Detained (42 page)

He’d even shown her where Norman was buried. An unremarkable patch of the paddock near a massive tree stump.

To go back to being conservative, polite and businesslike with him would be an insult after he’d handed her every pain and fear he’d ever had: from the death of his grandmother when he was five, his time in group homes and with various foster families, until his arrival with the Dunns in Tara, a teenage boy with an easy to fix learning disability, and hard to scratch off attitude problems.

The only question she hadn’t asked him was the simplest and the most terrifying. What next?

And on that topic his silence was so loud it made her ears ring.

He was in the kitchen. She could see him standing over the kettle from her position in bed. He watched it come to the boil while she watched him. He had a spectacularly well-worn pair of shorts on, neither zipped or buttoned and resting precariously low on his hips. He was tanned and strong, so remote from the crushed and broken man he’d been after Quingpu. He made tea for her, strong coffee in a plunger for himself, and brought it back to bed.

“Why didn’t you set the clock?” he said, putting his cup on the bedside table.

“If that’s code for please don’t leave me tomorrow, point me to the clock.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “On the oven. I wondered why it was flashing. You could’ve helped a guy out.”

He was making no sense, and from the smile on his face clearly enjoying it. He plumped a pillow and leant back on it, hands behind his head, a self-satisfied look on his face that made her want to rumble him till they were both happy to let their drinks go cold.

“Did you read the oven display or are you guessing it says to set the clock?”

His grin just about split his face in two.

“You read the digital display?”

“‘Please set clock and timer’. My adult version of ‘see Spot run’.”

She leant over him, hands flattened on his ribs. “Oh, my God, Will.”

He passed his hand up her back and into her hair. “I’ll be doing such classics as ‘choose correct cycle’, ‘defrost now’ and ‘delicates only’, before you know it.”

He brought her mouth to his and kissed her deliciously wetly. He’d cleaned his teeth, so he tasted of spearmint and coffee. But she was too excited, too nervous to get carried away. She pushed off him and scrambled out of bed.

“Something I read?” he quipped, laughing at himself.

She rummaged in her overnight bag. She’d noticed when she arrived there was no reading material in the house. Not a book, a magazine or a trace of Will’s Kindle. She’d taken the cue and kept a couple of business magazines she was carrying tucked away. She whipped out a copy of
Fast Company
and turned the cover to him.

“‘The Secrets of Generation Flux’,” he said.

She flipped it open and spun a double page spread to face him.

“Seriously?”

She frowned, moved to flip to another page.

“No, I’ve got it, ‘What Teddy Bears, Picture Frames and Condoms have in Common’. Do I need to know?”

She dumped the magazine and jumped on him. “How did this happen?”

He flexed his hips under her. “Who cares? It’s back.”

She shifted so she was sitting across his thighs instead. “I care. I want to understand.”

“It’s your fault.”

“My fault?”

He sat up and hauled her into his chest. “Got me so damn relaxed you rearranged my brain cells.”

“I did?”

“Clever piece of work. Goddamn gorgeous too. Have I told you that?”

He told her regularly, with his eyes, with his words, and with his body. Suddenly she felt the acid sting of tears. She pushed away from him, tried to hide her face in her hair.

“Ah, what’s wrong, Lois? What did I say to upset you?”

She met his eyes. “We’re not doing the interview.”

“We’re not? Why not? I thought we agreed to do it days ago.”

“Because you’re not my job. This,” she put her hand on his face, “us, it’s not my job.”

“But I screwed with your job and I can fix that for you.”

“I came after you because of my job and look at everything that happened. I won’t come after you again. No job is worth that.”

Will turned his face so he could kiss her palm, and then took her hand in his. “You’re a professional, you‘ll do what you need to do. I’ll be ready for you.”

“I’m a professional and I’m in bed with my interview subject. How professional does that sound to you?” She shifted to sit beside him, sat cross-legged facing him. “And please don’t make a joke or an insult from that.”

He knew enough not to reach for her. “I wasn’t going to.”

But he had once. He’d gone so far as to suggest he might buy her like a hotel suite or a car.

