Melting Ms Frost (41 page)

‘Hey,’ he said, turning into the doorway and stopping at the sight of Annabel’s overnight bag open on the bed. His gaze flew to where she bent over the bedside table, trying to gather too many of her possessions into her one good hand, and failing. When she turned back to the bed he saw her face was a cold, expressionless mask, her pallor parchment-white.

His guts gripped with unease. ‘Annabel. What’s wrong?’

She didn’t look at him. ‘Nothing,’ she said, shoving the items she’d managed to grab into the top of the holdall and then turning back for the others.

What the hell? ‘Are you going somewhere?’

‘Home.’

‘Right now?’ When he wasn’t even supposed to be here? She hadn’t said anything about it earlier. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d caught her in the act of sneaking out.

She picked up her things and made for the bag again. ‘Yes. I should have gone the other day. I’ve got things to do.’

He walked towards the bed, watching her snag her wash bag and spin in the direction of the bathroom.

‘Annabel, what is this?’ He changed course to match her, reaching out to take hold of her good arm to slow her down. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Don’t touch me,’ she spat, wrenching herself away with enough force that she winced in pain.

Immediately, he put both his hands up in a calming gesture. He didn’t want her hurting herself. As much as she was playing it cool, that reaction spoke volumes. ‘Then talk to me. Look at me at the very least. I haven’t the first clue what this is but I can see it’s not “nothing”.’

She glanced at him then, her eyes icy green, her features set, every fibre of her being held stiff. Fuck, he felt a trickle of something cold down his back. Ms Frost was back with a vengeance.

‘There’s nothing to talk about. It’s just time I left, that’s all. I don’t see what the problem is.’

The problem was that something had made her fling her defences back up and he had no idea what. ‘Neither do I. But there obviously is one if you’re running away.’

‘Running away?’ she scoffed. ‘Isn’t that a bit dramatic?’

Damn
. She was giving him nothing. ‘You tell me,’ he said as he watched her walk past him and into the en suite. But as she turned to close the door behind her, he swore he caught her blinking rapidly as though fighting back tears.

‘Annabel.’ He rushed forward but was too late; the door closed in his face and the lock clicked into place. ‘Oh, no. Don’t you shut me out. Not now.’

There was a moment’s silence and then her voice came through the door. ‘Aidan. I don’t see why you’re trying to make an issue out of this. I appreciate your hospitality but it’s past time I was gone.’

He knew it was. But not this way. ‘I’m not going to try to stop you leaving. I just don’t understand why it has to be like this. As though suddenly there’s nothing between us.’

Another moment of silence, then, ‘There
is
nothing between us. A few days of casual sex, that’s all.’

She was lying. She had to be. ‘You know that’s not true. We’ve shared a lot more than that. Enough for me to feel entitled to know what’s going on.’

This time the slight pause made him hold his breath. Perhaps he was getting through to her.

‘What’s going on is that I have a life to get back to.’ Annabel’s words soon dashed that glimmer of hope. ‘As do you. Which reminds me, there’s a message for you on your answer phone. It sounds important.’

Not more important that this. Unless … Unless it had something to do with whatever the hell was happening. Why would she have mentioned it otherwise?

He strode out of the bedroom and through the living space towards the small room set off the kitchen area that he used as his study.

He entered, noting the property details and extensive documentation for Teach na Tulaí covering the surface of his desk where he’d left them. He pushed the play button and listened to the automated voice telling him the call had come in about half an hour ago. Next came the voice of his property agent in Ireland, Niall O’Roarke, excitedly relaying the news that Aidan’s bid on the house had been accepted and then, in typical O’Roarke jokey fashion, he crowed that, subject to contract, Aidan could be installed as lord of the manor and be warming his toes at the great hearth in a week. Aidan understood by the gale of laughter following this statement that Niall thought he was the funniest man alive. They both knew the sprawling Tulaí currently had no roof.

