Always and Forever (16 page)

‘You’d love her, she’s fantastic,’ said Trish. ‘Can that girl dance … phew. And she loves al the same stuff as me.

She’s talking about going to Australia for a year to work -

she’s a physiotherapist - and she said would I like to go?’

Cleo felt a pang of left-outness. She and Trish had done everything together since Miss Minton’s class nearly eighteen years before. She had no plans to travel any more until she’d sorted out problems at home, but she’d hoped that when she did, Trish might be keen to go with her.

‘She knows al about work permits and stuff like that,’ Trish went on blithely. ‘Oh, Cleo, she’s the best. When you first meet her, you think she’s quiet, but whoa, baby, that girl is wild.’ ‘How did she come to be at the party?’ asked Cleo, feeling like a maiden aunt enquiring after somebody else’s beau’s credentials. ‘You know Sammy’s friend Pat? Wel , she’s his sister’s best friend and they were supposed to be going to a gig when the sister got sick and Pat said he’d bring her along to the party. I think he fancies her too,’ Trish revealed.

‘Real y?’

Pat was on the periphery of Trish’s Dublin circle of friends and had long been considered a fine thing by Trish and Cleo. Not that he’d ever looked at either of them. He was wel known for dating models, which had to mean that Carol was model material.

Trish’s phone beeped, signal ing an incoming cal .

‘It’s Carol,’ she said. ‘We’re going to see a show at the comedy festival tonight. I don’t suppose you can come up?’

‘Can’t, sorry,’ said Cleo shortly.

‘Better go. Cal you tomorrow. Byee.’

It was partly because she was feeling like Bil y No Mates, and partly because she was so upset about the row with her father, that Cleo said yes an hour later when Nat Sheridan phoned and asked her to come to Galway the fol owing weekend for his mother’s sixtieth birthday party in the family’s hotel, the Railway Lodge, which Nat was learning to run. Normal y, Nat texted on his mobile to keep in touch so Cleo knew it was a big deal if he was actual y phoning. Texting was perfect for shy people and commitment phobes, Cleo had decided. You could keep in touch without ever speaking to a human being.

‘I thought it would be nice if you came … as a friend,’

stammered Nat. ‘Nothing more. And only if you wanted to.

But it would be nice. I know it’s short notice. I didn’t want to bother you. I thought you’d have something else on …’

Conversations with Nat were always like that. He got to the point slowly. He’d been Cleo’s friend since the first day in col ege and the friendship had survived Nat asking Cleo out, and being turned down because Cleo said they’d be

‘better as friends’. Nat stil hoped, and Cleo did her best not to encourage him. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He had a quick, clever

face, kind eyes that could be mournful at times, and his hobby was running, so he was fit and athletic. He simply wasn’t her sort of man. He was ‘… too nice?” she’d said to Trish. ‘Can a man be too nice?’

‘Not the ones I meet,’ Trish had grumbled. But she’d agreed. There was something infinitely good about Nat Sheridan, and to women waiting to be whisked off their feet by handsome bad boys, infinite goodness was a strangely uninviting quality. ‘I’d real y like to show you the hotel,’ Nat offered. ‘And the party’s going to be a laugh.’

‘Sure, I’d love to,’ Cleo said, thinking of how nonexistent her social life was. And it would get her out of home for a couple of days. Since the argument with her father, the atmosphere had been icy. Cleo and her dad never rowed, never, so it felt doubly strange and horrible.

Cleo drove up in her mother’s car on Saturday morning.

The Railway Lodge did lots of brisk business because of its location in scenic Oranmore, just outside Galway City, but this weekend it was ful of Nat’s family and their friends to celebrate his mother’s birthday. Every room was pressed into service, with two of Nat’s cousins sharing one of the attics that hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner in years.

When Cleo found herself in a large bedroom with a queen sized bed piled with cushions and a large box of chocolates on the smal table by the window, she knew she was in trouble. Despite Nat’s protestations of it al being just about friendship, this had to be one of the best bedrooms in the place. To anyone who didn’t know how hotels operated, this would mean nothing. But Cleo had a professional understanding of the language of bedrooms and by giving her this room, Nat was sending her a message with romantic intent.

Against her better wishes, they went into Galway for lunch alone together. Nat said he wanted to know what she thought about the Railway Lodge. In fact, he was happy simply to sit I a deux in a bistro overlooking Eyre Square and to smile goofily at her.

