Flowers on the Water (2 page)

She pulled her bag from the rear of her vehicle, slammed the door, and paused with her palm splayed on the colorful logo, "Lucy's Flower Hut—Wedding and Celebration flowers a specialty." She had forged a new life for herself, come a long way since she enrolled in a floristry course at her local college. It was strange to think that had George lived, she would not have started her business. She would probably still be living in Dominic's shadow, the pretty little airhead who got pregnant and ruined the prospects of a bright boy.

"Do you enjoy what you do?" Dominic asked, nodding at the sign on her van. "I don't remember you being especially interested in flowers."

"People change." She didn't want to discuss her business with him. Floristry was her post-Dominic life, her refuge from the memories. She didn't want him connected with it in any way.

As she went through the gate, he took her suitcase. It was second nature to let him. He was halfway down the steps before she remembered that she'd intended to carry the bag herself.

With a sigh, she followed him back inside the cottage and up the stairs. He placed her case on the foot of the single bed in the back bedroom. Lucy glanced around at the small framed watercolor prints and the pine furniture. This bedroom had become familiar over the years. It almost felt like a home away from home. She should hate this place after what happened here, but she had a strange affection for it.

Dominic turned to leave, then hesitated, a whimsical smile on his face. "You haven't changed, Luce."

"I assure you I have," she said defensively. She was not the naive eighteen-year-old who married him, the girl who lived only for him, the girl who thought that love was all she needed. What a stupid, cruel joke that turned out to be.

"I mean your appearance," he added. "You hardly look a day older than the last time I saw you."

"Thanks. I think." He probably meant it as a compliment, although she wasn't sure she wanted to look twenty-one forever. She was comfortable in her skin now and quite happy to look her age. Nobody had taken her seriously when she was young. Even the teachers at school had treated her as a stupid airhead blonde and not been surprised when she got pregnant and had to leave school. She was a businesswoman now. She enjoyed the respect people gave her.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," he said.

Lucy closed the door behind Dominic, welcoming the solitude. For the first time since she'd arrived, she relaxed. She unpacked and stowed the clothes in the drawers, then she opened the bedroom door and listened. Jazz played softly downstairs. She didn't want to spend time with Dominic. Being with him brought back too many memories. But why should she confine herself to the bedroom when the cottage was supposed to be hers for the week?

Lucy descended the stairs quietly and paused in the living room doorway. Dominic was slouched on the sofa with a laptop on his knees, reading glasses balanced on top of his head. His dark hair flopped over his forehead as he stared out the window.

He looked older, but his gestures, the way he angled his body, the way he gnawed his lip in thought, they all resonated back through the years and called up memories long forgotten. She'd worked hard to erase him from her mind, but the past came back to her with alarming clarity.

An unwanted shiver of awareness ran through her. There was still something about him that made her hot and tingly. But she really did
not
want to be attracted to him.

He put on his glasses, consulted a notebook at his side, and started typing, oblivious to her. Writing another book, no doubt.

When he'd published
Flowers on the Water
five years ago, she'd been furious with him for trying to make money from their personal tragedy, and for stirring up the past.

She refused to speak to the reporters who wanted to interview her about the book, and she refused to read the signed copy Dominic sent her. Her mum read it and went all soppy over it, but Lucy would not be bullied into reading the damned thing.

The dormant anger roused now, burning along her nerves. Losing George had been an accident and not really Dominic's fault, but the book was a cynical attempt to capitalize on their tragedy. Dominic had hurt her again just to line his own pockets. She would never have believed him capable of that if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.

"Another book?" The words came out sharper and louder than she intended.

Dominic's head snapped up, and his fingers stilled. "Sorry, what was that?"

"You're writing another book."

Looking thoughtful, he closed down the lid of his laptop and set it aside. "Did you read
Flowers on the Water
, Luce?"

"No!" Angry words filled her mouth. "How could you write about what happened? How could you?"

He rubbed his temples. "If you'd read the book, you'd understand."

"No. I wouldn't. Trying to make money out of George's death was…" Lucy shook her head, tears filling her eyes. She had never cried over the book, never shed a tear over Dominic's crass behavior. She would not let herself do so now. She blinked frantically and fought the urge to cry.

"You think that's what I was doing?"

"Don't deny it. That bloody book was on the bestseller lists for months. It was a nightmare for me. Reporters wanted to dredge everything up again. People I worked with read it and wanted to talk about what happened.

"I'd moved on with my life. My work colleagues didn't know about my past until your book came out. I had to leave my job and start again. You must have made a bundle out of our heartbreak." She jabbed a finger in the direction of the lane outside. "No doubt that fancy car of yours came out of the profits."

"Lucy, I never meant to hurt you again." Dominic was on his feet and coming towards her.

She backed into the hallway until her elbow hit the wall, then raised a palm to warn him off. "Don't you
dare
touch me."

He halted, frustration etched on his face. "I wanted you to read it. I wanted you to understand how I felt. But you didn't even bother to read the foreword, did you?"

Lucy shook her head, her lips pinched tightly.

Dominic scooped the hair off his forehead, looking suddenly lost. "I didn't write it to be published, Luce. After George died, getting my thoughts and feelings down on paper was my way of coping."

She remembered now, he was always journaling, pouring out his thoughts in a leather-bound book he kept beside the bed.

"I submitted it as my thesis for my doctorate."

"Your what?"

"After the divorce, Mum suggested I reapply to Oxford. I stayed on there to do a PhD. Most dissertations end up gathering dust on an obscure shelf in the library, but my professor showed mine to an editor friend of hers. Apparently, narrative non-fiction is all the rage. The publisher snapped it up."

