‘Jas? You there?’
‘Yes, I’m here. Look Joe—’
‘We need to end this bullshit. I’m not fighting anymore. I need to get on with my life and, frankly, I need the money from the sale of the house to do that. I want to sell it and what’s left after we pay off the mortgage has to be split fifty-fifty. That’s all I want. We started off our marriage as equals. Can’t we end it that way? Surely we can sort this out without spending any more money on lawyers.’
Speech over, he felt the tightness in his chest unwind. He sighed into the wind and waited.
‘I agree, Joe. I need it to be over, too. I’ve been meaning to tell you something but I didn’t quite know how.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Michael and I … well …’
Joe’s journalist’s brain snapped back into life with a hundred questions. Had they broken up? Eloped? Had Michael cheated on her? Had she cheated on him with someone else?
He chuckled and went for the most ridiculous of all. ‘You’re not having a baby, are you?’
‘How did you find out?’ Jasmine whispered in shock.
Fuck. Sometimes he hated having a mind that worked two steps ahead of everyone else’s. Jasmine and his ex-best mate were going to be parents.
‘Lucky guess.’
‘I didn’t want you to hear about it on the grapevine. I’ve been meaning to call you, but it’s all been a bit unpleasant between us.’
‘I suppose congratulations are in order,’ Joe said.
‘Thank you. I know you were never interested in having kids—’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ he said through gritted teeth. Is that why she’d run off with his ex-mate? To have a bloody kid?
‘That’s not the reason I fell in love with Michael.’
Joe stood. This wasn’t a conversation he could have sitting down. ‘No? You sure about that?’
‘Don’t, Joe. You put everything else before me and our marriage. You never stopped answering the bloody phone. Your sources and your stories spent more time with you than I did.’ Jasmine sighed down the line. ‘But there’s really no point going over this again, is there?’
Joe began walking up the beach towards the pub. ‘No. There’s not.’
‘I’d like to have this all sorted out by the time the baby arrives. I agree, let’s ditch the lawyers and sell, half and half.’
Joe looked out to the waves, rolling in from the distance. He wished he was out there on his surfboard with his fingers trailing in the cool water instead of divvying up the failure of his marriage. ‘I’ll call my lawyer and tell him the news,’ he said. ‘Poor bastard. He’ll have to cancel his skiing holiday to Colorado now I’m not spending all that money on his good advice.’
He heard a chuckle down the line from Sydney. He hadn’t heard one fall from Jasmine’s lips in a very long time. He felt relieved to be ending it this way, after all the acrimony and hurt.
‘I’ll call mine, too,’ she said.
‘You’ll be free before the baby arrives.’
‘Thanks Joe.’ There was a long pause and Joe didn’t know how to fill it either. What did you say at the end of a marriage, when the fighting and the accusations and the horror were over?
‘Good luck,’ he said. And that sounded exactly right.
‘You too.’
Joe tucked the phone into his pocket. So that was it. It was over. After all the bitterness, it felt strangely anti-climactic. It felt like turning the final page on a book that you’d loved at chapter one but at the end couldn’t remember why you’d picked it up in the first place. Any interest in the story was gone and, with the benefit of hindsight, you’d never read the book again.
He was free.
Joe had always been slightly cynical about weddings, as he’d been about most other things in life. Had seen too many of them crash and burn under the pressure of two jobs, mighty ambitions, crushing Sydney mortgages and long commutes. But he’d never been cynical about his. Somehow, he’d believed he and Jasmine were different. They were stronger than all of that, had intellectual insights into relationships that other people didn’t. When a friend introduced them to a new partner, he and Jasmine would play their own private party game, making bets on who would and wouldn’t last. It was all so hilarious, wasn’t it, from the smug happiness of their own marriage. Not for them petty jealousies about work commitments or weekends away with the girls – or the boys. They hadn’t needed to be tethered to each other like charms on a bracelet. They were adults, with an adult, sophisticated relationship, unburdened by children or too much responsibility.
