True.
She plucked at the duvet. ‘Maybe I am, but should I be? I need advice, Sadie. I don’t know what to do, or how to feel. Please, tell me what you think.’
‘Oh, Lordy...’ Sadie drew in a weighty breath. ‘Are you sure you want to hear?’
‘Yes.’ Because Sadie was older, wiser, the closest thing she had to a mother. Plus, Sadie was generally right about everything.
‘Okay, well, for a start, I think you’re head over heels in love with him.’
Her heart paused. Impossible! Because Will was practically a stranger. Yes, she liked him. A lot. Cared about him a lot. And yes, he was under her skin, but only because he was a bit damaged, and that kind of thing always tugged at her heartstrings.
As for those other tugs and tingles she was always feeling around him—the ones that happened when his eyes crinkled or his nice shoulders shifted—par for the course, surely, because, as Sadie said, Will was gorgeous. And yes, his kiss had put the hex on her, got her craving and pining, which symptoms maybe did bear some resemblance to a love type of yearning, but equally, it could just be a physical thing—infatuation! Just a stupid crush playing her for a fool, trying to turn her against the door one scenario, which was clearly the most sensible and enduring one.
She adjusted her grip on the phone. ‘I think you’re wrong.’
‘Well, let’s pretend I’m not. Let’s pretend that you and Will love each other, so we can deal with your biggest fear: that if it doesn’t work out, you lose your connection to the Thacker family.’
‘All right...’
‘Question: what would you actually be losing? I mean, to be blunt, Anthony’s gone. You’ll always have your memories, that connection, but you never met Judy, and you never had much to do with Will in the past, so if things were to end, then, aside from losing a straggle of random outliers, what is there, really, to cling to, except an idea? And I know how important the idea of family is to you, I know you were devoted to Anthony, and I get why you’ve taken his dying wishes to heart, but what I think—straight up—is that you’re letting your loyalties get in the way, and pointlessly.
‘Anthony did a good thing by you, Quinn, but by his own admission he made plenty of mistakes in his life. It seems crazy to me that you’d deny yourself a chance at love with Will for his sake, especially when Will clearly has feelings for you too.’
‘Oh, God, Sadie...’
Way to mess her up even more, dangling possibilities from Will’s side—possibilities that, thinking about it... She felt her heart giving.
The way he’d turned round at the airport and come back, guidebook in hand. The way he’d pulled her over to the railing at Miradouro de São Pedro to reassure her he was all for avant-garde—not just for it but coming up with ideas of his own! Clowning all the time to make her laugh. Confiding in her about Judy. Oh, and dancing by the Tagus! Looking out for her all the time, taking care of her. Keeping tabs. Always capitulating...apologising...trying. Bringing her home from the airport for the sake of their stupid pact, bent on showing her his nicest side. She felt her throat constricting, tears welling. As if he even had any other side!
‘And as for this business of helping him find his so-called light, you seem to think it must be something he plucks out of himself, that it shouldn’t have anything to do with you, but what if it does?’
Her heart stumbled. ‘What?’
‘I’m saying, what if Anthony meant you to be Will’s light?’
Her heart stopped dead. ‘Don’t be daft—Anthony wasn’t matchmaking! He didn’t think like that. He was categorically the most unromantic man I’ve ever known.’
‘Well, tying you both into a prolonged hotel renovation sounds like a pretty foxy move to me.’
‘But he...’
Sadie wasn’t right. Couldn’t be. Could she? What did it matter anyway? Anthony was gone, so there was no asking him. No making sense of anything.
‘I can hear your cogs whirring, Quinn.’ Sadie sighed. ‘Maybe the best advice I can actually give you is to stop thinking so hard.’
‘After just giving me a whole lot more to think about!’
‘It’s only conjecture. What isn’t is that Will saw you to your door, which shows he’s trying to right the ship.’ She paused. ‘You can come back from this. The project’s a long one. You’ve got time to work things out, get to know each other better. Who knows, maybe you did the right thing, calling a halt this time.’
‘What do you mean, this time?’
‘Just that I think there’ll be a next time...’ And then there was an extended pause, a sense of distraction. ‘Listen, love, I’ve got to go. Fred’s signalling through the door. Looks like trouble in the dorm.’
‘Okay, go!’
But Sadie was already gone.
She parked her phone and sank back into the pillows. How not to think about Will and everything that went with him? How not to miss him...want him? Still, as Sadie said, they had time, and maybe that was exactly what she needed. Time to straighten out her head, and find out what was really going on in her heart.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MARION’S HEAD BOBBED round the door. ‘I’m off now.’ Her eyes made a quick assessing sweep of his face. ‘There’s a plate in the fridge for you.’
As if he could eat anything while his brain was burning like this. But if he didn’t show her some enthusiasm she would only worry. Bizarre that the housekeeper seemed to care more about him than his own mother did.
He smiled into her eyes. ‘Thanks, I’ll get it later.’
‘Make sure you do.’ Her lips flattened. ‘You look tired.’
‘I am...’ Tired, wrung out, confused, sad. Could she see it? No matter. He wasn’t up for talking about it. He smiled again. ‘Have a good evening, Marion.’
‘You too, Will.’
Footsteps echoing, fading. Door banging. Silence.
He got up to refill his glass then slumped back down on the sofa. Could it really be that all he was to Quinn was a link in a chain she didn’t want to break? If so, wouldn’t he have felt it, seen it for what it was? Or was his lens so twisted by love that he’d put a rosy spin on that light in her eyes, seeing it as warmer, fonder, deeper than it really was?
He drank, felt the whisky burning. No. Yesterday, it had definitely felt like it, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe his lens was rose-tinted, but the way she’d leapt up to hug him when he found her in that café was real. Pure joy. All weekend long, that same feeling: connection, affection. Back and forth. He wasn’t imagining it. And he wasn’t imagining the way she’d kissed him back either, all warm, sliding her arms around his neck. Pulling away but in the same breath saying she wanted to—‘so much’—but couldn’t because all her relationships went bad, that she couldn’t bear it if it happened with him, couldn’t bear to lose him. Then the sucker punch. That stupid, precious, incomprehensible link!
