Cinderella's Desert Baby Bombshell by Lynne Graham, Louise Fuller

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THETRAINBURSTout of the tunnel with a rush of warm air and a high-pitched squeal of brakes that filled the platform at Covent Garden underground station.

Frankie joined the crowd of commuters and shoppers jostling one another into the carriage. There was nowhere to sit so she grabbed hold of a hanging strap, leaning her head wearily into the crook of her elbow. She felt exhausted, although there was no real reason why she should. She’d hardly left the flat since getting back to London.

In fact, today was the first day she’d actually bothered to change out of her pyjamas, and it was a shock seeing herself reflected in the grimy window. A lot of the time over the last three days she had felt as if she was slowly being erased.

As the train started to judder forward she mechanically tightened her grip, shrinking into her coat. Her shoulders tensed. Even the thought that she might accidentally be thrown against someone made her feel queasy.

It wasn’t personal.

Except it was.

She just couldn’t bear the idea of touching someone who wasn’t Arlo.

Or maybe it was the knowledge that she would never touch Arlo again that was making her feel so unsteady.

The train rumbled into the next station and she watched numbly as people got on and off, remembering those final few minutes they’d shared.

It had been almost a second-by-second replay of the first time he’d put her on a train. He had lifted her bag up onto the luggage rack and told her to have a good trip, and then turned and walked away.

Gazing at the window, she let her reflection blur.The difference was that Arlo hadn’t come back for her. She had sat in the empty carriage, waiting, hoping, praying... But two minutes later the train had pulled out of the station.

In many ways it had been unremarkable—just a train leaving a station. To her, though, it had been as if day had turned into night.

Her eyes burned. She hadn’t cried then. She still hadn’t cried. The tears were there, but for some reason they wouldn’t fall.

It was raining as she walked out of the tube station. It had been raining ever since she’d left Northumberland—a steady grey drizzle that made people hurry home.

Home.

Her throat tightened. It made no sense to think of the Hall as home, and yet it felt to her more like home than the flat.

Turning into the street where she lived, she plodded through the puddles uncaringly.

But, of course, home was where the heart was—and her heart was with Arlo...would always be with Arlo.

Only he didn’t want her heart.

He couldn’t have made that any plainer, but it had taken her until this morning to finally accept that as one of the unchangeable, absolute truths that Arlo so loved.

Her heart contracted. How long was this going to last? Her every thought beginning and ending with Arlo?

Glancing up, she felt her breath catch. A tall man was standing by her front door, face lowered, shoulders hunched against the rain.

Her feet stuttered and then she was stumbling forward, breaking into a run, a trace of hope working its way through her blood, flaring into the light.

‘Arlo—’

He turned, and disappointment punched her in the diaphragm. It wasn’t him.

‘Thank goodness. I was worried you’d already left.’

It was her neighbour Graham. Beside him was a huge cardboard box.

‘They tried to deliver this earlier, but you were out.’

She forced a smile. ‘That’s so kind of you, Gray, thank you.’

‘No worries. Do you need me to take it inside?’

‘No, it’s fine. Honestly.’

He looked relieved. ‘I’ll see you when you get back, then. Have a good time.’

Upstairs in the flat, she dried her hair with a towel and frowned at the box. It was probably just some designer, sending her stuff to promote.

But when she tore off the parcel tape and stared down at the suitcase a lump built in her throat. She replayed the moment on the causeway when the wheel on her old suitcase had broken, snapping the thought off before she got to the part where Arlo had scooped her into his arms.

Because, of course, Arlo had sent the parcel. He had a pile of exactly the same suitcases in his bedroom.

There was an envelope with her name written on the front, and heart pounding, she opened it. Inside was a plain correspondence card, and written in Arlo’s familiar slanting handwriting was a message.

I’m sorry.

The pain made breathing impossible. She curled over, clutching the card, and finally did what she had been unable to do for the last three days.

She wept.

‘Come on, then.’

Patting the sofa, beside him, Arlo breathed out unevenly as Nero jumped up onto the velvet cushions. He didn’t normally let the lurcher up on the furniture, but there was something comforting about the dog’s warm fur against his hand.

His throat tightened. Not that he deserved to be comforted after how he’d acted.

Picturing Frankie’s stunned, pale face, he tensed his fingers against Nero’s head. He had been so blazingly certain, so smugly convinced that he was in control...that he had got it all worked out.

Now all his assumptions seemed at best naive and at worst inhuman.

