Holding Out for a Hero (2 page)

“You guess?” Ella felt her anger surge inside her again, swelling  to tsunami-like proportions. “They knew me, Jake. This town. They knew me better than that.”

She took a step toward him, feeling a very unreasonable urge to pummel her fists against the solid wall of his chest. What did he know about how difficult it had been for her? Jake, who’d been given a get-out-of-jail-free card by a big city football club. Kick a pointy ball around a piece of grass and the world was your oyster; work your butt off at school and people accused you of sleeping with the principal. She lifted her hands and then clenched them, shocked that she’d almost followed the violent impulse. They came to rest against his shirt and she bunched the fabric tight, rage still simmering beneath her skin.

His top button was at her eye level and suddenly her frustration found a more constructive outlet. She fingered the plastic disk. Jake placed a hand against hers and she batted it away.

“I was a valedictorian,” she muttered. A red mist lashed her insides and fogged her vision, making dexterity impossible. All her pent-up hostility was now concentrated on a little piece of plastic.

“I won the academic medal for five years straight,” she growled, feeling like a two-year-old who hadn’t yet learnt the art of undressing. Her badly shaking fingers fumbled with the button. It finally popped and she made a triumphant noise in the back of her throat.

“I tutored kids for free,” she told the next button, having as much trouble as the first.

“Ella.” He placed his hand on hers again.

She shook it off and took a deep, steadying breath, the mist lifting a little. “I volunteered at the old folks’ home.” The button popped. “I sponsored a child in Africa.” Another disk fell victim to her steadier fingers. “I still do.”

She looked him square in the eye. “I was a girl guide.”

Jake watched her, bemused, struggling with his buttons and her emotions. He knew better than anyone how hard it was to grow up in a place that ostracized you for the sins of a parent. How unfair it was. How crazy it could make you.

And he was trying really hard to do the right thing but Ella’s mood was heady with seething sexuality. Her anger and frustration, and no doubt her grief, had morphed into a raw, sexual cocktail. She needed to burn off some heat. And he was her explosive of choice.

After years of avoiding his gaze she was looking right at him.

The last button gave way and she pushed the shirt off his shoulders. She pressed her nose to his sternum and inhaled. It seemed like such an innocent thing to do in the middle of her seduction and it took him back a lot of years.

To the high school dance.

To how he’d lain awake later that night running his tongue over his lips, savouring the taste of her.

“It doesn’t matter what they think,” he said, his resolve to do the right thing weakening by the second.

Ella knew he was right. Jesus! She had three university degrees in
right
. She wasn’t here for his Dr. Phil advice. She was here for the sex. And from what she heard, Jake had more than a few degrees in that.

His chest was smooth and she touched it tentatively, the beat of his heart pulsing against her hand. He had a tattoo of some kind of demonic superhero, the Phantom meets Wolverine, on his left pec and she traced it with her finger.

“It matters to me.”

“Ella,” he murmured. “It won’t help.”

“Wanna bet?” She put her mouth where her finger had been and licked the length of the tattoo as she reached for the button of his jeans.

“Whoa there.” He shifted, covering her hand with his, holding her away from him. “This is wrong.”

Ella almost screamed in frustration as she dropped her hand from his waistband. She’d come here for one thing and she was damned if she was leaving without it. “We’re two consenting adults, Jake. This has right written all over it.”

“I think doing this the day after you buried your mother is maybe not the wisest way to cope.”

Ella looked at him. Since when had he become so damn smart? “Why don’t you let me decide what’s the healthiest way to cope with my grief?”

Jake was running out of reasons why he shouldn’t just throw caution to the wind like she obviously had. He wasn’t even certain why he was putting up such a fight. “I don’t have any condoms.”

Ella quirked an eyebrow. That she found hard to believe. Not that it mattered.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a strip of five, her gaze never leaving his. They concertinaed down like a pack of magic cards. She threw them at him and they bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. “That should do us.”

Jake looked down at the little foil packets of temptation. Five? He swallowed as his gaze returned to hers. “Kel’s off shift in an hour.”

“Then why are you wasting time pretending you don’t want to do this?”

His gaze flicked briefly to the condoms again and he shut his eyes against their lure.

Ella gave a frustrated growl low in her throat at his continued reticence. “You know, Jake, this wasn’t how I pictured it.”

Jake laughed. “How’d you picture it?”

Ella glared at him. She needed a plan B. Thinking quickly, she grasped the knot at her navel where the edges of her checkered shirt had been tied firmly together and undid it. Then she ripped the shirt open, sending buttons flying, and stripped it off, flinging it to the ground at his feet beside the condoms.

