Just One Last Night

Locking the garden door, she entered the house through the kitchen as she did most days, slipping off the thick walking boots she wore on a job and leaving them on the cork mat ready for morning. Barefoot, she padded upstairs, flinging open the bathroom window so the scents of the garden could fill the room, and began to run the bath before going into the bedroom and divesting herself of her clothes.

Two minutes later she was lying in hot, soapy bubbles gazing up at a charcoal sky in which the first stars were peeping. Not for the first time she blessed the fact that the developers who had renovated the string of cottages had had soul. In placing the big, cast-iron bath under the window as they had, it meant the occupier could lie and see an ever-changing picture in the heavens through the clear glass they’d installed. Melanie never closed the blinds until she was ready to get out of the bath and on occasions like tonight, when she was tired and aching, it was bliss to lie in the dark and think of nothing. Although tonight the carefully cultivated trick of emptying her mind and totally relaxing wasn’t working…

Melanie frowned, acknowledging Forde had persistently been battering at the door to her consciousness all day, however much she had tried to ignore him. And she had tried. How she’d tried. She didn’t want any contact with him, however remote. She didn’t want to have him invading her mind and unsettling her. He, and Isabelle too, for that matter, were the past, there was no place for them in the present and less still in the future. This was a matter of self-survival.

She heard the telephone ring downstairs but let the answer machine take a message. Forcing her tight muscles to relax, limb by limb, she slid further into the silky water, shutting her eyes. After a few minutes her mobile began playing its little tune from the pocket of her working jeans in the bedroom. It was probably James, reporting how his day had gone, but she made no attempt to find out. This was her time, she told herself militantly. The rest of the world could take a hike for a while.

It was another half an hour before she climbed out of the bath, and the house phone had taken another two messages by then. After washing her hair and swathing it on top of her head with a small fluffy towel, she slipped on her bathrobe. Her stomach was reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the two slices of toast at breakfast, and, deciding food was a priority, she didn’t bother to get dressed, making her way downstairs just as she was.

She had reached the bottom step and her tiny square of hall when a sharp knock at the front door caused Melanie to nearly jump out of her skin.

What now? She shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment. It could only be James reporting some disaster or other after he’d been unable to reach her by phone. And that was fine, she was his boss after all, but she really had wanted to simply crash tonight. It was clearly too much to ask.

Wiping her face clear of all irritation and stitching a smile in place, she tightened the belt of her bathrobe and then opened the door.

The six-foot-four, ruggedly handsome male standing on her doorstep wasn’t James.

A bolt of shock shot through her and then she froze.

‘Hi.’ Forde didn’t smile. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘What?’ She gazed at him stupidly. He looked wonderful. White shirt, black jeans, a muscled tower of brooding masculinity.

The silver-blue eyes with their thick, short, black lashes flicked to her bathrobe and then back to her stunned face. ‘Are you…entertaining?’

As the full import behind his words hit, hot colour surged beneath her high cheekbones along with a reviving dose of adrenaline into her body. Her expression becoming icy, she said slowly, ‘What did you say?’

Forde relaxed slightly. OK, so he’d got that wrong, then. But he had been waiting all day for a response to his letter, which had never come, and after ringing several times tonight he’d decided to see if she was ignoring him or wasn’t home. There had been lights on—upstairs—and then she’d come to the door flustered and dressed like that, or rather undressed like that. What was he supposed to think? ‘I wondered if you had visitors,’ he said carefully, getting ready to use his shoulder on the door if she tried to slam it in his face. ‘You weren’t answering the phone.’

‘I was late home from work and then I had a bath—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘What am I explaining to youfor?’ she added furiously. ‘And how dare you suggest I had a man here?’

‘It was the obvious answer,’ said Forde.

‘To you, maybe, but you shouldn’t judge everyone by your own standards.’ She glared at him angrily.

‘I’m suitably crushed.’

His mocking air was the last straw. Forde had always been the only person in the whole world who could make her so mad the cool façade she hid behind normally melted in the heat. Having been brought up in a succession of foster homes, she had learnt early on to keep her feelings hidden, but that had never worked with Forde. ‘Will you please leave?’ she said tightly, trying to close the door and finding his shoulder was in the way.

‘Did you get my letter?’ In contrast to her fury he appeared calm and composed, even relaxed. That rankled as much as his outrageous assumption she’d had a man in her bed.

Melanie nodded, giving up the struggle to close the door.

‘And?’ he pressed with silky smoothness.

‘And what?’

He studied her with the silvery gaze that seemed to have the power to look straight into her soul. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t care.’

For a moment she thought he was referring to him and then realised he was talking about her concern for his mother. She blinked, the anger draining away. Quietly, she said, ‘How is Isabelle?’