She had told him she loved him and the stark honesty of her words had unmanned him. Coward that he was, he had thought she would leave that unspoken, so that he could keep on pretending that he didn’t know how she felt.

How he felt.

He gritted his teeth.

So many times out on the ice he had been faced with a crossroads—a moment in his journey when a decision had to be made. A choice that could mean either life or death. And each time he’d made a choice.

It was what he did. He spoke about it at schools. In lecture theatres at universities. The great explorer Arlo Milburn, talking about risk...about how every step in any direction was ultimately a leap of faith.

But he hadn’t made that leap for Frankie. He loved her and he had let her leave, and this time tomorrow she would be on her way to LA.

And in a week’s time he would be out on the ice, living the life he’d told her he wanted. A life he had chosen over her. A life that suited someone like him—someone who found the prospect of having a woman who loved him too risky. A life where risk was confined to sub-zero temperatures and blizzards.

In other words, not a life worth living.

There. Itwas done. Finally she was packed.

Letting out a breath, Frankie got to her feet and stared down at her plush new suitcase. She had dithered about taking it, but in the end it had seemed churlish not to—and anyway her old suitcase was ruined.

She glanced at the clock by her bed. The taxi would be here in a minute, but that was fine. She just had to get her coat and then she would be ready to go.

She was going to get to the airport hours before she needed to, but that was what she’d decided to do last night, after she’d finally finished crying. She had cried a lot. About the accident and her family and about Arlo. At one point she had thought she might never stop crying, but at one minute past midnight she had run out of tears.

And that was when she’d made up her mind that today was going to be the first day of her new life.

Obviously, she wasn’t going to just forget all her problems. But there was no future in living in the past and she wanted to start living again.

That was what Arlo had given her. He had helped her take that first step. More than anything she had wanted him to join her on the rest of her journey, only that wasn’t to be.

But she wasn’t just going to mark time and blog, like she had after the accident. She was going to go out into the world and live her life. Do some travelling. Make some new friends—real friends. Reconnect with old ones. Learn a new skill.

The intercom buzzed and, shrugging on her coat, she took the handle of her suitcase and glanced slowly around the flat. Maybe when she came back she would finally make this into a home.

She always used the famous black London cabs for work. The cabbies were always fun to talk to, and it looked cool arriving at events in one. Now, she found the familiar beetle shape of the car comforting.

As she buckled up, the cabbie turned round. ‘It’s Heathrow, isn’t it?’

Frankie nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Going somewhere nice, are you?’

‘Los Angeles.’

‘Lovely. Me and the wife went there last year. Then we did a road trip to New York.’ He laughed. ‘I know! I spend all day in the cab and then I do three weeks driving across America for my holidays. But I loved it. Every day felt like an adventure.’

Frankie smiled. ‘This is a bit of an adventure for me too. My friend moved out there a few weeks ago and out of the blue he called up and invited me to stay.’

‘Already? He’s keen!’

‘Oh, it’s nothing like that. We’re just friends.’

‘Course you are.’

Looking up, she could see the cabbie grinning in the rear-view mirror.

‘Just so you know, I’m going to shoot right at the traffic lights. I wouldn’t normally, but there’s roadworks on Woodley Road.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’ Frowning, she pulled out her phone. ‘Or you can try Mercer Street and then Warwick Park—’

Her voice stalled in her throat. The phone in her hand felt suddenly leaden. Or maybe that was her limbs.

Heart thumping, she stared down at the screen. She had been planning to check the route, but instead she was looking at the last journey she’d searched.

To Northumberland.

She’d thought she couldn’t cry any more. But now tears started to roll down her cheeks.

Turning her head towards the window, she took a breath. The rows of terraced houses had given way to shops and banks and cafés. Already the streets were starting to buzz with life.

LA would be bigger, brighter, busier.

But it would still seem empty to her.

Everywhere would always be empty if Arlo wasn’t there.

‘No, no, no... Now, don’t you go getting upset.’

Glancing into the mirror, Frankie saw that the cabbie was looking at her in horror.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said. ‘I know a detour that’ll get you to the airport in plenty of time. You’ll have your adventure, I promise.’

She felt her heartbeat accelerate.

Not if she went to the airport, she wouldn’t.

Wiping her eyes, she leaned forward. ‘Actually, we’re going to have to take a slightly bigger detour...’

Arlo woke lateon Saturday morning. He had been awake for most of the night, willing the morning to come so that he could get the day over and done.

He’d expected it to be grey and dull, but the weather forecasters had got it spectacularly wrong and after days of rain the skies had cleared and the sun was beaming above the horizon.

