Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  He was still talking on the phone and when she realised it, she made as if to go. It seemed the right thing to do. It wasn’t what she wanted, but he was busy and it wasn’t as though she had come out looking for him. She still had things to work out. But then he put one hand on her arm and asked her with his eyes to stay.

  Staying probably wasn’t right. Based on the way her wrist was tingling where he touched it, neither was it smart. It wasn’t going to make her confusion any less. But her body didn’t appear to be on the same page as her better judgement. The light touch of his hand on her arm had anchored her to the pavement and she found that all those perfectly good reasons for avoiding him, which had been so clear upstairs, were slipping off the surface of her mind like condensation down glass.

  She tried to grasp them as they slid . . . then gave up. She was only human. She had resisted calling him, but when he just landed in her lap like this – or, more accurately, when she landed in his – it would have been fighting nature to turn away.

  He ended the call and looked down at her, the concern on his face so touching that she felt as though she might cry.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  No. She was bruised of spirit, confused of heart, and hopelessly attracted to how good he smelled. She shrugged, hoping it looked nonchalant.

  ‘So-so. I don’t really want to talk about it. What was your phone call about?’

  Josh’s reaction was unexpected enough to distract her from the catalogue of his features she had been making for her memory. She didn’t really care what his phone call had been about; she had just wanted to change the subject. But the question seemed to bother him. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat before he spoke.

  ‘Hmm, you have me there. I don’t really want to talk about that either.’

  Then, as rapidly as it had come, the dark expression left his face, and he smiled down at Kate. ‘Which makes us a right pair of miseries, doesn’t it? Do you want to be miserable together? Over coffee, maybe?’

  He gestured in the direction of the coffee shop next door, but Kate shook her head. Now that she had stirred herself and left the flat she wasn’t interested in going back inside and sitting still. She wanted to keep moving. She had an idea.

  ‘No, I don’t want coffee. But there is something I want to do.’

  ‘How can I help?’ he asked with the sort of expansive gesture and expression that indicated that if she wanted the moon, he would be happy to oblige.

  ‘Do you have your car here?’

  His face split into a grin.

  ‘I do and I would be delighted to put it at your disposal. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘To the beach,’ Kate replied. ‘Somewhere isolated and lonely where no-one else is likely to be, with big, crashing surf to look at and lots of wind to blow my hair into an impossible tangle.’ She looked up at him. ‘Can you manage that?’

  Josh looked back at her, his eyes as dark as she had ever seen them, and didn’t reply. He looked serious – almost sad – and she wondered if it was something she had said or if it was a reflection of what was in her own eyes. He reached for her arm and seemed about to speak; then abruptly, he swallowed, let his hand fall and transformed his expression so quickly to a smile that Kate was left to wonder if she had imagined the seriousness. He bowed foolishly, in an echo of his act from the reunion, and said, ‘Certainly, I can manage that for madam. If madam would like to walk this way . . .’

  He put his hand under her elbow and gently steered her towards a car a few paces from where they were standing. Kate stared. This was no ordinary car. It was a magnificent, racing-green, vintage MG roadster, with the top down, in defiance of the overcast sky. She turned to Josh.

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? This isn’t the car you had last night. Did you hire it?’

  Josh looked hurt.

  ‘I am not kidding and no, I certainly did not hire this beauty. She’s mine. I bought her in England years ago, with the proceeds of a rather canny property investment – if I do say so myself. I love her, but it isn’t exactly practical to drag her round the world with me. Most of the places I’ve lived I haven’t bothered with a car at all. So I shipped her out here and Mum and Dad keep her for me. Dad drives her and looks after her.’ Josh grinned the rapid, cheeky grin that was the twin of Jo’s. ‘I don’t think he finds it a hardship. In fact, as you discovered last night, it can be hard to get her back even when I am in town.’

  He opened the door for Kate, and she slid into the beautiful car. No-one would call riding in this gorgeous thing a hardship. Especially when the owner was driving. How was it that he always managed to make her feel better? At the reunion and at her mother’s dinner, when she had teetered on the edge of losing her cool completely, somehow he had managed to pull her back. And now, when she was as confused as she had ever been in her life and even though he was part of the cause, his presence was acting on her soul-fog the way sun acts on real fog. With each minute she spent in his company, more and more of it was melting away.

  Being with him might not be smart, it might just be asking for heartache, but it was irresistible. If only she could bottle the effect. She wasn’t going to be able to hold on to it any other way, and she had a sinking feeling that life was going to seem very dull without it.

  Kate put on her seat belt and snuck a look at Josh out of the corner of her eye as he pulled away from the kerb. He and his car were a good match for each other: beautiful, high quality, comfortable, old-fashioned (but only in a good way) and totally out of her reach.

  Kate sighed, closed her eyes and rested her head against the smooth leather of the seat. She would just have to make the most of this feeling while it lasted. She would just have to . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  She woke up as Josh cut the engine. For a disorienting moment, she had no idea where she was. Then she smelled the salt and seaweed and turned to see Josh smiling at her.

