Page 49 of Consequences of Their Wedding Charade
He had contemplated heading to Ely after his meeting but, with the ground still so rocky and uncertain with his godfather, he had chosen to postpone a physical meeting until the following week, which would have allowed some of the dust to settle.
It would also have allowed him time to psych himself up to seeing Jess. He had spoken to her on the phone and messaged her, but seeing her in the flesh?
Bittersweet.
He picked up the call and went into something of a panic when the first words William uttered were, ‘Son, you need to head up here as soon as you can.’
Jess was chopping some tomatoes when the doorbell buzzed. William, who seemed distracted, had spent the past forty-five minutes flapping around the kitchen, alternately explaining the roux he was making whilst finding fault with her chopping skills.
One of his favourite daily radio shows was playing in the background.
He dropped everything at the sound of the doorbell. Wrapped up in her thoughts, Jess was vaguely aware of the sound of voices in the hallway but only when the kitchen door was pushed open did she turn around to see what the fuss was all about.
The last person she expected to see was Curtis and how her heart leapt at the sight of him, gloriously handsome in a charcoal-grey suit and a crisp white shirt. He had dispensed with the jacket and if he’d been wearing a tie it was no longer in evidence.
He lookedfatigued.
He stopped abruptly in the doorway and now they stared at one another, oblivious to William’s presence to the side. Indeed, Jess only remembered that he was there at all when he scuttled into position between them and announced with ringing confidence, ‘You two need your heads banged together and I’ve decided that I am the one to do it. I’m going out for a couple of hours, and when I come back I want to find that the pair of you have come to your senses. You love one another and it’s time to stop making a dog’s dinner of the situation!’ With which, he bustled back to the door, only pausing to toss over his shoulder, ‘And the carrots, dear girl, still need to be julienned!’
‘Jess...’
Curtis was the first to break the silence, giving her time to try and gather her scattered thoughts, but she couldn’t, not when he was standing there in front of her, reminding her just how potent his impact was and making a mockery of her pretence that being away from him might have dented the force of her love. It hadn’t.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘William called an hour ago. Said I had to get here. I was on my way back to London... I thought something was wrong, thought he might have had some kind of turn.’
‘Curtis...’
‘I’m glad I’m here, Jess. We need to talk. We should talk. I need to talk.’
‘Haven’t we already done that?’ But her ears were ringing with William’s incendiary remarks. How could he expose her love like that? And to have misinterpreted what his godson felt about her!
‘About what your godfather said...’ Her laugh was falsetto high and tapered off into conspicuous throat-clearing.
‘He’s right.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Let’s go into the sitting room, Jess.’
‘I have no idea why William thought that I...that...’ Her cheeks were stinging and she knew that she was bright red. Pillarbox-red was not the colour of someone innocent of accusations.
She trailed behind him, mind frantically working to find a way out of William’s parting shot that would enable her to emerge with some semblance of dignity.
Once sitting, she leaned forward, hands planted on her knees, every ounce of her attention pinned to his beautiful face.
He looked more than fatigued. He looked exhausted.
‘You work too hard,’ she said shortly and then realised that what should have sounded like concern had instead morphed into accusation. She decided that that wasn’t a bad thing because he needed to realise that having a child on the scene would require an end to the twenty-four-seven work regime, and also attack seemed the best form of defence, at least right at this moment in time, when her heart was flip-flopping dangerously inside her.
He looked at her with such searing intensity and uncharacteristic confusion that she went even further into defensive mode.
‘You’re going to have to do something about that,’ she said crisply. ‘If you want to have a good, solid relationship with your child. Also,’ she added, ‘it’s just bad for you, working all the hours God made.’
‘I haven’t been working,’ Curtis responded quietly.
‘What have you been doing? You look shattered. No, don’t tell me...’ she said, painfully aware that there was one other thing guaranteed to tire a man out and it involved handling statistics of a completely different kind.
