Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  ‘No, she’s not quite ready yet. Please, go through and sit down. I’m sure she’ll be ready in a minute.’

  Matt smiled back – he seemed a very smiley man – and pushed off in the direction she’d indicated. Left alone, Kate shook her head. Poor Matt. The flowers were long-stemmed red roses. An expensive but misguided choice. Jo didn’t like roses, especially red ones. It was an odd prejudice, but it was something to do with a bad break-up and it was unshakeable. It had started around the same time as Jo’s ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out-of my-life’ policy with men, and Kate rather suspected that she had just witnessed Matt’s first strike.

  Kate shrugged. Oh well. She, personally, loved red roses and these were beautiful ones. It had been a long time since . . .

  NO! She caught the thought and stopped it in its tracks. She would NOT think about him. Alain was never going to give her flowers again. And that was fine. It wasn’t as though he’d given her flowers very often anyway. She needed to remember that. She was not going to get sentimental over something that had never been.

  After all, romance was lovely, but it wasn’t at the top of her list of must-haves in a man. It was nice, but there were more important things. Stability. Reliability. Permanence. All the things she’d thought she had with Alain. Until she didn’t. How had she got it so wrong?

  She closed her eyes and willed the thoughts away. This lament was familiar. It had been running around in her head and heart for days and it needed to stop.

  But this time there was something else as well. Inside her mind, she again pictured the magnificent roses and behind them a man. Only this time, it wasn’t Matt, but Josh, asking her when romance had stopped being important.

  With a start, her eyes flew open. When had he taken up residence in her head? And where did he get off asking questions like that?

  Of course, it wasn’t actually Josh who’d asked the question. It was something inside her, which her imagination had chosen to dress up as Josh, apparently to make her even more confused than she already was.

  Her head started to hurt. And spin, just a little. She closed her eyes again and reached for Jo’s hallstand to regain her equilibrium. But instead of the sturdy wood she was expecting, her grasping hand met a tall golf umbrella that had seen better decades. And instead of support, it rewarded her blind clutching with a broken rib right in the soft pad of her forefinger.

  It wasn’t what she’d been looking for – it drew blood and hurt like hell – but she couldn’t help thinking, even as she yelped, that this sort of pain was much easier to deal with. She swore softly and popped her finger into her mouth, grateful for the distraction.

  ‘Moving on’ had seemed so easy when she was under the influence of Jo’s energy. But it was going to be hard if she couldn’t even look at a bunch of roses without jumping on an emotional merry-go-round.

  She was still staring at the floor, thinking and sucking on her finger, when a soft, sharp intake of breath made her aware that someone was standing in the doorway. Somehow, she didn’t need to look to know that, this time, it was not a stranger.

  The amazingly resilient butterflies, which had seemed well and truly dead, resurrected themselves again and Kate found herself completely unable to make sense of what she had been thinking. It was something about roses . . . and merry-go-rounds . . . and . . . and . . . she gave up.

  Slowly, she raised her head. First into view was a pair of gleaming black shoes. Patent leather men’s dress shoes; the sort not found in the local K-Mart. Or indeed the local mall, unless it was a very upmarket one.

  Sliding past them, her gaze was led inexorably to immaculate, slim-cut trousers, so sharply creased as to be dangerous and so black that they appeared to absorb all the available light. Would that explain why she couldn’t drag her eyes away from them? Or was that down to the drape of the fine wool, perfectly cut to tantalisingly skim all but the curve where his thigh muscles touched the fabric?

  Kate felt a sudden, strong, almost overwhelming desire to see how the fabric handled his behind. The nicely-brought-up part of Kate was shocked. The butterflies, on the other hand, seemed to think it was a great idea. In fact, they were all for her spinning him round and doing some handling herself.

  She quickly moved her eyes upwards, but if she thought she was moving out of danger, she was mistaken. She couldn’t help noticing the way the jacket hugged his slim hips as though it had grown on him. And the way it hung from his broad shoulders and across the crisp white of his shirt made her want to run her hand down the front of it, to see if it could possibly feel as good as it looked.

