Summer Fling (10 page)

Yes, yes,
shouted
the devil.
Do it again.

Shut up!
She
berated it firmly, not missing Garth’s smug glance across at Nick, who’d
watched them with an obvious glare. What was this, testosterone city? They acted
like stags battling away with their antlers over the female in heat. Well, she
wouldn’t let any man treat her like a possession. She was through men using
her. She’d done nothing but try to please Ethan, and he’d thrown it in her
face, humiliated her, and pretty much ruined her self-respect. She wasn’t going
to let a man treat her like that again.

Without looking at Garth, she walked away,
bringing her glass of wine with her, hands shaking. Standing at the edge of the
group by the window, misery swamped her. She should have stayed at home and
watched re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in her pajamas. She would’ve left,
but she’d had too much to drink and anyway, they’d come in Stella’s car. Stella
wouldn’t be very pleased if Chloe left her stranded.

Then again, maybe she would. Her best
friend leaned close to Alex to whisper something in his ear, and he threw his
arm casually around her shoulder as he bent to listen and then laughed in response.
Stella wasn’t going to go home a single woman, by the looks of it. Alex clearly
idolized her, and Stella couldn’t believe her luck.

Chloe watched them flirt and look into each
other’s eyes, touch hands and share a glass, all the characteristic signs of
attraction. Stella wouldn’t be sharing her tent that night. Lucky cow would
have a proper bed to sleep in, and a proper man to cuddle up to under the
covers. Chloe didn’t resent her friend being happy at all, but the surge of
jealousy surprised her.

Her gaze slid across to Garth, who leaned
against the wall again. She wasn’t surprised to find him watching her. This
time he didn’t smile, but his eyes were gentle, apologetic even. She didn’t
bother to hide her resentment and hurt.

“Are you okay?”

She turned to see Nick beside her, and she
sighed inwardly. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? Only you seem—” He stopped as
his phone rung and cursed. “Sorry. Just a sec.” He flipped it open and turned
away.

She sipped her wine as she turned her gaze
to the view outside the glass windows. The moon hung low on the horizon, about
three quarters full, and dangled over the sea like a yoyo suspended from the
stars. Some people still sat outside, surrounded by citronella candles to keep
away insects, but more had come inside now, and someone had turned the music
up, ready to start partying. The crowded room was growing warm, and Chloe edged
closer to the window, uncomfortable amongst all the hot, sweaty bodies in the
humid atmosphere.

“What?”

Chloe frowned at Nick’s raised voice. He
paced up and down a few times, clenching his fists.

“When?” he asked the caller. “No! Fucking
hell.” He thumped the sofa, and several people turned to look at him. “I don’t
know. I’ll have to see if anyone can bring me. Can you see what’s missing?” He
ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. All right. I’ll let you know.” He clipped
the phone shut.

“What’s up?” someone asked.

“My house has been burgled.”

“Oh no!”

Everyone stopped talking and somebody
lowered the music. “Shit,” Alex said, leaving Stella’s side and coming over. “What
happened?”

“I don’t know.” Nick ran his hand through
his hair again, leaving it more rumpled and haphazard than normal. “The burglar
alarm’s gone off. A neighbor went around and thinks he disturbed them, but he’s
not sure if anything’s missing.”

“Oh Christ.”

“What do you want to do, Nick?”

“I need to go home,” he said, looking
around wildly. “I’ll have to call a taxi.”

“No, it’s okay, I’ll take you.” One of the
men stood and took out his keys. “I haven’t been drinking.”

The two of them made their way to the door,
people trying to console Nick as he went, but Chloe remained where she was. Garth
looked decidedly self-satisfied, and she prickled with suspicion at the memory
of his phone call after Nick had placed his hand on her knee. There was
something fishy going on.

Garth met Chloe’s angry gaze, and his heart
thumped with alarm. Damn it—she’d seen right through him.