If Annabel had been drawn in here by the sound of the phone, heard Niall’s update and seen the paperwork and architect’s plans, she wouldn’t get the joke. Taking the evidence on face value she’d probably think he was about to up sticks and leave London. Was that what had triggered this? She was particularly vulnerable at the moment, had just started to open up and trust him. Could the idea of him leaving have hurt her somehow?

Only if she cared – the seductive thought slid through his mind. Only if she’d started caring enough to see it as some sort of betrayal.

‘Shit.’

Picking up the photo of the old house, he made his way back to the bedroom, wondering how best to play this, pondering how much he should tell her of his plans when he wasn’t entirely sure himself about the recent shift in direction his thoughts about the future had been taking.

When he reached the room however, it was empty. The door to the en suite was open, showing that too was empty. The bed was devoid of the overnight bag. Annabel had gone.

He strode to the windows to look down onto the street just in time to see the flash of her ruby-red hair disappear into the back of a cab.

Oh, she was running all right.

He checked his instinct to give chase. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said that he wasn’t trying to stop her from leaving. After the intensity of the past few days he realised it would probably be a good idea for both of them to get some distance, take a breath. He was much less concerned with her physical departure than her total emotional withdrawal. Her ability to just shut down and walk away.

As the cab pulled out from the kerb, he knew he wasn’t ready for this to be over – not yet, not when it had barely begun. But seeing how swiftly, how absolutely Annabel had reverted to type had him thinking that maybe what he wanted wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough.

‘Fuck it,’ he barked, slapping a palm against the glass as he watched the cab carry her away.

Leaving had been the right thing to do. The only thing to do. Annabel stared out of the cab’s window but hardly noticed the passing blur of London streetlights. She hadn’t counted on Aidan’s unexpected return interrupting her clean getaway, but the force of the feelings the sight and sound of him had stirred up made her even more convinced that she was doing the right thing. She’d known it had been foolish to ignore the voice of reason telling her to go home the other day, known it had been dangerous to stay, to give her mixed-up emotional state the opportunity to get the better of her. Yet she’d continued to drag her feet long after she’d had any reason to. Thank goodness that phone call had come in to help put things back into perspective.

She hadn’t meant to snoop. Hadn’t meant to go into his study at all. But when she’d heard the landline ring and the answer phone kick in, followed by the sound of a deep, lilting Irish accent, she’d thought that maybe it was Aidan calling. By the time she’d reached the doorway she’d realised it wasn’t. She’d been about to turn away again when her attention had been caught by the papers scattered all over the large desk that took up most of the small room – her interest piqued in particular by the image of a beautiful old mansion house.

And then the meaning of the disembodied words filling the room had sunk in. Aidan had bought it. And from what she’d been able to tell, the house was the one he’d told her about, the one from his childhood in Ireland.

He was leaving. Going home.

‘You all right, love?’

When the cab driver’s question snapped her out of her musings, she realised she’d been absently rubbing her chest where an unpleasant tightness ached.

‘Fine,’ she muttered back, wondering if she really was. She’d been shocked by how much the thought of him leaving had hurt. The strength of her immediate reaction – a visceral stab of pain to the very place in her chest that still ached – had been so frightening that she’d known she had to leave. What had happened to her in just a few short days? She wasn’t supposed to care. Had promised herself never to care, never to leave herself open to hurt or betrayal.

Except the rational part of her brain knew that there was no betrayal. Aidan owed her nothing. Take away the extraordinary circumstances following Tony’s attack and what they had between them was physical, casual – only, that didn’t seem to stop the pain. Nothing about Aidan felt particularly casual.

The irony wasn’t lost on her that not much more than a week ago she’d have been celebrating the news of his departure rather than succumbing to inappropriate feelings. More proof that she was not herself. Thank goodness that wake-up call had shown her how relaxed and reliant she was becoming.

Aidan must be breathing a sigh of relief to have his life back.

