his wagon was missing.
Huh. He must have been up super early this morning.
She went inside and finished cleaning up after her ex-husband. Once she’d put the blankets in the hall cupboard, she had a shower and made her own breakfast and went to check to see if Oliver’s car was in the driveway.
It wasn’t. She tried his phone again, and again got shunted to voice mail.
“This is getting ridiculous, Smitty. Where is he?”
By midday she was starting to feel a little twitchy. She didn’t understand where he could have gone that would take so long, or why he wasn’t returning her calls. She was considering calling the local hospital to double-check there hadn’t been any accidents when her phone rang.
“Oliver,” she said as she took the call. “Hello. I’ve been wondering where you’d got to.”
“Sorry. I was driving and my phone was in the back.”
“That’s all right. I was just wondering what you were up to today and what time you want me to make our booking for dinner tonight.”
She could hear traffic in the background, lots of it.
“I was actually calling to let you know I’m on my way to Sydney.”
“What? Has something happened?” The worst possible scenarios started playing in her head—deceased relatives, house fires and other catastrophes.
“No. I mean, not in the way you mean. No one’s dead or anything.”
“Well, that’s a good start, I always think,” she joked, even though her heart was racing. There was something about the way he sounded, so flat and emotionless....
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“This isn’t going to work, Mackenzie. I thought it would, but I’m not up for it. I’m sorry.”
It took her a moment to understand he was talking about them. About their relationship. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the kitchen counter.
“Okay. Um...sorry. You’ve caught me on the hop here a little,” she said. “Can I ask what’s changed? Because yesterday I thought things were going pretty well.”
He’d been lovely, making her breakfast and holding her hand on the beach and making her laugh. She’d felt precious and cherished and, yes, loved, and she’d finally acknowledged to herself that she was in love with him.
And now he was on the way to Sydney.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“It’s hard to explain. Last night...wasn’t good. I wasn’t good. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for you.”
She attempted to push aside the fear crowding her thoughts and listen to him, to understand. “Because of Edie? Because of the divorce?”
“Because of everything. I’m not ready to take anything on faith right now, you know? Last night made that pretty clear. You have no idea how close I came to jungle crawling beneath your window so I could find out what was going on between you and your ex.”
There was bitter humor lacing his words.
“You thought something was going on with me and Patrick? Because nothing happened. There was nothing going on.”
He’d seemed so cool when he’d bowed out and left them to talk. Utterly at peace with the fact that her ex-husband had shown up out of the blue.
That was before Patrick had inveigled his way into staying first for dinner and then the night, of course. She closed her eyes as it occurred to her how it must have looked when Patrick’s Ferrari remained parked in front of her house all night.
“I wasn’t exactly rational,” Oliver said. “Which is pretty much my point. You don’t need me in your life right now, Mackenzie. And I can’t handle you.”
She was holding the phone so tightly her fingers ached.
“Nothing happened with Patrick, Oliver.” It was worth repeating. In fact, she’d repeat it ad nauseam until Oliver finally heard what she said. “He had too much wine with dinner and I put him to bed on the couch. End of story.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mackenzie.”
“Of course I do. I care about you. You care about me. You absolutely have a right to know that even though my ex-husband stayed the night, he didn’t do it in my bed.”
“Okay.”
He sounded so...distant. A million miles away. How could they have gone from him holding her against his heart while he slept to being a universe apart in twenty-four hours? How could she have been planning her life around him at four in the morning and now he was on the road to Sydney? It didn’t feel possible.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mackenzie.”
Tears burned her throat. She tried