by Shel Stone
“Hey,” she said as she sat down. “You having a coffee?”
“Nah, I have to sleep soon.”
“One of those nights, huh?” she said. She wasn’t looking him in the eyes. “Look, I think we need to stop seeing each other.”
It was the last thing he wanted to hear, but he’d feared it’d been coming. “I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
“Which really is a problem, because this is a casual thing for me, and I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t for you.”
Ricky chewed on the inside of his cheek at the moment. “I can’t help it. I’ve never been with someone where I’ve been so close to them and still so far away.”
Solraya sighed. “It was never my intention to hurt you, but it just can’t happen. I should have never messed with you in the first place.”
“I can’t see the reason why we can’t be together.”
“I’m having a kid.”
“I can help. I’m not actually allergic to kids.”
“In fucking Coffs Harbour. It’s a small town. There are no revered DJs there.” Alright, that was a little scary. It would basically be the end of his name in the business. But equally, staying on another five years at Shine or Ibiza didn’t sound completely appealing either. Still, giving up everything he’d worked for was a big deal. “I’m going home, mate, and that’s all there’s to it.”
This was where their discussions normally ended, and he conceded she was right.
“Why are you pushing this anyway?”
“I just really like you. A lot.”
Putting her palms on her forehead, she groaned.
“What’s the harm of letting me come?” he asked.
“To Australia? Are you mad?”
“If it doesn’t work out, it will be like a holiday, right?”
“So I get to the point where I start depending on you, and you fuck off?” She kind of had him there. It wasn’t as if he could absolutely guarantee anything. How could he call the outcome of such a big change?
“There are no assurances, but I know I haven’t noticed another girl since I laid eyes on you.”
“Really, because I recall you were sleeping with one.”
“That was more... doing someone a good turn.” Maybe that wasn’t the right word, and he could come across as a dick, but it was true. “She just needed someone to be with her. She’d had a bad breakup. I told you about it. But I have never felt the way about someone that I do about you. I’m willing to move to Australia, just to be with you.” Because, frankly, not sleeping with her wasn’t something he could contemplate. She was the most powerful drug he’d ever encountered. “We get on. We fuck like demons. What’s the harm in trying?”
“You’re legit a nutter,” Solraya said, but he could hear a little bit of softening in her voice. Now he just had to overcome a few of her barriers and close the deal. Everything hung very precariously right now.
“You’re not leaving this minute. Why don’t we just try while you’re still here, and if at the end of it, you want me to come with you, I’ll come.” Ricky held his breath, and he stroked along her bare thigh, which he knew she liked. Vinegar drove her away, but she wasn’t immune to a bit of honey. “And you can’t deny you would miss the things I do to you.”
If there was one thing he knew, it was how to seduce a girl, and all he had to do was get her to sleep with him. Then again, and again, and that was how one formed a habit.
Drawing her leg up onto his thigh, he stroked her smooth skin. “You’re trying to coerce me,” she accused.
“Absolutely. After the night I've had, and you trying to dump me, I could really use some TLC. And I figure that if I keep doing what I do to you, you’ll keep me around.”
“You really do play my weaknesses,” she said pointedly. “Not fair.”
His fingers stroked higher up her inner thigh. He had her, for now, but the intentions had been laid on the table. Now he just had to process the slight panic of having formed his intention of giving up his life here and moving to Australia with her. But in his gut, he knew this was what he’d been looking for. Now he just had to have the guts to see it through.
Chapter 59
“WHY ARE YOU LOOKING SO worried?” Adelaide asked, walking out into the backyard with a takeaway coffee in her hand. She must have just arrived.
“Just thinking.”
Adelaide moved onto the daybed beside her and sat down. “Boy trouble?”
“Of a sort,” Solraya said. “Ricky wants to come to Australia with me.”
“Oh?” Adelaide said, looking up as Trish walked out.
“Ricky?” Trish said, looking confused. “We’ve told you he’s a total man-whore.”
Obviously she knew this, but he wasn’t acting like a man-whore. He was jealous, pushy, persistent. And he said he liked her a lot. To the point where he was actually thinking about coming to Australia with her. None of it seemed like a put-on to her.
“I thought you told him you were pregnant.”
“Doesn’t seem to be putting him off.”
“Some guys,” Adelaide said, “when they’re ready to settle down, they’re ready and that’s it.”
“Like Quentin. I understand he passed himself around a bit before he met you,” Trish said. “With Ricky, though, can you really see him back in Oz? Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy on a one to one basis. Flirts like nobody’s business.”
All the stuff about Ricky’s past, Solraya knew, but in the time she’d known him, he’d been consisted in the things he’d been saying. It was just that no one was listening. And she was certainly not one to hold anyone’s past against them, she had a bit of a colourful past herself.
This was more of an issue of Ricky and her. She’d certainly never intended on dragging a guy back with her. He was just so keen, though. There was certainly no issue in the physical department, and she did enjoy spending time with him. The problem was that she wasn’t in love with him. But then she wasn’t the kind to fall head over heels for someone. Ricky seemed to be.
