Just Not Mine (5 page)

“Morning, Josie-Girl.”
Clive breezed into the makeup room, gave her a kiss on top of her head, careful not to disturb Gregor, the makeup artist who was brushing the heavy foundation onto Josie’s face. “Looks like you’re torturing me again today. But I am, of course, resisting heroically.”

She smiled. “
I’m counting on you to put up a gallant fight against being pulled into my web. For as long as the writers can drag it out, anyway. You know I’ll have my wicked way with you eventually. Want me to run lines with you later?”

“Yeh. Got yours
sorted already, have you, Encyclopedia Brain?”

“My superpower,”
she said modestly. She’d always been able to memorize quickly, and in the world of daily television, it was a precious talent to have.

He laughed and flung himself down beside her.
“Thanks. You’re a love. We’ll steam it up, and before you know it, we’ll be making Derek jealous, get him coming back across the Ditch to defend your honor.”

Josie laughed. “I think he’s well
beyond jealousy by now. Let’s hope so.”

“
How is Australia’s newest and finest talent?” Clive asked.

“
Run off his feet, he says,” Josie said, careful to move only her lips as Gregor brushed shadow onto her eyelids, blended it with his usual quick expertise. “Fourteen-hour days, already hotter than your dad’s cowshed in January on the set, even though it’s nowhere near summer, and he said there was a bit of an episode with leeches. Had him shuddering on the other end of the phone, I could tell.”

And not happy that she hadn’t been quite as sympathetic as he could have liked. “You just pull them off, though, don’t you?” she’
d asked when he’d told her.

“
It isn’t quite as easy as that,” he’d answered. “We didn’t all grow up in the bush, you know. If you had a vampire bat latch onto you, you’d have found out it was some tribal cure and been pleased to have the cultural experience.”

“I d
idn’t think we were talking about a vampire bat,” she said. “Thought this was leeches.”

“Yeh, it was leeches,” he said. “And next time they have me go in that water, it’ll be crocs, no doubt. Maybe that’ll get a reaction out of you.”

“When you’re bitten by a croc,” she said, “I promise to take notice. Sorry, I’m sure it was awful.”

“I’m s
orry too,” he said. “I’m shattered, that’s all.”

“How’s Vanessa taking it?” Josie asked. “Was she in the leeches too?”

“She was, because I was kissing her under a waterfall. Romantic, eh. Sexy. Not too sexy when you have slugs latched onto your legs, swelling up on your life’s blood.”

She laughed again. “
Ugh. Did you cope, though? Manage to be romantic after all? You can be a pretty romantic fella when you put your mind to it.”

“I
did.
She
didn’t. Not a hearty country girl like you. I had to carry her out of there, she was shaking and screaming so hard. They’re having to scout another location, because she refused to get back in.”

“Hard luck
. Still, it gave you a chance to be extra-manly and heroic, and that’s a good look on you.”

“So they say,” he said. “
Found the bright side, didn’t you?”

“That’s my job
in this partnership,” she said. “Designated sunshine.”

“Guess you’ll find out how he is at the weekend,” Clive said now as Gregor finished up and Josie rose from the chair with a smile of thanks, let Clive take her place. “This is the big visit, right? After how long?”

“A month. And no.” She sat down beside him, c
oncentrated on the sight of Gregor adjusting the smock carefully around Clive’s tanned neck. “They’ve had so many problems with the filming, they’re carrying on with the location work. So it’ll have to wait.”

“Again?” Clive
’s eyes darted to hers in the mirror.

“Yeh
. Oh, well, can’t be helped,” she said, pasting a smile on her face. “We’ll get it next week. He’s suffering more than I am. I’m lonely, that’s all, and from the sound of it, he’s being eaten alive by the Aussie wildlife.”

“Couldn’t you go anyway?” Clive
asked. “They’ve got to be giving them a day off, at least.”

“Yeh, nah
. Too long to get there, and anyway, he says he just wants to sleep.”

“You know what I’m going to say,” he told her.

“That he’s not that into me. That’s not it. I’ve told you, we don’t have that kind of relationship. We’re easy-peasy. Comfortable.”

“I know,
you’re low-maintenance Josie, comforter of the downhearted, soup-bringer and plaster-provider. Every man’s dream, their fondly-remembered kindy teacher’s heart in Angelina Jolie’s body. But …” He hesitated, unusually for Clive. “We’ve been friends a long time, and I hope good ones. Can I say this?”

“Go ahead,” she said, and braced h
erself, her heart pounding a little despite her best efforts at calm unconcern.

“T
hat’s exactly why he should be begging you to come, doing whatever it takes to get you there,” Clive said. “He should be worried about leaving you over here by yourself, for God’s sake. Why isn’t he? Not like he doesn’t have competition. If I
weren’t
actually a married man, you know I’d have tried it on by now.”

“Nah, y
ou wouldn’t. We know each other too well. Practically brother and sister, aren’t we.”

He laughed
, got a disapproving cluck from Gregor. “Not quite. You underestimate the effect you have. Even on me, sad to say. Not as impervious as that, not yet. Still looking at the menu, even if I’m not ordering. How many times do you get chatted up, anyplace you go?”

“Heaps,” she admitted. “But that’s been happening since I was
fourteen, and Derek knows it. I wouldn’t, and he knows that, too.”

“That’s the problem,” Clive
insisted. “He knows it. Better if he weren’t quite so sure of you. Takes you for granted, doesn’t he. How long’s it been?”

