Playing by the Rules (3 page)

‘Who? Who are you going to find who fits all those criteria? Between now and tonight?’

Jo pursed her lips and tapped one long finger against her cheek, in pretend deliberation.

‘Aha! I have it! The perfect man! Good job, nice manners, not bad-looking, if I do say so myself. He owns a dinner suit and there is nothing he loves more than playing a part. When he was younger he was in so many amateur theatrical companies that his mother used to despair of him graduating from high school. Best of all, I’m sure he’d be delighted to go out with you.’

Kate was mystified. Offhand, she couldn’t think of any man in Melbourne who would even remember her, let alone be lining up to take her to her high school reunion. Then an awful suspicion struck her.

‘Jo – you didn’t!’

Jo was the image of innocence.

‘Didn’t what?’

‘Josephine Juliet Marchant, tell me you have not set me up with your brother!’

‘No, I haven’t —’

‘Thank goodness!’

‘But I’m going to.’

‘But Jo, after this morning . . .’ Kate closed her eyes to try to blot out the events of the morning. It didn’t work. Instead, disconcertingly, she found that shutting her eyes brought vividly to mind that Josh had smelled fantastic. At the time, she had been too embarrassed to really register it, but now, suddenly, his fragrance washed over her memory like a wave. A warm, spicy sort of smell, with an undertone of man that made her catch her breath.

She hurriedly opened her eyes. The sensation disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving only the lingering embarrassment. As much to herself as to Jo, she moaned, ‘Oh, what must he think of me?’

Jo hid her mouth with her hand, but not fast enough.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No,’ Jo replied through her hand, unconvincingly.

‘You are so!’

Jo abandoned her pretence and giggled openly.

‘I’m sorry, hon, but if only you could see your face!’

‘It was embarrassing!’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. I know my brother is a tease, but I don’t think he is
quite
vain enough to think you flung yourself at him deliberately. I think he liked it, though . . .’

Kate’s ears, which had been burning with a mixture of mortification and annoyance, pricked up.

‘I could tell by the way he kept looking at your door this morning while he was supposed to be talking to me. He fancies you.’ Jo smiled at her slyly, and somewhere inside her, Kate felt her teenage self swoon. ‘And since he doesn’t have plans for this evening – he only got in in the wee hours of the morning and not even Josh makes plans that fast – he’ll be the perfect escort. Tell me I’m wrong!’

Kate couldn’t, not least because a picture of grown-up Josh in a dinner suit had swum into her mind and stolen the breath she needed for talking. She shook her head to dislodge it and some sense filled the space where it had been.

‘But Jo, even if I agree to go to the reunion with him that doesn’t solve my other problem. I can’t exactly have a fling with your brother!’

Jo shrugged.

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Half of Melbourne has. He’s quite good at them. It comes from all the travelling he does for work. A girl in every port and all that.’

Jo stepped closer to Kate, her face serious.

‘Look, I promise, I wasn’t thinking of him at first, but now that I have, I think he might be just what you need. He won’t hurt you, Kate. I do think you need a fling, but the last thing you need is a rebound relationship. With Josh you’ll be safe. He knows what’s going on with you.’

Kate flinched. ‘Because you told him, I suppose?’

‘Yes, I told him. I had to explain what you were doing here! I didn’t give him any details, don’t worry. But he knows you’ve just broken up. So he won’t ask you for anything you’re not ready to give. But he will show you a good time.’ Her face broke into a grin. ‘And
I
will take pictures that you can plaster all over Facebook so that your deadbeat ex and all the guys at work know exactly how heartbroken you
aren’t
. What do you say?’

Kate felt the way she had on the edge of the platform, the time that Jo had convinced her to go bungee jumping. As though something that had started out as a sensible, Kate-style plan was about to veer out of control. But this was no time for nerves. She had three weeks away from her normal life. If she was ever going to have a fling, shake off her mousy persona and grow some mojo, this was the time. She was never going to have a better opportunity. Or, she had to admit, a more attractive one. She took a deep breath.

‘I’m in!’ she said, with considerably more certainty than she felt. She paused, then grinned at her friend.

‘But if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll get
you
to open the door!’

As luck would have it, when the doorbell rang Jo was still in the bathroom fiddling with her hair. She stuck her head around the door and smiled wickedly at Kate. ‘Do you think you can manage to open the door without fainting this time, Kate?’

‘I did not . . .’ Kate began indignantly, then stopped as she noticed Jo making reeling-in motions with her hands.

‘Still biting then, Kate? Good to see some things never change.’

