Page 57 of So That Happened
But he didn’t want her. Not for a proper relationship anyway. He’d made that very plain.
* * *
Connor had been sure he’d be able to banish the thought of Josie and leave France with a clean conscience.
But he couldn’t.
He’d thought he’d be pleased to be on the move again. But he wasn’t.
There hadn’t been a day in the last week when he hadn’t thought about her, and it was becoming a problem. He was having trouble sleeping, which was really unusual for him. When he did sleep, he dreamt about Josie, and when he woke to find he wasn’t holding her, he felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.
He’d gone out every evening to sit by himself, nursing a beer and thinking, thinking, thinking.
A couple of brave and not unattractive women had approached him in the bars as he’d sat staring into his drinks and he’d talked to them, willing his recalcitrant brain to give them the opportunity to impress him, but he’d found them puerile and dull compared to Josie’s exhilarating company.
She was one of a kind, that woman, and he’d let her slip through his fingers.
After his family’s dismissal of him he’d spent so long on his own he’d forgotten how to care about someone else. Josie had reminded him of how good it could feel. The problem was, she’d also highlighted how terrifying it was to trust someone with his affections again. Hence that panic attack.
He’d been searching for unconditional love from his partners – something he’d been missing since he’d lost his grandmother – but he had no right to expect that. He needed to earn it.
It occurred to him that he’d used his family’s lack of interest in him over their business as a convenient excuse when he’d wanted to end a relationship, because Josie’s passion about her career, her drive and determination, were the things that he valued most about her.
He spent his days in a sleep-deprived daze and started making mistakes with the project, which he couldn’t afford to do.
He missed her. He missed her smile; he missed her energy and her passion. He missed the way she played music on her legs as if they were a piano, and the way she looked at him with those beautiful, intelligent eyes.
He’d told himself to forget her when she’d left him in France, that there was no point pursuing anything with her. The whole gamut of arguments had run through his head. She was too wrapped up in her career to be worth the effort. He wanted her, but he didn’t want it to turn into anything too serious. It wasn’t fair on either of them. She was too work-focused. He was too transient. It would never work. He’d be an idiot to open the whole thing up again.
None of those arguments seemed to work. She was still all he could think about.
It was going to take a lot more than he’d first thought to get Josie Marchpane out of his head. She’d somehow instilled herself into his psyche and no matter what he thought about, she wouldn’t goddamn go away.
Perhaps he’d finally found a reason to stop leaving? Was Josie going to be the one who helped him find the peace he’d been craving for so long? Could he allow himself to trust that they had a future? Could she be the one to keep him grounded? There was a good chance that he could answer yes to all those questions.
Without the distraction of Josie’s dynamic presence it had all come rushing in on him. The emptiness. The total singleness of his existence. She’d opened Pandora’s Box in his mind and all the angst and pain had come rushing out.
Before meeting Josie he’d been fine, hopping from girlfriend to girlfriend over the years, never getting too involved, never giving too much of himself. That had been why Katherine had riled him so much – she’d been more demanding than the rest and he’d found himself plagued by her to the point of being stalked. Poor Katherine. He knew what it felt like now to want someone so much you were willing to make a fool of yourself for them.
It was time to stop running. To turn around, face his fears in an open and honest way and trust they wouldn’t knock him on his ass.
16
Walking into the grand lobby of the hotel where the awards ceremony was taking place, Josie steeled herself to face her family.
Barely acknowledging the opulent surroundings and the throngs of famous faces, she pushed her way through towards the ballroom, where a stage was set up for the show.
She’d managed to duck out of the last few family get-togethers, but she knew it was time to get over her anxieties. She was just as much a part of the family as Maddie, and she refused to consider herself secondary any longer. This was her getting on with her life, moving forward. She would face them and come out fighting on the other side.
Her mother was standing in the doorway to the ballroom and as soon as she spotted Josie she came busying over, resplendent in a heavily shoulder-padded eighties throwback gown and six-inch heels with diamante bows. Clearly Josie was completely underdressed in her simple slip dress and flats, if her mother’s face was anything to go by.
‘You made it, then?’
The condescension in her voice made Josie’s pulse quicken.
Keep cool and ignore! Ignore! The words ran through her head. She’d probably need to turn it into a mantra and repeat it ad nauseum if she was going to survive a night with her mother at this thing and leave with her head held high. But she would do it. She would be serene and poised.
‘Follow me. It’s about to begin. We don’t want to embarrass ourselves by being late to the table,’ her mother said, beckoning her with a flapping hand. ‘They’ve put us right at the front.’ She moved her head back so her mouth was lined up with Josie’s ear. ‘I suspect we’re there so Maddie can get out easily to the stage,’ she said, not bothering to lower her voice a jot and wiggling her eyebrows as if she was imparting some great secret to the world.