‘Any more news on Roth Hotels’ plans?’ Cleo asked final y, when she was fed up with the long silences. Roth Hotels were the people who could destroy the Wil ow if they set up in opposition to them in Carrickwel , and the big golden R

symbol haunted many of Cleo’s nightmares.

Nat shook his head. ‘It could have been a mistake in the paper,’ he said vaguely. ‘They might not be interested in moving in here at al . They’ve hotels al over the world. What would they be interested in this country for?’

‘Because Europe is opening up and Ireland is ripe for more development,’ Cleo said, irritated. Honestly, Nat had no business awareness whatsoever. ‘You don’t build up a multibil ion dol ar empire by not exploring other territories, Nat.’ ‘You’re right, Cleo.’ Nat looked suitably reproved.

‘You’re great for ideas; you should be lecturing in col ege.

No, you should be running your own hotel,’ he smiled.

Cleo did not smile back. She’d talked to Nat many times about her family’s opinion of letting a feisty twenty-three-year-old with buckets of new ideas run the Wil ow and didn’t want to be reminded once again that they had not changed their minds. ‘You could turn this one around. The Railway Lodge, I mean.’ Nat’s puppy-dog eyes shone with a combination of devotion and excitement.

Cleo knew what he was offering her: him and the Railway Lodge on a platter. She could have her empire, an empire she could run without anyone tel ing her she wasn’t able to, and he’d have her. Poor Nat. She felt very sorry for him.

‘Let’s not get into that now,’ she said wisely, thinking that Mrs Sheridan would not have the party atmosphere she was hoping for if Nat was in the depths of romantic depression. In Cleo’s opinion, it was easier to have the big arguments after the actual party.

‘Let’s get a move on, Nat. You said you hadn’t bought your mother a present yet. We ought to go shopping and get back soon.’

Guests were stil trickling in when Cleo and Nat returned with the pretty silver photo frame Nat had chosen, and he took over on reception whilst his mother retired to the office for some tea.

‘Come on, Cleo, and join me,’ she said. ‘You must keep me away from the cream cakes if I’m to fit into my dress tonight.’ Mrs Sheridan was funny, forthright, and very easy to talk to. The Railway Lodge needed three times as much investment as the Wil ow did, but the positive side was that Nat’s mother knew this.

‘I’d love someone to be interested in buying us out of the business,’ she said, pouring the tea.

‘Would you real y?’ asked Cleo. ‘My parents would hate that.’ ‘They set their place up themselves,’ said Mrs Sheridan shrewdly. ‘I married into ours. As an old relative of my mother’s said, I walked up the aisle with a bouquet and walked down with a hotel.’ She looked around at the cramped office, with its elderly grey filing cabinets and wal s of black and white photos of the place in its former glory. ‘I suppose that’s why I don’t have the same emotional stake in it. If I wasn’t trying to keep the old place going for Nat, I’d have been off years ago. A hotel is a way of life, Cleo, and you’ve got to love it, because the Good Lord only knows, you don’t make money at it.’ ‘I do love it,’ Cleo said simply.

Mrs Sheridan looked astutely at her guest. ‘You do, don’t you? So does Nat. He’s very fond of you, you know, Cleo. I don’t suppose… no.’

Cleo’s face made it utterly plain that no was indeed the answer. ‘He was very excited about you coming here.’

Double torture in one day. Cleo knew it was time for bluntness al round.

‘I’m incredibly fond of Nat, but not in that way. And I’d never lead him on.’

‘I didn’t think that for a moment,’ Mrs Sheridan said. ‘I can see you’re not that kind of girl. You’d be great for him, though.’ Cleo shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He deserves someone who loves him the way he is. I’d be trying to change him.’

‘Aisle, altar, hymn,’ sighed Mrs Sheridan. ‘Many’s the marriage perishes on that rock. Don’t leave him hanging, wil you?’

The cake, decorated with only twenty-one candles - Mrs Sheridan said she didn’t want the fire brigade being alerted at the blowing-out phase - had been cut and the party was wel under way by the time Cleo got a chance to talk to Nat.

‘Dance?’ he said, holding out his hand with old-fashioned courtesy.

The band were playing Glenn Mil er, which Cleo actual y liked, but could never dance to. She was no good at waltzing. ‘You’ve got to stop trying to lead,’ her father always remarked whenever they took to the dance floor.

‘The man leads.’ Says who? Cleo thought every time he said this.

said this.

‘Sure, but I’m not good at this sort of dancing,’ she warned Nat, taking his hand.

