LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Eleven

      HAUGHTON WAS BATHED in watery sunlight, turning the house and gardens to pale silver, but as she stepped inside misery filled Ellen to the brim—for her father’s ruin, her stepmother’s avarice, for her angry parting with Max, for parting with him at all.

      And for the loss of her home, which must come—now, or later, come it must.

      As she went into the kitchen she could feel a dull, dread awareness forcing itself into her consciousness. A new, bitter truth pushing itself in front of her.

       I can’t go on like this. I just can’t—not any longer.

      Stark and brutal, the words incised themselves into her consciousness. She felt a pit of cold, icy water in her insides, a knot of dread and resolve. She had to face it—accept it. She could not stay locked in her vicious, destructive battle with Pauline and Chloe. It was a battle she could not win in the end. A battle that was indeed twisting her, deforming her.

       I can’t stop them taking it from me. I can’t stop them and I can’t go on the way I have been. So all I can do is give in. Give up. Give up my home.

      More words echoed in her head, stinging even more painfully. Max calling this house a tomb. Her tomb. She felt her hands clench as if in desperate denial. But his accusation stabbed again. Forcing her to face what he had launched at her. Forcing her to face another truth as well.

       I’ve changed. Max has changed me—changed not just my outer appearance but what is inside as well. I’m not the same person any more. Being with him, seeing the world with him, has changed me. He’s opened my eyes to the world beyond here, given me the means to make the most of it, to stride through it with confidence and assurance.

       I won’t have him and I won’t have Haughton—but I will have myself. And that must be enough. It must be enough because it is all that I can have now.

      She knew it, accepted it—had no choice but to accept it.

      But it was with a heavy heart and a sick feeling of dread and painful anguish that she went to make the phone call she knew she must make.

      Max sat with an expression of polite interest on his face, as his meeting with the Sheikh’s development minister proceeded. The meeting was going well, mutual benefits from his proposal were being agreed, relations were all extremely cordial and everyone all around was very pleased.

      But Max’s thoughts were far, far away, burningly consumed by a project that was small fry compared to the one being set up here, but ultimately far more important to him. One that was crucial to his future. His UK head of legal affairs had phoned him just as he’d arrived for his meeting and Max had mentally punched the air with relief.

      The meeting finally over, with an entirely satisfactory conclusion, Max walked out to his waiting car. The heat of the Persian Gulf engulfed him. So did spearing emotion.

       Ellen should be here. She should be at the hotel, by the pool. I’d join her and then enjoy a sundowner as the day cooled, looking forward to dinner together followed by an early night.

      Then tomorrow we’d explore the souks of the old city, with the scent of a thousand spices and the fragrance of frankincense everywhere we went, with gold glinting from a hundred stalls! We’d cruise along the coast at sunset in a dhow, watching the sun set over the city like a ball of crimson flame.

       The next day we’d drive into the desert, camp out in the Empty Quarter, sleep under the stars burning holes in heaven’s floor...

      He tore his mind away. He must not indulge in such wishful thinking. He must only look to the future now—must get back to his hotel, phone London, get matters expedited, concluded with all possible haste. No delays could be tolerated. The rest of his life depended on it.

      Ellen glanced at her stopwatch, lifted her whistle to her lips and blew sharply to call full time on the match that was taking place on the pitch in front of her. She shivered. A cold wind was blowing, seemingly straight off the tundra hundreds of miles to the north—the Canadian spring was later to arrive than the English one.

      But she was grateful that her headmistress had looked to her to accompany the school’s lacrosse team’s visit to a school in Ontario at short notice when a fellow games teacher had had to pull out. Even more grateful for the invitation she had just received from the principal here—to spend the summer semester as an exchange teacher.

       New horizons, a new life—Max would approve.

      She sheered her mind away. No—don’t think of Max. Don’t think of anything to do with him. He was gone, out of her life now—gone from everything that had ever been anything to do with her. Except... She felt emotion twist inside her like a spasm, except from the one place on earth she had sought so desperately to keep—the place that a single phone call to her solicitor had severed from her for ever.

      Maybe here, as she forged a new life for herself, she might start to forget the home she had lost. Maybe here, in the years to come, she might forget the man who had given her more than she had ever thought to have—who now possessed what she had feared so much to lose. Maybe. But she could not believe it. Because there was only one place on earth she wanted to call home. Only one man on earth she wanted to share it with.

       Max! Oh, Max, why am I missing you so much? Why do I want only to rush back to you? To go with you wherever in the world you go, for however long you want me? Why do my dreams torment me? Why does longing fill me—useless, hopeless longing for some fairy-tale world where it would all have been different?

      A

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