Man Trouble!

by Fox, Natalie

  He was steeped in rigid thinking. No room for change, for compromise, wanting everything just as it should be. He had a point, though, she conceded, gazing around the spacious area, seeing it from his viewpoint. It did seem a shame to modernise an old apartment and drag it screaming into the twentieth century. Perhaps if the agency was doing well by the time Mel had finished with it she’d bring it back to something more traditional. If she had any will left.

  ‘Do you still have the apartment at Regent’s Park?’ she asked, aware that she was making small talk. Since he hadn’t answered her question about where he’d like to eat, she set the table and put the foil dishes of Thai food on a table mat in the centre so they could help themselves. She had loved his sumptuous apartment with its high ceilings, cornices and wide doorways. It had been elegant and had reflected his character but somehow she couldn’t visualise the arty Nadia flitting round in it with her jewels jangling.

  ‘I took the lease on the whole property,’ he told her. ‘Planning for the future.’

  Planning a family life with Nadia. The thought churned horribly inside her. She might have been a part of that future if…if Mel Biaggio hadn’t been so single-minded, old-fashioned, out of order and, well, just Mel Biaggio.

  ‘Nice,’ she murmured.

  ‘I remember nice,’ he said reflectively as he settled the papers between them on the table. ‘You always used to mutter it when you were bored or uninterested.’

  She couldn’t ever remember a time when she’d been bored and uninterested with him. Perhaps all her memories were rose-tinted, not how it had been at all. It was an interesting thought. ‘I still do,’ she told him lightly. ‘Your future with Nadia doesn’t interest me, Mel.’ It hurt, though, she omitted to say.

  Funny, I don’t recall mentioning Nadia.’

  Jade sat down at the table and started wrestling with the wine bottle. ‘Nadia is your future, isn’t she?’

  ‘Possibly. Here, let me open that.’

  Jade impatiently thrust the bottle across the table at him. ‘I remember possibly too; it was usually followed by something banal to change the subject. What’s wrong? Do you and Nadia have a problem with your future that you don’t want to talk about?’

  He poured them each a glass of wine. ‘Possibly you’d be the last person in the world I’d discuss my personal life with,’ he said cuttingly.

  It didn’t put Jade off. ‘You didn’t say discuss your problems with; does that mean you and Nadia are love’s sweet dream after all?’

  ‘After all what?’

  Why was she doing this, trying to winkle his personal life with Nadia out of him? It would only hurt more and yet it seemed as compulsive as opening the newspapers on the gossip columns and avidly reading who he was dating now—a sort of media masochism. But she was curious about the two of them. She knew from firsthand knowledge the depth of Mel’s passions and yet he gave so little to Nadia in the work environment. Maybe he made up for it in their private life. The thought burned through her painfully. Nadia was having all that should have been hers—his love and caring, his passion and all that was uniquely Mel.

  She sipped the wine as she watched him fork prawns in ginger from one of the cartons. He plopped several onto her plate.

  ‘Go on, then, after all what?’ he prompted.

  Jade took a hesitant breath. Did she really want to know? ‘Well, no ring for starters, evasive about a wedding date. She obviously adores you—’

  ‘She’s grateful to me,’ he interjected, plopping prawns onto his own plate now.

  ‘I expect all your women have been grateful,’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘But what I’m really getting at is your attitude towards her. You’re very fond of her, I’m sure, but-’

  ‘Where is all this leading, Jade?’

  ‘I think up the garden path. I’m beginning to wonder about your relationship. I’m beginning to wonder if there is one or if you just invented it to get back at me.’ In fact the thought had only just occurred to her.

  He smiled thinly. ‘Men don’t do such things, Jade.’

  They did but Jade wasn’t going to argue that one; she was onto more interesting things.

  ‘I’ve watched you with her and I haven’t seen much body bonding between you. When we were together you were a very hands-on lover. In fact you find it hard to keep your hands off me even now.’ Oh, very risky. She seemed hell-bent on tempting him towards some sort of precipice of admission.

