The Boy is Back in Town (9 page)

There were a few seconds where all Mari could hear was Ethan shifting on the leather seat but, when he answered, his words rang out clearly in the small space that seemed to have suddenly become even smaller around them.

‘This is coming out wrong, What I meant to say was that it sounds like you’re going backwards in your life. I don’t understand why you would want to lock yourself away in that old house with Rosa and all of the ghosts from your past and throw away the key.’

Mari’s eyes sparked ominously. ‘Well, I’m glad to say that you are totally mistaken, Ethan. About me, about Rosa and, most of all, you’re totally wrong about what we’re going to do with our lives.’ Her words were coming in fast, angry, loud bursts and she reached out and slapped her hand down hard on her seat. ‘How dare you? How dare you tell me how to live my life? Perhaps you should take a look at how well you have been doing these past ten years.’

‘I’ve been doing just fine, thank you.’ He nodded, his brow furrowed.

She lifted her chin. ‘Have you? All those fine trophies for doing the one thing you seem to excel at. Running away. Or is that sailing away? Take your pick. Because it’s all the same to me. When was the last time you came here? Oh, yes. Just before you ran out on me and left me to clean up all of the mess that you left behind in my life. No.’

Ethan had moved forward to try and comfort
her—but she pushed both hands palm-forward and turned to stare out of the car window at the view.

‘After everything we’ve been through together, I actually thought that you would understand why I want this house for Rosa. Well, it looks like I was wrong. Very wrong. It looks like we’ve both changed more than you know.’

She sensed his movement and turned her head towards him.

‘Mari,’ he said in exactly the same voice she had always known, only deeper and more intense than ever, and she looked up into his face. ‘I’m sorry. I understand more than you can know.’

In that second their eyes met and any lingering thoughts she might have had that she could stay away from Ethan and walk away from this town without having her heart broken flew out of the window and into the cold night air.

And, almost as if he was feeling the same thing, his arm slipped away from the steering wheel and both his hands reached up to cup her chin so that the thumbs could swirl gentle circles on her cheeks.

Time slowed to a dead stop so that her entire senses were focused on Ethan’s breathing
and the warm scent of him filling the tiny space that separated them.

With one small shift in his seat, Ethan closed the space between them and his lips touched hers, warm and strong and tasting of all her forgotten hopes and dreams. All of her buried emotions surged back into life as if they had never been away but had kept dormant, waiting for this moment. And her heart swelled with such an overwhelming combination of anguish and love that when she pulled back she was afraid to open her eyes in case this was all some mirage, a dream.

‘It seems that some things haven’t changed at all. Have they?’ Ethan said, his mouth half pressed against her temple.

‘Yes, they have,’ she replied in a low and trembling voice, her eyes focused on his shirt as she fought to remember how to breathe again. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I won’t be helping you out at the house after all. I quit.’

The auction house was already half-full when Ethan sauntered in and found a seat at the back of the room. Curiosity about Mari had won out in the end and he quickly spotted her sitting in the front row.

She had brushed her shoulder-length
auburn hair into a shiny straight column held back by a single barrette. The stiff formal look was completed by a dark grey skirt suit and, from what he could see from this position, the same dark laptop bag she had been carrying everywhere. So this was what she looked like when she was in business mode. Impressive.

The ugly duckling of a girl he had once known truly had become a swan.

Beautiful to look at, serene and calm, and pedalling like mad under the water where nobody could see how desperate she was.

Oh, Mari. You’re better than this cold, impassive creature of your own making.

Yesterday he had seen glimpses of the girl he used to know when the real Mari slipped out from beneath the weight of the past and the huge unspoken barrier that lay between them.

And it was magical.

So why did she truly want to buy back the house where she used to live with her family? He remembered it well. The house itself was fairly basic, with a stunning view over the bay from its position on the cliffs, but he had never truly paid much attention to the house. It was the family who’d lived there that was remarkable, and Marigold Chance had been
the real star of the Chance home. He had never understood why he seemed to be the only person who saw that.

The auction room was filling up now and people were starting to block his view, so Ethan quickly moved forwards and took a seat directly behind Mari where she could not see him—but he could see her.

He could see how her shoulders stiffened and lifted a little when the auctioneer arrived and took his place at the podium. There was still twenty minutes to go before the start of the auction, but she was already tense and nervous.

There was the faintest whiff of the same perfume that she had been wearing yesterday in the air, mingled with heat and moisture from cold, damp clothing and a dusty room. Ethan sat back in his chair, but just at that moment the lady next to him dropped her handbag and the contents spilled out around him.

And Mari turned around to see what the commotion was, and saw him. He didn’t know who was more shocked. But her wide-eyed astonishment said it all.

She stared at him through narrowed eyes, shook her head from side to side just once, checked her watch and picked up her bag,
leaving her coat on the chair to reserve her place, and then tipped her head towards the entrance.

He got the message. And followed her outside.

‘Are you stalking me? Because I have to tell you that one kiss last night does not entitle you to follow me around. And don’t you dare try to interfere in this auction.’

Then Mari stopped, pressed her forefinger to her chin and took a short intake of breath before Ethan had a chance to answer. ‘Oh. Oh, silly of me. I forgot. Why should you? I’m the one who’s planning to stay in one place long enough to make a home. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?’

‘Are you quite finished?’ Ethan asked in a calm quiet voice as he leant with his back against his car.

‘No, actually I’m not. But I only have a few minutes before the auction starts and it’s freezing and you get me all frazzled when I’m trying to be calm and in control. So please. Just tell me. Why are you here?’

Ethan pushed both hands down into his trouser pockets and steadied himself.