“
Almost three years,” she said. “Which you know.” Seeing as how their romance had blossomed under the rest of the cast’s nose.

“And
… sorry, darling, but has he talked about making it permanent? Did you buy that new house of yours together? D’you have a ring I haven’t seen?”

She flushed a bit under the heavy makeup. “You know I don’t. We haven’t got there yet.”

“Because you don’t want to? Not thinking about kids, staring down the barrel at thirty like you are? That it?”

“
You trying to depress me?” she asked him, attempting to rally. “How’m I meant to cheer the place up today if you get me moping about?”

“Well, w
hy hasn’t he pushed for it, then?” Clive insisted. “Because he doesn’t think he has to, that’s why. Men want to have to compete for the prize. We want to win, and we want to beat the other blokes out for it. We want to have to fight for it.”

“Is this meant to be
a relationship, or a sporting match?”

“I didn’t say it was
politically correct. I said it was true. Am I right or am I right, Gregor?” Clive asked the makeup artist who was working on his eyes now.

“You’re right,” Gregor confirmed. “Sad
but true.”

“
Since I’ve stuck my neck out this far,” Clive said, “may as well go all the way. I’d do something about that, if I were you.”

“Like what? Have an affair? Start flirting with other blokes? How’s that going to improve my relationship?”

“I’m not talking about that. Just a little … uncertainty. We can’t actually make him jealous with me, alas. Much as I love you, my darling, I’m not willing to risk my own hard-won marriage over you. But you could mention somebody else, next time you’re on the phone. Just casually, get his antennae quivering, get him wondering a bit, give him a reason to think that seeing you might rate above a lovely long sleep. Try Trevor, maybe, eh, Gregor.”

Gregor put his head on one side. “Maybe,” he said dubiously.

Josie made a little face. “Don’t think I could pull that off.” Trevor was the show’s resident heartthrob, playing a fit paramedic who created almost as much havoc as Josie’s character amongst his colleagues at the hospital. Unfortunately, he thought as much of himself as his eager fans did, and Derek knew it.

“Somebody, then
,” Clive said. “You can’t lack for somebodies.”

“
I could mention my new neighbor,” she admitted reluctantly. “He’d do.”

“Good?” Clive
asked, a look of decided interest on his clean-cut face.

“Oh, yeh. Good.”

Good wasn’t the half of it. When she’d peered out from behind the chain that morning and caught sight of said neighbor taking up far too much space under the glow of her porch light, looking so incongruous amidst the spindles and ornately curved woodwork of her chocolate-box villa’s front porch, she really
had
almost shut the door on him. It had taken some effort to open it again, to assume the amused detachment in the face of masculine interest that she’d been practicing for more than fifteen years now and had down to an art form.

It wasn’t that he was so
good-looking, because he wasn’t, not really. He was a
man,
that was all, in a way that so many of her actor friends, gorgeous as they might be, couldn’t match.

The size of him,
for one thing. The bulk of his arms, the width of the chest straining that plain gray T-shirt—a chest she’d be willing to bet he’d never waxed in his life—and the extent to which she’d had to look up to see his face.

And what she’d seen when she’d looked. A nose that was probably
too big, too uncompromising, a little crooked, too. Eyes that were definitely too deep-set under the brows that nearly met in the middle, but were so dark, their expression so intense. And then that firm mouth in the midst of the dark shadow of beard covering the square chin and jaw. That wasn’t bad either.

All in all, it was a pretty potent package, and that was before she
’d opened the door the rest of the way and really looked at all of him
.
She’d restrained herself from glancing below the waist, but she hadn’t been able to help wondering. Because he was
big.

Stop that,
she chided herself. It was nothing other than idle curiosity, and anyway, size didn’t matter, any more than her own fair-sized breasts offered anything more truly satisfying to a man than any other woman’s, once the looking was done. And she didn’t do this. She was happily involved in a mutually satisfying long-term relationship, and she’d never got around much anyway. She was reasonably intelligent—all right, more than reasonably—but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that most men had pretty much one thought in their head when they looked at her, and Hugh had been no exception, that was obvious. She hadn’t missed the way his eyes had lingered on those same breasts, because he clearly hadn’t got the memo about size not mattering. But instead of the faint contempt she normally felt at the attention she inevitably aroused, she’d been … Well, face it. She’d been aroused.

It had been too long, clearly. She had a partner that any woman in New Zealand would have given her eyeteeth to be with. Tall, dark, and handsome, that was
Derek, and perfectly satisfactory in the size department as well, if it came to that. If she turned heads, so did he, and it had always been a comfort and a relief to know she was with the one man who wasn’t awestruck by her looks, because he was exactly as beautiful himself. They were a matched set, and that had always worked for her. And it still did.

Anyway
, what did she know about Hugh? That he lived with his aunt, brother, and sister, some of the time, when he wasn’t “away”? That he could barely sit still for his sister’s recital piece? Probably dragged there kicking and screaming. Probably on the dole, judging by that shaggy head of hair and the beard. Probably spent his time fishing off the jetty, when he wasn’t lifting weights in some mate’s homemade gym to build that physique, spending his evenings drinking beer in somebody’s basement. Probably broke that hand punching his fist through the wall while he was drunk. She’d gone to school with boys like that, who’d grown into men like that. Responsibility wasn’t high on their list, and nor was career focus. And they were definitely, most definitely, not her type.