Chapter 29
Lea frowned, her heart missing a beat. Why was he looking so cold and distant? ‘What’s wrong?’
He drew in a sharp breath, moved a few paces away, released the breath, and then turned back to face her. ‘Do you not think it might have been appropriate to ask me first before accepting an invitation like that?’
Lea swallowed a bauble-sized lump in her throat. ‘But I thought you’d be honoured to—’
‘You thought wrong,’ he said, brows drawn down heavily in a brooding frown.
'Dave...' She tried for a conciliatory tone but missed the mark. ‘Why are you so upset? Being asked to be a godparent is such a lovely thing. It’s mostly symbolic these days, but, still, it’s wonderful to be asked. I would feel awful saying no. And besides, they want both of us.’
“I’m not signing up for any more responsibility, especially when we’re not really a couple. Or at least not for the long term.’
Not really a couple. Not for the long term.
The words hit her like slaps. Cold, hard-stinging slaps of truth. A truth she had been hiding from for weeks and weeks, fooling herself into thinking her relationship with Dave was something else. Something like Isla had with Rafe. But it wasn’t. It never had been and never could be.
Why had she fooled herself?
Lea took a steady breath, trying to control her spiralling emotions. ‘So, what you’re saying is you don’t want to be Gabriella’s godfather?’
‘I don’t want to be any child’s godfather.’ His eyes were as hard as his tone. Diamond hard. Don’t-ask-me-twice hard. ‘You had no right to answer for me. We might be having a good time, but that doesn’t mean you get to sign me up for things I have no interest in.’
‘A good time?’ Lea gasped. ‘Is that all this is to you? Is that all I am to you?’ Pain ripped through her chest as if her ribcage were being wrenched apart with steel claws. But she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. Not now. Not in front of him. How could she have been so gullible and foolish as to think their physical closeness meant emotional closeness? He was as far away from her as he had ever been. She had fooled herself that his touch meant he loved her. His passionate kisses meant he cared. That his lovemaking was lovemaking, not just sex.
Dave shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, glaring at her like she was an intruder he had never seen before and not the woman he had spent the last two months making passionate love to. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I told you right at the start how things were going to be. You accepted my terms.’
‘Your terms are completely ridiculous,’ Lea said. ‘They’re your insurance scheme against getting hurt; that’s what they really are. And here I was thinking my limp was holding me back, stopping me from doing all the things other people do. But at the end of the day, it’s just a physical limp. Your emotional limp is far worse. It completely disables you, and yet you can’t see it.’
He gave her a mocking laugh that grated on her already shredded emotions. ‘Thanks for the free psychoanalysis, but I don’t need you to tell me how I think.’
‘You don’t need me at all,’ Lea said. ‘You don’t need anyone. You won’t allow yourself to. Which is why I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t be in a relationship that has limits set for it. I spent my childhood trying to fit in with impossible standards. Standards that didn’t factor in my needs or aspirations. Standards that didn’t include love. I want more than that now. I deserve more than that, and you do too.’
His expression was masked, but she sensed a simmering anger behind the dark screen of his gaze. ‘You’re free to come and go as you please. I can’t make you stay.’
Yes, you can, as Lea wanted to say. Just three little words would make me stay.
But those three little words had never been a part of their arrangement. Neither had a future together ever been part of the deal. Dave had always been blatantly honest about that. ‘I don’t think it will help either of us if I stay in this relationship. Of course, I won’t jeopardise your inheritance from Brathellae. I will be your wife on paper, as you first suggested, to fulfil the terms of your grandfather’s will.’
‘Magnanimous of you.’ His coolly delivered comment was as cutting as a switchblade.
Lea pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. She couldn’t fall apart now. He was making it perfectly clear that there was no hope for their marriage. No hope at all. ‘I think it’s best if I leave right away. I will pack a few things and come for the rest later.’
‘There’s no need to be so dramatic, Lea,’ Dave said. ‘I’m sure we can be perfectly civil to each other until tomorrow morning. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. I don’t like the thought of you driving all the way to Edinburgh at this time of day.’
And risk having him try to change her mind? No. It was better she leave now while she still had the strength, courage, and self-respect to do so. Lea raised her chin to a determined height, her gaze steady on his unreadable one. ‘I appreciate your concern, but my mind is made up.’
Anger flared in his gaze, his mouth went into a flat line, and he began a caged-tiger-like pacing of the floor. ‘This all seems rather sudden and impulsive.’ He stopped pacing to spear her with a look. ‘A few minutes ago, we were kissing. Now you say you want out?’
