‘IT’S NOT THE SAME.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she shot back. ‘Because that’s what I’m hearing right now.’
Aaron couldn’t describe the emotions going through him. It was a mixture of desire and annoyance. Anger and frustration. All because of her. He shook his head.
‘I’m not going to have this conversation with you.’
‘What else are you going to do?’ she exclaimed. ‘Walk out through the locked door?’
‘It won’t be locked for long,’ he said, and made the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision he’d warned himself against. He walked to the door and then took a couple of steps back. Enough so he could plough through it.
‘Aaron?’ There was panic in her voice. ‘What are you doing? Aaron,’ she said again when he didn’t answer. When he began to move forward, she shouted, ‘No!’
It wasn’t that she’d shouted at him. It was more the complete panic in her tone that stopped him. A few seconds later, she was standing in front of the door, her back against it, arms spread out, shielding the door with her body.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘You can’t break down this door.’
‘Why not?’
‘What would happen if it didn’t work?’ she demanded. ‘You would no doubt hurt yourself, and there’s absolutely nothing in here that would help me look after you.’ Her chest was heaving. ‘I wouldn’t be able to call for an ambulance, and who knows how long it’ll be until we get out of here?’
‘Careful,’ he said quietly. Dangerously. ‘You almost sound like you care.’
‘I do care,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘I wish I didn’t, but I do.’
‘Then what’s the real reason you left?’
‘Because I found a lump in my breast. Because I immediately thought I had cancer. Because I remembered a doctor had told me that I should get screened for breast cancer. Because, in some stupid, misguided cling to independence, I decided against it.’ She sucked in air. Continued. ‘Because I thought about how my life would change while I went through chemotherapy. Because I knew I couldn’t put you through that again.’ Her voice caught at the end and he cursed himself for forcing her to speak.
‘Rosa—’
‘I told the doctor that my mother had cancer, that I hadn’t been screened for it, and they gave me all the tests. I sat through the whole process fearing the worst and in the end there was nothing. Nothing.’
She lifted her hand and let it fall on her last word. ‘So I’d insisted, and imagined it all, and there was nothing.’ Her eyes shone when she lifted them to his. ‘Just like my mother.’
And suddenly Aaron understood why it had affected her so badly. And why she really had left because of the lump. With quick steps he pulled her into his arms and held her as her body shook.
He closed his eyes. Told himself he was an absolute jerk for pushing. And when the shaking subsided he pulled back and saw that her eyes were dry. That it hadn’t been tears at all, just...shaking.
‘You’re not like your mother.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know it just as well as I know that you’re not like my mother either.’
‘And where does that get us?’ she asked, pulling away from him now. ‘We still have a broken relationship.’
‘Because you were scared about having cancer.’
She stared at him and then shook her head sadly. ‘No. No, that’s not it at all.’
‘Tell me then,’ he said urgently, an unknown fear compelling his words. ‘Tell me what I’m not understanding.’
‘I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone, Aaron. That’s why I shouldn’t have married you. That’s why I left.’
* * *
How could she have hurt him more than she already had?
She hadn’t thought it possible, and yet here she was, watching the hope on his face transform into something uglier. And then his expression went blank, his calm façade back in place.
She hated it.
‘I’ll file the divorce papers as soon as I get home.’
‘No, Aaron—’
‘No, what?’ he said almost conversationally. ‘You don’t want to be divorced? Because that’s the reality of our situation, Rosa. You don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone. You made that clear four months ago. You’ve made it clear now.’
‘But... I don’t want to be divorced either,’ she replied lamely.
‘You have to make a decision,’ he said coldly now. The tone she’d heard him use with opposing council. ‘You can’t have it both ways. If you want to fix this, we’ll make that decision together and try our best to fix it. If you don’t, I file for divorce when I get back and we end this. Either or. Not both.’
She bit her lip when he turned away from her, the tears she’d resisted earlier threatening to spill over now.
