Nicola Marsh - Valentine's Day

‘I’m going to travel more. See amazing things. Record amazing things. My world has grown way too tiny.’

‘You won’t be able to travel.’ She laughed, though it was more of a cry. ‘You’ll be poor.’

‘You forget, I run marathons. I’ll run the world on foot if I have to.’

He would, too, this new Zander. The best of the two Zanders. A tear streaked down her face. She curled her fingers on the glass and wished she could touch his.

‘What else?’

‘I’m going to get a new gardener.’

The rapid change in direction threw her. ‘What happened to Tony?’

He shrugged and smiled, but it was nervous. ‘Tony won’t live in.’

‘You want a live-in gardener?’ He might not be able to afford that, either.

He nodded. ‘If you’re free.’

Behind her, the announcers gasped, as one. And it saved her the trouble.

She had to swallow twice to get the words out. ‘You want me to be your gardener?’

He curled his fingers to match hers. ‘I want you to have the garden. And you’re going to need to tend to it every day.’

‘You want me to live in your house?’ she whispered.

‘For ever, George. With me.’

‘But you don’t want to get married? You told me.’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to get hurt. But that hasn’t worked. I hurt every day because I’m not with you. So I’m cutting my losses.’

All over London women probably gasped, but Georgia knew exactly what that meant.

‘Ever the romantic, Alek,’ an announcer said in both their ears.

Zander didn’t laugh. Neither did she.

‘I love you, Georgia,’ he whispered through the glass, down the line and out of three million radio speakers. ‘I thought I was managing the rest of my life but the moments with you were like a blazing beacon and they spilled light on just how dull the rest of my existence has become.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s lucrative but it’s nothing without you. Totally empty.’

Tears clogged her throat. She struggled to clear them.

‘Are you proposing, Alek?’ the second announcer prompted, scenting a ratings slaughter.

‘Marriage? No,’ he breathed, and her heart lurched. ‘When I do that I’ll do it somewhere infinitely more special than my workplace.’ He tucked his phone to his ear and pressed a second hand up against the glass. ‘But I am proposing a future. A life together. A second chance for both of us.’

Georgia stared at him through the glass, speechless. Then she ripped her headphones and mic off and turned for the door.

The announcers went into panic mode but she didn’t care. They’d talk their way out of it; they always did. They could earn their enormous pay. She threw her gratitude to the young work-experience girl, grinning from ear to ear, who held the studio door open for her so that she could practically run through it.

Outside, the whole office stood, transfixed, staring at the studio doors. She ignored them. Except for Casey who bounced on two feet, tears streaming down her face, both hands pressed to her excited mouth.

Zander met her the moment she burst through the door. Swept her up and locked her to his strong body, turning slowly, eyes squeezed shut.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmured over and over.

‘For what?’ she gasped, lifting her face from the crook of his neck. ‘Practically proposing on air?’

‘For letting you go. For making you go.’

‘I needed to stand alone. I needed to find that part of myself and know I could survive it.’

He sighed. ‘Your courage shamed me.’

‘No...’

‘But it inspired me, too. To be authentic. To risk everything.’

‘Did you think I’d say no?’

‘I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t planning on calling in when I went into that studio. I just saw you and you were so radiant and...fine...it boiled my blood.’

She tipped her head. ‘It made you angry that I was doing well?’

‘It made me angry that I wasn’t. I so wasn’t. And I realised why the moment you walked back out of this studio. You took all the light with you.’

‘And you want me to live in your house?’

‘I want us to be together. I think I’ve been sitting in that house just waiting for it to populate itself with a family. A family I didn’t want. But, truthfully, I don’t care where we live. In fact, I’d be really happy to go back to Göreme and grow old underground with you. Whatever you want.’

Heat filled her cheeks. ‘I really want your garden.’

His lips turned up slightly at the corners. ‘Just the garden?’

‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I really want you.’

She lifted her lips and Zander pulled her up closer in his arms to help close the distance. They clung together, sealing their promise in flesh.

On the other side of the glass the two announcers were exploding with mute action, like a pair of mime race-callers. Georgia feared for exactly what was being said but, after the year they’d had, really, how bad could it be?

‘I’m sorry we’re not going to be rich,’ he whispered against her lips.

‘I don’t want to be rich.’

‘I wanted to give you the world.’

She traced his jawline with her finger. ‘You already have. Besides,’ she said, breathless, ‘I’m only cash-poor.’

He frowned. ‘But your flat...’

‘It’s one of four in the complex,’ she reminded him. And he nodded. So she broke the news. ‘I own them all.’

He just gaped.

‘Well, technically the bank owns them all but, you said yourself, I’m thrifty. When all my friends were out clubbing, I was paying the world’s biggest mortgage. Determined never to have to beg for somewhere to live again. Between my neighbours’ rent and my own repayments and the area booming I have more than seventy per cent equity. So maybe we’ll end up closer to equal?’

‘You were so scathing about my money.’

She shrugged. ‘It was so fun do to. That’s the real me. You may want to reconsider...’

‘I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.’

That raised the tiny ghost of the past. ‘You did want to do this with someone else, once.’

He considered her seriously. ‘It took me a really long time to get to the place where I could be objective about Lara. About the whole sorry mess. But our relationship was always about me making allowances for her, and she loved that, she didn’t love me. She did me the biggest favour in getting out before it was too late.’

Just as Dan had. ‘I understand.’

‘Yes. I think you do.’

They kissed again, stepping back out of the view of the viewing window between studios.

‘You were so right about how I treat people at work. To keep them at a distance. And my running. All designed to stop me from having to interact with anyone emotionally. And then you came along.’

‘And bullied my way in?’

‘And looked deep inside me and accepted who I was.’

She beamed up at him. ‘Well, aren’t we a pair of lucky-to-have-found-each-others?’

He smiled. ‘Yeah. We really are.’

‘Mr Rush?’ The producer’s voice boomed out over the studio PA system. Georgia could hear music in the background and knew the segment was over.

She was free.

Free to love the best man in the world.

Zander crossed to the panel and pressed a blue button. ‘Yes?’

Just as fearsome as ever, despite the monumental scene he’d just made in front of his whole staff. His tone must have worked because she spoke to him with more courtesy than Georgia had heard from her all afternoon.

‘Nigel Westerly is on line two, Mr Rush.’

She said it with the same awe she would have used if the Queen of England had picked up the phone.

Zander glanced down at the flashing light on the console, then back at Georgia. He pressed the blue button.