Frankly, she thought people made stupid decisions when they relied completely on their emotions. It sounded harsh, but a bit of practicality in choosing the guy you aligned yourself with went a long way. Those choices had practical decisions. Adelaide was more or less stuck here because she’d fallen in love with Quentin Cartright.
It was one thing falling in love with someone who you eventually fell out of love with. No harm done in the end, other than the trauma of the end, but with Adelaide and Quentin, one had to only look at them to know that they were going to be together for a long time. Love came with sacrifices, and Ricky was willing to sacrifice just about everything. That was kind of extraordinary.
What gave her pause was if he would then find the sacrifice was too much. As he’d said, there were never any guarantees.
“So what are you going to do?” Adelaide asked. Not being so familiar with his past, she seemed more open to the suggestion.
“The timing is terrible, of course. I’m going to have a baby in five months.” That sounded like a crazy short period of time. At least the waves of panic were starting to retreat whenever she thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “He is not giving up.” Not that she wasn’t still falling into bed with him whenever she saw him.
“You can tell him to leave you alone.”
Solraya wasn’t sure she wanted to; she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do about all this. “It’s not that. I just wasn’t expecting it to get so serious. But I suppose everything in my life is getting serious. They say things happen when you’re ready for them to happen. They’re obviously happening for Ricky.”
“I mean, do you like him?”
“Yeah, I guess. I like hanging out with him.”
“So hang out. That’s all you’re really doing, isn’t it? If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. You’ll know when it doesn’t, and if it does... If you think it has a chance to, you kind of owe it to try, don
’t you?”
“I would so not give him a chance,” Trish said dismissively. “Once a dog, always a dog.”
“Oh, come on. Corey was just as big a dog before he decided to settle down. Like I said, when they’re ready, they’re ready.” Adelaide did have a point.
What was it she was scared of? That it would get completely uncomfortable? That he would cheat and lie? Well, that always came out and she would send him packing. No, if she was being completely honest, she was worried that he was putting too much pressure on this, sacrificing too much for it. What if he hated it in Australia?
“I guess they sink or swim,” Solraya said and chewed on her nail. Truthfully, she was more worried about having to deal with the mess of him falling to pieces. Or worse, him being unhappy, but too in love to leave. “Relationships suck.”
“No, they don’t,” Adelaide said. “Can’t agree with you there. If it’s a good one, with a guy who doesn’t play games with you, then it’s awesome. And if that’s what you have with this guy, then it’s worth going for it. Like you said, sink or swim.”
Solraya sighed because she didn’t know what to do and she hated feeling this uncertain. It wasn’t like her. Normally, she knew exactly what she wanted, but it felt as if she’d lost her footing completely. Her rational brain said this was not the time to get into a relationship. Then again, she had never been in the position where a guy wanted to give up everything for her. That was quite something.
“Hey, so what are we going to do about this recruitment thing?” Adelaide asked. “Do we need a logo and stuff?”
“Yeah, of course. How about that? We’re going to be company directors,” Trish said.
“Have you gotten Jesus to agree to you recruiting for him?” Solraya asked.
“Should we ask him, or should we just present our replacements?” Trish asked in return. “I know it can be kind of rude, but it may just be easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. And then when it works out, we can propose that we take over all his recruitment. We all know he hates recruiting people.”
Trish did have a point, because involving Jesus at this point might just make everything more complicated than it needed to be. It meant there may be a risk of things not working out, but in all honesty, it had a higher chance of it working out than asking him if they should. The chance of him saying yes to Trish and Amber quitting to start a company so they could recruit their replacements was, from his perspective, not the optimal way of doing things. Jesus preferred no change when things were working well. The problem of being good at what you do was that people wanted to keep you there.
This kind of mirrored her and Ricky at the moment. Being together was the easy part, the complicated part was answering whether they should be. Or maybe it was just overcomplicating something that was, in essence, really easy.
“I think Chrissy is gonna go hang with that banker guy tonight. She’s been messaging with him pretty relentlessly,” Trish stated.
Solraya recalled the guy. Early forties, probably had been quite hot ten years ago, before he’d gotten married. Now he had that divorced and looking to party vibe about him.
“Should we do something?” Adelaide asked.
“She wouldn’t appreciate it,” Solraya said. Once Chrissy decided on something, or someone, that was what happened. Secretly, Solraya suspected that Chrissy just wanted to bag a rich guy. She wasn’t sure this guy was up for being bagged, but who knew. Chrissy was grown enough to make stupid decisions for herself.
“You’re birthday is coming up,” Trish said, clearly over discussing Chrissy’s flirtation with the banker. “What do you want to do? Should we go somewhere?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Adelaide said. “I don’t really want to do anything.”
“You have to do something. Quentin’s not going to be like, ‘let’s skip your birthday.’ Plan something, or he’ll plan it for you,” Trish replied.
“I just want to relax.”
“So do a beach party,” Solraya suggested. “A good old-fashioned barby on the beach.”
