Wanting Mr Wrong

by Avril Tremayne

  When the waitress reluctantly left, he reached across the table for my hand. ‘Sorry.’

  Darting a quick look around the café, I moved my hand out of reach. ‘I’ve seen it before, that magnet thing.’

  ‘You looked a little freaked out.’

  ‘I am freaked out,’ I said, and could hear fear in the shrillness of my voice.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why. The … the attention. And it’s more pronounced when there’s just the two of us. I’m not used to –’

  I broke off as a smiling woman from the next table appeared, holding out paper and pen for an autograph.

  Thankfully the coffee arrived while Jack signed his name and shared a few words with his fan. Holding up my coffee cup gave me something to briefly hide behind.

  Jack looked a little embarrassed when the fan left. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’ Hurry up, kitchen people.

  ‘Evie, let’s get some battle lines drawn. You know I want you. But it’s more than that. I also lo–’

  ‘Don’t!’ I reeled back. ‘Don’t say it.’

  ‘What? That I love you?’ he asked, sounding deadly, deadly serious. ‘I do love you. I’ve waited forever to say it, so you can bloody well hear it.’

  Love. Love! No. Not happening. There was a buzzing in my ears. I wondered if I was about to faint. ‘All right, I’ve heard it. But no more.’

  ‘No can do, Evie. I love you. I’ll keep saying it until I win you over. I’ve got one day – today – to convince you. So get ready to be pressured.’

  My coffee cup clattered into its saucer as the panic rushed at me – the noise making me dart a harried glance around to see if it had drawn any eyes that weren’t already focused on us. ‘I don’t like pressure.’

  ‘Trust me, Evie.’

  He tried to take my hand, but again I pulled it out of the way. ‘It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I’ll make it work.’

  I stared at him. He just wasn’t getting it. ‘You can’t make these things work. They either do or they don’t. And no matter what I feel about you, how much I –’ But my voice had that ugly shrillness as it rose, so I stopped. I dropped my eyes to my lap, trying to edge the terror back, get myself under control.

  ‘How much you what?’ Jack asked. ‘How much you what, Evie?’

  I knew what he wanted me to admit, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I forced my eyes back up, forced myself to look at him again. ‘I’m just not willing, Jack. Not willing to live your kind of life. I told you what happened. I can’t – I mean, just look!’ I gestured, one hand encompassing the café. Meaningless – as though the café were really the problem. I was the problem. I was a basket case. So wound up, I was turning a simple breakfast into an edge-of-your-seat thriller.

  ‘There aren’t any media here,’ he said.

  ‘No, but people are snapping photos of you with their phones. And it makes me want to scream. Can’t you see? It would crush me, to live your life. Crush me.’

  ‘I won’t let it.’

  ‘What if it all went wrong?’ I shook my head. Had I really just said that? ‘God, how can it not go wrong? And then how do we keep it sane?’ I shook my head again, almost violently. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t believe I’m even thinking about it.’

  ‘Why should it go wrong?’

  The return of the beaming waitress, carrying our food, stopped further conversation.

  Jack ignored the waitress and the food, looking at me with an intensity that bordered on indecent at breakfast.

  I buttered my toast and plopped a dollop of jam on the side of my plate. Then put down the knife and examined my handiwork. Picked up the toast. Took one bite. Put it down again and looked at it.

  The silence at our table, in the midst of the busy chatter elsewhere in the café, was thunderous. I could just see the headline in the Sydney Courier – LOVERS’ BREAKFAST TIFF. ‘Look, Jack, I really have to go.’

  Jack’s hand shot out, gripped my wrist.

  I looked anxiously around the café. ‘Let go. Please, Jack.’

  His hold gentled but didn’t release. ‘Stay at my apartment tonight.’

  ‘No. Lachlan’s coming to see me.’

  His face hardened. ‘You said that was over.’

  ‘It is. But we’re not celebrities. We don’t break up by phone or text or social media or on a television talk show.’

  He flinched, a tiny movement, reined in fast.