  With the part of her brain that was still capable of thought, Kate reflected that there was a downside to being an academic. The men she worked with wouldn’t know that clothes like these existed, let alone think they were worth paying for. Not many of them would have the body to show them off to such advantage, either.

  Then her green eyes met his brown ones and she stopped thinking altogether. Now it was her turn to gasp. While she’d been looking at him, he had apparently been returning the scrutiny – and liking what he saw. He looked as if he would quite like to eat her. And from the way the butterflies were reacting to that thought, Kate suspected she wouldn’t at all mind being eaten.

  Neither of them moved until, eventually, Josh let out the breath he had, apparently, been holding and smiled at her.

  ‘You look amazing.’

  It wasn’t many words, but the way he said it and his smile – which had more than a touch of the predator in it – made Kate believe it. In his eyes, she saw herself as she never had before. Glamorous. Sexy. A femme fatale. Exactly the image she wanted to take back to work with her.

  But wasn’t it supposed to make her feel powerful and confident? So why did she feel shaken, stirred and not a little dizzy? Why was she rocking on her high heels and seriously considering grabbing the umbrella again, in spite of its finger-mauling ways? What was happening to her?

  She needed to escape – from the dizziness, from the butterflies and from this man who had such a weird effect on her. It might not be worthy of brave new Kate, but if this was the fight-or-flight response, she was choosing flight. Muttering something about checking on Jo, she gestured in the direction of the lounge and just about ran to the bathroom.

  Jo was still not quite finished. Kate was flabbergasted. It must have been only a few minutes since she met Matt at the door. It felt like a lifetime. Kate shook her head, bewildered. She felt as though she’d been through a washing machine, and they hadn’t even got out the door yet. At this rate, it could be a long night.

  Thank God for Jo. At least she was reassuringly familiar.

  ‘Are you ready? Matt and Josh are here.’

  Kate had been trying for bright and breezy but she knew she’d failed when Jo shot her a suspicious look. She forced herself to smile back, more or less normally and, to her relief, Jo let it pass.

  ‘Yes, I am ready now,’ she said, giving her hair one last spritz. ‘Shall we go?’

  Kate managed to sound reasonably perky as she said, ‘Yes! Let’s!’

  But inside she couldn’t help wondering what she was getting herself into.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Driving through the gates of her old school did nothing to relieve her worries. What had possessed the organisers to hold it there? Did anyone really need to hear the echoes of excruciating Year Ten socials? Kate certainly didn’t. The memories of that Kate, brainy but awkward, only mildly spotty but still dateless, was precisely what the New Kate wanted to suppress – or preferably expunge – from her memory and everyone else’s.

  But how she was going to do that in a setting that brought it all back was beyond her. The mere thought of the gym, which somehow always managed to be simultaneously sweaty and cold, was enough to bring her out in an anxiety rash. As they left the car and walked towards it, Kate could feel itches forming in places she knew she wasn’t going to be able to scratch. And she couldn’t help feeling that she was goin
g to be massively overdressed.

  But the gym was transformed.

  Someone – or probably a team of someones – had strung the walls with what looked like thousands of fairy lights, then overlaid them with great swathes of filmy white stuff, completely obscuring the athletic instruments of torture that were normally their main feature.

  The same magic-workers had draped the basketball hoops in sprays of little pin lights that sparkled like trailing stars, and tucked tiny posies into the backs of covers that hid the folding speech-night chairs. Tall candelabras stood around the edges of the room, and hundreds of short, fat candles in flowerpots nestled in floral arrangements on the tables. It was elegant. It was magnificent. And it couldn’t have looked less like a high school gym.

  She turned to Jo.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  Jo grinned at her.

  ‘Do you like it? That’s why I wanted us to come a bit early, so you could get the full effect without too many people here. I knew it was going to be fantastic.’

  ‘But how —? I know this is my first reunion but I don’t think they’re normally like this. Are they?’

