Playing by the Rules (14 page)

‘There was one girl, once, who could have been more serious.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stiffen and a pure, possessive bolt of pleasure shot through him at the idea that she might be jealous.

‘What happened?’ Her tone was careful and devoid of tears and he preened inwardly. He was sure now. She was jealous. He was so pleased, he forgot to answer her question. ‘So . . . what happened?’ she repeated.

‘It was time for me to leave and go to my next job. And she didn’t want to leave.’

‘And you didn’t want to stay.’

‘I couldn’t. It was my first move in that job. The one I’m doing now. They’d taken a chance on me and trained me. They more or less invented the position for me. If I’d let them down, my name would have been mud.’

‘Did you ask her to come with you?’

Josh squirmed a little in his seat. He’d never been examined by the Love Inquisition before and he couldn’t help feeling he was going to be tried and found wanting.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What do you mean, “Not exactly”?’

Josh squirmed some more.

‘I told her I had to go and I said I’d like it if she wanted to move too.’

‘Well, with an offer like that, I’m not surprised she didn’t want to go!’

‘What was I supposed to do? Ask her to marry me? I wasn’t ready for that!’

How had they got to the point of arguing about how he’d treated an ex-girlfriend from the starting point of her mother’s new lover? He needed to get a grip, on himself and this conversation.

‘In that case, it wasn’t about timing. She wasn’t the right person.’

‘How do you know? Maybe we were just unlucky.’ Oh yes, Josh, excellent getting of a grip. Tell the woman you’re kind of going out with that another woman might have been ‘the one’ if circumstances had been different.

Kate shook her head firmly.

‘No. If she’d been the right one, you would have at least asked. You would have wanted to.’

Josh took a deep breath and tried to speak more evenly. He felt as though this was important, although he wasn’t sure exactly why.

‘I did want to. At least ask her to come with me properly. I thought about it. But maybe you’re right. Maybe we weren’t meant to be together. Because in the end, I couldn’t do it. I kept hearing my dad, telling me that if you’re going to take a woman away from her family and everything she knows – if you’re going to ask her to leave all that for you – you have to be ready to do whatever it takes to make her happy.’

‘Like he does for your mum?’

‘Yes! Exactly. When he brought her here from Mauritius, he promised her family that he would make her happy. That he’d make it up to her for taking her away from her home and her life there.’

They were between streetlights and he couldn’t clearly see her face, but he could hear the smile in her voice.

‘I didn’t know that. That’s lovely. And for what it’s worth, I think he succeeded. Your mum and dad are almost as much of an inspiration to me as my mum and dad are. Were.’

He reached for her hand, in an attempt to stop the conversation sliding back to sadness. Even if it meant having to talk about his love life, or lack thereof, instead.

‘Yes, I think he did too. But it’s a kind of tough act to follow. As long as I’m in this crazy job, to ask someone to come with me, I’d have to love them as much as my dad loves my mum.’

‘Which is a lot.’

‘A whole lot.’

‘And your job makes it hard for you to get that close to anyone.’

‘Exactly! So I guess I’m doomed to be alone!’

It was meant to be a joke, but even as he said the words, he knew it was falling flat. Something about the way he said it hadn’t sounded funny at all.

Luckily, they had arrived. So the conversation naturally came to an end and he could let it go, which was just as well, as he didn’t know how to salvage it.

It was official. He was losing his touch.

Which might have been why, when they got into the lift together, he gravitated toward her like a meteor drawn helplessly to a planet. He couldn’t seem to control what he said around her, but in one thing at least, he knew they had no trouble communicating.

Kate sank into his arms with a feeling of coming home, which would have worried her if she could be bothered thinking. But she didn’t want to think. After the night she’d had – indeed, the week she’d had – she was not going to turn down comfort when it was offered. Especially not if it felt like this.

So once again, as the arthritic lift shivered to a halt and the doors wheezed open to an attentive audience, Kate and Josh were discovered locked together and not paying much attention to anything but each other.

Only this time, the audience consisted of Jo, with her hands over her mouth . . . and six foot two of crumpled, tired, shocked and heartily pissed-off Frenchman.

