The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance) (24 page)

A walk. He’d take her for a walk. Great idea. Get some fresh
air, blow this craziness out of his head.

He strode to the bedroom and pulled on his coat, then wrapped
his scarf around his neck. Strudel blinked at him blearily when she heard the
clink of her lead, then shook herself to alertness as she understood a walk was
in the offing. She waited patiently while he clipped her lead on and followed
him out the door.

His breath steamed in the night air as he walked past
Mackenzie’s house. The Ferrari was covered with a fine sheen of condensation and
he had to resist the urge to write something profane and childish on the misty
paintwork.
Go home, wanker,
or something to that
effect.

He turned his back on the house and the car and walked, willing
the cold and the dark and the rhythm of his stride to loosen the knot in his
gut.

He wasn’t a jealous person. Never had been. For him jealousy
had always signaled weakness, fear. A lack of belief in yourself. That wasn’t
the way he saw himself. He had his own business, was on the way to owning his
home—at least, he had been before the divorce. Now, he and Edie would either
have to sell, or he could buy her out.

Or maybe she and Nick would buy him out.

Acid burned in his gut. He didn’t want to think about Edie and
Nick while he was trying to keep thoughts of Mackenzie and Langtry at bay.
Mackenzie was not Edie. Mackenzie was straight up and fierce and direct. She
called a spade a spade. She would curl her lip with scorn at the thought of
sneaking around behind her partner’s back. She’d see it as a cop-out, as the
actions of a scared, indecisive, weak woman. And Mackenzie was none of those
things.

Sometimes even when you know someone is
wrong for you, you get sucked into old patterns and behaviors.

He swore. If there were a brick wall handy right now, he’d bang
his head against it. As it was, all he could do was grind his teeth together as
his brain kept feeding him worst-case scenarios.

Because Mackenzie might not be interested in Langtry, but there
was nothing to say that he didn’t want to pick up where he’d left off. And
Mackenzie might be angry with him, she might be hurt because he’d dropped her so
callously after her accident, but she’d admitted herself that she had a weakness
where he was concerned. She’d said Langtry was charming—and he was. Most of
Australia agreed with her. The guy was good-looking, wealthy, famous. A walking,
talking female fantasy, basically. Oliver was willing to bet that if the other
man turned it on and applied himself, there weren’t many women who would say no
to him.

Langtry could be working his magic right now. Using his shared
history with Mackenzie to push all the right buttons. Wooing her, slowly but
surely.

For Pete’s sake, stop. Just stop.
Mackenzie is not interested in her ex. She’s interested in you. She’s
sleeping with you.

He knew the voice in his head was right, but the worm of doubt
kept working away in his gut. For six years he’d been a dupe. He’d swallowed
Edie’s lies because he simply hadn’t believed that anyone was capable of that
kind of deceit.

He knew differently now. People were weak. People said one
thing and then did another. People made mistakes, then kept on making them, over
and over. Was Mackenzie immune from any of that? Was he? Wouldn’t he be exactly
the same gormless idiot all over again if he simply sat back and let this
happen?

Somehow, he’d found his way back to his street. The Ferrari was
ahead, a screaming testament to Langtry’s success and desirability. What kind of
a chance did Oliver stand against a guy like that? How could he possibly
compete?

There was so much adrenaline charging around in his system he
felt sick. He stopped outside Mackenzie’s house and stared at the soft light
showing through the glass panel in the front door.

He could simply walk up and knock, say he’d been out for a walk
and thought he would join them for coffee.

Or he could sneak along the side of the house and take a look
through the kitchen window. Just to check what was going on.

For freak’s sake, can you hear yourself?
Are you insane? What is wrong with you?

He didn’t know. He felt possessed. As though there were two
Olivers at war within him—the Oliver who was in love with Mackenzie, who
believed in her, who was already planning a future with her, and the Oliver who
had been badly burned by Edie’s lies and was still recovering from six years of
deceit and betrayal. One part wanted to believe, to trust, while the other
wanted to make sure that he would never, ever put his faith in someone or
something without being absolutely certain that it wouldn’t turn on him.

Nothing in life comes with that kind of
guarantee. Nothing.

Strudel strained against the leash, keen to return home, but he
remained staring at Mackenzie’s front door, rooted there by his suspicion and
jealousy and doubt.