  In reply, Jo pointed to the opposite side of the room, where a shortish woman was laying down the law to a posse of waitstaff, all very smartly dressed in head-to-toe black.

  ‘One of our old classmates has an event management company now. A rather successful one. Do you recognise her?’

  Kate looked. At first glance, it wasn’t anyone she remembered. But then, no-one could possibly have looked like that while still at school. For a start, not many schoolgirls were that well endowed. This woman had filled out well past the proportions favoured by Hollywood, but rather than hiding behind baggy clothes she had clearly decided to flaunt what she had.

  Even from the other side of the room, she was a knockout. It wasn’t just the hand-made corset or the frankly magnificent bosom that it was making the most of. It wasn’t the laced ankle boots peeking from beneath the froth of petticoats. Her outfit was three parts steampunk, two parts dominatrix and five parts fabulous, but that wasn’t what riveted Kate’s attention. It was the woman herself. As she briefed her almost slavishly attentive troops, energy and confidence radiated from her with the force of sunbeams, dazzling and delighting in equal measure. Then she turned towards their side of the room and Kate’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Is that Belinda?’

  Jo chuckled. ‘Sure is. We see quite a lot of each other now. She hires art from me for her events sometimes. She’s come into her own, hasn’t she?’

  If there was an award for understatements, Jo would have been a hot contender at that moment. Kate had always been friendly with Belinda, but the girl she remembered was a chubby, shy, miserable goth who spent most of her hours at school hiding behind her hair. Kate had been wondering why anyone would have gone to such trouble to transform the gym for one night, but now she began to understand. There couldn’t have been a clearer way to make the point that things were not the same as they had been at school.

  Kate felt her itches start to subside. Things weren’t the same as they had been. She might not look as different as Belinda did, but she wasn’t a gawky teenager any more and she didn’t need to feel like one. So she had just been dumped, but no-one had to know that. She had a great outfit and a handsome escort. She pulled back her shoulders, accepted a champagne from one of the snazzily dressed waiters and took a sip. It was surprisingly good. Another good omen. Maybe she could pull off this reunion thing after all.

  Then a silky voice slid into her ear and burst every last bubble in her champagne.

  ‘Well, hello there! Kate, isn’t it? Look at you! You haven’t changed a bit!’

  Kate forced a smile and looked up. ‘Up’ because the voice was coming from a woman who was a good inch taller even than Jo (whose nickname had been giraffe, back in the days when they gave each other nicknames). Ten years hadn’t diminished her height or, apparently, her talent for insulting with completely innocuous-sounding words.

  This dubious talent had tricked a lot of the teachers when they’d been at school together, and it seemed to have fooled Jo’s date now. Matt was looking at the newcomer’s cascade of blonde hair and long legs with frank admiration, seemingly oblivious to the chill emanating from the other two women. Catching a glimpse of Jo’s face out of the corner of her eye, Kate heard an invisible baseball umpire yell ‘Steee-rike two!’

  Of course, it had sounded like a compliment. But from this particular girl’s mouth, what it really meant was, ‘Look at you! When we were at school, you were a bookish geek, and I was a goddess. So glad to see that the status quo hasn’t changed!’

  She was also ignoring Jo, which was another thing that hadn’t changed. While Kate-baiting had been one of Crystal’s favourite sports in their schooldays, she had generally avoided tangling with Jo. Most people did. When it came to a battle of wits, Jo was always armed and dangerous. Where Kate would seize up and get tongue-tied in the face of Crystal’s honeyed attacks, Jo was likely to let fly with some barbs of her own. Proving that Kate wasn’t the only one who hadn’t changed, Jo spoke up now, with enough honey in her voice to swamp five queen bees.

  ‘Crystal! Sooo good to see you! Doesn’t your hair look lovely! But then, it always did, didn’t it? What colour is that, exactly? No, don’t tell me . . . I know . . . Clairol Ash Blonde! My cleaner uses that exact colour. She swears by it. So close to natural, and so reasonably priced.’

