He laughed harshly. 'What just happened there? Do you really want to know what just happened there, showgirl?' He moved away from her because he could feel rage tightening his chest. He settled for grabbing hold of the chair, gripping the back so hard that his knuckles popped white against his tanned hands.

'You made me sit on this... f.u.c.king... chair...' he banged it down hard on the stage to punctuate his sentence, drawing pleasure from the way she flinched. 'And you flaunted your f.u.c.king body in my face until you got what you f.u.c.king... well... wanted...'

She stood her ground, glaring at him as he slammed the chair down again. 'You wanted it just as much.'

He held onto the chairback with one hand, scrubbing the other over his jaw and closing his eyes.

'I'm not proud of it,' he said, so quietly that he thought she probably wouldn't hear him over the rain drumming loudly on the roof.

'Well you should be,' she said, stepping closer, her face softening. 'No one's ever made me feel the way you just did.'

'Then you've obviously been f.u.c.king the wrong men,' he answered, hating the idea of her with anyone else. 'It wasn't good, or special. It was a f.u.c.k, and now it's over and I need a shower.'

Her face told him his words hurt, and he didn't have the vocabulary or the composure to make her understand him in a less painful way. She'd never understand. How could she? How could he tell her of the huge ball of shame and fear that had lived inside him since he'd been a six-year-old kid?

'You need a shower,' she repeated his words back at him, her eyes turning stormy. 'Why, to wash me off your skin?'

To wash her off, and to wash the whole sorry, rancid day off; the encounter with his mother, the truth about his father, the grief for his grandmother.

'What do you want from me, Genie? Lies about how it meant something? Do you expect me to buy you roses and hold your coat while you spend your evenings entertaining as many men as you can fit into your s.h.i.tty little theatre? Because it's never going to happen.'

He didn't add that he'd already spent too many years of his life waiting for the attention of a woman who'd spent her evenings entertaining as many men as she could muster.

'Don't mock me,' she said, squaring her shoulders.

'Then stop f.u.c.king with me,' he shot back. 'Stop trying to prove your f.u.c.king point at every chance you get. Stop shoving it down my throat. You win, okay? You. f.u.c.king. Win. You made me do the one thing I swore I wouldn't. What more do you want from me?'

'The one thing?' she said, glaring at him. 'What one thing?'

His blood pounded unnaturally fast around his body. Rationally, he knew Genie wasn't a wh.o.r.e. But emotionally, right down deep inside the darkest part of him, he couldn't keep the distinction clear. She blurred the lines, dancing between showgirl and stripper and hooker, leaving him utterly disorientated, feeling like a kid again. She held the power, down here at least, and he didn't know how to get it back. Besides attacking her with insults and belittling the overwhelming s.e.x they'd just had. He heard his own voice, knew he sounded desperate, unhinged, making no sense. With an effort, he tried to pull himself back.

'Stop it, Genie.'

She heard his quiet warning, and she laughed aloud. 'Stop what?' She threw her hands out to the sides. 'Stop calling you out for lying about what happened here tonight?'

'I'm asking you nicely,' he said, his hands a vice around the chair. 'Go to bed. Please go to bed.'

'You don't get to screw me over my lamp and then dismiss me from my own stage, Abel Kingdom,' she declared, braver than she should have been.

'And you don't get to tell me what to do,' he said, his head swimming with images of her spread out for him on the lamp, and then spread out for everyone else to look at tomorrow. He didn't see the stage costume she wore for everyone else. He saw only her naked curves and her wild red waves, his fantasy tonight and someone else's tomorrow. He saw red, fury, frustration, and he couldn't hold it back any longer.

Lifting the chair above his head, he swung it down hard over the lamp, smashing both the back of the chair and the lid of the glittering prop. Rhinestones scattered the stage, and beside him Genie shouted at him to stop.

Let her shout.

Let her scream.

The blood pounding in his head and the rolling thunder outside drowned her out anyway. He looked at the broken chair in his hands for a second and then brought it down again hard over the back of the lamp, watching as a huge crack opened up down the side of it.

She was yelling, screaming his name, but he didn't stop. He couldn't. The rage burned bright in his chest, and he threw what was left of the chair to the floor and set about wrenching the lamp apart with his bare hands. He was bleeding and still he tore at it, stamped on it with his bare feet, deaf to the sound of her voice and the storm crashing around outside, on and on until all that was left on the bare stage boards was an unrecognisable pile of gilt and crystal encrusted fragments.

