The Boyfriend Sessions (28 page)

“In my defence,” I told them, “I look younger than I am.”

Maddy shook her head at me. “Not debating that. Not telling someone something is still lying though.”

There was a double meaning if ever there was one. I chose to ignore her. She’d get over my dishonesty about Max sooner or later. “So you guys didn’t find him attractive?”

“Oh he was very attractive,” Cate agreed.

Scarlett looked at us over her glass of wine. “Until he opened his mouth.”

The others dissolved into fits of laughter and I rolled my eyes at them. They were referring to his voice. A tall, well-built male model with tanned skin and a mop of blond hair and mischievous blue eyes—there was good reason Grant had done so well in modelling. He wasn’t required to open his mouth.

“It was awful!” Cate cried, in between gasping for breath.

“It was like his voice had never dropped,” Scarlett agreed. “And that laugh … 
”

They resumed their fits of laughter. As I’d discovered the hard way, accidentally tickling Grant was not a turn on.

“The poor guy,” Cate managed. “Blessed with such good looks and completely lacking a manly voice.” Cate stopped and stared at me. “Was he adequate in other areas?”

I stood up. “Seriously. This conversation is over.” At Scarlett’s knowing look, I glared at her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I never let it get that serious.”

“Really?” Scarlett looked amazed, but then she would.

“Really.” Rack it up to guilt or motherly instinct, as hot as Grant was, he was also young and sweet. I hadn’t wanted to take advantage of him when I’d known things were unlikely to go anywhere longer term. “That’s it. Christa’s love life is finished. No more, okay?”

I marched to the kitchen, desperately needing some space and in need of a fix-everything cup of tea, because the wine was making me feel groggy.

“But what about Ben?” I heard Cate ask Maddy.

I almost growled as I grabbed the tea from the shelf.

Ben. What about him? I certainly wasn’t sharing the details with them, I decided. Enough was enough. My love life wasn’t a source of amusement for my friends and the last thing I wanted was a series of bad French jokes when they hadn’t even met the man. He was sweet and caring and lovely. A total gentleman. I’d allowed myself to get swept up in the magic of Paris and his endearing ways, and I didn’t want to tarnish that. He deserved better than being fodder for my gossiping girlfriends.

I finished making my cup of tea. Feeling calmer after a sip of the steaming Earl Grey, I made my way back to the lounge room.

“Ah, Christa?”

I looked around. Where was Cate? It was her voice calling me and now she was nowhere to be seen. Scarlett pointed toward the front door.

I turned to see her standing uncertainly in front of the open door. Strange. I must have been so caught up in my frustrated musings I hadn’t heard the intercom buzz. I couldn’t make out the person behind Cate, but it was definitely male.

My heart jumped for a moment and then I recalled that Max was at a football match with his father tonight so it couldn’t be him. Nor would that explain the pale look on Cate’s face.

It must be David, I realized. Poor Cate. I marched to the door, intent on supporting her and meeting the man currently cheating on his wife while he tormented my good friend.

“It’s for you,” Cate said quietly, then stepped aside.

I stopped in shock and stood stock still, several feet away from my front door.

“Christa!
Chérie!
I do have the right place. So sorry to drop in on you like this, but I wanted to surprise you.”

I stared into the deep blue, almost violet eyes of my French lover, currently looking at me earnestly, and swallowed.

“Hello, Ben.”

We stood staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

What was he doing here? We hadn’t spoken since I’d left Paris and now Ben was in Australia, standing on my front doorstep. I was relieved to see he at least appeared uncertain about his surprise visit.

“Are you going to let him in?” called Scarlett from the lounge room.

I clenched my jaw. I bet he hadn’t counted on a welcoming party. I offered him a weak smile and stepped aside. He leaned in and gave me a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, which I returned stiffly. My God, he still smelled the same. That intoxicating spicy, woody mix of what must be French aftershave and soap—Lord knows Australian guys didn’t smell like that.

Heart pounding, I led him down the hallway into the lounge room where my girlfriends all waited. Or should that be tigers ready to pounce on their prey? On second thought, it was probably a good thing I wasn’t alone with Ben right now as I needed to get over the shock of his sudden appearance.

Scarlett stood to greet him. “Ben, isn’t it? Just in the area were you?”

