For a brief moment, Faye looked bewildered. ‘Bloody hell, Jake, why didn’t you tell me?’
Jake sighed. ‘I did yell out.’
Marcus got quickly to his feet, keeping a wary eye on Faye.
Faye propped the fork by the door and stepped inside. Broken glass splintered beneath her feet.
Jake was having difficulty getting up from the floor without using his hands. Marcus caught his arm at the elbow and helped him up. Once on his feet, Jake roughly pulled his arm from Marcus’s grasp.
‘Hey!’ Marcus took a step back in surprise. ‘I was only trying to help.’
‘I think you’ve helped enough for one day, don’t you?’ Jake said. Holding his hands out in front of him, he headed for the kitchen.
Marcus frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He took off after Jake.
Faye shut the back door, trying to avoid treading on more broken glass. ‘Shall I clear this mess up?’
‘No, thanks,’ Jake called back to her. ‘I’m used to picking up the pieces,’ he added sarcastically, throwing Marcus a black look over his shoulder.
Jake reached the kitchen; the door was shut. He stood helplessly in front of it.
Marcus caught up. ‘So, you need my help now,’ he said, sounding smug.
‘Don’t be petty. Just open the damn door; I’m bleeding all over my hallway.’
Marcus drew in a sharp breath in mock horror. ‘Heaven forbid you should get a stain on that rug – never mind if you bleed to death.’
‘I’d rather bleed to death in the kitchen, if it’s all the same to you.’ Jake was rather fond of the rug.
‘Linoleum; easy to clean,’ Marcus shook his head. ‘There’s nothing like getting your priorities straight.’
‘Oh, that’s a good one coming from you. Lydia was frantic. She phoned me in a panic this morning.’
Faye wandered up the hallway, listening to Jake and Marcus bicker. She stopped at the rug and looked at the cricket bat. She knelt down to pick it up and placed the bat in the umbrella stand, where she guessed Jake kept it. Then she noticed a blood stain on the rug.
Jake and Marcus continued to bicker outside the kitchen door. Faye decided now was probably not a good time to mention the soiled rug.
Faye walked up behind Jake and Marcus and stood there, shaking her head. She found it slightly amusing; neither would back down. This was a side of Jake she had never seen before. They were both behaving like kids in a playground.
After a short time, Faye decided she had heard enough. She said loudly, ‘If you two children would excuse me …’ She barged between them to open the kitchen door.
‘What did she just call us?’ Marcus said to Jake as they followed her into the kitchen.
‘Losers,’ said Jake knowing exactly what Faye had been thinking; they were behaving like idiots. What was it about Marcus that brought out the worst in him? It hadn’t always been this way. Now, when he was around Marcus, Jake could feel his capacity for rational adult judgement giving way to a child’s raw emotion. That was why he needed to stay away from him; there were times he wondered just what he might be capable of doing. There was a very real possibility that one day he would just lose it and lash out. He sighed. He felt like he should have let Faye poke Marcus in the ribs with the garden fork.
Jake sat at the kitchen table and watched Marcus take a seat opposite. He wanted Marcus to get the hell out of his house.
Every call from Lydia signalled the start of a waking nightmare. The same picture went through his mind when he got the call: Marcus, still dressed for work, expensive suit, long wool coat, Gucci watch, and completely out if it – a walking beacon in the wrong neighbourhood, a death waiting to happen. Could he bear the thought of finding Marcus beaten, mugged, and dead in the gutter? No. And yet still he went looking, every time.
Jake thought about how many times William had asked him why he and Marcus weren’t friends anymore. William didn’t understand why they couldn’t just patch up their differences. William was under the impression that it was all because Jake had left the company. Jake wasn’t about to tell anybody what had really caused this deep, bitter rift between them – least of all William. If William knew what had really happened, there was a strong possibility that Marcus would not only have lost his sister and his best friend, but his father as well. Jake couldn’t be that cruel.
He had to face the fact that he still loved the guy. He’d known Marcus most of his life; that friendship hadn’t just vanished overnight. But on top of losing Eleanor, he was seriously beginning to doubt whether he could take much more. If Marcus couldn’t clean up his act, Jake knew that for his own sanity, he needed to cut Marcus out of his life.
There was a solution; Marcus could return to America. Without Jake to torment, maybe these episodes would stop. Perhaps Marcus and Lydia could get back to some sort of normality. Lydia would be up for it – returning home to America. Marcus could do with just taking himself off to an island, relaxing on a beautiful beach and getting himself together. Marcus’s father owned the whole company. Financially speaking, Marcus really didn’t have to lift a finger. His father wasn’t one of those types who’d cut off his children if they didn’t work. Marcus could have just sat on some exotic beach, waitingfor it all to pass to him some day.
Jake stole a glance at Marcus as they both took a seat at the kitchen table, and knew it wasn’t that simple. Life never was. Marcus wouldn’t return of his own volition. He’d been promoted to COO, Chief Operating Officer, the role just below the CEO of the company. He now oversaw the daily operations of the company, reporting to his father, William Ross, the CEO. To everybody’s surprise, William had effectively stepped down. He was still the CEO, but these days he was more likely to be found whiling away his time on a golf course than in a board meeting.
Marcus was now the head of the Ross Corporation in all but name. To do that job, Marcus was based primarily in London. Of course, he hadn’t had to take on that role. In fact, Jake really had no clue how anyone could hold down such a position while carrying on the way he was after work.
