Switching it On

by Lexxie Couper

  “What about them?” he asked, standing at the conference room’s open door.

  Open door.

  Lena glimpsed the rest of the main N@9 team suspiciously lingering a few feet beyond it.

  Blowing out a stream of exasperated air, she folded her arms over her breasts and gave the gaping window into their marital situation a pointed look. “Can you close the door, please?”

  Mike let out a dry laugh, turned on his heel and wrapped his fingers around the steel knob. “Sorry, guys,” he said to the rapidly scrambling people on the other side of the threshold. “Show’s over.”

  He closed the door.

  Lena couldn’t help but notice the way the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched and coiled as he moved the heavy tempered glass.

  The pit of her belly fluttered. And then contracted when Mike locked the door. Locked it. This time, however, the tension radiated lower into the junction of her thighs. Her clit prickled with a sudden rush of blood.

  “So…” He turned, leant his broad back against the glass—glass she knew was soundproof—and crossed his arms over his chest. “Divorce papers? That’s what you want to talk about? Sure you don’t want to talk about all the pendant-dragging and lip-chewing?”

  She frowned. “The what?”

  He levered away from the door and began to walk towards her. It was damn hard not to match his every step in retreat.

  “The dragging-that-ball-on-your-necklace-up-and-down-the-chain thing.” He made a move with his hands beneath his chin that looked as if he was waving an invisible fan.

  Lena frowned more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He laughed.

  Drew closer.

  She stood her ground. Clenched her hands into fists and glared at him.

  Much to her dismay, it didn’t slow his pace.

  Before she could moisten her lips—for some reason, they’d become quite dry—with a quick swipe of her tongue, he was standing right in front of her.

  She shot a quick glance through the conference room’s glass door and walls. Everyone on the other side of the soundproof glass was doing anything humanly possible to appear as if they weren’t watching.

  Damn it, perhaps taking this job had been a bad idea after all. Surely the ridiculous amount of money the network’s owner had waved in her face to lure her here couldn’t make up for the drama?

  “The necklace-dragging thingy,” Mike said, jerking her stare back to him. Mirth danced in his blue eyes. Christ, it was sexy.

  And as annoying as all hell.

  “This,” he murmured, plucking the gold-ball pendant resting in her cleavage with nimble fingers and slowly sliding it sideways along the length of her chain.

  She gasped.

  Not at the audacity of his actions, but at the traitorous way her nipples beaded at the soft brush of his fingertip against her breast.

  Snatching her pendant from his hand, she glared up at him. “Stop it.”

  He chuckled, a low, arrogant sound that did exactly what it used to do. Made her pussy throb with a desire she had no control over.

  But when it came to Mike, she and control had little interaction.

  Until he threw away everything over their—

  “So,” he murmured, “you don’t want to talk about the thoughts going through your mind for the duration of the meeting?”

  Christ, when had he got so close she could feel his body heat?

  Lena swallowed, clenching the little gold ball in her fist. “Sure, let’s do that. I was thinking ‘look at him, the cheating prick who stuck his prick into our barely legal dog-walker. God, I wish I could castrate him’.”

  Mike threw back his head and laughed.

  The relaxed sound bounced around the enclosed space, mocking her rage even as it played merry hell with her sanity.

  Like everything else about Mike, his laugh—open, bawdy, and completely without shame—affected her on a physical level.

  “That’s so not what you were thinking,” he said, returning his gaze to hers.

  An emotion she couldn’t deny burned in his eyes. An enigmatic and yet somehow familiar emotion that sent fresh waves of tension through her lower body. An emotion she used to see in his eyes often when he looked at her while they were still together. That always made her heart quicken.

  It made her want to move just a little closer to him, just a little, to feel the heat from his tall, hard body seep into hers. To breathe in his distinct scent. To see if his hands would find her hips as easily as they used to.

  “But I’ll let you go with that if it helps,” he finished.