Abel stilled, finally done, on his knees, his face wet with sweat and angry tears when he covered it with his blood-streaked hands.

She was still there when he looked up, damp cheeked with her arms wrapped around herself, vulnerable in his too big shirt. Her wide, shocked eyes locked with his, stripping him down to the bare metal. She saw him. Saw everything there was to see laid bare in front of her; the badness, the unlovable boy, the inadequate man. She saw inside him, and still she crossed the stage and knelt amongst the carnage to hold him.

Over the theatre a white bolt of lightning lit up the night sky, and neither of them saw the storm-damaged rafters fall until a split second before the debris tumbled down towards the stage, too late for anything to be done except for Abel to hurl his body over Genie's in a belated, instinctive gesture of protection.

Chapter Sixteen.

Genie sat on a front row seat and stared at the same ugly debris again several days later, still barely able to comprehend what had happened. She shouldn't even have been in there. The fire service and building safety inspectors had taken one look at the damage and declared the place unsafe.

The fact that the theatre was a listed building vastly complicated any prospect of repair. And then there was the cost. The roof had already been in need of serious work, and after the storm damage, it now needed replacing entirely. Hundreds of thousands of pounds she didn't have, and never would have now, thanks to the storm. She'd just come off the phone with Ada, who'd regretfully informed her that given their tight filming schedules, Dalton productions had no choice but to withdraw their offer to use the theatre as a movie set and look for somewhere else.

That was that then. No money. No roof. No theatre. No home. No job.

And then in amongst all of that misery, she'd lost Abel Kingdom too.

'Genie?'

She turned at the sound of her uncle's voice, and gave him a small, sad smile as he made his way down the central aisle and came to sit beside her.

'I knew I'd find you here,' he said. 'But sitting staring at it isn't going to help.'

She nodded, her eyes on the stage. 'For a while there I really did think I was going to do it,' she said, reflecting on what might have been. She'd told her uncle everything about Dalton Productions after the storm, and was only glad she hadn't told him before so that he didn't have to feel as gutted as she was.

'I know,G. I'm proud of you for even trying.' He patted her jean-clad knee and sighed heavily. 'Sometimes I think things happen for a reason. Maybe this is the old girl's way of telling us it's time to move on.'

Tears stung her eyes. 'I don't want to,' she said. 'I want to live here again with you, like we used to.'

He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her his handkerchief to wipe her eyes, just as he always had.

'I'd like that too, darling, but look up. Look around. There's a chance the insurance might cover some of it, but they knew it was already in need of work,' he said gently. 'And the time it would take. How long before we could start turning any sort of profit again?' He sighed and looked at her, forcing himself to be honest. 'Besides, it's more than that. It's me. These weeks of living with Robin have shown me that there is life outside of here. I'm no spring chicken anymore G.' He squeezed her tight. 'Those high heels are playing h.e.l.l with my knees these days.'

Genie had sensed his contentment with his new living arrangements, and she knew it was wrong to feel abandoned by the one person who'd never failed her, to begrudge him the happiness that his life with Robin had brought him. It was just that circ.u.mstances lately had left her feeling very alone, and the only certainty she had right now was a few weeks on Deanna's uncomfortable couch while she sorted herself out. It wasn't much to go on.

'How's Abel Kingdom doing now?'

Genie focused her attention on knotting her uncle's handkerchief around her fingers.

'All right, I think.'

'You think?'

She glanced up at the damaged roof. 'He's refused to see me.'

And there it was, the most upsetting fact in all of this. She'd been terrified when Abel had been knocked unconscious by the falling debris, scrabbling out from beneath him, inexpertly checking his pulse and finding nothing. She'd found his mobile in his discarded jacket and called an ambulance, sobbing down the phone so hard that the operator could barely make her words out. The hours afterwards had been a blur of anxiety and panic, punctuated by moments of overwhelming relief. He was breathing. He was injured, but at least he was breathing. The ambulance crew seemed concerned about his head and his shoulder, as she sat beside him on the way to the hospital and prayed only that he'd live. She didn't care about the theatre, or her own lesser cuts and bruises. She thought only of him, on his knees seconds before the accident, already a broken man. She berated herself a million times over for the way she'd relentlessly goaded him, pushed him to breaking point to prove herself right. And after all of that, she hadn't proved herself right at all. In breaking Abel, she'd broken herself too. She wasn't fanciful enough to believe that the physical destruction of the theatre had been of her doing too, but it felt like a bitter irony, as if the tempest playing out on the stage had somehow invited in the deadly bolt struck by the storm outside.

