Jo’s temporary moment of elation evaporated. ‘No, but it’s all I can give you at the moment. I want to tell you, I really do, but I can’t yet. Can you trust me and just wait until I come back from work next?’ She pulled back, looked directly into his eyes, willing him to accept what she was offering.
‘It’s not if I trust you, it’s if you trust me,’ Stephen said gruffly. ‘Yeah, I’ll go with it, but I’m not happy about it. And for the record, we can’t move on from here if you’ve got such a shitty view of yourself, Jo. You’re insulting my taste in women.’ He softened the blow of his words with a gentle smile, and Jo had to let a wave of defensiveness wash over her before she nodded and accepted what he was saying.
‘I sound pretty crazy, don’t I? Can we put it all down to lack of sleep?’
‘Yeah. You’re nuts. It’s a good thing I’ve always had this fantasy about sleeping with a psychotic woman,’ Stephen said, pulling away from her but keeping one of her hands in his.
Jo let out a surprised bark of laughter. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Now if you could just go along with things and do a bit of moaning and dirty talk, I’d appreciate it. It’ll be good for my ego.’
‘Sounds like you’re a bit crazy yourself.’ Jo chuckled.
‘Yeah? Well, we’re obviously not that dissimilar, so let’s go be mad together,’ Stephen replied, leading the way to his room and pushing her playfully onto the bed.
‘All right. But I get to moan and talk dirty first.’ Jo felt the tightness in her chest abate with a wave of relief. If Stephen could accept her like this, at her ridiculously tired, melodramatic worst, maybe, just maybe, he could accept the rest.
Chapter 15
Stephen’s espresso and biscotti were delivered quickly for such a busy time of the morning. The small Tuscan-style Italian café on the Fremantle coffee strip, one of many, was so packed with customers that people were queuing for tables. Stephen had been lucky enough to snap one up early and wasn’t planning on moving any time soon, despite the irate looks a few couples were giving him because he was sitting at a table with two chairs. He shrugged it off. Jo had left for Africa that morning, and he wasn’t exactly feeling sympathetic to their plight.
He lifted the small cup to his lips, inhaling the smell of good strong coffee before downing the whole burning lot in one mouthful. He savoured the pleasantly bitter aftertaste while watching locals and tourists alike pass the open window next to him. There was an American navy vessel docked at Fremantle wharf by the looks of it; a group of sailors walked by in white naval uniforms, loud voices and distinctive accents advertising their presence to any available women in the area. As Stephen watched, a group of girls called the Americans over and started up a conversation that the Yanks were no doubt hoping would extend to something else a bit friendlier. Stephen allowed himself a small, wry smile. Ah well, good luck to them.
On the whole, he liked Americans. He’d grown up with them touring his family’s vineyards and drinking wine at Evangeline’s Rest’s cellar door, usually falling victim to Angie’s persuasive sales pitch. Later, he’d done business with them, arranging for the Evangeline’s Rest label to be shipped to the States, where it had proved modestly popular. He smiled to himself as he remembered some of the things Jo had told him over dinner a few nights before about her numerous American colleagues. Well, if that’s what you could call a bunch of redneck good ol’ boys. When he’d asked how she got on in such a male-dominated workplace, she’d simply replied that they were a bunch of gossiping old women that she had to put in their place every now and then to get some respect.
He’d wondered over the past few months how much she wasn’t telling him and was happy he’d pushed for information when he had. It mitigated the frustration he was fighting more and more over the other parts of Jo’s life that she’d shut him out of.
He knew from talking to his cousin, who worked in the industry, that it was tough for women out on the rigs. So tough that there weren’t a whole lot of women who stuck it out more than a year at the most. Jo had been working offshore for almost a decade. He couldn’t imagine it had been easy for her when she’d first started and felt a mixed sense of pride and protectiveness at the thought of what she must have gone through over the years to stay in the business. No, she hadn’t just stayed in the business, she’d kicked arse. When she’d confided her nickname, Krakatoa, to him, he’d laughed so hard she’d had to threaten to pour wine down his shirt to get him to stop.