He shrugged. ‘As stubborn as a mule, as always.’

Melanie could almost have smiled. Forde’s mother was a softer, more feminine version of her strong-willed, inflexible son but every bit as determined. But Isabelle had always been wonderfully supportive and loving to her, the mother she’d always longed for but never had. The thought was weakening, intensifying the ever-present ache in her heart. To combat it her voice was flat and without emotion when she said, ‘You said she’d been unwell?’

‘She fell and broke her hip in that damn garden of hers and then there were complications with her heart during surgery.’

Melanie’s dark brown eyes opened wide. When he’d said in his letter Isabelle had been unwell she’d imagined Forde’s mother had had the flu, something like that. But an operation… Isabelle could have died and she wouldn’t have known. Her heart thudding, she murmured, ‘I— I’m sorry.’

‘Not as sorry as I am,’ Forde said grimly. ‘She won’t do as she’s told and seems hell-bent on putting herself back in hospital, refusing to come and stay with me or take it easy in a convalescent home somewhere. She was determined to return home as soon as she was discharged and against medical advice, I might add. The only concession she’d make was to let me hire a live-in nurse until she’s mobile again, and that was under protest. She’s impossible.’

Melanie stared at him. Forde would be exactly the same in those circumstances. He was impossible at the best of times. And easily the sexiest man on the planet.

The last thought caused her to pull the belt of her robe tighter. Don’t let him see how him being here is affecting you, she told herself silently. You know it’s over. Be strong. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, ‘but you must see me doing any work for your mother is ridiculous, Forde. We’re in the middle of a divorce.’

‘We are. That shouldn’t affect your relationship with Isabelle, surely? She was very hurt when you returned her letter unread, by the way,’ he added softly.

Unfair. Below the belt. But that was Forde all over. ‘It was for the best.’

‘Really?’ He considered her thoughtfully. ‘For whom?’

‘Forde, I’m not about to stand here bandying words with you.’ She shivered involuntarily although the night air was warm and humid.

‘You’re cold.’ He pushed the door fully open, causing her to instinctively step back into the hall. ‘Let’s discuss this inside.’

‘Excuse me?’ She recovered her wits enough to bar his way. ‘I don’t remember inviting you in.’

‘Melanie, we’ve been married for two years and unless you’ve put on a pretty good act in all that time, you are fond of my mother. I’m asking for your help for her sake, OK? Are you really going to refuse?’

Two years, four months and five days, to be precise. And the first eleven months had been heaven on earth. After that… ‘Please go,’ she said weakly, much more weakly than she would have liked. ‘Our solicitors wouldn’t like this.’

‘Damn the solicitors.’ He took her arm, moving her aside as he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him. ‘Parasites, the lot of them. I need to talk to you, that’s the important thing.’

He was close, so close the familiar delicious smell and feel of him were all around her, invoking memories that were seductively intimate. They brought a sheen of heat to her skin, her heartbeat speeding up and beginning to rocket in her chest. Forde was the only man she’d ever loved, and even now his power over her was mesmerising. ‘Please leave,’ she said firmly.

‘Look,’ he murmured softly, ‘make some coffee and listen to me, Nell, OK? That’s all I’m asking. For Isabelle’s sake.’

He wasn’t touching her now but her whole being was twisting in pain. Nevertheless, the harsh discipline she’d learnt as a child held good, enabling her to control the flood of emotion his old nickname for her had induced and say, a little shakily admittedly, ‘This isn’t a good idea, Forde.’

‘On the contrary, it’s an excellent idea.’

She looked at him, big and dark in her little hall, his black hair falling over his brow, and knew he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And considering he was six-feet-four of lean, honed muscle and she was a slender five-seven, she could scarcely manhandle him out of the house. She turned, saying over her shoulder, ‘It doesn’t seem I’ve much option, does it?’ as she led the way into her pocket-size sitting room.

Forde followed her, secretly amazed he’d been allowed admittance without more of a fight. But, hey, he thought. Go with the flow. The first battle was over but the war was far from won.

His gaze moved swiftly over the small room, which had Melanie’s stamp all over it, from the two plumpy cream sofas and matching drapes and the thick, coffee-coloured carpet, to the old but charmingly restored Victorian fireplace, which had a pile of logs stacked against it. Very stylish but definitely cosy. Modern but not glaringly so. And giving nothing of herself away. A beautiful mirror stretched across the far wall making the room appear larger, but not one picture or photograph to be seen. Nothing personal.

‘Sit down and I’ll get the coffee.’ She waved to one of the sofas before leaving, shaking her hair free of the towel as she went.