Breaking Through

by A. M. Hartnett

  Simon chuckled and wriggled closer to her. ‘I was right, you do have some filth in that pretty head of yours, and I can’t wait to hear all about it.’

  A look of surprise crossed his face and he shook his hand free, then rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  ‘Your make-up was still too perfect. I have to admit, it’s making me crazy. Christ, is it lacquered on?’

  She swatted his hand away and rolled onto her back. ‘It’s Estée Lauder.’

  Simon wriggled his hand between them and collected the discarded vibe. He turned it on and flashed a grin.

  ‘After we take a breather, I’m going to use this on you while you suck me hard again. By the time I’m done you’ll be the most gorgeous wreck ever to wear Estée Lauder.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Of all days for your world to end, why today?’ Miranda said, and shifted Eddie from one knee to another as he wailed and his face changed from bright red to purple.

  ‘Frig, let’s just go the hell home,’ Juliet growled from her side of the photo studio’s small lobby. ‘He doesn’t want to do it and I don’t want to do it. Admit it, you don’t want to do it.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ Miranda said, and the sippy cup she offered the baby went flying across the carpeted floor with his violent refusal. ‘He was so happy this morning.’

  ‘So was I, until you made me get out of bed.’

  Juliet was right: Miranda didn’t want to be there with a fussy toddler and a fussier adult in that photo studio at the grocery superstore, but it felt important to her to do this. When she was small, her mother had bundled all three of the girls into the bus and taken them to The Bay to have a family portrait taken. Every year a new photo replaced the old, until it became harder to get three teenagers together at once.

  Her mother hadn’t directly asked for this, but she’d posted that first portrait on Facebook and lamented not having a picture of ‘all four of my babies together’. There was nothing Miranda could do about it now, obviously, but she had quickly developed a scheme. She’d have Eddie’s picture taken, a real portrait that her mother would consider classy, and one with the three of them. Then she’d do a portrait and add Des to it.

  Juliet called it creepy, and Miranda had to agree that on some level it was, but their Mom would like it and they’d have pictures of Eddie to send off to grandparents and relatives who still liked to keep actual photo albums.

  Except, with no end to his tantrum in sight, Eddie would have swollen eyes and a tear-streaked face, and Juliet would smile but that petulant look would still be there.

  ‘Why don’t you call your boyfriend to calm him down,’ Juliet remarked without looking up from her nails.

  Balancing the baby with one arm, Miranda dug into the diaper bag with the other and glared back at Juliet. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, you want a traditional family photo, don’t you? Rope your sugar daddy into doing it.’

  ‘What the f–’ Miranda clamped her mouth shut to stop the curse. She gave up her hopeless search inside the diaper bag and jostled Eddie. ‘Can you please take him for a minute.’

  Rolling her eyes, Juliet held her arms out and a fresh tantrum was unleashed as Eddie was passed over.

  ‘That wasn’t very nice,’ Miranda growled as she hauled the bag onto her lap. ‘He’s not my sugar daddy, thank you. You don’t see me strolling around in a pair of Louboutins, do you? Just because he has an actual job and doesn’t tend bar to support his dream of becoming the next Bono doesn’t mean he’s slumming. What happened to creaming your panties over his sordid past?’

  ‘The novelty has worn off,’ Juliet countered, trying her best to hold onto the baby. ‘For me, anyway. You’re starting to get cosy, though. You’ve got it written all over you that you’ve got picket fences on the brain. That didn’t take long. Only, what, a couple of weeks?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  And she truly didn’t. Even though things seemed to be getting more serious with Simon – six nights at her place and then Sundays alone at his, watching movies and getting takeout and screwing like crazy – Miranda hadn’t gone to sleep one night and woken up with illusions of happily ever after. She liked the pace at which things moved between them: not quite casual sex, but not loaded with expectations neither of them could live up to.

  It is what it is, she thought as she finally found what she was looking for in the depths of the diaper bag, and it’s perfect.

  ‘Eddie, you want a cookie?’

  She brandished the vanilla wafer until she had his attention. His face lit up, like she’d produced some long-lost treasure. She hated to bribe him with a treat but with today quickly going down the toilet she was willing to try it out as a last resort. He wriggled from Juliet’s clutches and reached for the bribe.

  As soon he was sucking on the cookie, he quieted down and leaned against Miranda’s knee to inspect the exterior of the bag.

  ‘You need one, too, bitchface?’ she quipped at Juliet.

  ‘Shut up.’ She leaned back against the chair and returned to inspecting her nails. ‘By the way, you might have to get your schedule changed in August.’

  ‘Did you get a job?’ Finding herself, predictably, at the receiving end of a poisonous look, Miranda refrained from adding ‘a real job’.

  ‘Actually, yeah. I think there’s a real possibility we’ll be opening for Dante Monroe for the rest of the summer, and that’s on top of the real possibility that we’ll be in a studio by the end of the summer.’

  Miranda leaned back and rested her head against the wall behind her. She was so sick of ‘real possibilities’ when it came to Juliet. While Miranda spent every evening with an earpiece, trying to upsell travel insurance to callers who had no interest in more than just keeping their cars insured and on the road, Juliet lived for her real possibilities.

