The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! (24 page)

Tori shrugged her slim shoulders.

Lara cleared her throat, awkwardly, from the doorway. ‘What would you like me to do?'

Poor girl. What an introduction. Izzy forced herself back to some semblance of normal.

‘If you could let him into the building that would be super. Thank you!' she called as Lara disappeared back down the stairs to her small bedsit right below them.

She spun and looked straight to Tori, who knew, immediately, what she was asking.

‘You look great.' But her eyes fell and her face followed suit. ‘Although you have something on your sweatshirt.'

Tori turned and dashed into the boxroom, returning wearing a far less
lived-in
top.

I shouldn't care…I shouldn't care…

‘What's going on?' Alex asked, emerging from the kitchen with the first two steaming bowls of pasta.

Poppy and Tori spun towards him but Izzy couldn't take her eyes off the door. Sure enough Harry stepped into it, puffing slightly from vaulting the stairs.

‘You've got a bloody nerve—' Alex gunned straight for the front door.

Four female hands snagged him before he could get much past Izzy, and Harry skidded to a halt just outside the door.

Like a vampire that hadn't been invited in.

‘Izzy,' he said, a whole lot of nothing in his eyes. Giving nothing away.

‘Why are you here?'

‘I wanted to speak to you.'

‘We're in the middle of dinner.' What? Ridiculous. But her brain wasn't doing its finest work right now. ‘You should have called.'

‘I tried calling. Your phone's been going straight to voice mail since yesterday.'

Oh.

‘The battery died.' Sometime during her self-imposed sequester. Something to do with listening to his ‘I love you' voice mail over and over.

Ad nauseam.

‘You'll have a bunch of missed calls from me when you charge it up. Tracking my progress from Melbourne airport.'

The silence that fell was punctuated only by the three sets of heavy breathing behind her.

Well…wasn't this nice?

‘How's your father?' she asked past her tight throat.

‘Getting there.' He glanced over her shoulder and then back. ‘Can I…? Can we speak, privately?'

‘This is their home, too.' And she absolutely wasn't having any kind of conversation with him in the boxroom. It was hard enough getting to sleep now, without it filling with his particular scent.

‘A walk, then?'

‘I'll need a second.'

‘Okay.'

Izzy walked, numb but steady, to her room and then to the bathroom, where she pulled on a jumper, combed her hair and brushed her fuzzy teeth. She gargled for good measure.

Deluded optimist.

But if Harry was here as part of some extended farewell tour, she wasn't having his last memory being her looking like road-kill.
She'd prefer to be remembered as the one that got away.

Actually she'd prefer to be the one-that-got-to-stay but that wasn't happening any time soon.

When she re-emerged, the tension in their flat was richer than the colour scheme. Harry busily ignored the three sets of death stare blazing at him and kept his eyes tracked on the door she'd disappeared through.

At the slightest noise from her Alex, Tori and Poppy all spun around.

‘You don't have to do this, Iz,' Alex gritted. ‘I can make him leave.'

No doubt, given his background. But given Harry's martial arts training one or both of them would end up hurt. She squeezed Alex's arm and smiled at her girlfriends.

‘It's okay. I'll be back in a while. I could use the air, anyway.'

Concern ran ahead of them and tangled in her feet as she crossed to follow Harry back down the stairs. They descended in silence and didn't speak until they were out on the street.

Three gazes practically burned into the back of Izzy's head from the upstairs window.

‘I didn't expect to see you—' ever again ‘—back in London.'

‘I had to wind things up at Broadmore Natále and hand over to my replacement.'

Ironic since that was the lie she'd told to get into his house in Australia. She led him around the corner to a park playground on the next street.

‘I thought you'd have people to do that for you, now that you're the big cheese. Or Skype or something.'

‘Some things you can't outsource.'

She steered them into the park and turned to face him. To stare into those beautiful eyes. Just stare. He'd come to her. The next step had to be his.

He composed himself, visibly, and then started speaking. Formally, as if he'd been practising on the plane. Turmoil boiled behind his eyes. But it coalesced into a kind of certainty.

And she knew he was finally going to be honest.

‘Just over five years ago, my father paid someone a fortune to bring a heap of old family documents into Broadmore's content management system, and a letter
about
me was misfiled as being
to
me. It showed that my school captaincy—an
honour I believed I'd earned—was in return for spanking new science-lab equipment my father donated. The more I dug, the more coincidental donations I discovered. My academic achievements. Jiu-jitsu awards…'

Five years. Right about when he changed his name and left Australia for Britain.

‘Every girlfriend I had growing up was with me for the lifestyle that a rich young kid could provide. I picked girls who were friends with my sisters because I assumed they'd be less dazzled by the money. But it turns out many of their parents were encouraging them to befriend my sisters as a way to get closer to the future CEO of Broadmore Consolidated. But when they eventually went their way—and they always did—it wounded me
and
whatever sister they'd used to get to me. And I realised I was hurting my sisters.

‘So I changed my approach as soon as I hit uni. I stuck to women where we both knew the score. No betrayals, no innocent façades. I spent on them generously and publicly. They were openly in it for the reward and…I guess so was I.'

‘Those must have been cynical, lonely years,'
she murmured, hating the idea of anyone touching him before her.

He shrugged. ‘It was safer and it kept my family out of it. And if I felt myself growing connected to one of the women, all I had to do was tighten the flow of money and I'd get an instant reminder of why they were really there.'

‘None of them cared for you? At all?'

What was wrong with Australian women? How could they know him and not love him?

‘They all delighted in having a healthy young man to break in. But that wasn't why they were there. And I can't blame them. I set the rules. But it wasn't enough. I needed to know who
I
was…on my own.'