  I shook off his hand. ‘I need to finish things in person. It’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘All right. Then afterwards,’ he said, implacable.

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Evie, for Christ’s sake, I’m leaving for Morocco tomorrow. See me. Talk things through with me. If you’ll do it for him, why not me?’

  I closed my eyes. A heartbeat. Two. Three. I always seemed to be counting heartbeats with him. I could feel waves of emotion washing at me from across the table. It was impossible to know how he did that – or to resist.

  I opened my eyes, nodded. ‘I’ll call you when he’s gone.’ I reached for my purse. ‘Let me –’

  Jack’s eyes flashed. ‘Don’t you dare. I don’t go Dutch – not when I’m earning a fortune, and not ever with my girlfriend.’

  My hands went automatically to my ears, as though I could block out that word.

  ‘Girlfriend, Evie. Girlfriend. Get used to it, goddammit.’

  I shook my head. But all I said was, ‘Thank you. For breakfast. I – I guess I’ll see you tonight.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard,’ Lachlan said, the moment he was through the door that evening.

  ‘Heard …?’

  ‘Jack’s not doing my documentary, because of the filming in Morocco. But he’s putting up some funding. And he’s got a friend of his on board – a TV star.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s not Jackson J Stevens.’ Lachlan looked at me speculatively. ‘You could have got Jack to do it.’

  ‘I promise you, Lachlan, I could not.’

  Another speculative look. ‘Jack’s the reason you’re breaking up with me.’

  I felt myself blush, but said, ‘No he’s not.’ Which was, in fact, the truth.

  ‘The newspaper thing, then.’

  ‘That upset me, but –’ I stopped, sighed. ‘The thing is, Lachlan, I admire and respect you, but I just didn’t fall in love with you. There’s some … some spark missing. Surely you can feel that.’

  ‘But you’re good for me.’

  I couldn’t think of an immediate response.

  ‘The people you know,’ he explained.

  Hmmm. Still couldn’t latch onto a response. But at least heartbreak wasn’t going to be an issue.

  ‘And you’re interested in my work,’ he went on.

  He wasn’t exactly turning my head. ‘That’s not enough to build a relationship on,’ I said.

  ‘It’s really over, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Definitely no heartbreak.

  ‘Evie, do you think you could give me some advice?’

  Internal sigh. ‘About Jack? I really don’t –’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he interrupted. ‘About the documentary. Because I’m going to need sponsors, and I’ve heard … Well, I’ve heard you’re good.’

  I couldn’t speak for a moment, I was so shocked. And … and pleased, too.

  ‘Because, you know, you’ve got the corporate perspective that programs like mine need to tap into,’ he added.

  I felt a burst of excitement. Amazing what happened when you stopped trying to be in love with someone, because it was definitely tuberculosis infection rates getting me misty-eyed just then. ‘I’d love to help,’ I said.

  An hour and a half later, we’d come up with a workable plan and I had a new appreciation for the link between the corporate world and that other world, the phila
nthropic world where I’d wanted to be my whole life. I walked Lachlan out of the house and right to his car as a last idea – tying the documentary in with a top-rating medical drama – occurred to me.

  Lachlan was in the middle of an enthusiastic response when he broke off, mid-sentence, with a ‘Jack!’

  It took me a moment to realise he was calling out to the living, breathing Jack. But when I turned my head to the side, I saw Jack stepping away from his Audi, which was parked further down the street.

  Jack nodded at Lachlan as he came to stand beside me.

  Lachlan looked from Jack to me. ‘Aha,’ he said, with heavy emphasis.

  ‘Wait,’ I said urgently – not liking that ‘Aha’.

  But Lachlan, with a wink at Jack, said a cheery, ‘All yours, mate,’ got quickly into his car and zoomed off.

  Not that I knew what I would have said anyway.

  Jack started walking towards me, looking heartbreakingly gorgeous in jeans and a pale, long-sleeved Henley T-shirt. I could smell rain in the air. See the flashes of lightning. Then I felt the first drop.