  “Helps what?” she croaked.

  When in the hell had she lost the balance of power in this confrontation? She was going to demand he give her a day, a time for delivering the signed divorced papers. Instead, he was almost rubbing up against her, making her stupid pussy throb and pulse with his smirk and laugh, and playing with her necklace. What the hell was she doing?

  “Helps you live with our fucked-up ratings because you pulled me off the West interview.”

  Lena blinked. A prickling heat rushed through her. Anger.

  Serious anger.

  “You and your goddamn ego,” she snarled, rolling her eyes. “Here I was, thinking—”

  She stopped.

  Her blood drained from her face. Her lips tingled with the sudden loss.

  Oh God, she’d almost confessed she thought he was thinking about them, and how messed up they both were now.

  A muscle in Mike’s jaw bunched. “Thinking what, Button?”

  Sucking in a steady breath, Lena stiffened her spine and fixed him with a level stare. “Thinking I can’t wait to see you attached to Mrs. Kowinski via the leg. You’ll be expected to lose the race, by the way. We’ll run ads for the event for the week leading up to broadcast. Just think how many viewers are going to want to see the Mike Bailey running a three-legged race with an octogenarian? Entertainment at its finest. And so much better for ratings, yes?”

  That muscle in his jaw ticked again.

  She didn’t move.

  His stare dropped to her lips.

  For a terrifying, tantalizing second, Lena swore he was going to kiss her. As punishment? To prove he could?

  And then he returned his focus to her eyes. “I didn’t fuck our dog-walker,” he ground out.

  An invisible fist punched into Lena’s heart. “All evidence suggests otherwise, Michael,” she said, her voice as dusty as the dreams she’d once had.

  “Those images on Instagram. That’s it. Not a lot of evidence there. I thought we had trust, Lena. I thought we had perfection. I knew how much you’d been hurt before we met, and you should have known I would never do that to you.”

  His words scraped at the rawness of her conviction.

  If only it were just images on Instagram…

  Drawing in another breath, she released her pendant and finally took a step backward. “I would like those papers signed by the end of the week,” she said. “And I want you at the St. Xavier athletics carnival from the first event to the last. Do I make myself clear?”

  Something dark flickered in his eyes. His nostrils flared. And then he grunted out a laugh devoid of any emotion at all.

  “Sure, Button. I can do that.” He pivoted on his heel and strode to the glass door. “You know me,” he threw over his shoulder as he unlocked it. “No matter how I try,” he yanked the door open, “I just can’t say no to you at all.”

  He didn’t look back at her as he exited the room.

  For some reason, Lena found no triumph in that.

  Chapter Two

  Pacing his office didn’t help anything.

  Googling St. Xavier Primary School didn’t either.

  Well, apart from discovering Mrs. Kowinski was at least sixty-five years old in the shade, wore purple tortoiseshell-framed glasses, and proudly “walked with God every step of her life”.

  Leaving work early achieved fuck-all.
<
br />   Eating handful after handful of peanuts at the pub around the corner from the station was equally unproductive, a bizarre ritual he’d fallen into since joining N@9 that normally helped clear his head whenever work frustrated him.

  All he could think about, all he could focus on, was how goddamn incredible Lena had smelt when he’d stood directly in front of her, how soft her skin had been as his fingers brushed against her cleavage.

  How much he fucking wanted her.

  How much he missed her.

  How much he loved her.

  Still.

  After seven and a half months, he still missed her.

  It didn’t matter she’d found it easier to believe him a liar than to believe their dog-walker had set him up, he still loved her.

  Damn it, it hurt.

  Cradling the glass of mineral water he’d ordered upon arriving, its temperature now approaching tepid, he stared at the image smiling up at him from his open wallet.

  Lena. On their wedding day.

  It was his favourite photo from that day. His favourite photo of Lena, and during their time together, he’d taken quite a few photos of her.

