Playing by the Rules (20 page)

It was still in her hand when she landed in LA sixteen hours later. She had only put it down to eat, and answer calls of nature, and barely then. With the bulk of her luggage checked through to Paris, she cleared customs with just her carry-on and headed straight to the cab rank outside the airport. The weather was stifling and the cabbie surly, but she didn’t care. Her focus was on Josh and nothing much else was going to make an impression on her until she had seen him.

When she got to her destination, she felt a momentary hesitation. She had known that Josh only worked in the best places, but this was a very flash hotel indeed. Against her egalitarian principles, she couldn’t help looking down at her travel-crumpled clothes and wondering whether they might kick her out before she even got to ask after him. Then she shook it off, cross with herself. She would hardly be the first scruffy-looking traveller to arrive in a hotel, however fancy it was. She paid the cabbie, squared her shoulders and gave the doorman the biggest, fakest smile she could manage as he opened the door for her.

Once inside, it took a while to find the right place to enquire. The foyer of the hotel was enormous and magnificent. But it seemed more concerned with housing a giant fishpond, an even bigger bar, and not one but two sweeping staircases than with anything as pedestrian as a reception desk.

Even when she did track it down, it seemed to take an inordinately long time to establish just who she was looking for and that he was a member of staff, not a guest. Her accent appeared to be giving the American girl behind the desk some trouble. But when they had straightened out the details, the exchange didn’t get any better.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but he doesn’t seem to be on my staff list.’ Kate ground her back teeth, but tried to keep her voice neutral. And to refrain from leaping over the desk and strangling the girl.

‘No, that’s not really surprising. He has only recently started here. Did I not mention that? He would have arrived on Monday, or maybe Tuesday. So maybe he’s not on your staff list, yet. But I’m sure there’s a record of him somewhere. Could you maybe have another look?’

The girl, who Kate thought was not going to be winning a Rhodes scholarship any day soon, but seemed obliging, shuffled around some papers until she found a post-it note that made her smile.

‘Ah, here’s something!’ Then she frowned. ‘Uh, ma’am? There’s something here I don’t understand. Let me just get my manager for you.’ She was gone before Kate could say that she didn’t want her manager, she just wanted Josh and could she please cut the crap and get him out here. So Kate had no choice but to stand impatiently, shifting from foot to foot, and wait. Fortunately, the manager did not take long to appear. Kate took in her expensive suit, beautifully groomed hair and perfect makeup at a glance and felt even scruffier than she had before. But she didn’t have any energy to worry about it. The manager looked grave and an awful fear was growing in Kate’s gut. Had something happened to Josh?

‘What? What is it?’ she blurted out, with more haste than manners. ‘What’s happened to Josh?’ The girl from the desk looked interested at this outburst, probably hoping to get some good gossip for the tearoom. But the manager dismissed her with a look and steered Kate over to one of the islands of sofas that were scattered throughout the enormous lobby like rocky outcrops in the sea of parquetry and invited her to sit down.

Kate sat. She had a feeling that, before long, she might need to be sitting down. The manager smiled at her and held out her hand.

‘My name’s Evelyn Tsathis. Janine tells me your name is Kate.’

Kate nodded.

‘And I believe you are looking for Josh Marchant?’

Kate nodded again.

‘Can I ask what it’s regarding?’

She could ask, but Kate wasn’t about to answer.

‘It’s a personal matter. I’m . . . a friend.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, in that case, I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s not here.’

‘Not here?’

Of all the scenarios Kate had envisaged in the very long flight, this was not among them.

‘No. He’s gone off with Megan.’

The manager’s voice had taken on a somewhat bitter tone, but Kate hardly noticed. She was hearing her as if from somewhere far away, with very poor telephone reception.

‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say, eventually. She observed that she also sounded distant and faint and wondered, in a frozen sort of way, if she sounded like that to the manager, or if it was the buzzing in her head that was causing the problem. ‘Did you say “Megan”?’

