Insecure (29 page)

“Don't shut down on me. Don't you dare lock me out. Don't make this into something it's not. If you're going to leave me, do it because I'm a spoilt princess, not because you think I'm too weak to take your touch.” She glared at him and he gave her nothing. She moved to the edge of the bed and stood up; she didn't know what to do next, if he left, if he stayed.

“Get back in this bed.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. He lay on his stomach, he hadn't shifted. “Why?”

“Get back in our bed.”

The changed description mattered, but not enough. “I worked hard to get over Brent. You're making me feel like I'm too weak, too frail for you. I was not a victim then. Don't make me one now.”

He rolled over and sat up cross-legged, the sheet bunched in one hand. “I need you to come back to bed. I need it to be different.” He lifted his face and her whole body stung from the look in his eyes. “I nearly left you tonight because I can be a fucking hothead.” He ground his fist down into the bed. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”

She could see it, regret poured out of him, it bunched the muscles in his abdomen; it lifted his shoulders and darkened his eyes.

“I might've left you because you were upset and hating the world and you had a right to, and I couldn't see straight. All I heard was you rejecting me and that's not what you were doing. I nearly left you over nothing. Because yeah, we're stronger than some shouting and breaking things. And I'm not going anywhere. I think you're incredible. I love you and I need you.”

She stood at the end of the bed facing him. He was so intense he changed the temperature of the room, made her body hot and cold and shivering through both climates.

“But tonight I need you differently. You are all I can see, all I can think about. All I want to feel, and I came so fucking close to fucking it up. Don't ask me to be the same with you tonight, because I can't do it. Get back in this bed, Cinta and let me love you the best way I can.”

She got back in the bed and he loved her so carefully, so deeply, with hesitant reverence in his hands, with quaking obsession in his words, that he redefined their togetherness.

Lunch with Aaron Turnbull wasn't exactly a job interview, but it was the kind of networking you did when you needed a job interview to manifest itself out of thin air. And thin air had been in plentiful supply when Aaron called with an invitation. He'd want something, that's for sure. Jacinta had to hope what he wanted was also useful to her, because she'd had to knock back lunch with Carmen and Ingrid and that would've been far more interesting. No, not interesting, it would've been a straight up serve of no hidden agenda, no posturing, no power play, fun.

She gave Aaron a smile. Let the posturing begin.

“Unemployment looks good on you, Jac.”

He leaned forward, invaded her personal space and kissed both her cheeks, holding on to her upper arm a touch too long for someone she'd not spoken to in recent memory. She tried not to scowl at either the comment or the overfamiliarity, but the short form of her name made her cringe. He hadn't earned that. How would he like it if she called him Ron?

“Why has it been so long since I've seen you?”

Ron would've been busy with two ex-wives and four kids since they'd been MBA classmates. He was busy now checking out her legs. “Dumb question. Busy.”

He laughed, followed it with a shrug. “I always knew I could call you up in two years or ten and you'd be the same old clever chops and it'd be like we'd spoken yesterday.”

Jacinta shook her head. He definitely wanted something. “And my best ruthless, heartless, no friends in business, that didn't come across?” She'd put proper clothes on for this, makeup. Carmen would've had something outrageously funny to say. Ingrid would've given them an update on her online dating challenges. No one would have used the expression clever chops and thought they were being amusing.

Ron laughed again. He'd gotten fat and his hair was thinning. He'd been the one to watch in their class intake and proven it by launching his own consulting firm and then not crashing it in a blaze of bad decisions. “I must've missed it.” He had a hide like a well-fed croc, he'd have ignored it. He'd also gotten rich, quick, if the magazine lists were in any way accurate.

“Hmm, maybe that's where I went wrong.”

“I heard the old man cut you off at the knees. True?”

She inclined her head. “True enough.” It was no secret, and no one in the industry bought the idea it was her free choice to explore other options, follow private passions. Odd that, so far, that's exactly what she was doing.

