Unsuitable

by Ainslie Paton

  “Why would you want me to think you’re not a nice guy? Nice guy is part of your skill set.”

  He got up and went to Mia.

  “Reece?”

  He jammed his cap on walking backwards. “It’s all right for some of us skiving off. I’m still on the clock.”

  He helped Mia climb into the wooden fortress. He kept glancing back at her. Her brain was too slow to pick up his meaning and then. “Oh my God. You didn’t.” She stood up. “With Carrie.”

  He turned and flipped her off and she laughed. It wasn’t an answer but she wasn’t going to get another one right now.

  While Mia played, she checked her phone and returned a call to Les.

  “You’re not in your office,” said Les.

  “I took your advice and came home.”

  “That doesn’t sound like home in the background.”

  “That is the sound of children playing. I’m at the playground with Mia and Reece. I feel a lot better. Reece is going to stay late and put Mia to bed. I’ll have an early night and be back to myself tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure he’s not going to put you to bed and screw you into tomorrow? Not that I’d blame you if he was.”

  Audrey groaned. Ever since the Do the Propeller nanny cam episode she’d copped grief about Reece. Les was joking, but others in the office, not so much. There were all kinds of innuendo flying about the possibilities for extracurricular nanny activities. “You need to get out more.”

  “You can talk. And you have a totally acceptable virgin hunk at home on tap.”

  “He’s hardly virgin.”

  “I meant virgin to you, or is there something I don’t know?”

  “And you made me ring you because?”

  “Never mind. I can dream.”

  “You’re still dreaming of a certain builder with a girl’s name.”

  “I hope Mia wakes you five times tonight,” Les said, and hung up.

  An hour later, Audrey bought fish and chips, crumbed calamari and potato scallops and they ate them with salt and lemon, sitting at one of the picnic huts. Mia ate two big potato scallops, chased the seagulls while barking like a dog. She did a couple of frog jumps which Reece explained were cartwheels she’d seen kids doing at kindy gym, and fell asleep with her head on Audrey’s lap.

  It was too early to let her sleep long, but the night was so sweet, the time off so unexpected, the chance to talk to Reece without one of them racing off somewhere so tantalising, Audrey was reluctant to wake her. She was willing to risk Les got her wish.

  “Is Carrie the reason you broke up with Sky?”

  Reece ate the last of the calamari and made her wait. He’d put his cap away and had his sunglasses pushed up on the top of his head. His expression was all mischief. “No.” She thought that was all she was going to get. He ferreted around in the box their meal came in for the remaining chips. “Surprising as it may seem, I have not succumbed to Carrie’s significant charms.”

  She took a sip out of her water bottle to mask her amusement. They sat catty-corner to each other, so they could eat out of the same box and Mia could lay out full length on the longest section of bench seat. “Less reason for you not to now then.”

  “What, on the rebound?”

  “I don’t think she’d care.”

  He laughed. “I think you’re right. I’m steering clear of Carrie.”

  She picked up a burnt chip and ate it. “Junna?”

  “What are you trying to do, get me back on the horse already? I’m broken hearted. I need to be alone to heal.”

  If that smile, the lilt in his voice, was his broken heart in action, he was cruising for the mother of all romantic let-downs at some point. She poked his forearm with her plastic fork. “You are such a try-hard.”

  “Hah. That’s why I broke up with Sky.” He slugged his water. His smiled dropped away. Now there were shadows.

  “Because?” Audrey held her breath. Right now, she wanted this question answered more than she wanted Mia to sleep through the night.

  “Because I don’t try hard enough.” He sipped again, taking the last of the water and bagging the bottle with the rest of their rubbish.

  It wasn’t what she’d expected. The idea of Reece not trying hard enough was hard to imagine. “Are you heartbroken?” He wasn’t quite himself, but he didn’t seem wrecked, though he may be a better actor than she’d credited.

