"Coffee?" Dan plunged the cafetiere.

"Thanks." She held out her cup.

In fact the idea of food turned Sophie's stomach, but coffee might help wake her up enough to decide how to play things.

Dan poured for them both, the model husband trying to make good for his misdemeanours. It would take an ocean of coffee to atone for his behaviour, and she could only manage the tightest of smiles as she accepted the milk from him.

She watched him fill his plate, then served herself a little food, feeling duty bound, and picked up her knife and fork.

As she glanced up at Dan forking food into his mouth, a rush of venom flooded her. What was he doing? And what the hell was she doing?

She laid her cutlery down, her breakfast untouched.

He caught her eye as he picked up his cup.

"I know this is difficult, Soph."

"Do you really?" Sophie reached for her coffee and tried to steady her shaky voice. "Only you seem to be acting as if this is any other weekend."

She sipped her scalding coffee, glad to have punctured the pretense of cordiality. "What are we doing, Dan? What are you doing here?"

"Having breakfast with my wife?"

"Whereas last week you had it with your lover." Sophie watched Dan's expression change from hopefully chipper to guarded and defensive. He laid his fork down carefully and regarded her levelly.

"Yes I did. And every moment I was wishing I was with you." He rubbed a hand over his brow. "I fucked up big time, Soph. I admit it."

She looked at him skeptically. "Three years is quite a long time Dan. And now you realise you've fucked up. Three years, Dan. More, for all I know." Sophie stared at him. "So that means you were with her when we were in Menorca. And when we were in Crete the summer before. Did you miss her?" She battled to keep her voice level. "What did you do? Sneak off and call her when I was in the shower?"

"Sophie, no..." Dan looked and sounded defeated. "How many times can I say I'm sorry?"

She laughed bitterly. "You're sorry for the affair, or you're sorry you got caught?"

"I don't know what to say to you to make this better," Dan said quietly.

"You can tell me why." Even as the statement left her lips, Sophie feared his answer. Lucien had once gone to great lengths to enlighten her on his view of how men's brains worked, spelling out that Dan had chosen to have an affair entirely of his own volition, not because of any failing on her part. But now, here in this small kitchen, crows of self-doubt flew close around her head.

Dan shook his head, his gaze fixed on the table. "I wish I knew," he said at last.

No way. No way was that enough.

"That's it? No explanation, no big reason?"

Dan shrugged, and huffed out in exasperation. "What do you want me to say, Soph?” Frustration made him brusque. “That she was exciting? That I fancied her? That she was good in bed? Yes, all right, it was all of those things to begin with."

His words hit home hard, both because she didn't want him to have felt those things for someone else, and because she felt those things for someone else.

"It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong." Dan's voice cracked. "Maria was… up for it." He shrugged one shoulder, desolation all over his face. "I was flattered, I guess."

His honesty damped Sophie's anger, but cut her heart wide open.

"You were the love of my life, Dan."

"You're still the love of mine."

They stared at each other, hot-eyed across the kitchen table. They'd laughed together at that table, and they'd argued together at that table, but this was the first time they'd cried together there.

Quiet, wordless tears that spoke volumes.

Sophie went back to bed. Her head hurt from lack of sleep, and her heart hurt with the pain of her marriage splitting at the seams. And this time she slept. The deep, dreamless sleep of the exhausted and battle-weary.

Downstairs, Dan cleared away the uneaten breakfast and then lay on the sofa, his eyes on the TV screen but his head full of his earlier conversation with Sophie.

He was sick to the back teeth of feeling guilty. Three guilty, clandestine years of hiding his affair, and now the fall-out, as life with the women he cared for crumbled around him. Just looking at Sophie made him feel like the world's biggest shit, and Maria had been a tearful mess yesterday when he'd finally called time on their relationship. Had she seriously expected him to greet the news of her pregnancy with anything but horror? All it had served to do for him was highlight quite how badly he'd screwed up.

Somewhere in all of this, he'd realised with crystal clarity that he loved his wife, and

that come hell or high water, he was going to fight for his marriage.

If that meant fighting Lucien Knight, he'd do that too.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was dark by the time Sophie woke. Low level noise downstairs told her that Dan was still here: the TV channel changing mid-way through the opening bars of a familiar theme tune, the clatter of a cup on the coffee table. She wasn't surprised.

In the kitchen, she warmed two bowls of tomato soup, more out of simple survival than hunger. They needed to eat, and they needed to talk.

Dan sat up on the sofa as she passed him the bowl, and they ate in listless silence. He cleared the bowls into the kitchen, and returned a couple of minutes later with a freshly opened bottle of red wine and two glasses.

Sophie watched him from the safety of the armchair, noting the familiar way his body moved, the way his hair stood up at odd angles from lying on it, the pale skin beneath the dark stubble and the smudges around his eyes. He looked like she felt - weary, and badly in need of the wine he'd just poured into the glasses.

"I know you probably won't believe me Soph, but I'm so sorry." He stared into his wine glass. "I'm sorry for all of it. For being a shit husband. For Maria. For hurting you."

Sophie drank deeply, letting his words wash over her. He meant it, she didn't doubt him. She sensed that one way or another, this was going to be one of those conversations that shaped her life.

"I thought I knew you inside out, Dan. I thought we wanted the same thing. This place. Kids, someday." She spoke calmly, softly, while he looked at her, his big brown eyes sorrowful. "You know what I really don't understand? Three years ago, I thought we were blissfully happy. Yet you still… you know… with Maria." Say it. "Slept with her. Went with her." She frowned. "What did I miss? How did I get it so badly wrong?"

Dan shook his head miserably, scrubbing his hand over his stubble.