In the Market for Love (11 page)

All she wanted to do was get through the day, get home, clear her mind and prepare to start afresh.

“No problem,” she said coolly. “What can I do for you?”

“I didn’t call about business. It’s about tonight. I wanted to spea
k to you about something this evening.”

“Jake, I don’t have time for anything other than the campaign.”

A pause. “Has something happened?”

The man was infuriating. He
knew full well he was married.

“Look,” he said. “There have been a couple more alterations to the concepts so I was going to drop by this afternoon and leave them with you.”

“Sure, you can leave them at reception.”

“Reception? Rachel
, I want to see you.”

And it occurred
to her that perhaps she should see him one last time. Away from the campaign and their work environment. After all, why should he get off so lightly while she disappeared quietly into the background?

Tonight, she could tell him face to face. Let him know
exactly what she thought of him.

“Not at the office,” she said.
“Maybe you’re right about tonight. Not at a bar either. I’ll come to your place. I won’t stay long.”

“My place isn’t so good
.”

“I didn’t think so.
” 

Of course no married man would want to meet at his house. That didn’t mean she was going to let him get away with it.

“Can I come to your place instead?” he asked. “That’d be easier for me.”

“
That won’t work. You’d have to get a baby sitter for a start. That’s not easy at such short notice.”

“A baby sitter won’t be a problem,” he said. “I’ve been renovating and–”

“I don’t want to hear about it. It’s your place or you can forget it.”

There was a pause at the other end of the phone. She’d let him stew.

Eventually he said, “My place at 7.30.
Connor should be in bed by then. I don’t want to disturb his routine.”

She
scribbled down the address, looking forward to an early evening drive to Mosman, one of Sydney’s finest suburbs.

He wouldn’t
get the better of her.

*          *          *

Struggling to read the house numbers in the dark, Rachel drove slowly along View Street, Mosman, and pondered how different this was from the street on which she lived. There were no BMWs, Mercedes or Porsches parked on her street. No houses with tennis courts or vast manicured lawns.

She pulled
up on the side of the road, got out of her car and took a long look at Jake’s house.

It wasn’t the kind of place she imagined he’d live at all. There was no style about it,
no elegance or originality. The huge two storey Tuscan house was built to emulate the terracotta coloured rendered buildings of that part of Italy and looked severely out of place here.

The carefully landscaped grounds clearly required the skills of a professional gardener or perhaps a team of gardeners. A U shaped driveway
fronted the building but she hadn’t wanted to park there.

She turned her head to take in the vista Jake
had told her he enjoyed from his house. In the moonlight, she could just make out the Sydney Heads, the two thin landmasses through which all ships entered the harbour. She’d seen the view before from a park at the foot of the hill but the outlook from Jake’s house built high on a ridge was far superior.

Hearing footsteps, she turned to see
Jake walking towards her from one corner of the house. Even in the dark, back lit by lights at the front of the house, he looked magnificent, his hips slim, his shoulders broad and masculine.

She
waited for him to come closer. She had to be resolute. Unyielding.

“Rachel
,” he said. “Come on in.”

She strode up the broad driveway towards him. “Big house.”

“Yep. Too big.”

He steered her
towards the side of the house, away from the imposing double front door surrounded by ornate glasswork and the grand foyer which was no doubt behind it.

“What’s wrong with the front door?” she asked.

“Connor and I never use that door. We spend most of our time at the back of the house.”

Jake led her down a narrow path with overgrown creeper cascading over the fenc
e on one side and a wall of climbing roses on the other. It opened onto a pretty courtyard with limestone paving and a wooden table with four whicker chairs. The garden seemed small for a house this size.

They stepped into the house through French doors. T
wo large Chesterfield leather sofas covered in cushions dominated the room. Children’s books and a couple of toy cars were piled at one end of the coffee table, leaving room for a platter of crackers and creamy camembert at the other.

She stepped over to a low cabinet
covered in family photos and scanned them, only to find Bianca conspicuously missing from the pictures. Had he hidden her photos before she arrived?

Rachel
searched for clues of a feminine presence but could find none.

“Take a seat,” he said.
“Would you like a glass of wine? I had a glass of white with dinner. Or I can open a bottle of red for you.”

She
could think of nothing she wanted less than to finish a bottle of wine with Jake. She didn’t plan on getting that comfortable with him. “No thanks. Just a coffee.”

She was ama
zed at her own reserve. It was like the calm in the eye of the cyclone, only this time she
was
the storm. And she would demolish everything in her path.

“Help yourself
to some cheese.” Jake pointed to the platter on the coffee table and left to go to the kitchen.

What lay beneath his polite words?
Did he think they were going to have pleasant conversation and refreshments?

Footsteps shuffled on the floor and Rachel turned to see a
small child in racing car pyjamas.

She softened as soon as she saw him, a wave of warmth washing over her
. It was amazing. He had the pale hair, soft translucent skin and rounded cheeks of a small child but with Jake’s deep, serious eyes.

The boy fiddled with a button.
“Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s
fixing the coffee,” Rachel said. “Connor, honey, aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

He
nodded. “I can’t get to sleep. I want Daddy to scratch my back for me. To help me sleep.”