The other night . . . the other night when she’d opened up to him he’d felt so relieved afterwards. His patience had paid off. He was going to get the details he wanted and he was going to get the girl as well. The guilt he’d been feeling for years had seeped away until he barely felt it any more in light of the realisation that Jo had her own baggage from her past that had nothing to do with him. Maybe, just maybe he could let it go once they finished talking it out. Maybe she’d let him fight a couple of her battles for her. Because that’s all he wanted to do.
Before, he’d never felt this urge to defend and protect another human being this intensely and it would be funny if it wasn’t such a burning compulsion in him right now. Jo had been so strong for so many years, it was about time she shared a little of the load and he wanted to be the man she shared it with.
It dawned on him in that moment just how much he’d changed over the last couple of months. Somewhere along the way he’d forgiven the dumb kid he’d been, he’d worked out that he could be himself around a woman he cared for, that he could trust himself not to fuck things up, and maybe, that he hadn’t been such a fuck-up in the first place. That thought felt damn good . . . so damn good that he found his mouth curving into a grin.
A shadow fell across his table, and without glancing up he reached for his menu, thinking to order another coffee.
‘Stephen?’ The voice belonged to the last person he expected to encounter in these surrounds. His eyes snapped up to take in a classically attractive face, all pale green eyes, high cheekbones and gold-blonde hair cut into a sharp bob. The body the face was attached to was medium-height and dressed to impress in a white linen suit. She was fashionably thin, which meant too thin for his tastes of late. Thinner than he remembered. Much thinner.
‘Lauren?’
‘Um. Yes. Can we talk?’ She reached out a hand with a painfully delicate wrist towards the back of the spare chair at his table. He noticed she was still wearing the Cartier watch he’d bought her for her twenty-fifth birthday. ‘Do you mind?’ She gestured to the chair opposite him.
‘Ah. Well . . .’ Stephen began off-balance before regaining his composure. ‘Yeah, take a seat.’ He sat back in his chair and watched as Lauren awkwardly pulled out the chair. The sound of it scraping on terracotta tiles was painful.
She sat down, eyes lowered to the table, looking contained and fragile. ‘This wasn’t premeditated,’ she said in a high, nervous voice. ‘I’m here to do some shopping and saw you through the window . . .’
‘Guessed that,’ Stephen replied. ‘I don’t usually come here.’
‘No.’ She began to play with the loose band of her watch.
‘So?’ he asked warily. ‘What’s going on? Last time I tried to talk to you, you made it pretty clear you weren’t interested. I have it in writing from a lawyer, if I remember rightly.’
She didn’t say anything, just kept playing with the watchband, twisting it round and round her wrist.
‘Lauren?’ Stephen leant forward to get her attention, feeling his patience—already thin after months of playing games—fray to a thin thread. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘What would you have said if we had talked?’ she asked in such a small voice, Stephen wasn’t sure he’d heard her right over the clinking coffee cups and conversations of the people around them.
‘Pardon?’
‘If I had met you earlier, when you wanted. What would you have said?’ she asked, her voice louder, those brilliant green eyes meeting his. T
hey were sad and huge in her thin face.
Stephen let the immediate words that came to his lips evaporate but couldn’t suppress his incredulity. ‘You want to get into this now? Out of the blue you walk up to me in a café and want to hash things out? When we haven’t spoken a word for months? After I’ve tried to see you for ages to sort all this out?’
Lauren gave a tiny nod before averting her gaze out the window.
‘All right. I’ll go with it.’ Stephen studied her, weighing up his response, then set down his coffee cup. His voice was tight, his temper coming to a dangerous bubble. In the past he would have walked away, reined it in, but right now he wanted this finished. He wanted this done. He wanted the guilt gone and he wanted to move on. It was time to draw the line.
