Twice in a Lifetime (Carina) (2 page)

She nodded. He had changed so much. Liam was impossibly hard now. Once upon a time she could read his face, feel every emotion he felt. There was never a need for words; she just knew. But now everything about him was granite and impenetrable: his body, his face, his feelings. The realisation pulled at her, reminded her how much she had missed him. Even now, after all his betrayal, there were few things she wanted more than to spend another day with the Liam she knew before. She tried for years to forget him but seeing him now made her miss the boy she had known even more because he had not just left her life; he didn’t exist any more.

“Do you understand me?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

“Good. Give me his name and I will make a few phone calls. I can’t promise anything but I will see what I can do to save your latest stray.”

She took a deep breath; relief washed over her. He had agreed to help. She had managed to get him on side without needing to lie to him. But now she needed to tell him. A nagging sense of guilt pulled at her. She should have told him who it was before, but she couldn’t. He would not have agreed if he had known who he was helping, but once Liam made a promise, he honoured it. “It’s Sam.”

“Sam Ashton?” he asked incredulously, the anger etched in his tan features.

She ignored the consuming desire to run, mostly because there was no place to go. She forced herself to look him square in the eyes. “Yes, Sam Ashton.”

“Christ, Sarah.” He ran a hand through his hair and swore. He was silent for a long time, just scrutinising her, and then he asked, “Are you screwing him?”

Her jaw dropped. She was sideswiped by the question. Why would he ask that? It took her a moment for her brain to engage again.

“Are you?” he demanded. His accent had slipped, gone broader.

“Careful—your Scottish is showing.”

“No, if I wanted to sound Scottish I would have said, ‘Right, hen, dinnae tell me you shagged him.’”

It did not escape him that Sarah had effectively avoided the question, but he wasn’t going to ask again. It was none of his business; she had made her choice years ago.

The years had been kind to her. She looked the same, except for the dark circles under her pale green eyes. He hated to admit it, but she was still beautiful. Her honey-coloured hair was pulled back in the same hairstyle she always wore. He used to love it when she would take it down and let it flow in waves down her back, but she rarely did. Even then, Sarah was all business, sorting out the world.

“The answer is no. I am not sleeping with Sam,” she said.

He exhaled; muscles he didn’t know were tensed, relaxed. It didn’t matter to him, he reminded himself. “Glad to see your taste in men has improved,” he said casually.

“It could only get better.”

“True,” he said, knowing she meant anyone was a step up from him. He felt a smile tug at him despite himself. He missed the banter he had had with Sarah. She was never shy about cutting him down to size. It had been years since anyone had openly insulted him; everyone was too busy kissing his ass.

They had been good together, but she had thrown it all away. She should have made it out too. Suddenly a bolt of anger tore through him. It was near enough the same scenario as a decade earlier and Sarah was choosing Sam again. She would never change. But he had—he expected it from her now.

“Very clever not telling me it was Sam I was agreeing to help. Just this side of a lie though, wouldn’t you say?”

“I told you everything you needed to know. I knew you would never agree to help Sam.”

“How do you know? I have never needed to. You have always been there picking up the pieces, enabling him to piss his life away.”

Her eyes narrowed. Colour rose in her cheeks, two red flags painted high on each side of her face. “How dare you say I enabled him? I have spent my career helping people. The only thing I am enabling them to do is live better lives.”

“Your help seems to have done wonders for Sam. I hope you have not have been as helpful to all your clients. But I suppose that is another way to deal with the problem—just coddle them until things spiral out of control.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” she said sadly. She looked at him with a combination of confusion and pity.

“I will tell you what I get. Life is about making choices and following through.” Christ, why did she look at him like that? He ran one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world; hundreds of people were dependent on him for their livelihood. By anyone’s definition he was a success but she still looked at him as if he were the chavy kid who needed pity.

“Trust me, I know about choices. You made yours and it seems to be paying dividends. Congratulations, Liam. You have everything you ever wanted.”

“Not everything.” He had once been stupid enough to want her more than anything. But that was a long time ago. He had wised up; now the only thing he wanted was to show Sarah how foolish she had been.

“Near enough, then. Keep working at it. I am sure you’ll get there in the end. You always do.”

“Sometimes you realise what you wanted was nothing more than a juvenile mistake.”