Oh dear. Maybe it would be better if they weren’t here after all. Ben laughed comfortably, walked over to Scarlett, and I watched as they shook hands. Ben was dressed in old, worn jeans that hugged his hips and the simple black t-shirt he wore seemed to highlight his violet eyes more than usual.

“I’m taking a month off now a big project is finished and decided to head to Australia. I’ve always wanted to come.”

Maddy looked at him coolly. “I don’t suppose it had anything to do with Christa?”

Ben regarded Maddy, all six foot of her. Ben wasn’t short, nor was he quite six foot either. He seemed unfazed and glanced back at me warmly. “Well, she might have had something to do with my decision.”

I stepped forward before Maddy could say anything else. “Ben, I’m so sorry. Let me introduce you to everyone.”

After the introductions, I went to his side and put a light arm around his waist without really thinking. Maddy glared at me, but I ignored her. “Can I get you a drink?” I asked.

“That would be great.”

“Come on. The kitchen is this way.” I gladly led him away from my friends and their curious expressions—or in Maddy’s case, her icy stare.

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything?”

“Oh no.” I waved a nervous hand in the air. “Cate—the blonde one—lives here and the other two came around for dinner. Just take away. Nothing special. Would you like water or something else?”

“Water’s fine.”

I passed him a glass of water and his fingers lingered on mine longer than necessary. I quickly averted my eyes.

“Where are you staying?” I asked, still not looking at him.

“I’m at the Novotel in the city.”

Nice. “When did you get here?”

“I arrived this morning.”

I met his eyes again, fear constricting my chest. Okay. So he’d basically landed in the country today and I was the first person he’d come to see. “I thought you were going to be involved in a big project for a while?”

“It’s just finished.” He set the empty glass back on the kitchen counter. “It’s been over two months since you fled Paris, Christa.”

I blinked, grabbed his glass and took it over to the sink so my back was to him. I didn’t know what to say. The room felt suffocating all of a sudden. Only minutes earlier I’d been discussing the men in my past, and now one of them had decided to pay me a visit, as though I’d conjured him.

I felt his hand come to rest on my shoulder and closed my eyes. The contact felt wrong but inexplicably natural at the same time.

“What I told your friends is true. I have always wanted to come to Australia,” Ben told me. “But I also didn’t want to leave things the way we did, either.”

I turned to face him and hated myself for the way my blood seemed to be throbbing loudly through my veins. I was in a relationship with Max and I vowed I wouldn’t hurt him. Yet here was Ben—gorgeous, irresistible, Ben—standing in my kitchen having flown to the other side of the world because he wanted to see me. I didn’t know where to start, but I had to do my best or else I was going to be staring at him like an open-mouthed idiot for the foreseeable future.

“I’m sorry for leaving the way that I did, but it’s complicated.”

He studied my face and frowned slightly. “I figured as much. But I’m not the type to be scared off by complications.”

Damn him for being an investigative journalist. I’d never left him any personal details of my life back in Australia, but he’d obviously had no trouble finding me. Sensing my continuing inability to hold a reasonable conversation, he reached over and squeezed my hand. It might as well have been my heart he was squeezing.

“Look,” he continued. “I’m pretty jetlagged to be honest and I know me arriving here like this is a shock. I just wanted to see you. How about we catch up tomorrow? Can you do dinner?”

I didn’t have plans but Max would assume I’d be spending my Friday night with him. That would have to change. I needed to get things out of the way with Ben sooner rather than later, so I’d have to tell Max something had come up.

I smiled tightly. “Sure. How about I meet you in the city after work, say six pm? I’ll come to the Novotel foyer?”

He didn’t speak, but instead leaned over and kissed me gently on my cheek again, his lips impossibly soft. It lasted way too long. Or just long enough for my world to shift.

When he stepped back, his expression was tender. “Tomorrow,
chérie
.”

He left me standing alone in my kitchen. Before I realized I should be showing him out I could hear him saying a friendly goodbye to my girlfriends in the lounge room. Thirty seconds later, the front door clicked shut and there was a stampede into the kitchen.

“What the hell?” Maddy asked. She looked furious.

“He’s gorgeous, Christa,” Cate said at the same time.

Scarlett just looked at me with an amused expression on her face.

I held up my hands, indicating that I needed some space. “I had absolutely no idea he was coming.”

