Summer Fling (23 page)

He lay back on the deck and closed his
eyes.

He’d ruined everything. He’d thought Chloe
wanted security, but he’d pushed her too far too soon, and she’d assumed their
relationship was a fake because their feelings couldn’t possibly be so deep.
And she’d obviously planned to buy out Stewart at Cocoa Heaven, but he’d ruined
that too.

He was so caught up in his past and his
tortured feelings that he’d destroyed his one chance of happiness.

Hot tears burned his eyes, and he covered
his face with an arm, wishing he’d stayed in Afghanistan. Maybe it would have
been better if his captors had finished him off. If he’d never come back.
Surely everyone would have been happier.

A patter of footsteps sounded on the deck
and before he could sit up, a shadow loomed over him. Orion licked his hand.

“Hey, boy.” The dog sat next to him,
leaning against him heavily, and he patted the dog’s flanks. “You’d miss me if
I wasn’t here, right?”

Orion sneezed and rested his head on
Garth’s leg.

Garth sank his fingers into the dog’s fur,
emotion overwhelming him at Orion’s unconditional love. In the past, he’d never
been the sort of man to wallow in self-pity. How could he have changed so much
since then?

He raised his arm, remembering the moment
when he’d looked into Chloe’s eyes on the plane, thinking how much they
reminded him of the sky. She was wrong. She’d thought his declaration of love
meant they only had a physical connection, but that didn’t explain why he was
so distraught at the thought that he’d upset her. Yes, of course, he desired
her, wanted her in his bed. But there was much more to it than that.

His feelings for her ran deep—deeper than
anything he’d ever felt for Jess. And maybe that was why he’d got so confused.
His marriage to Jess had been born of the moment, a marriage of convenience
that had been failing even before he went to Afghanistan. He’d convinced
himself while he was kept captive that he’d be able to turn the relationship
around, that she’d be waiting for him, having missed him desperately. It had
hurt incredibly to find that not only had she not been waiting for him, but she
even seemed disappointed that he’d come back.

He’d struck out the only way he could, but
he’d been wrong to do so. Nick Stewart wasn’t the one who’d ruined his life.
True, he hadn’t helped the situation, but he’d been foolish to think punishing
Nick would make him feel better. All it had done was make him feel small. And
in the process he’d ruined Chloe’s dreams.

A tui bird sailed across the bright blue
sky to the trees. Garth frowned. Had he ruined everything irrevocably? Or could
he retrieve something from the tangled mess he’d created?

Already asleep, Orion snored, and Garth
stroked him as the sun beat down on them both. He’d dug himself a huge hole,
but he was the only one who knew the way out. And he could either give up and
remain there, alone and confined, or he could climb out and escape. Only he
could free himself. Maybe all along, he’d been the one to hold the key to his
own shackles.

***

On Sunday evening, he knocked on Chloe’s
front door. Orion sat by his side, waiting patiently, but after a few moments,
he realized no one was in.

Sighing, looking up at the rainclouds
gathering above them, he sat on the tiles inside the porch. “Looks like we’ll
have to wait, boy.” He stroked the dog, and Orion flopped down beside him.
“I’ll wait all night if I have to,” Garth murmured. He’d done some serious
thinking over the weekend, and he refused to leave until he’d seen Chloe to
sort things out.

After about half an hour, he saw her
walking along the road toward them. She’d obviously been on the beach, judging
by her windswept hair. She stopped at the gate and stared, eyes widening as she
saw him waiting for her, and she bit her beautiful bottom lip, hesitating.
Would she walk off? Refuse to talk to him? But to his relief, she opened the
gate and walked up to him.

“Hey.” She ducked into the porch as the
heavens opened and the rain hammered down.

“Hey,” Garth said. His heart pounded at the
sight of her, beautiful and clean-looking in denim cutoffs and a bright pink
T-shirt that clung to her curves, making his mouth water.

