Falling for the Guy Next Door (19 page)

“Not just
because of us,” she lied. She loved her house, but she loved Jack
more and she couldn’t keep it inside a moment longer. But if he
didn’t want her love, she’d be the one to leave so he could stay
and she wanted him to know that up front.

“People are
flawed,” she went on, searching for the best way to explain. “Love
is flawed. Nothing’s guaranteed and it’s not meant to be easy.” She
smiled as she finally understood what he’d been saying that morning
at bunny island about the uncertainty and surprise being part of
the perfect shot. “If we don’t work out, you won’t want us to be
living on top of each other and neither would I. Our house…your
home, has no bearing on what happens between us.”

It wasn’t
coming out quite right, Megan knew, but she didn’t have a better
way to put it. If he loved her, if they found their forever, then
it wouldn’t matter who owned what portion of the house. If he
didn’t, or if he couldn’t, then she wouldn’t be the one to drive
him from his home.

She turned in
his embrace to look at him, to tell him how very much in love with
him she was. Once he knew that, he’d figure out what she’d been
trying to explain.

J
ack couldn’t breathe. There was a pressure on his
lungs, pressing out the air and refusing to let fresh oxygen in.
Megan turned within his arms, looked up at him. Her face was
blurred. He blinked, but his vision didn’t clear.

“Jack?”

He scrambled
backward and shot to his feet. He tried to suck in a deep breath,
but it didn’t seem to reach his lungs. He staggered back another a
foot. “Megan, I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t do
this.

“What?” She
got to her feet. “Jack, what are—”

“I can’t.” He
held a hand out, shaking his head. “I’ve got to go.”

He shouldn’t
even think of driving. The images were pounding at his head,
pounding out what little oxygen was left in his lungs. He put one
foot in front of the other, going through the motions without
thought, barely capable. The same scene kept attacking his mind,
battering down carefully constructed walls.

He was seven
years old again, creeping down the stairwell of his uncle’s home.
Jack hadn’t spoken a single word since Nanny Anne had pulled him
into her arms and told him. Mommy and daddy were gone. No, not just
gone. Dead. Gone forever. Then the grey-haired lady had come to
take him away, put him in that place with rows of beds and a room
full of noise. Kids older than him. Kids younger than him.

He didn’t know
how many days he’d been there before the other lady had come, put
him on the plane and sat with him. She’d explained about England,
about Uncle Frank. He knew Uncle Frank. Mom and dad had brought him
over here to England, to the farm, a few times. Uncle Frank was
okay. He liked to swing Jack up high and tickle him until he
screamed. Uncle Frank was fun, but Jack didn’t want his uncle now.
He wanted his mom. He wanted Nanny Anne. He wanted his dad and he
wanted to be in his own bedroom.

He was also
thirsty, which was why he’d left the strange bed he didn’t want to
be in and was creeping down the stairs. When he reached the bottom,
he paused. The voices were coming from the kitchen. The door was
partially open, casting a circle of light across the threshold.

“
What about
his grandfather?” That voice belonged to Aunty Mary. He’d met her
for the first time today. Uncle Frank’s new wife. “The old man can
take him.”

“
Jack
doesn’t know Neville, you know that. And why would he want Jack
when he hasn’t spoken to his daughter since she married
John?”

“
I don’t
want him either. This isn’t fair, Frank. This isn’t what I’d
planned for.”

“
And I
didn’t plan for my little brother to die, Mary.” Uncle Frank
sounded cross. The type of cross Jack had never heard before. It
sounded a little like a sour orange he’d once bitten into and had
had to spit out. “Besides, Neville is bedridden. How much longer do
you think he has to live?”

“
But why do
we have to be burdened with him?”

“
Because we
don’t have a choice. He has nowhere else to go.”

“
Give him
to the state.”

“
Mary.” Now
Uncle Frank sounded like a bear growling. “How can I do that to
John?”

Jack stepped
back, no longer thirsty.

“
Well, I’m
not having it,” Aunty Mary said. “This is my life, not his. He has
no right to push his way in here and drive me out.”

