by Jess Dee
Every instinct told her to go to him, check he was okay, but as quickly as the grimace crossed his face it disappeared.
“Not even close,” he said. “I don’t pity you. I’m not trying to solve problems for you. This is a sensible business proposition. One that would benefit us and help you out of a tight spot.”
“I can help myself, thank you very much. But good luck with your new project. I hope it’s hugely successful.” She shoved her feet into a pair of thongs, and for the first time since James had come to stay, she wished he wasn’t in her room. All she wanted now was the privacy of time alone and the comfort of her own, empty bed.
With that option not available, she walked to the door.
“Jesus, Liv, where are you going?”
“Out. Somewhere you’re not.” Somewhere she could be alone. Alone to fix her own problems.
“You’re leaving? Because I tried to help you?”
“I’m leaving because I can’t face being your next good cause. Your next choice of charity. It was bad enough when Anton tried to fix all my problems, or when my parents guided me in the direction they felt was best for me, but when my friend sees me as someone who needs to be saved, as poor-Liv-who-lost-her-job, it’s pretty damn unbearable.”
“You’re overreacting.”
No, overreacting would be picking up one of his crutches and beating him with it.
Without another word, she opened the door, stepped outside and closed it softly behind her. Then she grabbed her bag and headed off to the one place she could think of where she’d be alone. The one place James wouldn’t be able to reach her.
Liv paced the length of James’s lounge room, walking from one wall to the other repeatedly, trying to burn off the anger and shame. The two warred inside her for dominance.
She didn’t believe James had set out to humiliate her. Knowing him, his offer came from the heart. He had an incessant need to help people. He spent tireless hours working on charity drives every year. If, like this year, the drive was a raffle, he had no qualms phoning up everyone he knew asking for prizes.
He got them too. This year’s first prize was an all-expenses paid, one-week trip for two to Fiji. Second prize was two return air tickets to any destination in Australia. The drive had been running for a month, and James had already raised upwards of twenty grand.
But Liv wasn’t a charity case. She didn’t need him to solve her problems or find her work. And she definitely didn’t need him to open up a whole new division of his company just for her. That was insane.
Sure, she’d been through a crap time, and when she’d first told James about it, she’d probably been at the lowest point of her life. But that was weeks ago. Things had changed. She’d changed. She’d been forced to pull herself out of her funk and seek out new work. The entire crappy experience had made her stronger, taught her how to bounce instead of crash.
Liv was no longer the trusting, naïve employee she’d been eight months ago. She no longer gave other people the power to influence her decisions—like she had with her parents. Standing on her own two feet was tough, but she was doing it. She was determined, and there was no way James would knock her down when she was just finding her balance.
Who knew if the bank would loan her money? They might not, but if she didn’t approach them, she’d never have an answer. If she didn’t do whatever she could to get her life back on track, she’d forever be the failure who made a bad business decision and got burned as a result.
The thing was, she had to do it. She had to be the driving force behind any decision she made or work she chose to do. Not James.
Frustrated, cold and exhausted, Liv gave up pacing and went into the bedroom.
She hesitated at the door. The only time she ever came in here was to have sex. She pretty much tackled James into his room in her eagerness to get to him. And to get him naked.
But sex was the last thing on her mind. She doubted she and James would ever have sex again. The thing about sleeping with a man was Liv had to feel they were on equal footing. Up until now, they had been. She’d felt equal to James on every level—except physically. But then she’d never compete with his massive muscles and abnormal strength. She never wanted to.
Now the balance in their relationship had shifted.
James no longer saw her as his equal. He saw her as a needy cause he had to help.
A nasty thought hit her. Had he viewed her this way since the beginning? Their relationship had changed the night he’d discovered she had a problem. No, he hadn’t known then what the problem was, but he’d offered her a shoulder to cry on. And things had pretty much spun out from there.
Had things never gone wrong at work, would she and James be lovers today? Would he be sleeping in her bed now? If Liv had never leaned on him or confessed her problems, would they still just be friends?
Was James’s need to help her, to save her, the primary reason he was interested in her?
Didn’t he know yet that Liv neither wanted nor needed to be saved? Her parents had tried, Anton had tried, and now he was trying.
She made her way to his bed and climbed in. But the second she pulled the doona up and over her shoulders, she was immersed in James’s scent. Damn it. The sheets smelled of chocolate and fresh-baked cookies and…and testosterone. Whatever the hell that smelled like.
His shirt smelled the same.
She was surrounded by his delicious scent. And just like that, her exhausted, traitorous body sprung to life.
No. No, no, no. This was not the time to be aroused.
It didn’t matter that she’d just had the most intense sexual experience of her life, or that for a while there, she’d never felt closer to a man. It didn’t matter that she craved James like an addict craved drugs, or that her friends’ merciless teasing at the hospital had reflected her deepest, secret desires.
She and James were over.