She winced. “True.” She stood and picked up her hand luggage again and then turned to face him. She reached her hand out to him to shake. “I am glad to see you, you know. I have wondered about you. I never really got…closure, I guess you could say. But now I know things worked out the way they were supposed to. Thanks for helping. I know you are really busy. I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I will email you and you can keep me up to date on progress with Sam’s case. That is probably the best.”

He stared at her hand in astonishment. That was it. She walked into his life, sirens blazing, and then she expected to walk away again, no questions asked.

No, that was not the way it was going to play out this time.

The annoyance mounted in him. What did she think she was playing at?

She was going to see all the things she missed out on by choosing Sam. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Her head snapped up to meet his gaze. “I have a return flight booked. I need to get to the airport.”

“Cancel it.”

“I can’t cancel it. I can’t afford to change my flight. I can’t even afford this flight.”

“Lucky I have a private jet.”

“Congratulations. I have a mortgage I can’t afford and a cat that won’t stop peeing on my carpet. I guess you win,” she shouted over her shoulder as she made her way for the door.

“If you leave now, I won’t help Sam.” It was blackmail and he was not above it.

She dropped her case and spun around on her heel. “You said you would. You are many things, but you have never been a liar.”

“It has been a long time—you have no idea what I am capable of. You didn’t expect to come in, demand I help your tearaway friend, and then leave again. Oh, I can see by your face you did. That’s not the way things work here in the real world. If you want me to help him, you will stay until it’s done.”

“I can’t afford to take any more time off work. I have service users—”

“Make time. Life is about choices, Sarah. Stay and I help Sam or go and see what justice the Emiratis have in store for him.”

She looked him square in the eyes; defiance flashed in their aquamarine depths. “Why? Why do you want me to stay?”

Liam let out a breath. Sarah was here. After a decade of wondering where she was and what she was doing, she was here with him. And he wasn’t ready to let her go again, not yet. Ten years had passed but the emotion was still there, as raw and palpable as ever, all the hurt, all the anger, all the betrayal. And all the passion. He just needed a few days with her, maybe a week. She wasn’t the only one who needed closure.

Christ, why did he want her to stay? Because he wanted her to see what life could have been, because he wanted to punish her, because the idea of helping Sam made his skin crawl, or maybe because, even though he could never have her, he never stopped wanting her?

No, it was because this time when she left, he wanted to be able to close the door for good. He wasn’t going to waste any more of his life chasing ghosts. “Because nothing in life is free.”

“I can’t stay.”

“I already told you, I would let you use my company’s jet.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then? Is there someone waiting for you in Edinburgh? Do you have a boyfriend?”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend. I have real responsibilities. I think you can understand that.” She gestured to the large office space that lay just outside his door. “I have people that need me. I have my work. I have Dave. I have—”

“You just said you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“Dave’s my cat,” she said.

“Of course he is. Christ, Sarah, you sound like a spinster. You can’t go away for a week because you have a cat. Can you hear yourself?”

“Yes, I can hear myself. Can you hear yourself? You don’t even sound Scottish any more.”

“Thank you.”

“It is not a compliment,” she said.

“I don’t think speaking properly is an insult.”

“You don’t speak properly any more. You sound English.”

“Because I went to university in Cambridge. This is what you would expect me to sound like.”

“Well, good thing I didn’t go, then,” she bit out.

The colour was intensifying in her cheeks, going from pink to an angry scarlet. It had always been her tell; she wore her emotions. “If your goal was to spend your life in the gutter, then, yes, it was a good thing you turned down your place at Cambridge.”

She balled her hands into fists. “I turned down my place at Cambridge because my friend, no, our friend needed us. But you left and never looked back.”

It was his turn to be angry. She made it sound as if he abandoned her. “Is that the way you really see it, Sarah? Because if you do you are remembering someone else’s life. That is not how things went down. Let me remind you how it really went. We worked our asses off to get places at Cambridge. We had our lives mapped out and then you chickened out at the last minute. Sam was an excuse. You never had any intention of leaving.”

Sarah took a deep breath. She tapped her foot and silently counted to ten in an attempt to control her rising anger. “How dare you? I would have left but someone needed to be there for Sam.”

“Why did it have to be you? Why do you always have to rescue people?”

“Because I don’t see anyone else queuing up for the job. First sign of weakness from Sam and you cut him off, the same you did with me.”

Liam grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him. “I am not the one who jumped ship, sweetheart. That was all you. You turned your back on us.”

