Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  So when they came upon a solitary park bench and Josh sat, pulling her down next to him, they were quite alone.

  She didn’t know where to look. She was expecting him to demand an explanation of her outrageous behaviour. He had every right to. The problem was that she didn’t have one. She’d acted on instincts she hadn’t even known she had and was completely at a loss to explain. She’d acted like an animal marking her territory. It was uncivilised and presumptuous and . . . completely out of character. She looked at her fingers, twisted together in her lap and said the only thing she felt able to.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  His response wasn’t verbal, not at first. Instead, he inserted one of his hands into the nest made by her tangled fingers and with his thumb, stroked her hands into stillness. With his other hand, he cradled her bent head and gently raised it so that she was looking into his eyes.

  ‘I’m not,’ he said, finally.

  Then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kate lost track of time.

  She wasn’t sure how long they sat there, exploring each other’s mouths, with his hands lighting fires under her skin wherever they touched.

  All she knew was that she hadn’t been so thoroughly kissed since probably . . . ever. By the time they eventually came up for air, her hair was loose, her lips were swollen, her bottom had moulded painfully to the wooden slats of the seat and things were different.

  It was in the way he tucked her hair behind her ears and the way she wiped the lipstick off his cheek. And in the goofy, slightly dazed way they looked at each other while they were doing it. Or was it just her who was goofy?

  ‘You taste amazing, do you know that?’

  Kate snorted and the spell was broken. He had to be winding her up. She swallowed and tried to give as good as she got.

  ‘Given what I just ate for lunch, I’m fairly certain that I taste of garlic and tomatoes and coffee.’

  ‘Lucky they’re three of my favourite things, then.’

  ‘Oh, stop it.’

  ‘Only if you let me ask you something.’

  Kate was trying to put her hair in some sort of order, but she let her hands drop.

  ‘Back at the restaurant – why did you do that?’

  Kate felt blood rushing to her face. Given what she’d just been doing, it was rather silly to be blushing now, but it seemed that while she might be capable of behaving shamelessly, she couldn’t think about it without embarrassment.

  ‘What? Climb down your throat like a madwoman?’

  ‘Yep. That,’ he said with a smile.

  She pushed down on the knee that had started jiggling and strove for matter-of-fact.

  ‘I had a point to make.’

  ‘Point taken! Gladly.’

  ‘Not to you, you wretch!’ So much for matter-of-fact. ‘To that woman. The one who just pretended I wasn’t there. I know I shouldn’t have done it —’

  ‘How many times do I need to tell you I’m not objecting?’

  ‘That’s no excuse! I shouldn’t have used you like that. I’m just tired of people treating me like I’m invisible.’

  ‘I can’t believe they do that,’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘Really? Ask your sister. She’ll tell you. When I was at school, people couldn’t even remember my name.’

  ‘That’s not what I saw at the reunion.’

  Kate hesitated. There had been more people than she expected who remembered her. But that didn’t mean the problem wasn’t real. She shook her head.

  ‘Okay, it’s not everyone. But what about Crystal? She tried to crack on to you right under my nose. And that woman back there did exactly the same thing!’

  ‘I think she —’ Josh tried to break in, but Kate was on a roll. It was an old grievance and now that she’d started there was no putting this genie back in its bottle. She’d already made a fool of herself for this point, she might as well explain it properly. She peeled herself painfully off the bench and stood, so she had more space to expound.

  ‘Oh don’t deny it! Look, I know I’m not in their league. I’m not pretty or glamorous. Even when I was little I wasn’t pretty. My mother’s friends used to say I was “such a serious little thing”.’ She looked back at him, the remembered indignity still fresh in her heart. ‘As if “serious” was a bad thing!’

  ‘Kate —’

  ‘Oh I know, they probably thought they were being nice, but I heard it in their voices. I heard what they didn’t say: “Shame she’s not pretty.”’

  Josh stood up as Kate moved on to more recent wrongs.

  ‘As for glamorous, I’ve tried that and I just look like a little kid playing dress-ups. The only time I can come close to pulling it off is when your sister helps me. I don’t seem to have whatever it takes on my own. And even if I was good at it, the maintenance would kill me. I don’t know how they do it. But that’s no—’

  ‘Kate!’

  Josh finally succeeded in getting her attention by seizing her upper arms and kissing her until she stopped trying to talk. It didn’t take long. There was something about his kisses, even short, hard ones like this, that made it very hard to think coherently.

  ‘Can I get a word in, Kate?’

  Kate nodded. Now that he’d interrupted her, she was aware that she had been ranting. There seemed no end to her out-of-character behaviour lately.

  Josh shook his head. ‘Not that I know where to start.’ He released her arm and tapped her forehead gently. ‘Is it always this confusing in here?’

  Kate nodded ruefully. ‘Often. I think it’s a girl thing.’

  Josh sighed and led her back to the bench. ‘In that case, I guess I’ll just take this one thing at a time. Will you sit?’

  Kate sat and Josh sat next to her and she tried to concentrate on what he was saying, rather than the feel of his knee resting against hers.

