The Passionate Mistake (18 page)

Chapter Eighteen

A month passed.

The hard part was really keeping her defenses up. Everything about him, everything about how she felt with him urged her to relax, to share with him. Her self-protective instincts seemed to be on leave. Just being with him was a holiday; from the grind and pushing and shoving and angst of ordinary life.

With him she was cheerful, easy-going. She laughed so much, and didn’t compete about anything. There was no sense she must grab and grasp to be certain of getting her share. He looked out for her, served her plate first, brought her to orgasm first
. He considered her needs and made them a priority. Had anyone ever done that before? Treated her so selflessly?

Maybe M
um had. As much as any mother could with three other children to take care of. She could remember Mum handing her a strawberry and saying, “Here, this is the best one. See how red it is? It’ll be the sweetest,” and then standing and watching with pleasure as she gobbled it down unhesitatingly with all the selfishness of adolescence.

Mike was like that. He enjoyed satisfying her appetites, taking pleasure from her pleasure. It was a rare quality. When she contrasted it with her own competitive nature she felt
small inside. But he didn’t judge her. And in his presence it became easy to be the same: to think of him first, put his needs before her own.

Last night – for the first time she could remember – she had found herself in a conversation that became almost an argument of deferring, as they tried to settle on a choice of restaurant by letting the other person pick. She never gave way like that. Always stated her opinions clearly and expected those around her to fall in line. But with him there was
a formlessness to her, a desire to fit around him, to make him happy.

Which would have been dangerous with a different man.
But with him there was no taking advantage. Oh, he wasn’t a doormat. He warned her gently if she was about to cross his boundaries. But he also gave way graciously, consulting her in his decision-making. As authoritative as he could be in the office, there was nothing dominating about him in his private life. He treated her as an equal; a partner; and without her having to fight for that place, as she had fought for so much in life.

She was a softer version of herself with him.
More gentle and compassionate. When he volunteered a day of his weekend to help out a local charity that built houses for people without housing, she joined him and enjoyed the day more than she could have thought possible. It had simply never occurred to her to take time out her punishing schedule to give it to others. She had always lived with such a sense of shortage in resources. Holding up a slab of drywall while he drove nails into it with a nail gun, she looked over her shoulder at him and the other volunteers. Everyone was almost visibly brimming with the spirit of goodwill. It was a special group to be part of. A special activity to be part of. And at the end of the day as they drove home – in
her
car, for a change – she said: “It’s weird how . . . I don’t know . . . how expansive I feel right now. I mean, I’m tired. But I feel . . .”

“Bigger than yourself?”

“Yeah that. And like there’s more available to me than there was this morning.”

“
There’s a lot of things I like about volunteering. But one of them is definitely the sense of wealth it gives one to give things away. I get this real feeling that I have enough and plenty.”

“Well you
kinda do anyway.”

He laughed.
“For sure. But the act of giving makes you really aware of it. Even in this country there are people who really have virtually nothing. Go overseas and it’s even more the case. A person living on modest means here is blessed beyond the imaginings of most of the population of the world. And . . . well, I’m not going to preach. But I do feel passionately about it. And much better for a chance to give things away. My time, advice, money, goods. Anything, really.”

She thought about that a lot in the days that followed.

Again he invited her to join him for his morning walks during the week. Every morning he got up at six and went for a random wander through the streets and parks or along the waterfront for about an hour and in the weekends she went too. He tried to convince her to arrange to come with him before work, but of course she had to say no once more. She simply couldn’t maintain her disguise as Cathy under those conditions; though she was tempted to see if she could get away with tucking all her dyed brown hair up under a sunhat and going with him anyway.

So instead she pretended early rising
on a working day was anathema to her, that it was unthinkable she should leave her bed one second before she must to make it on time for work.

S
till, all his ravings about the meditative qualities of walking made her try it secretly on the days they were apart. And she was stunned by the difference it made to her outlook on life, to have an hour peacefully to herself, alone with her thoughts and no list of actions to do.

She felt like a new woman. One who held her head up and smiled at strangers
. That sensation of internal expansiveness continued to grow.

It helped, too, that
she was recognized and encouraged at work. It was such a big part of her persona, her ability to program: to outthink every challenge and arrive at a honed and perfect solution. Her university studies had seemed wonderful, given the chance to compete and be recognized for her excellence in a way she never had been at Techdos, where her work was taken for granted.

But that was nothing to how it felt to excel in the real world, to be a valuable member of a team. And surprisingly she had come to enjoy the teamwork. Once she relaxed into it and stopped jostling frantically, starving for attention, she realized her colleagues had some considerable skills. That working in a team did not have to mean being held back by the incompetence of others. Not when they had their own competencies.

Several times her work had been improved by her team’s suggestions. It irked to start with, but out of a newborn desire to
truly
fit in – or more accurately, a desperation that Mike not watch her too closely at work – she kept her hostility to herself and played nice.

Emboldened by this change, her team’s suggestions came thick and fast and soon she realized her work was improving, if she could only keep her defensiveness in check long enough to actually listen and alter her approach. Moreover
they were warmer to her. Or maybe they had always been like that and she had refused to notice. Either way, she felt she was making some new friends.