He’d missed her so much over the weekend
that it hurt to have her standing in front of him and not take her in his arms.
But he had no right to any sort of positive reaction from her—not after how
he’d behaved. So he made himself wait.

She dropped to her haunches and stroked the
boxer’s ears, letting him lick her hands and face. “I missed you too,” she
murmured.

“I’d lick you all over as well,” Garth said,
unable to stop himself, “but I figure I have some explaining to do before you
let me do that.” Hoping he looked suitably contrite, he produced a single red
rose from behind his back. “Happy Valentine’s Day for tomorrow.”

Chloe stared at it, and he could see he’d
surprised her. She took it from him, holding it up to her nose to sniff the
aroma as she met his gaze. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The rain pounded on the
ground, and he edged closer to the door.

She lowered herself down opposite him.
Orion shuffled over to her and put his head on her knee.

“Traitor,” Garth said.

She smiled then. “Have you two been working
on this?”

“No, that’s all him,” he said. “Nothing to
do with me.”

She scratched the boxer’s ears, but kept
her eyes on him. “What do you want, Garth?” She twirled the rose in her
fingers.

He studied her. He’d gone over and over
this in his mind, but now that he was facing her, words failed him. She’d
smiled, but her eyes were cool, cautious, and he felt suddenly tongue-tied. “I
don’t know,” he said honestly, after a full thirty seconds of silence, during
which she waited, patience turning to curiosity at his inability to compose a
sentence. “I’ve got so much to say, but I don’t know where to start.”

She stroked Orion’s soft, velvety ear
rhythmically, and the dog grunted with pleasure. Jealousy stabbed through him.
He glared at the dog, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Eat your heart
out.”

“Start at the beginning,” she said. “The
most important thing.”

He fixed her gaze with his, but made his
voice gentle. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked huskily, and it was
only then he saw with shock that she was near to tears.

They both looked up as the rain increased
in volume, powerful Northland rain, flattening grass and flowers, drenching
everything in sight. It would be sunny again in ten minutes, he mused. For some
reason that gave him hope. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I’d planned for
Stewart. But I was caught up in a complicated web of hurt, pain, anger, and
hatred, and I didn’t want you to get caught in it too. I feel what we have is
unrelated to all that.” He used the present tense purposely, hoping she’d pick
up on it. “I wanted desperately to keep it separate. Our relationship is clean
and fresh, where everything else in my life is murky and thick with dark,
oppressive emotions.”

She studied him thoughtfully, her teeth
tugging on her bottom lip. He wanted to lean forward and pull her onto his lap,
run his tongue over that lip and suck it, graze his teeth on it. But he forced
himself to sit still.

She gave a small nod.
Carry on.
He
cleared his throat and continued. “I had this plan, you see. I thought if I
carried it through, if I got my revenge, it would be like giving myself a clean
slate.” He took a deep breath. This was difficult, but instinctively he knew he
had to be honest with her or she’d never trust him again. “I thought I could
eradicate all the guilt and pain by destroying Nick. I thought if I did so,
then somehow I’d be showing Jess—wherever she is—that I wish things had been
different, and that I was sorry I’d let her down.”

Chloe swallowed. “Do you wish things had
been different? Do you wish she were here now?”

He took another deep breath and then let it
out slowly. “Nick wasn’t completely wrong in what he said. I did marry Jess to
piss off my father. I met her at a party. She was young and beautiful, but also
very outspoken, aggressive, and opinionated. She liked an argument, the cut and
thrust of debate. I knew that would annoy my father, and I took her home to
wind him up. It worked. They argued from the outset, and he hated her.” He
shook his head. “I was delighted. I asked her to marry me one day after my
father and I had had a row about me helping out in the business. It was one
more way I could be rebellious and show him I wasn’t going to be the man he
wanted me to be.”