  ‘I told you I’d call you,’ I said, as he stopped in front of me.

  ‘I got tired of waiting,’ he said, and reached for me.

  ‘Not here. Inside. It – It’s starting to rain.’

  ‘I like the rain. And that’s not why you want to go inside.’

  ‘Jack, please.’

  ‘Here. Now,’ he said, and kissed me. A long, passionate, drugging kiss, as the heavens opened. He pulled back and gazed down at me, the flashing lightning silvering his features. ‘Would you look at that?’ he said. ‘Here we are, kissing on the street, and the world hasn’t come to an end!’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

  ‘It’s not sarcasm. It’s desperation,’ Jack said.

  And looking at his stern face, his stormy eyes, the raindrops on his skin, in his hair, I felt my heart crack and surge. A ripple of longing went through me. Oh God. This was it. Wet. Wild. Fierce. Loud and soft and hot and cold and clean and … everything. Everything!

  All right,’ I said. ‘You win. I’ll try to be what you want, what you need.’

  ‘You don’t have to try. You’re already it.’

  I woke the instant Jack did the next morning, as dawn was breaking.

  Aching and humming and longing for him. Knowing he was leaving today.

  He kissed me softly, and started to get out of bed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Home to change. I have an interview this morning. A pre-record with Chloe’s friend, Rowan Petersen. I’ll grab a quick shower first, so that everyone within a kilometre of me won’t smell … well, you.’ Quick, darting smile. ‘I don’t want to share that.’

  I giggled at the idea of a sex-drenched Jack walking to his car, telegraphing his pheromones to stray passers-by – and he leaned down and kissed me again, until I was breathless and not all giggly. He smiled as he swaggered, naked, out of the room – lithe and magnificent and utterly confident. I thought seriously about getting out of bed and following him into the shower, despite the tenderness between my legs from a night of unrelenting sex – until I heard a curse zing out from the bathroom.

  That shower was so small, he had to be practically bent in half under the spray. I wished, then, that we had spent the night at his apartment. That way I could have joined him, wrapped my legs around him and taken him under the driving force of the shower without causing any vital part of him to be maimed.

  But there were other things to imagine, things I could do to him when he came back into the room …

  When I heard the shower stop, I positioned myself, naked, on the edge of the bed.

  He walked in, damp and delicious with a towel slung low around his hips, and reached down to snag his crumpled T-shirt off the floor, where it had been unceremoniously tossed the night before.

  ‘Come here,’ I said, shivering in anticipation.

  T-shirt forgotten, he stopped, looked, straightened. Hardened.

  I edged my legs apart. ‘Here,’ I said, and felt the throb as his gaze went straight to the spot. He was in front of me in a heartbeat, leaning down to take my face in his hands, kissing me hard enough to fry my brain cells. My hands went to the towel around his hips, fingers tugging, loosening. The towel dropped and my hands were on him, stroking, holding, cupping. I pulled my mouth free of his, looked up at him, watched his jaw clench as I licked my lips, imagining the taste of him.

  ‘Evie,’ he said, and swallowed, closing his eyes, growing harder in my hands.

  ‘Is a little delay okay?’ I asked, and my voice was husky with lust. Without waiting for an answer, I slid off the edge of the bed onto my knees in front of him. ‘Because I want to give you something to think about on the plane today.’

  Jack dragged in a harsh breath as my mouth closed over him. ‘Oh my Gooooood,’ he moaned.

  He reached down, touched my hair, utterly gentle despite the ungentle cries that sounded like they were being torn from his throat as I sucked and licked at him. The way he sounded, the clean musky smell of him, the velvety texture against my tongue – everything excited me. I slanted a look up at him as I took him a little deeper, and he bucked, a sharp involuntary movement. I moved to hold him in position, one hand cupping between his legs, one on his tight backside to bring him closer, so I could take him more deeply. He tried to pull away once, twice. But I wouldn’t let him. His breathing grew harsh and desperate, and as he spilled himself inside my eager mouth with a wrenching cry – my name, Evie – my heart swelled with joy and lust and the most incredible, overwhelming love.