She darted a glance at his face and then gave another short nod. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she looked relieved.
‘It’s not so much what I would’ve said.’ He began speaking slowly, thinking each word through past the roaring in his ears. ‘It’s what I would’ve asked.’
‘You mean about the apartment?’ She had the same edge to her voice he’d heard the morning she’d told him it was over. That she didn’t want him in their home, in her life, any more.
Strangely, Stephen didn’t feel shattered the way he had almost a year ago when they’d split. Didn’t feel the same frustration that she’d shut him out so quickly without giving him a chance to make things right. Instead he felt a clean, almost refreshing anger. Rachael had been right. He needed to get this out.
‘Yes and no.’ He leaned forward. ‘Ten years, Lauren. You were my best friend, my everything, for ten years. I think the first thing I wanted to ask was what happened? What went wrong? What did I do wrong that caused you to end it like you did and why the hell did you feel the need to dick me around like you have for the last year?’ He gave her a long, measured look, letting a small fraction of the anger he’d suppressed into his expression, not caring if she was seeing it for the first time since they’d known each other. ‘And moving on from questions. I would’ve told you that the way you’ve handled this stuff was wrong, it was unfair and you’ve been relying on the fact that I didn’t believe in losing my temper around women to get away with blue murder. The buck stops here and we’re having this out right now. You’re going to tell me what the hell your problem was and why you felt the need to trash our relationship without explaining a thing to me. And you’re going to tell me how you could write off the fact that I spent a third of my life totally devoted to you, caring for you. I would’ve done anything, absolutely anything to make it work a year ago. The way things happened . . . it hurt.’ He felt a massive relief saying the words. He’d never expected he’d get the chance. It felt good. For the first time in his adult life he’d let a woman see him angry, really angry. And yeah, he was controlling it in this setting, but the words had come out right and no one had run away screaming.
In that moment he knew he could have done this earlier. He should have done this earlier but wouldn’t have been able to if he hadn’t had that talk with Jo the other night. She’d ended up okay. He hadn’t broken her with his jealousy and his temper all those years ago and he wasn’t breaking Lauren now.
Lauren stared at him with a stunned expression.
He looked her straight in the eyes, as the tension he’d been carrying in his chest for almost a year dissolved completely. ‘It that what you wanted to hear?’
She shook her head.
‘So what do you want?’
Lauren opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it and then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a shaking hand. ‘I thought I knew. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, but now . . . I don’t know, Stephen. I woke up one morning and just knew things couldn’t go on. We were friends and you have to know you’re attractive but . . . I wanted so many things. So many things for the future and I realised that I didn’t want them with you. You were almost too . . . too nice. That was the problem. I wanted a man who’d take me. Who’d get angry at me when I stepped out of line. I needed more.’
Stephen felt the words like a kick in the teeth. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It made me so angry that you couldn’t work it out, couldn’t fix it. I needed something and you couldn’t provide it. I needed you to be more intense, more commanding . . . more everything!’ She shrugged nervously to punctuate her words, meeting his eyes briefly and then returning her gaze to her watch.
‘Lauren,’ Stephen began, but she held up a hand.
‘No, just wait. Hear me out. We were so young when we met, Stephen. I felt like I’d moved on and grown up, but you were still a kid, really. You never mentioned marriage, never mentioned children. I’m nearly thirty. Couldn’t you see that might have been important to me? You didn’t even complain when I asked you to sleep in the spare room.’
‘I thought I was being considerate, and you could have brought those things up. How was I supposed to know? I remember bringing up kids and marriage a couple of times, wanting to check that’s where you wanted to go and you shrugged me off every time, so don’t put this on me. What did you want from me? Spell it out before I walk away from here right now, because all I’m getting from this is that you wanted me to fight you to keep my relationship with you. It doesn’t make sense.’
