Emma Darcy: Their Wedding Day

It sounded friendly and helpful, but Rowena wished she could die on the spot. She wanted to say it was none of his business. The expression in his eyes told her it was his business. Everything that happened in this building was his business.

It was a bitterly capricious stroke of fate that her arrival in the car park had coincided with his. Here she was, trapped with him in a confined space, his eyes asking her for a direct reply. Even as she frantically sought some evasive explanation for her visit, the certainty came to her that he knew why she had come and what she meant to do.

Maybe the affair had been carried on so blatantly it was common knowledge throughout the whole building. Rowena inwardly cringed at the thought. Then pride clawed through the miserable weight of humiliation, pride and a fierce maternal need to fight for her children’s emotional security. She had done nothing wrong. What other people thought did not matter when so much of real importance was at stake.

She aimed a direct appeal at the man who had the power to stop her. “I’ve come to talk to Adriana Leigh.”

He held her gaze for several fraught moments, then slowly nodded. “Adriana works in an open floor area, Rowena,” he said gently. “I’m sure you’d prefer complete privacy for your talk to her.”

“I’m not exactly overwhelmed with choices,” she confessed, her courage deflating at the idea of a public audience.

“May I suggest you use my office? I can call Adriana to come there, and I guarantee you’ll both be left alone together to say whatever you wish to say.”

Once again unruly heat burned into Rowena’s cheeks. His sympathy to her plight was somehow shaming, yet to reject it was self-defeating. “Does everyone know?” The painful question slid off her tongue before she could clamp down on it.

“There’s been gossip.”

She closed her eyes, swallowed hard. “How long…how long has it been going on?”

“I don’t know, Rowena.” He paused, then quietly added, “More than three months.”

Phil had bought the sports car three months ago. Last night’s despair pressed in again. But she had come to try for a different outcome, to salvage what might not be a total wreckage. She had to try. She would try. She mentally constructed a protective shell around herself and opened her eyes. Keir was watching her, waiting for her decision, his expression carefully neutral.

“Your offer is…very kind,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “Thank you. I’ll take it.”

He turned to the control panel. The elevator started to rise. Rowena fought to keep her composure and her resolve. She watched the floor numbers light up above the doors. They were travelling to the top level of the building. Keir’s eyrie, Phil called it. She would soon find out why.

“Why are you doing this for me, Keir?”

It was an irrelevant question. Silly to ask it, really. It put the situation on a personal footing, which was the last thing she wanted to invite or encourage with Keir Delahunty. Yet something inside her had wormed past common sense…perhaps a need for comfort from someone who cared about her. Although Keir was probably only thinking of saving his other employees on the open floor area from what could be an ugly, disruptive scene, causing more gossip and stopping work.

He looked at her, his face grave, his dark eyes intensely focused on hers. “We were friends for a long time, Rowena. I remember it, even if you don’t want to.”

Friends…and lovers at the end. Did he remember that? Or had concussion from the accident wiped out the memory of the night before Brett was killed? She hadn’t spoken of it when she’d visited him in hospital. They’d both been in shock over what had happened. She wondered what had been in the letter she hadn’t received.

She searched his eyes for some hint of knowledge of the intimacy they had once shared. It didn’t show. Maybe he had no recollection of it at all. Maybe that was why he had never come back to her. Maybe he simply remembered her as Brett’s younger sister, who had once had a schoolgirl crush on him.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened. He waited for her to exit first. Courtesy. Consideration. A friend. Brett’s best friend all those years through school and university. Like another brother to her until…But she mustn’t think about until. She had to think about Phil. And this imminent encounter with Adriana Leigh.

She forced her legs to move. She was extremely aware of Keir at her side as he directed her to his private office. A friend. She needed a friend. It was so hard…so very hard…to stand alone.

KEIR’S office was an architectural wonder in itself. The outside wall was constructed of massive glass panels, which were angled to extend over half the rooftop. The room was flooded with natural light.

At one end was Keir’s workstation—desk, computers, library, several big drawing boards on stands made of round metal tube with hydraulic lift for height adjustment. Rowena was familiar with the latter. Her brother, Brett, had owned one. She remembered her father getting rid of it, getting rid of everything that connected Brett to Keir Delahunty, photographs, books, postcards, university lecture notes.

Then there was the burning of the sympathy cards and letters that so traumatised her mother. Had Keir’s letter from California been burnt, too? It had been impossible to even mention his name in those dark months after Brett’s death.

Tears blurred her eyes, and she quickly turned to look at the display of models featured on shelves running along the inner wall. These were the buildings Keir had designed, an impressive testament to what he had achieved by himself. It made Rowena wonder if his work took first place in his life and that was why he hadn’t married. Marriage didn’t seem to be popular with high-powered career people. Easy-come, easy-go relationships probably suited their lifestyles better.

How different all their lives might have been if Brett had lived. He and Keir in the partnership they had planned, she and Keir…but that might not have happened anyway. Dreams didn’t always come true.

At the opposite end to Keir’s work area was a round table, furnished with contoured leather armchairs set on swivel bases. He ushered her to one of these seats, then excused himself to speak to his secretary, whose office they had bypassed.

Rowena was glad of the opportunity to sit down and reconcentrate her mind on the problem of Adriana Leigh. Yet it was difficult to come to grips with the idea of a woman she had never met, never seen. I’ll know more when she walks into this room, Rowena assured herself, trusting instinct more than unsubstantiated guesses.

Her gaze drifted to the window view on the other side of the table. It was nothing dramatic, just blocks of homes on tree-lined streets stretching out over the suburb of Chatswood, streams of cars taking people to their chosen destinations, everyday lives going on as they invariably did, regardless of death, births, marriages.

And divorces.

Would it come to that for her?

An underlying sense of panic started churning through her stomach again. She didn’t want to bring up three children alone. She remembered how hard it had been without a helpmate when Jamie was little. Phil had been so kind and generous, taking them both into his heart and life.

She had tried to be the best of all possible wives to him, although in her heart of hearts she had known she didn’t feel for Phil what she had once felt for Keir. It was a different kind of love, less passionate, almost motherly in some ways. Despite being five years older than her, Phil could be boyish at times, wanting to show off, to be the centre of attention.