Текст книги "Knight and Day"

Автор книги: Kitty French

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

It had not been an easy night aboard the Love Tug.

Dylan didn’t even know how to hold a baby, let alone feed one or change its nappy. Suzie had left him with two drums of formula milk powder, a packet of nappies, four sleep suits, a half used pack of wipes, an open shaker of baby powder… and the baby. Surely the baby needed more than this to stay alive?

Feed him every few hours, she’d said. On what? How much? How often? He had no clue, and his head was all kinds of screwed up. He couldn’t think about Kara, because every thought of her hit him like a blow to the stomach and rendered him even more incapable of caring for the tiny human being now sharing the Love Tug. A tiny human being with massive lung capacity, if the amount of screaming he’d done during the night was anything to go by.

Out of frustration, he’d considered emailing his mother at around three am, desperate to know how to make the baby stop the head-splitting noise. But then he’d thought it through, and he’d known she’d put herself on the first flight out, even though she had a pathological fear of flying, and he’d feel like a complete shit when she got here and saw him living on a freak show boat with a wild-haired baby, outcast and jobless to boot. So he’d picked the baby up instead, and one whiff had told him exactly why he was howling like a banshee.

The amount of crap one small baby could produce had been a revelation that Dylan could really have done without in the small hours of the morning, when his life had just crashed down around his ears. As it was, the baby was plastered, all up his back, down his legs… it was a full stripdown situation. Dylan heaved his way through the process of peeling the baby’s clothes off and wiping him down, finally resorting to dunking him in the tiny kitchen sink, where he screamed even louder throughout his unceremonious bath.

Was it normal for babies to turn purple when they were mad? He’d finally quieted when Dylan wrapped him in the biggest towel he could find and held him against his shoulder while he tried to mix formula from the instructions on the side of the tin. He’d taken him up on deck and settled into one of the low-slung deck-chairs to feed him as the sun came up over the horizon, heralding the start of a brand new day.

His first day as a father, and his first day without Kara. He closed his eyes a few seconds after his son did, equally exhausted and infinitely more terrified.

Chapter Forty

Lucien stalked across the beach at Vadella, still deserted aside from a couple of early dog walkers and a yoga class in session on the sand outside a cafe. He jogged past the impressive boats moored in the bay, all the way to the smallest boat moored at the very end. Although he knew where Dylan was staying, he hadn’t visited. And like most visitors, he’d never seen anything like it before. Lucien lifted his sunglasses to peer more closely at the Love Tug as he drew level, then dropped them again hastily, assaulted by the carnival of clashing colours that hit his eyeballs. Trying to put aside his newly formed personal opinion on Dylan’s choice of abode, he stepped on board and peered inside through the open sliding door. A can of formula milk sat on the counter, and the kitchen looked and smelled as if a bomb of baby powder had been detonated in there. The presence of a pushchair in the small space confirmed it. There was a baby on board.

“I’m up here.”

Dylan’s voice came from the roof deck, low and resigned.

Lucien backed out of the junked kitchen and stepped up onto the roof deck. He surveyed the scene in silence. Dylan’s tired, haggard face, and the tiny infant swaddled in a towel in his arms.

“Seems the rumours are true then,” he said eventually. “Should I say congratulations? Offer you a cigar?” He enjoyed the flare of anguish that his words ignited in Dylan’s exhausted eyes. “Where’s your wife? Still in bed after your fucking reunion?”

“Ex-wife,” Dylan said, monotone. “We aren’t married any more.” He looked up at Lucien, the sun’s glare hurting his eyes. “Sit down, please man.”

“I’ll stand.”

Dylan shook his head, resigned. He couldn’t blame him.

“She’s gone, for what it’s worth. My ex-wife. She came, dumped a kid on me I didn’t know existed, and then she left again with my fuckwit of a brother in tow as her escort.”

Lucien stared at him for a long time, and then dropped into the seat opposite Dylan’s.

“Spectacular fuck up.”

“I know that.”

“I should lay you out cold for what you’ve done to Kara.”

“I wouldn’t hit you back.”

Lucien looked out over the mirror-still water, his mind on the broken girl back at the villa. She was the closest thing he had to a sister.

