She thought she couldn’t have it all. She could. She could have it with me, because I wanted to help her do it. But how was I going to convince her of that?
And then I pulled off Highway 1 and headed up Moeraki Boulders Road, turned into my driveway, and found a car there. A silver sedan that looked like a rental.
“Huh,” Karen said, and I thought the same thing. A mate, maybe, a soldier with a problem. That had happened before. Or Poppy, even though the car was wrong. If this was her, driving a car that wasn’t her own, running away, I’d know that the niggles I’d picked up before were real, however breezy she tried to be. Whoever it was, it was likely to be somebody who needed help, which I’d have to give, even though I could all but feel my time with Karen running through the hourglass.
The fella who came around the house could never have been in the services. No possible way. He wasn’t even my brother-in-law, Max, much as I’d like to have a fairly serious discussion with Max just now. This bloke was what you’d call “broodingly handsome,” if you were in the model-agent business, and was wearing slim-fit jeans, a matching navy button-down shirt that was cut so close to his trim body that he’d clearly done it on purpose, and almost-casual blue suede shoes.
Yes, he was wearing blue suede shoes. I was sure that was meant to be ironic. No man should be wearing clothes that were meant to be ironic. I hated him already. And then Karen said, “Oh, no. Why?” and bolted out of the car like she’d been shot out of a cannon, and I thought I knew who he was and hated him even more.
On the other hand—this could end up in a fight. That was cheering.
Karen
My first thought was, “This went differently in my imagination.” As in—I’d be getting some award, or coming out of some interview. Possibly wearing an evening gown. I’d see Josh and would pause, one hand resting lightly on a banister, before I picked up my skirt and moved gracefully down the curving staircase, a faint smile on my face.
That had probably come from a movie. Oh, well. It wasn’t happening. Here in my real life, Josh was the one who looked dark and elegant, while I was wearing shorts, a grubby T-shirt, and running shoes, and I smelled like a couple hours of running followed by bacon and three hours in the car, during which the sweat had dried. I could also have spinach in my teeth. You never knew.
It didn’t matter, not when I jumped out. I was just mad. Jax got out, too, and stood next to me. So he could jump in front of me and take a bullet, probably. The man had been born to protect, and if Josh was cake mix? Jax was four layers of double-coffee chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing.
Josh’s eyes flicked between Jax and me, and I folded my arms and said, “What?”
“I should be the one asking ‘What,’” he said. “You never even returned my calls. You never gave me a chance to explain. You never answered me when I did explain.”
“When did you explain?” I asked. “And what possible explanation could you give?”
“I wrote you an email. I spelled it all out. I left voicemails.”
“I hope you enjoyed the exercise, then,” I said, “because I blocked you. Of course I blocked you. What did you expect?”
“That my fiancée would hear me out? That she’d actually break up with me, not just disappear? That she’d have some guts?”
Oh, boy. If there’d been a window handy, I’d have thrown a chair through it for sure. Or I’d have thrown Josh through it. I reminded myself, No hitting, waited for the message to get through to my body, and discovered that I’d apparently blocked that, too.
I said, “Your fiancée with no ring and no date, hanging on for nothing. I’m not having this conversation in the middle of a driveway. I have to pee. I need a glass of water. I need to brush my teeth. And you’re in my way.”
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” Josh asked. Not in an admiring way. He glanced at Jax and asked, “Who’s this?”
I said, “None of your business,” at the same time Jax said, “Jax MacGregor.” He didn’t offer to shake hands. His arms were folded, the same way mine were, and probably for the same reason. So he wouldn’t hit.
He was about the most controlled guy I’d ever met, and still—he was having as much trouble with that as I was. A helpful thought. I said, “I’m going in the house,” and Jax walked past Josh, unlocked the door, glanced back, and said, “If you want to talk to her, wait here. Who knows? Maybe she’ll come out again.”
When he shut the door behind us, I said, “I really do have to pee,” and he said, “Go ahead.”
I said, “I don’t want to talk to him, and I do. I probably have things to say.”
“Fine,” Jax said. “I’ll take him around back so we can sit. Come out when you’re ready.”
“I’m making you violate Kiwi hospitality rules.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “I’m not doing physical violence. That’s close enough.”
I didn’t have spinach between my teeth, as it turned out. I was sticky and hot, though. I thought about that for about ten seconds, and then I took a fast shower, didn’t put on a single bit of makeup, and headed into the bedroom to find something else to wear. Some item of clothing that said, “Fuck you.”
I ran into three unfortunate impediments to that plan. First, I didn’t have anything printed with that slogan, a sad wardrobe deficiency. Second, my breeziest dress was stuffed into a rubbish bag in a Tauranga landfill, cut in half. And third, the blinds over the bifold doors were up, and when I walked into the bedroom, stark naked, Josh turned his head from where he was sitting on the deck and saw me.
