Page 14 of Where the Heart Is

Grateful for the crackers and cheese in her stomach, Adelaide knocked back the rest of her manhattan, steeling her nerve for ‘the talk’ she needed to have with Jack. He entered the living room as she placed the empty glass on the coffee table, his lips compressed into a grim line.

‘Is it true you ended up here by sheer chance because your car broke down or is this another of your lies?’

Shocked by his change from solicitous host when she’d first arrived to accusing ex, she said, ‘I never lied to you.’

‘Yeah?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Then what was that whole“till death do us part”vow?’

Annoyed he had her on the back foot already, she kept her tone steady, with effort. ‘My car has broken down, so I’ll need to use your phone to contact a tow truck, please. As for you opening the door to this place …’

She cast an envious eye over the interior again. ‘Trust me, this is the last place I expected you to be.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Your feet are rooted to the farm. You’d never leave it, as you told me many times. So I’m assuming this belongs to afriend?’

If he caught her implication, he didn’t acknowledge it. ‘Mila didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I moved out of the farm when I built this place about five years ago. She bought the farm.’ A frown dented his brow. ‘I didn’t want her going into that much debt, but you know Mila, headstrong to a fault. I actually wondered if that’s why she was marrying Phil, for financial assistance, but she denied it.’

Adelaide heard what Jack said but she couldn’t compute it.

He’d sold the farm.

He’d built this cottage.

Her dream home.

And he’d lived here for five years.

What the hell?

Why couldn’t he have been so flexible when they’d been living together? Why hadn’t he acknowledged what she’d wanted, rather than shooting down every suggestion she made for them to have a better life away from the farm? Why hadn’t he seen how unhappy she was and done something, anything, as an incentive for her to stay?

Adelaide didn’t regret a single moment of the last fourteen years, when she’d found happiness and reawakened parts of herself she’d thought lost forever during the fraught years of her marriage. But the realisation that Jack had followed through on a part ofherdream rankled. A hell of a lot.

Unless he didn’t remember and had built this by pure chance? Only one way to find out.

‘Why did you build my dream house?’

The telltale flush staining his cheeks gave her an answer before he spoke. ‘I like sandstone too.’

A lame response and he knew it.

‘I’m glad your new partner has more influence over you than I ever had,’ she muttered, bitterness lending bite to her words.

Not that she had a right to give him grief. She’d walked away from him without looking back. She shouldn’t begrudge him happiness. Especially considering she hadn’t been celibate in the years since she’d left. But seeing concrete evidence of what she’d once wanted from him, and he’d never been invested enough to give it to her, infuriated her.

Confusion creased his brow. ‘I don’t have a partner.’

She snorted. ‘It’s okay, Jack, my feelings won’t be hurt if you’ve moved on.’ She hesitated, realising he’d given her the perfect segue to start the discussion they needed to have. ‘In fact, why don’t we put the past behind us once and for all?’ A gentle way of leading into the divorce conversation they needed to have.

He blanched, his pain-filled eyes stark in his face. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It’s been long enough. Isn’t it what you want too?’

‘You’ve never been particularly interested in what I want,’ he mumbled, shooting to his feet and stalking towards the window so she had no hope of reading the expression on his face.

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