Just Tell Me (The Justice Series) (11 page)

Chapter 9

September

Saturday night
.  Nicole thought ironically,
and all I want to do is sit in my old dressing gown, eat chocolate and wallow in some more self pity
.  Lying out on the sofa with her feet over the dog, she felt exhausted despite doing nothing all day.  Her dad was gently snoring on the adjacent sofa and her mum was picking her nails, scratching her hair and absently watching some talent show on bbc3.  Nicole stared up at the ceiling, its ornate ceiling rose and cornicing detail was barely visible over the years of gloss paint, she wondered how long it would take to strip it down to its natural glory again.  Like the Sistine chapel, she giggled to herself imagining her parents reaction if they came back to find the room full of scaffolding and her painting the gold detail on the plaster. 

She pulled the belt of her old dressing gown. 
God if Daniel could see me now in this dressing gown
, she caught her mind wandering back to him as she looked at her grubby outfit, she missed him and her tummy flipped at the thought.  She hadn’t realised how much this would hurt; she thought she had been strong walking away from everything but she felt her heart fill with melancholy as she thought how different it would have been.  Would she be in Edinburgh this weekend? She remembered her birthday a few weeks ago, just after she had come out of hospital. She had sat quietly at the kitchen table as her dad grilled a t-bone steak, unable to celebrate and wallowing in self pity.

It had been
almost two months since she had found out she was pregnant. Two months since she had left Andrew and he hadn’t contacted her since, he wouldn’t dare, the court had issued a restraining order and for the first time in years she felt free.  She knew Daniel had paid him off despite her note and at first she was furious, but now she couldn’t be angry at him, just sad, and eternally grateful for his generosity.  He must have thought he felt something for her but she couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t what he wanted, especially pregnant. 

S
he still felt she had no choice but to walk away from him, he wouldn’t want a family and she couldn’t have told him her news, not just like that after everything that had happened. Walking away from him was the only option, each way she thought about it ended in heartbreak. Every day she woke up making a promise to not think about him, but it was impossible, she had become obsessed with following him from a distance, on the internet and the gossip magazines.  Her hands ran over her tummy, it was still her secret and wanted to keep it that way as long as she could.  She didn’t want to think about the future at the moment, but she did want to get to 24 weeks before she told anyone. 24 weeks pregnant and too late to be talked out of it by Libby or her parents.  She had googled every aspect of her pregnancy, each week was a milestone in the baby’s development and according to her dates she was now 18 weeks pregnant.  She had been to the doctors, registered with the midwife and had her notes hidden in her bag. 

When she was on her own she would take the notes out of her bag and look at the date, 14
th
February, Valentines Day.  The irony wasn’t lost on Nicole.  She smiled sadly, she couldn’t believe in her heart it was happening to her.  In two weeks she would have her 20 week scan, on her own.  It was weird, being alone and she wished she could tell her mum and they could go together. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she could see the swell of her tummy and she had to undo the top button of her jeans. The sickness was becoming normal and her breasts were still feeling sore, she was sure they had doubled in size as she looked at her profile again.  Nicole didn’t know how her parents would react but she had a plan, she had a good career and earned way over the average wage especially with the financial freedom Daniel had bought her.  It just needed careful planning and the support of her parents, and the right time to announce her news, she thought wistfully. 

The next morning she woke early and padded downstairs to the kitchen, h
er mum passed her a cup of tea. Nicole took it gladly and took a bite of her toast and chocolate spread, she couldn’t face butter anymore.  Although she hadn’t been actually sick since the morning she took the test, Nicole felt on the brink of throwing up most of the time and had a list of foods that were on sick list.  Lamb, butter, fried onions.  If she saw a combination of that on a plate she would just be sick and for once she wished she could stop thinking about food. Her dad was cooking bacon in the kitchen and brought it over on a big place with fresh bread to the table, making her almost retch.  Nicole flicked through the Sunday newspapers. Her dad liked the highbrow thick newspapers that seemed to take an entire week to get through, and her mum bought the trashy Sunday throwaway reads. She filtered through the glossies, she wasn’t really interested about reading about celebrity fashion and who was dating but she needed to see what Daniel was doing, she found the gossip supplement and looked at the front page unable to comprehend the headline.

“I don’t fucking believe it” She spat the words out making her dad jump.

“
Nicole!!” her dad exclaimed “I nearly spilt my bloody tea”. 

“Sorry dad” Nicole stared at the headline.

“Britain’s most eligible bachelor signs up to be the next Single and Loaded”.
  

She stared at the photo, there was Daniel stood in front of a sports car in the grounds of a cast
le and her heart was palpitating as she took in every aspect of the photo, his expression serious and businesslike. He looked every bit a male model with his stylish tailored suit and dark short hair, his eyes sparkled. Just as she remembered and she was memorised by the images, she had to read more. 