  He avoided her with the business of clearing up. He punted the tied bag of rubbish at a garbage bin and it landed true and turned to face her. “Are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did someone break your heart so you decided to have Mia by yourself?”

  She didn’t have to have this conversation. He’d have to accept anything she decided. “No. Never got my heart broken. Never met anyone I wanted to stay with long term. Got scared I’d miss out if I wanted for lightning to strike.”

  “So you’ve never been in love?”

  Damn him for the neat table-turn, but she had nothing to hide from him. He practically lived in her house. “I’ve been in lust. I’ve had relationships I hoped might turn into something deeper, but I’ve never been in love.”

  “Shit, for real?”

  He looked appalled. She laughed at his shocked expression. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Because you’re fucking gorgeous. Men must’ve fallen all over you.”

  Shocked, she opened her mouth to say what— no idea— and he filled the gap. “I find it hard to believe you thought you had no option but to go it alone.”

  “I’d hit thirty. I didn’t want to be approaching every relationship I had for the next decade on the basis of whether the guy would make a good father or not. I didn’t think that was a good idea, and I didn’t want to get that far along and realise I’d missed my chance or settle with someone I didn’t love.”

  “Jesus.” He shook his head and looked away. She could see how the enormity of it registered.

  “Pretty much every one of my friends at the time thought I was insane. Now I have friends trying and failing with IVF, marrying Mr Right For Now or frightening men away because they’re desperate.”

  “Is Les in one of those categories?”

  “No. Les is hopelessly self-conscious about her body type. She doesn’t think any man will ever be interested in her in a romantic way.”

  “That’s too bad. She’s fun.”

  “She is fun. But she’s also right. For the most part men aren’t interested in size eighteen.”

  “What about you? Now that you have Mia and you don’t have to be desperate, why haven’t I seen a string of boyfriends coming to the house?”

  “Good question.”

  “You want me to guess?”

  “This could be amusing.” She rubbed her neck. She still had the headache, but Reece and the salt air were good placebos.

  He thought about it, looking past her out to sea. He knocked his knee against hers. “I have no flaming idea. I’m still thinking about how brave you were. Always figured some bastard walked out on you, or died like what happened to Charlie.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see it as brave. I was selfish. I didn’t want to miss out and I knew I could give a child almost everything they’d need if I organised it right.”

  “Almost? So why not keep trying for a relationship with a guy, with dad potential?”

  “I’m a thirty-four, nearly thirty-five year old single mum of a toddler, who has an executive level job. How much time do you see me having for random dates with guys?”

  He tapped the wooden slat tabletop. “You’d make time if it was important enough.”

  “Possibly.” She looked at a couple stroll by with a baby in a pram and toddler by the hand. “Thing is, I’ve still not met anyone I’m interested in.” She couldn’t look at Reece. If she did, he might know that was a lie that could boil the ocean.

  “Does that mean? Shit.”

  She looked at him sideways. He�
�d done the numbers and joined the dots. Not a precise science, but she guessed he’d figured out roughly how long it was likely to be since she’d had sex.

  He looked at his hands on the table. “Ah, none of my business, but that’s a crime, Audrey Bates.”

  She grinned at his quirky formality and poked him with the fork again. For years it had been a relief, not to have to worry about the whole meeting people, like, lust, negotiate sex thing. “We should get Mia home.”

  He carried Mia. They met back at home. Mia grumbled though a quick sponge bath and teeth clean and Audrey tucked her into bed while Reece hung out beach towels, rinsed swimwear and got organised for tomorrow. They shared a pot of tea. With Mia asleep, there was no reason for Reece to stay, but she had no incentive to ask him to go and when he sat her on a kitchen stool, turned the lights off, stood behind her and put his hands to her neck, she let herself dissolve into him.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She’d taken two headache tablets and his touch was the most exquisite ache. She closed her eyes and drifted. “I shouldn’t let you do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I like it too much.”

  “That was my cunning plan.”

