by Lily Malone
“You don’t want anything from me?” It felt like hot rocks blocked his throat and he wanted to lash out then, at Christina, at himself. He’d made it all so easy for her. He straightened and his shins rammed the coffee table. Wine sloshed over the rim of her glass, puddled at the base.
Christina gripped the cushion harder and a diamond-hard part of his heart thought, good.
“If all you wanted was a fucking sperm donor, Christina, why not just ask? Did you think I’d be flattered?”
She opened her mouth. Not a sound came out and she closed it.
He answered his own question. “Because it wasn’t all you wanted. Was it? You had to keep me around long enough to get a baby and a brand.”
“Of course not, Tate. I—”
She broke off and he waited. “You what?”
“I care about you.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Christina. There’s only one person you care about, and it sure as shit isn’t me.”
Her shoulders shook. There’d been tears in the bedroom, too. Crocodile tears. At least he got a great blow-job for his trouble, even if it had been nothing more than a distraction. She’d been buying herself a little more time to get her story straight.
Christ. He had to go. Get out before he put a chair through the wall.
She didn’t call him back. She never made a sound.
His overnight bag lay inside the door of Christina’s bedroom, tangled in the straps of the sportsbag she’d dropped. He tugged and when the bag wouldn’t come he switched on the overhead light, stomped on the leather, hauled her sportsbag straight up until it released like a slingshot. The water bottle inside clunked hard into his jaw.
Ow! Fuck. He rubbed his face. Dropped her bag; snatched up his own.
A scrap of yellow material swayed at the edge of her sewing table, caught in a lazy draft. The movement drew him across the room.
Not a scrap. It was a tiny arm, hanging beneath her computer. He pushed the laptop aside.
It was a baby’s suit—the all-in‐one-kind with feet so small it looked meant for a doll.
He tested its weight on his finger. It was like holding air. There was a chubby-cheeked cherub stitched in lavender on the front with a crown embroidered around its head. A Rubens’ cherub.
He lifted the suit higher.
Not a crown. In wavelets of soft curls at the cherub’s temple he saw the open-mouth and hood of a frilled-neck lizard, painstakingly stitched, a mirror image of his own tattoo. Its tail twined around the opposite temple, brushing the cherub’s ear.
Of all the Masters you could choose… why Rubens?
He drew his women real.
Tate waited another beat, clutching the yellow suit softly in his hands. He laid it on her sewing table, placed Christina’s laptop gently back in place then crossed to the bedroom door and flicked off the light.
The music died as the cottage door shut behind him.
Lily Malone
Chapter 19
Long after Tate had gone, Christina rocked on the couch. Rocked and wondered if the frozen feeling in her spine would ever thaw. The Police album spun to the end and the mechanical whir of the stacker changing discs burped through the room.
A staccato beat of Chili Peppers’ funky guitar drove her to her feet, stumbling for the CD player.
Not that song. Please! It was the same one that was playing at the Hen’s party on the night Tate walked into her life.
She was too late. Her finger punched the stop icon and the lights on the player faded to standby red.
Christina carried crackers and wine from coffee table to kitchen, stacked the dishwasher, filled the powder dispenser. The clunk and splash of the machine soothed her and she straddled the stool nearest the machine so its heat, as well as its sound, might warm her belly. Then she reached for the phone.
Lacy answered on the third ring.
“I hope it’s not too late to call Lace?”
“I’m not quite in the Nanna category yet, thank you.”
“I figured Mikey would be at band practice. Last Friday in the month, right?”
“Right. I’m watching a weird movie about a ring, but it has Viggo Mortensen in it and he’s always eye-candy, especially when he waves that sword.”
Christina laughed and her nose bubbled. “That won a gazillion Oscars and you think it’s weird.”
The noise of the television softened. “And now that you’ve completely wrecked my appetite for it, what’s up?”
“It’s about the City to Bay, Lace. I’ve been less than frank with you.”
“Tendonitis my arse. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Christina felt her mouth pop open and a half-squeak slipped out.
Lacy squealed. “I knew it! I said to Michael when you chose lunch and coffee at Danny’s Thai for your birthday instead of dinner and champagne, I told him: alcohol-free week my foot—your big sister’s up the duff.”
“I bet he didn’t believe you.”
“He didn’t. But Lacy knows best. Congratulations, sweetie, that’s great news for you both.”
The silence stretched.
“It is great news. Isn’t it?”
“I told Tate tonight.”
“What? He’s not thrilled?” Lacy sounded ready to pound sense into his head with a brick.
“I kind of wasn’t exactly frank with him either.”
Lacy groaned. “Why doesn’t that surprise me, CC? Tell me everything.”
“He accused me of using him to get myself a baby as well as a brand and he said that if I wanted a sperm donor I should have just asked.” Christina wiped her nose with the back of her hand and reached for the nearest roll of kitchen towel. The line went quiet. After a few seconds she queried: “Lace?”
“You mean you did this without telling him?” Lacy’s sigh whistled down the phone.
“You never were much for committee meetings and a consensus vote. What do you want me to say, CC? I love you dearly—”
Oh God, here it comes.