“Aristocrat playboy Daniel MacIntyre gives an up front and frank interview on his hedonistic lifestyle, his multimillion pound property portfolio and why he agreed to be the next Single and Loaded”. 

Unable to draw her eyes away from the article she stared down at the glossy paper.
Who the hell was this man?
It was like two different people and she couldn’t connect the person she had met with the person in these photographs, her Daniel was caring and reserved and he had dignity. This one intimidated her. 

She knew she had made the right decision, walking away from him
. There was no way he would have wanted to be a father. She didn’t want to read the article but she involuntarily skimmed through it

“
I’m ready to settle down and find someone I can spend my life with
” Daniel was quoted
“the producers of Single and Loaded contacted me and I thought, why not? I would give it a go, my future wife could be just round the corner”

Nicole closed the magazine; she couldn’t read anymore and she physically shook when she
picked up her tea, wanted to settle down?  She doubted it although the voice in her head screamed otherwise.
What the hell have you done to him?

“What’
s wrong love?” her mum was sat down at the table and looked at her daughter with concern.  Nicole just couldn’t believe it, she was speechless and her mum picked up the magazine, she read the headline and looked at the photos.

“This is THE Daniel isn’t it?” she looked up, Nic
ole had told them the details “Bloody hell, ah look this is the guy Nicole met in Edinburgh”

Her dad glanced over, stared over at the article and chuckled “W
ell you certainly blew it with that one Nicole, bet he wouldn’t leave you with negative equity”

Her dad’s
kind eyes twinkled at Nicole and she smiled despite herself, trust her dad to see the funny side of every situation, she really wanted to tell them there and then that she was pregnant and Mr. sodding Gigolo was the father. 

“No but he’s just paid Andrew off” Nicole hadn’t told her parents and they stared at her incredulously “But it’s over now, so let’s not dwell on it, eh?”  Her parents stared at her, speechless for once and she took the opportunity to leave the room.
She walked up to her room, laid on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Her hand automatically lay on her belly, she was carrying the child of an aristocrat like a story from a corny book, but there was no way she would ever tell him. This was her child, she didn’t want a penny more from Daniel, he had done enough for her just by paying Andrew off. 

He wouldn’t want to know her even if she had contacted him and she felt a wave of relief wash over her heart
, would he have wanted her to get rid of it? She suppressed any thoughts he would have supported her and hardened her heart again, whichever way she looked at it the outcome was always the same.

She googled
Single and Loaded and frowned. The format was 12 single attractive women, 1 rich attractive man mix them all together and each week one would be evicted until there was a winner.  Filming started in October and due on TV in January.

“What an arsehole!”  Nicole
felt furious at him for doing this, she knew he was doing it to get back at her and she decided to drag herself out of the house and go for a walk with the dog.  A rage was building up inside her, the likes of which she had never felt before and had she considered it, Andrew wouldn’t even recognise her now. He certainly wouldn’t have walked all over her.

Chapter 10

October

The autumn closed in quickly, the leaves fell on the roads and left a golden trail on the lanes around Hambelby.  Daniel drove his new car steadily through the country roads.  It was his mother’s birthday tonight
so he needed to get home, get ready and go to the castle before 7pm.  The autumn sun set fast over the hills, the dark blue sky had darkened as dusk approached and he pulled up outside the gatehouse. 

His new Audi hit the gravel and made a satisfying crunch as he pulled into the drive, Daniel loved his new car. It was black and sleek and handled like a dream. 
Part of me will always be a teenage boy at heart.
What he loved about it was that he bought it from money he had earned, he did not have to rely on the family money to maintain his lifestyle, unlike his parents. 

Daniel h
ung up his jacket in the hall. He checked his reflection in the mirror and ran his hand through his hair as he studied his profile.  The hard work of healthy eating and running before work was paying off. He was running daily, taking the routes through the estate he knew so well, he liked to sprint up the hills and pause to take in the view while the adrenalin rushed through his body.

Smoking had been hard to stop but he had managed, and
he had kept his drinking to a minimum.  His skin was glowing and his body was getting back into shape again, even his paunch had gone.  The hotel chains were performing well and he loved the commercial properties he was adding to the portfolio, especially the small shopping centre they had just completed on.  The unit’s were full and profits were forecasted at record highs by next April.    

Even his iPod was being nicer to him, it stopped shuffling miserable sad songs at him a
t inappropriate moments and gave him a more upbeat selection. The kitchen appliances had stopped glaring at him when he sat alone at night, mostly due to him cutting down the excessive drinking and self pity. 

He poured himself a weak gin
and tonic and took it upstairs while he changed into his white dress shirt and found his black bow tie and jacket. He considered wearing his green jumper and checked shirt.
All together the landowner’s son
he laughed to himself. Realising anymore preening in the mirror would make him more than fashionably late he rushed back out and took the private road up to the castle. 

