A Girl Less Ordinary

by Leah Ashton

  There was no point.

  She’d made up her mind, and so had he.

  Only a few minutes later she was back, and he still stood exactly where she’d left him, staring at the view, but to be honest he wouldn’t have noticed if a herd of elephants had moved into the valley while he’d waited.

  ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said, but she shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to put you out,’ she replied, and those simple, tautly polite words really said it all. They weren’t friends. They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even lovers any more.

  It was over.

  ‘How about I drop you off at the train, then?’

  She nodded.

  They drove in silence. When they arrived at the station, she turned to face him. Opened her mouth to speak, only to snap it shut.

  Words whirled about in his mind, too, but refused to form into anything remotely intelligible. He was caught between having too much to say and yet nothing at all.

  Finally, within seconds of each other, they both spoke.

  ‘As long as we are very discreet—’

  ‘If we both agree this is nothing serious—’

  The both fell into silence again, but this silence had a luscious tension.

  He leant forward, breathing in the scent of her—Ella mixed with the familiar musky scent of his shower gel.

  He leant even closer, so his breath brushed against her ear. ‘So...’

  He smiled when she shivered.

  She turned her head, now so close that if either of them moved his lips would brush against hers.

  ‘So...’ she murmured, and the corner of her lovely lips kicked upwards.

  He closed that insignificant gap, and instantly she curled towards him, her arms snaking up to wrap behind his neck. It wasn’t a gentle kiss—rather one tinged with urgency, as if they were both keen to eke out as much as possible from this undefined thing they had—for however long it lasted.

  After long, long minutes, they finally broke apart.

  And Jake put the car in reverse, turned around, and drove them back home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ELLA was absolutely fine with their arrangement.

  Fine with the fact she and Jake met up nearly every night after work—or after her Pilates class, or book club or whatever. Always staying in for dinner, of course, to avoid any chance of a repeat appearance in the gossip pages.

  He didn’t invite her up to the mountains again. Instead they met, in a very cloak-and-dagger fashion, at his apartment in the city. With the media interest in Jake at fever pitch, they never left, or arrived, together. Instead, Ella got to repeatedly experience the unglamorous reality of being dropped off and whisked away from his building via a rather shady back street, courtesy of a trusted Armada driver. This indignity was mostly offset by the exuberant greeting she’d then receive from Albert and Lizzie on arrival—followed by the rather more sophisticated welcome provided by Jake.

  Yeah, she’d become quite the fan of Jake’s very sexy way of letting her know exactly how glad he was to see her.

  So they had fun. They chatted, they laughed, and they made love. But they never woke up beside each other—by necessity she was whisked away before dawn. She and Jake could then face the world each day as if the other didn’t exist.

  She had insisted on this, and Jake had been only too happy to agree. Discretion was of upmost importance to both of them.

  So of course she was absolutely fine with their arrangement.

  Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Mandy asked, nudging Ella’s champagne glass a little bit closer towards her. ‘You look like you need this.’

  Ella shook her head, trying to refocus on the here and now. The here being the open-air bar beneath Sydney’s opera house, and the now being a last-minute drink with Mandy she’d organised after Jake had cancelled on her, with only the vaguest of explanations.

  Not that she was bothered by that.

  ‘You know,’ Mandy said, looking at Ella thoughtfully through a tangle of long blonde fringe, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.’

  ‘I’m not like anything,’ Ella replied. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  That word again. Fine.

  ‘Right.’ Mandy paused to sip her Blue Curacao cocktail. ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Yes.

  Wait. Where had that come from? No one could know about her and Jake.

  No one.

  ‘No,’ she said, although it sounded a little unsure. ‘Thanks, though,’ she added, more briskly.

  Mandy sighed, then tilted her head as if assessing her. Automatically, Ella ran her tongue against her teeth and over her lips—did she have a rogue fleck of parsley or something from one of the little bowls of tapas they were sharing?

  ‘Any interesting clients at the moment?’ Mandy asked suddenly.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re sure? A friend said she saw you at the Armada Smart Phone launch. With Jake Donner.’

  Ella shrugged, although it took all her effort to appear utterly unworried. ‘Oh, yeah. I worked with him for a couple of weeks.’

  Mandy raised an eyebrow. ‘Apparently you both looked very friendly on the dance floor. And I’ve heard rumours about Jake and some ‘mystery woman’. Any idea who that might be?’

  Her implication was obvious. Others had made the connection, too, and she’d fielded a few calls from journalists in the days following that damn gossip piece. Fortunately, it appeared, her denials had been effective, and she hadn’t heard a gossipy whisper since.

  ‘No,’ she said, although she hated to lie to Mandy. So she offered a partial truth. ‘We just went to school together. That’s why we looked friendly.’

  Her friend shook her head, then went silent for long seconds.

  ‘You’re a funny thing, Ella Cartwright,’ Mandy said, quite slowly, as if delivering a statement of fact.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed, really, until just now, but I don’t really know anything about you, do I?’

  Ella laughed. ‘What are you talking about? We hang out all the time.’