They had to be. There was no way Liv could continue sleeping with him knowing she was his charity case. His needy lover. She had too much pride for that. She had too much experience with that, thank you very much.
But why, if this was unequivocally the right decision, did a band tighten around her heart and squeeze so hard pain radiated through her chest? And why, when her body and her mind were bone weary, did she find it impossible to sleep?
Instead of closing her eyes and pretending the pain wasn’t tearing her apart, she stared out the window, contemplating those questions. For hours, she gazed at the black sky until it slowly turned a dark navy and finally a light blue and the sun sparkled off the ocean in the distance.
With the sunrise came answers, but the conclusions Liv drew left her even more unsettled than before.
Her pain wouldn’t be this intense if she didn’t have deep feelings for James. His words and actions wouldn’t have hurt her this badly if she had no emotional investment in him or in their relationship.
But Liv was emotionally invested. In a big way.
Big enough to suspect she might even be in love with him.
Chapter Ten
By the time James reached the top step of the final staircase, his leg throbbed, breath sawed from his chest and his armpit burned where the crutch rubbed against it.
He took a moment to wipe the perspiration from his brow and position the second crutch under his other arm before making his way to his front door. Neither rugby nor weight training had ever been this taxing or exhausting.
Perhaps if he hadn’t had a sleepless night, the task wouldn’t have been so strenuous. But James had spent hours working out what he’d done or said that had insulted Liv so intolerably. How had he managed to put that horrified look on her face?
He’d also spent hours working out where she’d gone. Ava hadn’t known, and dialing Liv’s number resulted in her mobile ringing next to her bed. It was only when the sun rose and James had looked out the window and seen her car parked down the road that he’d figured it out.
He unclenched his teeth
, releasing the key he’d been forced to carry there. His pants had no pockets, and he’d needed both hands to get upstairs. Under normal circumstances, he’d have waited another week or so to attempt the mammoth climb, but James needed to get to Liv.
It felt weird being back in his flat after all this time, knowing it was so close, yet so inaccessible. Both the lounge room and kitchen were in pristine condition, tidier than he’d ever kept them, but the air was cold and slightly musty.
They were both empty.
He made his way to the bedroom, his crutches clacking across the wooden floorboards. There she sat, in his bed, pillows piled behind her back, staring stoically out the window. She must have known he was here—he’d made enough noise—but she didn’t acknowledge his presence.
Confounded, James stared at her, unsure what to say or how to make things better. “You okay, pretty one?”
She didn’t answer.
“Quite a hiding place you found.” As far away from him as she could physically get.
Liv glowered at the window. A muscle worked in her cheek.
“I know I upset you, and I’m sorry for that.” He hated that he’d caused her distress of any kind.
Liv turned to him, shooting her death glare across the room. Weeks ago, when he’d walked in on her naked, there’d been the slightest hint of amusement behind the glare. Now there was only anger and hurt.
He limped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
Liv folded her arms across her chest, creating a barrier between them. She returned her gaze to the window.
“Liv.”
No response.
“Olivia,” he said more forcefully.
She turned, but her reluctance was clear in her stiff shoulders and the resentment in her eyes.
“Tell me what I did. How I hurt you.”
Silence.
An angry Liv he could deal with. An aroused Liv he knew how to touch. When it came to chatty Liv, he was confident he had some pretty good comebacks. But hurt, upset Liv? He was stumped. “Christ, help me out here. Give me a hint. One minute we’re talking about work and your future, and the next you’re storming out the room, berating me for making you my new charity case.” It made no sense. “Tell me where I went wrong so I can make it better.”
“You humiliated me.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“How?”
“By pitying me. By classifying me as one of your needy causes.”
How had she misunderstood his intentions so completely? “There are many things I feel for you. Pity is not one of them.”
“No? Then how did you react when I told you about Marion and her gambling problems?”
He’d been upset for her. “I was shocked.”
“Yeah, about her actions. But you felt sorry for me.”
“I felt bad for you.” Anyone would have. “She kicked you in the teeth, leaving you with nothing.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“I said I felt bad for you,” he corrected. “I didn’t say I pitied you.”
“Semantics.”
“Bullshit. I put myself in your shoes and knew that if it had happened to me, I’d feel bad. Really fucking bad. It’s called empathy. Not pity.”
“Well then, you have an amazing ability to take your empathy to new heights.”
He scrubbed a hand over his hair-roughened cheeks. Shaving hadn’t been a top priority this morning. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you can’t just empathize. You have to rescue as well.”
That explained nothing. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“It’s in your nature to save the world, James. You see someone in need and you jump in to help. You find a worthy cause and you raise money for it. Someone has a problem, you immediately seek a solution.”
He gawked at her. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“No. Usually it’s a positive thing. A really positive thing—when someone needs your help. But when they don’t, when they need to find their own solutions, it’s embarrassing and disempowering and leaves the person feeling more useless than ever.”
“Make it personal, Liv. Tell me how I…disempowered you.”
