Love Redesigned (12 page)

‘Holly, I know when you’re telling a lie. Your neck goes red,’ he explained, smiling warmly.

‘It does not,’ Holly said, reaching up to clutch her throat.

‘You shouldn’t think of me in those terms,’ Daniel continued gently. ‘I’d only break your heart.’

‘You broke my heart a long time ago, Daniel Madison. Don’t you worry about doing it again,’ Holly said forcefully, her inner lioness waking up. She didn’t like where this conversational tangent had gone. She was feeling vulnerable and raw, and needed to reassert some of her earlier strength and fortitude. ‘I’m a wiser person now, and I’m afraid it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy,’ she continued, hoping like hell that her blasted neck hadn’t betrayed her and turned beetroot.

‘I’m glad,’ was all Daniel said. Holly bit her lip so as not to launch into him. He was
glad
. What kind of response was that?
Glad
for what, exactly? For breaking her heart? Or perhaps for being a wiser person. Holly wasn’t sure.

‘You’d better get your solicitor to send over the papers,’ Holly said, instead of ripping his head off, like she wanted to.

‘What papers?’ Daniel asked. Now it was his turn to look lost.

‘Why, your divorce papers of course,’ Holly said with a glint in her eye. Something was satisfying about the realisation that getting divorced from her wasn’t at the forefront of his mind. ‘You’ll be needing my signature, I should imagine, if you’re wanting to get married to Miranda anytime soon. I never pegged you as a bigamist!’ Holly joked. She felt on much safer ground now that she was teasing him about his own love life, as opposed to having her own feelings and emotions called under scrutiny.

‘Yes, of course,’ Daniel said, recovering himself quickly. ‘I’ll see to it right away.

‘So I guess that’s it,’ Holly said by way of conclusion.

‘Sure is,’ Daniel said, standing up and walking towards the door. ‘Leave your email and full contact details at reception, and we’ll be in touch with regard to a compensation figure.’

‘So formal,’ Holly said, standing up herself and grabbing her bag. She automatically straightened her dress so it was wrinkle-free. When she looked up, she caught Daniel looking at her with a look of pure lust in his eyes.

‘What?’ Holly snapped at him. As far as she was concerned, he wasn’t allowed to look at her that way anymore. Plus, he shouldn’t really want to anyway.

‘Nothing,’ Daniel said quickly, shaking his head slightly and walking to the door, presumably to show her out. Holly trotted after him, keen to leave. As she reached the door, Holly was unsure how to say goodbye. Would a peck on the cheek be appropriate? More like a slap on the face. Should she offer him her hand to shake? The whole thing did all feel rather businesslike to her.

‘All that stuff you said earlier about developing your own properties… you were merely posturing, weren’t you?’ Daniel said matter-of-factly, solving Holly’s dilemma in an instant.

‘Was I?’ Holly said mischievously. It wouldn’t hurt to keep him guessing, although she was secretly affronted at the suggestion that it was all posturing, and not at all a realistic possibility.

‘Oh, come on, Holly,’ Daniel began. ‘I think we both know where your talents lie. You’re a great designer, but you’re not a developer. And by the way, do have a think about doing my house. The offer is still open,’ he said, smiling kindly at her like he was doing her a favour. Holly was incredulous.

‘I’ll think about it, Daniel,’ she said, laying on a thick layer of sarcasm. ‘Oh, and a word of advice for you, if I may be so bold,’ she continued bitterly. ‘If you are set on getting married again, I’d suggest you quit being unfaithful with anything that moves. It pains me to say it, but Miranda deserves more than that.’

‘Unfaithful?’ Daniel asked, as though the concept was alien to him.

‘Yes, Daniel. Unfaithful. Just remember, I could have brought up the fact that you shagged me twice in front of Miranda, but I didn’t…’ Holly trailed off, leaving a whiff of blackmail hanging in the air. And with that, she strutted out of Daniel Madison’s impersonal glass office box without looking back.

Holly was furious. Furious with Daniel for being such a condescending dick, but equally furious with herself for being so blind to the facts and having concocted some notion that Daniel was her Prince Charming. She was old enough to know that fairy tales were just that: tales. This was real life, and somewhere along the line she’d forgotten that little piece of pertinent information.