Headlights flashed across him as someone turned into a driveway
farther up the street. It was enough to make him move, and he turned away from
Mackenzie’s place and trudged up the driveway to his aunt’s house.

Strudel resumed her spot by the fire the moment they entered,
but he was too agitated to sit. He hated the way he was thinking, yet he
couldn’t stop it, couldn’t push the ugly image of Mackenzie in bed with Langtry
out of his mind.

Langtry touching her. Kissing her.

He thumped his palm against the side of his head, trying to
dislodge the picture, but it was stuck there, held in place by pride and anger
and hurt and self-doubt.

Call her. Call her and listen to her voice
and remind yourself of who she is and who you are.

Relief flooded him. He could totally call her without coming
across as some kind of possessive, jealous stalker. Even though that was how he
felt right this second. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed her
number. The phone rang. He moved to the window so he could see her place.

The phone rang, and rang. His grip tightened on the handset. He
stared at her house, willing her to pick up. Finally, it went through to voice
mail.

What the...?

He glared at her empty, dark kitchen window, a sudden, violent
rage ripping through him. What was she doing that she couldn’t answer the phone?
What were
they
doing? How could she do this to
him?

For long seconds he stood raging at the window, literally
shaking with the force of his own fury. He wanted to smash the glass in front of
him. He wanted to pick up the nearest chair and hurl it through like a cowboy in
a saloon fight. He wanted to kick holes in the wall and tear pictures from the
walls and drag the house down around his ears.

He didn’t.

He stood and shook and endured his own terrible anger. Then he
forced himself to walk into the kitchen. He sat at the table and clasped his
hands in front of him and tried to get a grip on his own sanity.

He didn’t know where all this anger had come from, but he knew
it wasn’t about Mackenzie. This was all for Edie and himself. This was about his
failed marriage, not the woman he’d fallen so precipitously and recklessly in
love with. Trouble was, at this moment in time, he couldn’t for the life of him
separate the two things.

He dropped his head into his hands, fingers pressing against
his skull. A single, hot tear ran down his cheek and dropped onto the table.

For the first time he admitted to himself that the past five
months had been damned hard. The hardest of his life. Dealing with Edie, keeping
up appearances for all his friends and his business partner and his brother.
Assuring everyone that he was a bit messed up but that essentially he was
okay.

On one level, it was true. But on another, it was a thin,
fragile lie.

He’d believed in his marriage. Even though he could see now
that it had been flawed, he’d believed in it and invested in him and Edie. And
she had smashed it all to pieces, destroying parts of him in the process.

In the midst of that chaos he’d met Mackenzie, and the world
had seemed good again. He’d fallen, hard, eating up the happiness and certainty
that she seemed to bring.

But nothing in life was certain. Certainly, people weren’t.

He had no idea how long he sat at the kitchen table. A long
time. He grew colder and colder. At some point, Strudel joined him, curling up
at his feet. Finally the need for heat forced him to his feet and into the
living room. He stoked the fire and threw on another log and stood staring into
the flames, feeling depleted and exhausted and oddly numb.

When the fire was blazing again he grabbed a blanket and
stretched out on the couch. Strudel jumped up to lie across his legs and he
drifted into almost-sleep, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles,
indistinct images flashing across his mind’s eye.

He must have eventually drifted off properly, because when he
woke it was very dark, the only light the glow of the embers in the fire grate.
His neck was sore from being crooked at an awkward angle on the arm of the
couch. He sat up slowly and circled his shoulders, then his neck. Then he stood
and placed the screen in front of the fire.

“Come on Strudel, bedtime.”

He wasn’t sure what made him check out the front window before
he headed for bed. Some innate, primitive instinct, perhaps.

He pulled the curtain aside enough to see into the street,
expecting to see nothing but empty road where the Ferrari had been.

The big red sports car was still there, its paintwork shining
dully in the moonlight.

Oliver stared at it for a long moment as an echo of his earlier
rage and jealousy rippled through him. He closed his eyes.

He believed in Mackenzie. He really did.

But he couldn’t do this.

His brother had been right. It was way, way too soon for him to
be throwing himself headfirst into a serious relationship. Even if he was crazy,
madly in love with Mackenzie. Even if he felt as though life was full of
possibilities when he was with her.