  “Is this the part where you get me to believe you’re not a nice man?”

  His hands stopped moving, but the heat coming from them was a softening agent all of its own. “This is the part where I tell you I want to kiss you and give you the chance to tell me to go home.”

  She gasped and he started the massage up again. She shook her head because that was impossible. “No.” Her heart was thumping so hard she looked down at her chest to see if its beats were visible on her skin.

  “No, I can’t kiss you, or no you don’t believe me, or—”

  She reached up and stopped his hands. “No, you can’t kiss me. Please, Reece. We get on well. We had a lovely afternoon. Don’t turn this into something it isn’t.”

  “You’d better tell me what it is then.”

  “You know what it is. I pay you a salary to look after Mia.”

  He pulled his hands away. “That’s all we are then, Boss?”

  She swivelled to face him. “Please don’t do this. There are too many reasons why this can’t happen.”

  “Name one that counts.”

  He was so close she had to tip her head up to look in his face, her knees were between his legs. “Common sense.”

  “Audrey,” he put his hands on her shoulders, “give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kiss you right now.”

  She could give him a hundred if she was capable of thinking clearly. “I’m your boss. There’s this unequal power thing. I’m too old. You’re not interested in me. You just broke up with Sky.”

  He shook his head. She’d given him solid-core steel reasons. How could they not be acceptable to him? “Mia.”

  “Mia is asleep. Nothing in Mia’s life needs to change because we kiss.”

  She wrapped her hands around the seat of the stool, because her head was spinning. “I can’t have an affair with the nanny.”

  “I only asked for a kiss and all you had to say is you didn’t want it and tell me to go home. I’m still standing here.” He took her chin in his hand. “Last chance.”

  “Oh my God, Reece. It’s been so long since anyone kissed me I’ve forgotten how.”

  He smiled. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever been touched by and he wanted to kiss her. It might well have been out of pity, as an up yours to Sky, or as some belated award for single parent bravery, but she didn’t care.

  “That’s what I wondered. So is that a yes?”

  He felt her nod. He would’ve felt her tremble. He might have even understood her near terror because he moved so slowly, with such deliberateness and gentleness, she had every opportunity to stop this and instead stood on the stool rung, so she was properly face to face with him and could press against his chest and put her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry if this is awful.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s already not awful. Are you ready?”

  She shook her head, then lowered her forehead to his shoulder. “No.”

  “Then how about I hold you for a while till you get used to the idea?”

  She laughed. He was too much. “I need to call your mother and tell her how wonderful you are.”

  He grunted an objection and she sympathised. No man needed his mother in the room when he was about to kiss a woman who was closer to her age than his.

  He nuzzled her hair. “Don’t think that, you’re not.”

  She lifted her head, appalled at being so obvious, at being so scared. “I can’t afford for this to change anything.”

  “It’s a kiss. It’s not a new employment contract. I don’t want anything to change either.”

  “This is a bad idea.”

  He frowned, but his eyes weren’t in it. “Shut up.” If there was a power imbalance between them it was tilted fiercely his way.

  His breath was on her chin, then his lips were on hers and she sucked in a surprised nose-full of air. He did nothing but hold still, letting her get used to him. And it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t a kiss, it was a form of torture. She put her hand to his hair, finally, its shine in her fingers and that made him wrap her tighter before he sucked at her bottom lip, before he sealed his lips over hers. He moaned and she lost the sensation in her legs, but it didn’t matter because everything was about her lips and her mouth and the flick of his tongue and the heated salty chlorine smell of him and the sounds he made.

  It was a kiss to grade all other kisses by. An asteroid to wipe out the history of past kisses, a jolt to change the weather of all future kisses. It was a wrecking ball of a kiss, demolishing her house of incidental celibacy to its rocky foundation. His tongue swept her mouth, his hands held her back. He didn’t let her breathe, or worry or judge, and when he finally drew away she chased him, because if she was going to be destroyed it would be by gluttony, not starvation.

