But beggars could not be choosers and now I had to figure out what one wore to a party on a goddamn yacht.
I was held up at work waiting on a call from the Sydney office and had to ask Noelle to meet me at Pier 25. We all had to be on the yacht by a certain time since it was a surprise party for Patrick, but I felt like crap for doing it that way when I had barely spoken to her all week.
In fact, every decision I was making this week was making me feel like crap. I hadn’t lied to Noelle about work being busy. The meetings Patrick had finally got around to arranging with key clients had gone well despite his intense panicking, but there were still a couple that needed to happen and now there wasn’t the time, I was going to have to ask Georgina.
And then Nick had contacted me about when he was flying over here in just over a week and I’d barely had time to respond to him either. I hadn’t wanted to get into the details of what happened with Trevor via text and I didn’t have time to call him and talk about it, so now I felt like I’d been lying to him.
All of this hadn’t stopped me from wanting to call Noelle up and invite her over when I finally got home from work every day. To lose myself in her soft body and witty banter and keep all the thoughts at bay that plagued me in the quiet of the night. But she deserved better than to be used as a distraction. I was still trying to be better for her.
I’d intended to get a handle on things before I saw her again, but I didn’t know what to do with the new information from Trevor. I knew what he looked like now. He was real. I knew exactly what he looked like and I knew the sound of his voice. I heard it, over and over, telling me he’d kept me a secret from his wife, but also that he’d sent me birthday cards and Mum had hidden them.
Why would she do that? Why would she let me think I’d been completely and utterly forgotten?
When did he give up sending them?
Perhaps going through the envelope that Noelle had tactfully left on my table before she left at the weekend would have helped but I couldn’t face it. So, I had to accept my failure to put it all behind me before I saw Noelle again. I couldn’t wait to see her any longer.
When I saw her at the entrance to the dock, looking out over the Hudson, I realised it was a miracle I’d waited this long. She was wearing a white dress with black polka dots and a big black belt around her waist. It accentuated her 1950s’ Hollywood hourglass figure perfectly. She was also wearing that ludicrously large sun hat, probably just to piss me off, so I couldn’t help but smile. It may have been the first genuine smile I’d had on my face in days.
She waved when she spotted me as I was walking alongside the grass and flowerbeds towards her, but I didn’t return the greeting. I couldn’t. It would put precious seconds between seeing her and holding her. I caught her at the waist and held her tight against me as I lowered my mouth to hers. She seemed stunned for a moment but then she wrapped her arms around my neck. I tried to take it slowly but the heat between us flared up, pulling me in, calling me on to go faster, deeper. She sighed into me in that way that unhinged me, and I had to break away before it got out of hand. We were both breathless and she was gratifyingly boneless as I managed to drag myself away, her cheeks pink and grey eyes twinkling.
‘Well, hello there, sailor.’ Her smile lit me up. She reached up and rubbed her thumb across my lips. ‘Lipstick,’ she explained.
‘You’d better get used to doing that tonight,’ I warned her, nipping her thumb before she removed it. ‘You look good enough to eat.’
‘Is that so? Even with the hat?’ Her grin widened.
‘It’s growing on me. You look like Kate Winslet inTitanic.’
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Is that a good thing, considering we’re about to go on a boat?’
‘Not superstitious, are you?’
‘All good Irish Catholics are. And a lot of superstitions are just common sense.’
I took her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it and leading her through the white metal gates. God I’d missed her. I debated blowing off the drinks on the yacht altogether in favour of taking her to my place and staying there all weekend. If it had been for anyone other than Patrick, I would’ve done. The dock stretched out a long way into the river with all sorts of boats moored there, from small private sailing yachts to tour boats and super yachts.
‘And what superstitions do you class as good sense?’
‘Well, don’t walk under ladders.’
‘Okay, I’d have to agree with that one. Big health and safety issue.’
‘Exactly. Don’t put shoes on the table.’
‘I thought that saying was about putting shoes on the bed?’
‘Bed – table – I’m not fussy.’
I looked down at her and quirked an eyebrow. ‘I’ll have to remember that.’
She caught at her bottom lip, still vivid red, with her teeth and I saw the answering heat in her expression. We were definitely going to make our excuses as soon as possible tonight. ‘Enough of that talk. We have more important things to discuss.’
‘Indeed?’ I tried not to let my good humour slip. I didn’t want to talk about my ‘feelings’. Not here. I couldn’t risk the way she unravelled me. She had a way of getting in my cracks.
‘Yes. Like, A) What is your work persona?’ She kept my hand in hers but lifted it to tick each item off on her fingers. ‘B) What are your work colleagues like? and C) How long do we have to stay?’
‘Did you write that list in bullet points in one of your notebooks?’
