Page 23 of A Bed of Broken Promises

“Your ex-wife?” She whipped her head around to look up at him, but his face was carefully blanked of any expression. “What happened?”

Even now, he found it difficult to admit. “She had an abortion. Once she started to gain pregnancy weight, she flipped out. Booked an abortion. She didn’t tell me until afterwards. Until after it was done. When I asked her why, she said it was because she didn’t want to get fat.”

Katie couldn’t help the sharp inhalation of breath. “You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly.”

“Oh, David. That’s just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I’m so sorry. When was this?”

“Years ago now. Our baby would have been Maxie’s age, or close to.”

Katie felt her heart twist in pain for this complex man. “That’s awful. You must have felt so powerless.”

“Powerless, betrayed, enraged. You name it, I felt it.”

“What did you do?”

“I walked out of our home and straight to my lawyer’s office. And I filed for divorce that day. How could I ever look at her again?”

Katie shook her head sadly. “You couldn’t. To not have discussed it with you first… it’s so callous.”

“That was Veronica. I didn’t see it at the time. I was too busy working around the clock. Really got her measure when she did that, though.”

Katie nodded, then tipped her head to one side. “What do you mean, ‘working around the clock’? I would have thought your hours as a teacher were pretty standard? I always thought that was the best thing about the job.”

He turned away from her, annoyed he’d yet again dropped the ball with his false identity. “I wasn’t teaching then.”

“It’s funny. I can’t imagine you doing anything other than teaching now that I know you.”

“That is funny,” he said, thinking it was anything but. If she knew he was the CEO and owner of a billion dollar company – one that was trying to buy her property, no less - she’d feel pretty bloody unamused.

“What about family? Do you have any?” Katie probed further.

“Everyone has family, don’t they?”

“Not necessarily,” she shrugged. She only had her mum, and Maxie. Not such a big group of people surrounding her.

“I do. Both my parents are in the states, and I have a brother, who is married, and expecting a baby in a few months time.”

It must be unbearable for him to see his brother’s wife’s belly swell with new life. She looked up at him, trying to keep the pity out of her face. Though she’d only known him a week, she wasn’t sure she’d ever known anyone so well, and she knew with fierce certainty that pity was not an emotion he would appreciate.

“Come here.” She said, tugging on his hand and changing their course, back towards the sheer rock faces that bounded the little cove.

“Where to?” He asked, allowing her to lead him nearer the cliffs.

“Here.” She slid in between two rocks, and he saw there was a narrow path between enormou

s boulders, overgrown with moss and lichen. He peered as far as his eyes could see, which wasn’t far. The rocks seemed to edge close and closer together, making it darken to black only a few meters ahead.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” He asked skeptically.

“Been here a hundred times. Come on. Don’t tell me a big, strong man who’s travelled the four corners of the globe is scared of a little Cornish adventure?”

Actually, Marcus was terrified. Trying to calm his racing heart, he followed Katie’s confident tread, until the pathway gave way to a large hole in the cliff.

“What is this place?”

“A smugglers’ cave,” she whispered in awe. She used the light on her mobile phone to show him the walls of the cave. “The whole coast is riddled with them, from when pirates used to stow their treasure here.” She ran her hand over the uneven wall, imagining what secrets must have been witnessed by this hole in the land.

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