“That’s the thing about Kara. She’s bold, and people can mistake that for tough.”

“I didn’t mistake it.”

“No. But you went ahead and hurt her anyway, which is worse,” Lucien said. “And the most fucked up thing is that if you’d just had the balls to tell her the whole unvarnished truth, she’d probably have loved you anyway.”

Dylan closed his eyes and sighed wearily as he leaned his head back against the wooden back of the chair, but Lucien knew that every word was going in. He went on, relentless, “She has a heart as big as anyone I know, and you’ve broken it by lying to her.”

Dylan scrubbed his hand over his eyes.

“How is she?” he said, so quietly that Lucien almost missed it.

“Do you really need me to fucking answer that?”

Dylan didn’t. He knew exactly how hurt Kara was, because he’d hurt himself exactly the same. He wanted Lucien to understand that, but the words wouldn’t put themselves together properly in his sleep-deprived mind.

“It seemed so goddamn simple when I came here,” he said. “I just wanted to live an uncomplicated life. Everything back home was fucked up.”

“Trouble has a way of following trouble,” Lucien said.

Dylan huffed. “Doesn’t it just.”

The baby stirred against his bare chest, and he fell silent for a second. “I should never have married Suzie. It was a stupid, drunken mistake that we both regretted the morning after. We didn’t love each other. Hell, a lot of the time we didn’t even like each other.” He looked over at Lucien’s unreadable face. “She threw her lot in with the wrong crowd, skipped town months ago with the guy who took my club in recompense for Justin’s debts.” He paused. “I missed the club for a while.”

Lucien was listening without comment, and Dylan was grateful. Now he’d started talking, he didn’t want to stop till the end. He wanted it all out, now.

“So when I got off the plane here and someone asked me my name, I lied.” He shook his head. “Dylan fucking Day. You have no idea how much easier it was to sleep at night.” The baby wriggled again, and laid his small, soft palm flat against Dylan’s chest, his fingers so tiny they were almost translucent. “And however crazy and fucked up it sounds, in here,” Dylan touched his fingers against his heart, “In here, I feel like Dylan Day. I didn’t lie to hide the truth. I lied because I couldn’t stand to be Matthew McKenzie any longer. The world I grew up in wasn’t like this, Lucien.”

Lucien knew more than Dylan could possibly realise about inventing a different life for yourself because the one you have sucks.

“I don’t expect you to understand, and I’m not asking for your sympathy.” Dylan went on. “If I could wind the clock back and change things I would, but life doesn’t work like that, does it?” He levered himself up to sit straighter as the baby opened his eyes. Both men looked down at the child as he roused. “And then there’s him. A boy with a fraud for a father and a mother who doesn’t want him.”

Lucien frowned. “She’s left him with you for good?”

Dylan nodded. “ And I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do with a baby.” He moved the child awkwardly in his arms and the towel fell open. On cue, an arc of pee spouted all over Dylan’s knee, and both men looked on, aghast.

“Jesus, man. He needs a nappy.”

“I tried, they kept falling off,” Dylan said, exasperated. He mopped his leg with the corner of the towel as the baby fastened his gums around the bent thumb of his other hand. “Jesus. No one told me babies bite,” he said, trying to extricate his hand gently.

“I think he’s trying to tell you that he’s hungry,” Lucien said, and sighed with resignation. “Where are the nappies?”

Half an hour and a master class in the art of nappy changing later, Lucien picked up the baby boy and sat him on his knee, cradling his head in the way only a practised father can. He contemplated the tiny child for a moment and then looked up at Dylan.

“He has ridiculous hair.”

Dylan smiled for the first time since the moment he’d laid eyes on Justin last night. A half smile, a tired smile, but a smile, of sorts. “I kinda like it.”

Lucien nodded, digesting the implications of the comment. “I take it you’re planning to keep him?”

Dylan nodded. There was no question in his mind. From the moment that the baby had opened his eyes and looked at him last night, he’d known what he had to do.

“He’s my son. My responsibility.”

“And you’re going to live where? Here? On this boat with a baby?”

“Lucien, I don’t have a fucking clue what happens next. I didn’t know he existed this time yesterday. I’m not even sure how to keep him alive, but one way or another, yes. He stays with me.”