"You went to Oxford University?"

Dominic shrugged. "That's where I was headed before you got pregnant with George."

So he'd picked up his life where he dropped it when they were married. Their three years together were just a bump on his road to success.

His parents got their way after all. They'd done everything in their power to persuade him to go to college and leave her behind, yet he gave up his promising academic future to marry her and raise George. It was years since she'd thought of the terrible arguments with his parents when they found out she was pregnant, the horrible things they'd said about her.

They'd wanted her to get rid of the baby—they'd wanted her to disappear from their son's life. She could still hear Mrs. Sinclair's words to Dominic: "That girl's nothing but a pretty face. Don't saddle yourself with the stupid little tart for the rest of your life."

Dominic stepped back, his hands raised in defeat. "I'd hoped…" He closed his eyes for a moment then turned away. "It doesn't matter. Forget it."

With her back still to the wall, Lucy watched Dominic disappear. She heard the creak of the sofa and then the click of the laptop keypad. She pressed a hand to her chest, suddenly aware of her racing heart.

Grabbing the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, Lucy sat on the third step and rested her forehead in her hands. It didn't matter why he'd published
Flowers on the Water
; the result was the same. He turned her life upside down and hurt her for a second time.

She couldn't stay here with Dominic. It was too distressing. All she wanted to do was dash upstairs, pack her suitcase, and leave before they had another fight. Before she did that, though, she would walk down to the beach and do what she came for.

When she went in the living room, Dominic didn't glance up, his fingers busy at his keyboard. Lucy trod quietly across to the kitchenette and dug her mobile phone from her bag, collected the bunch of lilies, then headed for the door.

When she stepped outside, she drew in a welcome breath of warm, flower-scented air. Even the lovely fragrance didn't lift her mood. She took the familiar narrow path through the shrubs to the steep steps that led down to the beach. At the bottom, she pulled off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the warm sand.

She had a ritual when she came here each year. It was time to get back to that and forget the distraction of Dominic. Lucy shaded her eyes and scanned the sandy beach. The place was off the beaten track and usually quiet, even in the height of summer. Today, the expanse of golden sand was all hers. Sun sparkled off the gently rippling water as it washed against the rocks bordering the cove.

She headed for the sea, remembering George's tiny hand in hers, and how proud he'd been of his bucket and spade. Dominic had kneeled, building sand castles with the enthusiasm of a kid while George giggled and flattened them as fast as Dominic turned them out of the plastic bucket.

She halted at the ocean's edge. Cold, clear water flowed over her toes, making the sand sink away beneath her feet. This had been paradise for the first five days of their vacation, paradise until it became a living hell. She glanced over her shoulder at Beach View Cottage. Dominic stood at the window, watching her. She quickly averted her gaze and tracked the coast from the slipway, across the rocks, to the headland that formed the southern end of the bay.

Her body hummed as she turned back to stare out to sea, aware of Dominic even when he wasn't with her. It was crazy that after ten years apart, there was still chemistry between them, a spark that ran along her nerves in a way she had quite forgotten.

Her phone chimed. She fished it out of her pocket and checked the screen: a text from her mum checking she'd arrived safely. Lucy sent a quick affirmative reply. She was about to drop the phone back in her pocket when she stopped.

Instead she scrolled to the reading app and searched for Dominic's book.
Flowers on the Water
had a beautiful cover, a picturesque English cove just like this one, with a scattering of colorful flowers floating on the water. Exactly what they had done after George's funeral, cast flowers onto the sea. A tradition Lucy continued each year as a symbol of remembrance.

Perhaps she should have read Dominic's book. Reading it changed her mother's opinion of him. It even prompted her to suggest Lucy contact him again. But the hurt went too deep.

Lucy instigated the divorce proceedings but Dominic hadn't contested them. He'd made no attempt to see her at all. She hadn't heard a word from him since the divorce—except for the signed copy of his book.

The gentle wind played with her hair and she tucked the strands behind her ears. She wandered along the water's edge and sat on a flat rock.

She returned her attention to her phone, bought the e-book, and waited while the file downloaded. With the gentle swish of the water in the background and the sun warming her skin, she started reading the foreword.

This book has been a long time in the writing. Four years to be exact. I started it twenty-four hours after a tragedy that tore my life apart, the death of my two-year-old son, George. At the time, I had no intention of my words being read by others. The pouring out of my thoughts and feelings was therapy of the most basic kind. If I had not purged these emotions onto the page, I am certain they would have destroyed me. As it is, writing this book kept me sane when I lost everything I held dear.

My son drowned—on my watch. His death was my fault. I accept complete responsibility. There is nothing I can ever do to bring him back, no adequate words I can ever say to the woman who carried him in her body for nine months, gave birth to him, and loved him with all her heart from the moment he came into this world. I let them both down so badly that I find it difficult to live with myself, still, after four years. I foresee no change in this state of being.

Life goes on—a hollow shell of a life, empty without my wife and my son.

This is my story, my epitaph to a beautiful little boy and my inadequate attempt at an apology to my darling wife who I miss every day and always will.

I dedicate this book to you, Lucy. I know you want nothing more to do with me, but in my heart, you will always be my wife.

Tears tightened Lucy's throat, flooded her eyes. She clutched her phone to her chest, pressed a hand over her mouth. "Oh, my God," she whispered. No wonder the women she worked with at the florist shop all took Dominic's side when the book came out. No wonder they told her she shouldn't have divorced him.