Husband Stay (Husband #2) (17 page)

I didn’t want to
make love with anyone else either, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Jack. It
would only make him feel like he’d won. And I wanted to win. The prize was a
family of my own, and I deserved that.

 “I’m sorry, that
won’t work for me,” I said, clutching my yellow jacket in front of me,
desperate to leave. Because, naked and with his dark hair ruffled from my
hands, he was incredibly sexy.

Take a last
look…

No, bad advice.
Thinking this was the last time I’d see him, made it harder to leave. So I
tilted my chin up and said, “The future I want doesn’t have any place for
this.” I waved my clumsy cast hand between us. He shook his head as if he
didn’t understand, so I went on with, “And even if this is the best sex you’ve
ever had…”
such a flattering thought
“…you clearly don’t want to make it
permanent or you’d be proposing to me.” His delicious mouth fell open in shock,
just as I’d hoped it would. “Which I would refuse,” I went on, “for previously
mentioned reasons.”

It took him a few
seconds to regain his composure. “Your future.”

I nodded.

And he nodded
back. “I suppose this Doug, he’s good for your future in some way that I’m
not.”

“Correct,” I
replied crisply, even though I had
no
idea if that was true.

“Okay then.” He
pushed himself off the wall and held out his hand to shake mine. “I don’t want
to stand in the way of a promising singing career, even if you do have to fuck
the right people to succeed.”

Somehow I managed
to stop my own mouth falling open in shock. But this was Jack, and I should
have seen it sooner. He’d never imagine sex to make babies. To him, it was
either for personal pleasure or material gain.

“Goodbye,” I said,
ignoring his hand because I couldn’t bring myself to shake it, impossibly rude
though that was. “Don’t call me anymore.”

“No problem with
that,” he replied flatly. “You are
so
not who I thought you were.”

I’d been turning
away to the door and had to grit my teeth to stop myself turning back, but I
couldn’t stop myself saying over my shoulder, “Yet you are
exactly
who I
thought you were when you were vomiting on my shoes and making lewd suggestions
in the hospital. Good
day
!”

“Good day?”
Jill
snorted on the other end of the phone. “
Tell me that isn’t the last thing
you said to him.”

“It was,” I
admitted, lying back onto my bed. “I was completely furious. I could have said
anything.”

 “
You could
have said Thanks for the orgasms.
”

I shrugged, even
though she couldn’t see me. “I’m sure he knows they meant a lot to me, but it’s
over now. I need to move on.” And this afternoon I had—signing Rosie’s
contracts and emailing them back to her. I was officially ‘agented’ and that
felt good.

“
Fair enough.
There’s no point in putting yourself through emotional upheaval if there’s no
future in the relationship.”

“There isn’t. He
made that clear.”

Jill sighed, and I
remembered her dramas while Finn had been pursuing her and trying to marry her
and she’d been making him crazy by sleeping with other men. Her situation had
been worth working through because there’d been a ring and babies on the other
side. Which reminded me, “Have you got the dress sorted yet?” I knew Finn was
holding her to their wedding date, even though she was hopeless at planning.
“Did Louella go shopping with you?”

“
Yeah. we got
it. Quite different to the bridesmaids’ gowns, but all our shoes will be
silver. That will be cute.”

“It will be glam,”
I agreed, clutching the phone tighter to my ear. I still had no clue how to
replace the shoes I’d lost in the nightclub, but I wasn’t going to admit that
until I’d exhausted every avenue. There were still a couple of shoe shops who’d
promised to ring me back after talking to their suppliers. “So a fortnight?”

“
Yay,
excitement.
” She sounded anything but. “
However,
” she added,
“It
will be wonderful to see my gorgeous Finny in a tux again. And the surprise
honeymoon—”

“Will be amazing.
Oh, and speaking of amazing, I got an email this afternoon from Rosie. You
know, Rosie Tatts,
my
agent…”

Jill sniggered.

“…who sent news
that a documentary team is going to follow me for a fortnight while I lay down
tracks.”