I didn’t jump back, or I only did it for a second. After that, I thought, I’ve got a body that the hottest man I’ve ever known can’t get enough of, and you don’t get to touch it ever again. And then I went to the closet, took out a stretchy chocolate-brown skirt that I sometimes used as a swim coverup, pulled it up my legs with no hurry at all, and settled it into place. It only came to midthigh, it didn’t have the highest waist in the world, and I was just fine with that. After that, I grabbed a blue dress shirt of Jax’s, buttoned about three buttons, popped the collar, went over to the door, flicked the lock, shoved it open, and went to sit beside Jax. No underwear, no bra, and plenty of badass.
Jax had seen me in there, too, I was pretty sure, because his intensity level was dialed up to 10. I stretched my legs out in front of me, crossed my bare ankles, and told Josh, “So. You came to talk. Let’s hear it.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. He was staring at my belly button, because I’d pulled the waistband of my skirt, way, way down. I touched the lowest ruby for just a second, then fingered the bow in an absent sort of way and said, “I’m waiting.”
“You got new jewelry,” he said.
“She got rubies,” Jax said. He had his hand on the back of my chair. Not touching me. Just being right there.
Josh cleared his throat and pretty obviously decided not to ask me if they’d been a birthday present from Hope. I thought, Screw you and your KitchenAid mixer, buddy, stared at him in what I sincerely hoped was a cool fashion, and said, “You flew a long way to get here. What did you want to say to me?”
“I could say that I wouldn’t have thought you’d go for rebound sex,” he said, “especially after all the times you told me you didn’t want anybody but me. It’s been, what, two months? That’s some grieving period after eight years. Maybe you thought it was revenge, though. Here’s a hint. It just looks tacky.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. “If I cared what you thought, I’m sure it would be useful. What else?”
“I can’t talk to you about this with him here,” he said, cocking his head at Jax. “Let’s go have a drink or something. And seriously? You couldn’t find a guy with two legs, at least?”
Before, I’d been sort of . . . angrily triumphant, if that was a thing. Now, I was down to just the “angry” part. I said, “In about two seconds, I’m going to tell you what he’s got that you can only dream of. How
did you find me? Because I’m going to kill somebody.”
He took a breath, and I reminded myself, You’re in the power seat here. And the less you lose your temper, the more powerful you’ll be. I tried to channel Jax. It wasn’t easy, but I shut up and stared at Josh until he said, “Jada told me where you were.”
“I didn’t give her the address.” Not Hope, I thought. Please, not Hope.
“You sent her a link to the house. Do you think we couldn’t find it from that? And I don’t want you back, not anymore. That’s over. This is a business visit.”
“Oh, really.” I wished I had a drink with a straw in it, so I could sip from it in a cool manner. On the other hand, I wished he’d just leave. The Hope thing had me weak with relief, and something about the tension in Jax’s body told me that the second Josh was out of here, I’d discover how Jax wanted to express his emotions. I’d much rather hear about that.
“Yes,” Josh said. “Really. You’re going to be getting an email from M&P tomorrow. It’s going to have the official offer in it. They want you back.”
My heart hadn’t exactly been beating slowly up to this point. Now, though, it started to race so fast, I got a little lightheaded. “What?”
If I’d lost my cool, Josh had found his again. “You’re very good at product development. You’ve been missed.”
“So why did you dump me?”
He sighed. Patronizingly. Oh, man, did I ever want to hit him. He said, “I didn’t. I told you, it was a corporate decision. You just wouldn’t listen. You took it personally.”
“Imagine that. So it wasn’t you, is what you’re saying. It was M&P. They thought—what?”
“That you were too insistent on the One Right Way, too hard to fit into a corporate structure. I fought for you. I just didn’t win.”
I’d bet he hadn’t fought that hard. “Wait,” I said. “How would they have figured out how wonderful I was in two months? In comparison with Angel Obrigado, sure. Oh. Wait,” I said again. “People have been quitting. Jada said something about that in a text. You didn’t get the team you wanted coming on board after all. They didn’t move with you. They stayed behind.”
“Some did,” Josh said. “And since then, there have been a few notices given. Some heavy recruitment. Some jitters.”
“Uh-huh. Sunshine Foods. HR’s been holding exit interviews, and they’ve heard my name.” Wow, was that good to hear. Something was flooding through me. I thought it was triumph. “Is Angel still there?”
He looked past me. “No.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
His gaze jerked back to my face, then away again. “No.”
“Now, see,” I said, “I don’t believe you. Three months ago, that would have crushed me. I’d have thought it was me. Now, I don’t even care.”
“Right,” he said. “Because it couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with you.”
Here came the rage again. I stuffed it down and said, “Yep. Because I care more about what I can do than what I look like. Because I like what I look like, and any man who doesn’t is a man whose opinion I don’t care about. And because all of that makes me better in bed than I’ll bet Angel could even imagine. I don’t just lie there and figure my job’s done by showing up, and aren’t you lucky.”
