And all the time he’d been making love, he’d been leaving her.

Max’s phone call came through as Dominic’s plane was taxiing into Qatar for refuelling.

‘You made the right decision, Nick.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Dominic said curtly. ‘I’m in a fucking lousy mood.’

‘Are we still on for Paris next week?’

‘Of course. Reschedule yesterday’s meeting for next week in the Paris office. I’ll be staying at the apartment in Paris for the foreseeable future. See that Liv gets a cheque for the philharmonic. That’s it.’ Dominic ended the call, held up his empty glass, waited impatiently for the steward to refill it and once it was returned, drank down half the whisky in one long swallow. Then he leaned his head back on the seat, shut his eyes, swore, instantly opened them again.

She was always there, in his brain, on his retinas, the taste of her on his tongue. He had no expectation of sleep in the coming weeks; if he shut his eyes she was smiling at him, tempting him, making him reckless, making him heedless of everything that mattered in his life. He’d been willing to jeopardize his company, or at least a good part of it, because of her. He’d almost gone off the deep end because of her. Missed meetings, pissed off people, hadn’t looked at his email in three days. Apologized more times than he’d ever apologized in his life. Fuck it.

He wasn’t meant to have a normal life.

He didn’t know what normal was.

But denials and disclaimers aside, he took out his phone a hundred times between Hong Kong and Paris, pulled up two photos and stared at them, thinking each time he should stop punishing himself and delete them. But he never did.

He’d taken a photo from the doorway of his bedroom before he left, wanting a memory of Katherine in his house, his bed.

The second photo was a zoomed-in close-up, the detail so good he wanted to touch her each time he looked at it.

Jesus Christ, life was complicated.

And fucking miserable.

Within the hour, Kate came back downstairs, carrying her overnight bag, and handed Leo the letter she’d written. ‘Please see that Dominic gets this. I think there’s a cab outside for me.’ She left Hong Kong soon after, having paid an outrageous price for a non-stop ticket to New York which was the closest she could get to Boston on short notice. She wouldn’t have flown on Dominic’s plane if the apocalypse was imminent and his plane was the last one on earth, after the shock of his leaving without so much as a goodbye. Or even a handshake. That forced her to smile, the thought of parting with a handshake after days of practically non-stop sex.

And he’d been good for something other than sex too – the salary he’d paid her was enough to keep her in comfort for a year. She’d earned it; she had no compunction taking it. But she deliberately left everything else behind: the clothes, the jewels, the matching shoes in every colour of the rainbow, the lingerie, the sex toys he must buy in bulk.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t always known what kind of man he was. She’d gone in eyes wide open. He was never going to hand her his heart; she wasn’t sure he had one. And why should he commit to her when he could have any woman he wanted?

It would be convenient if she could hate him for leaving her before she could leave him. It would be even more useful if she didn’t love him. But then, life wasn’t perfect; it sucked you in or threw a curve or stacked the deck when you were naively admiring its perfection. Or, in her case, ignoring reality with a man who could make you forget the entire world when he was making love to you.

She fought back tears constantly on her journey home. Dominic was always in her thoughts, her memory, her pitifully beating heart. He was a constant presence, an unflagging fantasy, a forlorn desire. One could be practical about whether or not a relationship would work, but that didn’t mean your decision made you happy. Or even slightly happy. Or even in the same planet as happy.

She tried to read on the long flight, watched movies without seeing them, finally resorted to drinking. She arrived at Logan Airport in Boston on a commuter flight from New York twenty-six hours later, weary in body and spirit and more than slightly inebriated.

Which may have accounted for her explosive burst of tears when she found the pile of Hermès luggage in the middle of her living room floor. She wasn’t sobbing because someone had broken into her home, nor was she lamenting the fact that privacy no longer existed. What made her collapse in tearful prostration was the note that had been left on top of the luggage. The heavy white stock bore the initials DGK centre top in a dark blue modern font, the message written in a broad, heavy scrawl in matching dark blue ink.

Wear these sometime and think of me – of us.

Fondly,

Dominic

She finally stopped crying when she ran out of tears.

The next day, she even managed to smile the tiniest bit when she dragged her laptop onto her bed, booted it up and checked her email.

Dominic had responded to her letter, even though he shouldn’t have. Even though he’d tried to talk himself out of answering her for the better part of the night. He didn’t mention the part where she’d said she couldn’t lose her wits and reason completely, or the part about how wonderful it had been. Or the part about the madness. He didn’t mention any of that because she was the clusterfuck in his head, his burning temptation, his road to ruin and he understood.

He kept it simple:

I like the part where you adore me, but that part about my frozen heart. Ouch. FYI as you can see above I’ve changed my personal email address and my personal cell phone number. In case you ever want to call or write me.