Almost Mine (27 page)

I deliberately got in his way. I told his mother that things were not going well because I knew that she would interfere. But Nick brushed Beth off and ignored her efforts.

I even became a VIP customer to the Victoria’s Secret website, but I could have been naked straddled on his lap and he still wouldn’t have acknowledged me.

He stopped playing music and it was eerie the way the silence echoed around our home and around the trees and mountains that surrounded us.

He stopped overprotecting me, and Blake had obviously noticed his complaisance and tested his boundaries during the following spring when he told me that, “Cate, you look stunning today.” I’d braced myself for the wrath of my jealous husband, but instead Nick clenched his jaw and glared a deathly glare and in the end he just walked away. He was buried deep, and as the months marched on and overtook him, he fell miserably and dejectedly away.

The blow that finished him off came in the summer of our fourth year. Nick’s eldest brother, Angus, his wife Josie and their brood of three busy children, announced that they were moving back to Shady Valley — apparently the twin boys that were born a couple of years earlier were a handful, especially now that Josie was pregnant with their fourth child and due any day now. I didn’t think that Nick could descend any further into the sinkhole that he was in, but that he did, and if I didn’t cry myself to sleep alone our bed every night then it was a miracle.

‘I just want him back,’ I cried to Dad time and time again, ‘I miss him so much.’

But it was difficult for him to ease my pain because he didn’t know the facts of the situation. Nobody knew. As much as I begged him to come to terms with it, Nick had refused to tell a soul. I didn’t want him to walk around with a placard against his chest reading; I AM DEFECTIVE; I just wanted to tell the people close to us so that they could let him know that it really was ok. With support he could perhaps absolve himself. Sometimes reassurance helps when it comes from more than one source alone. But still, nobody knew.

Solutions were becoming less and less attainable and I was slowly beginning to give up. I’d fought a hard fight, but flogging a dead horse gets you nowhere. That is, until Nick had hired Lucy as a waitress. It didn’t overly bother me; I had her measure, but while I’d given Lucy her induction to the winery — giving her a tour of the vineyard, teaching her about the varieties of wine and how to match them up with cuisines, as well as elaborately explaining the objective of the business, which was to give visitors a proficient,
unforgettable experience of the winery — it didn’t go unnoticed that Lucy quite openly talked more about Nick rather than her job description.

I’d never given merit to whatever it was that Lucy felt for Nick; he’d never given me reason to doubt him, but the way Lucy smiled at him, and at times the way he smiled back, made my insides cringe with jealousy. She wasn’t just a friend at a distance from us, she was now quite literally in my back yard, and not at all cagey about what she wanted. My fight was resumed; I’d make the dead horse gallop again, even if it killed me.

But how?

For the first time I felt legitimately threatened by Lucy; she made me feel things that I hadn’t felt before, so perhaps making Nick jealous would open his eyes to what he was missing. It would need to be something more persuasive than a flirt about a pretty dress; it would need to be something of substance…but what? I thought about it and then it struck me. Just the thought of doing such a thing nauseated me to my core. But if it made me feel this awful, then it was worth a try to see if it affected Nick in the same way. Any reaction would do, even if it was disgust; I could work with that, he just had to give me something.

I approached Blake in the cellar, and, as he usually did in my presence, he smiled.

‘Busy day?’ I said as I perched myself up on an empty wine barrel as he slid bottles of wine into allocated slots.

‘Your husband’s a whip-cracker,’ he said as he stopped work. ‘But I can take a break for a pretty lady.’ I liked being spoken to like that again. I couldn’t help but dip my head and blush — I’d had no reason to do that in a while and I liked that too. ‘What can I do for you, Cate?’

I cleared my throat. ‘I have a proposition for you.’

‘Oh,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t know if I like the sound of that,’ he lied, ‘your husband would cut me to pieces and feed me to the dogs.’

‘We don’t have any dogs,’ I smiled.

He stepped closer to me and pulled himself onto the barrel to my right. ‘I guess I have nothing to worry about then.’

I let out a short breath. ‘Ok, here goes—’

‘Wait,’ he said with a halting hand. ‘It’s not illegal is it?’

‘Why would I ask you to do something illegal?’

‘Who knows with you women? Sometimes you do some crazy shit.’

I didn’t know what he meant by that. ‘It’s crazy, but not illegal,’ I assured him. ‘But you have to know before I ask you that if you say yes, nothing is real between us. I am doing this to get my husband back and that’s it. I love Nick and I’m doing this for him, not for you.’

He held his hands mockingly to his chest. ‘Wound my pride, why don’t you?’

I threw him a look. ‘I’m serious.’

He laughed again. ‘Go on then.’

‘It’s Nick, he’s forgotten that I exist, I think, and I want to remind him that I do.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘I thought that you had.’ I was all business now. ‘So, I need your help.’

‘Why my help?’

‘Because you were able to make his blood boil once…’

‘And you want me to do it again?’ he guessed.

‘Yes. Would you mind if I used you like that?’

‘Used me? You’re exploiting the fuck out of me.’

‘We don’t have to do this.’

‘Are you kidding? It’s a man’s dream to be exploited by a beautiful woman. Do as you please. You can use me any which way you like,’ he said in a low voice that was too husky for my liking; but again, like the lovely comments a few minutes ago, I found myself liking his sultry words.

‘Thank you.’

‘So, what would I have to do?’ he asked as he took a big drink from his water bottle.

‘Well, I’m not sure yet. We could start with dinner.’