At first, Kate didn’t believe it. She thought she must be hallucinating. She blinked several times, but when she’d finished, Alain was still there. He must be real.

It had happened. In her most secret dreams, this was what she had imagined: Alain showing up on her doorstep, saying it was all a horrible mistake and begging her to take him back.

In her dreams, she hadn’t imagined that he would find her wrapped in the arms of another man. It hadn’t even occurred to her as a possibility. But here she was and, wonder of wonders, she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty. With the impression of Josh’s kiss still on her lips, what she felt was exhilarated.

Somehow, with Josh’s arms around her and his breathing tickling her neck, she couldn’t muster anywhere near the level of excitement that she had expected to feel on seeing Alain there, in Australia, just a few steps away from her. In the fantasy, his appearance on her doorstep was her cue to throw herself into his arms and forgive him, whereupon he would get down on one knee and give her the ring he should have given her weeks ago.

But now . . . now, she didn’t feel at all inclined to throw herself into his arms. That would mean removing herself from Josh’s embrace and that was something that she hadn’t been planning on doing for some time.

But she could hardly just leave him standing there. He’d come all this way; she owed him at least the courtesy of acknowledging his existence. So she disengaged herself from Josh – a non-trivial task, since he seemed to want to hold on to her – and started moving towards Alain.

Then the lift doors shut.

He’d done it again. Honestly, the man must have the fastest lift-button finger in the known world.

‘I thought you might need a minute,’ he said, confirming her suspicion. ‘I take it that was Alain?’

Kate looked at him blankly, as she realised that Josh had never met Alain. That was weird. She had begun to feel as though she had known Josh forever. She
had
known him forever, in a way, and yet this showed that he didn’t really know anything about her. He had never even met the man she had thought she was going to marry.

‘Do you want me to get rid of him?’

Kate couldn’t help feeling a jolt of pleasure as she saw his frown and heard the protective concern in his voice. It was rather lovely that he wanted to be her knight in shining armour. Maybe she should let him.

No. She rejected the thought almost as soon as it had come. That was ridiculous. Knights were supposed to protect you from dragons, not ex-boyfriends. Anyway, Josh wasn’t her knight. He wasn’t
her
anything.

In spite of what her mother wanted to think, he wasn’t her boyfriend. Yes, she had been going out with him on what, at a stretch, you could call dates. But that situation had a pre-set use-by date, which could arguably already have passed, now that the dinner was over. So he couldn’t, by any reasonable standards, be called her boyfriend.

He could perhaps be called her flingee, if she was a flinger. But she’d abandoned the idea of a fling some time ago. She’d never been exactly clear on what it meant, but she was pretty sure it didn’t include having anything to do with each other’s families. And even if this could be called a fling, surely the key part of a fling was that there were no strings? So he couldn’t be ‘her’ flingee. It was a logical impossibility.

The only word that made sense, that combined how nice he’d been to her and how short-lived this interlude had to be, was ‘friend’.

Mind you, she didn’t have many friends who looked at her the way he was looking at her now. Nor would many of her friends have thought that this would be an appropriate time to put their arms around her, as Josh was doing.

A small voice in Kate’s mind suggested that ‘lover’ might be a better word than ‘friend’. But that was ridiculous. She, Kate Adams, did not have
lovers
. Boyfriends, yes. A husband, one day, yes. Lovers, with all the connotations of hastily formed, illicit affairs, had no place in her neatly ordered life. But the voice stuck out its tongue and said that if she didn’t like it, she was going to have to find some other way to describe Josh, because, with the way his mouth was rapidly approaching hers again, ‘friend’ really wasn’t going to cut it.

She was prevented from discovering precisely how wrong it was, though, by the lift doors opening again. Unfortunately, the timing meant that Jo and Alain got a second close-up of her wrapped in Josh’s arms and the view appeared to be having much the same effect as it had the last time.

Alain removed his finger from the lift button, put one arm across the open door so it couldn’t close again and, with the other hand, reached out to Kate.

‘Kate, can I talk to you?’

He had spoken in French, which was rude, but Kate, normally such a stickler for manners, barely noticed. She was too preoccupied with his question. Because she thought the answer was no.