He sighed and leaned his head back on the
wall, not wanting to meet her eyes. “Her motives weren’t exactly pure either. She
came from a very poor family, and she liked the idea of having money. She
didn’t know at the time that my father had cut me off and didn’t give me an
allowance—that I had to pay my own way through university. She didn’t find out
until we were married.” He grimaced at the memory. “That didn’t go down well.”

“Do you still love her?” Chloe’s voice was
soft. He looked at her. Her eyes shone with tears.

He closed his eyes. Time for the truth—to
clear the decks. “It’s not an easy thing to admit. I married the girl, and
despite the fact that she also had her own reasons for agreeing to marry me, a
woman deserves more from her husband. I was faithful to her, because I couldn’t
be anything else—I’m not wired any other way. But I didn’t love her. I spent
more and more time away, because it was easier than being together and seeing
the disappointment in her eyes.”

“But if you didn’t love her, why did you
feel the need to punish Nick so badly?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “The longer
I was in captivity, the more I clung to the idea of making my life perfect when
I came out. I began to imagine Jess in my mind as this ideal wife—I thought if
I was given the chance, I’d make it up to her, make things good between us. I
felt that Nick ruined that chance. But now I realize I was thinking about a
woman who didn’t really exist. She never loved me in the way I hoped a wife
would love me.”

Chloe’s eyes glistened, but he couldn’t
read what she was thinking. “So you don’t still love her? You don’t wish she
were here, instead of me?”

Garth met her gaze and spoke firmly.
“Honey, I never lied to you. I said it before and I say it again—I never felt
about Jess the way I feel about you.”

Silence fell between them. He wanted to
take her in his arms, but he sensed that things weren’t quite right yet.

She looked at the rose in her hands and
thought for a while. He forced himself to sit still and wait quietly. Orion got
to his feet, walked over to him, and slumped against his side, as if he’d
sensed the inner turmoil going on in Garth’s mind and wanted to comfort him. He
scratched behind the dog’s ear, wishing he could wave a magic wand and put
everything right, but he couldn’t. He had to wait and see if Chloe could find
it in her heart to forgive him.

She cleared her throat. “So how do you feel
about Nick now?”

He stroked Orion, hoping the act would keep
him calm. “I had to make a statement to him. He loved the shop—it was the only
thing he had that I could take away. I wanted to make him see how it felt to
lose something valuable.” He sighed. “But I regret it now. I’ve been to see him.”
Surprise registered in her eyes. “I apologized. We had a long talk. It was
hard, and we’re never going to best friends, but we cleared a lot of things up.
He’s moving away. Somewhere south, maybe Auckland. I wrote him a check to clear
his debts—what I should have paid originally for Cocoa Heaven. He’s going to
start again.”

Admiration flickered in her eyes. “That’s
incredibly generous considering what he did to you.”

Garth tipped his head back on the wall. “He
never did anything
to me.
I know he had an affair with my wife, but it
takes two to tango—we weren’t getting on and, knowing Jess, she would have been
the one to start the relationship. He wasn’t her first affair, you know.” He
looked at Chloe wryly, seeing her shock. “Yeah. She’d had several other lovers,
and that’s the ones I knew of. She told me about them, as if she hoped it would
force me to do something—to either divorce her or love her, I suppose. I did
neither, and I think that probably drove her crazy.”

“She could have divorced you.”

“She wouldn’t have got any money then.”

“Ah.”

He nodded. “Anyway, back to Nick. I’m not
entirely innocent, Chloe—I organized that theft on his house.”

“I knew it!”

He pulled a face. “I wanted him out of the
way. I thought he was making a move on you, and it made me mad. I wanted you
for myself.” He looked at Orion and scratched his head. “My contact didn’t
steal anything though, only set off the alarm.” He took a deep breath. Time for
his big plan. “The shop’s yours, Chloe, if you want it. I’ll sign all the
papers over to you. Whatever happens between the two of us, I want you to have
it. You’ll be a resounding success—I know you will. You’re so knowledgeable
about chocolate, and you have a sound business mind. I know you’ll go far.”