And, apparently, unburdened by insight. It had been a long six months since the day his world had come crashing down. If he’d been reporting it, he would have laughed cruelly at such misfortune.
‘Check out this sad fuck. He gets made redundant and then his wife leaves him for being such a loser. And guess who she leaves him for? His best mate!’
The headline potential for that scenario was every journalist’s wet dream.
‘Man Loses Job, Wife On Same Day’
‘Top Columnist Sacked’
‘Yesterday’s Hero: Joe Blake’
‘Has-been Journo Back in Hometown, Old Bedroom’
‘Total Shocker: One-night Stand in Sister’s Bed’
And there she was, back again.
What the hell was it about that night at Ry and Julia’s wedding that had got under his skin?
Joe didn’t normally dance at weddings. Or at engagement parties, fortieth birthdays, farewells, bar mitzvahs or wakes. He was always more than happy to report on other people making fools out of themselves.
So what was he doing strutting his stuff on a dodgy wooden dance floor out the back of the Middle Point pub on a hot summer’s night? Joe wasn’t sure if it was the champagne or this mysterious Italian pocket rocket, Dr Anna Morelli, who had him feeling so goddamned loose and better than he had in such a long time. The rhythm of the music and the exuberant dancing of everyone around him was kind of catching and watching Anna dance was hypnotic. She swerved and shimmied, stepped to the side and back, shook her hips and her hair and sang at the top of her lungs. All in those damn high heels. He wondered how she hadn’t broken an ankle.
As the music got louder and the crowded dance floor filled with more bodies, Joe found himself loosening up too, limb by limb, until he was waving his arms in the air with everyone else and shouting lyrics to the twinkling stars in the night sky.
They hadn’t said much to each other. He was happy to watch Anna move and she looked like whatever the hell had happened to her earlier in the night, whatever it was that had upset her enough to run into the ladies with tears streaking her face, was forgotten.
This was just what Lizzie had asked him to do, right? To rescue Anna, to ask her to dance? As he watched her eyes, dark and teasing him with glances, he realised she didn’t appear to need the slightest bit of rescuing.
It had been way too long. Man, it felt good to let go. And – Jesus – it felt even better when the song changed again into something slow and Anna had responded to the change of pace by curving her body against his, snaking her arms around his neck.
‘Come closer,’ she’d said, and he’d reacted automatically, pulling her into him. His thigh pressed into her hip and his hands claimed her waist, so small under his fingers that they almost met at her back. She’d moved with the music, swayed against him, and he held her tighter. Anna’s fingers strayed from his hairline and tightened around his neck. She pulled him down and damn it if her lips didn’t graze his earlobe. It was about the sexiest thing that had happened to him in a long while.
‘I love this song,’ she said above the music.
He knew it. Al Green was asking how to mend a broken heart. He loved it, too. Or used to, before the lyrics cut right through him. A pair of dancers bumped against him and he instinctively held her tighter, dropped his hands from her waist to the curve of her arse and pulled her close to him. So close that
the fabric of that red dress, and what was inside it, pressed against his ribs.
‘I like the way you dance,’ Anna said, and he felt a low rumble in his body.
‘You’re not so bad yourself. Ballet as a kid?’
She laughed, uproariously and damn, what a smile. It lit up her face, her eyes and there was a crinkle in her cheek that he hadn’t noticed before. Was that a dimple?
‘Ballet? You’re kidding.’ And then Anna surprised the hell out of him by stepping onto his feet, shifting her weight from the ground to his shoes, and as she grew another inch taller, she tightened her arms around his neck. He responded instinctively, tightening his grip on her body. They looked into each other’s eyes and came to an instant understanding. This was no longer dancing. This was foreplay.
Was he up for a no-strings-attached night? Abso-fucking-lutely. It hadn’t been on his mind when he’d turned up for the wedding, but it was the only thing on his mind that very second. Where was he? Who’d just got married? Did he even remember his own name? He didn’t have a clue.
Ask him who he was holding in his arms like he never wanted to let her go?
