She shook her head. ‘No. It was entirely accidental. He was coming out of the bank as I was going in. No one is conspiring behind your back, Ellie.’
I sat up slowly and tried to reclaim my hand, but Mel refused to give it up, threading her fingers through mine.
‘He looked terrible.’
Despite the weeks I’d spent trying to exorcise him from my heart, he still haunted every chamber like a ghost. ‘Do you mean sick? Is he ill?’
‘If being heartbroken is a sickness, then I’d say he’s got it every bit as badly as you,’ she said, walking on ground that only a best friend would dare to tread upon. ‘He looked kind of broken.’
I swallowed uncomfortably several times, not entirely confident I could use my voice without it cracking.
‘Did he...?’ I stopped to clear my throat, which suddenly seemed to be full of gravel. ‘Did he say anything about me?’
If Mel rolled her eyes any higher, they’d have disappeared clear into the back of her head. ‘Of course he mentioned you.’ She sighed like an exasperated teacher dealing with unruly children. ‘He wanted to know if you were okay. That was the only thing he was concerned about.’
I didn’t want to feel the all-consuming flash fire of love, but it was impossible to stop it.
Mel drew in a deep breath. ‘He also told me that he’s leaving in ten days.’
My stomach didn’t really plummet within my diaphragm, logically I knew that couldn’t happen. But it certainly felt as though it did.
‘So soon?’ Whose voice was that? Because it certainly didn’t sound like mine.
Mel shrugged her shoulders. ‘Apparently his ex and their daughter left several weeks ago.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Jackson, doing a very bad Hercule Poirot impersonation. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘Not really,’ I said, desperately trying to sound nonchalant and missing by a country mile.
Mel and Jackson exchanged a look that they didn’t bother trying to hide. I saw it... just as they wanted me to.
Chapter Forty-Three
I didn’t actually cross each passing day off the calendar. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware, down to the hour, how much longer Rhys and I would be in the same hemisphere.
‘Please don’t call me. Don’t message me,’ I’d implored him in the shadows of the oak tree. ‘That would just be too hard. It’s far easier if we make a clean break of it right now.’
The green light in his eyes had looked somehow dimmer. ‘Nothing about any of this feels easy,’ he’d said, shaking his head slowly.
‘Please, Rhys. Just let me go.’
I could tell he hadn’t understood my reasons. That made two of us, but I hadn’t let my uncertainty show. And Rhys had done exactly what I’d asked of him. If he hadn’t run into Mel, I wouldn’t even know his departure was now just two days away.
I shivered, even though the heating in the office was set to a very comfortable twenty-three degrees. I was cold – I had been for weeks – but it was the kind of chill that came from deep within me, and no amount of radiators or extra layers could fix it.
‘It’ll be better when he’s actually gone,’ I murmured softly, but not quietly enough to have escaped Simon’s attention.
He was sitting at the second desk I’d managed to squeeze into the office, looking far more productive than I’d managed to be all morning.
‘Did you say something?’
I shook my head. I’d talked my reasons through with Mel and Jackson so many times that they’d finally stopped trying to persuade me to change my mind. I would get over Rhys in time, I kept telling myself, as though imprinting it in my head would make it true. I only had to get through another forty-eight hours, and then the healing could begin.
It was a plan that fell apart the moment the bell above the door rang and the man I was trying so hard to forget walked into my office. I gasped, losing any hope of trying to appear unaffected by his unexpected appearance.
‘Rhys.’ Just saying his name felt like a luxury that soon wouldn’t be mine to claim.
‘Ellie,’ he said, his eyes devouring me with an intensity that made me feel naked.