  ‘Well, Sleeping Beauty, you asked for rugged and windswept and here we are. I can’t promise you that we will be completely alone, but the only other people here at this time of year will be the real die-hard surfers and they’re out there.’

  He gestured over the windscreen at the surf. Kate looked. Sure enough, in the distance, wetsuit-clad enthusiasts were making the most of a quite decent swell. The beach, though, was empty, and looked just the place to walk off a bleak mood. Kate smiled up at Josh, who had come around to open the door for her.

  ‘Do you always fulfil your commissions so faithfully?’ she asked, as she allowed him to help her out of the car.

  ‘Oh, no ma’am,’ he replied seriously. ‘I save my best commission-fulfilling for commissioners who snore as I drive them.’

  ‘I do not —’ Kate began indignantly. Then she saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘Why, you . . .’

  Josh ducked laughingly out of the way as she took a half-hearted swing at him, then set off at a run for the beach, calling over his shoulder, ‘If you want to punish me, you’ll have to catch me first!’

  Kate ran after him, down onto the sand, pausing only to shed her shoes and socks as she went. She could feel the last threads of gloom flying out behind her and being blown away on the wind, which was already doing an excellent job of tangling her hair. She dug a hairband out of the pocket of her coat and pulled her hair off her face, finishing just before Josh came back to grab her hand and drag her further down the beach towards the waves.

  What followed was an afternoon out of a dream.

  Kate loved the beach in winter. She knew that many people thought it was a crazy predisposition, but unlike them, Josh seemed to understand its attractions without needing to have them explained. They walked along the edge of the sea, being chased by the waves and listening to the gulls cry overhead. They scrambled over the rocks to look for crabs in the rock pools and squeezed pods on the long strands of brown seaweed to watch them pop. They stood on the rocks and watched the mad surfers go out over and over again looking
for the perfect wave. They even made a sandcastle, complete with moat.

  And they lay on the sand and kissed the salt off each other’s skin until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began.

  Later, when even Kate had to admit that it was getting a bit cold and the sand was getting hard underneath them, they put the top up on the MG and sat in the car eating fish and chips out of the paper. The fresh air and exercise had brought Kate’s appetite back with interest. She tore into the crunchy battered fish with such enthusiasm that Josh teased that if he had known she was such a fan of unhealthy food, he wouldn’t have bothered with fruit for breakfast. She threw a chip at him for his trouble, which he promptly caught and ate.

  Then, when they were both so stuffed they could barely move, they fed the rest of the chips to the seagulls, laughing at the various tactics the scavenging birds used to try to get more than their fair share.

  It wasn’t until she had shoved the fish and chip paper into a bin and was walking back to where Josh was waiting by the car that Kate had any inkling that there was something on his mind. But now she saw that he was standing with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and his head down as if he was trying to ward off more than the cold. She touched him lightly on the shoulder and when he looked up she was disturbed to see that his eyes looked bleak and there were tiny lines around them that she’d never noticed before.

  ‘Josh, what is it? Is something wrong?’ He took his hands out of his pockets and pulled her around to stand in front of him, his hands lightly on her waist, and looked her in the eye as he replied.

  ‘I don’t know, Kate. You’ll have to tell me.’ Kate was mystified.

  ‘Josh, I —’ she began, but she was stopped by a sudden loss of air as he pulled her into his arms and held her as though he would never let her go. Then he released her enough for her to lean back and look questioningly up at him. He sighed, and looked at his feet.

  ‘Kate, I’m sorry if this question is painful, but I have to ask. What happened with Alain?’

  Kate felt a surge of relief. Was that all this was about? That, she could answer. She put her hand under his chin and made him look at her.

  ‘Josh, nothing happened. That is, nothing has changed, except that I understand better now what happened and I don’t hate him any more. He is in love with someone else. We’re not together and we’re not going to be. I’m not sure we’re exactly friends, but I’ve forgiven him and given him my blessing. There’s a bit more to it than that, but I’m sure you don’t really want the details.’ She looked up at him, trying to read the reaction in his face. ‘Does that help?’

  Josh looked like a man who’d had a death sentence repealed, only to have it replaced with lifetime imprisonment. Improved, but not reprieved.

  ‘So you and he are officially over then, Kate?’

  ‘Yes, Josh, absolutely, officially over. Kaput. Finished. No more. I think it’s been over for a while, but I was too selfish to see it.’ She had to gulp down a swell of self-loathing to admit that, but the time for lying – and kidding herself – about her love life was over. ‘Alain is my boss. No more and no less. We might make it back to being friends eventually. I hope so. But what —’

  Kate was stopped once again by Josh’s arms squashing her to him with more energy than care for her ribs. With an effort, she pushed herself off him and looked up at him again to finish her question.

  ‘What is this about, Josh? I know I probably should have said something before but surely, you didn’t think I’d be here with you if there was anything going on with him? Why this sudden need for details?’

  Josh released her fully from his arms, took her hand and led her over to sit on one of the low railings separating the car park from the beach. He ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘Kate, there’s something I have to tell you. You know that phone call I made this morning? The one I was on when you knocked me over?’ Kate nodded, wondering where this was going.