  ‘Okay, first things first. Megan was not trying to crack on to me, or hook up with me, or do anything sexual with me.’ He held up a hand to forestall Kate’s objection. ‘Yes, we did go out a couple of times, but it never came to anything and it really was a long time ago – she was only joking about it not being that long.’

  Kate wasn’t convinced.

  ‘So what did she want?’

  ‘She was asking for a favour. She’s applied for a job with the hotel chain I work for and she wanted me to give her a reference.’

  ‘And you just happened to be here at the right time? That’s convenient!’

  Josh grinned at her. ‘You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.’ Kate would have liked to deny it, but it was so palpably, if preposterously, true that she didn’t know how. He went on. ‘As a matter of fact, Miss Suspicious, she emailed me last week and asked if I could do it. I was happy to – because she is very good at her job, not for any other reason, before you ask – but since I was likely to be here soon, I said I’d go one better and take her into the hotel and introduce her to some people. Yes, it was a coincidence that she happened to be in the restaurant when we were, but there wasn’t anything sinister in it. She just wanted to give me her new mobile number.’

  Which meant that Kate had just made a complete arse of herself. Was there no end to her capacity to do so around him?

  ‘Oh. So she probably thinks I’m really rude, then.’

  Josh chuckled. ‘Possibly. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Unless she’s changed a lot, she’s not the kind of person to worry about that sort of thing. Put it out of your mind. Put her out of your mind, because now, I want to talk about you.’

  About how she was a rude, irrationally jealous, crazy person perhaps? Kate braced herself for the worst.

  ‘Do you really not know how beautiful you are?’

  What? She jerked her head up so fast that her partially restrained hair fell in an unruly tumble across her face. He reached out and gently smoothed it back.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no. You know, for a very smart w
oman, you are really bad at taking a hint. Didn’t you listen to anything I said the other night? Or do we have to have the conversation again about me meaning what I said?’

  She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I heard you.’ Through a haze of unbelief and horror, but she had heard him. ‘I thought that was part of the bit you exaggerated.’

  Josh shook his head.

  ‘Did your loser of a boyfriend never tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘That you’re beautiful!’

  Kate shook her head, feeling as though she were in a dream. Surely this conversation wasn’t real?

  ‘Alain didn’t say things like that. Or not very often, anyway. He’s not – he wasn’t – demonstrative.’

  Josh made a face.

  ‘So he’s blind as well as stupid, then?’

  ‘Josh!’

  ‘What? It’s the truth. He had you and he let you go. That makes him stupid. He didn’t tell you how beautiful you are. That makes him blind and stupid. Quod erat demonstrandum.’

  ‘But I’m not . . .’

  ‘Not what, Kate? Not pretty? No, you’re not. I didn’t know you when you were a little girl, so I can’t tell whether you were then, but you definitely aren’t now. I didn’t say you were pretty.’

  Kate’s head started to spin, trying to make sense of this.

  ‘What? But I thought you said . . .’

  ‘You’re not pretty. Pretty is a word for sweet little girls. Either baby ones or cute teenagers with their hair in pigtails. You’ve never been cute, Kate. Even when you were a teenager.

  ‘And before you ask, no, you’re not glamorous either. Glamour is something put on. You are so much more than that.’

  He reached out and ran his fingers, feather-light, down her face from hairline to chin, as if learning the contours. ‘Pretty and glamorous, they’re nice, but they’re like . . .’ He waved his hand, as if grasping for an analogy. ‘Fireworks. That’s what they’re like. They’re fireworks. They’re sparkly and bright and might impress you a bit, but they don’t last – and you wouldn’t want them to. They’d get boring if you had them around all the time.’

  Kate felt as if parts of her were beginning to melt into the uncomfortable park bench.

  ‘Compared to them, you’re like . . . you’re like the sun. With you in the room, you can’t even see them.’

  Kate took a shaky breath and let it out again on a wobbly kind of laugh.

  ‘I don’t think other people see me like that.’

  Josh repeated the tracing of her face with his fingers and Kate thought that if she were the sun, she might be about to have a solar flare.

  ‘Sure they do. Why do you think Crystal doesn’t like you?’

  ‘I don’t know! Because I beat her for the literature prize? Because our French teacher liked me better? Because she’s crazy?’

  ‘Because she’s envious of you. Maybe partly because you’re smart. But I think it’s mostly because she works so hard on her looks and you eclipse her without even trying.’

  Kate tried to breathe normally, but she couldn’t. She was far from convinced that Crystal thought she was beautiful, but that was irrelevant. Josh did. Which meant that the goofiness wasn’t just her. She took another breath, but it was even shakier than the last. He had shifted closer and she was fairly certain that, if she didn’t stop him, he was going to kiss her again.

  ‘Josh.’

  ‘Hmm?’ he replied, more or less into her neck.

  ‘I’m not sure I can do this.’

  He drew back far enough to look her in the eye.

  ‘Do what?’

  She shifted back far enough to be out of range of his irresistible scent and flapped her hand back and forth in the space now between them.

