The Rules of Engagement

by Ally Blake

  The sight of him all soaped up and tanned, his beautifully sculpted muscles shining and wet, was almost enough to have her turn on her heel, put the ring back and pretend she’d never found it. Pretend everything was peachy.

  Dax washed soap from his eyes and saw her standing there. He grinned a wolfish grin. Then his eyes found the ring-box teetering on her shaking upturned palm and the smile slowly faded away.

  ‘I was looking for a whisk,’ she said, her voice rich with accusation. She jabbed the velvet box at him as if it were evidence of a war crime and not something she had, on occasion, gone weak at the knees for.

  Dax turned off the jets, pulled a large folded chocolate-brown towel from the rack above his head, and wrapped it around himself as he stepped from the shower. He said, ‘The whisks are in the canister on the bench.’

  ‘Dax—’

  ‘It’s for you by the way,’ he said, motioning to the velvet box with a tilt of his chin.

  Her mouth snapped shut and she closed her eyes, her whole world turning blood red. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and tried again. ‘Dax—’

  ‘Would you care to open it?’ he asked. Watching her carefully.

  No, she didn’t want to open it! Because this time it didn’t feel as if she were on the crest of some fantastical romantic wave. This time she didn’t feel that all-consuming rush of adrenalin.

  This time she knew it was the beginning of the end.

  No more late-night phone calls that sent her wild. No more lunch-hour strawberries and champagne in gorgeous hotel suites. No more Dax.

  Suddenly she struggled to breathe. The mist in the bathroom wasn’t helping, and neither was the fact that Dax was half naked, his presence and scent and heat filling every inch of the small room.

  She turned on her heel and moved to the relative vastness of the bedroom. The bedding was a shambled mess. The imprint of her head was still on his spare feather pillow. Had they really made love for the last time?

  She felt Dax follow. His singular scent curling around her, making her body ache for him, for what she’d lost. For what he’d thrown away!

  Unless...

  This had never been like before. They’d made up the rules as they went along. Maybe they could still.

  She spun around, words clogging her throat at the sight of him running a small towel through his dark hair, muscles working in his arms, his stomach. A cruel reminder of all that was fast slipping away.

  Realising the ring box was cutting into her tightly clenched palm, she uncurled her clawed fingers and slowly put it on the bed. Dax’s eyes followed, narrowed.

  ‘We have a good thing going, don’t you think?’ she asked, drawing his attention back to her.

  ‘Clearly.’ His intelligent eyes swept over her clenching and unclenching fingers, her feet that couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Then why change things?’

  ‘Because things change.’

  ‘But we promised we’d be casual. We promised no strings.’

  His eyes connected with hers. ‘That’s what people say in order to protect themselves from the possibility their date is a stalker. Or lives in a house full of teddy bears. Or is bad in bed. I think it’s safe to say we both lucked out.’

  ‘Dax—’ she began, but he cut her off.

  ‘Caitlyn, I never wanted strings with anyone else.’

  And her mouth snapped shut.

  Then he walked to her, water sliding down his neck creating shiny rivulets around the muscles of his chest. She felt so faint from the mix of desire and panic she had to breathe through her mouth.

  He wrapped his hands around the tops of her arms. His touch calmed her, warmed her, and damped down the worst of the panic. And, like metal to a magnet, her eyes slid back to his.

  ‘Caitlyn, sweetheart,’ he said, his voice deep and tempting, ‘I’ve spent my whole life not letting people get close to me, not trusting those who’ve tried. Until one night a stranger felt me up on a dance floor and everything changed. You, my gorgeous girl, dragged me kicking and screaming out of my cave that night, and every night since, and you brought me into the light. Your light. Your candour, and sweetness, and joy, and strength. Your willingness to give anyone a chance to know the real you despite knowing full well how it feels not to have that warmth returned.’

  He swept a hand over her hair, then the other, before cradling her face between his hands until there was nothing between them but breath. ‘I’m in love with you, Caitlyn.’