“Missy Diva.
”
I could well imagine Jill shaking her head. “
Not only snuggle buddies with Noah
Steele, but now the star of her own reality television show? Do you need an
assistant?”

“No!” I laughed,
and it felt good after all the drama of the day to relax, sprawled out on the
bed chatting to a bestie. “You’ve got enough on your plate. I just need to stay
calm and enjoy this.”

“The key is to
care less what other people think. It’s your life, not theirs.”

‘Other people’ was
code for my mother, but I didn’t want to open that discussion again. Jill had very
clear ideas on how I should disengage myself from my mother’s manipulation, and
none of them were polite.

“So I’d better get
some sleep,” I said, wriggling to settle myself more comfortably into the
single bed in Kamal’s guest room. “I don’t want to look like a wreck on my
first day.”

“
I’m proud of
you, A,”
Jill said, and unexpectedly my throat tightened.
“You’ve had a
crap year, and even this Jack thing has been a drama. But you’ve handled it all
without losing your shit. You’re taking risks and moving on with life. Can’t
ask more of yourself than that.”

“Thanks J,” I
whispered. “I love you too.”

She laughed at
that, and it was okay. I knew she was awkward with emotions.
“So I’ll see
you when I’m wearing white.”

“Yes you will!”
Hopefully, by then I’d have silver shoes…

If I’d been
worried about having too much time on my hands to think about Jack, I shouldn’t
have. The next week was fully-loaded, thanks to Rosie.

“
Thanks,
Angela. Sounded perfect to me
.”

I smiled at my
producer, Mal, through the glass window that separated my booth from the
control room and took off my headphones, allowing myself a shoulder roll while
I waited for him to confer with the engineer. The documentary crew were filming
me from the other side of the glass, but in the week they’d been following me,
I’d learnt to ignore them completely.

On my first day
I’d felt horribly self-conscious and had sweated so much my deodorant had let
me down. But now I could see—exactly as Rosie had predicted—that this was good
practice at focusing on what was important. In a live performance, I’d need to
ignore any cameras to concentrate on the audience.

I was pretty sure
I had that down pat now, which meant I could do what I’d always wanted to—simply
sing, although the choice of music was not what I’d have expected. Rosie had
met me alone on the first day and grilled me about my
current emotional life
as she called it, making me sing snatches of songs that were front of mind,
almost like word association.

After consciously
trying to steer the direction toward classical jazz—which Rosie hadn’t bought
for a second—we ended up with
The very thought of you, All of me, Till there
was you,
and several other romantic or blatantly sexy jazz numbers
.

No prizes for
guessing that my thoughts were all on Jack and what I
wouldn’t
be doing
with him ever again. Rosie, bless her, hadn’t asked questions. She’d just run
with what was ‘hot’ and we’d selected some sexy, and some torchy numbers for my
debut album.

I was to record
twenty and she and Mal would select their favorite ten, at which time I could
decide on the final choice. The super-sexy songs seemed weird when Rosie was
asking me to wear white all the time to fit my signature look—the Angel. But
I’d put myself in her hands so I was determined to trust her.

Besides, anything
that required me to think was a good distraction from memories of Jack’s
lovemaking and the heat between us. I knew I should stop thinking about him,
but I simply didn’t know how.

When my new white jeans
pulled across my groin—as they did now on the stool—I remembered Jack’s hands
there. When the wind stirred my hair, I remember Jack’s hand at my nape,
gripping it so he could kiss me. And even the smell of toast reminded me of his
skin.

It was crazy, but
so many triggers in my day brought him back into my mind, and I seemed to be
drifting around in a state of semi-arousal. All I could hope was that time
would somehow erase him.

Ultimately, I
didn’t regret walking away, no matter how much sexual longing I felt. I’d done
the right thing, but I couldn’t help feeling sad that I hadn’t waited just a
little bit longer. There were ‘once in a lifetime’ things I’d wanted to do with
him, which I now probably never would. Fellatio for one. He’d told me so many
times that he’d loved my ‘luscious mouth’ and I’d always wondered if he’d
fantasized about having it wrapped around his very hard—

“Angela!”

