Kitty French - Knight and Day

Suzie had been a symptom rather than the cause. It hadn’t even hurt that she’d left him to shack up with Donovan, the very guy to whom both of his brothers had gambled their lives away to, the very same guy who had taken everything Dylan owned beside the shirt on his back in recompense for Justin’s unpaid debts. It had been a stark choice. His club, or his brother. The fact that his wife had thrown herself into the equation too barely even registered. He’d made the choice he wished he’d been able to make for Billy. He did it for Billy, and to save his mother from the heartache of burying another son.

“He’s been tested,” Suzie said, nodding down at the baby. “He’s not Donovan’s. He even looks like a fucking McKenzie.”

Dylan digested her words, every one a death knell for him.

“So what… you’ve come here after money?” Dylan guessed. “If he’s my child then you know I’ll pay.”

“I don’t want your money,” she said. “And I don’t want your child, either.”

He jerked his head up, not understanding, and she shrugged.

“Come on, Matthew. Do you really think Donny’s going to raise a McKenzie brat?”

It had been a long night. Given time to absorb the facts and think about it, Dylan wouldn’t have wanted Donovan anywhere near his son either. But as it was, in his state of numb shock, he needed her to spell things out for him.

“Suzie… what are you actually saying?”

She stood up, and thrust the pushchair towards him. “He’s three weeks old. Everything you need for him is in his bag.”

“Suzie, for fuck’s sake!” Panic galvanised Dylan onto his feet, knocking into the pushchair handles. “You’re his mother, he needs you. You can’t just walk away from him.”

She was doing exactly that. She turned her back and set off across the sand.

“Suzie! Jesus, Suzie, stop! I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do with a baby.”

His former wife paused and turned around, her hands flung out to the sides.

“So learn. Or give him up. I don’t really care either way as long as I get on that plane without him.”

“You can’t mean that,” he said, appalled.

Suzie sighed and looked at him flatly. “Donovan loves me, Matthew. He takes care of me. He has money.”

Dylan laughed. “Yeah, my fucking money.”

Suzie shrugged, stony-eyed. “He has money,” she said again. “He doesn’t want your kid.” She glanced back at the baby, just once, but her expression didn’t change. “Feed him every few hours. Change his nappy. It’s not fucking rocket science.”

The baby stirred, opening his eyes and blinking up at Dylan. He had Billy’s eyes.

“What’s his name?”

Suzie paused, almost embarrassed. “He doesn’t have one.”

Dylan sighed heavily at Suzie's retreating back. "He does now."

She walked away without a backward glance, off towards Justin further up the beach, off back home without her ex-husband’s bastard child weighing her down.

Kara drove aimlessly, following the coast road. She couldn’t go back to the villa. It was Sophie and Lucien’s wedding night. If she went back now, they’d rally round her, enveloping her in hugs, wiping her eyes, plying her with brandy as she spilled the whole sorry tale of how she’d been deceived again. Sophie would comfort her, and Lucien would want to kill Dylan, and their wedding day memories would be forever tarnished. Kara had enough experience of that herself to know that she couldn’t and wouldn't inflict it on her best friends.

The traffic around her thickened, and she found herself amongst the brash lights and raucous revellers of San Antonio, otherwise known as party central. She could park up the Mustang and lose herself here amongst these people. Drink until she couldn’t remember who she was. Screw someone without even asking his name, and forget the man who hadn’t loved her enough to bother even telling her the truth about his own.

People spilled out onto the pavements from the neon-lit bars on either side of the road, laughing, shouting, kissing.

She drove on, leaden-hearted, until the lights thinned out again, and then on some more, meandering around the island until she found herself drawn to somewhere familiar. She swung the Mustang down a sandy lane, nosed through the fringe of pine trees, and turned off the engine as her wheels touched the edge of the sand.

And there she stayed all night, dry-eyed and empty-hearted, overlooking the beach where she’d made love beside a campfire with a make-believe man called Dylan Day.

One look at Kara’s pale face when she walked into the villa at just after seven the following morning was enough to tell Sophie that something was very, very wrong.

Why was she here at all? Sophie frowned, trying to make sense of it amongst the happy detritus of yesterday in her head. Kara was supposed to be with loved up with Dylan. All thoughts of the blissful wedding night she'd just spent with Lucien flew from her mind as she put the coffee cups down with a clatter and half-ran across the room.

“Kara,” she cried, taking in her best friend’s dishevelled bridesmaid dress and mascara-streaked cheeks. “What happened?” Her mind raced with disastrous scenarios. Had there been an accident? “Is Dylan okay?” she pressed. It had to be Dylan. Kara’s face was ashen as she put down her keys and shook her head.

“No.”

Kara’s expression was so foreboding that Sophie’s hands flew to her cheeks and tears spiked her eyelashes. “What’s happened? Tell me, Kara. What is it?”

Kara lifted her tired eyes, realising that Sophie had misunderstood.

“Don’t worry Soph,” she sighed. “He isn’t hurt.”

Relief unclouded Sophie’s features, followed swiftly by confusion and concern. “So… what is it, then?”

Kara flopped wearily on the sofa and Sophie followed her, tight with anxiety. At that moment, Lucien appeared up the stairs, his hair still mussed from Sophie’s fingers, naked aside from his oldest, most loved pair of jeans, T-shirt in hand. The honeymooner smile dropped from his mouth as he looked at their two faces: Sophie’s worried and Kara’s something far, far worse. In a moment he was hunkered down next to them, his senses on high alert, a feeling of apprehension chilling him and overriding the warmth of the morning.