The Sheridan clan and friends were throwing themselves into the party spirit and there was much inexpert twirling to

‘In the Mood’. Everyone was happy, especial y Nat.

‘You look lovely tonight,’ he said, as they held hands and did a bit of twirling themselves. Cleo’s hair was pinioned into a loose knot, which suited her, with trails of nut-brown curls clustering around her face. She’d made an effort and was wearing the dress she had bought for last year’s Christmas party at the Wil ow, a dusky grape chiffon thing with short fluted sleeves and a swirling hem that swung around her ankles as she moved. It was a delicate dress and Cleo felt delicate in it. ‘Oh, Nat, you don’t have to compliment me,’ she said lightly.

‘I do,’ he said, not lightly at al .

The tempo switched in a flash down to the moody romance of ‘Moonlight Serenade’, a song made for lovers. Nat was too shy to grab Cleo and pul her close, but he moved in a bit tighter and laid a gentle hand on her waist. Her heart sank. It was such a beautiful song and how glorious it would be to melt against an equal y beautiful man and move with him to the music. She closed her eyes and dreamed of such a thing for a second. When she opened them, Nat was closer to her, his face as near hers as it could be without actual y touching. Instinctively, she pul ed back and watched his kind face flood with disappointment. ‘Nat, we’ve got to talk,’ she said, pul ing him away from the dance floor and out into the empty corridor.

He leaned against the wal miserably.

Cleo took a deep breath. ‘I love you but not in that way,’ she said, and it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

Nat’s expression was anxious, but she had to tel him the truth, the whole truth. It would be unfair to leave him in any doubt. ‘You’re my friend, Nat, but that’s al I want from you. I can’t let you think there wil ever be anything more. I am so, so sorry.’ She took his hands and they stood there in the corridor with the muffled sounds of music and laughter in the air.

If he was the sort of man she could love, Cleo realised irrational y, he wouldn’t let her comfort him when she’d just turned him down: he’d have snatched his hands away and left, coat flying in the wind of his departure.

But Nat couldn’t be that sort of guy, which was why she’d never fal in love with him.

‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, ‘I never meant you to get the wrong idea.’

‘I was hoping you’d feel differently if you saw me on my own ground,’ he said. ‘Here, I’m not as shy as I was in col ege. I can be whatever you want, Cleo. I can be dynamic and into business, and we can work together and …’ he cast around anxiously, ‘we make a good team, Cleo. I love you. That would be enough.’

‘It wouldn’t, Nat,’ she said in exasperation. ‘One person in love can’t make a relationship. I don’t want you to change and I can’t see you differently. You’re my friend, that’s it.

And that could be great but it’s al it’s going to be.

Friendship.’ ‘I’m glad you’re being honest with me,’ Nat said quietly. ‘Nat,’ wailed Cleo, ‘be angry with me, anything.

Stop being so passive!’

‘Al right!’ He jerked his hands away, his eyes brimming.

‘Go away, Cleo. I can’t cope with having you here. Go away.’ Though her eyes smarted with tears, his anger was almost a relief. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’ Nat said nothing, because his eyes said it al . He turned and went down the corridor, leaving Cleo alone, feeling miserable and cruel.

Life was unfair. She wanted a hotel to run but couldn’t have one, while Nat wanted only her and he was offering her the chance to run his. Yet she craved passion and fire and a tempestuous relationship with a man who’d kil anyone if they looked crossways at her. She didn’t want Nat, with his pleading puppy dog eyes and his blind devotion, hotel or no hotel.

She left a note in the office for Nat’s mother saying thanks but she’d had to go. She didn’t mention what had gone on between her and Nat. Mrs Sheridan could work it out and Nat deserved the dignity of tel ing his mother in his own way. Then she packed up her things, stripped the bed in her room so the chambermaid wouldn’t have too much to do, and slipped out of the door to the car park. It would take her at least three hours to drive home, but she wanted the comfort of home tonight. The midnight news bul etin was ending on the radio as she sparked the car round the back of the Wil ow. It was good to home, even if she felt as mean and horrible as she’d ever felt

in her whole life. You couldn’t force yourself to love someone, could you? That thought had tortured her for the entire trip. In her bedroom, she got ready for bed and then turned to the best comfort she knew: her Rodriguez Sisters books. Bought in a church fete years ago, the five bodice-ripping novels were a series about three feisty sisters, Odelita, Graciela and Beilarosa, who lived in Spain in the eighteenth century. Their saucy exploits had thril ed Cleo since she’d first read them when she was a teenager.