  If you closed your eyes it could almost have been Crystal herself. Kate felt a giggle collide with the champagne in her throat and thought it best to keep her mouth shut. Crystal looked daggers at Jo, but contented herself with saying, with just the suggestion of a hiss, ‘My hair is naturally blonde, Josephine.’ Then she turned back to Kate.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your date?’

  And just like that, she administered the blow that sent Kate tumbling, head-first and helpless, down the slide of memory to the regions where she kept everything she most wanted to forget.

  It was her final year formal. She wasn’t going to go. The friend she was supposed to go with had fallen ill and the thought of showing up dateless in front of Crystal and her cronies had been too much. But at the last minute, Jo had set her up with one of her cousins.

  Once, Kate had fantasised about going to her Year Twelve dance with Josh. But she’d never really believed it would happen and when the formal finally arrived he was already working overseas. Jo’s cousin wasn’t as good-looking as her brother, but then, very few were and he was available and willing. And she didn’t really want to miss it. So she had gone with him.

  And Crystal had stolen him.

  Not to keep, of course. That wasn’t her style. It was the conquest she enjoyed. But after being asked to be introduced – in exactly the same words as she had just used – she had tucked him under her arm and taken him away. She had spent half the night dancing with him and he had spent the other half watching her and, worse, talking about her.

  The memory was one Kate thought she had got over years ago. The ritual effigy burning she’d done with Jo had helped. But now, with Crystal gazing at Josh with lust in her eyes and a smile that was pure piranha, it was back, in all its humiliating glory, and her embryonic bravado was draining out of her as if it were water and she’d suddenly become a sieve.

  But then Josh’s arm slid around her waist.

  It was completely unexpected – and had an even more unexpected effect. His encircling arm warmed her, physically and emotionally, and the frozen horror brought on by the dreadful memory began to thaw. The holes in her bravado closed over and she discovered a wellspring of strength that she had never before felt in the face of Crystal’s hostility. Rather than a horrific re-enactment, the situation felt like a chance to finally stand up to this cow. Kate smiled sweetly at her old nemesis.

  ‘Of course, Crystal. This is Josh Marchant, but he’s not just my date. He’s . . .’ She paused and looked up at Jo
sh’s face in a way she hoped looked coy, but was in fact a plea for him to play along. Had Jo explained enough? He smiled down at her and gave the tiniest of nods.

  ‘Her fiancé,’ he said, playing the game like a champion. For the first time, Kate understood why they called sportspeople heroes. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  He extended his hand to Crystal, but the smile he turned to her didn’t reach his eyes. Evidently he was more sensitive to atmosphere than Matt. Or he had a really good memory. Or both.

  For a wonderful moment, it seemed that Crystal had been beaten. But you don’t get to be queen bee (or queen cockroach, as Jo said later) by taking defeat lying down. Switching her target, she addressed Jo; the first time in living memory she had done so willingly.

  ‘Marchant? Can this be your brother, then, Josephine?’ Her tone implied that she would have sooner expected to find a looker like Josh related to a gargoyle than to Jo. ‘Where have you been hiding him? Some of your other friends might have wanted a chance with him.’

  She shot a seductive glance over her shoulder at Josh. Apparently, she was so convinced of her own irresistibility, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would be anything other than delighted by her obvious interest. Her sensitivity to atmosphere was obviously on par with Matt’s.

  ‘Hiding him? Oh, I wouldn’t say I have been hiding him. He does travel a lot, of course, but I would have said that all of my friends,’ the emphasis was slight, but unmistakeable, ‘have had ample opportunity to meet him.’ She flashed Crystal a smile that was all teeth and insincerity, and went on, before she had a chance to reply. ‘Besides, my dear,’ Jo was in Crystal-mode again, and Kate marvelled at the edge she had managed to put on a word that was usually a term of endearment, ‘you can’t seriously mean that you need my help to meet men? Oh, Crystal, don’t tease! We all know that you are much too gorgeous to still be on the shelf. I bet you’ve been married for years. Come on now . . . don’t hold out on us! Where’s your husband?’