  Caitlyn’s breath bled from her lungs in an intoxicating rush as her Achilles’ heel stretched and preened like an overindulged cat.

  Dax. Dax Bainbridge. Big, beautiful, invulnerable Dax Bainbridge was in love with her! She felt as if she were on the brink of everything she’d ever wanted. All she had to do was reach out and grab it.

  But her hand wouldn’t budge. It simply refused to move as emotion clogged her throat, and beat achingly against her ribs, and crackled painfully over her skin.

  And she knew why.

  It didn’t matter how he thought he felt because he didn’t know what he was asking of her. He didn’t know her track record with love. With commitment. And it was all her fault because she’d been remiss in telling him.

  Why hadn’t she told him? Because she’d thought he wouldn’t love her if he knew? Or because she knew her experiment was doomed from the start? Because deep down she knew the reason she’d chased love with such fearlessness, such unabashed vigour, was because she’d known she simply didn’t have it in her. to catch it.

  She felt things, for sure. But love? No. Nope. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She’d built up such a resistance to the real deal she’d finally become immune.

  And if the promise of Dax Bainbridge wasn’t enough for her to change her ways, no man was. She was destined to be alone, and at twenty-eight, man, was that a hard truth to discover.

  A sense of cool overcame her, starting in her toes and ending at the points where Dax’s warm hands held her. She could see him, feel him, but suddenly it was as though she were looking at him from the wrong side of the looking glass.

  Dax had come to love her. She was a lost cause. It was only fair he knew it.

  ‘Dax,’ she said, her voice now unwavering. She waited in utter stillness until she had his full attention.

  ‘Yes, Caitlyn.’

  She had to swallow, twice, before saying, ‘You see, the thing is...’ Here goes. ‘I’ve been engaged before.’

  He became so quiet. So still. All that tightly leashed power that usually simmered just beneath the surface now coiled deep down inside him like, like the energy at the centre of the earth.

  ‘Engaged,’ he repeated, the word sounding heavy on his tongue.

  ‘To be married. To another man,’ she said, not wanting to leave him in any doubt.

  ‘When?’ he asked, his jaw clenched.

  Oh, God. This was going to be awful. Far worse than it had been with the others. The pain tying her gut in knots was nearly unbearable. Because he meant more to her? Probably. Not that it mattered a lick.

  ‘Five years ago.’

  Dax’s nostrils flared and his dark eyes swept from one of hers to the other. She knew he was shocked yet trying to be understanding. And she wasn’t even halfway through her confession.

  Her heart rate tripled, her skin throbbed, then on a half-choke she said, ‘And two years ago.’

  ‘Twice,’ he said, his forehead creasing, his breaths coming harder. ‘You’ve been engaged twice before?’

  She nodded. Then shook her head. Her body came over all numb, as it attempted to protect itself from the horror it knew was coming.

  ‘Caitlyn?’ he said, his voice dark.

  ‘Three times,’ she croaked, feeling like such a fool as she admitted as much out loud. Then, as if she were about to tear a Band-Aid off as fast as she possibly could, she scrunched her eyes shut and blurted, ‘I broke up with my last fiancé George earlier this year.’

  When she opened her eyes
it was to find all the light gone from his. And whether it was putting a name to one of the men she’d dumped, or the timeline, she’d never know. But Dax’s hands finally dropped away, and so suddenly she stumbled, catching a hold of the edge of his bed with the backs of her knees before she fell.

  The man who’d as yet never let her fall didn’t even notice.

  * * *

  Dax blinked. And again. Yet still he felt as though he wasn’t seeing straight.

  One moment he’d been staring down the barrel of the kind of future he’d never imagined he’d have for himself. And the next...? Boom!

  He breathed deep through his nose as the reverberations shook through him. Everything he was feeling, everything that was happening, was all new territory for him so he had to make sure he was completely apprised of the situation at hand before proceeding.

  Caitlyn had been engaged. Three times before. Okay. That was a bombshell, to be sure. The idea of any other man coming with five feet of her made every muscle clench ’til it burned. But worthy of the hot sickness currently eating at his insides?