“You weren’t talking, for a start.”

Jake felt his laughter die on his lips. A gentleman may not have looked but there wasn’t one person in Huntley who would ever have accused Jake of being a gentleman. So he looked. In fact, he barely stopped himself from licking his lips.

He’d seen a bra like that hanging on the Lucas clothes line when he’d been fifteen. Red lace. D cup. He’d known it was Ella’s—Rachel had never been big on underwear. He felt all his good intentions slowly melt away and he swallowed. There was a point at which resistance becomes futile. And God help him, he’d reached that point. In fact, suddenly, he was way beyond it.

“I can do mute.”

It was Ella’s turn to laugh, knowing she had him as she reached behind and unclipped the bra, throwing it on the ground too.

“I can do deaf and blind also.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she demanded as she tugged on the waistband of his jeans and dragged him forward.

Ella groped her way through the crowd to meet Rosie at their usual booth. Except it wasn’t their usual booth. Nothing about their local family-owned pub was usual anymore. It had been destroyed, the new owner making no attempt at retaining any of the olde worlde charm.

The death knell had sounded a few months ago when Ernie and Cheryl, owners of the Spring Hill pub for the last forty years, had announced to their regulars they were selling up, buying an RV and becoming grey nomads.

Ella’s fears had been compounded when it had been rumored that some dreadful sports star had bought the pub. And the entire time it had been shut down for refurbishment, she’d had an awful feeling in her stomach. Then the sign had gone up, heralding a new era, forever erasing any traces of Ernie and Cheryl.

But this travesty, the Hero Bar, was far beyond Ella’s worst nightmare. Gone were the slightly shabby, chipped linoleum tables and worn red leather bench seats and the endearing faux flaming torches that balanced on the walls, throwing a comforting blanket of warm yellow light. In their place was a horrible sports bar with retina-detaching neon and big-screen TVs that further distorted the already flattened noses and cauliflower ears of the men silently running around in tight shorts chasing a stupid little ball. Bloody footballers. The display of beer cans from around the world had been sacrificed as well. As had the comfortable, wide wooden bar stools that actually supported her ass, replaced instead by trendy metallic structures that looked like they’d crumple beneath Kate Moss’s weight.

The cheesy Coolidge prints of dogs playing poker and snooker above the pool table were gone, too. In their place were framed footy jerseys and other sporting paraphernalia.

It was dark, black-hole dark. The neon may have been bright enough to induce epilepsy but barely threw the light of a firefly. Everything gleamed and Ella winced as the neon reflected off slick, shiny surfaces. The metallic booth table was cold beneath her elbows. An equally metallic song with a heavy bass beat and no discernible lyrics throbbed around the room.

“This is horrible,” Ella bitched.

“Yes,” Rosie agreed, handing Ella the glass of Sauv blanc she’d bought for her. “I think we’re gonna have to find a new TGIF watering hole, babe. This is more Holy Shit, it’s Friday.”

“But I liked it here,” Ella moaned. Today was going from bad to worse. “And it’s five minutes from home.”

Rosie looked at her. “What’s up?”

Ella took a sip of her drink. “The letter came today.”

“Bastards!”

“Hear, hear.”

“Pen pushing, beaurocratic assholes.”

Ella nodded, her friend’s colorful insults music to her ears. Real music, not the techno-crap that was currently vibrating around them. “What you said.”

“That lot couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. How dare they do this to you? Fuck them. Fuck them all.”

Ella smiled despite the air of depression that had settled around her since opening the ominous yellow envelope at eight am. Rosie’s profanities had long since failed to shock. Growing up around side-show alley was bound to have rubbed off and her best friend’s unique way with words was just one of the things Ella loved about her, along with her don’t-give-a-damn attitude, her dramatically dyed black hair and the chunky-heeled black army boots she favored. Not to mention the blood-red lips, eyebrow piercings and studded dog’s collar that always graced her neck.

She raised her glass and clinked it with Rosie’s. It was good to have such an ardent supporter in her corner. “Amen.”

Ella’s self-appointed champion since the age of seventeen, Gypsy-Rose Forsythe had been exactly what tightly wound Ella had needed. People who knew them often wondered what two women so completely opposite had in common. But Ella didn’t—she knew she owed Rosie her life. That fateful day when the carnival had driven in to Huntley had been a major turning point in her life and she thanked her lucky stars for it, for Rosie, every day. Two misfits against the world.

“How long have they given you?”

“Till the end of the year,” Ella said gloomily. “If my enrollments haven’t picked up and my truancy record improved and if the school’s image continues to be dragged through the muck in the media, they’re going to shut us down.”