'Mr Kingdom, please! You can't leave, the consultant hasn't discharged you.'

Abel looked up, b.u.t.toning his shirt with difficulty. 'Send me the paperwork in the mail. I'll sign to say you're not responsible.'

The young nurse rounded the bed. 'It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. You really need to get back into bed and re...'

Abel's words cut across hers. 'I've spent three days lying in that bed looking out of that window at that G.o.dforsaken greyness. I'm done here. My head's fine.' He pulled the bandage from around his skull with his good arm. 'I can see perfectly well, and a fractured shoulder isn't going to stop me from catching my flight home.'

'You can't fly, Mr Kingdom! Please, let me try to get hold of the registrar at least!' She backed out of his room purposefully, and Abel sighed darkly. He was leaving this place today. He'd booked a flight home that left in a few hours' time, and one way or the other, he was going to be on it.

He didn't need to pack. All of his belongings had been at the theatre and none were salvageable. He had the clothes he'd arrived in, his jacket, and his wallet. Along with the emergency pa.s.sport his PA in Australia had organised a couple of days back, it was going to have to be enough to get him home, because he'd had a skinful of London and everything that went along with it.

Coming back here had been the biggest mistake he'd ever made. He'd thought he could stamp his authority all over the places that had haunted him as a child, and he'd come to realise since the day of the accident that he didn't have the stomach to see it through. London had defined his childhood, it wasn't possible to come back and scrub the bad memories out of existence.

Abel had learned over the years to choose his battles wisely, in most areas of his life. He now knew that however painfully personal this battle was, he couldn't win it. He wasn't peaceful with his decision, but the only alternative was to stay here and risk tearing himself to pieces completely to see it through to its bitter end. That simply wasn't an option. London diminished him. It stole his spirit and infected him with its cold, grey bleakness. He wasn't proud of the man he'd become here and he wasn't going to let the process go any further.

Sighing heavily, he picked up the painkillers from his bedside table and tossed them down his throat. His shoulder hurt like a b.i.t.c.h and his headache was no picnic either. The accident in the theatre had been the last straw. How many more signs did he need before he accepted that this thing just wasn't going to work out? The meeting with his mother shouldn't have hurt, he'd known what to expect, after all. The news about his father too: on reflection, he'd have been more surprised had his mother have given him any concrete information. It was a hard fact to face that not just one but two parents were utterly indifferent to his existence, but it wouldn't break him. His mother had taught him early on not to believe in fairytales.

But the biggest reason he was leaving was Genie. He'd never known a woman like her before, someone with such clarity about who she was, or such conviction in her beliefs. She was dangerous to him. Toxic. Her obstinate challenges had backed him into a corner, and he'd come out fighting. He couldn't explain it or apologise for it, even though he was deeply ashamed of the way he'd behaved. He didn't want to feel the way she made him feel: insecure and out of control. He only had to look at her and she had him, hook line and sinker, and he didn't trust her not to haul him so far out of the water that he couldn't survive. That was why he was going home.

Because he'd met his match.

Standing stiffly, Abel picked up his jacket and walked out of the hospital ward.

Genie rode the hospital elevator up to Abel's floor, then stood rooted to the spot when the doors slid open and revealed the man himself standing there waiting to ride it back down again.

He reacted the exact same way, then shot her a look that could have killed a less robust person and stepped inside with her.

Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d. What could she say to him? She'd come here today as she had every day since he'd been admitted, but in truth she hadn't expected to actually see him. He'd turned her away each time, nurses at the ward's door politely declining her company on his behalf, though she was pretty sure they weren't pa.s.sing on his exact words. To find herself granted an audience with him now came as a shock.

'Abel,' she said softly, turning to him. His profile didn't flicker a muscle.

'Don't,' he said.

'Are you leaving?' The ward sister had told her on the phone earlier that they antic.i.p.ated he'd need to stay in for at least another few days yet. She'd been able to get updates on his progress because she was on record as having brought him in, despite not being family. It was a small victory.

