Inconsolable (41 page)

She was already jeans-less and Mark was down to his boxers. This was supposed to be normal, ordinary, nice first-time sex with a man she cared about. Her mother loved him. Nat considered him an appropriate rebound guy. If they were going to keep seeing each other, sex was inevitable.

Except it wasn't.

Mark sighed. He rested his forehead on her shoulder. “Fuck, Foley.” He never swore. He was the least swearingist person she knew.

“I'm sorry.” She pulled her shirt over her chest.

“It's really not going to happen?”

She shook her head. “No.” It was never going to happen and deep down they both knew it.

Mark sat up abruptly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I think we're done.” That was abrupt too, but it was for the best. “I'm way more into you than you're into me.”

Another truth, another dose of feeling crappy for the way she'd treated Mark. She'd let him hope things might be different. She'd turned Mark into what she'd have become if Drum had stuck around; upbeat, hopeful, patient, the peppy cheerleader—the ultimate loser. The irony of that was a special kind of poisoned barb.

“You're not over that homeless guy.”

She couldn't hate Mark for anything except the truths he was batting at her. He was a great guy: intelligent, funny, compassionate, good company, supportive of her new job and other interests. He fitted easily in her life. He was a guy you could build a normal future with. But he was Hugh when he had hair, without the smirk. She felt no desire for him and it was time to let him go.

She sat and hugged him from behind. She'd been honest with him the entire time she'd known him, except for the part about not wanting him in her bed. She'd thought she could get past that. She'd had sex with a hopelessly complicated and conflicted homeless guy on the night she'd discovered he wasn't who he seemed. Sex with Mark should've been easy, especially as he made no secret of his affection for her. Trouble was she loved the memory of the homeless guy more than the careful touch of the good guy.

They dressed. She got teary. He did what a good guy would do and soothed her.

“We're finished, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends.” He actually said that. He was the sweetest man, because he believed it too.

“Why would you want anything more to do with me? I've been a really average girlfriend.”

He gave her his big, genuine smile. “Nothing wrong with average. We just weren't meant to be.”

He kissed her forehead. She hugged him with more feeling than she'd ever shown and then she was alone on her new sofa on a Saturday night with a large packet of salt and vinegar chips and a sense of relief. Until Nat called.

“Turn on the TV.”

The TV was on. Foley changed stations until she got to the current affairs program Nat wanted her to see.
Oh shit
, NCR Pharmaceuticals. “I don't want to watch this.”

“Yes, you do. I saw the preview.”

She switched stations. “So tell me what I'm missing because I'm going to watch an episode of
The Walking Dead
instead. It'll be safer, more wholesome, less traumatising and it won't give me bad dreams.”

“Hey, weren't you planning a big night with Mark?” Foley could hear Nat rumbling around, the clatter of dishes.

“We broke up. Half an hour ago.”

“Holy shit.” The rumbling stopped. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No. I'm fine. It was the right thing to do. Nice guy, but … anyway, I want calories and TV drama, not current affairs.”

“He's back, Foley. He's not a homeless man with problems anymore.”

“La, la, la, la. I don't want to know.” She stuffed a finger-load of chips in her mouth and crunched, said with a mouthful, “Oh God, tell me everything. But I can't watch it.”

“He looks
, Jesus Christ
, he's a hunk. You'd know if you were watching. He looks ten years younger without all the hair. He launched a new charity, he's the CEO and its funding comes from his own private wealth, matched by NCR.”

Nat was quiet. Foley could hear the murmur of Nat's TV set through the phone handset. She hung on to that sound, to the anticipation of more of Nat's commentary like it was her last gasp of air.

“Are you watching?”

“I can't.”

If she saw Drum, Trick, Patrick, whoever he was now, she might come apart. On the night she gave up her ordinary normal guy she couldn't think about her extraordinary one. He would always be missing, always out there somewhere, making his own rules, living on his edge. That's the only way she could stand to think about him, because if he wasn't that confused, intense, challenging man then she'd lost him twice. Once to lack of a secure future, and once to the new future he was building without her.

“Apparently he's had a trust fund that funnelled his earnings from his shareholding in NCR through a bunch of charities. Did you know that?”

Foley shook her head and willed Nat to keep talking.

“That was passive. He's going to take control of this new one. Work with charitable groups to help disadvantaged people: low income, single parents, the disadvantaged and the homeless. He's good interview talent. He doesn't look mad, he's making sense. Now they're talking to his father. This is a big deal, Foley. He's got a lot of money to play with.” Nat paused. “Are you crying?”

She was sobbing uncontrollably.

“It's not about Mark, is it?”

She couldn't get an answer out. Drum had worked a miracle on himself and that made her impossibly joyful and horrifically sad at the same time. He was as lost to her in his new life as he ever had been when he lived in a cave.

Nat let her sob, filling her ear with detail after detail of the interview segment and when it was over she kept talking about Nathan's new job as a corporate affairs director, her own as the paper's new editor. It was what Foley needed, that reminder everything changed, people moved on, nothing was static forever.

On Monday morning she got another reminder. Her three month probation as Acting General Manager was up. She opened a single line email from Roger.
I'm keeping you. Quit acting. Now the real performance begins
.

She forwarded it to Hugh as an FYI with a smiley face and was grinning about it when Adro walked in. He plonked himself in the visitor's chair she'd occupied so often when Hugh owned this office. “I have good news.”

“Hit me.”

“There's a genuine buyer for the Beeton house.”

She sat up straighter. “You're kidding me?”

“A builder submitted redevelopment plans, and they're all within heritage specification. If the trust accepts the offer the house gets restored. We win.”

They grinned at each other. It was a good omen. Another loose end tied up, and to think she'd get to see the house restored to its former glory made it worth the slightly illegal things she'd done to stop it falling apart.