  ‘It was my boss. My new boss, that is, in LA. I was supposed to be starting there in August, but something’s come up and they need me to start earlier.’ He turned towards her and took both her hands in his.

  ‘Kate, I have to leave tomorrow.’

  Kate felt as though she had been kicked.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. She had been kidding herself. She hadn’t needed to sleep with Josh to lose her heart to him. She already had.

  How had she let this happen? When had it happened? Was it on the night of the reunion? Was it when he had nursed her through meeting her mother’s new love? Or had she never got it back after losing it all those years ago?

  The phantom kicker came back for another go as Kate realised that it didn’t matter when she’d lost her heart to him. He was leaving, and he would be taking it with him, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  She pulled away from him and stood up, wrapping her arms around herself to try to hold herself together for the second time that day. How could she have been so blind? So stupid? Alain had never been ‘the one’. When he left her, she had been angry and hurt and humiliated, but it hadn’t felt like this. Never like this.

  Then she felt Josh’s arms reach around her from behind. He pulled her in to him, his arms enveloping her and his face against her hair and, for a time, he just held her.

  ‘Kate . . . come with me.’

  Kate froze, trying to take it in. For a giddy moment, she considered it. For one glorious moment, she thought about dropping everything and just going, flying off into the sunset with him. Then reality slapped her in the head, and she pulled away and turned to face him, torn between howling loss and fury.

  ‘How, Josh? How am I supposed to come with you? What for? I’m due back in Paris in just over a week. If I come with you to LA, I’ll be there for, what? Two days, before I have to leave? Two days when you’ll be up to your neck settling into your new job? I’m sorry, Josh, but you were right when you said it before: a dirty weekend is completely out of the question.’

  Josh reached for her but she twisted back out of his reach. She couldn’t afford to let him touch her or her defences would crumble, and who knew what she might do? Somebody had to retain some sense, and it seemed it would not be him.

  But he was not so easily put off. He approached her again, and forced her hands out from behind her and held them.

  ‘Kate, you don’t understand. I don’t want you just for now. I don’t want you for two days, or two weeks or even two months. I want you forever. I love you. I didn’t know it until last night, but I think I have always loved you. I fell for you the first time I saw you and I don’t think I ever got up. It’s taken me thirteen stupid years to realise it, but now I have, I can’t walk away from you again.’

  Then he knelt down.

  Kate had been trying to pull her hands away, but when his knee touched the ground, she stopped, partly because she was paralysed with shock and partly because she was afraid that if she let go, she would fall over. Suddenly the screeching of the gulls, the thudding of the waves onto the beach and even the sigh of the wind in the bushes behind her, receded, as all her awareness centred on the man kneeling in front of her.

  ‘Kate, will you marry me?’

  Kate looked down at him. It was as if she were seeing him through a haze, or the mists of a dream. The only thing that was clear was that at least one of them was insane. She didn’t know if it was him for asking or her for considering it, but this conversation was definitely crazy.

  Her head began to throb, then it started to spin. With a lurch, she wrenched her hands out of his and sprang for the bushes, just in time to see her one and only meal of the day come up, even faster than it had gone down.

  When she finally stood up and turned around, Josh had disappeared, but he soon returned, with a towel and water bottle from the car. She took them gratefully, rinsed and wiped her mouth, then, without thinking, handed them back and walked past him, to the little wooden barrier. She needed to sit down. He followed
and sat down beside her.

  ‘Well, I think that would have to be about the worst response you could expect to a proposal. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a yes, but I wasn’t aware that I literally made you sick.’

  Josh had tried to make a joke of it, but the pain in his voice was real. Kate turned to face him, contrite and miserable.

  ‘Josh, I’m so sorry. You don’t make me sick. Far from it. It was just the shock. I wasn’t expecting any of this.’

  Josh’s expression instantly lightened and he took her hand with a renewed air of hope. ‘So is that a yes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that “No, it’s not a yes”? Or No?’

  There wasn’t even an attempt at a joke this time and Kate felt her heart constrict at the idea of hurting him. She had to try to make him understand.

  ‘Josh, it’s not because I don’t want you. I do. I want you more than I have ever wanted anything or anyone. But it’s too soon! Two weeks ago, I was expecting Alain to ask me that question. Alain – remember him? The one who is now off with someone else, who is apparently the love of his life?’

  Josh made a slashing motion with his hand. ‘Don’t bring him into this!’

  ‘But I have to, Josh! Don’t you see? If Alain hadn’t met Sophie, he probably would have asked me, eventually. Or he might have, anyway. And if he had, I would have said yes! I would have said yes, Josh! Which, in case you haven’t been paying attention, would have been the wrong thing to do. Because the love of his life isn’t me.’

  ‘And he’s not the love of yours! He’s —’

  Kate shouted him down. ‘I should have seen it, Josh! Women are supposed to be perceptive. We’re the ones who are supposed to understand love and all that stuff. Especially me. I thought I was so clever, with my plan to get married. I thought I had it all worked out. But I didn’t see it. And I have been racking my brains trying to understand why. For two weeks, I couldn’t come up with an answer, but talking to him today made me realise what the problem was. I was the problem.’