Page 45 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

Words, not sentences. But he wasn’t going to help Olivier make his case. Ben sighed and gripped the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb. When Olivier put it like that, it sounded stupid.Hesounded stupid. He thought he should try to explain why he was running from Millie. Maybe if it made sense to Olivier, it would make sense to him. ‘Emotion scares me. I was feeling emotional and I started to stutter. If I don’t nip this in the bud now, I might regress.’

Olivier’s look suggested he’d been out in the sun for too long. ‘Get real, Ben, we both know that’s not going to happen. You’ve worked far too hard and too long to let that happen. And if you stutter with the people who care about you, who the hell cares? The people who love you—me, Millie—love you whether you stutter or not. Heads up, perfect speech is not a requirement to be loved.’

Millie said the same thing, love wasn’t conditional. But could he believe it? His mum was supposed to love him, but she couldn’t. Neither could Margrét. Ben bit his lip and shook his head. ‘Lo-lo-love hurts, Olivier. It’s hurt m-me.’

‘No,lovedidn’t hurt you. Your mother, because she had the emotional range of a crowbar, hurt you. Margrét, because she was more concerned about how your relationship looked to the outside world, hurt you. But do you know what hurts more, Ben?’ Olivier demanded, sitting up and resting his arms on his now bent knees. ‘Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Walking away because you’re an idiot hurts. Trying to protect yourself hurts. We blame love for hurting us, but it doesn’t. Love doesn’t hurt. Love heals those wounds and fixes the bumps. It gets you through the day.’

Ben met his cousin, and best friend’s, eyes. He couldn’t speak, partly because emotion was bubbling in his throat and if he tried to push words past that mess, he’d make a mess of what he was trying to say.

‘You’ve been married to that girl for twelve years, Ben, and I’ve never seen you happier than I have these past few weeks. You might not have known it at the time, but she was always the girl you were supposed to be with.’

He shook his head. ‘I d-don’t know, Ol.’

‘Of course you do,’ Olivier told him, ignoring his stammer. ‘You’re just being stubborn. You want to love her, you want to be with her, you want to spend your life with her, but you’re scared of taking that leap, of being emotionally vulnerable.’ Olivier reached across the sand and punched his thigh. Hard.Dammit, ow!

‘Pull your head out of your—’ He saw a little girl building a sandcastle quite close to them and adjusted his words. ‘Out of the sand and go and be with her. Throw your lot in with hers and see what happens.’

‘What h-happens if it f-falls apart?’ Ben asked, terrified at the idea.

Olivier shrugged. ‘Then your heart gets shattered and you can go back to being the introverted, unemotional robot you were before.’

‘I feel like that now,’ Ben reluctantly admitted, rubbing his aching thigh.

‘Then you might as well take a punt and be happy before you feel like that again,’ Olivier cheerfully told him. ‘But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I suspect that when Millie jumps in, she does it with both feet and all of her body.’

Ben took the hand Olivier held out and allowed his cousin to pull him to his feet. ‘I’ll think about what you said,’ he told Olivier.

Olivier shook his blond head. ‘No, you and thinking are a dangerous combination. Just tell your pilot to get your jet ready, get to the airport and fly to London. When you get there, go to Millie. She’ll do the rest...’

‘Your faith in me is touching,’ Ben told him, his tone dry as they walked back to the hotel.

Olivier grinned at him. ‘And tell Millie to let me know whether I should withdraw your divorce petition. And for God’s sake, buy the woman a ring, Jónsson. Actually,don’t, she’s a jewellery designer, you’ll probably get it wrong. Let her choose her own.’

Ben stopped and rolled his eyes. When Olivier finally stopped talking, he shook his head. ‘Are you done telling me what to do?’ he asked, a little bemused by this volley of instructions.

Olivier slapped his hand on his back and the movement propelled Ben forward. ‘I intend to be your shadow until I get you on your plane and see you taking off. I’m not letting you bail, Cousin.’

Ben didn’t think he would. Living with his fear might be hard, but living without Millie was impossible. ‘Why don’t you organise your own love life and stay out of mine?’ Ben grumbled.

‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Olivier demanded, laughing.

Millie aimlessly wandered around her top-floor Notting Hill apartment, feeling unsettled and off balance. Nothing, it turned out, stopped the ache of a broken heart. Her entire body was slowly crumbling and she was a hostage to sadness. Since she watched Ben walk out of her life, her nerves started vibrating at a higher intensity and every bump, scrape or bruise was so much more painful than anything she’d experienced before. Her heart was shattered and so was her spirit.

She’d been hurt when Magnús rejected her and by her mum’s inability to tell her who her father was. Discovering the identity of her real father upset her, but Ben choosing not to love her was pain on an industrial scale.

What made their situation worse was that she knew he felt something for her—it might not be love, but it was close—and she couldn’t believe he’d chosen to walk away from her, dismissing all they could be. He was choosing loneliness and solitude over her and that added a layer to hurt she’d never experienced before.

How could he think that being miserable and lonely was better than being together?

Millie looked out of her window on to the street below, taking in the flickering light of a Christmas tree in the window of the flat opposite. It was Christmas Eve and she was spending it alone. For once she didn’t mind—if she couldn’t be with Ben, then she preferred to be by herself.

She could cry in peace, she wouldn’t have to put on a happy face and pretend to be jolly.

Millie placed the balls of her hands into her eye sockets and pushed back her tears. She’d cried more over the last two days than she had since her mum died and knew her red nose could rival Rudolph’s. Her hair was a tangled mess and she wore her most comfortable pair of yoga pants, thick fluffy socks and a sweatshirt of Ben’s she’d nicked from his closet.

She should eat, but whatever she swallowed immediately wanted out. She wasn’t sure if a broken heart or starvation would kill her first.

Stupid,stupidman for not giving them a chance.

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