'What's it look like?'

'Abel, please. At least look at me.'

His jaw tightened, but he didn't glance her way. Genie knew full well that her time with him was going to be up in a matter of seconds, and in a panic she turned and pressed the emergency stop b.u.t.ton.

Abel looked her way at last, a slow, cold flick of his eyes. 'If you're expecting a repeat performance of the last time we were in a lift together you're going to be disappointed.'

She took his insult and let it hang. 'You don't look well enough to get out of here.'

He didn't; he looked pale, and strained, and he needed a shave.

'A nurse and a stripper, huh? There really is no end to your talents, Beauty.'

Another barb. Genie winced, letting him throw his arrows. What she needed to say was too important to get dragged into the argument he was spoiling for.

'Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?'

He turned to her then, revealing his arm strapped across his chest in a dark sling beneath his jacket. 'We're not friends, Genie, and this isn't the movies. I don't think either of us needs an emotional farewell scene.'

Genie felt his detachment all the way to her bones. 'I don't want you to go,' she said, desperate and raw, and he looked at her, completely unreadable.

'Why not? You made your point pretty f.u.c.king well, don't you think? We've established the fact that I f.u.c.k strippers. What do you want me to do? Get it tattooed across my head so I see it everyday for the rest of my G.o.dd.a.m.n life?'

Anguish filled Genie's throat with tears. He was too angry to listen to what she needed to say, but he was leaving her life and if she didn't say it now she'd probably never get a second chance.

'I'm sorry, Abel. I'm so, so sorry for what happened the other night.'

'Don't turn on the crocodile tears on my account,' he said, leaning his back against the wall, his face flinching in pain.

'Do you have to keep ramming the point home about how low your opinion is of me?' she said, finally biting. 'Never in my life has anyone constantly belittled me as you have, Abel Kingdom and I hate the fact that that I can't help loving you regardless.'

She stopped speaking several words too late, her chest heaving, both of them sh.e.l.l shocked.

It was the last way she'd wanted to say those words for the first time to the man she'd realised she loved as he'd knelt amongst her smashed up lamp, broken and in tears. In that moment she'd known that somewhere along the line he'd been wounded deeply, that whatever his hang-ups, they weren't really about her. The fact that she'd pushed him into facing them so starkly made her insides twist with regret. She'd sat beside him in the ambulance that night and wondered if she'd ever get to tell him that she loved him.

'You love me?' he said. 'Have you lost your f.u.c.king mind?'

It wasn't the ideal response.

'Probably,' she said, aching to hold him and knowing he'd push her away. 'Please don't go. Stay. Take the theatre. It doesn't matter to me as much as you do. Nothing does.'

He stared at her long and hard, like someone trying to understand an abstract piece of art.

'You're on some f.u.c.ked up kind of guilt trip,' he said, eventually. 'You'll get over it.' He gestured at his shoulder. 'So will I.'

'You're right, Abel, I do feel guilty. I pushed you and I shouldn't have made you do something I knew you didn't want to.'

He half laughed. 'It was s.e.x, Genie. f.u.c.king. You didn't make me do it. I did it because I'd had the day from h.e.l.l and I thought it might make me feel better. It didn't. Quit blaming yourself and get on with your life.'

'Really?' she said, rounding on him. 'Really? As simple as that? I tell you I love you, and you tell me to get over it then jump on a plane to the other side of the world?'

He nodded. 'It's every bit as simple as that. You can keep your tears, and your pathetic excuse for a theatre. I want none of it.'

Wow. He was hard, but she knew better. 'I don't believe this anti-love, tough guy act. I've seen you, remember? I've seen behind your smoke and mirrors, Abel.'

That registered. He glared at her. 'That's exactly my f.u.c.king point,' he shot back, his dark eyes furious. 'I don't want smoke and mirrors, or lies, or to feel this s.h.i.tty.' The bleak dejection on his face sliced her heart in half. 'That's exactly why I'm going to fly half way around the world to get away. I can't think straight,' he said, getting closer to the truth now, in spite of himself. The anger left his voice, leaving behind a hollow sadness. 'I can't breathe around you.'

Was this how it was going to end? A painful conversation in a c.r.a.ppy hospital elevator? Genie couldn't have imagined a more unsatisfactory fairytale.