  This one…

  He’d snagged their photographer’s camera while the man had been in the loo, whistled at Lena as she was talking to her parents, and snapped the shot when she’d turned to him, capturing what could only be described as honest, pure joy on her face.

  Their marriage, their life together, had been about joy.

  And then his status as an Australian sex symbol had started to grow.

  Then the envelopes began to arrive at their home, full of women’s undies and bras and suggestive photos and offers…

  He and Lena had laughed them off. All of them. She’d trusted him and he’d loved her, desired her too much to be remotely interested in the indecent proposals sent his way. They’d given them no second thought.

  At least he’d thought they hadn’t.

  But when the incriminating Instagram images broke…

  There’d been no joy on Lena’s face then. No laughter. Only broken trust and pain.

  He’d thought he’d helped her get over the pain her previous boyfriend had wrought upon her, but apparently those wounds ran deep. So deep, she’d refused to believe him. She’d listened to him, silently, then opened the day’s paper to a double-page spread containing the Instagram images enlarged to a size that still made his gut churn. She didn’t look at those images. He suspected she’d already had her fill of them.

  She just looked at him, her eyes full of grief, and asked him to leave. Which he had, sick with confusion and anger.

  Two days later, shocking the hell out of him, she’d cancelled their planned lunch to talk about the situation and informed him she wanted a divorce instead.

  And just like that, the world he’d known was destroyed.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, slapping his wallet shut. He was torturing himself. He’d barely looked at the photo of Lena since then, barely acknowledged its existence in his wallet apart from the odd flippant observation to his sister that he needed to get rid of it.

  He needed to go back to that mentality. Go back to the “Do you think I give a rat’s arse?” attitude he’d had before Lena strode back into his life.

  Yeah. That attitude, Mikey? You know it was all bullshit, right?

  “Fuck,” he repeated, shoving his wallet back into his hip pocket.

  Picking up his now lukewarm water, he held it out, staring at his reflection in the mirrored wall opposite him. “To sticking it to the boss.”

  “Really?” a female voice tickled his ear beside him, smooth and ripe with mirth. “That’s the toast you’re going with?”

  Mike flicked the stunning brunette on his right a glance before raising his glass to his lips. “It is,” he told his sister before gulping the warm water in three mouthfuls.

  RG chuckled. “Mum would be so proud.”

  Mike placed his empty glass on the bar, inched it away with the back of his fingers, and then turned to his sister. “She would.”

  RG, born Rosemary Grace but only ever called that by their mother, snorted. Today, Mike noticed, she wore a skin-tight white tank that read Jabba Was Misunderstood, faded denim shorts so damn short it was a wonder she hadn’t been arrested the second she walked out in public, and knee-high Doc Martens. Her hair, thick and wavy and glossy with a hint of their father’s Irish-red colouring, hung over one shoulder.

  It couldn’t very well hang over both, given the left side of her head was shaved to buzz-cut length.

  He raised an eyebrow. “She’d be proud of that, as well.”

  RG grinned, skimming her palm over the shaved section. “Good thing she’s not here to see it, eh?”

  Dorothy Grace Bailey had passed away from alcohol poisoning when RG was fifteen and Mike was eighteen.

  Eighteen years of mental and emotional abuse at the hands of the woman who was meant to nurture and care. Eighteen years of cowing and being manipulated by selfish guilt.

  A childhood spent smiling because his mother insisted he did whenever she begged forgiveness from him for spending his lunch money on alcohol, or for failing to collect him and his sister from school because she was passed out in her car outside a pub somewhere.

  Teenage years spent hiding her bottles of vodka, scotch, cooking brandy, only to be beaten bloody until he handed them over to her. Years protecting RG from Mum’s drunken anger over the fact her daughter was prettier than she was, smarter. Days spent hungry at school and at home because she’d found the money he’d been hiding and poured it all down her throat via the quickest bottle of grog she could find.

