Calling Me Back (6 page)

“Seriously, dude. If you have to think about it, it’s not right,” Jake said.

Ash greeted us and helped herself to a glass of wine. I watched her as she peered into the fridge. She looked good tonight. Well, she always looked good, but she’d looked better, or different, the last few times I’d seen her. She joined us, sitting between Jake and me on the bar stools, watching Haven doing something with pastry and egg. It seemed kinda unappetizing, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Are you sure you don’t need a hand with anything?” Ash asked, grimacing while she knew Haven wasn’t watching. I snorted, and Haven looked up.

“I’m sure. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute and you can do your thing,” Haven said. “How’s Richard?”

“I met him,” I interjected.

Haven stopped what she was doing, her eyes on mine. “You did?” Her gaze darted between Ash and me. “When? How come?” Haven hadn’t met Richard yet, so she was bound to be wondering why I had.

“I went to see Ash for lunch this week and we bumped into him,” I explained.

“You guys had lunch?” Haven asked. I’d expected her to focus on Richard rather than the fact that Ash and I’d had lunch. A look passed between Haven and Ash I couldn’t decipher. Was Haven pissed I got to meet him first? It wasn’t really her style.

“So, what was he like?” she finally asked.

“He didn’t have two heads.” I decided not to mention that as soon as he appeared, Ash had been out of her chair faster than a bat out of hell. I hadn’t quite worked out what had happened there. Haven rolled her eyes at me. “Well, what do you want me to say?”

“Did you like him?” Haven asked me.

“I met him for five seconds. He could be Gandhi; he could be Charles Manson. But he seemed like a decent guy and Ash has good taste in everything so . . .”

“Is he the one?” Jake asked. “I’m a convert to the theory of there being such a thing as
the one
.”

“Obviously,” Ash replied.

“Obviously he’s the one?” I asked as my gut twisted. Had Ash found her future husband? It hadn’t occurred to me that that’s what she’d been looking for. If that was the case, I wanted to know more about him. Was he good enough for her? Did he deserve her?

Could he make her laugh the way I did?

She smiled. “I meant obviously Jake believes in all that. See the pair of them.” She lifted her chin toward Haven and Jake, who were throwing each other little glances.

“And you
don’t
believe in all that?” I was suddenly fascinated by what her response would be.

I willed her to look at me, but she stared into her glass. “Yeah, I believe in it.”

Ashleigh

The boys had gone to watch sports, and I knew I was about to face an interrogation from Haven. “So you two had lunch?”

I tried to brush it off. It really was no big deal. “Yeah, Luke called and asked me at the last minute. We used to do it all the time. It’s not like I crossed some morally reprehensible line for lunching with your brother.”

Haven cocked her head. “I haven’t said a word. Do you think you might be a tad defensive? I just thought you were making room in your life for Richard, that’s all. I want you to be happy.”

“I saw Richard last night. There is plenty of
room
for him.”

Haven tapped the side of the pan with her wooden spoon. “And how’s the sex? Has it improved?”

“I don’t remember saying it needed improving on.” I threw a glance over my shoulder to check the boys weren’t listening.

Haven raised her eyebrows at me. I think I
had
said something like that, but hearing her say it sounded bad. Richard was a good guy.

“It’s not bad. He’s sweet and caring and very attentive,” I said. The sex had been . . . nice. But it was true, my world had not been rocked.

“And you want him to shove you against the wall and fuck you properly,” Haven replied. She’d hit the nail on the head, as always.

I sighed. “Maybe. I mean, he’s great in so many ways. I really should like him more than I do. He’s nice to me; he’s good looking; he has a good job. It’s just . . . there’s something that’s not quite right, like I’m not quite feeling it. But then maybe I won’t feel it, right? Or maybe it will come with time.” I wanted her reassurance that staying with Richard was what I should be doing, because I wasn’t sure. Should I want fireworks? Is that what would make me happy? All these years of loving Luke hadn’t done it. Wanting more than Richard seemed selfish and immature when everything about him was so great . . . at least on paper.

“But whatever
it
is, you feel that for Luke?” she asked. We rarely talked openly about how I seriously I felt about Luke. I joked around with him, told him we’d get married someday, called him handsome, that kind of thing. And sometimes he’d flirt back. It was our game, or it had been. I didn’t do it so much anymore. The difference between Luke and I was that my mock flirting was covering real feelings. Feelings I’d had since that day under the magnolia tree. Along the way, I’d fallen in love with Luke. I’d given him my heart. Luke was the fireworks, but I couldn’t will him to feel that way about me. And he was almost certainly about to get married.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I feel for Luke. I know he sees me as his little sister. I’ve accepted that, which is why I’m dating Richard.” I wasn’t sure I had managed to fully wrestle my heart away from Luke, but I was trying. Maybe I just needed to give Richard and me more time. Maybe I needed to know him better, know him the way I knew Luke.

“I think that’s a great idea. He and Emma have been together a long time, and she’s in her early thirties—her biological clock is bound to start ticking sooner rather than later.”

My heart started thundering at Haven’s words. Had he agreed to marry her? Did Haven know something? “He told me that he’s feeling some pressure to move things on,” I said.

She blushed and looked away. “He told you?”

