If she had any skeletons in her closet they were deeply hidden.
‘Do you have another room?’ Marisa heard the quiver in her voice that stopped just the right side of hysteria, and bit down on her full lower lip while buying time to regain her composure by making a meal of smoothing back non-existent loose strands of shiny silver-blonde hair that was safely secured in a smooth simple knot on the nape of her swanlike neck.
She knew she had to pull herself together, but unfortunately knowing that was no help right now.
‘Another room? This is one of our—’
‘Sorry, yes, this is marvellous,’ she gushed. ‘But...something...on a lower floor, perhaps? I... I don’t have a very good head for heights.’
‘Of course, if you’ll just bear with me for a moment.’ The man pulled out a slim tablet and began to scroll through it.
Get a grip, Marisa, she told herself fiercely, if for no other reason than this poor man who was only doing his job looked as if he wanted to run for the hills—and who could blame him? Scared of heights? She was beyond feeling embarrassed, no doubt that would come later when she revisited this moment—in her nightmares!
The gut-freezing panic had hit her the moment the taxi drew up outside the hotel. The signage on the well-known art deco frontage was ultra-discreet—it didn’t need to be flashy; everyone knew the iconic façade of the Madrigal—but to Marisa those letters had seemed to be written in neon and came accompanied by a loud soundtrack of guilt and shame.…She still couldn’t remember how she had got out of the taxi, as the sheer horror of the moment had blanked her brain completely.
Of course it ought not to have been a shock, wouldn’t have if she’d been paying attention. Her delicate dark blonde brows drew together in a straight line above her heavily lashed amber eyes. Even distracted, she had managed to hide her disappointment when her assistant, Jennie, had triumphantly announced that she’d managed the impossible and secured an alternative last-minute venue after their original booking at a country-house hotel had fallen through.
She could remember Jennie mentioning the prestige of the alternative venue, she had to have mentioned the name, but Marisa’s mind had been elsewhere and she hadn’t registered it. No, because she’d been too busy torturing herself with every possible, and highly improbable, disaster that could occur in her absence.
Her glance darted around the room, reached the slightly open bedroom door and retracted hastily, focusing instead on her feet clad in leg-elongating nude court shoes that added four inches to her willowy five feet ten inches.
She brought her lashes down in a protective sweep over eyes that continued to be drawn to that open door, her mouth twisted in frustration as she acknowledged all the missed opportunities that would have at least given her time, if not to avoid this moment, then to at the very least prepare herself for it.
Even as late as getting in the taxi would have been something, she thought, considering another missed opportunity. Jennie had waited until she was in the cab before they’d parted company, her PA heading towards the Tube to spend some well-deserved time off with her family. Jennie had to have given the driver the address of the hotel, but again Marisa’s thoughts had been elsewhere.
Where was a convenient icy shiver of premonition when a girl needed one?
Up to the point the taxi had pulled in, she hadn’t even glanced out of the window. Instead, she had spent the journey from the station scrolling through some emails and checking in with Jamie’s nanny, Ashley, who had responded to her anxious questions with cheery positivity and a series of soothing photos of Marisa’s four-and-a-half-year-old clearly having the time of his life at junior soccer practice.
It wasn’t that she doubted Ashley’s competence, but this was the first time she had left Jamie since he’d been given the all-clear by the doctors.
Up to this point, any trip away from home had deliberately not included an overnight stay, or if it had, she had taken Jamie with her. This was a big step for her, though less so, it seemed, for Jamie, who had been too busy playing with a new computer game to do more than give her a casual wave before he got back to his screen.
On one level she knew that he was fine, he was safe, and she knew her fear had no basis in logic but, as she had already discovered, it wasn’t always about logic. When you had lived with fear this long it was something that was hard to let go of. For so long she had been afraid of losing her precious son and—She took a deep breath and deliberately dampened the panic she could feel rising. No, she told herself, repeating the phrase like a mantra, she was not going to lose him, because he was healthy now.
Her son was a survivor, one of the lucky ones, and he had made a complete recovery. Despite the fact he was noticeably smaller and more delicate-looking than his contemporaries, Jamie was, so the medics told her, as fit and robust as any other four-year-old and would soon catch up developmentally.
The assistant manager cleared his throat and lowered his tablet. ‘We do have an alternative room although it is not as—’
‘That’s tremendous, thank you so much. I’ll take it.’
Reaching for her sunglasses, she slid them on her small straight nose, hiding behind the tinted glass as she dredged deep to produce a faint smile.
‘Right then, if you can give me a few moments I will make the necessary arrangements. The room is on the second floor—will that do?’
‘That’s fine. It’s just the balcony up here that bothers me.’ She stopped, well aware that the balcony she spoke of was not actually visible from where they stood.
‘I understand totally.’
Luckily for her he didn’t.
‘I will be back momentarily.’ He held out