  ‘I did give you an explanation but you don’t seem to have grasped it very well.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember now,’ she drawled sarcastically. ‘You were laying ghosts. Well, don’t expect to lay the real thing, Mel. Forewarned is forearmed.’

  He smiled at her coldly. ‘Your forewarned hasn’t done much for you yet, sweetheart. You still can’t resist me when I take you in my arms.’

  Jade stared at him unflinchingly though her poor heart was breaking. “That was uncalled for,’ she muttered miserably.

  ‘That was asked for.’ His eyes narrowed to dark slits of warning: Leave this alone or else…

  He was right, as nearly always. Attacking a prawn with her fingers and teeth, she imagined it was his emotions she was tearing at.

  ‘So, what are these?’ she asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin and pulling a sheaf of papers towards her. Work took precedence over emotions and that was what he was here for after all. Be strong, she advised herself.

  An hour later they had polished off the prawns, fragrant rice, chicken satay, pork in papaya and lime sauce and most of the wine. They had lost themselves in figures and projections for the following year, but suddenly Mel protested that enough was enough and pushed the paperwork aside. Still sitting at the table, he poured them a last glass of wine and smiled across the debris of the take-away. He looked more relaxed and Jade certainly felt so.

  ‘Just like old times,’ he said softly.

  Jade couldn’t look at him, just stared at the wine in her glass, a slow, hesitant smile softening the tension in her mouth. ‘I would have thought you could have come up with something more original than that,’ she breathed. She looked up then and the warmth in his eyes hurt her more than his stabbing remarks earlier.

  ‘TouchĂ. Sometimes the old ways are the only ways,’ he mused, still holding her eyes deeply and meaningfully.

  Jade wondered if she’d detected regret in the remark. She searched the depths of his glittering eyes for confirmation and thought she found it there, but with the wine how could she be sure? She was sure of one thing in her own head, though. She so very deeply regretted what they had lost. They’d had it all, had been perfect for each other four years ago. So deeply in love, wanting each other, laughing so much. Their lives together had been so full of promise and this evening, dining together again, was a mixture of pleasure and pain. How it had been and how it should be but without the promise of more now.

  ‘I’ll make coffee,’ Jade whispered, and got up from the table to break the unexpected ambience between them. Mel was dangerous in this softer mood and she couldn’t trust her own feeble emotions at the moment.

  ‘Do you live here alone?’ he asked.

  He’d left the table to sit on one of the sofas and while Jade made coffee she took furtive glances at him. It appeared that his softer mood had been dispensed with as swiftly as he had dispensed with her love at her twenty-first birthday party. He picked up magazines from a coffee-table and flicked through them, smoothed his fingers over a tall wooden carving of an Egyptian cat Nicholas had brought back from one of his exotic holidays, and zapped through all the channels on the TV with the remote, finally zapping off altogether. They were all restless movements she wasn’t familiar with.

  The Mel Biaggio of her past had only ever had eyes for her when they were together, she remembered poignantly. This Mel was fidgety, easily bored and really not very relaxed at all.

  As she carried the tray to the coffee-table she reminded herself he wasn’t here for pleasure. His pleasure
, Nadia, was waiting for him back at home, in his wonderfully elegant apartment overlooking the park. Her heart squeezed at her loss for the millionth time since he’d come back into her life. She’d hoped that aversion therapy would have worked over the weeks but it hadn’t. Her heart still twisted when he walked into a room, the sound of his voice on the phone still made her pulse race.

  ‘I never was one of the girls,’ she answered, which was a veiled reminder of how close they had been. ‘And I told you, I don’t have a lover.’ She’d told no lies and there was no reason to tell him that Nicholas was here sometimes because he wasn’t her lover. Mel wouldn’t see that, though, if she did tell him. He hadn’t wanted to understand their relationship before and now…now it was none of his business.

  ‘Have you ever had a lover since me?’

  The question came out harshly and Jade looked at him in surprise. His eyes were glittery with an anger she hadn’t expected to see and she wondered what had prompted it. Revenge again, probably; he was jibing at her, wanting to hurt her more.