“—I’ve known you since high school and in all that time you’ve done what you wanted every day of the universe since you decided you were the centre of it—”
“Lacy!”
“Don’t interrupt. I’m on a roll,” Lacy snapped.
Christina’s lips smacked shut.
“You have the knack for being simultaneously the most self-absorbed woman I’ve ever met and the most generous, which is why I forgive you. Case in point, my beautiful 1951 Bentley at the hen’s night. Anywho, I digress. The problem is: you’ve fallen for a guy who’s not going to let you ride rough-shod.”
“I haven’t fallen for anyone, Lace.”
“CC, it’s me. Cut the act. This isn’t just about you any more. Cracked Pots is Michael’s baby too, pardon the pun, and if Tate pulls out now, Saffah and Richard will pull the pin on it faster than you can say Fred.”
“I know.” Christina rubbed her temples. “One minute Tate said we’d get married.
The next he looked at me like he hated me. Like really hated me, Lace, you should have seen his face. He couldn’t care less about the brand.”
“Hold the phone! He asked you to marry him?”
“And he brought me orchids.”
“Focus, CC,” Lacy said.
“He said ‘we’ll get married’. That’s not asking.”
“Was that before or after the sperm donor thing?”
Christina thought about it for a second. “Before.”
“And you didn’t mention that part till now because?”
“Hell, Lace. Marriage? You know me.”
“Crap. What a mess.”
They lapsed into moody silence, punctuated by the faint sound of battle in the background: swords, arrows, Orcs.
“You could try grovelling,” Lacy began. “Apologise. Kiss his feet.”
“Pigs might fly.”
“It’s the only way. This baby has nine months to ferment while the two of you work something out. The l
aunch is three weeks away.” Lacy’s voice changed. “You, my girl, need to eat some humble pie. Go and see Tate tomorrow morning. First thing, so he knows you’re serious. Wear those red boots.”
Christina sniffed through the bubbles in her nose. “There’s another teensy matter.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re having twins.”
“I don’t even know where he lives. I’ve never been to his house.”
“You’re a resourceful woman, Christina Clay. You work it out.”
****
Tate’s house was all square white-rendered walls rising out of the morning mist, two-storey, with skinny rectangular windows tinted so dark they looked like coin slots on a giant Lily Malone
washing machine. Its front door was recessed beneath a pillared portico, hidden from the street.
A closed double garage in the same charcoal as the roof marked the crest of a steep incline at the end of a grey, square-paved drive. It was edged on the left by a column of pencil pines flanking a six-foot fence—brick—rendered the same white as the house. Right of the driveway a fountain of a little boy perpetually pissing into the open mouth of a frog split the centre of a manicured square of lawn, way too uniform green and lush to be real. It too sat on a brick platform rendered white, surrounded by alternate squares of limestone paving and black mondo grass.
Bram’s info must be wrong. This can’t be the right place. Christina peered at it from beneath the shallow brim of her shiny black leather rain-hat and wondered how long it would take the fine citizens of Elizabeth Avenue to report a loitering woman to the cops.
A silver Lexus four-wheel‐drive cruised slowly past, wheels raising a splash.
With the second cup of takeaway CIBO balanced on the first, Christina thrust the index finger of her free hand at the intercom and let it buzz. The brown paper bag from Mr Loh’s deli whacked the rendered brick pillar.
Just when she decided a business card in the mailbox was enough to show she’d tried, the gate mechanism clicked and her heart clawed a path up her throat. The coffee on top almost ditched to the pavement. She glanced back to where the Golf hugged the kerb, beside weed-free footpath that looked newly laid, and wished she could jump in and drive away.
“Don’t be such a chicken,” she muttered, transferring the wobbling coffee to the same hand as Mr Loh’s famous vanilla slice.
Heels clacked grit over pavers made slippery by a combination of last night’s rain and this morning’s slush. Coffee sloshed in extra-large cups and by the time she reached the crest her breath puffed about her face in fluffy white clouds.
Turning a right-angle at the garage, she crunched along a verandah that smelled of wet cement, into the shadowed recess beneath the portico. It was dark there, and then a sensor light clicked. Tate’s front door was white too, shot through with horizontal panels of yet more black-tinted glass. She looked for, but couldn’t find, a doorbell or knocker and she was standing with knuckles raised when it opened.
She jerked back a half-step like she’d been punched.
Tate filled the frame.
He wore grey tracksuit pants with a navy stripe. Nothing else except a towel over his shoulder. Every muscle was raw, pumped, sheathed in sweat. His hair tangled in wild whirls across his forehead.
Her eyes stuck on his abdomen; the way it heaved.
“Nice boots. Not sure about the hat.” He crossed his arms, placed his shoulder against the door frame.
“I thought you weren’t home. I was about to leave a note.”
“And the coffee and cake? Did you intend leaving them too?”
“In this neighbourhood? You’ve got to be kidding.”
He didn’t crack a smile. His face was even more intimidating than his house.
“Nice place you have here.” She gestured with the cup and coffee sloshed.
“Cut the crap, Christina. What do you want?” He delivered the words like slaps.
“Whatever you have to say shouldn’t take long if you could have written it in a note.”