Maddy grimaced. “And I assume you told him you’re now in a relationship and he should find someone else to show him around Sydney?”

“We didn’t get that far.”

“You didn’t tell him!”

“I wasn’t sure what to tell him, Maddy.” I inhaled unsteadily. “I’m in shock, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ll tell him more when we catch up tomorrow.”

“You’re going to see him again?”

“He flew to the other side of the world to see me, I think I owe him at least that much.”

Maddy observed me warily. “Should I tell Max or are you going to?”

“I’ll tell him,” I replied quickly. “Promise me you won’t say anything until I’ve had the chance to talk to him. I don’t want him hearing it from anyone else.”

“Alright,” Maddy said, a little too reluctantly. “But only because he asked me to mind my own business. I don’t like this, Christa. I don’t like it one bit.”

“You don’t exactly see me jumping up and down for joy, do you?”

“I saw the way he looked at you, Christa. That was enough.”

“Come on.” Scarlett touched Maddy’s shoulder. “It’s a school night.” Which was her way of saying Maddy should back off.

Maddy pushed a manicured hand through her long, dark hair. “Yeah, you’re right.” She shot me a firm look. “I’ll call you on the weekend.”

“Sure.” I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

Cate and I watched as they gathered their things and we said our goodbyes. Once the door closed, Cate turned to me, her expression lined with concern.

“You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

I tried to hide my shock as I looked into her earnest, light blue eyes. “Was it that obvious?”

“No, not really. I just know you.”

I sighed deeply and looked out the glass doors into the night, where the lights of the other houses across the bay winked at me. “What gave me away?”

Cate’s lips pressed themselves into a thin line. “Do you really want to know?”

I nodded.

“You looked at Ben the same way you do at Max sometimes.”

I felt my stomach twist. I shot her a questioning look, not trusting myself to say anything.

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s that look you get.” She smiled weakly. “The terrified one. When you’re scared of falling in love.”

It wasn’t possible.

After several years of L word illiteracy, could I be falling for two men? At the same time? Surely that wasn’t what this was? I must just be suffering from post-holiday romance reminiscence.

I pushed an errant curl behind my ear, then gave up altogether when a gust of wind blew my hair in all directions. My heels clicked steadily on the footpath as I approached Circular Quay. The sounds of slow moving city traffic, the train, and the hum of conversation as office bound workers escaped their fluorescent caves for Friday lunch threatened to engulf me, and I was glad of it.

I didn’t want to think. I was sick of thinking. After Ben had left and Cate had gone to bed, I’d lain awake for hours, my head a jumble of thoughts. As for my heart, if it hadn’t been beating loudly after my brisk walk from Grounded Marketing to Circular Quay, I’d almost have convinced myself I no longer had one. I felt numb and so confused.

The sight of Max in the distance, holding a casual hand up in greeting, filled me with a mixture of relief and dread. His tall frame was relaxed against the railing overlooking Sydney Harbour. He wore a navy suit and it highlighted his broad shoulders. I wondered if they were broad enough for what I was about to tell him.

Closing the distance between us, I registered his warm smile and did my best to do the same in return.

“Hey, gorgeous.” His eyes were obscured by his reflective Ray Bans, but I could still feel the warmth in his gaze.

“Hey.”

I stood on tiptoes to offer him a quick kiss. He ignored my attempts to be brief and pulled me in closer for a long, lingering taste. “Max—”

“Not finished yet.”

My mind wanted to resist, but my body won out and I let myself go limp in his embrace. Damn him.

“That’s better.” He gently extracted himself and held up a plastic bag. “Hope fish and chips is alright, but it seemed like a fish and chip kind of day.”

He was right. The sun was high and the sky was an endless blue. It was one of those postcard days where Sydney Harbour seemed to be alive and basking in the start of the summer heat, enticing people to kick off their heels, sit on the grass and soak up the sun.

Hand in hand, we strolled along the water’s edge. The ferries bustled in and out of the quay, their loud wash noisy enough to keep us silent as we searched for a seat. Max directed me to a bench partly under the shade of a palm blowing in the breeze.

I watched as he ripped open the bag of chips and offered me one. I bit into the oily shell, ignoring the sting on my tongue from the heat.

“So what have you got on tonight?” he asked innocently.

The chip seemed to get stuck in my throat and I swallowed it painfully. “That’s why I wanted to see you for lunch.”