As he approached his parent’s house, he slowed down and looked
at the windows, the light was blocked by people in evening wear. The last of the autumn sun had set, silhouetting the castle against the dark blue sky, its windows lit in the great hall.  He stopped a moment, one day this would be his responsibility, what if he had to do it alone? What if he never met anyone?  Alone. With all this and no one to share it with. 

All he wanted was
Nicole and his mood plummeted. He pulled himself back from the mental dark abyss his mind took him down, knowing it was a downward spiral.  He was due to start filming Single and Loaded next week. Women thought he was a catch, he didn’t want to come across as a socially inept, alcoholic dependant loon pining for the lost love of his life and talking to household appliances. He chuckled darkly at this thought and climbed out of the Audi.  

He opened the large wooden door
of the castle and walked into the great expanse of hallway, its giant staircase wrapped round the walls of the room leading the eye upwards towards its ornate vaulted ceiling. His mother was stood in the middle of the hallway, in a flowing purple gown as if she was centre stage in a theatre.

“Daniel my darling you’re here!” she exclaimed, her eyes lit up as she air kissed her only child
, and ushered him through into the great hall where it would appear most of the district had congregated.  Daniel grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

“Clarissa my dear,
you must remember my son Daniel” Daniel’s mother had spotted her target and still holding onto Daniel, practically forced him into the arms of the woman Clarissa. A distinctively horsey woman with long dark hair and far too much make up, Daniel guessed he would be sat with over dinner as his mother had insisted on name settings.

Cl
arissa looked at him with awe “Hello do you remember me?” she fluttered her fake eyelashes seductively at him and slightly pouted her lips. Daniel did remember her from polo a couple of years ago. She was a decent enough player but threw herself at every single man at the after parties trying to get herself a rich husband, Daniel had so far been out of reach to her. He also knew he would end up sleeping with her if he wasn’t careful, not because he found her that attractive but because when he was drunk he would end up with any semi attractive woman. He was staying true to his resolve and made sure he sipped his drink.

“Ye
s I think I do” he smiled politely and he steered the conversation towards horses and mutual friends.

Daniel’s
mother kept a close eye on her son during the party, he was acting differently and she couldn’t work it out. Usually Daniel would be flirting with the girl she had put him next to, not her first choice of wife for her son but she was getting concerned. She watched him fill his glass only half full and stare at his plate of wild duck confit, he wasn’t himself.
I must have a word with him
. She had suffered from depression when she was younger and even now she had a store of “happy pills”.  There was a history of depression in their family, she recalled her mother sat for days in the big drawing room, staring out the window at the grey skies.  They rarely talked about it as a family, never ones for speaking about their emotions; it was a sign of weakness. She sighed inwardly and took a big sip of her drink, she knew she drank too much but it seemed to help block out her thoughts for a few hours.  

As she looked at Daniel, she remembered the article in her husband
’s Private Eye magazine stating the position of homosexuals in business and their ways.  She ignored the blatant publishing irony and she was sure he fitted most of the criteria.  He took care of himself, dressed well and she knew he kept his house immaculately clean.  She had found herself in there a few times when he was away. There was never any trace of female company, but she had found moisturiser in his bathroom cabinet, eyebrow tweezers and bubble bath. 

She looked over at her husband whose eyebrows or ear hair had never been plucked and they were almost meeting in the middle, his face red and rugged from too much brandy a
nd the rough Scottish weather. If she gave him moisturiser he would probably eat it, she thought as the hired help replenished her drink. 

Daniel sat quietly through the meal, he raised a glass to his mother and she stood up to do a little speech.  The great hall was the centre of the castle, and
Daniel’s favourite room.  Double height, it had a fireplace so big ten people could sit in it and large oil paintings hung around the walls.  His ancestors glared down on them at every occasion.  As a child he would play under the table alone in this room, talking to the pictures and he especially loved the small oil painting of a woman, her eyes were piercing and unforgiving.  A true MacIntyre.  No one really knew who she was, rumour had it she was Great Aunt Madeline, a beautiful woman in her youth but as she got older she withered away.  A spinster that never married, she had been jilted by the love of her life and she lived in the turret of the castle for years, no one knew even knew she was dead for weeks until the smell attracted attention. He doubted this was the truth, his family loved drama and tragedy but Daniel found his favourite picture and looked at her eyes, he was sure there was some truth to the tale. His mind drifted although the room was crowded and Clarissa was trying very hard to get his attention. Her top was getting lower he noticed and she kept edging nearer to him as dessert was being served, but he felt nothing. 

