Cassie sat in front of her laptop willing Jack to accept her call and hating Skype’s insistent ring tone. She could see that he was online, which made it worse. Nothing about this was going to be easy. What Jack had seen and heard in the library hadn’t even been dramatic, just ridiculous. Gobnit prancing across the room in her pink unicorn onesie, and Mary scrambling over the seating, scarlet and officious. And the idea of Mary stalking her round Finfarran, and the ghastly revelation that she’d spent the night with Brad. The thought of facing Jack after that was cringe-making but she knew that if she did nothing tonight she’d never face him again.
The insistent tone that was driving her mad stopped, and Jack’s face appeared on her laptop screen. At the back of her mind she observed that, this time, he, too, was sitting in his bedroom. His was orderly, with no embarrassing underwear scattered about, and, compared to herself, he seemed scarily calm. But perhaps he had no reason to be otherwise? Maybe he hadn’t cared about Mary’s revelation. Maybe he’d cut the link in the library out of good manners, because he’d felt the conversation had nothing to do with him. But as Cassie opened her mouth she saw that, under his freckles, he seemed unnaturally pale. The surge of hope she felt was so overwhelming she couldn’t speak.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Cassie!’
Cassie blinked. ‘What?’
‘According to caller etiquette, yours is the next move.’
‘Yes. Of course. Of course it is. Because I called you.’ Taking a deep breath, she controlled her voice. ‘So here’s the thing. I wanted to tell you my news.’
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. Your world awaits. You’ve taken a job with an exciting new cruise line.’
‘No! I haven’t. I think I was going to but—’ She stopped in mid-sentence. ‘Just a minute, that’s the name of Brad’s cruise line.’
Jack looked taken aback. ‘What is?’
‘Your World Awaits. Why did you say that? Wait, oh, my God, you googled him!’ Ignoring the fact that she’d done the same thing, Cassie bridled. ‘What on earth did you think you were doing?’
‘Well, forgive me for being curious when you couldn’t seem to stop yourself talking about him. Or sleeping with him, apparently. Though, like the kid in the unicorn outfit said, I guess that’s private.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And I’ve no right to object.’
‘Damn right, you haven’t.’
They glowered at each other from either side of the ocean. Then Cassie bit her lip. ‘I didn’t know you were curious.’
‘Well, I was.’ Jack looked away and then, turning back, looked straight into the camera. ‘I am.’
Hardly able to believe what she was hearing, Cassie asked the first question that came into her head. ‘Did you really have a thing the night the Ashlee woman took over at the club?’
He grinned. ‘I thought I could wean myself off wanting to sit there staring at you. It didn’t take long to find out that I couldn’t.’
Relief exploded in Cassie, like a firework taking off. ‘So, do you want to hear my news?’
He nodded, and his eyes were like slivers of blue light.
‘Pat’s going to be fine, and I know what I want to do next. I’ve decided that I’m coming back to Resolve.’
She held her breath, waiting for his reaction, and it seemed like a lifetime before he spoke again.
‘Good.’
‘Really?’
Jack reached out and she almost felt the touch of his finger on her face. ‘Yeah, really. Maybe this time, if you hang around, we’ll get to know each other.’
With a shaky laugh, Cassie placed the tip of her finger on the screen over his. ‘You do realise that it could turn out we’ve nothing in common at all?’
Thousands of miles away, Jack’s face broke into a lopsided smile. ‘I know. Scary, isn’t it?’
‘Seriously risky.’
‘And yet the weird thing is that it feels so right.’