“Yeah, it’s what we talked about at lunch.”

“Right. What do you think?”

My stomach flipped over, once then twice. Fuck, I hated thinking about it, but more than anything, I wanted him to be happy. “I think he needs to decide either way—shit or get off the pot. He must love her. They’ve been a couple for ages. Whatever makes him happy.”

Haven pushed her lips together. “Yeah, you’re right. I just don’t think . . . Anyway. Back to you. Maybe Richard’s just not the right guy for you. You need chemistry. It’s not all about ticking things off a list. Just because he meets some arbitrary criteria doesn’t mean you’re destined for each other,” she said.

“Destined?” Had she really just said that? She’d become such a sap since she’d married Jake.

“You know what I’m trying to say.” She laughed. “It doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life with a man just because he fits the description.”

“He wants us to go away next weekend. To the Lake District. So I guess it will be good to have that time together. Hopefully I’ll figure out if there’s a future for us.”

“And if there isn’t, maybe you’ll meet someone if you do that course you were talking about.”

I turned the base of my wineglass on the counter, watching as the alcohol crept up the edges of the glass with the movement. “Yeah, I need to work out whether or not I’m going to apply.”

“Apply for what?” Luke asked, poking me in the waist as he walked toward the fridge.

“Did I tell you?” I asked him. “I’m thinking about doing an MBA.”

“You are? Wow,” he said as he turned his attention away from refrigerator. He rarely shaved on a Sunday, and the stubble on his jaw looked long enough to feel good against my skin. I needed to focus.

“You think I shouldn’t?” I asked. I hadn’t mentioned it to Richard because I hadn’t decided whether or not I should apply yet.

“God, no. I think it would be awesome. You should definitely do it. Do you want to change jobs, or will it help you get promoted and stuff?” he asked, setting two cold beers on the counter and staring at me.

“If I really want to be a director of nursing in a hospital, then it’s what they look for, and if I want to get out of nursing and do something wider in healthcare, I guess it will help too. We can’t stay still, can we? I can’t be wiping puke from my uniform for the rest of my career.”

His eyes were bright and his whole body seemed focused on me. I loved it when I had his full attention. “How come you haven’t told me about this? When do you start?”

Haven pretended not to watch us as she set about slicing the onions I’d asked her to deal with.

“I haven’t decided whether or not I should do it.”

“Why wouldn’t you? I mean, I think you’re totally awesome at wiping vomit and myriad of other bodily fluids from your uniform, and I’m sure your patients would miss you, but you’re a smart girl. You can do anything you want to.”

“You think? I mean, I know I’m a good nurse, but I worried that in a class with a bunch of crazy-clever people, I would . . .”
Look foolish? Be the class dunce?

“
You’re
crazy clever. You could have done anything you wanted in your career. You can hold your own against a room full of management consultants. The thing is your heart is even bigger than your brain.
That’s
why you’re a nurse.”

I loved that that’s how he saw me. Luke always knew the right thing to say, and when he put it like that, I didn’t have a good reason not to apply, apart from the cost. I shrugged. “I have to sit a test and fill out an application form. The deadline is coming up.”

“You’d start in January?”

I nodded.

“Isn’t this great, Haven?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, she should totally do it.”

I grinned at them both. If I told them I was going to fly to the moon, they’d think it was a wonderful idea.

As promised, Richard had arranged a weekend in the Lake District for us. He picked a beautiful country hotel that felt as if it was in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t have asked for a more romantic setting.

“Wow, what a view,” I said, staring out of our bedroom window across the mountains and down to the lake. I loved the way the sun turned everything yellow before it hit the horizon.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Richard asked as he came up behind me and put his hands around my waist. It didn’t feel entirely natural, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Just unfamiliar.

“How did you find this place?”

“A guy at work had his honeymoon here.”

I could see why. Our room was huge, but cozy with an open fire and a four-poster bed. It was something that would pop up if you typed
romantic country hotel
into Google. In the same way, if you typed
romantic, attentive, kind and generous man
into Google, Richard would pop up. He
was
all those things.

“I thought we could just hang out here for the night. The restaurant downstairs is meant to be good. I made reservations for eight if that works for you.”

“Sure,” I said as I laid my head back on his chest. He was so thoughtful and kind.

“Or we don’t have to go anywhere. I’m sure they do room service.” He swept my hair to one side and pressed his lips to my neck.

We were three months in and this was our first weekend away together. I should be desperate to keep room service busy, but I didn’t feel like that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. When he kissed me, it felt nice. I was just ambivalent about his touch. About him really. I didn’t miss him when he wasn’t there, and I didn’t get excited to see him—though when I did, I had a nice time. Hopefully, now that things between us were getting more serious, my feelings would grow. But Haven’s words echoed through my head—maybe he just wasn’t the right man for me.

My phone rang and although I didn’t move to answer it, Richard released his hold around my waist. “You get that and I’ll grab a quick shower,” he said, then planted a kiss on my cheek.

Luke’s name was flashing on the screen. Talk about timing.

“Hey,” I said. Why was he was calling me?

“Hi, I’m at the supermarket. What wine did Haven say I should bring on Sunday?” The noise of the shoppers echoed behind him.