But a sound at the door distracted her. She took a step back automatically, felt Aaron approach, placing himself between her and the door. Seconds later, a red-faced man was standing in front of them.
‘Aaron and Rosa Spencer?’
‘Yes,’ Aaron answered.
‘Sergeant Downing.’ He showed them his badge. ‘Liana Spencer—your mother?—called to say that there might be some trouble here. Was she right?’
Rosa heard the hesitation in the man’s voice and for the first time realised how it must look to him. Aaron was wearing a wrinkled shirt and jeans, barefoot, and she wore only his shirt. It looked less like the captive situation he’d thought he’d be stepping into and more like an invasion of privacy.
‘She was right,’ Aaron replied. Cool. Collected. Always. Though he’d stepped in front of her, blocking her from the sergeant’s view. ‘The door was locked. We couldn’t get out.’
‘Not locked.’ Rosa peered from behind Aaron to see the sergeant lift his hand to his chin. ‘It was jammed and I had to use some force, but it opened.’
‘So...no one locked us in?’ Rosa asked softly. Aaron stiffened in front of her.
‘No, ma’am.’
‘And the electricity?’ Aaron asked.
‘We’re working on it.’ Sergeant Downing frowned. ‘Your mother told us she was worried about you and to check. She told me about the spare key she left with the security company down the street.’ He paused. ‘The only reason I knew to check up here—’ his face went red ‘—was because I...er...heard voices.’
Rosa could only imagine what those voices must have sounded like to an outsider.
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
Aaron didn’t move from where he stood, didn’t offer the hand she knew he would have if he wasn’t still protecting her. Her heart swelled, though she wasn’t sure how. She was certain it had broken.
‘We couldn’t contact you, and with the storm... We thought we’d be stuck here all weekend.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Sergeant Downing replied. ‘Well, then, the rain’s calmed somewhat, but it’s still pretty bad out there so I should be off. There’s bound to be another emergency somewhere. A missing dog or something.’ He winked at them and only then did Rosa noticed the shimmer of raindrops on his coat. ‘You two try to stay out of trouble for the next twenty-four hours.’
‘Twenty-four?’ Rosa spoke again, almost without noticing that she had. ‘Will the storm be continuing until tomorrow?’
‘That’s the expectation, though you know what the weather’s like on this side of the world.’ He paused. ‘I know this is probably a much better place to ride out this weather—and since I’m a police officer I’m supposed to tell you that you should stay inside until it gets better outside—but this weekend is our annual heritage celebration.’
‘In winter?’
‘Yeah,’ Sergeant Downing said with an indulgent smile. ‘We don’t get many visitors this time of year, and our founders rocked up here on the fifteenth of this month, so we celebrate. It’s nothing major—just some food, some wine, some music inside city hall—but we’d love to have you.’
‘We won’t—’
‘Thank you so much, Sergeant Downing,’ Rosa spoke over Aaron. Again, she felt him stiffen. ‘We appreciate the invitation. And your assistance.’
‘It’s fine. And, while I’m here, I’ll write down my number in case things get rough again.’ He took out a notepad and pen and wrote quickly before handing Aaron the paper. ‘Things should be up and running again in a few hours at best—by the end of the day at worst—so you should be able to call. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the city.’
He nodded at them and a few moments later they were alone.
‘I’d better go down and make sure he locks up,’ Aaron said.
‘Do you want to go?’ she asked instead of replying.
‘Do I want to go to the heritage celebration?’ he asked, and then shook his head. ‘I can think of better things to do.’
‘Like spend your time here, alone with me?’
His expression grew stony. ‘You’re more than welcome to go.’
‘How?’
‘Take my car.’
She lifted her brows. ‘So you really won’t go with me?’
‘Rosa, I’ve told you where I stand. You’re on the side that doesn’t allow me to go with you.’
He left the room before she could reply.
* * *
She wasn’t on the top floor when Aaron returned. Which was fine, he told himself, because he was tired of whatever was happening between them.
