The door opened, and Harriet was there, backing away, a wary gleam in her lovely eyes. He slammed the door behind him and leaned over her in the chair, bracing himself with a grip on her wheels “How’s your knee?” he murmured, his lips brushing against her ear.
“Much better.”
“Good. I’ve missed you Harry. You won’t believe how much.” He kissed her, probing her mouth with his tongue desperate to take possession. She responded, parting her lips and relief washed through him, easing the pain in his chest. Pushing her backwards towards the bedroom he kept his lips moving over hers and Harriet reached up, unbuttoning his shirt and by the time they were in the bedroom she was tugging at his jeans.
God, he loved her. Still loved her. He stiffened at the unwelcome revelation and she looked up at him, her eyes wide. Shaking his head to clear it, he dragged up a smile.
“Ready?”
Lifting her from the chair he carried her to the bed before stripping to his undershorts and joining her. He kissed her eyes and her ears, sipping at her skin and inhaling the long familiar floral scent that clung to her.
“God, I’ve missed this. I want to touch and taste every part of you.” It had been seven long, dry years. The loving they’d shared in the past few weeks could never assuage the hunger from that drought.
He pushed the aching memories aside, focussing on the woman in front of him. If sex was all she would give him, he would take it. He paid special attention to her neck and shoulders as his shaking fingers undid the buttons on her shirt and the clip of her bra, so he could kiss her breasts and tease her nipples until they stood in stiff peaks. Her skirt barely slowed him down and he pulled it and her lace underwear down in one movement and slipped her sandals off to drop them on the floor beside the bed.
Harriet saw the moment when some unwelcome thought paralysed him. He recovered quickly enough, but the disquiet lingered. His hands lit small fires as they stroked their way back up her legs and to her inner thighs followed by his lips. He tasted her deeply, his tongue measuring broad strokes that caused her to arch into him. His long fingers probed her secrets and in moments Harriet was going up in flames unable to control the convulsions as she cried out his name in ecstasy. Waves of pleasure rolled through her, the aftershocks leaving her trembling.
As she came down from the heights, Lucas lay his head on her stomach and Harriet stroked the soft hair back from his face. His hand cupped her hip and his thumb stroked the ridge of hip bone where the veins lay close to the surface.
For a while Harriet wondered if he had gone to sleep, the slight movement of his thumb the only signifier of his alertness. Then he sighed and moved to lie beside her on the bed, placing one hand on her stomach as if to maintain contact.
“Not a very coherent greeting Harry. But I hope you realise how pleased I am to see you.”
Harriet put her hand over his. “I missed you too, Lucas.”
They showered together before preparing Spaghetti Bolognese from ingredients in the bag Lucas had dumped in the hallway when he arrived. The rest of the evening they spent making love with an almost frenetic desperation. She had a horrible feeling that things were reaching a climax. All the same, Harriet slept soundly in his arms until Lucas woke her up long after dawn with a sensual invitation that she had no will to resist.
All too soon it was time for Harriet to prepare for her final rehearsal, for the demonstration her group was giving that night.
Lucas was reluctant to let her out of bed. “I wish I didn’t have this function to attend tonight. If it wasn’t business related, I would call it off.”
Harriet hushed him. “It’s all right. I’m busy tonight anyway. We can see each other tomorrow.”
She sent him off with a lingering kiss before heading for her rehearsal. Maybe she had been wrong about him distancing himself earlier. He certainly hadn’t been at all distant last night.
9
This was a mistake. His gut told him in no uncertain terms he would regret coming. It felt all wrong being here with Angela. A glimpse of several people in wheelchairs at the Ministers table early in the evening had confirmed what he already knew. It should be Harriet at his side. Angela was charming and beautiful in her slinky red dress and strappy heals, her blonde hair piled high.
But Lucas found himself wondering about Harriet and what she was doing with her dance group. He hadn’t made the connection until he’d realised the particular focus of tonight’s event. If only he could be sure.