But it wasn’t the sudden upturn in the weather that had got him out of bed.

It was Frankie.

His mouth twisted.

Only not quite Frankie.

She had been there in his dreams, and just as he’d begun to wake her soft body had pressed tightly against his. He had felt her warmth, and relief had spread through his limbs. And then he had woken properly, and her absence had been like a crushing weight on his chest, so that he’d had to get up and move about.

He should be packing. But that would mean going into his bedroom, and he had been avoiding it for days, choosing instead to sleep in one of the spare rooms.

Downstairs, the house was silent and still, and he made his way into the kitchen, Nero padding lightly after him. It would all be over soon. Just this last day to get through and then she would be gone. In a week he would join the expedition at Svalbard and lose himself in the fathomless expanse of the Arctic.

His phone rang, the noise jolting him, and he felt a sudden rush of raw, unfiltered hope. But as he glanced down at the screen it swiftly drained away.

He hesitated, debating how to swipe, and then he made up his mind. ‘Davey. How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine. But apparently you have lost your mind.’

Arlo frowned. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he and Davey had fallen out, but on those rare occasions his cousin had always been placatory—apologetic, almost.

Now, though, his cousin’s voice was shaking with either anger or frustration or both.

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

But he didn’t need to ask the question. He already knew what—who—Davey was talking about.

‘I’m talking about Frankie.’

Arlo felt his heart twist. Hearing her name out loud hurt more than he would have thought possible. Hearing it out loud seemed to make her absence more vivid, more real. Too real.

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he said stiffly, ‘I don’t want to talk about Frankie—’

‘Well, I do.’ He heard Davey take a breath. ‘Serena called her. Just to find out if she wanted to ride before lunch on Saturday. Apparently, she’s going out to LA to see Johnny.’

Arlo swore silently. He’d forgotten all about lunch. ‘I should have called. I’m sorry—’

‘I don’t care about lunch. We don’t care about lunch. We care about you, and why you ended things with Frankie.’

‘I didn’t end anything,’ he said flatly. ‘It wasn’t that kind of relationship.’

‘What kind? You mean the kind where you can’t take your eyes off one another?’

Arlo bent his head, struggling against the truth of Davey’s words. ‘Exactly. It was a physical thing, and it burned out.’

He had never lied to his cousin before, and the lie tasted bitter in his mouth.

There was a long silence, and then Davey said quietly, ‘It didn’t burn out. You snuffed it out. Like you always do. Only it never mattered before. But Frankie’s different. She loves you—really loves you.’

‘I know—’ The words were torn from his mouth.

His heart contracted as he remembered the moment he’d given her the bracelet and how she’d been upset for giving him nothing in return.

She had given him something. She had given him her love and her trust. She was a gift—beautiful, unique, irreplaceable.

‘And you love her.’ The anger had faded from Davey’s voice. ‘I know you don’t want to admit it, and I know why.’

Picturing the moment when he’d rejected Frankie, Arlo felt a pain sharper than any physical injury he’d ever endured. He had told her he wanted to be honest and then he had lied to her face.

‘I can admit it, but it doesn’t change anything. I tried marriage, commitment, love—whatever you want to call it.’ His chest tightened, and remembered misery and panic reared up at him. ‘It was a disaster.’

‘Yes, it was. Because you were young and you were grieving and you made a mistake. And if you’d been like everyone else on the planet—like me and Johnny and Arthur—you would have known that was all it was.’

He heard Davey sigh.

‘But you hadn’t ever made a mistake. You were always so smart, and so in control, and you didn’t like how it felt. And when you got divorced you didn’t just walk away from Harriet. You walked away from love.’

Arlo felt his throat tighten. His eyes were burning. He hadn’t walked. He had run. He had turned and run away from love and kept on running until some cosmic force had put Frankie in his path...or rather in his bed.

Frankie, with her fiery curls and freckles, her permafrost-melting smile and her teasing laughter, which trailed a promise of happiness like the tail of a kite high in the bluest sky.

More than anything he wanted to turn and follow her, but—

‘I have to keep on walking because nothing’s changed,’ he said slowly.

He couldn’t change his past.

Davey cleared his throat. ‘Everything’s changed. Frankie is not Harriet, for starters. But what’s changed the most is you. You’re different with her.’

Different because of her, Arlo thought, his fingers tightening around the phone.

‘And you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Just to tell you that it’s not too late,’ Davey said softly.

