Chapter 77
2048words
He looked away and shrugged, cursing himself for showing that it bothered him on any level. ‘You always said you would want to go home.'
He could feel her penetrating look and tensed. She sighed. ‘Yes, I did. And I think the time to go is before I turn into a total caricature of some kind of jealous lover.'
Her honesty surprised him. He was so used to women being vague, indirect.
Before he could dwell on the significance of that, she stood and said breezily, ‘You made it very clear what would happen here. What you wanted. So I really don't see the point in prolonging my stay. Things should have died down at home, and I need to get prepared for the baby coming.
‘That is—' her voice suddenly became more hesitant ‘— unless things have changed for you …?'
Sebastian looked up at her. The sun was behind her and all he could see was her narrow framed silhouette. She had to be referring to the fact that he seemed to turn into a walking human emotional confessional around her. Was she asking him if he wanted her to stay because he might need her? Did she feel pity for him? Was she feeling a sense of responsibility to stay because he might have come to depend on her? Everything within him rejected that.
He stood, too, in an abrupt move and said curtly, ‘No. Why would anything have changed?' He flipped out his mobile phone and called his car around.
When they were in the car, Aneesa tried not to let Sebastian see how she was trembling. It had cost her a lot to ask him if things had changed. She'd held her breath, hoping against hope that the past few days and all their revelations might have opened up a new intimacy. She hadn't wanted to admit to being jealous, but obviously he just saw it as sexual jealousy, and not the corrosive emotional kind when you loved someone.
He looked at her and she prayed her eyes weren't
giving her away when she felt like crying. She steeled herself. ‘I'll come with you to India, of course. I need to meet
your family. And attend to business in the hotel.'
Aneesa somehow got out, ‘Please don't feel like you should. They'd be perfectly happy to meet you when the baby is born. Believe me, they've gone beyond shock and despair at this stage.'
‘Nonetheless, I'll come.'
Aneesa bit her lip so hard she could feel blood. This was it. The line had been drawn. The affair was over. And she knew by going to India now that would be the end. Because he would return to Europe and she wouldn't. Because she would have no reason to.
The following day Sebastian sat in his office. He had any number of things clamouring for his attention, a veritable pile of paperwork that needed to be signed. But he was distracted. Last night, he hadn't slept with Aneesa. She'd been all but monosyllabic on their return from the Grange and had bid him goodnight with definite hands-off signals.
And yet what had he expected? She was going home. He was going to be getting on with his life. It wouldn't be fair to keep sleeping with her, when patently she didn't want it.
He'd just got off the phone to Jacob, who had been telling him some of his plans for Wolfe Manor, and curiously Sebastian felt a measure of peace. Which he'd never expected. It was as if a huge weight had been taken off his shoulders, and his chest. He'd always felt weighed down when he'd thought about his family, especially Jacob, but seeing them at the wedding, he'd realised that they, too, had their preoccupations, their demons. They really weren't as disparate as he'd always imagined.
He thought of the wedding …. It had been such a relief to go upstairs and find Aneesa in his bed … even just knowing that she'd been there—Sebastian stood so quickly in reaction to that unbidden thought his chair went back onto the floor. He heard his assistant ask hesitantly through the phone intercom, ‘Is everything all right, Mr Wolfe?'
He smiled grimly. ‘Fine, Meredith. Just fine.' He righted the chair and his hand shook slightly.
Everything wasn't just fine. Panic clutched at his gut; everything within him rejected the direction his thoughts had been going in. The last person he'd depended on had been Jacob, and when Jacob had disappeared a fundamental part of Sebastian had been annihilated. And a large part of his trust and faith in mankind had died too.
Depending on anyone was anathema to him and yet somehow Aneesa had infiltrated into that deep secret part of him that he'd vowed would always be invulnerable.
And it still was, he assured himself.
He was losing perspective. He would go to India with Aneesa, meet her family and walk away. She knew the score; at least she and the baby would be provided for.
He told himself that he would be glad, relieved, to see the back of her, at least for a while. She'd witnessed him at his most vulnerable too many times for him to even contemplate now. He didn't need that, he'd never asked for that. And he didn't like it. It was why he'd always kept his relationships so impersonal, but from day one Aneesa had come at him like an emotional bulldozer … and just kept coming.
He suddenly felt the urge to go to India that day, and not tomorrow, and had to curb the slightly panicked impulse. He told himself he'd stay at the Mumbai Grand Wolfe Hotel, and limit his time with her family as much as possible. And then get out, and get on with his life….
Sebastian couldn't be making it any clearer that he was already over their relationship and now it was all about the baby, meeting her family and leaving her in India. Every time she felt like crying Aneesa cursed herself—she'd known exactly what to expect all along, from the moment she'd made the masochistic decision to stay in England.