  His eyes swung to Caitlyn’s, glinting slowly but surely back into focus to find her sitting primly on the edge of his bed, so still, so cool, she appeared practically catatonic. But her eyes... They were wide, panicky, and sorry.

  And then he knew. As if a fist had clamped around his heart and squeezed ’til he saw the truth, he knew what his gut was trying to tell him.

  It was no accident that this was news to him. She’d kept it from him on purpose.

  Caitlyn had lied to him.

  And he’d never even seen it coming.

  He looked away, the bitterness boiling in his gut hitting his veins, blistering beneath his skin until his whole body felt hot, prickled with sweat.

  The shock of his parents’ self-serving lies had played havoc with his place in the world, with his family’s name. He’d grown from a boy to a man with the hard work he’d put into piecing those things back together until they were stronger than ever before.

  But this? This was personal.

  That Caitlyn had hidden such a large part of her make-up from him and got away with it struck at the very foundation of the man he’d built himself to be.

  That early lesson had taught him never to trust first impressions. To never take people at face value. To believe everyone had an agenda. Yet, for her, he’d softened, swayed, let himself believe maybe, just maybe, she was different. In the end she was no better than any of them, choosing what to reveal about herself, and what to conceal according to how it would best benefit her. And he, a grown man of thirty-six, with an MBA and a multimillion-dollar company under his reins, had just been hauled back to square one.

  Just like that the heat sizzling through his veins dissipated, and with it came a hardening cool. This time he’d learned his hardest lesson, not as a boy, but as a man. And this time he’d damn well never forget it.

  He glanced up to find her face an illustration in unhappiness as she looked into his eyes. Pain flickered to life deep down inside him but he slapped it down so fast it shrivelled up, whimpering in a dark cold corner.

  He didn’t care. Not any more. Not ever again. Fortified by that truth, he looked her dead in the eye. ‘Deep down I think I knew it all along.’

  ‘What?’ Caitlyn asked on a sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath the whole time.

  ‘I knew you were too good to be true.’

  To her credit she didn’t even blink. Didn’t look away. It was almost as if she took his words as punishment deserved. ‘I’m sorry you think that. But to be fair I never pretended I was good.’

  ‘No. You just pretended to be honest.’

  This time she flinched as though he’d slapped her, and he felt it ricochet with an ache as if he’d been kicked in the groin. He gritted his teeth.

  ‘I never pretended to be good,’ she said, her chin tilting a fraction, ‘and I certainly never pretended to be perfect. I’m a woman with a past who has made mistakes and I’m sure I’ll continue to do so. And you’re no walk in the park yourself, you know.’

  ‘I never lied.’

  Life sparked into her eyes, bright and burning. Her nostrils flared, as though she were ready for a fight, but she swallowed her next breath, then slowly licked her lips before saying, ‘Can you honestly say that every second we were together you told the absolute truth?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What a load of rot!’ Fidgeting now, she turned so that her knee angled towards his, bare beneath his oversized T-shirt that barely covered her thighs, and shook her head. Her hair fell over her shoulders in great rumpled waves. Dax felt himself getting aroused. He slapped it down.

  ‘Everyone lies,’ she insisted, ‘either by omission, or timing, or simply not to hurt someone else’s feelings.’

  ‘Is that why you held off on telling me about your plethora of failed engagements—so as to not hurt my feelings?’ His eyebrow rose slowly as if to say, Me? Hurt? Ha! He wondered if she believed it.

  It certainly caused a reaction. She bounced off the bed as if the spark in her eyes had swept through her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No. Maybe I didn’t want my feelings hurt. I don’t know. But now you do know.’

  She threw her arms out in surrender, as if that was all she had.

  Well, he’d hit the end of his rope too. ‘Now I know,’ he said. ‘I know I never really knew you at all.’

  She half laughed, half sobbed. ‘Stick you and my mother in a room together and you can surely find a million reasons why I shouldn’t win person of the year. But give me a break. I’m just trying to get by in the world using the limited emotional resources I’ve been dealt. Just like everyone else. Just like you.’