‘So you became Harry Mitchell.'

‘And I got an entry-level job in my father's company without him knowing and then worked my way up. He eventually cottoned on. It amused him to watch my progress, at first, but then he saw how settled I was getting here and so he turned on the screws, reminding me of my obligations, and me staying became conditional on us both considering it in-house training.

‘I got another promotion and I really started to wonder whether he was orchestrating those,
as well. So I began testing people. Seeing if I could get away with murder. Seeing who'd just wear it.'

‘And who did?'

‘One or two. But not a bolshy, blonde finance officer who was assigned to me fourteen months ago. She gave me no quarter at all.'

‘That explains your management approach, then…'

‘Izzy, everything I've ever achieved has been because of my name, my family, the bank balance that would some day be mine,' he started. ‘I wanted to see what I could achieve without any of those things behind me.'

He shuffled around, more face-on. ‘And I achieved
you,
Iz. Quirky, high-maintenance and left-of-centre you. This gorgeous woman who I'd lusted after for a year, who came to be interested in a snarky finance manager whose only redeeming quality was his circus skills in the sack. And I was really happy with that. Because you'd chosen
Harry Mitchell.
On his own merits, not because of a name.

‘But then you thought I hadn't.'

‘I didn't want to know how long you'd known my secret, because I was scared of the answer. Scared of hearing you say it. But I should have
known, I should have believed you. Or done just about anything other than shouting at you and leaving the country before you could defend yourself. My head was just so…compressed with memories and images, which all looked totally different through a darker filter.'

‘It was a rough time—'

‘I was raised to push through rough times. And I knew my old man was too much of a control freak to actually die.' He shook his head. ‘I have no excuse for the conclusions I jumped to. At least I didn't think I did. But then you turned up at my house.'

He said that as if it were the most audacious and awe-inspiring thing he'd ever heard of. As if no one ever just
turned up.

‘You fronted me on my own turf, and you stood there all beautiful and fresh and
honest
and, after you'd gone, that impression wouldn't leave me. And all those memories and images started to replay again through a different filter. A blindingly bright one.'

He took her hand.

‘They were completely changed, Iz. Genuine. Unpolluted. The way I'd experienced them the first time. I realised, then, that I'd fixated on the fact that you'd known rather than on
the fact that you were one of two people in the world I
could have
trusted with the information. That I
should
have.'

‘Why didn't you?'

He slumped down onto the playground seesaw and straddled it. She stepped quietly around to its opposite. When it had completely stilled from its bouncy adjustment, he resumed speaking.

‘My mother wasn't even twenty when she started working at Broadmore's Melbourne office and met my father. I wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't sought a job there purely to meet him. She was pretty motivated. I don't know what she did to hypnotise him or whether the realities of marriage were just too mundane but, the moment the ink was dry on their nuptial agreement, all that allure just fell away. And all they were left with was the husk of a not very deep, not very long, not very good relationship.'

Izzy frowned. ‘They brought four kids into that family.'

‘Part of the agreement. He wanted an heir.'

‘Oh, Harry…'

‘It hurts kids to grow up like that, Iz,' he breathed. ‘My sisters are as messed up as I am in their own ways. But I sat there and sucked in the
veiled looks through osmosis; the snarky comments, the telephone conversations to friends and lovers they probably thought I couldn't hear or understand. I watched my father—a man I wanted to love and respect—paying the lifetime price for his weakness about this woman, and I watched her enjoy a string of relationships with people other than my father, loving them, and then brushing them off when they ended, and finding someone new.

‘But, as I grew, I realised her love for
them
was virtually indistinguishable from her love for
me
,' he said. ‘And she told the world she loved my father but really she can barely tolerate him. So how could our love be any realer?'

The pain in her chest—the one that had finally eased off following her return from Australia—surged back now, angry and tight.

Her fingers itched to find his.

So this was why he protected his heart?

‘And so I grew up believing that love was just a thing you said for effect or put on for show, like the flash entry hall of my house. It was where you stood your sculptures or hung your expensive art or custom-woven drapes. It was a trapping of success. It didn't have to be real.

‘But I hadn't realised until I was standing in
my doorway shouting at your pale, devastated face what that had done to me. What it had made me.'

He leaned forward and snared her gaze with his.

‘I'm here for two reasons and the first is to beg your forgiveness, Izzy, for the way I spoke to you. Here and in Australia.'

‘Do you believe I wasn't faking it?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Do you trust me?'

‘Yes.'

‘You paused.'

He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It doesn't come naturally, Izzy. It's going to take a little work.'

The future tense had her breath coiling up all over again in her chest. ‘Why couldn't you tell me your secrets?'

‘I was so smitten with you. So distracted and glassy-eyed. We went tumbling past the point at which telling you would have been natural.'

Tumbling into bed, knowing them.

‘And then I'd left it too long. It got harder every day I left it.'

Just like her parents.

‘But you'd been so great about it, so relaxed
and undemanding, and I treasured that after the women I'd had in my life.'

‘I was waiting stoically for you to tell me,' she murmured.

He forked his fingers through his hair. ‘I recognise that now.'

‘Long way to fly to apologise.'

‘In my message on the day of Dad's heart attack, I said there was something I wanted to tell you. This was it. I was going to tell you everything—all of it. Back then.'

Until she'd gone tearing over like a banshee with all her support and kindness.

‘That's not all you said.'

‘No.' He stood slowly so that her end of the see-saw didn't dump her off. Then he drew her back to her feet, too. ‘And it killed me that the first time I said it was in a voice mail. That's not how I'd imagined saying those words.'

She tried to smile, but suspected she wasn't pulling it off. ‘Not really how I'd imagined hearing them.'