She hadn’t said and with things the way they had been the last few days, he hadn’t asked. He should have asked. Should have made some attempt to breach the barrier she kept between her life and their time together. Moving around the dance floor with Angela he responded to her chatter absently and when the music stopped for the compeer to announce a special event, he was more than happy to move to the side of the floor.
Another hour or two and he could politely end the evening. The crowd jostled for position, so he rested a hand on Angela’s waist to keep her from being swept away.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Minister has invited three medal winning couples from previous state Wheelchair Ballroom Championships to give a special demonstration here tonight.”
Lucas strained forward to see the three wheelchair dancers and their partners come onto the floor. Sure enough, he recognised the third couple. Black hair slicked back and wearing a formal suit, he hardly knew Jimmie. So that was the out of work connection. Dressed in lavender and white with the sporting wheelchair trimmed with ribbons of the same colour, she looked quite different.
Smiling to himself, he started formulating a teasing comment about the bouffant hairstyle and heavy makeup. There was an audible murmur of appreciation from the crowd as the music started and the wheelchairs began spinning. Lucas joined in the spontaneous applause, seeking out the couple in purple.
All three couples were spectacular, but Lucas found himself watching Harriet as she spun and dipped around her male partner. Her arms were graceful and expressive and brought back to Lucas the night he had watched her perform her final ballet concert as the Fairy Queen only weeks before the accident.
A shiver prickled his spine as the memories and the reality of Harriet doing her dancing from a wheelchair came home to him. Angela must have felt the tremor, moving closer to take his arm as the performance came to a close. Jimmie, resplendent in a dark purple suit, stood beside Harriet, beaming from ear to ear at the applause.
They moved to follow their fellow dancers but the surge of people onto the floor forced them towards his side of the room. Lucas could see her laughing and chatting to Jimmie as she made her way through the crowd and knew the moment she spotted him. Her eyes lit up and she redirected her chair, manoeuvring adroitly through the crowd.
“You came to watch after all. How lovely…”
Her voice trailed off as she saw Angela clinging to his arm and with a sick feeling in his gut, he saw her smile die, replaced by an anxious crease. Her mouth moved silently as she stared, her face leaching of colour. He started towards her, but it was too late. The stricken look on her face told it all before she made an attempt at getting it under control, with a smile that wavered before it firmed into that fake expression he hated.
“We have to go. Lovely to see you. Come, Jimmie, we need to get our gear.” She spun away, and the crowd parted to let her through, closing up behind her. With a puzzled look, Jimmie waved at Lucas before vanishing in the sea of people.
Excusing himself, Lucas plunged into the crowd, but was hindered by the music starting again and more people moving onto the floor. By the time he got to the foyer Harriet was nowhere in sight. The closing of a lift door caught his eye. Taking a chance, he took the stairs, stopping at each level to see if she emerged. He was lucky at the second level, spotting Jimmie stowing the decorated chair in the red Focus.
Harriet sat in the driver’s seat, hooking up her regular chair. Lucas came to a halt, panting slightly from his headlong run down the
stairwell. She sat stony faced in the car refusing to look at him and Jimmie stood awkwardly beside the boot watching the confrontation.
“Harry, it isn’t what you are thinking.” He bent over, his hands on his thighs trying to draw breath.
Harriet pulled the lever to set the chair lift moving and was obscured from his sight for a few moments as the mechanism pulled the chair onto the roof of the vehicle. A sparkle of something under the car caught his eye. Something dropped in the rush to escape him? The chair settled on the roof with a dull clunk and a whirr of the mechanism, drawing his attention up to the girl in the car. She sat with her hands resting on the steering wheel staring straight ahead.
“Harriet, please talk to me. It was organised weeks ago before you and I were together.”