‘Jo Marchant, has anyone ever told you that you are a pain?’

‘Frequently,’ Jo replied, serenely. ‘I take it that means you
can
open the door, then?’

‘Of course I can!’

‘Good. I’ll get on, then, shall I?’ said Jo, disappearing regally back into the bathroom.

‘Of course I can,’ Kate repeated to herself, as she moved down the hallway, which suddenly seemed three times as long as it did normally. It wasn’t as though this was a real date, after all. It was her friend’s brother doing her a favour. Showing her a good time so that she could go back to work having had a ‘fling’. Giving her some photos to flash around to show how much she didn’t care about Alain. That’s all.

So why were there butterflies dancing a tarantella underneath her breastbone?

The doorbell pealed again, temporarily disturbing the butterflies. Kate told herself to stop being stupid and opened the door.

She was greeted by an enormous bunch of flowers with legs. At least, that’s what it looked like. Kate felt the beginnings of a blush creep into her face and the butterflies turned their fluttering up a notch. Then a man’s face popped around the edge of the flowers and smiled at her.

It wasn’t Josh.

‘Hello,’ said the face, cheerfully. ‘You must be Kate. I’m Matt.’

Kate was none the wiser.

‘Jo’s date,’ he said, more tentatively. ‘I do have the right place, don’t I? The door was open downstairs, so I came up.’

The penny dropped and Kate felt the blush turn into the standard-issue, hideous embarrassment variety. Of course Jo had a date. Kate had just been too busy stressing about her own non-date to give it any thought. She pulled herself together and smiled at the stranger called Matt.

‘Yes, you do have the right place! People are always leaving that door open. Honestly, I don’t know why they bother with a security system at all.’ Kate realised she was babbling and forced herself to be more to the point. ‘Would you like to come in? That is, if you can get through the door with that lot!’

She kept her tone light and this time, having checked in advance for cats, she managed to open the door without incident. But inwardly, she was fighting a sense of loss. There was no-one else behind the flowers. Even a quick look into the hall outside yielded no trace of Josh. Perhaps he had managed to make plans after all.

For no good reason she could think of, Kate found she had a dull ache where a second ago the butterflies had been. What on earth was the matter with her? She put her hand to her forehead, wondering if perhaps she was coming down with the flu. Then Matt spoke again, forcing her attention away from the bizarre way her body was behaving.

‘Is Jo ready? I’m a bit early . . .’

Early! Of course! Kate’s mood lightened as if by magic. If Matt was early, then Josh was still on his way. Probably, anyway. Kate still could not justify to herself why it should matter so much, but the butterflies, some of whom had miraculously come back to life, were apparently immune to reason.

Kate told herself it was because she wanted to get on with her plan and favoured Matt, who was waiting patiently for an answer, with her most dazzling smile.

‘No, she’s not quite ready yet. Please, go through and sit down. I’m sure she’ll be ready in a minute.’

Matt smiled back – he seemed a very smiley man – and pushed off in the direction she’d indicated. Left alone, Kate shook her head. Poor Matt. The flowers were long-stemmed red roses. An expensive but misguided choice. Jo didn’t like roses, especially red ones. It was an odd prejudice, but it was something to do with a bad break-up and it was unshakeable. It had started around the same time as Jo’s ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out-of my-life’ policy with men, and Kate rather suspected that she had just witnessed Matt’s first strike.

Kate shrugged. Oh well. She, personally, loved red roses and these were beautiful ones. It had been a long time since . . .

NO
! She caught the thought and stopped it in its tracks. She would
NOT
think about him. Alain was never going to give her flowers again. And that was fine. It wasn’t as though he’d given her flowers very often anyway. She needed to remember that. She was not going to get sentimental over something that had never been.

After all, romance was lovely, but it wasn’t at the top of her list of must-haves in a man. It was nice, but there were more important things. Stability. Reliability. Permanence. All the things she’d thought she had with Alain. Until she didn’t. How had she got it so wrong?

She closed her eyes and willed the thoughts away. This lament was familiar. It had been running around in her head and heart for days and it needed to stop.

But this time there was something else as well. Inside her mind, she again pictured the magnificent roses and behind them a man. Only this time, it wasn’t Matt, but Josh, asking her when romance had stopped being important.

With a start, her eyes flew open. When had he taken up residence in her head? And where did he get off asking questions like that?

Of course, it wasn’t actually Josh who’d asked the question. It was something inside her, which her imagination had chosen to dress up as Josh, apparently to make her even more confused than she already was.