“
Jack’s not
pushing—”

“
I’m not
going to raise another woman’s child! You’ll have to make a choice.
Either he goes or I do.”

Jack heard
nothing more. He raced up the stairs and dived beneath the covers.
His heart raced so fast, he wondered if it would fly out of his
chest.

Jack was
sitting behind the wheel of the Land Rover, parked outside his
home. He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. He must have driven from
the beach, unaware and unseeing. His breaths came a little easier,
but the pressure was still clamping his lungs. He climbed out of
the car and moved quickly, up the porch steps, through the front
door, up the stairs to his bedroom. His body was still on
auto-pilot, functioning without his input.

He’d chased
his aunt from her marriage, from her home, from the life she was
supposed to live. He’d been complacent, had known he shouldn’t
stay, but he had and now he was doing the same thing to Megan.
Kicking her out of her home.

In the
bedroom, he pulled his bag from the bottom of the wardrobe and
flung it on top of the bed. This was what he’d always feared. If he
stayed in one place too long, he’d fuck up. Mess up other people’s
perfect lives. He marched between the wardrobe and the bed,
stripping shirts from hangers, scooping the shelves clear, cramming
everything into the bag.

The sooner he
got out of here, the sooner Megan could get her life back and this
time, he wouldn’t return to fuck it up again.

He zipped the
bag and hauled it from the bed. But instead of lugging it down the
stairs, he stood in place, staring at the wall between this room
and Megan’s.

Megan. He’d
promised her he wouldn’t do this.

He closed his
eyes, allowing pictures of her to swarm his head. He hadn’t just
been complacent. He’d being falling in love. And now he was going
to break his promise to the one person he’d sworn to never hurt
again. He couldn’t do it. He sucked down deep breaths, and this
time the air filled his lungs.

He wouldn’t
walk out on her again. This time, he’d stay to end it properly.

Megan slept in
fits and starts. In the waking moments, the heaviness inside her
chest shared space with disbelief and numbing anger.

She couldn’t
believe it.

He’d done it
again.

Okay, last
time she’d checked through the window, the Land Rover was still
outside. He hadn’t left yet. But that didn’t fool her this time.
When he’d said, “I’ve got to go,” she knew exactly what he meant.
The very thing she’d been expecting from the start.

And she hadn’t
even gotten around to saying she loved him. So what had chased him
off? If he didn’t want the house, well, she hadn’t insisted he be
the one to buy it. Maybe that had been one of her more stupid
ideas, but she’d been fresh out of clever ones.

Morning
arrived with the chiming of her doorbell. It could be any number of
people. Kate knew what had happened. She’d wanted Megan to stay
with her the night, but Megan needed to be alone. It could be
Isobel, recovered and come to apologise for freaking out, although
Megan didn’t blame her. It could be Finn, come to fill her in on
any new developments, although God knew how much more she could
take. Hell, it could even be Bill, the postman.

But she knew
it would be Jack even before she dragged herself down the stairs
and opened the door. She wore her favourite pair of threadbare
sweater pants and hadn’t bothered running a brush through her hair.
She didn’t care if she looked a fright.

“Morning,” he
said, his voice as solemn as his gaze.

She swung from
the doorway without a word and marched down the hall into the
kitchen. He could stay or he could go. She prepared the espresso
pot and set it on the gas hob to boil.

He followed
through to the kitchen. “Megan, I brought you this.”

She
turned.

He held a wad
of loose papers in his hand. “Contract of sale for 21a.”

“How long have
you had that?”

“I had the
contract drawn up a couple of weeks ago. The selling price is what
I paid for the place four years ago. I know how much you love this
house and I always intended to offer 21a to you.”

Confirmation
that her instincts had been spot on from the very beginning. He’d
been planning to leave the moment he’d arrived in Corkscrew Bay.
How on earth had she become so deluded along the way?

Her glare
moved from the contract to him. “You could have slipped it under
the door.”

A pale
impression of his usual grin tugged at the side of his mouth. “Is
that your way of kicking me out?”

A sigh started
below her ribs and threatened to drag up a sob as it left her lips.
“What are you doing here, Jack? You said you had to go. Well, just
go.”