Her hands fluttered. In its paper bag, the vanilla slice slid, almost belly-flopped to her boots.
“Christ.” Tate stepped back, flicked his head as if to say follow or not and turned down the corridor. Behind him, floorboards shone perfect pale blonde.
“Um. Do you want me to take my—”
He cut her off. “Leave the boots on.”
Christina wiped her feet. Twice. Stepped inside and pulled the door shut. It closed with a hiss. Like a bank vault.
The room immediately to her left held a fireplace. Gas. The type with fake coal.
There wasn’t a scrap of furniture, not even a chair. The same pale blonde floor continued seamlessly into the room on her left, down the corridor, and into the big room on the right where removalist boxes were piled three and four-high: stickered and labelled and covered in this-way‐up and fragile signs.
Her heart pinched. Tate was leaving?
She took a tentative step and almost cannoned face-first into the left-hand column of a pair of white-painted pillars that stretched all the way to the ceiling, almost spilled coffee and slice all over his gleaming floor, she could see it: slice sliding along those perfect floorboards like that crazy game of curling you saw at the Winter Olympics… and Mr Loh’s homemade custard plastering those pristine white walls.
She picked a careful path round the pillar.
An open door on her left showed a sparkling bathroom with a pair of blue-glass vanity basins in a bench of white stone. She caught a whiff of bleach, something lemon. The third door on the left was closed.
The corridor dog-legged out of the dark and she stepped into an immense open-plan room where grey morning light streamed through floor-to‐ceiling glass.
Her eyes darted everywhere at once.
There were no paintings on the huge expanse of soaring white wall, no photographs or prints. Not even a clock. Chrome-legged bar stools were tucked beneath a granite island bench without a single fingerprint to blemish its polished surface. One three-seater black leather couch confronted another mid-way across the open space, positioned perfectly between the kitchen and what she could see of the garden through glass.
No dining table. No bookshelf. No widescreen. Nothing. Just a knife block and a plastic bottle of water to mar the perfection of a stainless-steel sink.
And Tate. Standing a foot from the island bench, exuding so much energy it was like he vibrated back and forth without ever moving from that spot.
“Give me that, Christina. I might as well drink it before it goes stone-cold.” He took two paces towards her, lean and lethal, took the coffee from her hands.
His smell hit her. Sweat. So sharp she could taste it. She touched her bottom lip with her tongue. “You’re leaving?” It was all she could think of to say.
“The hell I’m leaving,” he growled.
Her head felt filled with cotton-wool, brain slow and puffy. “But those boxes?”
For the first time since he’d opened his front door, a smile flicked the corners of his mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m still unpacking.”
“Oh.” She took a sip of coffee, felt her heart fly. “So how long have you lived here?”
“Why start the small-talk now? What the fuck do you care?”
He wasn’t going to make this easy. “Can I sit down?”
“Suit yourself.” He flicked his hand at her. “It’s what you do.”
Lily Malone
Her purse and keys scraped the bench. She considered for a moment whether to opt for his couch or a bar stool, then chose the couch. Bar stools went best with long legs.
The black leather tried to ingest her whole. She had to scoot her bottom forward and her boots squeaked where the leathers rubbed. She perched Mr Loh’s vanilla slice on the armrest, balanced the coffee in her lap and looked up. The kitchen bench made a black granite blade at Tate’s back, stainless steel appliances gleamed.
“Shouldn’t you put a shirt on or something
?”
“Why? Do I make you nervous?” He twisted the lid off the Styrofoam cup, took a long sip.
Hell yes. “No.”
“So spit it out. I haven’t got all day.”
She inhaled like it might have been her last breath. “I’m sorry for the way you found out about the baby. I should have told you—”
“You have so much to be sorry for and that’s what you choose?”
“My family has invested a lot in Cracked Pots—”
“Ah. She cuts to the chase.” His fingers drummed the lizard on his bicep.
She tried again. “There’s so much still to do—we’re only weeks away from the launch.”
“Label copy and designs. Website design. Copy. Web functionality . I know. Not to mention a launch design for your father’s Landrover before the Bush Bash. But you didn’t come all the way out here to tell me that.” He took a step toward her.
“I wasn’t sure—” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t look at that incredible chest without thinking about kissing a path across the roller-coaster dips of his collarbone.
“You weren’t sure about what?” He took a second step.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want to finish the job.”
“That depends.” He advanced another slow step and his eyes locked hers. She could see the pulse in his throat, stubble on his chin.
“It depends?” Her voice was an echo through the room. “On what?”
“Was it always about the brand, Christina? When I was inside you?”
Electricity fizzed through her thighs. She jammed them together. Hard.
“When you told me how good it felt? When you begged me not to stop?”
Her cheeks couldn’t have felt hotter if he’d held a red-hot brand to her skin.
“When I buried my tongue between your legs? When you came in my mouth?”
He was so close now. She tried to keep her eyes on the bridge of his nose but her favourite place—the precipice where chest dipped into armpit and he tasted like the freshest French bread—was right there…
“Why did you really come out here, Christina? How did you even find me? It’s not like I’m in the book.” He said it harsh.
