London Tides: A Novel (The MacDonald Family Trilogy Book 2) (27 page)

Except just as he’d feared, she was far too capable to remain an assistant. How long before she wearied of the tedium of a support job, when clearly she belonged at the head of a department, maybe the head of a corporation?

Even with Ms. Grey’s efficiency, his email in-box was filled to bursting. He sorted through the messages, tagging those that needed his immediate attention, forwarding those that could be delegated to Ms. Grey, shooting quick replies back on those that were easily solved. He was so absorbed in clearing his backlog that he didn’t notice the time creeping past noon until he looked at the clock. Good enough. Grace would be here in a few minutes with lunch anyway. If he could take care of this final list, he might even make it out of the office before 5:00 p.m. today.

The clock inched past one o’clock. Then one thirty. Unease crept into Ian’s gut. He pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket on the back of his chair. No messages.

Quickly he tapped out a text message:
Still having lunch today? Everything okay?

He set the phone on the edge of his desk, where he would notice if her reply came through.

By three thirty, it was obvious that she wasn’t coming, and she didn’t intend to reply to his message. He couldn’t breathe through his tight chest.

“Ms. Grey, my shoulder is bothering me. I’m going to leave early. You can reach me on my mobile if you need me.”

“Of course, sir. Tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.” He shrugged his jacket onto his shoulders without putting his arms through. “Thank you for all your hard work. I’ve never been able to take time off and not come back to a disaster.”

“It’s my pleasure, sir. Rest up.”

Ian held on to his composure until he stepped onto the lift and punched the button for the ground floor. Then he slumped against the wall and let the feeling of panic that had been clenched in his stomach rise up.

When he got back to his flat, would he find a ring on the counter?

Chapter Thirty-Three

Grace glanced at her watch as she stepped out onto Ian’s stoop. Eleven thirty. She’d gotten wrapped up in some photo editing after Ian had gone to the office, and she’d barely noticed the morning slipping by. If she were honest, she was reluctant to leave his place. It was like a physical link tethering her to him, even as she struggled with the emotional one. Ian clearly thought she was pulling away from him, that she was thinking of leaving, when in truth she just didn’t want to feel anything. If she opened herself to love and desire, she had to open herself to everything else. And if she did that, she would drown in it.

She took the Tube to Embankment, then rode the escalator up to street level, where the falafel stand was, the same place she and Ian had bought shawarma the day she’d challenged him to kiss her in public. The little twinge of pleasure at the recollection surprised her, almost as much as the way Ian’s kiss had thawed her numbness this morning. That had to be a good sign.

She waited her turn, then stepped up to the counter. “Two lamb shawarma and an order of falafel, please.”

The proprietor nodded with his usual stalwart demeanor and stepped back to carve the meat off the rotisserie on the back counter. Grace turned into the cool September breeze, taking in the surroundings: the queue backing up behind her, the heavy traffic on the Westminster streets, a rubbish lorry rumbling down an alleyway with a squeal of brakes.

“Ma’am?”

Grace looked back as the man returned with her food and exchanged her banknotes for a white paper bag. She was shoving her change into her pocket when the loud bang of the rubbish skip hitting concrete rang out above the street noise.

The change fell from her suddenly numb fingers to the ground. Her pulse pounded in her throat, her temples, her ears. And then her vision began to blur around the edges, narrowing like a tunnel, the sounds around her becoming tinny and distant.

No, no, no
, she thought, her heart rate increasing with her panic. She knew this feeling, standing on the precipice of a flashback, scrambling for purchase.

“Ma’am? Are you well?” The words came from a distance, but they couldn’t penetrate.

She slipped over.

Ian pushed the buzzer on the front stoop of Asha’s building, his heart thudding in his ears. He’d started here first, trying to convince himself that Grace had simply moved her things back to Asha’s flat this morning as planned and fallen asleep. After a few minutes, a speaker crackled to life. “Hello?”

Asha. “It’s Ian. Is Grace there?”

“No. I thought she was at your place.”

“Has she been home today?”

“Not that I know. Is something wrong? Do you want to come up?”

“No, we just probably got our plans crossed.” He let go of the button, then stepped off the stoop, rubbing his shoulder as if that was what actually pained him. He chose to walk the mile or so to his flat, steeling himself for the sight of her things gone, her ring on the counter. She had run away again. He should have known this was going to happen as soon as she began distancing herself.

But when he entered his flat, her duffel bag still sat in the foyer, her camera case on the table. Surely she wouldn’t leave that behind? The air rushed out of his lungs in a wave of relief, but a pang of concern followed just as quickly.

If she hadn’t missed their lunch date because she was leaving him, where was she? Had something happened to her? London was a relatively safe city, and Grace certainly knew how to take care of herself, but accidents still happened. He took out his mobile and dialed her number. It rang several times, then went to voice mail.

Grace, call me,
he texted.
Worried about you.