‘Good question. Long answer. Let’s start with the stalking.’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Someone clearly has a very high opinion of themselves.’ Ethan did not react to Mari’s instant cough of dismissal but carried on. ‘But you have a point. I am here to see you. I’m here to see just how far you are prepared to go to move right back to where you were ten years ago.’

There was a sharp intake of breath from the woman standing in front of him with her arms crossed before she answered with a look of total disbelief on her face. ‘You know why. I’m buying this house for my sister. She needs a secure home. And …’ Mari stretched out her neck a little. ‘It’s an excellent base where I can create business at some future point. Do you have any further questions or can we go inside now?’

‘Only one. How long are you planning to keep that excuse up? Because, the way I see it, you aren’t buying this house for Rosa—you’re buying it for yourself.’ He pushed himself off the car and reached out and fought off her protests to wrap his sheepskin coat around her shoulders.

He pulled the front of the coat towards him, with her inside. ‘You can fight me all you like, but I just hate to think that you’re going to come back here to lock yourself away from other people. Oh, I know. People
can leave, people can hurt your feelings and people can break your heart, but sometimes it is worth taking the risk.’ His voice dropped even lower and he gave a half smile as he smoothed down the front of his coat.

‘You don’t need to be so afraid. You can live anywhere you want and go anywhere you want. And you’ll be fine.’

She looked up at him and her jaw tightened. Her eyebrows came together but she forced them apart and licked her lips before answering. ‘This is all I know. This is what I want.’ And she quietly slipped off his coat and strode, head up, back into the auction room.

Oh, Mari. I do hope that you know what you are doing.

The first three properties seemed to take forever to sell and there had been several breaks in the bidding when Mari had felt like screaming. Didn’t they know that she had been dreaming about this moment for years, and been awake half the night worrying and the other half reliving the moment when Ethan had kissed her in the car?

How dared he turn up this morning and ruin her day with all of his questions? How dared he kiss her and give her a glimpse of all of the things she could not have? He was
leaving, she was staying and he
still
kissed her. Worse. She had liked it. Stupid girl.

Either way, she was exhausted, her hands were shaking in anxiety. And the bidding was just about to start.

She didn’t know whether to be sick into her laptop bag, stand on the chair and scream at everyone that this house was
hers
and they’d better not even think about bidding, or calmly sit there and make her bid at the right time.

She went for option three.

Her real worry was the size of the deposit she had to put together before the bank would agree to offer her a loan for the maximum she could afford on her salary. The constraints meant that she had a working budget with enough left over to do the repairs and create a home office. And that was all she had. Anything else would mean going back to the bank for a bigger loan, and they had not exactly been impressed by her proposal in the first place.

Without the extra cash deposit from her overtime and all of her cash savings, she could be in trouble.

And the prices so far had been a lot higher than she had expected.

But of course that would not happen with her. The photographs and house details had
made it clear that a lot of work was needed. That was bound to drive down prices.

Right. Mari lifted her chin. Three. Two. One. Go. She was about to buy back her home.

Ethan clutched tight hold of the back of the chair in front of him, two rows behind Mari, his fingers wrapped around the hard metal rungs, knuckles white with pressure.

As the auction started, he felt himself being caught up in the electricity and excitement. Bids were flying everywhere from all corners of the room so quickly that it was hard to keep up. The numbers were higher than he had expected, which could be a problem. But Mari was calm. Her head fixed in place. Waiting. Waiting for the perfect time to place her bid to buy back her old home and start a new life. Back where she’d started.

And there it was. Mari raised her hand and bid a startling amount of money for her old home. But there was one more bid. From a middle-aged man at his side of the room, sitting next to a woman and three children, each of them almost bouncing with excitement and enthusiasm. A family wanted the house.

Ethan’s heart sank. If he was in that position, with his wife and children around him, all looking forward to a new home by
the sea—he would move heaven and earth to make it happen.

And without warning an icy chill hit Ethan hard in the stomach with such speed and ferocity that he had to take several long breaths to calm his thumping heart.

She was going to lose this house and it would destroy her. It would be better in the long-term if she made a future somewhere else, he believed that now, but it would still cause her huge pain if she thought that she had let Rosa down.

Mari immediately raised her hand again and increased her bid by another ten thousand—and was instantly outbid again.

She was so startled that it took her a full second to recognise that the family man had increased his bid by not ten thousand but another twenty thousand.

The astonishment and alarm on Mari’s face said it all. She clearly had not expected to pay anything like this much and Ethan recognised by the telltale way she chewed her lower lip and bent her fingers into the centre of her palms that she knew she was at her limit.

She hesitated, her hand almost shaking, before increasing her bid yet again.

And the longer Ethan watched Mari, the
more he thought that this was not the action of a woman looking for a home back in Swanhaven with her sister. This was a desperate act driven by a need to come back to the security of the past life she had once known.

The life which he had played a part in destroying.

And he knew exactly how that felt.

Because, sitting here amongst these strangers in a dusty, cold auction room, it was as obvious as a slap in the face that he was no different from Mari whatsoever.

Watching Mari struggling with her decision at that very moment, the answer screamed out at him from Mari’s startled hazel green eyes. He
was
running away from the pain and the guilt that was Kit and Mari Chance and everything that happened in Swanhaven ten years earlier. It had been easier to leave and not come back and start over again in Florida with his father’s new job, and he did feel guilty about that—his whole family had—but they had made the decision and acted on it. While Mari had stayed trapped right here.

It was ironic that he should only realise that fact when he was right back
in
Swanhaven.
Looking at Mari. Who had stood up and was winding her way towards him, her face lined and grey and tense with concern. The weight of disappointed dreams hung heavy on her sagging shoulders.

Part of him was pleased. Her agony was over. Now she could start moving forwards, not backwards. And perhaps give him a few tips on how to do that along the way. He started to get up, ready to take her home.