Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  Kate couldn’t keep the bitter note out of her voice. It had come as a rude shock to discover that her mother didn’t like the man she had intended to marry. Not that she liked him herself all that much at the moment, but still . . .

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s nice.’

  He sounded pleased with himself. It was probably just as well he hadn’t heard Kate’s mother actually talking about him or his head wouldn’t have fit in the café.

  ‘Yes, except that there’s more.’

  ‘More?’ He leaned forward again

  ‘Yes.’ Kate took a big gulp of her now-cold second coffee. ‘My mum had some news as well. She has a boyfriend. And she wants me – she wants us – to meet him.’

  Josh frowned.

  ‘How does your dad feel about that?’

  Kate flinched.

  ‘Josh, my dad’s dead.’

  ‘God! Kate, I’m sorry. I should have known that. I did know that. I just forgot.’

  ‘No, Josh, it’s okay. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I know, I remember now. It was when you were little, wasn’t it?’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘But . . . I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound callous, but, in that case, what’s the problem with your mum having a boyfriend?’

  It sounded so simple, when he put it like that.

  ‘There isn’t one. I guess. It’s just that this is the first time she has.’

  ‘What, since your dad died?’

  Kate nodded again.

  ‘Why?’

  Kate shrugged miserably, but Josh wasn’t having it.

  ‘Seriously, Kate, why? I know it’s not easy for single mothers, but your mother’s a very attractive woman and she must have been in, what, her early thirties at most when she was widowed? And it’s been a long time since then.’

  ‘She always said, “When you’ve had the best, why mess with the rest?” She was really in love with my dad.’

  Kate scratched a sudden itch on the back of her hand, until he stopped her by putting one of his long hands over hers.

  ‘So this new guy is a big deal, right? And that’s why you’re worried about meeting him?’

  Kate wiggled her hand out from under his to scratch at a new itch that had sprung up on her cheek.

  ‘Yes. I know she wants me to like him and I’m afraid I won’t, just because he’s not my dad. Which would be unbelievably unfair. But it’s not just that.’ Her other hand started scratching at the same spot on her other cheek, until Josh grabbed them both and held them down, whereupon her agitation transferred itself to a tapping foot.

  ‘She thinks we’re a proper couple.’ She looked up from her hands to Josh’s face, hoping she’d find an answer in it. ‘I was going to tell her the truth. About Alain and about “us”. But she said the only reason she was brave enough to tell me about her new man was seeing me so happy. And now she’s organising this big dinner for next weekend so we can all meet each other.’ She gripped his hands. ‘I think she’s really serious about him. So I can’t tell her that we aren’t really going out —’

  ‘—because you’d upset her and wreck her big meet-the-family dinner. Understood. So don’t.’

  ‘But then I’d have to ask you to pretend. Again. And that doesn’t seem fair. For all I know, you have a girlfriend back wherever you’ve been living. I haven’t even asked you that.’ Kate leaned away from him as this horrifying idea occurred to her. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ What would she do if he said yes?

  ‘Honestly, Kate! You’re as bad as my mother! What do you take me for? No, I do not have a girlfriend!’

  ‘Oh, good. I mean, in that case . . . I hate to ask you, but . . .’

  ‘Yes, Kate, I will come to dinner with your mother and her friend and play happy families for as long as it takes to get the pair of you through this.’

  Kate sighed and sagged in her chair, eyes closing as the tension she hadn’t known she was holding in her body ebbed away.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She hadn’t let go of his hands. She had loosened her grip as she relaxed, but she was still holding them as if it was a normal thing to do and she didn’t want to let go.

  And that was fine with him.

  He didn’t know why it was fine. He wasn’t a big hand-holder, as a rule, but holding hers just felt right. He felt much the same way about it as he had carrying her the night before. It seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up. Which made hardly any sense at all, but, unlike Kate, he trusted his instincts.

  Right now, they were telling him to keep hold of her and keep her talking, so that he could look into her big, beautiful eyes and put some fertiliser on the embryonic connection that he could feel between them.

  ‘You realise that we will have to go into training for this.’

  ‘What?’ She opened her eyes.

  ‘If we’re going to pretend we’re a real couple – can I just say that that phrase makes me feel like I’m Pinocchio? – we’re going to have to put some work in before this dinner. In case you’ve forgotten, a little while ago I put my foot in it about your dad. We can’t afford to do anything like that when we’re with the others, or we’re going to give ourselves away.’

  Kate frowned and he had to fight down the urge to smooth her forehead with his finger.

  ‘You’re right. Josh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you into this!’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, with as much gallant flourish as he could manage sitting down in a dry café without a cape to fling over an obliging puddle. ‘I find I quite enjoy being cast as the romantic hero. It’s not a role I’ve ever done before. I was always the villain or the best friend. Besides,’ he added hurriedly, belatedly realising that reminding her of his theatrical tendencies wasn’t likely to help his cause, ‘it’s been ages since I played tourist in this town. We can do it together. It will make us look like a couple to any interested bystanders.’