  But Mandy didn’t pay her words any attention. ‘Like, I read somewhere that Jake Donner’s from Perth, right? Three-thousand-odd kilometres away? So you must be, too.’

  Reluctantly, Ella nodded.

  Mandy smiled, but didn’t look particularly happy. ‘And I didn’t even know that.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are!’ Ella said, a little shocked. ‘We’ve had heaps of fun together.’

  ‘Exactly. But that’s all we ever do. Have fun. You know, it’s only been recently we’ve started hanging out more, just the two of us. I like it.’

  It was strange, seeing perfectly gorgeous heiress Mandy Williamson be just slightly vulnerable. Strange, and also more than a little uncomfortable.

  As if now Ella would be expected to be vulnerable, too.

  And that just wasn’t an option.

  But, for the first time, Ella felt a twinge of guilt for deliberately basing her friendships on good times and not on some deep, emotional connection.

  It was her own fault they were having this conversation. Until recently, Mandy had been someone she liked, someone she respected, but someone, like everyone, that she kept at a distance. Really, she’d even considered her closer to an ex-client than truly a friend.

  But then something had changed, and she’d found herself reaching out for more to her. Needing more...

  Because of Jake.

  It was Jake who’d pushed her off balance. Who’d made her life feel less like a perfectly tailored shirt and more like a pair of stockings with ladders running all the way through them. Of course she’d reached out to a friend, of sorts, to try and rearrange her thoughts, her emotions, her confusion back into something she could control.

  But it wasn’t permanent. It was temporary.

  Once he was out of her life again, everythi
ng would go back to normal.

  And Jake Donner would walk out of her life. Of that she had no doubt.

  For that reason, she pasted on a smile. ‘We are friends, Mandy. But trust me, you don’t want to hear too much about me. I’m terribly uninteresting.’

  She took a casual sip of her champagne and lifted her shoulders as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Mandy’s lips thinned. She placed her glass carefully back on the table, slid from her bar stool and then gathered up her handbag where it lay at the base of the tall cocktail table.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Ella,’ she said, not meeting her gaze.

  The champagne on her tongue tasted suddenly bitter. Awful. With an effort, she swallowed, the liquid forcing its way down a throat tight with unexpected disappointment.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Ella said, with bubbliness as false as Mandy’s eyelashes. ‘We’ll have to catch up again soon, okay?’

  Mandy nodded, probably the result of unconscious, conditioned good manners more than anything else. Then she walked away.

  Leaving Ella amongst a sea of people in the packed bar, the Sydney city skyline to her left, the harbour bridge lit up before her, and the dramatic curves of the Opera House towering above her.

  Alone.

  * * *

  Jake sat beneath the too-warm lights of the midday show’s studio, doing his best to smile, and look attentive and open, while feeling more than a little ridiculous in the make-up he’d been told was compulsory.

  ‘Now, Jake, can you tell us what it is about this new Armada phone that makes it so exciting?’ The host, a woman with helmet-like blonde hair, arranged her plumped-up lips into an encouraging smile as she waited for his answer.

  It seemed impossible that the campaign was only three weeks old. Jake felt as if he’d been smiling, and talking, and smiling, and schmoozing for months. And months.

  But still, he took a deep breath, and, just like the good little face of Armada he was, he obediently launched into an ‘on message’ answer to the question. By now he’d done so many variations of this very same interview he could talk about the phone in his sleep.

  ‘Well, Gloria, what really makes this phone stand apart is its operating system...’

  And so he went on, doing his best to intersperse geek speak with more consumer-friendly explanations.

  According to the very happy marketing department, he’d been getting that just about spot on. Early sales of the phone were well above expectations. Focus groups were indicating a significant increase in brand recognition.

  Basically, he was ticking all the boxes.

  And while it was reassuring to know it’d all been worthwhile, it didn’t make this particular interview any less mind-numbingly boring.

  ‘Now, just one more question before we finish. I happened to stumble across an interesting snippet in last weekend’s Sunday paper...’

  Jake tensed. It was the question he’d been expecting all week, just that so far he’d been fortunate enough that his schedule had been more of the technological variety—an interview for a smart-phone magazine, an appearance at a new technologies conference and the like.

  But this was commercial television at its finest, complete with a live studio audience rabid for news of the tabloid variety. Of course she’d been going to ask.

  The host recapped the pertinent details, ending with a kissing-sound special effect.

  Ah. Classy.

  ‘So tell me, Jake,’ she asked conspiratorially, as if they weren’t surrounded by hundreds of people and a television crew, ‘just who is this lucky lady?’

  He and Ella had discussed this. He knew exactly what to say.

  Yet the words didn’t come, not immediately.

  Instead, most unexpectedly, he was reacting as he had at that radio station. No, he didn’t have the urge to throttle over-peroxided Gloria. But his body was suddenly constructed of knot after knot of tension.

  He didn’t even want to say no comment. He wanted to end the interview—immediately.

  Even though he knew that to do so would be stupid. Even though he knew it would achieve nothing but further scrutiny.