Lucien had to respect the conviction with which Dylan had accepted the parental responsibilities so unpromisingly foisted on him.

He scrubbed his hand over his chin, at war with himself, because the truth was that sitting there listening to Dylan, he almost understood.

He couldn’t condone the fact that he’d lied, but he could understand how one lie had led to the next, and that none of those lies had been borne of maliciousness or an underhand attempt to deceive.

But then he thought of Kara, hollow-eyed and heartbroken, and he wanted to grab Dylan around the throat out of pure frustration.

“And what about Kara?” he said.

“Kara.” Dylan said her name with the quiet reverence of a priest, then closed his eyes and sighed raggedly. Lucien looked away, settling the baby in the crook of his arm to give Dylan a few seconds to get himself back together.

“I’ve never met anyone like Kara before,” Dylan said. “She is good, and clean, and pure, and all of the things I’m not. She was falling for Dylan Day, and she made me want to be him forever. I still do. I can’t go back to life as Matthew McKenzie.” He looked down at the baby. “Especially not now.”

Lucien didn’t envy Dylan his new life as a single father. It seemed unfathomable that they were even having this discussion, when just yesterday they’d all laughed and toasted their idyllic Ibizan summer.

“Tell her I’m sorry?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Dylan nodded. “These past few months have been the best of my life.”

Lucien looked down at Dylan’s son. “That’s good. Because these next few will be amongst the hardest.”

Chapter Forty-One

Lucien found Sophie sitting alone at the dining table when he returned to the villa a little while later. She looked up immediately as he came in the door, her face a study of concern as he dropped into the seat opposite her.

“Did you see him?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s Kara?”

Sophie shook her head miserably. “She’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Home. Back to England. She threw her things into a bag just after you left. I couldn’t persuade her to stay. I couldn’t even get her to let me take her to the airport."

Lucien pushed his hands through his hair. He’d been gone a few hours. Numerous flights left the airport every day bound for the UK: there was every chance that Kara was already airborne.

“What an absolute fucking mess.”

“She couldn’t stand the idea of running into Dylan again. She was desperate.” Tears filled Sophie’s eyes. “I’m so worried about her Lucien. She went through so much with Richard, I really thought Dylan was…” her words tailed off as a tear dripped from her cheek into the mug of cold coffee cradled in her hands.

“I know, Princess,” Lucien said. “I know.”

“So did you see him?” she asked again, and this time Lucien nodded.

“Yes. I saw him.”

Sophie’s head snapped up, her eyes blazing.

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“It’s complicated, Soph,” Lucien said softly after a couple of seconds, making her frown.

“Please don’t tell me you’re about to defend him,” she said quietly.

Lucien sighed. “I’m not defending him. It’s just not as cut and dried as you think.”

She stared at him blankly. “If he has a wife and child, then it’s pretty cut and dried from where I’m standing.”

“She’s his ex-wife. They are divorced.”

“But she still turned up here, and he has a child with her. Was she there?”

Lucien shook his head. “No. She’s gone.”

Sophie looked at him steadily, waiting for more.

“She’s gone, Sophie. She dumped a three week old kid on Dylan and then shot through back to the rock she crawled from under.”

It was too ridiculous an idea for Sophie to process. “She left a three week old baby? For how long?”

Lucien nodded. “Forever. He’s all kinds of screwed.”

Sophie took the news in.

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for him?” she asked after a moment. “Because I don’t. For the baby maybe, but not for him.”

“I get that.”

Sophie shook her head, not convinced Lucien did get it. He’d left the house furious and returned almost ready to fight Dylan’s corner. Dylan, or Matthew, or whoever he was, was clearly a very accomplished liar, because Lucien didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Still she couldn’t find it within herself to be mad at Lucien for wavering. She’d watched him grow close to Dylan over the months, and it had warmed her to see those bonds of friendship.

Over their years together she’d watched him learn to open his heart, first of all to her, and then to Tilly, and over time he’d encompassed Kara in his circle of trust. Dylan had brought something new and unfamiliar to his life, a sense of brotherhood and friendship that he’d never before known as a grown man. It wounded her to think he was going to lose that, and it wounded her to think that Dylan wasn’t the man she’d honestly believed him to be.