  ‘Like my mum?’

  ‘Exactly, like your mum. And while we’re at it, we can catch up on our respective lives, so we don’t make idiots of ourselves at the dinner. What do you say?’

  Kate sat up and, finally remembering to repossess her hands, folded them in her lap. Josh’s hands felt bereft and he quickly took them off the table so he wouldn’t have to watch them closing on empty space that had been full of her.

  ‘Josh, why are you doing this for me?’

  ‘I’m not.’ It achieved that desired effect of raising her eyes to his again and he smiled. ‘I’m doing it for myself. My mother already has a poor enough view of the way I conduct my love life. If I don’t see you for a week, then show up at the dinner with you, supposedly as part of a happy couple, she’ll hear about it and she’ll give me the round of the kitchen for treating you badly. So you see, you’re really doing me a favour.’

  He thought he’d given it just the right touch, but she wasn’t buying it.

  ‘Josh, I’m as intimidated by your mum as the next person, but I don’t believe you’d go to all this trouble just because of her. So what’s the real reason?’

  Josh didn’t think of himself as untruthful, but he was in the habit of deflecting questions that got too close to his inner self. It was a useful defence against women who wanted more from him than he was willing to give. Smart women – and the ones he liked were always smart – worked it out pretty quickly and drifted away of their own accord when they realised he wasn’t going to change.

  But this time, for some reason, he wanted to tell the simple truth. It felt restful, somehow, and he liked the feeling. So he did.

  ‘Because I like you. I’ve always liked you. I said so last night, remember? And because, for a sensible person, you seem to attract a lot of chaos and I like that too. And because I don’t have any other plans for this week and I think it might be fun. I take it you do remember fun, in grown-up land? Do I need a better reason?’

  Kate smiled at him. What better reason could there be? It was part of what she’d set out t
o do after all – have some fun. She did remember what it was, even if she didn’t seem to have had much lately. Admittedly, she had never thought of chaos as fun, or that she could ever be considered a chaos magnet. Nor did she remember fun ever before feeling quite this nerve-racking or out of control. She had the sensation of being on the edge of the bungee platform again, only this time she had to push herself off and she wasn’t even sure there was water at the bottom. But sometimes you had to take a risk for a gain. That was a concept she was familiar with. And if it was what her mum needed to be happy, there wasn’t really any choice. She raised her nearly empty glass and held it out towards him in a toast.

  ‘Viva chaos?’

  He smiled back at her, ridiculously relieved that she had agreed, without any clear idea of why he should feel that way. All he knew was that he was looking forward to this week, and that was good enough for him. He raised his own glass and clinked it against hers.

  ‘Bring it on.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  With the best of intentions, though, there was no chance of any further chaos that day. By the time they made it back to Jo’s flat, the word was well and truly out that they were back in town. Instantly, they were caught up fielding calls and visits from their respective friends who knew that they wouldn’t be staying long and wanted to get hold of them while the weekend lasted.

  But Monday was another day. A day when Jo and the rest of their friends and family were working and therefore not clamouring for yum cha dates and other opportunities to see them.

  Josh’s idea of playing tourist had appealed to Kate’s love of planning. It also gave her something to think about other than how much she was looking forward to seeing him again. The anticipation occupied all of her spare moments and quite a lot of the busy ones, and the intensity of it bothered her. Was it normal to feel this way when having a ‘fling’? Was that even what she was having any more? She didn’t know the rules of this kind of engagement and it bothered her order-loving soul.

  So she busied herself with a list of places to go and things to see, and by the time Josh came to the flat – this time at a more reasonable hour for people supposedly on holiday – she had a veritable catalogue of possible activities, colour-coded and neatly cross-referenced by type, location and duration. And a terrible case of sweaty palms.

  After teasing her about the list, he looked at it for approximately twenty seconds before choosing the glass box. The one that stuck out from a building eighty-eight floors above the ground. Of course he did. She’d only put it on the list as a challenge to herself. It was an attempt to embrace the chaos that he had correctly pointed out was following her lately. But she had rather hoped she wouldn’t have to follow through. So naturally, that was what he chose.

  If he’d been trying to convince her that he was her polar opposite when it came to snap decisions and embracing risk, he’d succeeded. But of course he wasn’t. He wasn’t that reflective. He just thought it would be fun. It seemed to be his guiding principle in life. Which must be . . . fun, if you liked that sort of thing. But it was an alien concept to Kate.

  On the way into the city on the tram, they talked of inconsequential things. Specifically the weather. It was a great day for going to a lookout. Cold and clear. Unusually pleasant for mid-winter Melbourne and therefore good material for small talk.

  Kate was pleased with herself. She’d managed to spend more than half an hour in his company without embroiling him in a lie, crying on him, shouting at him or kissing him. This was progress.

  But she couldn’t keep up the trivial chatter forever. Her goal-oriented nature rebelled against it (which made cocktail parties a fair facsimile of hell). They were supposed to be using this time to get to know each other. Standing in line for tickets behind a harassed teacher and a barely restrained group of school kids seemed as good an opportunity as any.