“What did you do to deserve that?”

“Did you ask me to lunch to get the gossip, Ron?”

“Of course I did.” He waved at a waitress. “Did you just call me Ron?”

This meeting was a waste of good lipstick and she'd only been in the restaurant for fifteen minutes. “Good Lord, what do you want,” she enunciated clearly, “Aaron?”

“Don't be like that. Tell me how you've been?”

For seconds, while he scanned the menu, she thought of telling him she was at a weird place in her life where wearing her work clothes felt like playing dress-ups, where she was more likely to have paint under her nails than polish on them, that she was making friends for the first time since school days, and had a lover she cared about for the first time in forever.

That would shut him up because it was deeply personal and there was little place for that in business. Particularly this kind of business, masquerading as a friendly catch up lunch, but in reality, all about using the sucker you share a tablecloth with for your own personal gain.

She wondered what Ron would do if she forgot the unwritten rules of a business lunch and confided in him about her sex life. Told him her man knew how to turn her into a writhing, screaming, pleasure-seeking hoyden, but that she's scared him recently and he was being so careful with her she wanted to string him from the ceiling and beat it out of him. Too much information, and not just for Aaron, she wouldn't tell anyone that, but it would be fun to fluster Aaron with bawdy bedroom talk. He almost deserved it.

But if she told him exactly how much of a private passion Mace was and exactly how she spent most of her time in front of an easel, Aaron would write her off as a serious career contender before their order went in. And he had an influential network, the members of which would chew up that information like a stoner with the munchies.

If she wanted this lunch to be the shortest on record, she'd dangle the idea of being in a permanent relationship with Mace because that was virtually the same thing as announcing she was fifteen months pregnant with quads, or becoming a nun, or retired. Or dead.

She looked at her copy of the menu, wondering if they had duck, because it was unlikely they had goose or gander but that's what was going on here. Two ex-wives, attendant public scandal—wife two was almost a teenager—and four kids weren't a liability for man. A wedding ring on a woman's hand was a bat signal there could be serious, long-term work-incompatible distractions coming.

God
, where did that thought come from? Marriage wasn't anywhere on her agenda. A serious relationship wasn't either, but now that she had one, she was intending to hold on tight, even knowing more than Mace did about what stresses they'd need to get though. He was easily the best thing that that had happened to her. Without him, and without her brushes and her art classes, she'd have been far less mentally capable of waiting out her waiting period and more inclined to snap Aaron's head off.

“Really enjoying the time off, but very keen to get back into it again,” she said, giving good old Ron almost nothing he could work with.

He gave her a calculating look. Searching for a line to read between. He could search all he liked.

“I'm bored, Aaron. I want to be working again, but it's a waiting game.” Maybe that was what he was waiting for. If he had anything up his sleeve to offer that was his introductory line.

“How's Tom?”

They'd probably throw her out, maybe charge her with malicious use of silverware if she lurched across the table and stabbed Aaron with a fish fork. He should've asked Tom for lunch. She could've had this discussion with Aaron on the phone. If she made some excuse she could skip lunch altogether and be back in her studio before the light died. “Busy, I imagine.”

“Sure, but how's he coping?”

She studied the menu so hard the type blurred. That was better than screaming at the lunch crowd about Tom being a scumbag opportunist, much like Aaron. “You mean is he in the market for consulting services? I have no idea.” She had no idea if Tom still had two arms and legs either, but she assumed so. She'd had no contact with him. She'd have to do something about that, Tom wasn't Malcolm and he hadn't deliberately gone out of his way to steal her best ideas. Even if it did feel that way. “You'd have to ask him.”

“Right, but I thought you'd have insight on the best way to approach him.”

Which translated into that's the way you pay your share of the use of this tablecloth and that cutlery in these very pleasant fine dining surroundings.