“Don’t those fuckwits know the demographic you’re dealing with?”

Ella swirled the contents of her glass gloomily. “I never wanted this damn job. I never wanted to be principal.”

“I know.”

She threw a desperate look at Rosie. “I’m a math teacher.”

Rosie reached across and squeezed Ella’s hand. “And a damn good one.”

Ella gave her friend a lop-sided smile. “How were any of us to know that Kelvin was going to crack under the pressure? This position was only meant to be temporary.”

“It’s not your fault no one wants to work there.”

Ella sighed. “They’re not bad kids. Not most of them. They’re just living really tough lives.”

“I know,” Rosie murmured again. And she did know. They both knew how rough it was to grow up standing on the outside, looking in. To be one of the have-nots.

“But they need Hanniford High. The whole community does. Even if they don’t realize it. I can’t turn my back on that. Not like Kelvin.”

“What are you going to do, babe?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I’ve got nine months to come up with something.”

“You will.” Rosie squeezed her friend’s hand again. “We will.”

Ella smiled. This was the Rosie she knew and loved. Behind the uncouth mouth, behind the dramatic clothes and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, Gypsy-Rose Forsythe was a bona fide pussy cat. She gave to buskers—even the crap ones—she helped in the local soup kitchen, bought street magazines from homeless people, wrote letters of protest for Amnesty International and collected strays.

Including Ella.

“Enough of me,” Ella dismissed, removing her hand and feeling unaccountably emotional. “How’s it going with preppy boy?”

“Ah, Simon. I had a breakthrough today.”

Ella saw the gleam in Rosie’s eye and the grin that split her face was infectious. She leaned in. “Oh, do tell.”

“I dragged him into the stationery cupboard and pashed his lips off.”

Ella laughed. Rosie, in complete contradiction to her appearance, worked at the city council as a systems analyst. “Oh my God. What did he do?”

“Well, at first he said it was highly inappropriate and broke the rules of workplace conduct from 11a through to 19b.”

Ella gasped. “He did not!”

Rosie grinned and nodded. “I swear to God he did.”

“He sounds arcane. How old did you say he was?”

“Thirty.”

“God, Rosie. He’s a baby.”

“I know. I’m a bad, bad person.” Rosie sighed dramatically. “I’m probably going to hell.”

Ella rolled her eyes. Like the thought of a fiery afterlife wasn’t a turn on for a crazy, semi-Goth chick. “So what did you say?”

“That I really didn’t mind being sexually harassed by him and that he should take full advantage of my appalling lack of morals and just shut up and kiss me.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say that man follows directions to the letter.”

Ella laughed. “I don’t get what you see in him. He sounds too strait-laced for you. Not like your usual type at all.”

In Rosie’s quest for “the one”, Ella had seen a procession of men through her life and none of them would ever be described as preppy. Her men were edgier. They rode Harleys and got into bar fights. Her men didn’t give a damn about the rules of workplace conduct.

“Yeah, but there’s something so—so
endearing
about him. He’s so neat and prim. I just want to, I don’t know … mess him up a bit.”

Ella shook her head, wishing for the thousandth time she could have just an ounce of her friend’s faith that Mr. Right was out there somewhere. Or her ability to get back up and get out there again. If Rosie’s life was a song it’d be ‘I Get Knocked Down (But I Get Up Again)’. What would her life song be? ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’?

“They’re not toys, Gypsy-Rose,” she tutted.

“Well, this one certainly ain’t. His great-grandfather was governor of the state back before World War I. His grandfather was a federal minister. His father is the Lord Mayor’s right-hand man and his mother is some hobnobbing charity queen. His family is about as blue ribbon as they come—very serious, conservative people.”

Ella raised an eyebrow. Rosie getting involved with a political dynasty? Her friend was the antithesis of conservative. It’d be like Lindsay Lohan marrying a Kennedy. Did she know what she was getting herself into? “So, he’s a challenge?”

Rosie winked. “You know how I do so love a challenge.”

Yes, she did. But for the first time ever since she’d known Rosie, Ella saw a flicker of doubt, a brief hesitation before the confident wink. Something told her Rosie wasn’t as sure of herself as usual.

“Hey, maybe Simon can use his connections to help with the school thing?”

Ella shook her head. “I doubt it. He might be able to help with getting that developer off Daisy’s and Iris’s backs though.”

Rosie’s wound a lock of her black hair around her finger and thumped the table with her other hand. “Yes, goddamn it! Yes. Kick that greedy bastard to the curb for once and all.”