  Jade forced a smile of defiance. No lovers. Not before and not since and her amorous future would probably be a non-event as well. It was the bit in the middle that Mel had occupied in her life that had ruined it all. He should know but obviously didn’t.

  ‘Some ego you have, Mel.’ She sat on the sofa across from him, leaning forward to pour the coffee. ‘I suppose you think you were so fabulous you couldn’t be topped.’

  ‘I recall you once rather naively said that, in the heat of one of our moments.’

  She checked the rush of heat to her throat at the pointed reminder. Was it possible to stem the hurt? To discuss their past affair rationally and become just friends at the end of it? But a passion like that wasn’t the sort to filter into friendship over the years. There could only be bitterness, and yet a while back there hadn’t been. She’d seen a softening in his eyes and had imagined regret in his tone, but was she just trying to wish on a star?

  ‘Yes, well, I was rather gauche and overwhelmed by your attentions at the time. I’m older and wiser now.’

  ‘Certainly not more experienced, though.’

  Jade leaned back in the sofa with her coffee, fully aware that she was being goaded now. Their work was over—at least all they were willing to put in for the night. She supposed Nadia wasn’t due home yet and he had some time to kill so he’d thought he might indulge in a bit of emotion-pricking for fun.

  ‘I don’t know, Mel,’ she said smoothly. ‘I’ve had my moments.’

  None in fact. She’d not even come close to allowing another man in her heart since him; as for allowing one in her bed…The thought coiled her insides. Mel had been too special a lover for her even to consider it.

  ‘I doubt you’ve had a single one, Jade,’ he said, as if he had just bored into her thoughts and struck at the truth. ‘You still react to me the way you used to—sort of endearingly overwhelmed,’ he went on. ‘Experience with men knocks that out of you. I’d bet my BMW that you’ve not allowed anyone in your heart since me.’

  Oh, how easy it would be to fall into the trap and hurl abuse at him, to give it all away in a flurry of temper, to show that he could hurt her with his true-to-the-bone accusations. But his tone had sounded more regretful than spiteful and because of that she smiled and kept her own tone soft.

  ‘You thought I was married the first day you came to see me, then I was a flirt for eyeing up some guy in the restaurant, and now, apparently, you think I’ve been leading the life of a nun since you. Make up your mind what you think I am, Mel—not that your opinion matters to me,’ she added, just to show she was as strong as he was.

  He drank his coffee without a word. She knew he was suddenly angry. His jawline was set, his eyes unblinking now, his fingers far too tight around the Royal Doulton coffee-cup.

  She watched him and wondered. Why was he angry with her? Why was he here goading her? Why was he in her life again? He could so easily have walked away that first day in her office. She thought for a moment. Actually he had, as if he had just come to have a morbid peek at a past lover and, satisfied he had no feelings left in that direction, walked away.

  But he’d come back and his reasons were obscure. Laying ghosts? Revenge? Or couldn’t he stop himself because she was still in his heart? He’d brought Nadia, though, as if to taunt her with his new love, so it must be revenge. But…he could have done the job more thoroughly by openly showing his love for Nadia. He didn’t though. He showed affection for Nadia, not the passion he had shown for her during their affair. It was all very confusing.

  He put his cup down and glanced at his watch. She wanted him to go yet she didn’t. She knew it was hopeless yet…yet hope had never left her; even with Nadia thrust at her she still couldn’t believe that Mel belonged to another woman, and certainly not so wholly and completely as to be planning marriage.

  ‘How did you meet Nadia?’ she asked softly. What she had really meant to say was, Yes, you’d better go! and with anger in her voice, too, but her changes of mood equalled his at times. Was he as confused as she was?

  He smiled and got to his feet. ‘I don’t think you are really interested.’

  ‘I’m curious; that’s near enough.’

  ‘Through a friend of a friend. Now, do you want me to help with the washing-up or would it be safer and wiser if I left now?’ His eyes held hers knowingly though Jade hadn’t a clue what he was hinting at. And then suddenly she did.

