The Love Market (32 page)

He hands me a piece of paper with something written on it. ‘My new address,’ he says.

I take it off him and read in the dim light. Have I drunk too much? ‘London?’ I frown.

‘This may be crazy, but I don’t think it is. I’ve rented a flat. For a year. I’m going to give myself that time to focus on my book. And I’m going to be free to see you as much as you’re willing and able to see me.’

I am too stunned to respond, and while I stand here, his eyes do a slow wander over me, from head to toe and back. And then he smiles. He looks young, and handsome, and happier than I’ve ever seen him. And for the first time, relaxed, in an odd sort of tense way.

‘But your job?’

He is already shaking his head. ‘I didn’t take it. I had doubts about it all along, as you know. I guess I didn’t want it enough. Or what I should say, is I wanted something else more.’ He takes hold of my warm hands in his cold ones, and clasps them there, and looks at me with that same vigorous intensity that I always associate with him. From inside the house, Seal is singing “Kiss From A Rose”. ‘I told you before that there would be a way. That I made a mistake once, and I wasn’t going to make the same one over.’ He smiles at me. ‘I don’t say things I don’t mean, Celine. I meant every word of it.’

He pulls my hands now and relocates them round his back, wrapping his arms around me, and resting the weight of his chin on the top of my head. Around us, like a halo, our breaths merge in the bitter night air. ‘We’ve got a year to see how it goes. It’s not perfect, I know. But can you live with that for now?’ He kisses the top of my head.

I look up at him, and whisper. ‘I can live with it for now.’

Carol Mason is the author of The Love Market, Send Me A Lover, and The Secrets of Married Women. She is British, from Northern England, but lives in Vancouver, Canada with her husband. You can learn more about her and her novels, at
http://www.carolmasonbooks.com
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• Prologue
  
• One
  
• Three
  
• Four
  
• Five
  
• Six
  
• Seven
  
• Eight
  
• Nine
  
• Ten
  
• Eleven
  
• Twelve
  
• Thirteen
  
• Fourteen
  
• Fifteen
  
• Sixteen
  
• Seventeen
  
• Eighteen
  
• Nineteen
  
• Twenty
  
• Twenty-one
  
• Twenty-two
  
• Twenty-three
  
• Twenty-four
  
• Twenty-five
  
• Twenty-six
  
• Twenty-seven
  
• Twenty-eight
  
• Twenty-nine
  
• Thirty
  
• Thirty-one
  
• Thirty-two
  
• Thirty-three
  
• Thirty-four
  
• Thirty-five
  
• Thirty-six
  
• Thirty-seven
  
• Thirty-eight
  
• Thirty-nine
  
• Forty
  
• Forty-one
  
• Forty-two
  
• Forty-three
  
• Forty-four
  
• About the Author
  
• Two