But Davey was wrong, he thought, his heart swelling against his ribs. It had been too late from the moment he first saw Frankie. All this panic and doubt was just him struggling to catch up with the truth.

For so long he’d been so fixed on the idea of absolutes that he’d been blind to the beautiful potential of a life where random events simply challenged you to take new directions. Like down a causeway in the middle of a storm. Or to a crowded family party.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat. ‘Then I should probably get going if I’m going to stop Frankie catching that plane.’

Hanging up, he glanced at his watch. If he left now, he could catch her at the airport...

It took him less than ten minutes to grab his jacket, find the keys to the Rolls, and more or less run outside to where the huge gold car sat slumbering on the warm driveway.

His heart was leaping.

Three days ago the past—his and hers—had felt like insurmountable obstacles to a future where he and Frankie could be together. But she had been right. Love conquered everything, even the obstacles around his heart, and now nothing would stop them being together.

He knew now that he didn’t need or want to chase what his parents had shared.

He wanted and needed Frankie.

Together, they would make a life that was rich and enticing and joyful—but not perfect. Why would he want perfect? It was their flaws, their failings, that had brought them together, and it was in failing that they’d found strength in themselves and one another.

Turning the car around, he began rumbling over the cobblestoned causeway, tensing his muscles to stop himself from just putting his foot down on the accelerator pedal and flooring it.

There was plenty of time.

He had a full tank of fuel so he would only need to stop once.

He frowned. What was happening? The steering wheel was turning in his hands like a dog pulling on its lead, and there was an ominous choking sound coming from the engine.

His hands clenched around the wheel, urging the big car on. But he could feel the power dying, and he watched as with slow, agonising inevitability the Rolls slid slowly to a standstill.

Switching off the engine, he yanked up the handbrake and threw himself out of the car. He flipped open the bonnet and stared down at the engine. He had no idea what was wrong with it. The alternator, maybe?

But that wasn’t something he could fix right here and now. He needed another car.

He began to run back to the house. He would take the Land Rover.

His footsteps faltered. Except he couldn’t. Constance had taken it to go shopping in Newcastle. Even if he called her it would take her at least an hour and ten minutes to get back and that was too long.

The train would take even longer.

What he needed was a taxi—only of course there was no phone signal out here, and it would take him twenty minutes to run back to the house...

Heart hammering against his ribs, he squinted into the pale sunlight. He must be seeing things.

Except he wasn’t.

There really was a London black cab rumbling slowly over the cobblestones.

It stopped in front of the Rolls and he stared in shock—not at the car, but at the woman stepping into the sunlight.

‘Do you need some help?’ she asked.

Frankie was standing there, her red hair gleaming in the sunlight.

‘What are you doing here?’

He watched without blinking as she walked towards him, scared to blink in case she disappeared. His throat tightened with love and longing as she stopped in front of him.

‘Oh, you know... I was in the area.’

‘But you’ll miss your flight.’

Frankie nodded. ‘That’s the plan. Although it only really became a plan this morning, when I was on my way to the airport.’

Arlo swallowed. His mouth was dry, and he felt breathless with shock and hope. ‘I was on my way there too.’

Her face tensed. ‘To go to Svalbard?’

‘No.’ He took a step forward. ‘I’m not going to Svalbard. I was coming to find you. To stop you from leaving.’

She took a step forward too, and now he could see his love and longing reflected in her beautiful blue eyes.

‘And why do you want to stop me from leaving?’ she said shakily.

Lifting his hands, he cupped her face. ‘Because I love you and I need you. And I want to spend my life with you.’

‘You love me!’ Frankie echoed, and then she started to cry. All the way up in the taxi she had been picturing Arlo’s face, imagining what he might say, but the simple, absolute truth of his words were more than she could have wished for.

‘I want to spend my life with you too. More than anything. I love you so much.’

‘Not as much as I love you.’

His face creased and she saw that he was crying too.

‘I can’t believe that I let you go. Or that you came back—’

‘Of course I came back. Everything else in my life is optional. But you—you’re like air to me. I can’t breathe without you.’

Arlo pulled her closer, his mouth finding hers. ‘I can’t breathe without you either.’

He could hardly believe what was happening. Not just that she was here, and that she loved him and he loved her, but that love had come so simply and completely.

‘I made everything a struggle,’ he said softly. ‘I fought the past, my family, and most of all myself, because I was scared of being proved right. But I’ve never been happier to be proved wrong.’

He felt her hands slide around his body and they looked into each other’s eyes, both of them certain that here in each other’s arms they were in the right place—the only place they would ever want to be.