She could be in her car in ten minutes, home in thirty, have a paintbrush in her hands in another five. Or she could swing by the school and see if anyone was around for coffee, or to sneak in a movie; all of that would be more fun than this. If Mace wasn't so stressed about his presentation she could kidnap him for a late lunch. But none of that would keep her network humming, none of that back scratching and favour bank building would be in place when she needed it, and she was going to need it. She took a calming breath, the kind that traditionally went with yoga pants, and ordered a salad.

While they ate, she talked Aaron through the best way to approach Tom, and the most likely needs for consulting services. It hardly mattered since her Wentworth bridges were torched with intergalactic fire. While they ate, Mace would be fretting his pitch. Though he had it locked, nothing to worry about. She'd rehearsed him till he was almost verbose with it, even threatened him with a re-enactment of the Hugh Jackman, John Travolta interview scene from
Swordfish
. In her version, he'd pitch instead of hack, and she'd intended to give him more than sixty seconds of distracting attention involving her mouth and tongue and the most sensitive, responsive piece of his anatomy.

She smiled at the memory of Mace's horror, and how he'd laughed when she'd explained he was most free with his tongue when she wasn't able to be free with hers. It put an end to rehearsing, but not to laughter.

While Aaron ate chocolate cake, she realised the most interesting things in her life weren't going on at this table, or at Wentworth or Turnbull and Co, they were happening in her loft home with Mace, in her studio with her paints, and in the classroom she'd entered with a mixture of fear and determination, half expecting to fail and wanting to push herself to prove she could still stand and fight, even with her knees cut off.

Aaron was an associate, not a friend. They would never sneak out and watch a movie together, and he could check out her legs all he wanted, he'd never get past the acceptable public mauling of a kiss on the cheek.

All of that was more disorienting than how easy it was to build a strategy for Aaron out of nothing more than his enquiry, a plate of seafood salad and her deep knowledge of the bank and its issues, as well as the best way to appeal to Tom.

On one hand, it was good to know she hadn't lost the ability to think about strategic issues amidst all the new focus on shapes and textures, lines and layering, colour and form. On the other, it was a shock to realise how much her life away from her usual life was starting to mean to her.

And despite the flaming bridges, perhaps she shouldn't be giving this knowledge away for the price of a posh lunch.

Aaron promised to stay in contact, keep her informed of any movements in the job market, or opportunities she should be aware of. Hell would sprout snowmen first, but still, he owed her one now, so maybe the lipstick wasn't a complete waste.

She made it back to home in time to catch the last of the good daylight, but she was too distracted to get much done in the studio. Lunch with Aaron was a magician's misdirection. All the look of something important happening, but it was Mace's pitch that was the showstopper. Win or lose, it was going to change things. Alone with her music and art, it was hard not to stop herself nurturing the tiniest hope the pitch failed.

Not because it would cut Mace in half and devastate Dillon, but because if the pitch failed, she and Mace would go on as they had been, in this gorgeous bubble of unexpected freedom and affection they'd built together. If it failed, they had time and space and energy for each other. If it failed, they had a chance to be lovers and partners and there was no outside agenda that could make it hard to be devoted, to split their attention.

Hoping for failure made her a terrible person. The take no prisoners, cold, hard, bitch type she'd inferred she was to Aaron, that Mace had first taken her for, but she didn't care, because if Summers-Denby funded Ipseity, she was well aware of what they faced as a couple and she'd need to be strong to get through it.

For Mace it would be a rollercoaster rocket ship ride. He'd need to climb on board and hang on tight or get thrown off. They'd be no second ticket. It was one shot, nothing guaranteed, step out of line, lose your place, and someone with grippier hands would step in.

And much as she could coach and cheer from the sidelines, the most she could be in this was the magician's assistant. The one left holding the bunny, while Mace took the applause.

It wasn't jealousy. Nothing as simple as that. It was his turn and he'd worked so hard for it, and she knew what it felt like to have a goal, coat it in dream and work for it—thrilling, miraculous, life-altering. She wanted him to have that for himself.