Page 59 of Three's a Crowd
She’d never seen him so angry and was shocked by the intensity of it. His whole body appeared taut with rage.
‘He came on to me!’ she shouted, fury at the injustice of it all making her voice shrill.
‘Yeah, sure. You didn’t look like you were struggling too hard to me.’ He took a deliberate step away from her. ‘You’re just a manipulative, self-serving bitch and always have been. Just fuck off and leave me alone, Daisy.’ This was said directly into her face, the expression in his eyes hard and cold.
It cut straight through her, making her entire body cold with icy dread.
She couldn’t believe he could speak to her like that, after all they’d shared over the last couple of days.
‘So much for friendship.’ Her voice was shaking with emotion now and she glared at him defiantly, determined not to let him intimidate her. ‘Here,’ she said pulling the friendship knot away from her throat and snapping the delicate chain, holding it out to him. ‘You’d better have this back.’
Zach just looked at it steadily, his eyes hard.
‘You keep it. It means nothing to me,’ he said, without a hint of emotion in his voice.
‘Fine!’ she shouted and bringing her arm back, she threw it as far as she could out to sea.
They both watched as the diamond glinted briefly in the moonlight, before the necklace disappeared with a small splash into the water.
Daisy spun back to see a mixture of disbelief and fury cross Zach’s face, before he turned and walked away from her, his hands bunched into fists at his sides.
Daisy slumped down onto the wooden walkway and let the tears finally flow, sobbing uncontrollably with her head in her hands.
She was aware of other people leaving the boat and stepping delicately around her, but no-one stopped to ask if she was alright.
She really was completely alone.
Eventually, once her sobs had subsided and everyone seemed to have left the boat, she picked herself up and trailed miserably back to the hotel, carrying her shoes in her hand and giving her now painful feet a break.
She got back to find the suite in darkness. Adam had obviously not come back yet.
She trailed around the place in a state of panic, her heart racing, terrified he might have done something stupid or hurthimself. Picking up her mobile, she called him with shaking fingers, but he didn’t pick up and it went to answerphone.
‘Adam,’ she said in a quavering voice, ‘where are you? I’m worried about you. Please don’t have fallen overboard. Call me when you get this, okay?’
Throwing her phone onto the nightstand, she slumped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, willing him to respond.
Eventually, when it seemed like he wasn’t calling her back any time soon, she got undressed and wiped away the make-up that now streaked her face.
Half an hour later, he still hadn’t appeared or called, so she got into bed and pulled the covers up to her ears, her mind in a whirl.
Half of her didn’t care what had happened to him – he’d humiliated her so completely – but the other half badly wanted him to come back.
She needed to know he was okay and even if they ended up rowing for a while, she was sure she could talk him round. He usually relented when they argued, allowing her to be the dominant one, and she desperately needed this release to help her come to terms with what had just happened.
Her desperation sickened her.
Unable to settle, she got up and paced back and forth for a while, alternately looking out of the window for any sign of him and trying his mobile, which always went straight to answerphone. After an hour of this, she gave up and fell, exhausted, into bed, telling herself it was unlikely anything really bad had happened to him. There had been so many people on board the boat and security had been all over it. Someone would have noticed if something untoward had happened.
It was much more likely he’d gone off to some late-night bar to drown his sorrows. Anyway, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now. She had no-one else here to turn to, nowthat Zach had disowned her, so she’d just have to pull herself together and deal with it. Preferably in the morning after some reviving sleep.
Daisy awoke after a fitful night to find Adam still hadn’t returned.
A pang of terror struck her as she tumbled out of bed, still woozy with sleep.
She checked the living area, but there was no sign that he’d come back at all.
She felt sick.