Lea smoothed her sweaty palms down her thighs, wishing she could smooth away the heartache she was feeling. ‘It’s not as sudden as you might think. I’ve been worried from the start—you know I have. I didn’t want you to lose the castle. But I can’t lose myself in the process of you gaining your inheritance. And that’s what’s already happening. I can’t be who I’m meant to be if I’m tailoring my needs to suit your plans. I have my own plans, and they don’t include a short-term, loveless marriage.’
He rolled his eyes heavenward and let out a not-quite-inaudible curse. ‘Oh, I thought you’d mention the L word eventually. Do you think I don’t care about you? Is that what you think?’
Lea forced herself to hold his embittered gaze. ‘I know you care. You care about lots of people. But you don’t love me.’
He sucked in a harsh breath and strode to stand in front of the waist-height bookcase. ‘You’re suddenly such an expert on my feelings.’ He pushed a hand through his hair and then dropped it back by his side. ‘Love?’ He shook his head, let out another breath, and continued, ‘I don’t trust that emotion. I don’t trust the word when people say it to me.’
His gaze narrowed. ‘Are you saying you love me?’
Lea ran the tip of her tongue over her parchment-dry lips. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I did or not. You don’t love me the way I want to be loved.’
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a moment, he lowered his hand from his face to look at her. ‘No one can love anyone the way they want to be loved. The standard is set too high, fed by romantic fantasies encouraged by popular culture. It’s not real, Lea. What you feel for me is not real, it’s just a fantasy.’
How like him to intellectualise everything? How like him to dismiss her feelings as a simple fantasy? What hope was there for him to ever change his mind? She had seen her mother try desperately to get her father to love her, and it hadn’t happened. Lea had tried to get both her parents to love her, and yet the drugs and drink had triumphed over her. Lucky Lea wasn’t so lucky after all.
She was unlucky in love.
‘I’m going upstairs to pack. I’ll text you when I arrive in Edinburgh.’
‘Fine.’
Lea took off the engagement ring and held it out to him. ‘I think you should have this back. It’s a family heirloom, and I’m not family.’ Or ever will be.
His eyes hardened to ice, and his jaw set in stone. ‘Keep it. I don’t want it.’
Lea curled her fingers around the ring, slipped it into her pocket, and silently left the room.
His words could just as easily be referring to her love for him.
Keep it. I don’t want it.
Dave forced himself to watch Lea’s tail lights fade into the distance. He forced himself to stand there at the window, watching her leave, instead of racing to his own car and driving after her, begging her to come back. But he was not the sort of man to beg. To plead. To humiliate himself over a relationship that was never going to work. It had all the odds stacked against it from the start, and wasn’t he the biggest of them?
He was the last person to be anyone’s godparent. What sort of spiritual guardian would he be? He had messed up big time, keeping the reins too loose, and now he couldn’t pull back on them. He had done an even worse job of taking care of his fiancée. Taking on any more responsibility was asking for another monumental screw-up.
And now he had another one for his personal failure board—his relationship with Lea. It had been doomed from the outset because he was the common denominator in all his failed relationships. There was no escaping the uncomfortable truth that he was unable to care for someone without letting them down.
The taillights were finally swallowed by the cloaking darkness, and he closed the curtains.
Lea fancied herself in love with him, and he blamed himself for not sticking to his rules. He had blurred the boundaries by taking their relationship from paper to passion, and now he had to pay the price.
But he still had the castle.
Lea had promised not to do anything that would compromise his inheritance, and for that, he was grateful. To lose Brathellae would be to lose a big part of himself. He glanced at the Christmas tree that, only a short time ago, they had decorated together. The porcelain angel on top of the tree had slipped sideways and looked in danger of falling. He deliberated on whether to climb back up the ladder or leave the angel to its fate. It had been repaired a few times—once Flossie, as a puppy, had run off with it during the tree-decorating process.
It had taken Dave ages to glue it back together before anyone noticed.
Flossie pushed the sitting-room door open with her nose and padded over to him, her tail low and her brown eyes so woebegone that it made something in Dave’s gut tighten. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, frowning. ‘I didn’t ask her to leave.’
But you didn’t convince her to stay either.
He pushed aside the intrusive thought and went over to where he had propped the stepladder against the wall. He unfolded the ladder and began climbing, but he had only gotten up three rungs when the angel toppled from the top of the tree and fell to the floor, her porcelain face smashing into pieces that no amount of superglue was ever going to fix.