This was crazy. She should be jumping at the chance to talk to him. But she wasn’t. There was a cold space in her heart where excitement should have been, and the unresolved issue of what Josh was to her was still hammering around her head, threatening to give her the mother of all headaches. She felt her mouth go dry and sweat start to bead on her forehead; then a sickening realisation hit her stomach with a thud.

Alain was going to ask her to take him back – and she didn’t know whether she wanted him.

She shivered in Josh’s arms and he tightened them around her protectively. Then, before she knew what was happening, he switched to holding her hand and pulled her out of the lift to face Alain. He looked, Kate thought (apart from the lack of armour and sword), exactly like a knight about to save a maiden from a dragon.

‘Look mate, it’s late and Kate is tired. I don’t think now is a good time.’

Alain bridled visibly and drew himself up to his full height. Kate couldn’t help noticing that the tactic, which would normally have been so successful, was wasted on Josh, since he was still about an inch taller of the two. Nor could she help feeling a small surge of pleasure at the fact, although she did her best to ignore it. It seemed likely to start up that whole is-he-a-friend-or-is-he-something-else cycle of thoughts again and she didn’t think her head was up to that.

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you? I am here to see Kate.’

This time, Alain had spoken in flawless, although accented, English. But Josh clearly took exception to his tone. He dropped Kate’s hand and stepped forward, until he was almost toe-to-toe with Alain, and spoke quietly, but with a world of menace in his voice.

‘Well, she doesn’t want to see you.’

Kate looked from Alain to Josh and back again, suddenly reminded that when knights went out to battle dragons the results were usually not pretty. The two men were glaring at each other with naked dislike. Josh’s eyes were nearly black with antagonism and Kate could have sworn she could smell testosterone. Their aggression was so palpable she could almost see it, coming off the pair of them in waves and swirling in eddies around the hallway. It looked as though it was only a matter of time before one of them started swinging with more than words.

Watching them, Kate had to wonder whether fantasies were all they were cracked up to be. Wasn’t it supposed to be the ultimate, flattering fantasy to have two men fighting over you? Yet she didn’t feel at all flattered by this; instead, she felt a little scared, a lot nauseous and very, very tired. The butterflies that had been in her stomach earlier had moved into her head and the threatening headache had become a reality. With a sigh, she stepped forward and put a hand on each man’s arm.

‘Stop it, both of you.’

Neither of them moved. Kate sighed again, and added ‘Please?’, looking at Josh. He was visibly reluctant to back down, but in response to Kate’s plea, he removed his wary gaze from Alain for long enough to look at her. Kate’s eyes achieved what her words had not been able to. With a shrug, he stepped back to stand next to Jo, and Kate gratefully turned to Alain.

‘Alain, I am tired. I have no idea what you think you are doing here —’ He tried to interrupt, but she held up a hand to silence him. ‘—and I don’t want to know. Not now. I’m exhausted, and I am going to bed. Go away. If you must see me, you can come back tomorrow. Don’t come before midday, and ring first, in case Jo wants to go out before you get here. You’re not exactly popular in this household.’

The last bit was probably unnecessary; if Alain had been in any doubt about his lack of popularity, a look at the face of either of the other two people in the hallway would have disabused him. But Kate was beginning to feel quite ill and now that the shock of seeing him had worn off, resentment at his ruining what had promised to be the best bit of the evening was taking its place. If she didn’t get away from him and get some breathing and thinking space soon, she wasn’t going to need Josh’s help to turn this whole thing quite ugly.

She turned her back on Alain and gave Jo and Josh a tiny smile. It did not escape either of them that she hadn’t managed as much for Alain.

‘Josh, thank you for a lovely evening. I really appreciate you coming,’ she said, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek. It had been more weird and exhausting than completely lovely, but there was no way she was going to admit that in front of Alain. Josh looked as if he would have liked to insist on more than a chaste peck, but there was no way she going there in front of Alain, either. Not again. She shook her head at Josh and immediately regretted it, as she felt her brain bounce off the inside of her skull. She turned, gingerly, to Jo.

‘Jo, goodnight. I’ll talk to you in the morning, all right?’ Jo started to speak, but Kate wasn’t waiting for an answer. She didn’t dare. She turned and almost ran into the flat.