He looked at
her a long moment. “I will, but I’ve got a promise to keep first. I
said I wouldn’t bolt in the middle of the night. I’m not going
anywhere until I know you’re okay.”

“You’re
kidding!” She turned her back on him and pulled a mug down from the
cupboard. Damned if she’d offer him coffee. “Your sense of honour
is so screwed up, you don’t even know the point at which a promise
becomes absolutely worthless.”

“It’s not
much,” he agreed in a gruff voice. The slap of paper on wood was
followed by his footsteps down the hall.

The door
closed with a click, and then it was just her and the whistling
espresso pot and the stack of white papers on the kitchen table.
The proof of her stupidity. She’d let her guard down, slept in his
arms and put off tomorrow. Well, tomorrow had arrived and she
wasn’t prepared.

She poured her
coffee, added a large dollop of cream to the black syrup and took
it with her upstairs.

She got
nothing done that day, couldn’t think straight with the sounds of
him rustling about next door. Knowing he was right there, so close
and yet completely out of reach, was a poison festering the ache in
her heart. But would he leave? Oh, no! He’d made a promise and he
was keeping it. Why did he have to be so bloody noble?

Well, night
had come and gone. He hadn’t bolted. Promise #1 to him. Did he
seriously intend to hang around until she was okay?

She grabbed
her phone and started typing.
I’m
okay.

The reply was
instant.
I don’t believe you.

His arrogance
tipped the bucket. She tossed the phone across her desk and stormed
down the stairs. Hopped across the hedge and banged on his
door.

“What did I
say that was so terrible?” she demanded the moment the door
opened.

Not the
words she’d come to say.
She’d meant to tell him exactly where
he and his promises could go, and to take his patronising
assumptions with him.

But she’d
missed the tell-tale signs this morning. Looking at him now, the
stubble grazing his jaw, his hooded gaze, she saw that he was far
from okay himself. “Is this about my idea to put my house on the
market?”

“It’s not just
a house, Megan, it’s your life.” He shoved a hand through his hair,
stepping back. “Without Bluff Drive, you’d either have to move into
town or move right away. I’d never take that from you.”

Her throat
went dry as it finally dawned on her. She’d missed the most
important details when he’d told her about the plane crash and
Frank raising him. That hard edge of bitterness she’d heard in his
voice wasn’t aimed at his parents being so careless with his young
life. It was aimed at himself.

Frank’s wife
left him when the courts appointed him as my guardian. She didn’t
fancy the idea of an instant family not of her making.

Frank’s wife
had left and Jack had stayed. He blamed himself for taking her
place.

Megan gave
herself a mental kick. She’d made a silly suggestion and
inadvertently regurgitated up his history. She’d offered him a
chance to stay at the cost of her leaving. With Jack, it had never
ever been about his need to always leave, but about his need to not
stay.

“I’m not
Frank’s wife,” she said softly. “You’re not forcing me out of my
own life. You’re not forcing me into anything.”

“It doesn’t
matter either way,” he told her. “21a is yours if you still want
it.”

“I’d rather
have you,” she exclaimed.

His eyes
shuttered. His face blanked of any emotion.

Frustration,
pain and anger broke within her like a damn flooding its walls. “I
love you, Jack.” She had nothing more to lose. And she didn’t think
she could ever forgive. “I love you and I was prepared to do
anything to give that love a chance.”

Her hands
shook so badly, she fisted them into a tight balls so he wouldn’t
notice. Tears welled at her eyes and she blinked hard to crush
them. “Moving out of my house means absolutely nothing because
no-one, and certainly not you, can kick me out of my own life. Only
I can do that, and that’s exactly what it felt as if I was doing
when I was too afraid to risk everything for what we might have
been.

“I don’t know
if we could ever have worked.” She backed away from him and down
the porch steps. “I never expected guarantees. I expected very
little, Jack, but I did expect more than, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ If
it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have frozen me out between one
heartbeat and the next. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t still be
here. But you go right on telling yourself it doesn’t matter and
turn that into your own little truth.”