Stewart left the house, casting a final
look over his shoulder at her. She pushed her way through the crowd to where Garth
leaned against the wall, trying to keep out of the way of the bodies choking
the room.

She stood in front of him, eyes blazing.
“Are you happy now?” She snapped the words in a voice low enough so those
sitting in the living room couldn’t hear her, but loud enough to show her
displeasure.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Don’t bullshit me, you arrogant bastard. I
saw that triumphant look on your face. You’re thrilled Nick got burgled. You
think it’s funny.” A look of horror crept across her face. “Oh my God. It was
you. You did it.”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

The hand not holding her glass of wine
twitched as if she wanted to slap him. “Don’t treat me like an idiot. You’ve
done nothing but butt heads with him since I arrived. You kissed me because you
thought
he
was going to kiss me, and I saw the look on your face when he
put his hand on my knee.”

She stepped closer, into his personal
space, blue eyes sparking like a summer sky filled with lightning. His heart thumped
uncomfortably.

“You were on the phone.” Her voice filled
with menace. “You orchestrated this. Didn’t you?”

Garth said nothing, conscious of his palms
sweating. She’d guessed correctly. His contact had only tripped the alarm, and
nothing had been taken. He just hadn’t been able to bear being in the same room
as Stewart any longer.

Someone had turned the music back up again,
and the dull thudding of the bass made his teeth ache. His clenched jaw didn’t
help. The fan on the center of the living room ceiling hardly stirred the warm
air at all, and the breeze from the door didn’t reach to his side of the room.
Why had he come so far in? His stomach roiled uneasily from the greasy food
he’d eaten earlier, and the beer tasted sour in his mouth. “I...” His brain
felt fuzzy. He couldn’t think what to say.

“Didn’t you?” Chloe’s words were thick with
bitter disappointment.

“I...” He touched his hand to his forehead.
It was cold and clammy.

He saw it in her eyes the instant she
realized what was happening. Her anger vanished, to be replaced by concern. “Garth?
What’s the matter?”

“I need to get out.” He pushed past her and
tried to cross the room, but there were too many people. A girl laughed, her
voice high and harsh, hurting his ears. Someone tried to offer him a beer, but
bile rose in his throat at the strong smell of the hops. He didn’t want to draw
attention to himself and force everyone aside, but the walls were closing in on
him. If he didn’t get out soon, he’d make a huge fool of himself.

A slender hand slipped into his, and Chloe pushed
through the crowd. She apologized with smiles and a word here and there, but
cleared the way for him to follow her outside into the clean, invigorating air.
She didn’t let go of his hand as they exited the doors, and led him across the
deck, past the people talking and drinking, down the steps onto the beach.

She walked about twenty feet along the
sand, past the tents pitched in front of the deck, out of the pool of yellow
light spilling from the house, into the semi-darkness. He wore no shoes and the
sand cooled his feet, the night air like cold water in the back of his throat.
The soothing sound of cicadas in the bush above the beach blended with the
peaceful swoosh of the waves on the shore. His panic began to die down.

Chloe turned to face him, but he couldn’t
look her in the eye and sank instead onto his haunches. He released her hand
and dropped his head, trying to clear his mind of the images shooting through
it—of the small cell with the peeling paint, the smell of sweat and shit, most
of it his own, and the three bars of bright sunlight that had lain on the dusty
floor like bars of gold. He’d counted them over and over until he became
convinced he’d never be able to count to more than three again. Emotion tightened
his throat, but he forced it down, taking deep breaths to keep control.

Chloe stood over him for a moment,
obviously watching him struggle with himself. Perhaps he’d alarmed or
frightened her. Would she walk off?

But she didn’t move.

She placed her cool hand on the back of his
neck, and he inhaled, drinking in the contact with another human being. He let her
ground him as he tried to calm himself. She stayed like that for a while, quiet
and relaxed, not speaking. Occasionally she stroked his hair, comforting him
until his breathing grew more regular.