Sophie rubbed Kara’s back, willing her to explain, willing her to be all right.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Kara put her elbows on her knees and dropped her forehead on her palms.

“Just about everything, Soph.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, each of them wrestling with their own questions. Sophie knew that Kara had been planning to declare her love to Dylan. Had he thrown it back in her face? Thinking back to Dylan’s expression as he’d danced with Kara at the wedding yesterday, she couldn’t make any sense of it if so. He loved her, of that much Sophie was certain.

Lucien sat on Kara’s other side, deeply troubled. He knew more about Dylan than either of the women beside him. Had he been complicit in Kara’s distress by holding his silence? Could he have prevented this?

“I’ve been an idiot all over again,” Kara said at last, her eyes downcast. “A gullible, stupid fucking idiot.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. She was tired - really, really tired - and as Sophie’s arm settled around her shoulders and she leaned into her for comfort, her remaining self-possession deserted her.

“Lies, Soph. Lie, after lie, after lie.” She batted the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, furious with herself for crying over him. “I didn’t even know his fucking name.”

She knew that she wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, and she loved Sophie for listening without asking all of the questions that must be racing through her head at that moment. “I thought I loved him, and I didn’t even know his name.” It seemed ridiculous, it sounded ridiculous.

“And do you know it now?” Lucien asked, low and ultra calm.

“Matthew.” A long breath left Kara’s body, and she closed her eyes again. “His name is Matthew.” She didn’t even like saying the word. It seemed so utterly unconnected with the man she thought she knew.

Sophie frowned over her friend’s dipped head at Lucien, unsure of what was going on, and even more confused by the fact that Lucien didn’t seem all that surprised.

“He isn’t who I thought he was,” Kara said, to neither of them in particular.

“But why would he do that?” Sophie said. “I don’t understand why he’d lie.”

“Maybe he had his reasons,” Lucien said, careful to keep his tone neutral.

“Oh, he had his reasons,” Kara said, and a harsh laugh rattled in her throat. “I met them on the beach last night. His wife, and his child.”

“Oh no, Kara,” Sophie whispered, realising the extent of the betrayal Kara was trying to process. She squeezed her friend’s ramrod-stiff shoulder tighter. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. “I’m so sorry, darling.”

“Fuck,” Lucien said. “Fuck.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair and stood up, grabbing his T-shirt from where he’d dropped it and shrugging it over his head. “I’m going down there.”

“Lucien, don’t.” Kara said dully. “There’s no point.”

Sophie glanced up, knowing from his dark, purposeful expression that Kara’s words wouldn’t stop him. He grabbed his keys from the stone side table and stalked out of the door.

Betrayal burned hot in Lucien’s mind as he drove down the coast. He’d trusted Dylan too. He’d brought the man into their lives and their home, and he’d covered for him when the chips were down. But a wife, and a child? He couldn’t fathom how they fitted into the picture that Dylan had drawn for him. Lucien trusted his own instincts, and cheating jarred with everything in his mental assessment of Dylan Day. But it was hardly something that Kara could have been mistaken about. He could almost feel his brain unpicking all of the ties that he’d thought had bound them together as similar men, re-assessing, distancing himself from someone he’d thought he had the measure of.

It wasn't just injured pride at having been taken in. It cut deeper than that. Lucien had lowered his guard because he’d thought they were friends, and his life had felt richer because of it. He thumped his hand down on the steering wheel, furious with Dylan, and also with himself.

He’d let Dylan into their lives, and it was down to him to kick him out again.

Today he was going to lose not only his club manager, but also someone he’d come to think of as a kindred spirit and true friend.

It had not been an easy night aboard the Love Tug.

Dylan didn’t even know how to hold a baby, let alone feed one or change its nappy. Suzie had left him with two drums of formula milk powder, a packet of nappies, four sleep suits, a half used pack of wipes, an open shaker of baby powder… and the baby. Surely the baby needed more than this to stay alive?

Feed him every few hours, she’d said. On what? How much? How often? He had no clue, and his head was all kinds of screwed up. He couldn’t think about Kara, because every thought of her hit him like a blow to the stomach and rendered him even more incapable of caring for the tiny human being now sharing the Love Tug. A tiny human being with massive lung capacity, if the amount of screaming he’d done during the night was anything to go by.

Out of frustration, he’d considered emailing his mother at around three am, desperate to know how to make the baby stop the head-splitting noise. But then he’d thought it through, and he’d known she’d put herself on the first flight out, even though she had a pathological fear of flying, and he’d feel like a complete shit when she got here and saw him living on a freak show boat with a wild-haired baby, outcast and jobless to boot. So he’d picked the baby up instead, and one whiff had told him exactly why he was howling like a banshee.

The amount of crap one small baby could produce had been a revelation that Dylan could really have done without in the small hours of the morning, when his life had just crashed down around his ears. As it was, the baby was plastered, all up his back, down his legs… it was a full stripdown situation. Dylan heaved his way through the process of peeling the baby’s clothes off and wiping him down, finally resorting to dunking him in the tiny kitchen sink, where he screamed even louder throughout his unceremonious bath.