  As the seasons changed, Miranda was getting tired of this shit. It had been cool when she was eighteen and all she needed was pocket money, when she and Des would brag about having a sister who was in a band, and the shitty apartment they’d visited in Vancouver was considered a place they’d talk about long after Juliet had a hit.

  Now that Juliet’s career was just one more thing Miranda’s life revolved around, it wasn’t cool any more. It was a pain in the ass, and getting bigger as the months dragged on.

  ‘This is why I didn’t want to tell you,’ Juliet snapped. ‘I knew you’d get pissy.’

  Miranda looked across the waiting room at her sister. ‘Oh, really? I can’t imagine why. No, wait, it’s coming back to me now. You were supposed to pick up more hours at the employment agency so I could take fewer hours and enrol on that arts course next fall.’

  ‘You still could. This year could be big for me, and you might not have to work at all.’

  ‘That’s what you said last year when I told you I wanted to take the course. I could be finished and working by now.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Quit? After almost ten years you want me to give up?’

  An unhappy gurgle from Eddie caught Miranda’s attention. He raised his arms, dropping his cookie onto the floor. She dragged him back onto her lap, but as soon as he was up he wanted back down again, then shrieked as she beat him to the cookie on the floor and tossed it in the garbage. It was getting close to his nap time and he would be cranky, but Miranda also knew that he usually picked up on their squabbles.

  Not wanting to deal with a meltdown, she shook her head. ‘We can talk about it later.’

  Juliet leaned forward, her expression pure poison. ‘Do you expect me to quit? Give up all the time and energy I put into doing this?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Miranda snapped back, her temper getting the better of her as she pulled Eddie away from the garbage can. ‘I expect you to think, for once. I expect you to remember that I need you to do more than haul your ass out of bed at one o’clock in
the afternoon when it’s time for me to work. I expect you to bring home more than just five or six hundred every month so we don’t have to rely on the family allowance to break even.’

  ‘I told you, the only way to make this work is to treat it like a full-time job.’

  ‘You think I don’t want to paint full-time? Hell, I do it a few nights a week and I still make more online than you, so if you want to get technical, I have two jobs while you’re half-assing it.’

  Juliet threw her hands up. ‘You know what? You were right the first time: we can talk about it later. I’m going to have a smoke and get a Coke.’

  Miranda let her sister go even though the photographer would call for them at any minute. She needed five minutes without Juliet to focus on getting Eddie picture-ready. The fog of tension in the waiting area evaporated, and Miranda managed to tickle and tease the baby out of his bad mood, and once the photographer admitted them he was all smiles as he played with a stuffed elephant.

  She still simmered through the whole session, and after ten minutes it became clear that Juliet wasn’t returning. She made one call to Juliet’s cell, but received no answer.

  Though she fumed, Miranda wasn’t surprised. Juliet excelled at being an asshole, and when it came to calling her out, she retaliated by being an even bigger asshole.

  And so she went in front of the canvas with the baby, hauled him into her arms and blew raspberries into his cheek until he was a bubbly little ball. Her mother would have her damn picture, Miranda decided as she posed for the camera, but the urge to cry prickled in her sinuses.

  From the darkest part of her self-pity came a thought. It wasn’t the first time it had bubbled up, black and acidic, and she knew she would feel guilty for it later, but there it was.

  She wished that Des was the sister she had been left with.

  Des, who had pulled up her boots when she found out she was pregnant and on her own, who had done what needed to be done by moving back into the apartment with her mother and Miranda so she could stretch the money she made working at the gas station as far as she could. Des, who would have been a wonderful mother if she had been given the chance.

  When the pictures were over and the proofs were approved, Miranda tucked Eddie in his stroller.

  ‘Do you want to walk home and look at all the trees and cars?’ she cooed at him as she slipped a pair of plastic sunglasses on his face. ‘No bus today?’

  The bus would have been quicker, but she wasn’t in the mood for lugging a stroller when she could push it and be home in just over thirty minutes.

  For a moment the temptation was there to see if Simon was up for lunch, but she was still smarting from the sugar-daddy remark. Asking him to chauffeur her was out of the question, and so she headed north, narrating the whole journey to Eddie and keeping her black mood at bay for a little longer.

  * * *

  ‘Jenna, you’re as gorgeous as ever,’ Simon lied as he rose from his seat.

  It wasn’t that his ex-girlfriend had aged terribly. It had only been a few years since they’d seen one another and not much had changed about Jenna Pollack, but she lacked the shine she once had in his eyes.

  Then again, they all shone in his eyes at one point. All the women in his past were glossy plastic, much like the version of himself he presented to strangers.

  Maybe that’s why he was so wrapped up in Miranda. She didn’t shine, she glowed. It was a quality that couldn’t be seen unless you really looked, and once you caught it there was no escaping it.

  Jenna took his hands and leaned forward, giving him the semblance of a kiss on the cheek, then took her seat opposite him.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Simon,’ she said, but her tone conveyed otherwise.