As she drove home, she asked herself: What had she thought was going to happen when she’d strutted into his big bad office with her demands? That Daniel would see the light, tell Miranda to sod off for good, then sweep the clutter off his desk (of course the clutter existed only in Holly’s imaginary world) and make sweet reunification love to her on it? She’d been seriously deluding herself. In Holly’s imaginings she hadn’t even factored in the very real possibility that Miranda would even be there, despite the fact that it was her surname above the door. That was how naïve she’d been about the whole escapade.

But still, she’d got what she’d wanted. Hopefully. Daniel had promised her some recognition and some compensation. Holly had mostly believed him when he’d said that, although she wasn’t exactly sure how those things were going to manifest themselves. Probably a mention on their website and a cheque for a few quid to shut her up. The only serious doubt she had in her mind was what Miranda was going to say. She had the potential to upset the apple cart. Holly didn’t quite understand the working dynamic between Miranda and Daniel. Was it a partnership, or was one of them the boss? From the scene in Daniel’s office, she would have guessed that Daniel held more sway, but then again, she’d been wrong about him, and she could quite as easily be wrong about the hierarchical structure of his bloody company. Holly didn’t get him. And she didn’t get what he was doing with Miranda—that was for sure.

Daniel had made it abundantly clear in their meeting that he wasn’t the least bit interested in rekindling anything romantic with Holly, let alone a reconciliation. She felt shamed by just how badly she’d misread the signals. He’d merely been flirting with her to get sex. That was all it had been to him. Sex. Nothing more. He’d laughed at her honesty, making her feel foolish and embarrassed. He’d made assumptions about her talents being solely design-based rather than business-based. That comment of his:
I think we both know where your talents lie
. What the fuck was
that
supposed to mean? Had he not seen her office, seen some of the projects she’d been spearheading? It was small-fry compared to his massive developments, but she was running a successful business in an industry that was notoriously hard to survive in. Maybe it was just one of his fly-away remarks, but it had given Holly’s pride a considerable jolt. It made her question and doubt herself. Was he right? Was she just a designer who didn’t possess the necessary business brain to make it as a developer?

Holly knew deep down that, given the same opportunities, she
could
build houses on the same scale and budget as Delamonte Developments. It wasn’t rocket science, she told herself. The same spark of a plan she’d jokingly alluded to during their discussion began to wake up as she drove home. She was pretty sure she could use Daniel’s model, tweak it some, and ultimately prove him wrong. She could, and would, be something more than
just
a designer. She owed it to herself. Plus, she wanted to make Harry proud of her. Whatever happened with his father, which was an unknown story given recent events, she wanted to be an inspiring mother to her son.

It occurred to her that Daniel hadn’t even asked her about Harry. Wouldn’t that be a normal thing to ask if he had the emotional capacity of a normal person?

By the time Holly had got back home, she was absolute and one-hundred-percent resolved to have nothing more to do with Daniel Madison in a romantic sense ever again. Yes, he was Harry’s father, and she would encourage Harry to see him if that’s what he wanted. But she and Daniel were done. Completely finished. She would be civil for Harry’s sake, and perhaps one day they could turn this current shambles into a friendship of some sort. But nothing more.

As far as Holly was now concerned, those divorce papers couldn’t come soon enough.

Daniel was at a loss. The great Daniel Madison, famed for being eternally calm and contained. And now, for only the second time in his life, the control that usually pervaded every aspect of his being had gone completely AWOL. As he looked out of his office window, down from his tower in the sky, he spied the cause of all his inner turmoil: his wife. Or, to put it more correctly: his soon-to-be ex-wife. Holly was getting in her clapped-out rustbucket of a car, looking as polished as he’d ever seen her. There was something about the way her smart and sexy exterior contradicted with the tiredness of her car that he knew she would have found aesthetically pleasing. Where Daniel just saw a piece of junk, Holly would see something deeper. Experiences and memories. Maybe that was why he’d asked her to redesign his house. To put more depth and meaning into it. When he’d first considered it, he’d regarded it as nothing more than a business experiment. A gamble to try and win yet more business and make more money. But the more he thought about Holly spending time in his house, and ultimately more time with
him
, he wasn’t so sure it was only business that was his real motive.