“I’ll help you, sweetie.” Rachel placed her hand on his shoulder and nudged him gently back in the direction from which he’d come. “I’m not very good at back scratching but I can help you get back into bed.”

In the boy’s room, she straightened the sheets and doona and tucked him back into bed. She wondered if Jake had painted the fluffy white clouds on the ceiling himself.

It seemed there were two sides to the man. Father and philanderer.

She slipped quietly out of the room and watched from her darkened position in the doorway as Jake entered the living room. He put two coffee mugs on the table, and shifted his gaze to the French door, then to her burgundy suede handbag sitting at the foot of one of the Chesterfields.

Did he think
she’d disappeared?

“I’m still here.” Rachel’s heels clicked on the floorboards as she
made her way back to the sofa.

“Is everything alright?” Jake asked.

“Fine. Connor said he needed his back scratched so he could fall asleep.” Rachel smiled. She couldn’t help it. “He seems like a nice kid.”

“
I thought you didn’t like children.”

“Shows how little you know,”
she said. “I adore kids. I have two beautiful nieces.”

“
I’m surprised he let you into his room, let alone allowed you to scratch his back.”

“I
didn’t scratch his back. I tucked him back into bed. Anyway, kids have good instincts about these things. They’re good at judging who to trust.”

Somewhere along the line, she seemed to have lost those skills.

Jake sat down on the sofa not too close to her. “I’m glad you came around this evening.”

“Really? It sounded like you didn’t want me coming around. To your house, that is.”

Perched on the edge of the leather sofa, she leaned forward to sip her coffee before leaning back.

“You seem
tense,” he said.

“
I don’t usually visit strange men at night.”

Jake inched closer
. “I’m not strange.”

“We might work together but I don’t really know you very well.”

“That’s just it. I’d like to get to know you better too. And there was something I wanted to talk about.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to get to know you better.”

He held her gaze. Didn’t say anything.

“I don’t like playing games,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

She
pressed her hair back behind her ears.

“So why did you lie to me?”

Rachel glared at Jake. He stared back at her, his eyes softened by something. Tenderness perhaps, or guilt.

“I didn’t lie to you,” he said
.

“I thought you didn’t like playing games.
” She leaned back into the sofa. “You’re married.”

“I’m not
.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I am and I’m not. I only wish it were so simple I could explain it one way or the other but life isn’t always black and white.”

“Then let me explain it to you. Married is when you have a marriage certificate but you don’t have divorce papers. Separated is when you live in a di
fferent house from your wife and you’re waiting on your divorce to come through.”

For a moment, she thought h
e might take her into his arms and hold her, tell her she’d misunderstood and she was wrong. He wasn’t married. He was completely innocent.

Instead he stood,
his hands on his lean hips, before turning to face her.

“When you put it that way, I am married. But surely you must understand that sometimes life is complex and it can’t be answered with a yes or a no.”

She thought about her relationship with Nick and how she’d underestimated its complexity, never seeing it wasn’t pure and happy until after he died.

Jake was r
ight but she refused to give an inch. He didn’t deserve her understanding.

“So tell me about it,” she said.
“Tell me what’s so damn complex. You don’t love her any more. She doesn’t understand you. Anything else?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you
, Rachel.”

“Should I care?”

He dropped back down on the sofa. “I am married but we’ve been separated for about four years. The only reason I still see her is because of Connor. I don’t want him to grow up with only one parent like I did. I want him to have something at least vaguely resembling a family. He deserves that. A family. Especially since he’s an only child.”

“You didn’t think to provide him with a little brother or sister?”

She disagreed with Jake. Tonight sarcasm suited her

“I
would have loved another child,” he said. “But that wasn’t on the cards. From very early on, our marriage didn’t work. After a while, I worked out that what she loved most about me was my money.”

“Bianca, you mean?”

“You know her name?”

“Of course. So you’ve been separated
for a few years? That’s a long time to wait for a divorce.”

“You’re right. And I hadn’t been planning on getting one. I live like this to make sure Connor has the one thing I didn’t have. A family. With two parents. But recently, well, I have been thinking of a divorce.”

Rachel had nothing to lose. She was determined to drive the knife in deeper.

“Don
’t bother with your smooth talk,” she said. “Your wife lives in this house, doesn’t she?”

“She lives here but not with me. You’ve seen the size of this place. It’s huge. She lives i
n the main part of the house while Connor and I are in this side wing.”

“Don’t stop there,”
she said.

“It’s true. That’s why we didn’t go in through the front door. I always come down the side
path to my part of the house. The rest is hers. I’ve never liked it. It’s her taste. Big and ostentatious. But this way the three of us can be in the same house. Even if I’m not living with Bianca, for Connor it feels like we’re a family.”

“That’s
some story.”

Hot tears burnt at the back of her eyes but she refused to show any emotion. Her face was a rock, her eyes
fixed on a single point on the coffee table. She would give him no clue to the molten feelings surging inside her. The slightest movement on her part would crack her cool surface and her seething rage would burst through.