her.
For a moment she wanted to storm into the boardroom and drag Jake out, strike him down, hurt him like he’d hurt her, make him suffer. She wanted to be angry, to have someone to aim her fury at but in truth it wasn’t anger she felt.
Despair and loneliness felt different from that.
There was no one to lash out at. The Jake Austin she thought she knew had disappeared. He had no integrity. He wasn’t the man she thought he was.
She’d felt this pain before, this same sense of hopelessness, but had structured her life so carefully since then to protect herself from it ever happening again. Her life was so safe, her priorities clear, her emotions secured against this kind of pain. Or they had been until now.
It kept coming back to her.
How could she have let this happen again?
Wasn’t once enough?
Marcus was still prattling on about heaven knows what. She heard him say something about the view.
“Yes, it’s a lovely office, but I’ve got to get going.” She turned to leave, then paused at the door. “I thought Jake was separated.”
He shrugged. “As far as I know, they still live together. Bianca pops in from time to time. Everyone here knows her.”
His words reverberated in her head. They still live together. She wondered in what sense of the word Jake thought he was ‘separated’ if he still lived with his wife. They were very much married if his wife was in the habit of visiting him at work, yet he had the audacity to pursue another relationship.
Where did that leave her? The other woman. A husband stealer. Someone willing to break up a family. And Jake clearly thought she’d have an affair with a married man.
“Bianca,” she said. “Such a pretty name.”
There was once last chance at redemption. Rachel quickly said goodbye. The concepts folder still tucked under her arm, she insisted to Marcus that she’d see herself out.
Everybody here knows her, he’d said. Rachel strode past the front reception desk, then stopped. She wasn’t sure she could do this. There was one last chance and if she spoke to the receptionist this could all be cleared up quickly.
“Excuse me,” Rachel said. “I bumped into Jake’s wife in the hallway but I can’t remember her name.”
“Bianca,” the receptionist said.
“So they’re married?”
The young woman nodded.
It was over.
But not the way Rachel had hoped.
Chapter eight
Rachel threw the concepts folder into the boot of her car and slammed it shut. Her suede bag slipped off her shoulder so she clutched at the strap, walked over to the driver’s side of the car, yanked the door open and slumped onto the seat.
“Damn you,” she muttered.
Pulling the door shut, she stabbed the key into the ignition, only for it to slip through her fingers. She groped the floor of the car searching for the keys, then sat up to insert the key more carefully.
“I can’t believe this.”
Her voice was a whisper. She shook her head, surprised to find she was talking to herself in the empty vehicle.
She crossed her arms in disgust. She’d dealt with bigger problems than Jake Austin and wasn’t going to let him get the better of her. She couldn’t disappoint herself like that.
He didn’t mean anything to her. It wasn’t like losing her husband. Jake was merely a colleague. He wasn’t even a boyfriend. What they had wasn’t a relationship and a couple of stolen kisses didn’t constitute something special. He meant nothing to her.
Nick’s death and all it entailed had left her devastated. He’d left her more alone than she’d ever imagined possible, alienated from her friends who couldn’t understand the depths of her struggle and, to top it all off, in debt.
If she could live through that she could do anything.
Including deal with Jake.
They’d met regularly about the campaign and he always talked about his child but never mentioned a wife. Now she thought about it, it was too blaring an omission. Even if he were divorced he’d surely mention his ex if only to berate her.
He’d been evasive the night they’d gone out for a drink too. Everything fit. He’d hesitated before answering a question about his ex wife. Or was she his ex?
Then he’d given Rachel his mobile number, refusing to give her his home number. The oldest trick in the book. How could she not have picked up on it?
His behaviour in his office minutes ago flashed before her eyes and it occurred to her that perhaps he’d been about to tell her he