British Bachelors: Gorgeous and Impossible: My Greek Island Fling / Back in the Lion's Den / We'll Always Have Paris

Well, that was interesting.

Lexi hardly noticed that someone had come to sit next to her on the bench until he stretched out his legs and she saw the sharp crease on his smart navy trousers, and the black crash helmet cradled on his knee.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ Mark replied. ‘I didn’t have much luck in the shops so I thought I’d join you, instead. Much more entertaining.’

They sat in silence, watching the hydrofoil crew help passengers onto the deck.

Lexi lifted her head and frowned, as though she had just woken up from a deep sleep.

‘Did I just throw my phone into the sea?’

‘Yes. I watched you do it from the car park. For a casual overarm technique it made a very nice curve for the few seconds it was airborne. Have you ever thought of playing cricket? Not much of a splash, though.’

‘Oh. I was hoping I had imagined that bit. No chance I could get it back, I suppose?’

‘Sorry. Your phone is probably covered by about thirty feet of salt water by now.’

‘Right. Thirty feet.’

Mark sidled up to her on the bench. ‘When I take an awkward call I often find it better to wait a few moments before replying. How about you?’

She shook her head. ‘You see what people do to me? They make my head spin so fast that I throw my phone, that I need for my job and has all my numbers, into the sea.’ She gesticulated towards the open water. ‘There’s probably a law against polluting the Mediterranean with small electrical items. Perhaps you could direct me to the local police station? Because I have to tell you, handing myself in and spending some time in solitary confinement sounds pretty good to me right now.’

She swallowed hard but no more words would form through the pain in her throat.

‘Attractive though that option might sound, I have an alternative suggestion. I have a spare phone and a number of spare bedrooms which you are welcome to use any time you like. And I still owe you dessert. If you are available?’

‘Available? Oh, yes, I am available. I’m always ready to step in at a moment’s notice when they can’t find anyone else. Why not? After all, I don’t have a life.’

‘Don’t say that. You know it isn’t true.’

‘Do I? Then why is it that I choose to live through other people’s experiences of a happy family life, and other women’s children? No, Mark, I do it because I want to forget for just those few days that I am never going to have children of my own. But it’s crushing me. It is totally crushing me.’

And then lovely Lexi, totally in control as ever, burst into hysterical tears.

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_4eb63a5d-20d8-5578-9dac-1b5516ec93a2)

LEXI sat back on the sofa with her eyes closed. The patio doors were wide open and a gentle breeze cooled the hot air. It was evening now, and the only sounds were the soft hum of the air-conditioning unit on the wall, the cicadas in the olive grove and somewhere in the village some chickens being put away for the night.

The gentle glug of wine being poured into a crystal goblet filtered through Lexi’s hazed senses, and she opened her eyes just in time to see Mark smiling at her.

‘Feeling better now?’

She nodded. ‘Almost human.’

And she meant it. She’d enjoyed a luxurious bath, with some amazingly expensive products Mark’s sister had left behind from her last visit, and was now being cosseted and pampered by a handsome man.

The day was turning out a lot better than she had expected.

‘I’m sorry about what happened at the harbour earlier, Mark. I don’t usually burst into tears. But do you remember we’d been talking about how your mum had given up her career for a few years when you were small? So that she could take you to school in the morning and take you to see your friends and make cakes for your birthday parties?’

‘Yes, of course. We loved it.’

‘Well, sitting on that harbour this afternoon it hit me out of the blue that somewhere deep inside my head I know I’m never going to have that life—and like a fool I’ve been living through other people’s stories.’

‘What do you mean other people? You have a perfectly good life of your own.’

‘Do I? All those celebrities I work with? I’ve been making a life for myself through their love affairs, their pregnancies, their children, their families—the good and bad and all the joy that comes with being a parent. That’s what hurts. I’ve been using their lives as some sort of replacement for the family I’ll never have—for the children I’ll never meet. And that’s not just sad, it’s pathetic. Wake-up call. Huge. Cue tears.’

Her voice faded away and she tried to give Mark a smile as he kissed her on the forehead and pressed his chin into her hair.

‘I think you would make a wonderful mother.’

Lexi squeezed her lips together and shrugged her shoulder. ‘That’s not going to happen Mark. That illness I was telling you about? I was diagnosed with leukaemia two months after my tenth birthday.’

Mark inhaled sharply, and his body seemed to freeze into position next to her on the sofa but he said nothing.

‘I know. Not good. But I was lucky. I lived in central London and had a very quick diagnosis and treatment at one of the best children’s hospitals in the world. I was in hospital for what seemed like forever. It was … painful and difficult to endure. My mum was there every day, and my dad phoned me now and then, but I knew he would never come.’

Her head dropped onto her chest and she twiddled the ring on her right hand. She paused and took a moment to compose herself before going on, and to his credit, Mark didn’t interrupt her but gently stroked the back of her hand, as if reassuring her that he was there and ready to listen to anything she had to tell him.

‘The day I was due to be discharged from hospital I remember being so excited. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see my own home again, and my own room with all my things in it. Best of all, my dad was there. Waiting at the front door. With his suitcases. For a few precious moments I thought we were going on holiday somewhere warm, so I could get better. And then he closed the door, and he wouldn’t let me hug him or kiss him because he said I was still getting better and he had a cold. Then he turned to my mother and told her that he had met someone on location in Mexico and had decided to make a fresh start with this girl and her daughter. He picked up his suitcases, opened the door, walked down the path to a huge black limousine and jumped inside.’

Her brows twisted and she had difficulty continuing. ‘I couldn’t walk very fast, and my mother … She was running after the limo, screaming his name over and over. Telling him to stop, begging him to come back. But the car didn’t stop. It went faster and faster. When I caught up with her she was kneeling in the road, watching the car speed round the corner, taking my dad away from us.’

Bitter hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes and Lexi blinked them away.

Mark sat next to her on the sofa and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she answered. ‘Because the past never goes away. There’s always something there to remind you, and just when you think you’re on a happy track and can forget about it and move on—smack! There it is again. Staring you in the face.’

‘How did you ever get over that betrayal?’

‘Oh, Mark. You never get over it. My mother taught me to focus on the best memories we had as a family. But she never really understood why I felt so guilty, and that guilt consumed me for years. Until I saw what he was really like.’

‘You felt guilty? I don’t understand why the ten-year-old Lexi would feel guilty about her father leaving.’

‘Can’t you see? I was the one who got the cancer. I was the one who forced my dad to have an affair with a beautiful actress on a movie set because it was too upsetting and painful for him to come back and deal with my illness and pain. I was the one who drove him to find another daughter who was prettier than me and healthier and cleverer and more talented and …’

Her voice gave way, unable to sustain the emotion any more.

‘Parents aren’t supposed to abandon their children,’ Mark whispered. ‘Sometimes I regret going to university in America. I loved being with my friends in a wonderful country where the world seemed open and full of opportunities to explore and to do business. I just forgot that my family needed me back in England. I could never have imagined that one day my mother wouldn’t be there at the airport to take me home. We missed so many weekends and holidays together.’

‘Young people leave home and follow their hearts and careers. Your mother knew that. Her little boy had grown up, with his own life to lead. She must have been so proud of you and what you’ve achieved.’ Her voice faltered and she stroked his face with her fingertip as she went on. ‘We’re so very similar in many ways. We’re both survivors. I came through cancer. I watched my mother going through torment as my father cheated on us both, then struggle to balance life as a single working mother with a sickly child.’

‘Is she happy now?’