Since he’d reconnected with Holly, she’d thrown a considerable-sized spanner into his streamlined and ruffle-free life. He’d originally sought her out to find out about the son his mother had kept from him. He’d always wondered what had happened to Holly and her unborn child after she’d deserted him and run out on their marriage. But he’d never wondered hard enough. After a while, whenever he found his mind thinking about Holly, he’d simply deluded himself into assuming that she would have seen sense at some point and done what he’d expected her to do all along: terminate the pregnancy. Fatherhood was never something that had held much appeal to Daniel, and he’d made that viewpoint crystal clear to Holly before they got married.

Yet, despite being on the pill, Holly had somehow fallen pregnant—most likely through a lack of care and attention on her part. Or so that was what Daniel thought. He was furious when she told him. He could recall everything about her on that day. Her white cotton sundress. Her nervous smile. Her foolish naïveté, thinking that he would actually be pleased. Then her heartbroken face when she realised that he
wasn’t
pleased. At the time, Daniel had felt like she’d committed the ultimate betrayal. It was like she’d deliberately tried to trap him into being someone he didn’t want to be; someone he’d never had any intention of being. She knew his stance on children. And yet, there she was. Happy with the news.

Daniel looked into her eyes that day, and he knew she’d go. She’d defied him once already, and he knew she wouldn’t stay around long to try to convince him. And he also knew he’d do nothing to stop her. Even so, her disappearing act on him whilst he was at work one day just compounded the betrayal he’d felt. After a week of sulking, he realised he missed his wife something chronic. But when he tried to find her, it seemed there was nothing to find. She’d successfully disappeared into thin air—her trail had gone cold.

He’d been cut-up then, feeling truly out of control for the first time in his life. He’d spent months trying to find her, on and off, until his mother finally managed to persuade him to stop. Meanwhile his business had gone down the drain, and Miranda had stepped into the void in his life. First as a business partner, and then, over time, something more. She’d become the constant that eventually ceased his wondering about the whereabouts of his wife.

It wasn’t until after his mother’s death—and the subsequent discovery of Holly’s letters—that Daniel had felt curious again. It had turned out that Holly had kept the baby—and that he had a son.
Harry
. With uncharacteristic nerves and trepidation he’d looked Holly up again, on the premise of meeting his son. And to his surprise, meeting Harry had proved to be a better experience than he’d ever expected possible. Although knowing that he was now a father hadn’t exactly caused a massive turnaround in his thinking, each time he saw Harry something deep inside him softened a little, and he couldn’t help himself. Limited as his experience was so far, being a father hadn’t turned out to be the end-of-the-world catastrophe that he’d always thought it would be.

Yet as exciting as it had been to meet Harry, his son, he’d encountered something completely and utterly surprising in Holly. Daniel had always felt there was some unfinished business between them. For a start, they were still technically married. He had hoped that in finding his son he would finally be able to draw a line under his relationship with Holly once and for all—and move on. But the instant he’d clapped eyes on his estranged wife he’d fought a losing battle to keep his hands off her. True, Daniel was a flirt, but he’d never once been unfaithful to Miranda since they’d been together. Yet two encounters with Holly, and both resulted in sex.

There was that word again, he mused to himself, still gazing out the window in the direction Holly had driven.
Unfaithful
. That was the word Holly had used to describe what he’d done with her. Funny how he didn’t actually see it that way. A part of him still thought of himself as being married to Holly, and he found it all too easy to rationalise it to himself by saying that he wasn’t being unfaithful if it was with his wife. Of course, he knew that Miranda might have a slightly different view of the matter, if she ever found out. Something else was bugging Daniel, though. There had been a judgmental insinuation in Holly’s words and tone, suggesting that she thought being unfaithful was something par for the course for him. That was why Holly was so damn infuriating. She clearly didn’t know him if she thought he would be stupid enough to risk his relationship and his business with Miranda with just anyone.