There was too much pent-up emotion pushed down inside him. Too
much ugliness. He was nowhere near ready to trust again. Nowhere near ready to
place his heart and happiness in the hands of another human being. Even if that
person was Mackenzie, whom he admired and loved and desired.

Maybe especially if it was her, because if she failed him, if
she was even now lying sated in her ex-husband’s arms...Oliver couldn’t
guarantee his own sanity. He really couldn’t.

He didn’t have it in him to risk that kind of betrayal and
unhappiness again. Not at the moment. Maybe that made him a coward of the
highest order, but so be it.

He turned away from the window and walked to the kitchen. Even
though he’d put the fire screen in place, he wanted to be sure the fire was out
so he poured a jug of water onto the ashes. Smoke and steam billowed up the
chimney. Once he was satisfied that the fire was extinguished, he went to the
bedroom and packed his bag. It didn’t take long, no more than ten minutes. It
took a little longer to collect his tools from around the house, but within half
an hour he’d checked the shed, locked the back door and the windows and loaded
the car. His mind carefully, thankfully blank, he ushered Strudel into the
backseat, then went to secure the front door.

The car engine sounded loud in the stillness of the early
hours. He reversed into the street and drove away, not once looking back.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
ACKENZIE
WASN
’
T
SURE
what woke her. A sound out in the street, maybe Mr.
Smith moving around out in the hallway. She sat up in bed, blinking in the
darkness. Only then did she register the dark outline of a figure in her bedroom
doorway.

“It’s just me,” Patrick said. “It’s bloody cold out on the
couch.”

“Then grab another blanket from the hall cupboard. You know
where they are.”

“I was thinking I could maybe get in with you. Share some body
heat.”

She didn’t need to see his face to know that he was wearing his
winsome, cheeky little-boy-lost expression. She wasn’t exactly surprised by his
approach. She’d been expecting it from the moment he’d pointed out that he’d
drunk too much wine with dinner to be safe driving home.

“As if, Patrick.” She didn’t bother hiding her
exasperation.

“We’ll just spoon, I swear. I know you’ve got something going
on with what’s-his-name next door.”

“Go spoon with Smitty on the couch. He’s good at the kind of
spooning you’re talking about, by all accounts.”

She waited for him to go, but instead he entered the room. The
bed sank as he sat on the corner.

She sighed heavily and reached out to flick on the bedside
light.

He was wearing nothing but his jeans, the fly wide-open, his
hair mussed and endearingly ruffled. His body was camera ready, with clearly
defined abdominal muscles and hairless pectoral muscles.

She guessed she was supposed to be overcome by desire at the
sight of his gym-honed physique. Or something like that.

She pulled the covers higher so that her shoulders were warm.
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Patrick.”

“Okay. I respect that.” He studied her, his expression pensive.
“I miss you, Mac. That’s really why I came down today. I wanted your advice, but
I miss you.”

Not so long ago, she might have been moved by his confession,
even though she understood that it came from a place of self-interest and was
bound to end in nothing but unhappiness for both of them. Tonight, she felt
nothing beyond a tinge of sadness that Patrick still clung to something that had
never worked.

“Did you miss me when I was in hospital? When I was in rehab
for all those months?” she asked.

“I know I was a shit, not coming to see you. But you have to
understand, seeing you like that...it was bloody hard, Mac. I didn’t feel as
though I had anything to offer you. So I stayed away, because I figured you
didn’t need to take on my grief and whatever as well as your own.”

“Big of you.”

His gaze dropped to the floor. “You’re angry with me.”

She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I am. But mostly
disappointed. At the very least, I thought we cared about each other as
friends.”

“We do. Jesus, there’s no one else in my life like you, Mac.
You’re up there on a pedestal, all on your own.”

“And yet you couldn’t put aside your own stuff to be there for
me when I needed you.”

It wasn’t a question.

He flicked a look at her and she saw that his gaze was
anguished.

“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you think I’m a selfish, pointless
bastard, but I do love you. More than anyone or anything.”