Annabel paid the taxi driver and made her way down the path to the entrance doors of her apartment block. Her progress up the stairs was slow, not so much hampered by her injuries as a reluctance to face the destruction she remembered from that fateful morning. At least she knew she had nothing more to fear from Tony here. She’d learnt from her visit from the police yesterday that his arrest had uncovered a long list of outstanding charges that had ensured he’d been kept in custody.

Inserting her key into the lock, she tried to brace herself with the reassurance that it was easier to be home, facing having to put possessions back together, than to still be at Aidan’s, getting sucked deeper and eventually be left trying to put herself back together.

Pushing the door open and turning on the light, she gasped. The hallway she stepped into was tidy and clean. As was the sitting room, which she walked into in a daze, for a fleeting moment wondering if any of the events of the past few days had actually happened. However, the empty space on the bookshelf where the photo of her father should have sat signalled that it was more than a bad dream. If it weren’t for that, plus a very few other missing items, things that she assumed had also been broken, there would have been no way of telling what violence had gone on here.

She started to shake as everything that had happened recently finally caught up with her. There was no way she didn’t know who was responsible for this. There was only one person it could be. Aidan.

She swiped her hand across her cheeks, cross to feel the moisture of a few errant tears
. Get yourself together, Annabel.
She didn’t have time for this. Not when there were still plenty of things she needed to do.

She walked into the kitchen, looking forward to finding some tasks with which to distract herself from the increasing roil of emotions threatening to break out and overwhelm her. But she found that room to be beyond spotless too. On the worktop beside the sink she found a business card from a cleaning company propped against a cardboard box containing a selection of broken items. She rummaged inside, looking for the only thing that mattered, the only thing that was irreplaceable. But neither the photo of her father nor the frame were there. Had the police taken it as evidence? She’d used it as a weapon after all.

She checked the rest of the flat, a sense of desperation growing as she realised there was nothing left for her to do. In the bedroom even her bed had been stripped, the pillows and duvet left stacked neatly at the foot of the mattress.

Her desperation threatened to tip over into panic. There must be
something
she could do? Going back into the kitchen, she was suddenly struck with inspiration. Ha! The fridge. That would need clearing out. She bet Mr I’m-So-Bloody-Wonderful wouldn’t have thought of that. She opened the door and looked at the sparsely stacked shelves, the empty vegetable crisper. No curdled milk, no browning lettuce, no mouldy tomatoes.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ She slammed the door shut and burst out crying. Bloody Aidan Flynn! Why did he have to be such a considerate bastard? She didn’t want it to feel so nice to have things done for her, didn’t want it to feel so warm and comforting to be cared for.

In fact, she’d feel a whole lot better if she could just hate him at the moment. But she couldn’t. All she felt was an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness.

Making her way back into her bedroom, she crawled onto the bare mattress and gave herself up to a good bawl.

It was mid-evening by the time she clawed her way back out of her pity pit, feeling bruised by emotional and physical exhaustion but with her conscience scoured to a raw clarity. It had been a long time since she’d taken a good look inside herself. And what she’d seen there left her knowing what she had to do.

She called Aidan’s mobile. He didn’t pick up. He probably didn’t want to talk to her. He was probably angry, and why wouldn’t he be when she’d flung all his care and kindness back in his face? She hung up, not knowing where to start with leaving a message. She’d try again later.

She tried later, before she went to bed, but again got no reply. She cut the call, still not willing to leave a message.

The following morning she called her insurance company, Richard Landon, the hospital, and her hairdresser to arrange for a twice weekly wash and blow dry until her cast was removed. She got through to each and every one of them. She called Aidan’s number twice and got no answer. When her landline rang she jumped out of her skin, but it was someone checking in from the victim support team the police had passed her details to.

It was well into the afternoon before she finally got hold of him.

‘Annabel,’ he answered the call, his tone cutting the word short in a way she didn’t like at all.

‘I’ve been trying to call you.’

‘I’ve been busy,’ he countered, words still clipped, his accent devoid of its usual soft edges.

Yeah. He was angry. And rightly so.