Anna Morelli.
And did he want her?
Fuck, yes.
She moved her face close to his, so close she nudged her cheek against his. He could smell her perfume, something exotic and feminine.
‘You here with anyone, Joe the Journo?’
‘No. I’m not’, he said. Then he pulled back so he could see her face when he asked her the same thing. Was she up for no-strings-attached too? He didn’t want complicated or back-stabbing or dishonest. He’d had a lifetime of that in Sydney.
‘You?’
There was a flicker in her eyes and she bit her lip. ‘No.’
‘Wanna dance some more?’ Joe moved his hands slowly down her back, his fingers feeling every inch of her on the way down to the curve of her arse. He cupped her butt and lifted her against him. When her eyes widened and her lips parted on a sigh, he knew what the answer was.
‘Get me out of her,’ she’d whispered.
And since that night, he hadn’t been able to forget that look. It still teased and haunted him, asleep and awake.
Joe was almost at the Point, could see the pub up ahead. He pushed a hand through his hair and kicked a knotted lump of sea grass into the waves.
He was becoming seriously obsessed with Anna. And that was such a bad idea, he didn’t know where to start. He’d just been burned big time by his wife. She’d just been burned big time by her husband. Two people with such heavy baggage shouldn’t, if they had half a brain, go anywhere near each other. Two people trying to fuck away their hurt with a total stranger should let sleeping dogs lie and forget all about it.
Shouldn’t they?
His gut instinct told him this was something different. That she was different.
Joe reached the steps to the top of the Point and took them two by two until he reached the top. Across the road, the Middle Point pub seemed alive with people, judging from the coming and going through the heavy wooden front door and the shapes Joe could make out through the front windows. He checked his watch and realised why; it was lunchtime.
He pushed through the crowd in the front bar and down the narrow corridor to Lizzie’s office. He didn’t bother knocking before walking right in and pulling up a chair.
Lizzie was squinting at the computer screen with a frown. ‘Hey Stinkface. Don’t know anything about MYOB, do you?’
Joe propped his shoes on her desk and crossed his arms. ‘Don’t look at me. You need an accountant.’
Lizzie sat back and clasped her hands on top of her head. ‘No, what I need is a new staff member and a holiday. Not necessarily in that order.’
‘What’s up?’
Lizzie rubbed her eyes. ‘Kimberley, my fabulous waitress, is leaving. She’s packing up her bat and ball and moving to Adelaide to go to uni.’
‘Good for her. You can’t tell me you’re surprised. She’s young. Why wouldn’t she want to escape sleepy old Middle Point for the bright lights and big city?’
‘Remind me not to recommend you as tourism ambassador,’ Lizzie huffed.
‘C’mon, you know what I mean.’
‘I know, I know. She’ll be back next summer for the tourist season, thankfully. But that doesn’t help me now.’ Lizzie slumped in her chair and plonked her chin in her palm.
‘I know someone.’
Lizzie barely moved. ‘Someone good?’ she muttered.
‘Someone excellent.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Someone who’s spent more time in pubs than he should.’
‘Any experience?’
Joe shook his head. ‘Absolutely none whatsoever but he has plenty of time on his hands, is willing to learn and will even work for beer.’
Lizzie slowly sat up. ‘Oh no.’
CHAPTER
20
Lizzie’s eyes flew wide open and she began to wiggle her head from side to side. ‘You don’t mean—’
‘Yes, Mosquito. I mean me.’
She gripped the edge of her desk and laughed out loud. ‘C’mon Stinkface. You’re kidding, right? Work for me? Here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t get me wrong. It would be a lot of fun telling you what to do on a daily basis, but I don’t think you’d cope with your little sister bossing you around.’
‘Could so.’
‘Could not.’
Joe smiled at his sister. He fought the sudden urge to lean over her desk and muss her hair.
‘Look, Lizzie. I need to do something.’ He thought back over the conversation he’d just had with Jasmine. He was back in the saddle. And getting back to work was the next step.