He sat there for a few more minutes, then rose. He should go grab something to eat for supper and wait for her. He took a moment to change from his suit and hang the pieces neatly in his wardrobe, then slipped into a pair of jeans and a loose pullover that didn’t require too much contortion to get into.

Thirty minutes later he was back with a paper bag containing two paper-wrapped Reuben sandwiches from a nearby Jewish deli. He could only assume Grace would come here instead of Asha’s flat. She might not care about her clothes, but she wouldn’t leave her camera behind. He flopped onto his sofa and flicked on the television, keeping one eye on the minute hand of his watch. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Just as he was about to gather their uneaten dinner, a key scraped in the lock and the door handle rattled.

He was on his feet instantly as she walked into the hallway, cap pulled low over her eyes and her cardigan wrapped tightly around herself as if it were winter. Something in the way she moved sent up an alarm in the back of his mind. Was she hurt? Ill?

She looked up at him and blinked slowly. “Ian? What are you doing here? Is it your shoulder?”

“I left work early. You missed our lunch date. I was worried.” He tried for casual, but even he could hear the undercurrent of tension in his voice.

“I’m fine. Are those sandwiches?” She nodded toward the bag on the coffee table and set down her rucksack. She wasn’t meeting his eye, and she still hadn’t acknowledged the fact that she’d stood him up today.

“Grace. Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Then why didn’t you didn’t come today?”

She blinked, seeming legitimately surprised. “I’m so sorry, Ian. I completely … I got sidetracked, and then I forgot.”

“You’re holding something back. What is it?”

She got a glass from the kitchen cabinet, filled it with orange juice, and replaced the carafe in the refrigerator before she said anything. She didn’t look him in the eye. Her voice shook as she said, “If you were smart, Ian, you would just let me go.”

Another spike of fear impaled him. “What are you saying? What’s going on?”

“I had a flashback on the street. Or something. I was getting our lunch when a rubbish truck dropped a skip in the alley. I don’t remember anything else after that.”

Fingers of fear gripped his heart. “Grace, that was five hours ago. Are you saying you lost this entire afternoon?”

“No.” She blinked, looking confused again. “No, that’s impossible.”

“How often does this happen? The flashbacks? Lost time?”

“Not often. I usually just have nightmares. Flashbacks are rare, and only if I’m startled.”

Ian took her face in his hands. “Grace, sweetheart, listen to me. I know you said it didn’t work before, but you need to get help. This isn’t safe. God knows what could have happened to you in those five hours.”

She jerked away from him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m broken. Like I’m something that needs to be fixed. I told you I don’t want to be defined by my issues.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” He kept his voice gentle despite the dread in his chest. “I’m just saying that ignoring it isn’t making things any better. If anything, it’s getting worse.”

“I tried!” she shouted. It was so out of character, so out of the blue, he stepped back. Tears brimmed on her lower lashes. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? It. Didn’t. Work.”

“One therapist, Grace. That doesn’t mean it didn’t work; it just means you had the wrong one.” He sighed. “I just want to see you get better.”

“That’s just it.” Her tears spilled over. “There might not be a better me. You want the version of me who can tell your friends brilliant stories about firefights and exotic locations. But you don’t want to know about the dead children and the raped women and the death squads.” She lifted her eyes to his, and the hurt and the horror there took his breath away. “You like the tattoos because they make me edgy and different, but you never ask about the crosses.”

He reached for her with his good arm, but she twisted away. “I know I can’t fully understand,” he said. “And I’m sorry if I haven’t been as supportive as I should have been. But that’s why I want you to talk to me. And to get help. Will it make it go away? No. Nothing will ever change the past. But it could at least be bearable.”

“Bearable,” she said with a laugh. “Do you really want to be saddled with a wife for whom life is just bearable?”

“Good, then. Life can be good. You’ve seen it yourself. You’ve been happy with me up until now. It’s just been too much, one thing on top of another. It won’t always be this hard.”

“Ian, you’re being naive again. Whatever you think you see in me … I’m not that woman. We’ve been fooling ourselves to think otherwise.”

Ian didn’t know what to say, gripped by guilt and pain and sorrow. That the woman he loved had struggled so much, and he’d never fully realized—he’d thought he was respecting her space, but in reality, he hadn’t wanted to know.

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, weariness evident in every movement. “I think I’m going to go now.”

“Grace, please, don’t do this.” He grabbed her by the arms, but she didn’t even flinch. Her gaze was back to that distant, numb look again. “Just wait a bit. Don’t make any decisions now.”

Slowly she nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but her mobile phone rang in her pocket before the words could emerge.

He let her go.

“Grace Brennan,” she said quietly, flicking a glance in his direction. “Yes, Monique. How are you?”

He leaned back against the counter, knowing he should give her privacy but unable to make himself move.

“No, I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m still finishing up some things here in London. I couldn’t possibly come this month.” Her voice was still flat, emotionless, but when she glanced at him, he almost thought he saw disappointment in her face.