She believed him, but his love was not the same as her love.
Her love was all-encompassing and forgiving and resilient. Her love would have
demanded that she sleep night and day by her lover’s side if he’d been in a
life-threatening accident. If Oliver had been torn apart and crushed by flying
metal, she would have moved heaven and earth to let him know that he wasn’t
alone, that he was loved, that they would get through whatever lay ahead
together. Then she would have followed through on her promises, because his
happiness meant more to her than her own.

She stilled as she registered the thought, a little stunned by
the insight she’d suddenly gained into her own feelings.

She was in love with Oliver. Profoundly so.

“What?” Patrick asked.

She shook her head. She wasn’t about to tell him she was in
love with Oliver—Oliver should be the first person to hear those words, not her
ex-husband. It was nothing to do with Patrick. At all. He was the past, and
Oliver was the future.

An almost unbearable happiness swept through her as she
absorbed the truth of the realization. It didn’t matter that Oliver lived in a
different city in a different state. She could move, or he could. It was
irrelevant. The important thing was that they’d found each other in this tiny
sea-swept town on the edge of nowhere. Amazingly. Impossibly.

She glanced at the clock, wondering if it was too early to go
next door and slip into Oliver’s bed.

“Another private joke, I take it?” Patrick said.

“Just private.”

Patrick’s gaze was searching. “You’re serious about this Oliver
guy, then?”

“Yes.”

Patrick dropped his gaze to the floor. “I always knew it would
happen sometime. That you’d meet someone else.”

He looked lonely and sad, sitting there in his seducer’s
clothes. A beautiful, confused man who didn’t know what he wanted.

“It’ll happen for you, too, Patrick. If you want it to.”

His head came up. “You think I didn’t want it with you?”

She chose her words carefully. This wasn’t about them, after
all. They’d been finished for a long time. “I think that we never really
understood each other.”

His mouth thinned, his expression becoming bitter. “You really
believe that, don’t you?”

“You don’t?”

“I think that if you’d put half the energy into our
relationship that you put into your career, we’d still be married.”

She managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Barely.
Patrick had always considered her career the enemy, but it was an old battle and
a pointless one and she wasn’t prepared to go there yet again.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said. “You can’t see
it.”

“Patrick, I don’t want to get into this stuff. It’s late, I’m
tired...”

Patrick stood.

“You’re a great producer, Mac. You know why? Because you’re
fearless. You know what you want and you don’t stop until you get it. You don’t
let anyone or anything get in your way. But you never believed in us like that.
You always held back. Always.”

He left the room. Mackenzie stared at the empty doorway,
feeling more than a little sideswiped. She’d put off Oliver tonight to help
Patrick out—and this was her thanks? An unsolicited, sulky critique of her
commitment as a wife.

She turned out the light and turned onto her side and told
herself not to let him get to her. He’d wanted something from her and he hadn’t
got it and he’d simply been striking out. She was not going to lie here and stew
over what he’d said. She refused to play into his hands so readily.

Except...

On a very basic level, he was right. She
had
always held back with him. Even at the very height of their
relationship, in the heady days when they’d decided to get married and were
making plans for the future, she’d always made sure there were options available
if she needed them. She’d loved Patrick, but she’d never felt safe with him.
She’d never felt as though he would be there, no matter what. And so she’d
always kept a small part of herself in reserve. And when push had come to shove,
when she’d finally acknowledged to herself that they were fundamentally
incompatible, she hadn’t gone to the mat to save her marriage.

Patrick was definitely right about that.

She stared at the wall and wondered what would have happened if
she had fought for her marriage the way Patrick said he wished she had. If she’d
insisted on them having counseling, if she’d pushed him to talk to her more, to
share with her more, and to be prepared to listen to her and really engage.
Would they have survived? Would they still be together now?

Her gut said no. Mackenzie didn’t believe that people were
doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that personalities were
intractable and behaviors immovable. But she did believe that the fundamentals
of most people remained the same throughout their lifetimes. People who were
generous usually remained generous, unless life taught them not to be. And
people who saw the world through the prism of their own needs first and foremost
would always be that way.

Patrick was one of those people. It was simply the way he’d
been conditioned. And maybe that would shift for him if he met someone who took
him outside of himself...or maybe not. But certainly that person had not been
her, and she had not been prepared to fight for both of them. Because that was
what it had come down to. Patrick said he’d wanted her to fight for them, but he
hadn’t been in the trenches, either.