“But wait, there's more.” He held a finger aloft. “I have better news.”

Foley laughed. Adro was enthusiastically enthusiastic about work now that he had Gabriella's job. “I like this part of my job where you give me only good news.”

“It's insurance against the day when I have to come in here and give you nothing but the apocalypse.”

She laughed. “Hit me.”

“Walter Lam is moving to Queensland.”

“No!”

Adro stomped his feet and air punched with his fists. “Oh yes. It's true. He's moving to go live near his grandkids.”

“Oh thank God.”

“Without him the rest of the group will fall over. No more personal objectives couched as community good.” Adro stood. “Do you love me?”

She'd have hugged him but she didn't want to start any rumours. “I love you.”

He tossed an envelope on her desk. “That came for you. Was passing reception when it arrived.”

She tore the seal and a car key slid out. She looked up, but Adro had gone. The envelope had her name handwritten on the front but there had to be some mistake. She called reception to be told the courier was waiting if she had questions.

She had questions. There was no reason for anyone to send her a car key. She was also busy, could the courier wait for fifteen minutes? Apparently he'd wait all day.

She made it to reception thirty minutes later and there was no sign of the courier. She looked to the two women at the desk. One of them said, “He's waiting outside.” This got more and more irritating.

She went through the door, impatiently scanning for the leathers of a bike courier or the inevitable cap of a guy with a van. She almost got knocked over by the shock of meeting a pair of the palest eyes in a charcoal grey suit. She took an instant step back and he smiled and that staggered her too. He had no right to smile at her like that, sending her breakfast into instant rebellion.

“How are you, Foley?”

Her fist closed around the key. She could throw it at him, at this distance it might hurt. He was way too beautiful and she didn't understand why he was here in a suit coat that fitted so well across his shoulders, draped so faultlessly over his chest. He made her throat tight, her chest hurt. Why was he here? Where had he been?

“Why did you send me a car key?”

His smile got impossibly bigger. He had a scar on his cheekbone that hadn't been there before. She wanted to put her finger to it, put her lips to it, hold onto him, block her ears to whatever excuses he made and throw her self-respect off a cliff.

“What do you want from me?”

His smile softened, but it simmered in his eyes. “Whatever you'll give me.” His voice was an obscene caress; it flowed across her body and took her breath away.

She threw the key at him. He caught it one-handed and the smile never left his face. It was infuriating. He couldn't simply come here like this and trick her into seeing him.

“Do you think you can come back wearing clothes that fit, with a decent haircut, and we'd pick up where we left off? Do you think I've been waiting around for you? I haven't. You walked away. I have a life I like now. You had your shot.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He wasn't smiling now. He wore confusion on his face as well as he wore that open necked shirt. “I'd have stood in any hailstorm for you. Followed any rule. Risked every convention.”

He reached a hand out to touch her. “Foley.”

She stepped back. “I looked for you. I asked around. I wasted months pining for you. Did you even once think about me, worry about me?”

He dropped his hand to his side. “I thought about you every day. I learned to recite three hundred and eighty-seven names backwards from Z to A because I was trying not to think about you and how I'd hurt you.”

He pushed a hand through his short crop of hair. Her traitor hand wanted to march on through those shiny strands too. But there was sticky tape holding her heart together and she wasn't brave enough to let him near it again.

“I owed it to you to stay out of your life. I was too screwed up. I couldn't take you anywhere I needed to go and I'm not apologising for that.”

Foley wrapped that traitor hand around her waist. “Then I guess we have nothing to say to each other.”

He held out the key. “I bought you a car.”

She looked at his hand then back to his face. Was this some kind of sick joke? “What piece of stupid logic would make you think I need you to buy me a car?”

“You have a new job but you're still driving the old one.”

“I haven't had ti—What business of yours is that?” Her hands came up, an aggressive gesture. “You'd have to have freaking well stalked me to know that.”

He didn't even have the grace to duck eye contact. “I drove by your flat. That car's not safe.”

“That's not your concern.”

He took a half step closer to her. “Yeah, it is.” He looked amazing, Nat was right, he looked younger, sexier, damn him. “It always was. That's why I had to leave you.” He needed to stop looking at her like he wanted to eat her with chocolate sauce. “I couldn't keep you safe. I couldn't be what you needed.”

“You took my confidence away. You ripped my heart out. It was a wet lump of shredded lettuce. If that's your version of safe, I'll take dangerous.”

“You already did that. You took my confusion, my anger and my rule making and you smashed it all up. You're the bravest, finest person I know.”

“Well, maybe you don't know me anymore. Maybe my life is a thousand times better than it was when you were in it. I don't need anything from you.”

“Foley.” His tone was so low, so hazardous to her continued mental stability. “If all you want to do is have me lay at your feet so you can walk over me, you only have to tell me where you want me to stretch out, and how long you want me to lay there.”

He couldn't say things like that. She'd virtually begged him to stay. This lying at her feet caper was a piece of crap. “You're unbelievable.”

“I believe in you. I believe in us.”

“There's no us.” Oh, he was just delusional. And she was a madwoman. She'd just yelled at him in the street outside the council chambers on her first legitimate day as general manager. “Why would I take you on again, to have you walk away when it got too difficult?”

That blow landed. It showed on his face. He lowered his chin. “It'll never be that hard again. I'll never make those same mistakes.” He looked up and straight into her eyes. “You can call me Drum or Trick or Patrick. They're all me and I won't ever try to battle things beyond me alone again. But I understand how you feel. I sucked,” he smiled gently, “and still you cared for me with everything you had.”

“I loved you.” She said that with bitterness; a slavish devotion to the past tense of it, the over and done, lost and gone of it.