They were in the first-class cabin of a commercial flight and even though Sebastian was beside her, he might as well have been a million miles away. He'd been brusque to the point of rudeness with her for the past couple of days, had made no
attempt to come to her bed and was utterly engrossed in his laptop—as if it held all the secrets to life itself.
Aneesa wondered slightly hysterically if she just opened the emergency door and parachuted out would he even notice. Instead she reclined her seat and pulled a blanket over herself and tried to sleep.
When Aneesa curled up in a ball in her seat facing away from him, Sebastian finally looked over and sighed deeply. Her long black hair was spread out, making him want to run his fingers through its silkiness. The curve of her bottom under the blanket was an enticement to rest his hand there, caressing the tempting line. And her scent was a constant reminder of her innate sensuality which called to him like a homing beacon.
His hands curled into fists as he tried to curb his impulses around her. He put back his head and closed his eyes and wondered if he'd ever feel normal again. He smiled grimly
—normal for him anyway. He valiantly blocked out the images that ran through his mind like movie stills of the life he'd always led. He also tried not to remember the way his perfectly unflappable and cool-as-a-cucumber housekeeper, Daniel, had been all but inconsolable saying goodbye to Aneesa, making her own huge brown eyes fill with tears too. Sebastian had felt like an absolute heel, when she was the one that wanted to go home!
He just had to endure a couple of days and then he
would make his excuses and go home.
To Aneesa's relief, the press in Mumbai hadn't got wind of her return so their arrival went under the radar. She felt so brittle now that she couldn't have handled the media intrusion along with the prospect of Sebastian leaving in a few days. He hadn't said how long he'd stay but she could well imagine he was already itching to get back.
Mumbai greeted them in all its hot and steamy, chaotic glory. Horns beeping, traffic narrowly avoiding sacred cows and mopeds whizzing by carrying entire families with serene looks on their faces. A beautiful baby with black kohled eyes smiled up at its mother in an auto-rickshaw.
‘You really love it here, don't you?' Sebastian asked from the other side of the car. Aneesa nodded. She couldn't look at him, she felt too emotional. So she just said, ‘It's home.' But she knew that as much as she loved Mumbai, the minute Sebastian left, it would be flat and empty. Her home was where he was now, and she would never be the same again. In that moment she hated him for doing that to her.
He asked then a little gruffly, ‘You should tell me a bit about your family …'
Sudden fire within her made her face him and for the first time she let her guard slip. ‘What's the point? I'm sure you've just carved out the minimum time required to meet them to be polite and have made sure you've got plenty of time for business meetings.'
Aneesa flushed. Immediately feeling contrite and terrified that he would guess where her turmoil stemmed from Aneesa said, ‘Forget I said that. You didn't deserve that….'
She looked away for a moment and then back, and tried a smile even though it felt forced. Haltingly she started to tell him of her beloved indomitable grandmother who was now apparently clinging onto dear life to see her first grandchild born and had not a word of judgement about
Aneesa's less than acceptable status as a single mother.
She told him about her beautiful younger sister who was determined to become a star just like Aneesa albeit without the scandal as she'd declared sunnily to Aneesa on the phone. And about her overweight younger brother who was determined to be a chef, much to their father's chagrin; he just wanted him to love cricket and be a famous cricketer.
By the time her voice faded away she was smiling fondly in earnest, unaware of the tightening in Sebastian's face.
‘You love them very much.'
She looked at him and tried not to let the intensity of his blue eyes distract her. ‘Yes. I do … But for a long time I took them for granted. I'm lucky that they have loved me so unconditionally.'
Just then she looked past Sebastian out the window and said excitedly, ‘We're here!'
Sebastian felt an uncustomary sense of claustrophobia and trepidation crawl over his skin. As the car pulled into a neat driveway he saw a big house emerge, and lined up outside was a veritable welcoming party.
Aneesa jumped out and suddenly a smaller, younger version of herself with a streak of black hair launched herself at Aneesa with a squeal—her younger sister. Her younger brother who was indeed overweight was more nonchalant but one could see that he, too, loved his sister, hugging her with typical teenage awkwardness.
And then her parents … The emotion on their faces nearly made Sebastian want to climb back into the car and drive far, far away. He'd never seen so much naked love and affection beaming from anyone. And this was their disgraced daughter?
Aneesa was aware of Sebastian hanging back and she was also aware that he was looking a little green around the gills. She could imagine all too well that this was not a scenario he was used to.
She turned back to him after hugging her parents and took him by the hand. Squeezing it gently, she silently said to him, Just go with it, much as he'd done with her when they'd seen his mother. She brought him up to her parents. ‘Papa, Mother, I'd like you to meet Sebastian Wolfe.'