“Sure. If something changes, I’ll let you know.” She clicked off the line and stared at the phone in her hand, silently.

“She wants you to go to Montreal.”

“Yes. But I promised you. No decisions right now.”

He searched her face for some sign of peace, something to spark hope in the suddenly dark space in his chest. But he found nothing.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Grace stared through the viewfinder of her camera, snapping pictures of the muddy waters of the Thames as it slid silently beneath Westminster Bridge. She scarcely saw her subject, too conflicted to concentrate on her work. She had barely eaten, hardly slept in the week since she’d had her episode. The first episode at least. The afternoon on the Westminster street had been the drop that preceded a rainstorm. She scarcely passed a night without waking in a cold sweat from another reenactment of the horrors in her past. She lost parts of her day without explanation, sometimes minutes, other times hours.

She said nothing to Ian, though. She had promised him she would stay, and she was staying. They ate supper together, watched films at his flat, kissed good night, but it was nothing more than routine. She wasn’t a good-enough actress to sell emotions she couldn’t feel.

Except when she found the business card for a therapist on his dining room table. That she’d felt—a fury disproportionate to the offense. She’d ripped it up into tiny pieces in front of him and then burst out crying. To his credit, he’d simply put his arms around her and held her, and for the first time in days, she felt a flicker of love stir in her.

And yet she could still see the pain in Ian’s face. He knew she was pulling away from him, knew she was considering leaving him again, and he wasn’t going to hold her if she didn’t want to stay. Not just because he had too much self-respect to cling to a woman who didn’t want him, but because he loved her too much to force her into something she didn’t want.

Except she did want him.

The thought broke through the numbness that had been her constant companion like a ray of light through the clouds. She loved Ian. She knew she loved him, because even when she was broken and miserable, he was the only thing that felt safe. When she wanted to run away, she didn’t, because she couldn’t bear to think what that would do to him.

When she thought about leaving, it was like the whole world was falling to pieces again.

She was shattered, make no mistake. But he had stood by her even when she pushed him away. Why was she so determined to face her problems alone when he had told her over and over they were in it together?

If she didn’t marry him, it would be the stupidest thing she’d done in her life, and she had a long list already.

For the first time in days, a smile touched her lips. Yes, she would marry him. As soon as they could manage it.

Grace considered going straight to Ian’s flat, but she didn’t want to show up in a wrinkled T-shirt and faded black trousers. When she asked him to elope with her, and soon, she wanted to look decent. More than that, pretty. Years from now he should remember the way she looked in that moment and smile.

She chose her clothes with care and took a few extra minutes to put on her makeup. Before she left for Ian’s flat, she sent a text message:
I need to talk to you. Are you home?

I’m home. Need to talk to you too.

The trip seemed to take forever, and she slowed as she approached the historic building. Ian sat on the steps, his right arm cradled to his body in the sling, his jacket thrown loosely around his shoulders. He said nothing, just patted the step beside him.

Her stomach lurched. She sank down and pressed her clasped hands between her knees to keep them from trembling.

Silence stretched. Then he said, “When we were children, our parents used to take us to the Edinburgh Zoo. Jamie loved it. He would’ve sat and watched the big cats for hours if they’d let him.

“I hated it, though. The way they paced their enclosures made me sad, as if they were just looking for a way to escape. But no matter how they paced, day after day, they would die behind those barriers.” His voice lowered, roughened. “Some creatures aren’t meant to be caged, Grace.”

Her heart swelled into her throat, choking off her air as she realized what he was saying. “Ian—”

“Don’t.” He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long, slender folder. She recognized the British Airways logo as he tapped it on his knee. “I want to be here for you, Grace. I do. But I can’t watch you pace the boundaries of our life together any longer.”

She took the plane ticket from his hand and flipped open the folder. First class for Grace Margaret Brennan, London to Montreal. One way. “Why?”

“Because you need to decide what you really want, and I can’t be the person standing in your way.” Pain shone in his eyes as he leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead, lingering long enough that she felt the hitch in his breath. Tears brimmed on her lower lashes, threatening to spill over. “Take care of yourself, Grace.” He stood, then walked up the steps.

Before he stepped inside, she called, “Wait!”

He turned. She’d hoped to see some hint of hope in his expression, some indication that his mind was not made up, but she saw only resolve. “That’s it? You’re letting me go? Without even asking me?”

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. It’s what you want.”

“What if it isn’t?” Panic built in her chest. He couldn’t be doing this. Not now. Not when she saw her future clear for the first time in her life.

“Then maybe it’s what I want.” He let himself in the door of his building, pain evident in the way he held himself, though she didn’t know whether it was his body or his heart.

Grace stared down at the ticket, choking back sobs until she could force herself to her feet. So there were limits to what he could endure after all. She had discovered the edge a day too late.