Page 53 of So That Happened
She fought to keep her voice under control, but the pain that his words provoked was nearly blinding her. ‘I thought there was more to you than this. That the loner persona was a front. But it’s not, is it? You’ll always be 100 per cent for yourself. One day you’ll need to stop and face what’s chasing you away. Be a man.’
She knew it was a low blow, but if he was going to play dirty so was she.
Grabbing her case, she piled her stuff into it willy-nilly and forced it shut. Tears threatened to spill out, but she held them back. There was no way she was showing Connor how much this had hurt her.
He stood with his back to her, looking out of the window. He didn’t say a thing.
Humiliation crashed in on her. She meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.
On autopilot, she used the landline downstairs to call the hotel next to the airport and booked a room, then got herself onto the next flight out to London in the morning. Then she phoned for a taxi. She completed each step without emotion, refusing to let herself acknowledge the heavy drag of sadness in her limbs.
Taking her case out to the front of the house, she slammed the door behind her and flopped down onto the front step, staring fiercely out across the gold and purple fields that surrounded her. Their association with Connor now marred what should have been a beautiful sight.
Ten minutes later, the door to the farmhouse was still resolutely shut. He wasn’t coming out to stop her. He’d never change his mind.
It was time to go home.
* * *
After Josie was driven away from him in the taxi, Connor sat brooding in the kitchen.
He was furious – angrier than he ever remembered being in his life. Who did she think she was, barging into his life and making judgements on him? They barely knew each other, yet she’d managed to pull him apart with just a few choice words.
He shouldn’t have asked her to stay.
He wasn’t sure why he had.
She’d got under his skin, that was why.
This realisation made him even more furious with her and, more crucially, with himself. He hated how out of control he felt, how panicky; it was something he tried to avoid at all costs. It was a slippery slope.
Once he gave himself to something, he found it very difficult to give it up. Like his travelling. It had become part of him now, and the thought of being stationed somewhere for any length of time made him uncomfortable. This restlessness was in his blood. He couldn’t let Josie get the same hold on him. Once there, she would be there forever, haunting him.
To his utter frustration he could still smell her on him, taste her in his mouth, feel her under his fingertips. He hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to her so soon and he felt jarred and uneasy.
On reflection, it was probably a good thing she was gone. It was time he went too. He’d already extended his stay here to far longer than he’d planned. He needed to get back to the project, back where life was simple and free from emotional complications, or he would regret it – and God knew he didn’t need any more regrets.
15
London was such a crazy, intense whirl of noise and lights after the peace of the French countryside that Josie’s head throbbed when she finally made it home to Greenwich.
Walking into her apartment was like stepping back into the past. The air was stale and fusty from being sealed inside for the last couple of weeks and the atmosphere was cold and soulless compared to the warm comfort of the farmhouse.
She spent a while wandering around it in a spaced-out state, mentally changing the furniture and the decor so it would feel more homely. She needed to put some pictures on the walls and introduce a bit of colour to the place. Focusing on something simple like that helped distract her racing thoughts from what she’d left behind in France, at least in the short term.
It occurred to her that she spent so little time at home, her surroundings had never really intruded on her consciousness before. They were just the background to her life. Now they seemed more important than that. She needed to be reflected in her own home. There was nothing there at the moment that was intrinsically ‘her’. The place had no personality.
Was that what had happened to her?she wondered with a shock. Was she actually as bland as her apartment? The thought terrified her. Perhaps that was why Connor had seemed so comfortable with letting her go. She’d just been a warm body in the right place at the right time for him.
The muscles in her throat squeezed so hard, as she tried to stop the tears, it actually hurt. Flopping down onto the sofa, she put her head in her hands and tried to will her locked jaw to relax.
At least that proved she’d been right to go. She couldn’t allow herself to care about someone who treated her with such easy indifference.
Pulling her knees up to her chin, she wrapped her arms around her legs, curling herself into a tight ball. She shouldn’t have let herself get sucked into the excitement of a crazy fling, she knew that now, but it had been like a dream. It was as if someone else had taken her over, making her do things she would never usually do.
Worst. Mistake. Ever.
But she was damned if she was going to regret it. It had happened and it was best to fold it away into the cupboard of her mind and move on.