She closed her eyes. This was all ancient history, and while
she was mildly pissy with Patrick for dumping on her like that, she wasn’t going
to lose sleep over it. It simply wasn’t worth it.

* * *

W
HEN
M
ACKENZIE
WOKE
again it was daylight
and she could hear someone moving around the house. For a moment she let herself
hope that it was Oliver, that he’d let himself in and was doing something sweet
and lovely like making her breakfast.

She knew better, though. She pulled on her robe and walked out
to find Patrick making himself breakfast in her kitchen. She eyed the
crumb-covered counter and the many coffee cups and reminded herself he’d be gone
soon.

“Good morning,” he said. He shot her an assessing look.

“If you’re wondering whether or not I’m going to rip your head
off, relax. Game, set and match to you.”

“Ah. You don’t even want to play anymore.”

“No, I don’t.”

She wanted to play with Oliver. And she wanted to play for
keeps.

She walked to the French doors, pushing the curtains wide so
she could see Oliver’s place. There was no movement next door, however. She
wondered if he was still in bed.

She glanced at the time and saw it was nearly eight. A
perfectly civilized time to call.

She grabbed her phone and discovered the battery was dead.
Typical. She padded into the study and plugged it in, waiting for it to come to
life. After a minute or so it did and she saw she’d missed a call from Oliver
last night.

He was such a sweetie. He’d probably been calling to say
good-night. She smiled to herself as she hit the button to return his call. She
hoped he was still in bed. She would make him toast and come join him, Patrick
be damned.

The phone switched to voice mail almost straightaway. She
pulled a face, disappointed, and waited for the beep so she could leave a
message.

“Hi, it’s me. I was kind of hoping I could come over and make
you breakfast. Call me, okay?” She ended the call to find Patrick watching
her.

“Sorry if I’m in the way,” he said.

She shrugged her good shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“Sorry if I was out of line last night, too.”

“Yeah, well. Did you decide what you’re going to do about the
movie?”

“I’m going to take it. If I can buy the time from my
contract.”

“Tell them you’ll walk when it’s time to renew if they don’t
come to the party. That’ll make them sweat.”

“Would it make you sweat?”

She gave him her shark’s smile. “That would be telling.”

He swallowed the last of his toast and brushed his hands
together. “On that note...”

She watched as he made a halfhearted effort to tidy up before
grabbing his jacket and paperwork. Mr. Smith followed them both as she walked
him to the door.

“Drive safely,” she said as Patrick stepped onto the porch.

He looked at her for a beat, then leaned down and kissed her
cheek. “Look after yourself, Mac.”

She watched him walk down the driveway, then glanced next door.
She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for—Oliver standing on the porch with a big
red bow around his neck?—but she frowned when she realized his wagon was
missing.

Huh. He must have been up super early this morning.

She went inside and finished cleaning up after her ex-husband.
Once she’d put the blankets in the hall cupboard, she had a shower and made her
own breakfast and went to check to see if Oliver’s car was in the driveway.

It wasn’t. She tried his phone again, and again got shunted to
voice mail.

“This is getting ridiculous, Smitty. Where is he?”

By midday she was starting to feel a little twitchy. She didn’t
understand where he could have gone that would take so long, or why he wasn’t
returning her calls. She was considering calling the local hospital to
double-check there hadn’t been any accidents when her phone rang.

“Oliver,” she said as she took the call. “Hello. I’ve been
wondering where you’d got to.”

“Sorry. I was driving and my phone was in the back.”

“That’s all right. I was just wondering what you were up to
today and what time you want me to make our booking for dinner tonight.”

She could hear traffic in the background, lots of it.

“I was actually calling to let you know I’m on my way to
Sydney.”

“What? Has something happened?” The worst possible scenarios
started playing in her head—deceased relatives, house fires and other
catastrophes.

“No. I mean, not in the way you mean. No one’s dead or
anything.”

“Well, that’s a good start, I always think,” she joked, even
though her heart was racing. There was something about the way he sounded, so
flat and emotionless....

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“This isn’t going to work, Mackenzie. I thought it would, but
I’m not up for it. I’m sorry.”

It took her a moment to understand he was talking about them.
About their relationship. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the
kitchen counter.