She’d thought him a better man. A man worthy of Lucien’s trust, a man worthy of Kara’s love.

“I need to go home too,” she said gently. “I need to go back for Kara. The staff at the boutique are ready anyway, it’ll just mean bringing the handover forward a couple of weeks.” She’d already spoken briefly with Aida, their assistant manager, after Kara had left, and set the wheels in motion for her own early departure. Their flights were arranged, and Esther was packing Tilly's things up as they spoke. She knew Kara well enough to know that she wouldn’t go running to her family and friends for support when she arrived back in England. She’d try to shoulder her burden alone, most likely drowning her sorrows in the bottom of countless wine bottles. Sophie had been there herself, and she shuddered to think what might have become of her if Kara hadn’t come to her rescue with her unique blend of common sense, good humour and tough love.

“I’ll have to stay on here, for a couple of weeks at least,” Lucien said, disgruntled but resigned. He accepted immediately that Sophie needed to be there for her friend. For their friend. “There’s no way Dylan’s in any position to come into work.”

“Do we still even call him Dylan?”

Lucien studied her face. “He’s still the same man, Sophie,” he said, and the despondent expression in his eyes sliced through her heart. “Sometimes good people do bad things for good reasons.”

She stared at him for a long time. “And do you think he had good reason?”

Lucien shrugged. “The jury’s out. Go home and take care of Kara. She’s the one who matters right now.”

Chapter Forty-Two

As it turned out, Kara hadn’t sought comfort in the bottom of a wine bottle. Not because she didn’t want a drink, but because she wanted one so much she feared that she’d drown her own lungs in alcohol if she let herself pour so much as a glass. She had previous form in heartache, after all, or somewhere on the scale, at least. When Richard had jilted her at the altar, she’d anaesthetised the pain and humiliation with liquor. She knew now that it didn’t really help. She’d thought at the time that she couldn’t possibly feel worse. She also knew now that she’d been very, very wrong.

Loving and losing Dylan Day made what Richard had put her through seem like a walk in the park.

The transition from loved to lonely had all happened so fast. Two weeks on and she was still reeling from the impact of that night on the beach, nurturing a glowing ball of pure hatred for the man who’d melted her heart and then stamped all over it.

He’d been so very, very lovely. How could it not have been real? Never for one second had she harboured even the tiniest of doubts, yet their entire time together had been nothing more than a fabrication.

Her emotions veered wildly between the raw, gaping misery of loss and fury hot enough to want him dead. How dare he? How fucking dare he? She’d lost any faith in her own ability to know the bottom from the top, he’d robbed her of her self respect and dignity right along with her heart. Twice already she’d looked up flight information to Ibiza, half certain that she wanted to go back and face him, to make him tell her what she’d done to deserve it. Had he been looking for someone to lay the con on and judged her gullible enough to be the one? Someone to warm his bed in the absence of his wife? But why go to all that trouble? He could have found any number of willing women on Ibiza without needing to woo or lie. He was the beautiful boss of a sex club – if anyone could get sex without trying, it was surely him.

Was it just the thrill of the chase that turned him on? Or did he get his kicks from lying, from watching her fall into his web of deceit?

All of these thoughts and many other, darker ones filled Kara’s brain on a loop until she held her head in her hands and cried, needing the haranguing voices to stop.

He was married. He was divorced. He had a child. The child wasn't his. The child was his. He'd lied about so many things that she had no clue which amongst them were the truth anymore.

She didn’t get up from the kitchen table when she heard Sophie’s key in the door, but she was relieved to hear it none the less, grateful always for her friend’s quiet, strong solidarity at her side.

Sophie came into the room, flicking the kettle on as she passed it, toting carrier bags from which she began to unpack fresh food. She unravelled the soft woollen scarf from her throat and wound it instead around Kara’s neck, ruffling her friend’s hair. She swiped the cold cup of coffee from Kara’s hands and replaced it with a fresh one for each of them.

“Did you sleep last night?”

Kara lifted one shoulder. “Some, I think.” She sipped the hot drink and sighed, pulling the folder on the table towards her and flipping it open.