  Unsurprising, given that the death of their relationship came crackling over the phone when he informed her he was flying to Vancouver for Taureau rather than keep their dinner date with her parents. He could have put it off, and he suspected she knew it and knew that he had been looking for an excuse to end their relationship now that it had gone from explosively sexual to uncomfortably monogamous.

  If he could have avoided seeing her, he would have, but circumstances had made her his only hope. When they’d been dating, she’d been the legislative assistant to the MP who would later become the current leader of the opposition. Save for his dealings with Dominic Taureau, Simon had little interest in what went on in the House of Commons. He was only interested in what he was paid to be interested in – the gossip – and picking it apart to find out what was truth and what was just rumour. Over the years, he’d determined that the best way to find things out was through word of mouth.

  That’s where Jenna came in. He’d contacted her a month ago and asked to have dinner with her, and she happened to be coming into town to meet a small publisher about a book they had contracted from her.

  She’d completed her studies and now taught American History at university level, but it just so happened that she did so in Matthew Murray’s backyard, and had married an independent who had lost to Murray in the last election.

  As they settled across from one another, Simon found himself on the receiving end of a hot perusal. Her gaze washed over him, and for a moment he was reminded of how insatiable they’d been when they’d first gotten together. Virtually nothing was off limits with Jenna in those days.

  He tried to enjoy it, but his mind quickly wandered: his hand hot and stinging as it came down on the plump curve of Miranda’s ass, and the satin clinch of her pussy as she came for him.

  ‘You look good,’ she said, meeting his gaze.

  He patted his stomach. ‘There’s more of me than before, but I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.’

  ‘I’m not sure what I was expecting, after what I’ve heard. I have to admit, I was surprised to hear that you’d gone back to rehab. You seemed so together, I never would have guessed. Then again, you never really opened up about your demons to me.’

  ‘Who said I have demons?’ he asked, a little testily. ‘After the time I had last year, I just went overboard.’

  ‘You’ve got demons,’ she said, quietly, ‘and I think on some level you like having them.’

  ‘How’s the husband?’ Eager to change the subject, he leaned forward and folded his hands. ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘David is fine, and we don’t want children.’

  She mirrored his pose and held it as the waiter arrived to take their orders. She ordered a white wine and Simon ordered a diet soda, and once the waiter had left she raised a brow at him.

  ‘If I told you the only reason I agreed to meet you was in the hopes of going to bed with you tonight, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say you were about a month too late. I’m off the market.’

  ‘That never stopped you before.’

  He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘I never screwed around on you. I’ve never screwed around on anyone unless they were screwing around with me.’

  ‘But you’ve been with married women. Oh, yeah, I know all about that.’ She laughed and kept her smile as the waiter brought their drinks. ‘I asked around the first time I met you, and I heard all about how you were carrying on with Johanna Fleming while her husband was in Ottawa.’

  He raised his glass. ‘That was work. I keep my dick in my pants once I’ve taken things to the next level with a woman.’

  ‘And that’s where you get stuck,’ she murmured, took a sip, then leaned back in her chair. ‘This is work, too, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘You worked on your husband’s campaign, am I right?’

  ‘Yes, I did, what little campaign there was. Don was flattened by the competition.’

  ‘I’m working for Michael Roe.’

  She raised a brow. ‘And you’re hoping I know something that Roe can use against Murray.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Jenna averted her gaze to her glass, and Simon could feel her turning to stone. He read her easily. It’s not that she didn’t want
to talk about Matthew Murray, he intuited, it’s that she was deeply offended that he didn’t want her.

  Same old Jenna.

  He had to do damage control or lose her. As he’d told her, two weeks ago he probably would have taken her to bed and given her what she wanted, but that was out of the question.

  And so he leaned forward and took her hand. ‘I thought you were happily married now.’

  ‘Some days I am. Most days I’m wondering why in the hell I got married to begin with. He’s almost twice my age and happiest when he’s about to have his afternoon nap. I’m hitting my prime.’ She gave him a cynical smile. ‘I want to have an affair. I’m ready to have an affair.’

  ‘Then have one,’ he said, and drew a laugh from her. He smiled. ‘Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? You get a divorce and get to spend your forties riding some twenty-year-old dick? You picked the right place to do it. This is a university town. Throw a rock and you’ll hit a ready hard-on.’

  ‘Is that your way of telling me you won’t budge and I won’t get my ride tonight?’

  ‘I am spoken for at the moment, and, past indiscretions aside, I’m happy to keep it that way as long as she’ll have me.’

  Jenna gave her head a shake. ‘Too bad. I was hoping for a sure thing. You do have your talents, Simon.’

  She was loose now, but Simon could still detect some barbs sticking out from beneath the skin. Keeping an eye on the time to make sure he didn’t leave Miranda waiting for him, he ordered her a second glass of wine and drew her into one recollection after another about their better times together, and by the time she had finished her second glass she was flushed and smiling.

  ‘Are you driving?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m at the Cavendish Hotel, so you don’t need to worry.’ She flagged to get the waiter’s attention, and then her eyes widened. ‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry. Here I am guzzling wine in front of a guy straight from rehab.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ he told her. ‘It’s not being around alcohol that catches me, it’s what goes on in my head.’