My head snapped
up, and I belatedly realized that Mal was knocking on the glass wall between
us. Had he called me several times? I could feel heat rising up my face, and it
took all of my will-power to keep my hands at my sides and not bring one up to
press against my hot cheek.

“Sorry. Yes?”
Somehow I managed to sound professional, and even though I wriggled on the
stool, I made it look as if I was preparing for the next song. “Are we ready?”
I put my headphones back on and heard his voice through them.

“
We’ve found a
wobble in that last chorus. Do you want to just re-do that, or the whole song?”

“The whole song,”
I said automatically. I appreciated the fact that he gave me the easy option
every time they found a glitch, but I wanted the song to build, to have
continuity. That wouldn’t happen if they cut and pasted bits.

“Okay, when
you’re ready.”

I sat straighter,
reminding myself of the core of the song—a woman who’s so much in love that she
can’t leave her man, even though she obviously wants to.
My voice
probably wobbled at the end because that was my deepest fear—that I’d go back
to Jack and be locked into some bizarre holding pattern of sex and regret for the
family life I’d never have.

That’s
why
I’d broken away, because the sexual heat between us was so addictive, if I
didn’t cut off the supply now, I might confuse pleasure with emotion and
genuinely fall for him. I was already worried about how he was feeling, and
that was crazy.

Imagining soft
feelings on his side was pure fantasy. He couldn’t have been clearer about what
he’d wanted—temporary pleasure. My pleasure, so he said. But in time that
relationship would have encompassed my curiosities about how to give him
pleasure.

I’d wanted that.
I’d wanted to know what it feels like to bestow the sort of pleasure he’d given
me. And that was my connection to the song—imagining that future where I’d
overstepped the mark and found myself trapped by lust. Every song we’d picked
had the same core, so even though I wouldn’t let myself go there in reality, I
cast myself adrift now in imagination, pretending I was in thrall to Jack and
completely unable to release myself.

The soft ticking
of metronome in my headphones cued me, and I started out slow, soulful, closing
my eyes as I pretended I was singing to Jack, pouring my heart out about the
trap I’d fallen into, allowing myself to believe it in that moment.

When the last line died out, the soft ticking of the
background metronome felt like a counterpoint the throbbing I could feel inside.
I came back to myself and opened my eyes, only to discover my hand was at my
upper chest, as though it had travelled there over my body and was holding my
heart in.

Sweet Shiva, had I touched my breasts?

I flashed an embarrassed glance at the documentary
team, and while the camera operator continued to film me, the sound recordist
was grinning like a loon, completely ignoring his big puffy microphone which
he’d aimed in the general direction of Mal and the engineer.

I knew they had a separate recording of my singing,
and any sounds I made in between, so I was careful to keep my breathing slow
and even as I lowered my hand to rest beside my cast. I turned a fake smile in
Mal’s direction.

He conferred with the engineer for another few
minutes, then gave me the thumbs up through the glass. After gazing at me for a
few seconds, he said, “
You look tired, petal. Had enough for the day?”

I wasn’t normally a quitter, but that last song had
taken me somewhere deep, and the last thing I wanted was to dig even deeper with
another torchy number. I had a lunch date with Doug—thanks to Louella’s
prompting and my own impulsiveness—and I didn’t want to turn up emotionally
hollow, on top of the lack of enthusiasm I felt for the outing.

So I nodded and said into my mic, “Bad night’s sleep.
Is it okay if I go home and nap for a few hours, then come back, say around
three?”

“
Sure, luv. We can all take a break and come back
then.
”

I made a point of going into the control room to thank
the film crew and ask if they needed lunch money. I knew they didn’t. Rosie had
them well funded, but I wanted to make sure they had other plans than following
me.

My bank balance had gone up to the tune of twelve grand
only days after I’d stormed out on Jack, so I could afford to be generous, and
I didn’t have many other costs.