  She stood up and the thought thrummed through her that if things weren’t the way they were it would be so easy to…what? Ask him to stay? The idea engulfed her like a raging bush fire, nearly fazing her completely. Mel, here in her apartment, Mel in her bed…

  Quickly she gathered the coffee-cups together on the tray, her fingers all thumbs. ‘I’ve a dishwasher and I’m quite able to load it on my own,’ she told him quickly.

  ‘Good; I never was very domesticated.’

  ‘I remember,’ she muttered, crossing to the kitchen area. It hurt to remember. Would it ever not? She scrabbled with the cups and saucers, making too much noise, wanting to drown out the sound of the silly voices in her head which were telling her to make him stay.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow…Oh, no, you’re going to Paris, aren’t you?’ She’d never been to Paris. If he asked her to go with him, would she? Her sudden desperation must have shown in her eyes because he came round the breakfast bar to her.

  ‘We planned on taking a trip to Paris, remember?’

  Jade bit her lip. She looked up at him, eyes wide and brimming, her heart racing so fast it made her breathless. ‘The magic carpet,’ she whispered. How could she have forgotten? How could he think she had? He’d wanted to whisk her away to romantic Paris on a magic carpet. ‘We seem to have done a lot of remembering tonight,’ she added mournfully.

  ‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’

  The edge to his tone told her it was another stab at her.

  ‘It’s not incurable,’ she told him valiantly, lifting her chin. ‘And it doesn’t seem to have affected you very much over the years—all those women—’

  ‘Not that many, and amongst the few lucky ones I was looking for what I had lost with you, Jade.’

  She got his arrogant meaning straight away. ‘You didn’t lose anything, Mel, you threw it away. I just hope if the time comes you treat Nadia more fairly than you treated me.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You still feel the hard-done-by one, don’t you?’

  ‘I am the hard-done-by one!’ she cried in retaliation. ‘You are the one able to lead a normal life and…’ Her voice gave out. She’d nearly given it away—that she still cared so much for him she’d never be able to lead a normal life.

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him, angry and stiff with tension. ‘You think I lead a normal life, do you? You think Nadia could ever be a replacement for you? How little you know me, Jade,’ he grazed with contempt. ‘If I marry Nadia it won’t be for the reason I wanted to marry
you four years ago!’

  He thrust her away from him and spun around. She watched him gather up a weighty pile of papers and slam them into his briefcase, and yet she felt as if she really wasn’t there; her head was spinning with his words. If he married Nadia! He didn’t love her! He hadn’t exactly said the words of denial but what he had said meant the same. If he married her it wouldn’t be for love—so what would it be for, then?

  ‘Are…are you marrying her to punish me?’ she asked in a faint whisper, her fists clenched at her sides, her pulses racing so hard she felt sick. The thought was horrendous. If it was true he must hate her so much and want to hurt her so much…

  With his hand on the clasp of the briefcase he turned and looked at her, eyes enigmatic, dark and threatening. She’d used to be able to read his moods in his eyes; now he was always a mystery to her.

  ‘Would it punish you if I did?’ he asked heavily.

  Her eyes squeezed tight shut. How could he ask such a thing? It would be the very end of hope in her life. Marriage would be final to Mel. He was an honourable man; once he made a decision he wouldn’t back down on it. In love or not, he’d make the marriage work.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Your marriage, to whomsoever, would be a blessed release to me,’ she told him coldly, and meant it. Finally having Mel out of her life would be a release, like death after a long, debilitating illness.

  She went to move past him, to clear the dining table. He was too close and not about to give way. She hesitated nervously and he took her wrist again, this time not in anger. His tender touch unnerved Jade completely.

  ‘And a life sentence to me,’ he said under his breath.

  The words rang in her ears, discordant at first and then coming across so very clearly. Her eyes widened as he touched the side of her face and then cupped it in his hands and drew her to him. His kiss was confirmation of the meaning of his words and it swelled her heart with hope. He didn’t love Nadia; he couldn’t love her. She allowed the sweet pressure on her lips because it made all bad reasoning fly from her mind. He didn’t love Nadia; he still loved her and wanted her. He couldn’t help hurting her with his cruelty and hostility; he was hurting so much himself, it was instinct to lash out.