"Remember we talked about the possibility of opening some stand alone boutiques over the next couple of years? I've been doing some research and I think it's got potential." She sifted through the paperwork quickly, frowning. "I made some lists…"

Sophie reached out and stilled Kara's increasingly erratic hands. "Kara, stop."

"No, it's here somewhere. I made lists… locations…"

Sophie squeezed her fingers, knowing full well that Kara was using work to block out thoughts of Dylan. "Okay," she said. "We'll find the list, and we can talk about work if you want to, but you can't pretend that this hasn't happened forever, you know?"

Kara withdrew her hands and propped her forehead in them instead.

"It's all I've got right now, Soph." She sighed heavily. It wasn't all she wanted, but it was all she'd got. Every time Sophie came she battled with herself not to ask questions about Dylan. Today, she lost her battle.

“Have you spoken to Lucien today?”

Sophie nodded. They spoke all the time. She stroked her wedding ring beneath the table top, wishing he was here instead of still wrapping things up on Ibiza. A one-night honeymoon wasn’t what they’d had in mind.

“And is he still there?” Kara asked tonelessly, and Sophie didn’t need to wonder who she meant. She faltered, wondering how her friend was going to take the news.

“For now. He told Lucien yesterday that he’s decided it’s time to move on.”

Kara let the information sink in. “Move on where?”

“He didn’t say. Back to the States, I expect?”

The man Kara had thought she knew wouldn’t head back to the States. A slow, cold creep of panic stole over her bones.

He was going to disappear, and she’d never see him again.

But so what, she hated him.

He was going to disappear, and she’d never get the chance to force him to answer all of the questions that haunted her.

But he wasn’t worth even one single moment more of her time.

He was going to disappear, and she’d never have the chance to beat her fists on his chest until he was as black and blue on the outside as she was on the inside.

But he didn’t deserve to feel the touch of her hand ever again, even in anger.

He was going to disappear.

Dylan needed to disappear. It had been two weeks since Kara had left, two weeks since Billy had arrived.

It seemed a lifetime longer on both counts. He needed to step up to the plate and make a plan for the future, find some place to lay down roots for Billy, a job with regular hours.

The baby had turned his entire world upside down and inside out. He wasn’t just a tiny person. He was a mini-dictator, and Dylan his foot soldier as much as his father. The first few days had been a living hell of not knowing why Billy was screaming or how to make it stop, but little by little, he was learning to read his son’s cues. He wasn’t confident that he was doing a very good job, but he did at least feel pretty sure that he could keep Billy alive and well, which was several significant steps forward from the day Suzie had left him literally holding the baby.

He owed most of his new knowledge and a big debt of gratitude to Lucien. He’d fully expected to find himself unemployed and unwelcome, but Lucien had turned out to be a measured, loyal friend who didn’t turn away in times of trouble. Dylan knew that Lucien had found himself caught in the most delicate of positions, and his admiration for the other man deepened ten-fold as he observed how he managed to remain true to himself without feeling obligated to entrench himself on one side or the other.

Instead of firing him, he’d given him paternity leave. Paid paternity leave. Company rules, he’d said.

No big deal, he’d said.

But it was a big deal. A big, huge deal. It was the gift of precious breathing space, of time to get a handle on the enormity of what had happened to him, to get to know his baby, to grieve for the love he’d lost.

Billy was the most effective distraction imaginable when he was awake, but when he slept, Kara came. She came to Dylan in his daydreams and in the snatches of sleep he managed at night, sometimes smiling, sometimes furious, and beautiful all the time. His whole body ached with missing her, as if he’d been trampled by wild horses.

The only time of day when he could find any solace at all came at sunset. Most nights, Billy’s fledgling routine allowed for him to be fed, winded and bathed by then, and they’d developed a habit of sitting up on deck, one man and his baby, to watch the horizon darken.

Billy seemed able to sleep easiest held skin to skin, his tiny chest against his daddy’s, his blanket tucked around him until just his small round face and wild-child hair poked out above. Dylan often found his own eyes closing too, drifting into a doze along with his son.

It was there, in that exact position, that Kara found him, two weeks and two days almost to the hour after she’d left.