Lizzie laughed again, louder this time. ‘No kidding. I’ve been wondering just how many months it would take you to get bored and, I have to admit, it’s a few more than I thought.’
‘Listen …’ Joe paused. ‘I’ve talked to Jasmine.’
Lizzie harrumphed. ‘How is the North Shore whore?’ The look on Joe’s face had her quickly apologising. ‘Oh. Shit. You’re not getting back together again, are you?’
‘No. We’ve decided to call off the legal eagles and just settle this. We’re selling the house as soon as we can and we’re both moving on. So, soon, I’ll be officially homeless. Until I find a real job I’m stuck here in—’
Lizzie snarled playfully at her brother.
‘—this delightfully sun-drenched jewel on South Australia’s glorious south coast.’
‘That’s better, Stinkface.’ Lizzie looked sheepish. ‘Is she all right? Jasmine?’
‘She’s having a baby.’
It took so long for Lizzie to respond that Joe feared tumbleweeds might blow through her office.
‘Oh. A baby.’
‘Yes.’
‘With your best friend.’
‘Ex-best friend and thanks again for reminding me.’
‘Well, shit a brick, Joe. How do you feel about that?’
He rubbed his chin and pondered the question. Back in the saddle, Blake. ‘I don’t feel anything, actually. Which is exactly how I want to feel about it.’
‘I see. You’re going for the pity angle to score a job?’
‘Depends.’ He found a smile for his sister. ‘Will it work?’
‘Maybe.’ Lizzie tapped her index finger against her chin. ‘How many shifts a week can you do?’
‘As many as you want.’
‘How long are you going to be around? Can I count on you to work right through the winter and spring until Kimberley comes back?’
Joe nodded and the effect on Lizzie was like an electric shock. She sat bolt upright. ‘What are you saying? That you’re staying in Middle Point?’
‘Settle down. I don’t know, but in the absence of a better one, staying here is the only plan I’ve got.’
Lizzie leapt from her chair and rounded the table to hug him. Before he could think, his arms were aroun
d her. It felt kind of nice, this family thing, being the big brother. He hugged his little sister right back.
Anna unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from Julia’s arm and the sound of ripping velcro echoed in the cavernous space that was Julia and Ry’s Middle Point living room. The afternoon sun shone bright and warm through the two-storey high windows and Anna turned her face to feel it on her cheeks. The sun as well as the view filled her with an equanimity she hadn’t felt in so long. Past the windows and the roadway, the shrubbed dunes and the white sand, there was the beautiful blue ocean, a sparkling blue sky and silence.
When Anna turned her gaze back to her patient, Julia nodded her head in the direction of the window.
‘You should get out there, go for a walk, feel the sand between your toes and the sun on your face.’ Julia had obviously noticed Anna’s distracted stare.
Anna shook it off. ‘My patients come first, you know that.’
Julia rested against the sofa with a lazy sigh. ‘And I think we’re done. So, tell me Dr Morelli, do I pass the pregnant woman test? Am I sufficiently glowing?’
Anna gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Glowing and gorgeous. Your BP is fine. You look fantastic. Keep up your exercise and get lots of rest.’ Anna slipped the cuff into her medical bag and clipped it closed. ‘It’s not complicated, is it?’
Julia scratched her arm where the cuff had been tight and then unsuccessfully tried to stifle a yawn.
‘Sorry Anna, you’re not boring me, I promise. I’m feeling so tired. Like I could go to bed and not get up for a week. I never have afternoon nanna naps, but now? It’s all I want to do. That and pee.’
‘That’s completely natural,’ Anna told her. ‘Wait until the third trimester when the baby’s doing aerobics on your bladder.’
Julia closed her eyes and groaned dramatically. ‘Great. Not seeing too many upsides to this whole pregnancy thing at the moment. Sure, there’ll be a baby at the end, but it feels a long way off from where I’m sitting.’
‘This will all blur into a distant memory when the baby is born, believe me. It’s nature’s way of making you want another one.’
Our Kind of Love Page 13