“You…” She pointed at him. “You found a solution to my problem. You’re establishing a whole new division of your business so I won’t have to worry about finding work. Newsflash, James. It’s my problem and my life. I need to worry about it. I need to find a solution. Not you.”
“For fuck’s sake, Liv. You’re going through hell, and it upsets me. I found a solution that would work for both of us. Me and you.” Was that a crime?
“Exactly. You found a solution. But you fighting my battles isn’t helpful. Solving my problems isn’t what I need from you.”
What the…? “So what do you need from me?”
“Nothing. That’s the point. I don’t need your help, I don’t need your attention and I don’t need you interfering in my life. Most of all, I don’t need you rescuing me.”
Back to this? “I never rescued you.”
“Oh, you did. Right from the beginning of our…of whatever is happening between us. It all changed the minute you realized something was wrong. You didn’t know what it was yet, but damn, you homed in on it. From that moment on, you were all over me, trying to help, trying to make it better, trying to save me. ”
James would have laughed if he hadn’t been so shocked. “You think my interest in you was inspired by your problems at Beautiful Homes?”
“Do the math. The dates coincide perfectly.”
That was, quite possibly, the stupidest argument he’d ever heard. Or the most illogical. “I call bullshit.”
Liv’s face pinched in anger. “You don’t get to call bullshit on the truth.”
“Your perception of the truth. Not mine.”
“Hmmph.”
Why was it that even when she was furious and irrational, Olivia was still damn sexy? Brain-scramblingly sexy. Why did he want to throw her on her back and bury himself as deep inside her as he could get—as much as he wanted to tear his hair out in frustration? “Cast your mind back a month. The dates also coincide with my walking into your room and finding you naked.”
Her eyes narrowed and flickered from side to side. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He had to spell it out? Seriously, he’d never understand the way a woman’s mind worked. “You were naked!”
Liv pursed her lips, but didn’t respond.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” James lost patience. “I didn’t want to save you that night. I wanted to fuck you. Big difference.”
Her nostrils flared. “Okay.” She nodded. “I concede on that point. But what about the rest of it? Your obsessive need to feed me. And make me sleep. And take care of me. And feed me some more. It’s not normal.”
He called bullshit on that too. “You were making yourself ill. Sue me for caring.”
“It’s not the caring that bothers me. It’s the taking care of me. Taking care of everything for me.”
“I fucked you and I fed you.” And fell in love with you. “Is that so terrible?” He shoved his hand through his hair. “It’s nothing compared to what you’ve done for me. If you think I did what I did because I pitied you, I can only conclude you view me as the most pathetic case in history.”
She looked genuinely baffled. “Huh?”
“Oh, come on. I broke my leg. I’m useless. I can’t live on my own.” Or even climb the stairs to his own home. If that wasn’t disempowering, then fuck knew what was. “I have to rely on the…sympathy of friends to house me. And feed me. And look after me.”
“You can’t compare the two. They’re totally different.”
“Really? How?”
“Your break has caused a temporary, physical limitation. Soon as the leg is healed, you’ll be fine. You’ll look after yourself again.”
“Your situation is temporary too. Soon as you find work again, you’ll be fine.”
“Exa
ctly. So why are you trying to save me?”
Exasperated, James threw his hands in the air. “I don’t get it.” His voice rose. “I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong or how my helping you in a time of need is any different to your helping me.”
Her eyes flashed and color rose in her cheeks. “You’re opening up a new division of your company. You’re assuming I don’t have the balls or the ability to open my own company, so you’re doing it…for me!”
“For you?” James threw his head back and laughed, but the sound held no humor. There was nothing funny about her accusation. “You give me way too much credit.”
The truth hurt like a slap across the face. As did the humiliation. His humiliation, not hers. “I’m not doing it for you.” Shame made him bow his head. “I’m doing it for me. The fact that it could help you is just an…added benefit.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
James grabbed the crutches and jumped—one-legged—off the bed. Then he had to wait for the resultant pain to subside as he stood there, his arms holding him up, his injured shin hanging limp, heavy and useless from his knee.
“You think you’re the charity case in all of this? Jesus, woman, you’ve got it all mixed up.” The embarrassment that she’d exuded now radiated from deep inside of him. “It’s me who’s the fuck-up here. My life that’s become a pitiful waste. Not yours.”
He raised his gaze to find her gaping at him.
“Even when my leg heals, my life as I know it is over. I knew it was coming, knew I’d have to deal with it soon enough, but this—” he gestured to his boot, “—happened, and everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve lived for, is just…finished. Over.”
Confusion was written all over her face. “What are you talking about?”
“Rugby.” The one word said it all, explained everything.
“I still don’t understand.”
“It’s over, Liv. My lifelong love affair with the game is finished. This break ensures I’ll never play again.”
“That’s ridiculous. Your injury will heal, and you can play again.” She furrowed her brow. “Maybe not this season, but next year. Come February, you’ll be good as new.”