“Because you couldn’t go another day without seeing me?”

He was joking, but I wasn’t in the mood. “No, I needed to see you in person.”

“Sounds ominous.”

God, I didn’t know where to start. He’d asked me to be honest with him and right now, I was struggling with his request. My immediate gut reaction to Ben turning up on my doorstep last night was not to tell Max. The old Christa would have just ignored any sense of duty and gone and had dinner with Ben and not mentioned it to Max. After all, if I never saw Ben again after tonight, then why did I need to worry Max unnecessarily?

I reached for a bottle of water in my bag and took a long gulp. The problem was the new Christa was paranoid of hurting Max. And I also knew him well enough to understand that not telling him something like this would hurt him more than the news itself.

I couldn’t forget Maddy either. I was still on tenterhooks there, too.

I put the bottle back in my bag and turned to face Max, who was now looking at me with a mixture of confusion and concern.

“I had an unexpected visitor last night,” I told him.

“Oh?”

“Ben. French Ben.”

Max was quiet for a long moment. “They guy who proposed to you in Paris?”

“Yes. He’s in Sydney. I didn’t know anything about it until he turned up. I’m catching up with him for dinner tonight.” Why did that sound worse when I said it out loud?

“Alright.”

Alright? “I thought I should tell you.”

“Thanks.”

I watched as he picked up another chip and proceeded to eat it while looking across the harbor. Well, that had gone better than expected.

“You don’t you have a problem with it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not thrilled about it.”

And there it was. Exactly what I’d been worried about. “It’s not fair for me not to see him, Max. He came all this way—”

“When did I say that you shouldn’t be seeing him?”

“But you just said you weren’t happy about it.”

“That’s different from telling you not to.” His voice had a hard edge to it. “And since when do I get to tell you what to do, Christa?”

“You don’t.”

“Exactly.”

I was confused. Confused by his words and his tone. “You don’t seem very happy—”

“Of course I’m not happy!”

I sat back in the seat, taken by surprise.

Max pushed his sunglasses onto his head and leaned in to look at me. “You’re telling me the guy you were involved with only a few months ago—who proposed to you—has just flown across the world to see you and you’re having dinner with him tonight? Do you expect me to be pleased about it?”

“No.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Then what’s the problem?”

I broke eye contact and stared at the Opera House, at the creamy arches glinting in the afternoon sun. “I need to see him, Max.”

“When did I tell you not to?”

“You didn’t.”

“That’s right. I didn’t.”

“But you’re not happy about it!” I was feeling exasperated now and I felt as if our conversation was going around in circles.

Max sighed and sat back again. “I thought we’d established that. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.”

“So now I’m just going to feel guilty all night, then?”

“Why should you feel guilty?” Max was looking at me carefully.

“Because me seeing him will make you uncomfortable, that’s why.”

Max frowned. “Plenty of things make me uncomfortable. I’m a grown man, I can deal with it.”

“But I’ll still feel bad.”

“That’s you feeling that way, not me. If you need to go see the guy, go see the guy.”

I sighed and picked up one of the plastic forks, speared a piece of deep battered fish, and ate it somewhat grumpily. My head hurt. Why did men have to be so goddamn black and white?

Max studied me and shook his head, a wry grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I do appreciate you telling me.”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” I muttered between mouthfuls.

His fingers found my hair and twirled a curl. I resisted leaning into him. Max’s response was to plant a soft kiss on my forehead.

“You’re stressed about it, Christa, I can tell. Just accept that’s what this is instead of trying to pick a fight with me.”

Well, that wasn’t fair. He was being far too reasonable and I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. Not intentionally anyway. I leaned back to look at him and he laughed at my grim expression.

“Of course, if he lays anything other than a brotherly hand on you, I’ll hunt him down and punch his lights out.” He grinned. “Is that better?”

I pouted. “That’s more like it.”

Max laughed loudly, drawing the attention of a few people walking nearby. “You’re a strange woman. Besides, from what you’ve told me, when he proposed you fled Paris and didn’t speak to him again until now. So I’ve got nothing to be worried about, right?”

I studied his smiling expression. Max didn’t appear concerned, which was a relief. But then why didn’t I feel relieved too? As I allowed him to take my hand, I realized what it was.

He might not have been worried, but I was.