  He’d had enough. He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want a discussion. Didn’t want a consensus. Fool him once, shame on her. Fool him twice and he’d never be able to look himself in the eye again.

  He stood, found a pullover and jeans on top of the leather couch in the corner of his bedroom and pulled them over his still-damp body.

  ‘Dax, wait. Don’t do this. Talk to me, please. Ask me anything. I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth.’

  Anything? He knew he should leave but there was one last anvil hanging over his head. He’d been ignoring it until that moment, pressing it to the back of his head since this whole conversation had begun. He’d told her he loved her and she’d never said it back.

  He turned to her and, unable to keep the raw edge from his voice, said, ‘Tell me how you feel about me.’

  Her honey-brown eyes pleaded with him not to go there, to let her off the hook. But he was done prevaricating. ‘I want you to say it,’ he demanded.

  She swallowed, hard. Her eyes blinking fast, her chest rising and falling as she gulped in great difficult breaths. She took a step his way and the familiar scent of her hair slid beneath his defences, the gleam in her beautiful eyes hooked him through the middle.

  Tell me!

  ‘I want you, Dax. You know I do,’ she said, and for a brief blinding moment he believed her. Until her face slowly lost all colour and she added, ‘I just can’t promise to want you for ever.’

  * * *

  Caitlyn stared at the ring box in her hand. Somehow she’d ended up with it again when she was sitting on the bed. The damn things gravitated towards her like homing pigeons.

  She held it out to him, her hand shaking as if it weighed a tonne. Dax stared at it as if it were a bomb with a lit fuse, before his eyes swept back to hers, dark, cold, empty.

  And in that moment she knew there was no fixing things. No going back to the way they were. No more making up the rules as they went along.

  She waited for the usual relief to flow through her, but it never came. Perhaps it was all too raw. Too sudden. Too soon. Far too soon...

  ‘Dax—’ she choked, tears clogging her eyes, her throat.

  But he didn’t want to hear it. He stormed from his bedroom, grabbed his keys from where they’d landed
when he’d thrown them in haste the night before, then took a dozen long strides to his front door.

  Caitlyn followed on numb feet. In fact her whole body felt numb. As if it were made of ice. Dax stopped. His body practically vibrating with the effort. When he turned his hazel eyes were as dark as coal. ‘I should thank you.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Not waiting until further down the track before proving me right.’ He dropped his head. Shook it once. Then said, ‘We’re done, Caitlyn. I’ll be back in an hour. When I get back I want you gone.’

  And with that he left.

  Out of his apartment.

  Out of her life.

  And while she tried to tell herself that she’d done the right thing, that she’d found the will power to do the right thing at the right moment, she didn’t feel changed, or grown-up, or vindicated for having broken the patterns of a lifetime.

  She felt empty. Alone. Lost. As if the implosion of the relationship were like a supernova, obliterating her emotions until they were now nothing more than specs of space dust floating in a vacuum.

  She wondered if how she was feeling right now was anything near how the others had felt when she’d walked away. If so, she deserved it. Every damn bit.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LAUREN stood in the doorway of Dax’s office, arms crossed, not looking happy about something. For once Dax ignored her. He simply didn’t have time to care. Feeling a need to be categorically certain, he’d asked to see the latest string of benefaction proposals before allowing them to go through, which had meant working day and night.

  She sighed.

  ‘Not now, Lauren,’ he growled, frowning at the PDF that was blurring before his exhausted eyes.

  ‘Yes, now,’ Lauren said.

  Dax lifted his eyes and glared at her.

  She glared right on back. ‘I was in the IT lab looking for Rob, when I overheard a couple of the accountancy girls outside the door. One of them was near tears because you’d gone rank at her for something she hadn’t even done. What the hell’s going on with you?’

  He set his teeth and stared past his sister to an unframed picture hanging in his assistant’s office. It was some rubbish modern art thing that was worth a mint. One of the first investments he’d made while dragging the foundation out of bankruptcy with his bare teeth. As investments went it had been smart. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the sight of it.