Left Kate-less in the hallway, there was nothing for Alain to do but go. With a scowl, he shouldered the bag that had been lying by the door and pressed the button for the lift. Then, apparently as an afterthought, he turned back to speak to Jo.

‘I trust it is all right with you, if I return tomorrow?’

Jo nodded, looking surprised and rather impressed, that he had thought to ask. Josh felt like telling him it was far from all right, but he held his peace. Then the lift arrived and Alain was gone.

Josh expressed his relief by grabbing Jo in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet and left the imprint of her bag on her stomach.

‘Oof! Josh! Put me down!’ He obliged and she took a couple of deep breaths, having apparently had all of the air knocked out of her by the force of the hug. ‘God, Josh, can you warn me next time before you do that? Just to give me a chance to put down any pointy, metallic objects I happen to be holding.’

‘Well, now we’ve got rid of him, I’d say it’s time for bed, wouldn’t you, little sister?

‘Oh, no you don’t.’ Jo had got her breath back and, to his surprise, moving with a speed that would have astonished her old schoolmates, she had whipped past Josh and was standing blocking the door to the flat.

‘You are not staying here tonight.’

‘But we talked about this, Jo. You said I could sleep on the couch tonight. And I promised not to whinge about it being too short. Remember?’

He accompanied this with what he hoped was an ingratiating smile, but Jo wasn’t swayed.

‘That was before tall, blonde and handsome showed up.’

‘He is not handsome!’

‘Like you’d know! Stick to what you understand, brother dear. And don’t change the subject. You are
not
staying.’

‘Jo, I’m not leaving Kate alone with that gorilla hanging around!’

‘Last time I looked, Josh, the only person hanging around was you. And what am I, anyway? Chopped liver? Kate isn’t alone. I’m here. Besides, she seemed perfectly capable of handling the gorilla herself, thank you very much. He’s just an ex-boyfriend, after all.’

‘Just as long as he stays ex,’ Josh muttered.

‘Yes, and that’s another thing,’ Jo said, with a look on her face that reminded Josh unnervingly of their mother. ‘Whatever Alain is here for, Josh, it is None. Of. Your. Business.’ Jo could ram a point home with the best of them, and her last words had been enunciated with a crystal sharpness that had Josh wincing as though she had stabbed him with them.

‘I mean it, Josh. Look, I think he’s a bastard too, but if he has come here to apologise, maybe he’s not as big a bastard as we think. And if that’s the case, she
might
want him back.’ She held up her hand as if to stop him from interrupting her, but she wasn’t really in much danger. The idea of Kate taking Alain back had hit Josh like one of Kate’s basketballs to the diaphragm and he had no breath for talking. ‘Now, we might not like that, but it’s not our decision. So we – and by we, I specifically mean
you
– need to stay out of it.’

Jo had been pacing up and down in front of the door as she spoke, her body betraying an agitation she was carefully keeping from her voice. But then she looked at Josh and gave him a hug.

‘Josh, hon, I don’t know what’s going on between you two. I’m not sure you do yourself. But whatever it is, it’s less than a fortnight old. Kate and Alain have a much longer history than that. She has to at least talk to him. Surely you can understand that?’

Josh nodded, although he really wanted to shout that no, he didn’t understand, that he would never understand and that he didn’t want to understand.

‘Now, love, I really think it would be best for you to go home. Back to Mum and Dad’s, I mean. Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow night might be best. She told Alain not to come before lunchtime, and it’s probably better to let her get that over with before she sees you.

‘Besides,’ she added, with a faint version of her normal cheeky grin, ‘judging by the look of her, I don’t think Kate is going to be at her sparkling best first thing tomorrow morning.’

Josh tried to smile back, but he didn’t do a very good job. Jo didn’t comment. She just kissed him on the cheek, gave him another quick hug and went inside, closing the door behind her.

For several minutes, Josh stood there in silence, looking at the door. He accepted the sense of everything Jo had said. But his heart was locked in the flat with Kate, and it wasn’t listening to sense. What if she did want Alain back? Was he supposed to lie down and take that? Even if it was wrong for her? Even though he, Josh, loved her?