Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2) (16 page)

He knew the
story.

He
’d lived it.

His stare lifted across the sofa. “
Congratulations, Kate.” He didn’t recognise his voice. It was a stranger’s voice, belonging to another man, a man who’d never be this foolish, a man who would have seen this coming. “You got your story.”

“
No!” She scrambled closer.

He jumped up. Suddenly, everything in the room was so still. The air didn
’t move. Sound didn’t travel. Time didn’t progress forward. He couldn’t hear or feel his heart beating. “Get out.”

“
Alex, don’t do—”

“
Get out.” He didn’t wait for his command to be obeyed. He strode out the room, not even aware he was still clutching the folder until he entered his bedroom.

He tossed the pile of trash into the unlit fireplace on his way to the armchair by the window. There, he put his h
ead between his legs, trying not to move or think or breathe. Trying his damndest to not throw up.

When he looked up again, his stare landed on the fireplace. The folder taunted him with his own worst fears, laughed at the deluded idiot sitting in the chai
r.

A layer of grit cemented the contents of his stomach. He lurched up to grab the folder and ripped it into small pieces. He didn
’t stop ripping until the result of his trust, of his love, had been shredded.

Chapter Nineteen

Kate crashed as soon as she got home. She didn’t make it to her bedroom, just collapsed on the sofa.

She
’d been living on a high-wire for too many days, the guilt and tension, regret and sorrow, draining her. And last night, well, how could she sleep through her last night with Alexander? She’d lain there, her cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heart beating against her skin, careful not to let a single tear fall until his breathing evened out.

She
’d known. From the moment she made the decision to tell him, she’d known the outcome. But she couldn’t leave this lie to live between them. Alexander deserved better. Maybe he deserved better than her.

It still hurt.

Losing Alexander hurt.

That
’s as far as her numb brain went before sleep washed over her exhaustion.

Tuesdays were usually slow at the paper with the week’s edition going out the night before, but this Tuesday Kate didn’t even get out of bed until late afternoon.

Her first thoughts on waking belonged to Alexander.

Would it have made a difference if he’d given her a chance to explain? She doubted it. There was no excuse, no reasonable explanation for snooping into his past. And when it came down to it, no matter what colour excuses she painted on her actions, that was what she’d done.

Everything hurt. Not just her
heart, but her head, her muscles, her stomach, her bones.

She picked up her phone at least ten times to call Megan. Her self-imposed ban on disturbing her friend
’s honeymoon could take a hiatus for this crisis. But the thought of speaking about Alexander, saying his name, talking about him as the man she used to have, the man who might have loved her, dried her throat and added another punch to the pain. Each time, she banged her phone down again without pressing the dial button.

Wednesday morning, she awok
e at the crack of dawn, her body finally protesting the neglect. She donned sweatpants and trainers and forced herself to go for a jog before work. That cleared the fog in her head, if not the pain.

She
’d get through this, one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, until the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach faded.

How could she have been so stupid?

What was the matter with her?

Why did she always have to be so impulsive, have to know everything?

Why, why, why hadn’t she just left Alexander’s past alone?

The incriminations pounded inside her skull as she dragged herself to the paper, went through the motions of living, until a massive crack of lightning snapped the air inside the office. Thunder followed almost instantly, the roar reverberating
in her desk and chair. Adrenaline rushed through her, pushing out the lethargy as she looked out the window for the first time in hours.

The sky was a black, roiling mass struck through with bright shards from bolt after bolt of lightning. She moved clos
er to the window, drawn to the sinister spectacle, goose bumps spreading over her skin. The air felt different, wrong, as if charged with alien static.

Within minutes, the storm was upon the town, a howling inferno of gale force winds and rain, so thick a
nd heavy, she couldn’t see the building across the street. The town siren joined the cacophony, the storm alarm barely audible above nature.

She ran back to her computer and quickly called up the local news channel feed. It was full of early warnings that
had just come through. A high precipitation super cell building off the west coast. Not expected to hit the land mass. People nevertheless advised to stay indoors.

“
Early warning, my foot!” She grabbed her cell phone and hit her mother’s speed dial, her heart thudding as loudly as the next roar of thunder. “Mom! Are you at home?”

“
Darling, I was about to call you. Where are you?”

“
I’m at the paper, but I’ll come over.”

“
No, stay where you are. Our street’s flooded, anyway.”

“
Already?”

“
We’re fine, although I might pop next door quickly. You know how poor Agnes gets when—”

“
Mom?” She pressed the phone closer to her ear, shouted above the disconnected signal. “Mom?”

She tossed the phone onto the desk, was about to grab the landline when an explosion sent her s
prawling to the floor. She scrabbled around to see the entire wall of windows had been shattered. The equivalent of a mini-hurricane swept through the opening, throwing chairs into the air, wiping computers off desks, driving hail stones the size of golf balls at her.

Her heart raced, blood pounding at her temples. She kept close to the floor, crawling to the safety of the small kitchen at the back. She stayed on the floor, sitting against the wall, her arms wrapped around her knees.

The battering seemed to go on for ever and ever. The lights went out at some point, plunging her into the eerie pall of the storm’s black heart. She couldn’t decide if she was grateful or not that the lightning had finally petered out.

Once her heart stopped thudding, worry set
in with a torrent of jumbled scenarios.

Had Alexander been caught in the storm? If it was blowing in from the ocean, the valley would offer protection. If there wasn
’t a mudslide off the mountain. Or flooding in the valley. Isobel’s cottage was right on the beach. But she’d be at the spa, wouldn’t she? After she’d finished the tunnel mural, Finn had her doing murals in all the log cabin bathrooms. But the spa was right on the shoreline as well. God, what was the state of her mother’s street by now?