Lauren’s vulnerable expression changed to something harder, her eyes narrowing. ‘Yes! I wanted you to fight for me! I wanted you to prove I was worth it. Worth marrying, worth having babies with. You never chased me when we got together. Never had to work for me—and I wanted to know you cared. Instead I realised we didn’t have enough between us for me to be happy. It hurt. It left me feeling angry.’ Her voice had become louder, sharper, and a few people at nearby tables glanced up curiously.
Stephen stared at Lauren in shocked silence, angry words racing through his mind. He wanted to remind her of every romantic thing he’d done for her. All the times he’d tried to pull her close to him only to have her pull away, all the times he’d hinted at their future only to have her change the topic. ‘You . . .’ He paused, taking a deep breath and then another one. She started to speak, but he waved his hand at her. ‘Give me a few minutes,’ he said curtly. ‘Let me get this right . . . your idea of me showing you that I cared, the most important thing I could have done as far as you were concerned was to get angry at you? Well, I’m pretty pissed off right now. Is that working for you?’
She nodded, biting her lip and looking away. ‘If I’m honest, yes.’
‘It’s too late.’ Stephen shook his head. ‘You ended it then but I’m putting a stop to the games now. I want you to sell the apartment. We’re going to split the money and we’re both going to walk away while we’ve still got good memories of the last ten years. I don’t know what you need now, Lauren, but it can’t be me.’ He gripped his hand around his coffee cup and then deliberately loosened his fingers as the words sat between them.
A waiter came by to take Lauren’s order. She hesitated before choosing a cappuccino off the menu, furtively glancing at Stephen. He ignored her and turned his head to stare blindly out the window at the waves of people passing on the pavement.
It took him nearly ten minutes to order the thoughts in his head, lining them up neatly and categorically, his anger abating until a moment of sharp, startling clarity kicked in. He squeezed his eyes shut tight before looking back to Lauren. ‘You know, you’re right.’
Lauren put down her coffee with unsteady hands. ‘Pardon?’
‘You’re right. Although not about what you said just then, but what you said before. Things couldn’t go on. I guess I have you to thank for working that out, because I obviously wasn’t tuned in.’ He spoke with an even, calm voice and looked her straight in the eyes.
She stared at him. ‘Are you having a go at me again?’
His expression softened. ‘No, I’ve said what I needed to say. I meant it, Lauren. You were my best friend. I loved you. Probably a part of me will always lo
ve you, but I get it. I finally get it. I’m sorry I let you down. I think a part of the reason I’ve been so hurt was that I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know how to make it all better. I didn’t realise that all I had to do was just be myself without holding back. Am I right?’
Lauren made a low noise but Stephen kept talking, wanting to get all this out now that he could see things clearly.
‘Until recently I was too scared to show my temper or any . . . aggression or anger around you because I was worried I’d hurt your feelings and seriously mess things up between us. I didn’t realise it wouldn’t look that way to you. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you. It was because of something that happened years before you and I met.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘We weren’t on the same page. I should’ve told you everything and I didn’t. I’m sorry about that. I wish I’d been able to give you what you needed and I wish I’d been the one to click that we weren’t working. And I owe you an apology for not checking in with you as much as I should have. I should’ve asked more questions. Asked the right questions. You had a right to be angry with me. I wish you’d spoken to me about stuff before ending it all, but . . . I understand why you did it.’ He felt the second surprising wave of relief go through him that morning as he spoke the words, knowing they were true.
Lauren’s eyes filled with tears.
Stephen handed her his unused napkin. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’
She shook her head, a tear trailing down her cheek. ‘I was so angry.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought if I kept the apartment, then at least you’d have to fight for something. I was trying to force you to get it, to understand, but it didn’t work like that.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry, Stephen.’
‘So am I.’
They sat in a tense silence for a while that gradually, oh so slowly, shifted to something else, more familiar, more relaxed.
Unforgettable You: Destiny Romance Page 22