The manager leaned forward, in the manner of someone with some really juicy gossip to impart. ‘She’s new too. She’s Australian. Do you know her? They started on the same day. Just a few days ago. And they’re already on a junket.’

‘A junket?’ Kate repeated faintly.

The manager sniffed.

‘It’s supposed to be some big convention about event management, but it’s in Vegas. You tell me.’

But Kate couldn’t. She couldn’t find any words at all and in the silence, the manager seemed to think she might have said too much. She stood up, shedding her conspiratorial air, and offered her hand to Kate. Kate stood automatically and observed, again from a distance, that her manners seemed to still be in working order, even though the body that they were moving around so cavalierly had no feeling.

‘Would you like to leave a message for him?’

The manager’s voice seemed to come from even further away than before.

‘No, thank you,’ Kate managed to say. ‘I was just passing on my way back home. It doesn’t matter.’

The manager smiled and went back to whatever it was she did in that huge hotel.

And Kate went home.

Three weeks later . . .

Kate picked up her pen and tried to work up an interest in the papers in front of her. She had come here in the vague hope that sitting in the August sunshine at her favourite café would make marking seem like less of a chore. It hadn’t helped, though. It looked as though the balmy summer evening had brought out every couple in Paris to promenade in front of her and Kate kept having to force down the urge to leap from her seat and shout at them all to go away and be happy somewhere else.

She slammed her pen down on the papers and drained the rest of her coffee. It was bitter, but it matched her mood. Serve her right for ordering espresso. It wasn’t the coffee’s fault that she couldn’t stand the sight of milk in coffee any more.

She picked up her pen again and leaned over the first of the papers resignedly, only to find that someone was casting a shadow over it, making it next to impossible to read. She looked up to ask the inconsiderate person to move . . . and gasped.

Standing on the other side of the table was a tall man with olive skin, black curly hair and a devastating smile, which he was directing at Kate. He put his hand on the back of the chair in front of him and asked, ‘May I?’

Kate nodded. Her vocal cords seemed to have fossilised, and, anyway, her mouth was too dry to speak. Fortunately, the handsome man seemed willing to do the talking.

‘Can I tell you a story?’

Kate nodded again, her eyes glued to his face, afraid that if she looked away he would disappear.

‘I fell in love a little while ago. Well, actually, I fell in love a long time ago, but I only realised it a little while ago.’ Josh took a deep breath and looked away, as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes. ‘I was really badly gone. I couldn’t think about anyone or anything else. I wanted to be with her all the time. I even asked her to marry me.’ He looked back at Kate. ‘But she turned me down.’ Josh inched his hand across the table until it was lying next to Kate’s and rubbed his thumb gently across the back of her hand. Kate trembled, but didn’t take her eyes from his.

‘She said that it would never work. She said that it had all happened too fast and we couldn’t possibly know for sure in such a short time. She said that she was afraid she would hurt me. She said that it was crazy to even think about it because we lived on different continents.’

Kate felt as if her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest as she listened to the litany of objections she herself had made. In the back of her mind she wailed that she had never meant him to listen to them. But still, no sound came out of her mouth.

‘At first, I was angry with her. I thought that if she cared about me, none of that should have mattered. We could have made it work with love alone. So I left town without even saying goodbye.’ Josh’s face darkened and his voice dropped to a sound barely above a whisper. ‘That has haunted me ever since.’

Then his face cleared a little and his volume increased again. ‘But then, after I left, I got to thinking about what she’d said. And I realised that I hadn’t given her a proper chance. Asking her had made sense to me. My whole life is crazy schedules and making decisions even before someone drops a hat – but she’s not used to that. Of course she was going to say no. It was the only sensible thing to do. And my girl is always sensible.’

He swept his thumb across her hand again, leaving tingles where it touched.