Then she dropped her hand and lowered
herself to the sand beside him. He sat back and looked out across the sea. The
moon splintered into white feathers on the water, while behind them a kiwi
cried mournfully in the bush.

“Okay,” she said. “Are you going to tell me
what that was all about?”

He owed her an explanation. Nothing would
develop between them until he came clean. Maybe it was time for some honesty.

He breathed in and let it out slowly. “It’s
a long story.”

“We’ve got all evening.”

The urge to confide in her surprised him. “I
used to be a journalist.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I decided I wanted to be one when I
was a teenager. I did it to piss my dad off.” He smiled wryly. “My family’s in
the oil business. My brother runs it now.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Two brothers, both older than me. And they
both work in the business. Dad wanted me to as well.”

“And your mum?”

“She died when I was eight. I missed her.
Dad was strict, but whereas Jake and Ian were made in his image, I was always
Momma’s boy.” He threw a stone onto the sand, wishing he could remember her
better. He was unable to recall more than the way she used to play cards with
him, tickling him when he cheated.

He brushed away the memory. “I rebelled,
told Dad I wasn’t going into the business. He refused to listen, but when I turned
eighteen I took myself off to college to study journalism. He refused to pay my
fees, and I had to fund my way through. But I got my degree. I moved to New
Zealand a few years ago.” He couldn’t tell her about Jess yet. “I landed a job
as a reporter for TVNZ.”

Her eyebrows rose. “No reporting on lost
cats for you then.”

“Not quite, no. I traveled all over the
world covering current conflicts. Paid off my debts. Made quite a bit of money,
to prove I didn’t need my dad. And then, coming up for three years ago now, I
ended up in Afghanistan.”

He went quiet for a moment, letting the
sound of the sea soothe him. Chloe reached out a hand and squeezed his fingers.
“What happened?”

 “I was captured by one of the Taliban
splinter groups. They took me hostage somewhere near Quetta in western
Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.” Chloe gasped, but he carried on,
unable to stop now. He wanted to tell her, to get it off his chest. “They kept me
in a nine-foot-square cell with a stone floor, a piece of foam for a bed, two
blankets, and a jug of water. They fed me once a day with soup, sometimes
chicken or mutton if I was lucky. There were no toilets, just a pit at the end
of the corridor, but that overflowed pretty quickly. I was allowed out for
about ten minutes every few days to exercise.”

“Jesus.” She’d gone white. “Did they
mistreat you?”

He looked down at his hands. He’d clenched
them into fists, so tight they hurt, and he made himself unfurl them and relax.
“Sometimes.” He didn’t elaborate, didn’t want to tell her about the times
they’d smashed his head against the wall, or kicked him until blood poured out
of him. Or how they’d stubbed out cigarettes on his back, or stuffed newspaper
down his shirt and set fire to it to try and force him to make a plea on
television for his release.

Chloe seemed to understand, though. She put
her hand over her mouth and stared at him with horror-filled eyes. “Oh, Garth.
What happened?”

“I escaped,” he said simply. “I promised
one of the guards that I could get huge amounts of money if he’d take me to the
border. I lied of course, but he smuggled me out, and when we got there, I
attacked him and his mate in the car, beat them senseless, threw them out, and
drove off. It’s a long, rather dull story. It took weeks to get to a friendly
town and months to get back to New Zealand. But I did, eventually, and now I’m
here I don’t ever want to leave.”

He studied his fingernails, unable to look
up at her. “I’m not proud of what I’ve become, Chloe. A man so full of fear and
hatred that I have to sleep looking up at the stars or else my chest tightens
and I can’t breathe. I’m so caught up in my past that I can’t move on—in spite
of the fact that I tell myself I want to forget. I wish I could tell you
stories about my bravery and all the heroic things I did to stand up to my
captors, but I can’t, because all I thought about was escaping.” Disgust at
himself rose in his throat, choking him until he could barely speak. “You’re
better off keeping well away from me. I’m just a coward.” He touched his face,
ashamed and embarrassed to find it wet.