“Ah fuck, Darcy.” Now he reached, but she moved back and he dropped his hand, taking it to his head and scrubbing at his hair. “I was in the nuthouse. I’m sorry. I hated myself so much for that I took out several thousand dollars worth of glass and two good hands to pay for what I said to you.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. You have a job to do, and it’s important to you. That’s why you’ll come after me with everything you’ve got.”

“No. I won’t.”

He made a growling sound in the back of his throat, and threw himself back against the pillow. “Tell me what’s going on here?”

“There’s no hidden agenda. I don’t want to interview you anymore.”

“Okay. What else?” He was looking at the ceiling as though the answer might be on a digital display up there.

“That’s it.”

“I might’ve lost my ability to fathom the printed word but I could always read you.” He turned his head and pinned her with his, ‘you will do as your told stare’. “Cough it up.”

She couldn’t pretend this didn’t matter. “What’s going to happen to us?”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t want this to be the end. I don’t want us to be a series of intense experiences in confined locations I look back on with fond amusement.”

He spun around on the bed to face her and sat cross-legged as well, one hand massaging his repaired knee. “We’re not confined here. It’s not like we’re in detention.”

“We’re not in the world either.” She watched his hand to avoid his eyes. This conversation scared her more than Will’s dark moods did. She knew he cared for her, knew he loved her, but not what that meant to him. Maybe not what it meant to her.

He gave up on the knee and stretched his leg out, hooking it around her, using it to pull her and the sheet towards him. “Keep talking.”

She kept her hands away from him, clasped in her lap, an attempt to centre her feelings when they were already on the run. “I’m foolishly, irrevocably, poisonously in love with you. I want you in my life, and I don’t know if that’s what you want too, or if this is some kind of game to you still.”

“Ah gorgeous, it’s no game.” Will put his hand, to hers; the broken one, plaster-free since his swim, but paler than the rest of him, with a new scar from a pin inserted in his middle knuckle. “I’m not sure what I can give you.”

“You’ve already given me so much.”

He gave a bitter laugh and squeezed her hand. “Yeah, I got you sacked, threatened, and for a variation on that theme, threatened with the sack. I’m fucking brilliant boyfriend material.”

“Stop.” She brought their clasped hands to her chest.

He leant in closer. “Darcy, listen to me. I am hopelessly, irretrievably, indefinitely in love with you too.” Her breath caught. This made it real like his other signals, however strong, had failed to. “I’ve never known a woman as strong, insightful and dangerous to my health.” He put his other hand over her mouth to stop a protest. “I mean that in a good way.” He took his hand away. “My health isn’t good without you.” He grimaced in frustration. “I’m not explaining myself well.” He cupped her check. “You’re essential to me.”

She wanted to dissolve. To wrap her arms and legs around him and meld her skin with his.

“But I don’t know what I can give you. I have responsibilities I’ve been neglecting. I don’t want you waiting on me. You have a career you care about, you’re a big deal, and your life is out in the world.”

She closed her eyes as her vision of happiness broke apart. “You’re dumping me?”

He took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What part of hopelessly, irretrievably and indefinitely didn’t you get? What I don’t have is availability.”

Oh
. Relief was a soothing glue. “You’re going back to Shanghai. It’s not that far and we could meet in the middle.”

“Would you be satisfied with a long distance affair?”

Long distance meant time apart, but if it that’s what it would take to have him in her life, she’d take separation for togetherness. But she didn’t get a chance to respond.

“I couldn’t be. If I commit it’s for the whole box and dice. I want the woman I’m with to harass me about working too long, and lose it with me for not paying her enough attention. I want her to resent me for being hard to live with, and keep me on my toes to make her happy. I’m arrogant enough to want all that and I want a shot at a family of my own, despite my bloody lousy beginnings. And you don’t.”

Oh God
.

“You told me in Pudong you believed in the next headline, not forever, and you didn’t see a picket fence and little pattering feet in your future.”

“I...” With all that’d happened, he’d remembered that.

“You told me you didn’t want to be judged for being a daughter or a sister or a mother, and I surmise from that—a wife.”

