A family. With two parents. But recently, well, I have been thinking of a divorce.”
Rachel had nothing to lose. She was determined to drive the knife in deeper.
“Don’t bother with your smooth talk,” she said. “Your wife lives in this house, doesn’t she?”
“She lives here but not with me. You’ve seen the size of this place. It’s huge. She lives in the main part of the house while Connor and I are in this side wing.”
“Don’t stop there,” she said.
“It’s true. That’s why we didn’t go in through the front door. I always come down the side path to my part of the house. The rest is hers. I’ve never liked it. It’s her taste. Big and ostentatious. But this way the three of us can be in the same house. Even if I’m not living with Bianca, for Connor it feels like we’re a family.”
“That’s some story.”
Hot tears burnt at the back of her eyes but she refused to show any emotion. Her face was a rock, her eyes fixed on a single point on the coffee table. She would give him no clue to the molten feelings surging inside her. The slightest movement on her part would crack her cool surface and her seething rage would burst through.
“It’s the truth,” Jake said.
“She’s your wife, for heaven’s sake.”
“She’s my wife and we’re separated. I don’t have feelings for her any more. But she is the mother of my child.”
“Sounds like you’re a married man.”
“Only on paper. Only for Connor.”
“Married men don’t leave their wives. You think I haven’t worked that out by now? I’ve seen it before. They may sleep with other women and have affairs but they never leave their wives.”
“I’m not a married man. Not in the way you think. I haven’t been her husband for years. All we’ve got in common is Connor.”
“That’s very convenient,” she said.
“Convenient? You think this is convenient?” He stood and shook his head in disgust. “It’s bloody hard work. Every day is a trial but I do it for Connor. I can’t let him down the way my father let me down.”
“You’ve got an excuse for everything. What’s your father got to do with it?”
“It’s not an excuse. I’m human you know. My life isn’t perfect and my father certainly wasn’t. He left my mother with two small kids. He couldn’t have been less interested in us. He called himself a businessman. He did what he wanted and thought he could buy us with his money. We barely saw him for years.”
“We’ve all got our problems,” she said. “What makes yours so special?”
“You don’t get it do you? In some ways I’m a lot like my father. He was so damn ambitious and I’ve got that in me too. But I don’t want to be like him. I want what’s best for Connor. I want him to have a better start in life than I did.”
Rachel didn’t dare look up at Jake. She didn’t know what to believe.
She only knew she didn’t want to put herself at risk again. Being hurt was part of everyday life and being devastated, as she’d been before, was another.
They were talking about infidelity. She couldn’t possibly give herself to a man who was married.
“Marcus told you, didn’t he?” Jake asked. “Today. At the office. I don’t think he meant it to happen that way.”
“It doesn’t matter who told me. I worked it out.”
He looked her in the eye. “I didn’t tell you the complete truth right away but I didn’t lie. I tried to tell you lots of times. I was about to tell you at the Ebony Bar and then that drunk guy came along and you ran out on me. I did try. I tried again today.”
“Not hard enough.”
She didn’t care for his excuses. She’d already worked out he’d tried to tell her in his office today but that wasn’t good enough.
“I’m sure you have your secrets too,” he said.
Though she pressed her eyes shut, she felt his gaze fixed on her.
“You’re a woman,” he said. “You’ve lived. I know you’ve been hurt. Things have happened that you don’t want to talk about but that doesn’t mean you’re lying. I know something happened, something that’s stopping you from trusting yourself. And me.”
It wasn’t possible he could know her marriage to Nick wasn’t as happy as she’d so naively thought. No one knew. All those years ago she’d tried to explain it to the people closest to her but everyone assumed she had the