Maybe Mike saw the change
at work, because she no longer sensed she was under his close supervision. Now she had fitted in his attention was elsewhere, and though she missed the thrill of it she didn’t miss the continual knife edge of danger, of waiting for it all to come crashing down as he discovered the truth.

Unexpectedly her work at
DigiCom had become valuable to her in its own right, not just as a way to be close to Mike all the time. Which was good because the excitement of being near him, of knowing him also in this other milieu that was so important to him, had given way to regret she couldn’t share these moments with him as his partner.

The character of Cathy irked her more and more. It had always been difficult to conceal her looks – that natural advantage in life that she had honed
so carefully as she did anything that might put her ahead of the game. But now added to that was the resentment of any time she had to be apart from Mike. Sitting in the same office was no substitute. Not when she had to do everything she could to avoid his notice. Not when just being there without him knowing was a lie.

No, it was no substitute.

Yet loving her work had its own disadvantages too. Most significant of which was her reluctance to walk away from it. Yes, that would remove a huge burden of risk that Mike would find her out. But what would she do with her days then? Dad and Damian would expect her to go straight back to Techdos, as the university was still on summer break. Not to mention the conversation she had yet to have with them about her change of heart. As far as they knew, she was still trying to steal software, and she was fielding increasingly urgent messages and texts from the two of them, playing phone tag and using work as an excuse not to speak to them.

It was time to confront them and tell the truth. To make it clear she was not prepared to be a thief for them, not now and not ever, no matter what she had promised. She had had no very clear idea of her own morals and val
ues before, but out from under Dad’s supervision, from her acceptance of his authority, she realized his choices were not the same as hers.

Maybe they never had been. Maybe that was why she had lived under such a burden of stress for so long, in conflict within herself, trying to resolve her own beliefs with those of her father, and by extension, her family.

It had come to dominate everything, the black-or-white perspective that she must cleave to her family or – if not – lose them. She could see it all much more clearly. It was time to forge different links – ones of true kinship rather than just shared ambition.

With that in mind she called
dad to arrange to have dinner at the family home next Sunday. She talked to her sister Janet as well to suggest the afternoon of the same day could be spent together hanging out in the kitchen making things like Mum used to. Janet accepted the idea with enthusiasm.

Kate
planned that they would share dinner and then she would draw Dad away and tell him she wouldn’t be involved with the family firm anymore; or at least, not as an employee.

Nor would there be any
stolen software coming from her. Maybe she could do a piece of work for them that was her own. Maybe he would now accept that, knowing there was no other alternative. She didn’t mind doing work for them if she could stay out of the office and all its dynamics. As an independent contractor she might retain a professional link.

What worried her most was the question of how she could possibly
explain her reasons for leaving without offending them beyond repair. Dad had built the company from the ground up, and Damian was completely wedded to it. To say it was a failure, a toxic place to work that chewed up and spat out its employees . . . well, of course they would take that observation personally.

Anything less than that truth and she would be hounded about her reasons, about where her loyalties lay.
She wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Perhaps she could hint at her romantic involvement with Mike, imply her en
tire reason for staying at DigiCom was to be near him, and leave the relative merits of the companies out of it. Still, she didn’t know if that would prove a better solution. It was really a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Deceiving people was such a complicated, unpleasant business. If nothing else, this whole melodrama had certainly hammered that home.

When she was free of Techdos she could also bow out of DigiCom – and she was surprised to discover the prospect far more difficult than that of leaving Techdos formally and for good. Then she could be just Kate, who was with Mike. Who loved Mike, and could maybe have a future with him.

The baking day was a success. Kate had carved a little precious time out of her weekends with Mike, reminding herself that soon she’d be able to see him on the weekdays as well so it wasn’t such a huge loss.

Luke had initially tuned up his nose at the idea, but Janet was enthusiastic. Luke had come and gone from the big, sunny kitchen, hands shoved in his pockets, eventually condescending to sit at the
breakfast bar and taste a fresh-baked biscuit. Then two, and three. Kate handed him the recipe book so he could read out the instructions and before long he was volunteering scraps of things he remembered about baking at Mum’s knee. Kate found herself on the verge of weeping more than once, her eyes hot and her nose running so she had to keep blowing it. This was more perfect than she had imagined.

So the Sunday afternoon had been dedicated to trays of biscuits and muffins, with mum’s old cake tins hauled out of the back of the cupboard, cleaned and filled and placed lovingly on the bench. There were a couple more containers full of goodies stored in the freezer.

“So you’ll have plenty of treats for the next couple of weeks,” said Kate to the two of them.

“Yum!
This is great! Hey, we should do this more often. Like, maybe set up a regular time. The second weekend of every month, or something.”

Luke scooped another muffin off the countertop and started on it, nodding laconically with his mouth full. Crumbs littered the surface around where his arms were propped.

“I was wondering if you’d like to make something out of Mum’s recipe books for dinner too, instead of ordering out?” asked Kate.

“Oh yes!
That sounds cool,” said Janet, instantly receptive. Kate had forgotten what an easy-going, positive person she was. In dedicating her time to the business, she had felt in touch with her family. But really she’d only been seeing Dad and Damian. And they never talked about anything but the business at work. No wonder their family wasn’t functioning too well. How could it, with so little play time together?