  ‘So, Josh, what exactly is it that you do? I know you said the other night that it was in hotels but I’m afraid I didn’t really catch the details. Did Jo say it was something to do with food?’

  Josh smiled down at her. ‘Something, yes. I work for one of the big hotel chains, at the fancy end of the market. Food is a really important part of their business. It’s a major contributor to their turnover and can be crucial when it comes to profitability.

  ‘My job is to go in to a particular hotel, assess their food service outlets – restaurants, catering, bars, room service, whatever – and upgrade them. I’m part food critic, part trouble-shooter, part restaurant designer, part logistics planner and part human-resources guy.’ He paused to sidestep a primary schooler who had had too many red lollies for any bystanders’ good. ‘I come, I see, I fix; then, every two years or so, I move on to the next place and do it all again.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s very impressive compared to what you do. Didn’t Jo tell me you work at the Sorbonne?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about impressive,’ Kate said, although she couldn’t help basking in the compliment. But I do teach at the Sorbonne. Comparative Literature.’

  ‘Well, there you go. Much swankier than me. I’m sure my mother would think so. She just about disowned me when I chucked in uni to go travelling. I did end up getting a degree, but it’s in hotel management and I earned it mostly on the job. But the pay’s good. And the perks are great.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s amazing,’ Kate agreed absently. He’d had to lean closer to her to be heard over the primary schoolers and the proximity of his lips was distracting.

  ‘Really? To someone who lectures in two languages on a daily basis?’

  Startled, she shifted her focus from his lips to his eyes and just in time, Kate saw the teasing glint there. Instead of apologising, she smacked him lightly on the arm.

  ‘Oh, stop it! You make me sound like such a snob! I’m not! I do think it sounds interesting. It’s a lot more practical than my job; everyone needs feeding, after all. And hotel staff can’t be worse to manage than students.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ he replied, grinning.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Quite a lot of them are students, of one sort or another. It’s one of the biggest challenges of hospitality. It has a highly mobile workforce. Even in the big places, you get a high staff turnover.’

  The kids having finally moved, Josh stepped forward to get their tickets, giving Kate a chance to think about what it would be like to have a job that required changing city every two years. She’d been in her current job just on two years and in some ways she still felt as though she was just settling in. And she hadn’t seen anywhere near as much of Paris as she wanted to. If she had to leave now . . . she shuddered as Josh turned around, tickets in hand.

  ‘What’s the matter? Are you cold?’

  Kate felt a little surge of pleasure at his concern. She loved feeling looked after.

  ‘No! Thanks, but I’m fine. I was just thinking sooner you than me with all that moving. I don’t know how you stand it.’

  ‘How I stand it? That’s part of what I love about it! I get to travel, live in beautiful hotels, eat in fancy restaurants whenever I feel like it, check out all the attractions and move on before I get a chance to get bored. And I get paid for it! What’s not to like?’

  The lift to the eighty-eighth floor pinged, the doors opened and he stood aside to let her go first. Now that the kids had gone up, the place was quiet and they had the lift to themselves. Kate tried not to think about the last time they had been alone in a lift together.

  ‘It sounds good when you put it like that. I’m sure most people would love it. But not me. I’ve done quite enough moving for one lifetime. After my dad died, we never stayed still. Every year, every two years, sometimes after as few as six months, we were in a new place and I had to start all over again. I feel like I spent half my life being the new girl. The thought of having to do that for work is . . .’ She shuddered again. ‘It’s too awful to think about.’

  The lift doors o
pened and they stepped out into a surprisingly dark lift lobby. But in a few steps they were out of that and across to a window with all of Melbourne laid out before them. Josh turned his back on the view to look at her.

  ‘I suppose that’s a good reason not to like moving – although I think you would find doing it under your own steam a bit different. But why did you move so much? Was your mum in the army or something?’

  Kate turned side on and leaned her shoulder on the window frame.

  ‘No, far from it. My mum’s an artist and curator. That’s one of the reasons she gets on so well with Jo. Sometimes I think Jo’s more like her than I am!‘

  She turned back to the view and gazed down into the green well of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, decked out now for the football season.

  ‘She just liked to move. After Dad died, she got itchy feet. That’s what she always said, if I asked her why we kept moving.’

  A cloud moved across the sun and Kate looked up, startled at the change in the light.

  ‘It sounds as though you don’t think that’s what it was really about.’

  Kate glanced at him, then returned her gaze to the window.

  ‘When I was younger I never thought about it. I just accepted it, the way you do when your parents say things. But lately, I have wondered if it was more that she was trying to outrun her grief. She used to say that if you were moving, you knew you were still alive.’

  ‘Sounds as though she might have been trying to outrun death, too.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kate agreed. ‘She didn’t like sitting still, either. I don’t know. Maybe she thought that if she kept moving, the loss couldn’t catch up with her. Couldn’t come home to roost. Maybe it explains why she never settled to going out with anyone else, too.’

  ‘Until now.’

  She turned back to look at him.