  They kissed till they got good at it. Till it stopped being a shock and started being the most exotic dance, where she trusted and anticipated, and he lead and fulfilled, and still it wasn’t enough, but it was too, too much. He lifted her when she slipped on the stool rung and broke away when he placed her on the floor. His hand shook when he pushed back his hair and she was the one to lie first.

  She pressed herself to his chest. She needed the wall of him to hold herself upright. “That was fantastic.” Her voice warbled.

  “It was.” His was honey gravy on gravel.

  “I remember how to do it.”

  He laughed and hugged her. She couldn’t let him know how hard it was to make light of it; to make nothing of it. “I won’t be so worried now about doing it on a date.” She pretended not to notice the way his body stiffened. “Thank you for helping me relax, for making me feel good.”

  She knew she should add something about it being a one-time thing, about it changing nothing, but the words failed her. She needed him to leave because she didn’t want him to see her come undone because every impulse she had was to take him to bed and let him reteach her how the rest of this dance went.

  She walked him to the door instead. And they kissed again. This time with the sharp lust cored out, with the ripeness of affection dripping through, soaking both of them.

  Audrey slept fitfully, her mind a crisis of weird dreams woven with waking wonder. At four in the morning she got up and checked on Mia. Her neck was so stiff, she was going to need to see someone about it. The headache was back, she was definitely coming down with something. She only hoped she hadn’t given it to Mia and Reece. She turned her alarm off. She was going to need a genuine sick day. She’d wake with Mia, call in sick at work, and go back to bed when Reece arrived. Her last thought before she slept again was of the way he’d looked at her after the kiss.

  As if she’d crash landed him on Saturn, a gazillion light years from home, and he was ecstatic about it.

  13:
Crisis

  Reece could hear Mia crying. Last night his head was so full of Audrey, the sucking gut-awful panic she was going to play his bluff and order him to the nearest building site, then the way kissing her short-circuited his brain, he’d left his copy of her keys somewhere inside the house.

  Normally it wouldn’t matter. The front door usually stood open when he arrived in the morning. But now it was a huge problem. Mia wasn’t just crying, he could hear her distress, and he was locked out of fixing whatever it was, and it might make Audrey run late.

  He rang the bell, feeling like a right berk. He wasn’t sure whether to play it cool with Audrey or...yeah, there was no other option, he had to be cool.

  Mia’s crying got closer till he would see her form through the frosted glass panel in the door. “Good morning, Mia. Silly Reece forgot his keys, can you open the door for me?”

  “Mum won’t wake up.”

  He played the door handle again. It didn’t shift. “Mia, can you open the door for me.”

  He heard her scrabble at the handle too. “Mum won’t wake up.”

  Fuck, yeah he’d heard that right. What the fuck was going on? “Where’s Mum?” He punched the bell and called. “Audrey. Audrey.”

  “She won’t wake up.”

  Oh fuck, fuck. “Mia, where is Mum? Can you find the keys and open the door?”

  Mia sobbed, disappeared from the glass. He yelled for Audrey and dialled the house, heard the phone ring inside. He heard Mia running towards the kitchen then back.

  “I don’t know where any keys are.”

  The phone timed out. The backdoor would be locked as well. “Okay. It’s all right. Go and stand near the TV for me. I’m going to make the door open.”

  She disappeared again and he put his shoulder to the door. The glass broke first, then a panel gave and he battered the door at the weak point until it gave and he could pull it part piece by piece. Mia had stopped crying. He stepped over the pieces of glass and wood into the house and found her in the other room, curled into a ball by the TV, too scared to cry.

  He swept her up and cuddled her close, calling for Audrey. His heart was beating in his temples, all his senses were on hyper alert. Mia had wet herself. The house was deadly quiet. Audrey was in bed, curled under her sheet. She looked peaceful, but so still she could be dead.