The measures being employed in the battle royale for their beloved home were becoming increasingly desperate. The rickety old house owned by Rosie’s aunts was the center of their universe. It had been their sanctuary after fleeing Huntley for Brisbane all those years ago and was most definitely not for sale. At any price. Unfortunately, big-money developers weren’t used to being denied and the pressure was on. Current tactics involved obscene amounts of money.

It had been quiet since Daisy and Iris had knocked back the last offer and, while the aunts took that as a sign of capitulation on behalf of the developer, Rosie and Ella weren’t so optimistic. Their entire street had sold out and the sharks were definitely circling.

“I haven’t seen Curtis at the house all week,” Rosie said, changing the subject.

“We decided it was best to stop seeing each other.”

“Oh, babe.” Rosie reached across the table and squeezed Ella’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

Ella sighed. “Don’t be. I think it was possibly the dreariest relationship I’ve had to date.”

Rosie whistled. “That’s saying something.”

Ella didn’t bother to protest her friend’s statement. It was depressingly accurate. In the last two years, in her effort to exorcise the ghost of the best sex she’d ever had and the fact that it had been with the one man on earth she shouldn’t have had it with, she’d decided to only date Jake’s complete opposites: nice men who had proper jobs and didn’t give a damn about sport. Arty men. Intellectuals. SNAGS.

“Don’t get me wrong, he was very nice. Just a bit—”

“Blah?”

Ella shook her head. “Too—”

“Boring?”

Ella shot her friend an impatient glare. “SNAG-ish.”

Rosie nodded. “Lousy lovers.”

Ella cocked an eyebrow. “And Rosie, queen of SNAG lovers, would know this how?”

Rosie gave a sheepish grin. “So I’ve heard.”

Ella rolled her eyes. Rosie had heard it from her, about a million times. “They want to talk. Get to know me.”

Rosie suppressed a smile. “That’s terrible. Just awful.”

She shot Rosie a quelling look. “You know what I mean. Is there something wrong with wanting a man to take the lead for once? A little bit of masterfulness?”

Rosie smiled. “Ah. So you want to be dominated?”

“No!” she gasped. “I want … I don’t know what I want.”

Rosie looked at her dearest friend. “I do. You want head-banging sex without the emotional vulnerability. SNAGs get too close and, thanks to Rachel, you’ve spent your entire life keeping men at a distance.”

Sometimes Ella hated how well Rosie knew her. “No, Miss Smarty-Pants,” she denied, placing her wine glass down. “Do you know what I found myself thinking about when Curtis and I were between the sheets last time? I was thinking about Pythagoras’ theorem.”

Rosie laughed. “Because A squared plus B squared equals C squared is some kind of twisted math geek aphrodisiac that gets you off? Are triangles some kind of new phallic symbol I haven’t heard of? Are they the new black?”

Ella laughed and then groaned, laying her head on the table. “No. But he was being so gentle and kind and considerate. You know, touching all the places in the correct order, the correct number of times. Honestly, it was like sex-by-numbers—totally boring. And he kept talking. You know, asking if I was okay, did I like it? Was there anything I needed? Tell him to stop if I wasn’t comfortable. I mean, whatever happened to talking dirty, Rosie? My mind just drifted.”

“To Pythagoras?”

Ella sighed, even more depressed that instead of conjuring up some filthy fantasy like sex with a boat load of marauding pirates, her mind had drifted to a dead Greek scholar.

“Yes.” She took a sip of the crisp white. “In my defense, I had been trying to explain it to Cam a couple of hours beforehand. And,” she said, pointing a finger at her friend while still keeping a grip on her glass, “Pythagoras was supposed to have been a bit of a hottie.”

Dubiousness quirked Rosie’s eyebrow.

“It’s true, I’ve seen busts.”

Rosie pressed her lips together. “Uh huh.”

“Oh God, what’s the matter with me, Rosie? If I have to fake another orgasm, I think I’m going to join a convent.” Ella stopped and frowned at her friend. “Are nuns allowed to masturbate?”

“I would have thought it a prerequisite,” Rosie said “Of course,” she continued, “there is the teensy tiny problem of you not believing in God. Although … I guess you could fake it.” Rosie burst out laughing at the dirty look that sailed her way. It took a minute for her to control the laughter. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Look, it sounds to me, babe, like you need dirty footballer sex again.”

Ella opened her mouth to protest. Footballer sex was exactly what she
didn’t
need. What she’d been trying to purge from her system. But hell, at least Jake Prince had made her come three times in forty minutes. That was three times more than any other man had made her come over the last two years. And he hadn’t stopped to ask her what she did or didn’t like, he’d just thrown her on the bed and taken charge. Told her what he was going to do to her in the most smutty, explicit terms possible. Even now her toes curled at the memory.