She didn’t pull away; it had been so long since Liam touched her, and she didn’t care if it was only anger fuelling him. She could feel his hot breath against her. Somewhere in there was her Liam. She needed to see him again, any small part, to prove to herself she had not imagined it. “I didn’t turn my back on us. I turned down my place at Cambridge. There is a big difference.”

“No, there isn’t. We had a life planned and you gave up on it.”

“It’s all or nothing with you, isn’t it, Liam?”

“Yes. And you could have had it all too.”

She shook her head. No, she couldn’t. Liam had left. He was always going to leave; she shouldn’t have been surprised. That was what men did, after all. She’d thought he was different, but it turned out her mum was right: men were all the same. “Look, Liam, I am tired and hungry and more than a little annoyed. I just want to get home to my bed.”

“I can’t help with the annoyed, but as luck would have it I have food and a bed. It all came with the new accent, package deal.”

The sound of a bed, his bed, made her stomach do a back flip. She needed to get away before she did something stupid like start to believe sharing his bed was a good idea. “I can’t just leave Dave.” It sounded pathetic even to her but entirely plausible given her lack of social life.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Make another excuse. Call whoever you left in charge of your cat and tell them you will be home in a week.”

“I didn’t—”

He cut her off again. “Don’t lie again, Sarah. It really doesn’t suit you. We both know you would never leave any creature unattended. You’re a bleeding heart—even the thought of someone in distress upsets you. You will have given someone a key just in case you were held up and didn’t get your flight back.”

He was right but she was not going to admit it. “Fine. Dave is fine. I just don’t want to spend any more time with you.” The truth was she wanted to spend as much time as she could with him, and that was what scared her. Despite his harshness, she could already feel her heart opening to him, searching for the connection that had been severed too many years ago. Spending any more time with Liam would be too painful.

“You really need to stop lying, Sarah. You’re rubbish at it.”

“Liam, I don’t think it is a good idea for me to stay here.” That much wasn’t a lie. It was a horrible idea. It was as clever as ripping off a scab just to pour acid on it. “I can’t afford a hotel.”

“Then it is lucky for you the new accent also came with a penthouse. Amazing the things you miss out on when you choose a life filled with addicts and prostitutes. You too could have had more than a cat and a two-bedroom terrace in Craigmillar.”

She pulled away from him and he did not stop her. “How do you know where I live?”

“I know a lot of things, Sarah. I must say I am disappointed—you couldn’t even make it a mile away from the scheme. You have got to learn to set the bar higher. You couldn’t even manage a new postcode.”

She clenched her jaw until her teeth began to ache. She wanted to scream but instead she took a deep breath and pushed her anger away. “Look, Liam I don’t want to be here and you don’t—”

“Stop telling me what I want and what I know. You don’t know the first thing about what I want.”

“What do you want, then, Liam? Tell me.”

Liam ran a hand through his hair again. His office was suddenly hot. He loosened his tie and undid his top button.
What did he want?
A good question, one he had been asking since she walked in. He wanted to taste her. He wanted to bend her over his desk and make up for lost time. He wanted to make her regret choosing Sam. He wanted to get her out of his system once and for all. He wanted to show her the life she could have had. But most of all he wanted her to regret choosing a life without him. And when it was all over, he wanted to not wonder about her any more, he wanted to stop caring so bloody much about a girl from his past. “I want you to stop fighting me on this.”

“What will it accomplish, me staying here? Other than winding each other up.”

“Consider it a holiday.”

“Ha!” she scoffed. “If it was a holiday I would have packed sun cream and condoms, and I would be with someone whose company I enjoyed.”

“I remember you enjoying my company quite a bit,” he said as he pushed back a strand of her golden hair that had escaped its clasp. The smooth skin on her cheek was as soft as he remembered. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what else felt the same. “So lucky for you I have a medicine cabinet full of Durex and SPF thirty.”

Her eyes widened. It was hard to tell if she was surprised or angry; he would settle for either as long as it made her squirm. He had forgotten how much he loved making her blush. And he had loved that she gave as good as she got. They really had been good together. She would realise she had made the biggest mistake of her life by giving up on them. And this time it would be his choice when things ended. He wasn’t going to play the daft laddie again. He knew what he was getting into this time. He would have seven days to get her out of his system once and for all.

He picked up her case and led her to the door and past Gemma’s desk. “There is a lot to do in a week. Best get started now. Gemma, I am off. Please phone my driver and tell him I am on my way down to the car park. I am on my mobile if there is anything pressing, otherwise I will see you in the morning. Have a nice night.”