He wondered if his mother had given any thought to the havoc her plan would wreak. Liana hadn’t known why Rosa had left him—he certainly hadn’t, so she didn’t find out from him, at least. Though now that he knew she’d been in contact with Rosa, perhaps his wife had told Liana why she’d left...
He dismissed it almost instantly. His mother would have told him if she’d known what had happened. It would have been an opportunity to tell him where he’d gone wrong, and she’d never be able to resist that.
He couldn’t describe his relationship with his mother. Liana had kept him at a distance for most of his life. And then she’d got sick and things had changed between them. Probably because he’d been determined to change things between them, and he acknowledged that he’d bridged the gap more than she ever had.
But watching her suffer the way she had... His stomach turned just thinking of it. It had been enough to ignore the fact that she hadn’t wanted the reconciliation as much as he had. It had been enough to move his life to Cape Town until she got better.
Maybe it was time to face the truth—that his mother still didn’t want the relationship he’d tried to forge with her. Perhaps, this weekend, she’d wanted him to face the fact that the end of his marriage had been his fault. Or perhaps she’d been trying to fix it. Which, if that was true, would have been ironic since he’d been cleaning up her mistakes his entire life.
I’m not your mother, Aaron. You don’t have to take responsibility for me. Or for something that you didn’t cause.
He sat down heavily on the couch, clutching the glass of rum he’d poured for himself, Rosa’s words echoing in his head. Maybe he was conflating the two issues. Rosa and his mother were nothing alike. And Rosa was right. She had a mind of her own. And she’d never expected him to clean up after her. She’d always taken responsibility for what she’d done, even if what she’d done had been spur-of-the-moment.
‘Aaron?’
When he looked up Rosa was hovering in the doorway, wearing fitted jeans and his shirt, which she’d paired with ankle boots. ‘Where’d you get the clothes?’
‘I found some things I left behind the last time we were here.’ She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Was she remembering how different things had been the last time they were there? ‘The shoes are your mother’s.’
‘No top?’
Her cheeks turned pink. ‘No.’
He frowned at her reaction, but didn’t ask her about it.
‘I’m going to go into town. Are you—’ She broke off, cleared her throat. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to come along?’ He shook his head. ‘Okay. Right. Fine.’ She paused. ‘Well, I’ll try to find somewhere else to stay then.’ Her gaze met his. ‘Since there’s a line in the sand now.’ She stepped back and then nodded. ‘Take care of yourself, Aaron. I’ll make sure your car gets back to you in one piece.’
And then she was gone. Seconds later he heard the garage door opening and then closing again. He didn’t move. Just kept wondering if this really would be the last time he’d see his wife.
If it was, it would be his fault. He’d been the one who’d drawn a line in the sand. Who’d given them sides to stand on. He was the one who’d told her that she needed to decide between saving or ending their marriage.
Really, it had been selfish. Because he’d hoped that his ultimatum would force her into letting him in. She had—a little. She’d told him about her mother’s illness, how she’d thought she was becoming like her mother when she’d found that lump.
But it was so obvious that she wasn’t like her mother.
Why hadn’t she believed him?
And what had she meant when she’d said she shouldn’t be in a relationship with anyone?
Clearly, she’d been right when she’d told him he didn’t get it. He didn’t. He didn’t understand how she could claim that marrying him had and hadn’t been a mistake. He didn’t know how she could say she didn’t blame him and yet not want to be with him.
It was hopelessly messy. He hated it. Hated how much it reflected the messiness of his mother’s life.
With a sigh, he went downstairs to try to find the suitcase he’d brought with him when he’d thought he’d be staying at the house for the weekend. He found it in the room he and Rosa had shared when they’d been there last. He ignored the memories that threatened and was on his way to the shower so he could change when he glanced into the closet Rosa had used the last time they’d been there.
She was right. There were extra clothes of hers there. Including three or four long-sleeved tops, any of which she could have worn out that night.
So why had she worn his shirt?