Jax made a movement beside me for the first time. I glanced at him and said, “Sorry. If you don’t want to hear this, you can go inside. You don’t have to . . .”
He said, “Oh, I want to hear it. And you’re right. I don’t know this Angel, but you’re better in bed.”
“Get a lot of action, do you?” Josh asked him, and I actually thought, I hate you.
Jax didn’t say anything, just looked at him like a man with nothing to prove, and I said, “This is stupid. What’s the bottom line?”
“The bottom line,” Josh said, “is that I’m authorized to offer you six hundred thousand as a signing bonus if you come back. A third of it to be paid upon signing, a third after three months, and final third after six months. Along with a very generous salary and incentive package.”
“And I’d work with you again why?” I managed to say it, to sound cool, or at least not blown away. Inside, I was screaming and turning in circles. Not necessarily in a good way. In an I-don’t-know-what’s-happening-here way.
“Because your leaving wasn’t personal,” he said. “Because we know how to work together, and because we both know our personal relationship is over. I don’t want a woman who walks out on me without discussion.”
No, buddy, I thought. You don’t want a woman who doesn’t come crawling back no matter what you do to her. I spread my hand on the table, looked at my nails—for no reason, since they weren’t painted—and said, “If M&P wants me back, the price is one-point-two million.” And, yes, I was pretending to be Hemi. What did I have to lose?
Josh sighed. “Six hundred is an incredibly generous offer.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped around, and slid it across to me. “Salary. Housing allowance. Bonus potential. Hiring and firing authority. I’m not asking you to decide now. I’m asking you to come back and take a meeting. Question everything. Dig deep. Decide whether you’re capable of transitioning to a working relationship with me. I’m less involved with the day-to-day operation now. I’m on the outward-facing side.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “It’s a hell of an opportunity. It’s what you worked for.”
“No,” I said. “What I worked for was never the money.”
“Oh,” he said, “I think it was. Partly. The money, and what it represented. Success. Freedom. And the chance to make a difference, to do it right. To do it your way. Well, this is your chance. You’ll never have more power than you do right now. You got me all the way out here to ask you. You got to insult me and show me your new boyfriend. You can feel like you won, and now, you can get flown back to New York first class, make your demands, and listen to me having to give up too much to get you back. You’ve got your chance. All you have to do is take it.”
Jax
I was a controlled man. That didn’t mean it was easy.
There were a few reasons for that. Seeing Karen naked in the bedroom, and knowing that arsehole was seeing her, too. Yes, I knew he’d seen her before. That didn’t matter. He was seeing her now. Having her come outside not dressed enough, wearing my half-buttoned shirt and nothing under it, and not being sure exactly why she’d done it. The look on his face when she’d touched her rubies, like he didn’t even know he was staring. And then there were all the things he’d said. The ones that had made me want to hit him, and the ones that had sent a chill down my back.
On the other hand, she’d said some pretty good things in response. You could say that my feelings were mixed.
Now, she was silent, and Ranfeld was starting to talk again, his confidence back. I’d guess it never left him for long. He said, “I’m flying out of Christchurch tomorrow. If you come back with me now, that’d be easiest as far as the hotel and the flight, and then the meeting. I’ll wait for you to pack.” He glanced at the jewels flashing from her taut belly, the curve of her waist, the length of her slim thighs, and I could read his thoughts like they were written there. He was thinking about that hotel. He didn’t care that she was still fragile, and if he knew how much he’d hurt her, that idea was giving him nothing but pleasure. For him, power would always be pleasure. Whatever he said, he wanted her back in his bed, and I knew exactly why.
The rage was burning in my blood, pressing behind my eyes, twisting through my belly and my brain, and I was barely holding myself back. I was holding myself back, though.
Karen said, “No.” She stood up with a scrape of chair legs, and my heart gave the kind of surge that threw you off balance. That was before she went on to say, “I need to decide.”
“You’ve got three days after tomorrow to meet with the team,” Ranfeld said, not standing up. “This isn’t an open-ended offer. If you don’t want it, they’ll be going after the next
-best option. Jump now, or miss your chance. Come with me, Karen. We’re a good team. We can do this together. It matters too much to both of us not to try.”
“I’ve got it,” she said. She was almost quivering. She glanced at me, and I read that look as, I’m about to lose it here. Help me.
I stood up myself. Ranfeld didn’t. “You’ve delivered your message,” I said. “Time to go.”
He looked me over, taking in the scars on my face, lingering on my leg. I pulled off my white T-shirt, so I was standing in a pair of rugby shorts and my shoes. “You seem interested,” I said, “so here’s the full picture. Now get out before I throw you out.”
He still didn’t stand up. “I don’t think so, buddy. I don’t scuttle away on command, and I’ve been practicing Tae Kwon Do for, oh, about ten years now. And, sorry, but you look like the other guy won.”
“But you see,” I said, “I don’t care what you think, or what you practice, and I got tired of you about fifteen minutes ago. Get out.”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 38