‘And, even though I made out it didn’t mean anything at the time, when I thought about it, she did have a point about the two-continent thing.’

He paused and Kate mentally begged him to go on. Between the conflagration on the back of her hand and the agitation in her chest, she thought she might explode if he didn’t speak again soon. He reached out and took her other hand off the pile of papers and held it.

‘So I did something about it. I found someone to take my job in LA —’

A light came on in Kate’s heart, driving out her darkest fears.

‘Megan?’

He smiled at her.

‘Yes, Megan. How did you know?’

Kate shook her head.

‘Later,’ she managed to croak.

He smiled at her again and she lost herself for a moment in gazing at his lips, so familiar and so dear.

‘So, I ditched my job on the other side of the world and found one in Paris, where she lives. So now, I don’t have to ask her to give up her life to be with me. I even got an apartment, so she doesn’t have to come to the hotel if she doesn’t want to. With a two-year lease. I figure two years might be long enough for us to get to know each other. What do you think?’

Kate wasn’t thinking at all. She was trying not to faint from happiness. ‘After that, who knows? I have an investment place back in Melbourne and by then, I might be ready to go back to Australia. But only if she is,’ he added quickly.

‘Because I have learned something in these last few weeks. I don’t want to live without her, and there is nothing –
nothing
– I wouldn’t do to make it possible for us to be together. I can wait. I can live with uncertainty. I can move countries. I can learn to plan. But I can’t live without her.’ Josh got up and came around to Kate’s chair and went down on one knee at her feet.

‘Kate, I can’t live without
you
. Please say you’ll give me another chance to love you.’

Looking into his eyes, Kate knew that there was absolutely no chance; no chance that she was ever going to let him out of her arms again. She didn’t try to speak. Between the constriction in her throat and the silent tears pouring down her face, she suspected it might go badly. But she didn’t need to speak. There was a much more reliable form of communication – one that had never failed them.

She leaned forward into his waiting arms and kissed him . . .

And in that kiss was all the certainty and all the love that either of them could ever have wished for.

She loved it when a plan came together.

I’d like to say a big, big thank you to:

My husband and daughter, my unfailing supporters. I couldn’t do this without you!

My family and friends, who think writing is cool and tell me so.

The Romance Writers of Australia, always in my corner.

My editors at Destiny Romance, Carol and Sarah and my copy editors, Arwen and Jocelyn.

My agent, Clare Forster, from Curtis Brown Australia.

Jacqui and Ingrid, surely the best beta readers in the world.

Lyndall and all the crew at Gloria Jeans for making the writer juice.

Everyone who takes the trouble to write a review of my books, especially Roz from
http://mywrittenromance.com/
and Marcia from
http://bookmusterdownunder.blogspot.com.au
. You were the first and I love you for it!

Everyone who bought and read my first book,
Rules are for Breaking
and YOU for reading this one!

Imelda was born in Fremantle and grew up under the nose-peeling sun of WA – at least, she would have, if she hadn't spent most of her time under a tree reading a book. From under that tree, she battled pirates on the seven seas, solved crimes in Victorian London, journeyed to the centre of the earth, travelled to distant stars and consorted with witches on blasted heaths – and along the way developed a life-long love of stories.

Her first book, in what she fondly imagined was the style of Agatha Christie, was published by her grade four teacher to the acclaim of her parents and classmates and the lukewarm interest of her siblings. Her second effort, a middle grade thriller written in grade six, was less well received and in a fit of pique, she put away her authorly fountain pen until she discovered the Romance Writers of Australia and thought she'd try again.

In the intervening years she occupied herself as a student, editor, office manager, chorister, kid wrangler, volunteer, storyteller, copywriter and general pest about town. She has enjoyed all of these roles, but likes being an author best, as none of the others gives her an excuse to read novels and call it work.

She lives in Melbourne with her long-suffering darling of a husband, her daughter, an arthritic but enthusiastic dog and an indeterminate number of frogs.