The sec
ond the sound of the storm changed, she jumped to her feet. The wind was still howling, but no longer hurling everything in its path. The hail had yielded to pelting rain. She ran to the landline, but that was dead as well.

Outside, the darkened sky looked
slightly less fierce. A few people had started to emerge from whatever shelter they’d found. The street was strewn with bicycles, trash cans, whatever the storm had gobbled up and spat out. The only significant tree in the paved town centre, an ancient oak as tall as the church spire, had been split down the centre, one blackened half still standing, the other half embedded in the roof of the town hall.

She managed to navigate the Jeep around the debris and deep pools, making her way slowly toward her pare
nts’ side of town. Her mother hadn’t exaggerated. They lived in a dip and, at the bottom, water rose to porch level of most of the houses on that street. She had to leave her Jeep at the top and wade through knee-deep water.

Ambulances sounded in the dista
nce. Police sirens. The town’s emergency services were coming to life.

By the time she reached their home, the rain had stopped and the sky was opening to pale streaks of sunlight. The storm had left as fast as it had come. Her heart sank at the devastati
on around her. This street was intact apart from the flooding, but on the way here, she’d seen roofs ripped off, trees uprooted, shattered glass everywhere. That would stay with them for weeks. She prayed everyone was safe.

A short while later, a small sea
rch party had taken to the water-clogged street, searching through each home to check for anyone in need of help. Thankfully they found no casualties, but some were in shock and in desperate need of comfort.

“
We need to get them to the town hall,” her mother said. “Mr. Granger can’t spend the night alone and the Crowleys have two young children and a baby. Lord knows when the electricity will be back up.”

“
The town hall’s wrecked, mom.” Kate shoved a weary hand through her hair. “Will you be okay? I want to see if I can find Izzy.”

“
Go, love, we’re fine here.” Her mother grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Just be careful.”

“
I won’t be long,” Kate promised.

Her teeth chattered as she trudged back up the hill. Her jeans were soaked and the chill seemed to have hit
her bones now that she wasn’t rushing into homes and dashing up and down stairs, hauling blankets and battery-operated bottle warmers and whatever else could be borrowed from one family to help another.

She was a couple of yards from her Jeep when she saw
him climbing out of the low-slung Aston Martin. She blinked, convinced the fear and panic had caught up to her, making her delusional. But he didn’t disappear on the other side of her blink. He was still there, solid and very real, and he was safe.

He slam
med his car door, his gaze sweeping from the Jeep and finding her.

“
Kate!” He came toward her in long strides, his expression as thunderous as the recent sky. His eyes glittered silver, his jaw set in stone.

Kate
’s limbs seized. She stood there, frozen to the spot, wondering what she’d done now. She’d never seen Alexander this furious, not even when she’d confronted him with her betrayal.

He reached her, and his arms came around her, pulling her into him, folding her into his warmth, crushing her against hi
s heart.

“
I’ve looked everywhere for you.” His voice was raw, bleeding with emotion. “
Dio
, when I saw the state of your office, I was almost too afraid to go inside. I thought I was searching for your body.”

“
I’m fine.” She strained away.

He gave her a li
ttle slack, just enough so she could look up at him. “Thank God.”

“
What—What are you doing here?”

“
I had to find you.” The silver glint in his gaze warmed, the harsh edges fading as emotion creased into the corners of his eyes. “Kate, there was no story in the paper yesterday. You never published it.”

“
I was never going to.” He thought she’d planned to print all that stuff? “There was never any story.”

“
I know that now.” He crushed her to him again. “I’ve spent the last two days trying to figure out a way to tell you what an idiot I’ve been.”

“
I researched that information for me, for us…” she mumbled into his chest. “I thought if I knew what had happened, I could protect you—protect us—from myself. That I’d know how to avoid making a mistake you couldn’t forgive and then I ended up doing exactly that.”

“
You didn’t,
cara
.” His chin rested on the top of her head, his arms wrapped around her so tightly, she could barely breathe. “I will always forgive you.”

She didn
’t need to breathe. She needed only him. As she stood there, listening to his heart thumping unevenly against her cheek, she knew he hadn’t only come back to find her. He’d come back to her.

He held her for another long moment before releasing her. And then he looked into her eyes, his gaze searing h
er, as he ran his hands down her arms, rubbing layers of warmth into her over and over.

His face gentled. “
Are your parents okay?”

She found her voice, reeling back to reality. “
Yes, but it’s Izzy I’m worried about.”

“
We’ll find her.” He swung an arm around her, keeping her close as they continued up the hill. “Let’s check the town hall first. People seem to be gathering there.”

“
That’s our crisis centre, but it’s not going to be of much use today.”

“
I know. I stopped there when I saw Harry. He was organising search and rescue parties and I thought he might have seen you. I suggested he arrange transport to start moving stranded people to the castle.”

Kate glanced up, meeting his gaze, waiting…
For what? For the surprise to set in, she realised. But she wasn’t surprised that Alexander would jump in to help, not in the least.

They left his car there and took the Jeep, which would be more practical given the current state of the roads. They had so much to talk about, there was so much she needed to say, but for
now she simply fed off the strength of having him at her side. Yes, they weren’t a perfect couple, they might get angry with each other, but they weren’t one mistake away from heartbreak. They never would be.

A large crowd had already assembled in the squ
are by the town hall, huddled in groups, a small handful loading supplies and people, the elderly and families with small children, into the school’s mini-bus that had been commandeered. Isobel wasn’t amongst them. Neither was Finn.

“
We’ve already combed the beach front thoroughly,” Harry told her. “Those properties were hit the worst, but thank God we’ve found minor injuries only so far.”

“
We’ll take a drive to Finn’s spa,” Alexander said, pressing a comforting hand on her shoulder.