Her head started to hurt. And spin, just a little. She closed her eyes again and reached for Jo’s hallstand to regain her equilibrium. But instead of the sturdy wood she was expecting, her grasping hand met a tall golf umbrella that had seen better decades. And instead of support, it rewarded her blind clutching with a broken rib right in the soft pad of her forefinger.

It wasn’t what she’d been looking for – it drew blood and hurt like hell – but she couldn’t help thinking, even as she yelped, that this sort of pain was much easier to deal with. She swore softly and popped her finger into her mouth, grateful for the distraction.

‘Moving on’ had seemed so easy when she was under the influence of Jo’s energy. But it was going to be hard if she couldn’t even look at a bunch of roses without jumping on an emotional merry-go-round.

She was still staring at the floor, thinking and sucking on her finger, when a soft, sharp intake of breath made her aware that someone was standing in the doorway. Somehow, she didn’t need to look to know that, this time, it was not a stranger.

The amazingly resilient butterflies, which had seemed well and truly dead, resurrected themselves
again
and Kate found herself completely unable to make sense of what she had been thinking. It was something about roses . . . and merry-go-rounds . . . and . . . and . . . she gave up.

Slowly, she raised her head. First into view was a pair of gleaming black shoes. Patent leather men’s dress shoes; the sort not found in the local K-Mart. Or indeed the local mall, unless it was a very upmarket one.

Sliding past them, her gaze was led inexorably to immaculate, slim-cut trousers, so sharply creased as to be dangerous and so black that they appeared to absorb all the available light. Would that explain why she couldn’t drag her eyes away from them? Or was that down to the drape of the fine wool, perfectly cut to tantalisingly skim all but the curve where his thigh muscles touched the fabric?

Kate felt a sudden, strong, almost overwhelming desire to see how the fabric handled his behind. The nicely-brought-up part of Kate was shocked. The butterflies, on the other hand, seemed to think it was a great idea. In fact, they were all for her spinning him round and doing some handling herself.

She quickly moved her eyes upwards, but if she thought she was moving out of danger, she was mistaken. She couldn’t help noticing the way the jacket hugged his slim hips as though it had grown on him. And the way it hung from his broad shoulders and across the crisp white of his shirt made her want to run her hand down the front of it, to see if it could possibly feel as good as it looked.

With the part of her brain that was still capable of thought, Kate reflected that there was a downside to being an academic. The men she worked with wouldn’t know that clothes like these existed, let alone think they were worth paying for. Not many of them would have the body to show them off to such advantage, either.

Then her green eyes met his brown ones and she stopped thinking altogether. Now it was her turn to gasp. While she’d been looking at him, he had apparently been returning the scrutiny – and liking what he saw. He looked as if he would quite like to eat her. And from the way the butterflies were reacting to that thought, Kate suspected she wouldn’t at all mind being eaten.

Neither of them moved until, eventually, Josh let out the breath he had, apparently, been holding and smiled at her.

‘You look amazing.’

It wasn’t many words, but the way he said it and his smile – which had more than a touch of the predator in it – made Kate believe it. In his eyes, she saw herself as she never had before. Glamorous. Sexy. A femme fatale. Exactly the image she wanted to take back to work with her.

But wasn’t it supposed to make her feel powerful and confident? So why did she feel shaken, stirred and not a little dizzy? Why was she rocking on her high heels and seriously considering grabbing the umbrella again, in spite of its finger-mauling ways? What was happening to her?

She needed to escape – from the dizziness, from the butterflies and from this man who had such a weird effect on her. It might not be worthy of brave new Kate, but if this was the fight-or-flight response, she was choosing flight. Muttering something about checking on Jo, she gestured in the direction of the lounge and just about ran to the bathroom.

Jo was still not quite finished. Kate was flabbergasted. It must have been only a few minutes since she met Matt at the door. It felt like a lifetime. Kate shook her head, bewildered. She felt as though she’d been through a washing machine, and they hadn’t even got out the door yet. At this rate, it could be a long night.

Thank God for Jo. At least she was reassuringly familiar.

‘Are you ready? Matt and Josh are here.’

Kate had been trying for bright and breezy but she knew she’d failed when Jo shot her a suspicious look. She forced herself to smile back, more or less normally and, to her relief, Jo let it pass.

‘Yes, I am ready now,’ she said, giving her hair one last spritz. ‘Shall we go?’

Kate managed to sound reasonably perky as she said, ‘Yes! Let’s!’

But inside she couldn’t help wondering what she was getting herself into.