Oh God, oh God
. In that cold room with that hot, challenging stranger she’d been trying to hold on to her identity. “And if I remember rightly you told me I was a selfish cow, and you seduced me.”

He grinned. “And I’d do it again, but with better room temperature. Do you still believe those things?”

Did she? That felt like a different time, a different woman. She wrapped her arms around his neck, rested her forehead on his. “You’re going to break my heart, aren’t you, Will?”

He nudged against her nose. “Not if you break mine first.”

“I’m confused.”

“No you’re not. You know who you are and what’s important to you and we’ll see each other again.”

“You want me to do the interview?”

“Darcy, I want you to be the woman I love.”

Her tea was cold, his hands were warm. His words were seared on her skin, a form of tattoo. He wouldn’t be the boyfriend you lazed around on Sundays with the paper, and argued with over the stacking the dishwasher. But however, wherever, some way—he was going to be in her life. They’d work it out, like they’d worked out how to irritate and please each other, how to challenge and save each other.

When she left him looking sleep-tousled on the verandah next morning, before the heat of the day came on, she wasn’t frightened of their future any more. They’d make it up as they went along.

Back at work, Alan tried to keep expressions of surprise and admiration out of his face when she told him about scheduling the interview with Will, and Darcy realised he’d been utterly convinced she’d fail. Her first night back in the anchor chair it felt good to know she hadn’t conformed to expectations.

In Pudong she’d told Will she wanted to be the best at what she did and she did this well, and would learn to do it better. Her interview with him would win her time to do that, time to complete the adjustment from print to television journalism. She’d be the woman he loved. Meanwhile he’d asked for time, to finish what he’d come to Tara for.

When she came off air, Alan was complimentary. She looked well, rested, and he’d liked the way she’d tackled the interview with the head of a charity accused of embezzlement. If he kept up the good vibes she might get a swelled head. On her way out to her car she ran into Nadia.

“Hello, golden girl.”

“Not so much golden, I’d say plated. The shine will wear off the minute I stuff up.”

“Not while you’ve got Will Parker in your sights.”

In her sights, on her mind, under her skin.
He was every love struck cliché there was, except shouted to the moon about. He was her very best secret, and he was going to call tonight. She wanted to be home, and out of her work uniform in time. She fossicked in her bag for her car keys.

“I got a new suit in for you today. Un-frigging-believably-beautiful. Why didn’t you say you knew someone at Armani?”

Darcy shook her head. “I don’t,” but then it hit her. She pressed the unlock button.

Nadia looked puzzled, called after her. “But you know who sent it, right? It’s exactly your size.”

She got in the car, called out the open door, “Night, Nadia.” She wasn’t sure what was going to be more exciting, dressing in the suit Will sent her to interview him in, or having him strip it off her.

“Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.” — Confucius

It was good to be back in the city, any city. It was good to have Bo behind the wheel, even if only for a little while. Will sat in the back of the hired car and checked his notes spread out on the seat. He’d see Darcy in thirty minutes. He could scarcely believe how excited he felt about that. Ten days of regular phone sex convinced him being apart was going to be sheer torture, but the meeting up again—exquisite. He had to count on his luck that he’d avoid more torture, and he knew it was a gamble. Maybe his biggest. Maybe his last for a while.

He hit redial and finally connected with Ted. After he explained the reason for the call, he waited for a reaction that would make things more or less easy to get through.

There was a long pause and some colourful swearing then Ted said, “It’s a hell of a thing, Will, but you do what you have to do, son. I’ll stand by you as long as I can, as long as I can keep the shareholders off my back. A hell of a thing.”

When he disconnected, Bo was pulling into the Channel Five driveway. The guy on the gate was waving them through. Bo parked and they both got out.

“You’re sure, Boss?” Bo wasn’t happy. On his face was every doubt about this being a smart thing.

He clapped Bo on the shoulder. “I’m sure. It’s time. I’ll see you back in Shanghai, okay?” He got a woebegone look that was Bo’s best available version of an okay, pulled his briefcase from the back seat, checked his pocket, and walked into the studio reception.