Suddenly water sprayed from his mouth. ‘Dinner! Not just more obvious flirting or even a smack on your arse, then? You really want to fuck him up that much?’

I thought I might cry at the belated realisation; he was already broken. What if I completely ruined him? ‘I just want to make him look at me again.’

‘Fuck, Cate. Is it really that bad?’

I couldn’t hold them back any longer; my tears fell whether I wanted them to or not. ‘It’s really that bad.’

Blake jumped from the barrel and rounded to face me. He lifted me off and held me against him. I wrapped my arms around him and let him hold me, and even though it felt so wrong, a small part of me wouldn’t let this safeguarded feeling go.

‘Come on. Let’s go make this lunatic boss of mine—’ Both of our heads whipped up and I pushed myself out of Blake’s embrace as the cellar door was opened wide.

‘Oh, sorry,’ Lucy said as if she’d walked in on an intimate moment between lovers. ‘I didn’t mean to barge in.’ She turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ I raced to stop her but she was already halfway to the restaurant by the time I reached the cellar door.

‘She’ll tell Nick.’ Blake came to stand beside me as we watched Lucy practically run across the lawn and past the blossoms.

My heart beat out of my chest and my on-edge nerves made my whole body shake. I thought that I might throw up.

This had better be worth it.

‘And so it begins,’ I said.

In the office late that night, Nick sat stretched back in the leather chair behind the desk, rolling a pen over his fingers. He seemed light years away and I felt it necessary for the first time ever to knock before I entered.

‘Wine?’ I asked as I grasped a bottle of sauvignon in one hand and my fingers wrapped around the stems of a couple of glasses in the other. I was wearing a pair of short denim shorts and a pale pink shirt that was buttoned to allow my cleavage to slightly spill out. He was a sight himself. The heat had dictated that he strip out of his shirt, and he had thrown it on the chair opposite him, leaving him wearing a pair of long shorts and a white Bonds singlet. My insides hungered for his strong arms to be wrapped around me…holding himself up as he moved over me… If the look in his eyes was more inviting and less
would you just leave me the hell alone
we may have taken one look at one another and it would be all over; we’d be naked and panting on the floor.

Perhaps the type of seduction I was going for was a little too subtle for him as he sat seemingly unaffected by my efforts.

I sat on the chair with his shirt even though he didn’t answer. It was painful to smell his scent and not be able to taste him.

‘Good day?’ I attempted to entice a conversation. I held my breath hoping that he’d answer with something more elaborate than a shrug.

He did shrug, and then taking me by surprise, he spoke. ‘Did
you
have a good day?’ he asked.

It took me a moment to formulate a response. Were we about to have actual dialogue? ‘It was ok, I guess. The new labels look good, and I noticed the sign for the restaurant finally going up. It took the sign writers long enough, didn’t it?’

The pen continued to roll over his fingers. After a thinking minute he spoke again. ‘Lucy is very informative.’

Without missing a beat I remarked, ‘Good. She’ll make a great waitress.’

He put the pen down and sat forward, leaning slightly toward me. ‘I…’ he began.

I sat praying, praying, praying…

The leather chair stretched, as did Nick, when he sat back again and let out a deep tired breath. ‘I have a lot of work to do in here. It’s probably best if you just go up to bed.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed, Nick…unless you want to come with me?’

‘I’m busy.’

I sat deliberating whether to say what I wanted to. ‘I see that you haven’t paid too much attention to Lucy’s information, then.’

‘Do I have a reason to?’

‘The choice is yours.’

He sat mute and began rolling the pen once more; if he had made a decision I was not privy to it.

‘Please come to bed with me, Nick. I miss you.’

The pen rolled uninterrupted. ‘I said no.’

‘So that’s your decision then, is it?’ I stood to leave before frustrated tears fell and he saw me cry because, of late, it only compounded the pain when he did nothing to stem the flow.

‘Cate,’ he said.

‘What?’ I whirled around but the sight of him stopped me from shouting. His eyes were wet and his chin quivered as he tried to stop his own pain from escaping him.

I prayed and prayed and prayed for him to say something that would urge me to put an end to my ridiculous plan.

‘What is it, Nick?’ I ventured.

His mouth opened and closed but, ‘Good night,’ was all he said.

I turned and left the office and by the time I’d reached the side door to the kitchen my determination built and I’d practically booked my first date with Blake.

Nick was in the restaurant when I dressed for my “date” with Blake. I wore a short, yellow dress that flowed around my mid-thighs as I walked. It was seven o’clock and still humid outside so I opted out of wearing the jacket, leaving my shoulders bare. My hair was loosely flipped and held in place with a clip at the nape of my neck, allowing the honey tendrils to fall lazily down my back. Nick would have loved the way I looked and in the past, back when he paid attention to me, he would have swept me from my feet and made love to me still wearing the barely there yellow fabric.

I descended the stairs as I fastened a pair of large hoop earrings into my lobes and at the front door I slipped into my white thongs. Opening the door let in a cooling breeze and it worked well at lowering my body heat. It didn’t last long, though, as I unhurriedly ambled past the restaurant and saw Nick behind the bar. My returning body heat prickled with my deception and I thought that I may throw up, but I kept my feet moving.

When I made it to the driveway I looked back over my shoulder to see if he’d bothered to look up, and I was surprised to see that he was staring at me with — what? I couldn’t tell. Dismay? Acceptance? Finality? I waved to say good-bye and he lifted his hand to slowly wave back. I stood unmoving and urged him to stop me, to not make me do this, but he didn’t; instead, he turned to Lucy, who handed him a drink order, and he began to fill it.