  At that moment, there really was only one world. Our world.

  Jack called me before his interview to say nothing much.

  Then he emailed me, providing a dizzying array of phone numbers and email options for him in Morocco.

  Then there was another phone call, after his interview, to bring me ‘up to speed’.

  ‘I told Rowan I’m off the market and in a relationship,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘And that would be me, right?’

  ‘Bloody hell, I hope so, after last night.’ Deep chuckle. ‘And this morning. And oh God, Evie, I shouldn’t have thought of that. Because now I am hard as a freaking telegraph pole and just about the same size.’

  I giggled.

  ‘Don’t laugh or I’ll come to your office and … well, come in your office.’

  Another giggle.

  ‘Right – I’m on my way.’

  For a moment, just a moment, I thought he meant it and I froze. He seemed to feel it through the phone.

  ‘Evie …?’

  ‘I – Sorry.’

  ‘Evie, I’m joking.’

  I closed my eyes for a moment, putting my heart back where it belonged – in my chest, not my throat. ‘Phew. Sorry.’

  ‘Yes, so you said.’ But the humour had gone from Jack’s voice.

  ‘I’m just not … not comfortable yet.’ I hunched a shoulder, even though he couldn’t see it. ‘The public side of this. You know, the thought of people seeing us together, putting it together. So you’re going to have to be patient with me. Very patient, while I try. Because I will try, Jack. But I’m going to fail every now and then.’

  ‘You won’t fail, Evie.’

  That was Jack. So sure of himself, so positive he could control the world, his world, the way he always had. But he’d never had someone like me to drag along with him. And I was scared, so scared, I was going to disappoint him. Because how could I not, with all the baggage I was carting around?

  ‘So …’ I said, then paused for courage. ‘You said you were in a relationship, but you didn’t … you didn’t …?’

  Long sigh. ‘No, I didn’t. She tried, but I wouldn’t tell her your name. I wouldn’t do that without asking you.’

  Relief. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But, Evie …’

  I waited, tensing at the hesitation in his voice.

&
nbsp; ‘It will come out eventually. It’s bound to. I hope I’m here when it happens, but I may not be. I don’t want you to freak out.’

  ‘I don’t want me to freak out.’

  ‘I mean, freak out and run away. From me, from this.’

  ‘Jack … You said, once …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said there were things you did to protect me. From media speculation.’

  I chewed a fingernail in the slight pause that followed.

  ‘But this won’t be speculation, Evie,’ Jack said carefully. ‘It will be the truth.’

  I swallowed, not making any comment.

  Another long sigh, and then Jack asked, ‘Do you really want me to play decoys?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling torn. ‘I guess … maybe …?’

  ‘Even if it means you’ll see pictures of me in the papers with other women? Will you know, when you see them, that I’m doing it because you asked me to? Or will you think – there he goes, back to his celebrity bed-hopping?’

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll feel, what I’ll think. I’ve never been in this situation before. It’s so hard. Already, Jack.’ I could hear the panic building in my voice. ‘Last night, this morning, I felt everything would be fine, it would all work out between us. And now … Now I just wonder if we should put things on hold until you’re back, in case it –’

  ‘Don’t, Evie. Don’t give up. Don’t do that to me.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said miserably, not at all sure it was the truth.

  ‘I’ll fix anything I can fix. I’ll do whatever I can to keep people away from you.’

  I felt a horrible tightening in my chest as I struggled to find reassuring words for him that just wouldn’t come. ‘You always talk about fixing things, Jack. But what if you can’t?’

  ‘I can. I will.’

  ‘Okay, Jack,’ I choked out. It was the best I could manage.

  ‘And I’ll be back so often, you won’t believe I’m not living here. And in between, you can fly over to me – Jacinta can arrange as many air tickets as you want. And when we’re together, we’ll talk about how we deal with things going forward. But no dumping me while my back’s turned. You have to hang in there, Evie.’