  ‘This! This whatever-it-is between us! I don’t even know what it is. How can I know how to handle it if I don’t even have a name for it?’

  Josh captured her flailing hand and pinned it down between both of his.

  ‘Kate Adams, I don’t think I have ever met anyone who thinks as much as you do. But much as I admire your giant brain, you’re overthinking “this”. Why does it have to “be” anything? Why does it need a name?’

  ‘Because I . . . I . . .’

  He squeezed her hand and she fell silent. Easy enough to do, when she had no idea what to say.

  ‘Okay, how about this,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we just go on the way we planned to? I know you love a plan and this one is still good. Nothing’s really changed. We’ll just continue playing tourist and getting to know each other and we’ll go to your mother’s dinner at the end of the week. And we’ll see what happens. How does that sound?’

  Like crazy on a cracker. Like solar flares on Mercury. Out of control and terrifying.

  And irresistible.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  So that’s what they did.

  On Tuesday, he went with her to her old university. She thought that on her old stomping ground, in her natural habitat, so to speak, she’d have the upper hand. Not that it was a competition; it was more that she wanted to have at least one day with him when she felt that her feet were firmly on the ground, not skating unsteadily on ice, or slipping in sticky mud.

  And it worked. She was happy to see old friends and as comfortable as she ever was in his company. Until she discovered that, before she even started at the university, he had had a brief affair with one of her younger lecturers.

  It took the best part of an hour’s snogging to get over that one.

  Wednesday was snog-free. Not because she wanted it to be (although her better judgement said that she should), but because Josh had meetings to go to and Kate had arranged to meet her mother. Never had time with her mother gone so slowly.

  On Thursday they exchanged home turfs. In his case, that meant going to a hotel, although not in any way she had ever been to one before. He said he wanted to show her where he worked and although he’d never been posted to this particular hotel, it was the local flagship of the chain, so he knew some of the people there and could take her behind the scenes.

  She saw huge gleaming kitchens, with an army of sous chefs slicing, dicing, simmering and generally preparing for the evening’s events. She navigated chilly, fluorescent-lit corridors that could have been in the bowels of the earth for all the connection they seemed to have to the outside world. She tripped over bigger laundry baskets than she had known existed and hobnobbed in giant delivery bays with more smokers than she’d ever seen in an Australian workplace.

  The order and organisation of it appealed to her, but overall she found it exhausting. She was used to hard work, but not like this. It was like theatre, in a way. ‘Backstage’ was all hustle and stress and noise and colourful language (especially in the kitchen), so that front of house could be smooth and quiet and restful. It was the opposite of her work environment, where she spent most of her working hours alone, in a measured, predictable environment and only encountered crises and stress in the relatively limited time she spent with her students.

  She’d forgotten what putting on a show was like. Giving lectures was a form of theatre, but it wasn’t the same as coordinating dozens of people all with lines and cues and props and so on – and even when she had done that sort of show, she’d never worked on anything remotely like the size of this production. Before their tour was over, her head was pounding and her legs were aching from what felt like miles of walking, all without leaving the building. The idea of being responsible for even a fraction of it was horrifying.

  Josh, though, obviously thrived on it. He was always lively, but in this, his adopted home, it was as if he was plugged into the mains. His eyes were alight with enjoyment and he seemed to draw energy from the exact same bustle that sapped Kate’s.

  It was a sobering observation, or it should have been, but high tea in a quiet corner of the beautiful bar did wonders to restore her body and seemed to work just as well at wiping unpleasant thoughts from her mind
.

  Later, that night, after he had gone home, sensible Kate – the one who used to run everything in her life – reminded her again of how different their lives were and decided that she really should give him a wide berth. Or at least a wider one than she had been.

  But Friday dawned so crisp and clear that it would have been criminal to waste it in the city when there was an old steam train chuffing through beautiful hill country just a short drive away. And once on the train, with the dappled light playing over his face and the wind blowing in her own, she would have had to be dead not to find it romantic.

  There were times during that week – many times, especially when they were joined at the lips – when she wished she was the kind of person who could just have a one-night, or several-night, stand and move on. But she wasn’t. She had never slept with anyone she wasn’t in love with. And even in the maelstrom of desire and emotion that Josh elicited in her just by entering the room, she retained enough sense to know that now was not the time to start.

  She’d told Josh she didn’t fall in love quickly and, teenage lunacy excepted, it was true. But she’d never been faced with a temptation like him before. She couldn’t afford to court that risk. Not here, not now, not when he was going back to his crazy lifestyle in not much more than a week. Not when she was on the rebound from a long-term relationship.

  It was one thing to enjoy his company and pretend there was something real going on to make her mum happy. Falling in love with him was quite another thing. That would be a very bad plan indeed. At least for anyone sane.

  So, in the interests of sanity, she resolutely continued to say goodnight to him on the safe side of the door. The side without a bed. Or a too-short couch. Or temptation. For a solid week, in deference to her better judgement and in defiance of her impulses, she put herself to bed early, sober and alone.