  The host was looking positively gleeful at his extended silence. He could hear the murmur of whispered voices in the crowd, and he knew every camera was trained right on him.

  What would the average Australian, sitting at home on their couch at noon on a Friday, be able to see in his face?

  Could they tell what he was feeling? How hard it was for him to lie?

  Lie. Was that what he thought he was about to do?

  And if he thought that, what did that mean for him and Ella?

  He managed a laugh that sound awfully false to his ears. ‘We all make mistakes, don’t we, Gloria? It was nothing.’

  ‘So she’s not your girlfriend?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’ she asked. ‘You seemed to have a good long think about it.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, and now he was back using the interview voice he’d cultivated over the past few weeks.

  The host chuckled. ‘Well, I’m sure that will come as a huge relief to many, many women. Hear that, ladies? Jake Donner is still on the market...’

  He barely heard what the host said next, but the next thing he knew he was being ushered from the stage, and plonked down in front of a mirror to have that caked-on gunk removed from his face.

  He should be relieved. It was another issue-free interview. One more campaign appearance to cross from his list.

  But he felt...

  Uncomfortable.

  And...guilty.

  Why?

  He’d done nothing wrong. He’d had no reason to stumble when asked the question. It was what he and Ella had agreed.

  Maybe it was just his choice of words. As he couldn’t classify the past week as a mistake, whatever Ella might think. Or if it was, it was certainly one he’d be happy to make again and again.

  This thing, this arrangement? Fling? Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like a mistake. Whenever he saw her, in fact, it felt quite the opposite. It felt right.

  With her, he didn’t have to pretend. And, to a point, he felt she didn’t pretend with him. Although she’d never let her guard down again as every time they’d met she’d been picture perfect with not a strand of hair or a smudge of make-up out of place, complete with those fake green eyes.

  He wished she could see that she didn’t need all that stuff.

  Slowly he registered the direction his thoughts had taken.

  This felt right? With Ella?

  He firmly pressed down on his mental pause button.

  No way. He was not going there.

  He was not going to start paying attention to the siren call of intimacy. Of relationships. Of love.

  The very idea triggered an almost suffocating pressure in his chest, and at his throat—an overwhelming sensation that over the years had become so, so familiar.

  He couldn’t do this.

  He needed to cancel tonight. They were meeting at his place in a few hours’ time.

  No. Not cancel. He needed to see her tonight—and end it.

  Yes. That was what he had to do.

  * * *

  Ella reached blindly for the remote, and pressed far harder than was necessary to rid her television, and her apartment, of the echo of Jake’s words.

  We all make mistakes.

  It was nothing.

  Too late she realised the midday show had long ago moved to a commercial break, and it was purely her own brain that was insisting on replaying those short, painful little sentences, again and again and again.

  Painful?

  Why? He’d done nothing more than recite the words she’d fed him.

  That she’d pleaded for him to say.

  On her couch, she drew her knees up to her chin, not caring that she was wearing a designer suit that would not appreciate such unladylike treatment.

  She wasn’t supposed t
o care. She was supposed to be fine, remember?

  But even though it was irrational...

  Her heart still ached.

  And what that might mean frightened her in ways she couldn’t possibly describe.

  * * *

  Ella had just returned from her Pilates class when someone buzzed to be let into her building.

  She’d hoped that exercise would provide her with that promised rush of endorphins, and so by now she’d be feeling happy and perky and normal again. But no such luck. As she walked to the panel beside her door, she felt just as confused and unsettled as she had since Jake’s television interview.

  Although, if she was honest, she’d been unsettled for longer than that. Last night she’d found herself wishing she’d done what Mandy had wanted, and what she suspected she needed, and poured everything out.

  But she wouldn’t even know where to start. What was everything? How could she possibly put the way Jake made her feel into words? How she feared what they had ending almost as much as she feared what she might soon feel for him? Or maybe already did?

  No. It was better that she hadn’t talked to Mandy.

  Because if she started, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to stop.

  She stabbed at the button on the intercom panel. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ella, it’s me.’

  She was sure, for a moment, her heart ground to a halt.

  ‘Ella? Can I come up?’

  She managed to push the buzzer that would let him in, but didn’t say a word.

  Why was Jake here?

  She’d come no closer to figuring that out when she opened the door to let him in.

  Before she’d even had a chance to say hello, he reached for her, placing a hand at the small of her back to pull her against him.

  He wasn’t rough, but he was sure. Her softness moulded to the firm, hard lines of his body. This close to him, any possibility of analysing or deconstructing her relationship, such as it was, with him, evaporated. This close to him, she could barely think at all.

  ‘Jake?’ she said. ‘Is everything okay?’

  For an answer, he kissed her, hard, and fast.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked as they broke apart, breathless. ‘What we’re doing?’

  She looked up at him. His gaze, usually so steady and so certain, was all over the place. He’d meet her eyes, then flick away. Look down to her lips for a long moment, then move his gaze away again—over her shoulder, out of the window.