He looked at Great Aunt Madeline and wondered if he too would end up mad and alone, locked up in a turret while he waited for the love of his life to rescue him.  He forced himself not to think a
bout Nicole and felt a pang of loneliness in the crowded room. It was too late, he wished she was here with him, he knew they would laugh together and he missed her more as his emotions took hold.

Clarissa turned to him “Oh I completely forgot, I read all about your debut in Single and Loaded, I
can’t work it out Mr MacIntyre, I’m sure there are plenty of eligible ladies out there, you must have the pick of whoever you fancy”. Daniel was getting irritated by Clarissa,
why couldn’t she talk to me normally?
And stop sticking her chest out
? Any minute now he thought she was going to grab his leg and he felt a little wary. 

“
Yes it starts filming a week on Monday”. He tried to steer the conversation away from his love life. He couldn’t believe how quickly October had come round he wondered where the year had gone, another sign of getting older. “The filming only takes two weeks, but it represents 8 weeks of one hour slots on Friday nights, it starts January” he explained “It just seemed like something I should do, I want to show the country I’m not like the photographs and the media say, they make up what they want about me and it’s about time I stopped playing about, I don’t want to be seen with a different woman at every party anymore, do you understand what I mean Clarissa, I don’t want women I don’t know throwing themselves at me in the hope they will strike it lucky”.  

Daniel’s
words were stern and he glared at Clarissa but felt quite sorry for her as she pushed her chocolate ganache around the plate, her previous confidence deflated as it was clear he was talking about her.  She looked up at him and she was quite pretty underneath the make up and pretence. 

“Hey look I’m sorry Clarissa, it’s not you, it’s me” he cringed at the clique, where had that come from?  Why was he apologising to this silly girl anyway? He really wanted to tell her to stop the fake tan, cover up the overbearing cleavage and be herself

“I’m not what you think Daniel” she stuttered, feeling defensive by his words “I just thought, oh well it doesn’t matter anymore” she stopped playing with her food and placed her fork down and grabbed her glass. “Anyway, here’s to Single and Loaded, I hope you find the person you’re looking for” and she smiled at him, he clinked her glass, a thin smile on his face. 

As the party came to
its natural end, Daniel was the last one left.  It was late once the stragglers had gone and he finally relaxed, there were no more predatory women waiting to pounce on him. He breathed a sigh of relief, they had moved from the great hall as the catering staff started to clear away, the large table drown in a sea of empty glasses and napkins.

They sat in the cosy drawing room, the sofas were old and worn and Dan
iel sunk into his favourite leather chair. He looked at his brandy glass, swilling the brown liquid and getting ready to listen to his parents as they would inevitably witter on.  They were strangely subdued for once, both of them sat on the adjacent sofa and watched him.  

His
mother’s blue eyes were glazed over and she had a smile on her face as she looked at her son. “Well that was a success” she slurred and her husband poured another generous measure of brandy into her glass and lit her cigarette. Daniel looked at his father, his weather worn face even redder than usual and his hair was thinning and wild on top, sticking out behind his ears. His eyes were the same piercing blue as Daniel’s, although old age and too much brandy had dulled the colour.

“
How’s it going son” his dad spoke “How are you?”

Da
niel looked at them quizzically and wondered where this peculiar new strain of parenting would lead. 

“I’m fine father, ho
w are you?” Daniel quipped back not wanting to have any kind of emotional heart to heart with either of them. 

“Oh come on Daniel, you’re not fine” his mother blurted out “I wa
s watching you tonight, with that Clarissa girl, you hardly even noticed her” she threw the words out accusingly “When are you going to meet a girl Daniel, settle down, have some children, your father and I are not getting any younger” she continued as Daniel stood up, a little unsteady on his feet ready to leave. He didn’t want to hear this right now.

“Daniel you have never had a serious relationship with a girl, I doubt you have had a meaningful relationship with anyone
” his mother emphasised the word girl and she studied her son as he stood looking down at them. His bow tie was loose round his neck and he adjusted his shirt collar, suddenly feeling tightness in his throat.

“Mother can I just say I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not gay”
he shouted at them, like a surly teenager “And actually I did meet someone”.  He sat back down in his chair, unaccustomed to speaking to anyone about his feelings and Nicole, least of all to his parents. They were quiet as he spoke.

“I met a woman and she was so special, I thought I was falling in love with her and in the end she didn’t want me” he looked crestfallen and stared into the dying embers of the fire, speaking the words to the last remaining flames.  “It was love at first sight, we met on a train
and I just felt…. well I’m never going to meet anyone like her ever again”

“So you had your heart broken by a beautiful stranger?”
his mother broke the silence “That’s just what happened to Great Aunt Madeline, for Gods sake Daniel don’t end up like her” she continued “You know your father was quite a catch with the ladies when I met him, if I hadn’t pursued him goodness knows what would have become of him”.