“It doesn’t matter, Lucas. We never said anything about exclusivity, did we? It worked out well all round, the crip gets laid and you still get to dance the night away with a real date. It’s a pity the two worlds collided tonight. You should have warned me. It could have been quite embarrassing.” Her face was pale but composed as she turned to look at him and Lucas was deathly afraid of the look in her eyes.
“I never wanted it to be like that, Harry. I never thought of you like that. Give me a chance to explain. Can I come over later?”
Her voice came out flat. “I don’t think so. What would your date think? We’ve run our course, Lucas. We live in different worlds now, so it was always going to be nothing more than a nice little interlude.”
Lucas put his hand on the car door to prevent her closing it. “Please, Harriet, I made a mistake. Don’t write me off again. Give me a chance to fix things.”
Harriet tugged at the door. “There isn’t anything worth fixing. Let me go. I have to take Jimmie home.”
“Wait. You forgot something.” She hesitated as he went down on one knee. He reached under the car to grab the bejewelled stiletto shoe.
For a moment something softened in her eyes as he held out the shoe. Her lashes lowered to fan out over her pale cheeks as her lips moved soundlessly once more. But he couldn’t read the words.
“Harry?”
Her jaw tightened as she opened her eyes. “No more fairy tales.”
Tossing the shoe into the back seat, she reached once more for the door handle.
Standing up he released it and stepped back. “Please, Harry, don’t do this.”
Harriet pulled the door shut, hoping to block out the desperation in his voice. Lucas looked totally defeated and her savaged heart was already painful enough. If she listened, she would give in and then it would start all over again. The futile hoping, the dreams of a future would only come crashing down again when reality reared its ugly face. It had already gone too far, the biting pain in her chest all too real. Friends with benefits had been a poor illusion.
Harriet backed out of the car park, trying not to look at Lucas as he stood there, shoulders slumped and face distraught. When she reached the turn to the exit, she could still see him in her rear vision mirror, standing there, one hand covering his eyes.
She clenched her hand over the steering knob and concentrated on her driving. If she could get home before this pain in her chest exploded…Breathing deep she focused hard on the traffic. She would be alright. Already the pain was easing, a numbness, familiar and comforting settling in the hollow of her chest.
Jimmie remained tactfully silent all the way home and she said goodnight and thanked him for his help when she dropped him off at his tiny flat. At home, Harriet had a shower before sitting at the dressing table looking at herself. Her mobile phone rang and rang, and she let it ring out. It rang three more times before whoever it was gave up. She couldn’t bear to listen to Lucas justifying himself. She deleted the messages without listening to them.
Picking up the brush she began to brush her hair but stopped after only a few strokes. She’d forgotten to wash it. The hair tangled from the thick hair spray she used to keep it in place for the dancing. Exchanging the brush for a pair of surgical scissors she cut the tangles out and then kept cutting. The reflection in the mirror blurred and she widened her eyes to hold back the tears. The scissors jammed on the bunched-up hair and she tugged them loose, lying them on the dressing table. She was so tired.
Suppressing a yawn, she went to bed and slept. The mobile phone ringing shortly after eight in the morning dragged her from sleep. Heart pumping, she turned it off and buried her head in her pillows when the landline in the lounge room began ringing. It was never going to stop. She staggered out, holding onto the walls and furniture and pulled it out. In the blissful silence that followed, she crawled onto the couch.
The sound of someone in the kitchen woke Harriet and she stretched and yawned before spotting her father making himself a cup of coffee. She was really going to take back the key card. This was getting ridiculous. Only now was not the best time to try and prove she was an adult.
“Would you like a hot chocolate?”
She nodded. “Yes, please. I don’t remember when I last ate.” She brushed some loose hairs off the couch and a memory had her putting her hand to her head. “Oh damn.” That wasn’t the only stupid thing she’d done last night.
Jack brought her over the hot chocolate and she sat up to drink it.
“It was a knot. Really, I’m all right.”