“We do have beaches,” Trish added. “Why have we never done that before?” Now she looked confused. Back home, the beach was the centre of everything, but it hadn’t been around here. Maybe because there weren’t really any waves. No surf clubs, or hot lifesavers. Just a lot of burnt Brits and Germans.
“That could be nice,” Adelaide mused.
All of a sudden, Solraya missed home. She missed the hot summers and the smell of sunblock, beers in the chilly bin, and sausages in bread slices. “I guess we’ll see how Ricky does on a beach. That’s pretty much make or break for him. If he can’t beach it, there’s no hope for him.”
Laying back, she thought about him and how he’d get on in Australia. It could be that the Aussie lifestyle worked really well for him.
“He’d look pretty good in the old boardshorts,” Trish said.
That was true.
Chapter 60
“HOW’S BUSINESS?” TRISTAN asked, sitting across from his sisters at the large, black marble table. Salmon was being served. It tasted particularly sweet because of how sour Persephone looked.
It wasn’t hard to make things complicated for her. A few of her suppliers cutting their ties was all it took. As expected, Persephone had not done a great deal of contingency planning and things just got tough for her.
“Fine,” she said tartly. “How are things with your girlfriend?”
Any loyalty Persephone had had to Samara had gone out the window when it came to her offensive.
Rumour had it that Hassan Azmer was still in town. Samara couldn’t be happy about it, but Tristan hadn’t spoken to her since the party. From what he understood, she’d had some spa treatments planned, so he hadn’t pressed her for communication.
Unfortunately, Persephone’s interference had been successful. Samara was definitely unhappy about her ex-husband appearing at Marbella.
“I believe she’s keeping better company than you are at the moment. I suspect you have burnt your bridges with those women.” If Persephone felt a twinge of remorse for it, she didn’t show it, but then his sister was very talented at only showing people what she wanted them to see. “I understand Hassan has a tendency to not reward people who do his dirty work for him.”
“Although some would say he is doing my dirty work for me.”
“The very definition of uneasy bedfellows,” Tristan said and took another bite of the delicious fish. It was fresh enough to suggest it had been flown in from Scotland that morning.
So now they awkwardly sat in this house which would soon be his, pretending they weren’t awkward at all.
Ludwina had been unusually silent since all this started. Percy had tried to recruit her, but he wasn’t sure Ludwina was falling for it. Percy had a tendency to underestimate Ludwina. As vacant and distracted as she was most of the time, she wasn’t fundamentally stupid, which was the mistake Percy couldn’t help making. It was a survival tactic Ludwina had used to be out of reach of their father—be so flaky the old man could never get any real purchase.
Lunch finished and Percy walked off in the leisurely manner which belied the fact that she had a massive mess to go deal with. Ludwina mentioned something about Reiki and Tristan tuned out immediately.
Once Ludwina was gone, Tristan called Samara. The phone rang and he was about to hang up when she answered. “Tristan,” she said, but her voice didn’t have its usual warmth. In all honesty, he would be a little disappointed in her if her ex-husband's mere presence had such a profound impact on her that she lost all of her personality.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, but didn’t elaborate. “Obviously I’m not pleased with how things went the other night. In truth, I’m deeply disappointed.”
“My sister has the habit of going for blood when she feels it advantages her.”
“It’s hurtful when a friend betrays you. I struggle to understand such behaviour, such
cruelty to someone you call a friend.”
“I think it comes down to you being a far better person than Persephone, but this is an action I believe Persephone will grow to regret. As I understand it, Hassan Azmer has no loyalty beyond what serves him,” Tristan said. “Obviously, you know him better than anyone.”
Again Samara was silent. “This is all so tedious. All this squabbling and attacking within families—it’s unbecoming.”
Tristan wasn’t sure if she meant to include him in that statement, but he was by default. “One has to do what one has to do.”
“Does one? At times, I don’t know if it’s even the money that people are fighting for.”
“Of course it’s the money. Why else would anyone be doing this? Why else would I be here?” Granted, partially it was to prove a point to Percy. “It’s a significant fortune this is regarding.” Did she not understand? Again he had to wonder if Samara simply didn’t understand some things. Some people were like that, particularly amongst the wealthy, those who didn’t earn it, simply thought money was there whenever they needed it. The dirty business of getting it was just beyond them.
“But you are a wealthy man in your own right. What you have achieved in your own name is remarkable.” That was true. Clearly his doubt of her understanding had been unnecessary.
“Maybe you are right in your assessment. Things in families get strained because one must fight one’s ground. I would like to think I live in a family that doesn’t take advantages of each other, but I’ve known I don’t since a very young age. For a moment, I hoped that would disappear with the death of my father, but I was mistaken.”
Samara sighed down the line. “It is all so unnecessary. I hate being involved with such things.”
“One must harden one’s skin to such things,” he replied. It was remarkable that she had been Hassan Azmer’s wife and was still squeamish about squabbles. Granted, Percy was nasty when she wanted to be, but he’d assumed as an Azmer, she knew how to defend her patch. From all appearance, she’d even faced down Hassan himself.