  Teenage years—those years that were meant to be fun, carefree—being emotionally manipulated into accepting every apology she gave him. Long, draining years believing every promise that she was going to sober up, every lie that she was going to be better. Years smiling for her when she begged him to do so because it made her feel less guilty for the shitty job she was doing as a parent.

  Years spent in a situation too fucked-up to forget.

  Mike remembered trying to cry at her funeral. He also remembered digging RG in the ribs often with his elbow as she spent said funeral texting on her phone.

  Their estranged father, equally as enamored with alcohol, had been a no-show. He’d turned up at the wake with a woman who, to this day, Mike was convinced his father had met on the way there. Had called Mike Mitch and asked if RG was Mitch’s date.

  Suffice to say, Mike and RG had grown up with a warped notion of family.

  Mike had believed he’d been well on his way to righting that warped view with Lena. She’d saved him from the bleak reality behind his charismatic smirk. She’d been his light, his promise, his hope, his present, and his future. She’d helped him put his history behind him.

  RG hadn’t bothered to right what was warped. She’d made a living out of it instead.

  Of course, RG didn’t live in the real world. At twenty-six, RG was one of the best online gamers out there, who spent most of her waking hours seducing unwitting foes to their doom in Hell’s Harbour, the game that had made her a millionaire.

  “So…” He dragged out the single-word sentence. There was no need for him to finish it.

  “She’s back in your life, eh?”

  Mike snorted, lifting a hand at the barkeeper. “You could say that.”

  RG studied him. Didn’t say a word.

  “And you can just keep your opinions to yourself about finding me in this place,” he said without looking at her. “The peanuts here are the best.”

  RG sighed. “Man, our parents really fucked us up, didn’t they? You can’t come to a pub when your wife rips out your heart again without the fear of becoming a raging drunk, and I can’t exist in reality without feeling like I’m a fraud.”

  “Who said Lena’s ripped out my heart again?”

  A grin curled RG’s lips, part melancholy, part snarky. “I’ve been in here watching you for the las
t ten minutes. In that whole time, you didn’t look up from that photo of her in your wallet, or notice the barkeeper hitting on you.”

  Mike slid his gaze to the hot blonde behind the bar heading in their direction.

  She smiled as she leant her elbows on her side of the marble bar and bent towards him, squishing her boobs together with her upper arms as she did so to present him with a view of the most incredible rack money could buy. “What else can I give you, Mr. Bailey?”

  Beside Mike, RG burst out laughing. There was nothing demure or self-conscious about RG’s laugh.

  “Just water, Lucy,” he muttered, pressing a palm to his sister’s shoulder and shoving.

  RG didn’t fall off the stool.

  He didn’t want her to anyway.

  Lucy barely acknowledged RG’s existence as she traced the tip of her tongue over her top lip and mooshed her boobs closer together. “Sure thing, Mr. Bailey.”

  She pushed herself from the bar and sashayed away.

  RG laughed again. “See? She’s been doing that since I’ve been in here.”

  Mike gave his sister a curious frown. “How did you know to find me here anyway? And while we’re at it, why did you know?”

  She flashed her teeth in a wicked smile. He noticed her lips were a vivid purple today. Oh, and was that a nose piercing? When had that happened? “I’m a techno genius, brother. You know that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and waited.

  She chuckled. “Your phone’s location service is activated, you doofus. All I had to do was bring up your contact details in my phone and it showed me exactly where you were on the map.”

  Mike winced. “I thought I’d turned that off after…”

  He petered off. He hated talking about the dog-walker who’d destroyed his marriage.

  RG shoved her butt off the stool, leant over the bar, and snagged herself a wedge of lemon from somewhere behind a small raised partition. “After Little Miss Wants To Bone My Brother, you mean?”

  Mike twisted on his stool and glared at the two guys ogling the view of her posterior from their booth. “Oi!” he called. “Stop perving at my sister.”