Just a little teensy bit heart-sore but that’s normal isn’t it. Harriet could tell her father was worried and she hated the fact it was her actions that put the strained expression on his face.
“Lucas rang me, Harriet. He said you’d given him the flick. He’s been trying to ring and getting no answer. He came around, but no-one answered the buzzer. He was worried about you.”
Harriet pointed to the phone. “That’s why I unplugged them. I meant to plug them back in tonight, but I fell asleep. He only wants to justify himself, so I’m not interested.”
“What had he done that was so terrible?”
“Only dated a beautiful blonde called Angela without telling me. She was glued to his side when I saw them at the IDD ball last night. He was dating her when we first met again, and it looks like he never stopped all the time he was with me.”
“Did Lucas have an explanation?”
Harriet snorted. “Only that it was organised before we got together. But in that case, why didn’t he tell me? Or even dump her and take me. I’ll tell you why. Because he doesn’t want any of his friends to see me with him. He’s ashamed of me. I’m all right to have sex with but not fit to be seen in public.”
A startled murmur from her father stopped her diatribe in mid flow.
“Damn. Too much information.”
Harriet leaned forward to touch her father’s knee. “Don’t blame Lucas. I wanted it. You don’t have to get the shotgun out.” She sighed as she tried to get her legs comfortable “This is so unnatural isn’t it. I mean a twenty-five-year-old actually mentioning her sex life to her father.”
“It’s probably better than talking to your mother.”
Harriet groaned. “She’d be rabid.”
“More than rabid. We might not mention it, hey. Or the reason for the haircut.”
“You think she’ll notice?”
“It’s fairly…radical.”
“Not good?”
He ruffled the short strands. “It actually looks quite nice, apart from the jagged bits. Shows off your eyes.”
“Think of all the time I’ll save brushing it. Shampoo will last for way longer.”
“That’s my girl. What will you do about Lucas?”
“He wanted to explain but I wouldn’t listen. Pretty stupid, huh?”
“Give him a chance. If it turns out you’re right and he is in a relationship with her you can let go gracefully. If not…well it’s up to you to decide.”
“The voice of reason. No wonder they pay you the big bucks.” She ran her fingers through her hair, laughing wryly when several clumps came away in her hand. “If he rings, I’ll listen. But if
he doesn’t, I’ll know it’s over.”
“You don’t want to be pro-active?”
“I don’t want to push him. If he really is involved with her, I don’t want him to feel pressured to come back. As it is, I think half the reason why he hung around was out of pity and a smidgen of guilt. That’s not my idea of a good basis for a relationship.”
“I’ll leave it at that.”
The next day Harriet went to the hairdresser and got a haircut. A short spikey cut that sat close to her scalp. There was no other option because she’d cut some patches so short. It had taken her a while to convince her father she would be all right. The whole hair cutting thing didn’t help and frankly, Harriet couldn’t even explain it to herself. But it brought back bad memories for her parents, reminding them of the aftermath of the accident. It was up to her to mitigate the damage by proving she was still in control.
Lucas didn’t ring again. She tried to tell herself it was for the best, but her fingers itched to call him. Her father didn’t say anything, just grunting when she told him there’d been no contact. She wondered if he was disappointed, but he gave nothing away. They had always got on well and this time round it seemed no different.
Lucas really had been perfect. The perfect lover and now the perfect businessman. The kind of man any father would want as a son-in-law. But his future would have been stunted if Lucas had stayed around after her accident. Sometimes she wondered what might have happened if the accident hadn’t occurred, but there was no chance of a do-over, so it was a futile exercise.
As the weeks passed and no contact came from Lucas, Harriet knew her decision had been the right one. If he really cared he wouldn’t have given up so easily. In her right mind, she knew differently. He’d gone because she’d pushed him away again. Harriet punished herself by imagining all the possible scenarios in which the beautiful, long legged Angela was present on his arm or in his arms.
Tell Me No Lies Page 14
