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“Christ, you are a stubborn pain in my ass. This is not the time to be stoic, Jules. Just let me the fuck in.”
Suddenly weary, she sat at the kitchen table. Keeping it all inside for so long was just so bloody tiring. She looked into those deep blue eyes and rallied her strength.
“He’s a chef. He runs a very fine restaurant in London and I went there for an interview and left smitten.”
“So you worked for him?”
She let out a bitter laugh. “No. I wasn’t even good enough to get the job. I bungled the interview. Just one in a long line of interviews for servers or hostesses Jack was always setting me up with because he thought I was wasting my life away working in a pub. I’d blow them off or sabotage them by not making eye contact with the chef, who was usually a good friend of Jack’s and only talking to me as a favor to an important culinary genius like my brother. A handshake and a pitying smile later, I’d be out the door. Until Simon.”
“Simon,” he said, tasting the name and not liking it. He lowered his body to the opposite chair.
“Simon St. James, chef/owner at Lilac in Islington. The interview had gone terribly, just like I planned. On the way out, he asked me why I didn’t want the job and I said, don’t you meanwhyI want the job? He smiled and said,you know what I mean, and it was like we had this secret between us. That night, he showed up at the Red Lion, the pub where I worked. He wanted me and—”
She stopped, the humiliation and desperation of it hitting her hard.
“Baby, go on.”
She swiped at a ridiculous tear. “I wanted to be wanted. I found myself telling him things I’d told no one else. About my reading problems and Jack and how I felt like I existed on the edges, looking in on this world I couldn’t grab hold of. All my life I had been waiting for someone to notice me. My aunt and uncle, my teachers, my brother. And here was this man, pursuing me.”
Even now, the intoxicating memory thrilled through her blood. That night he had come to the bar, she had thought it was a coincidence. He was with friends, muckety muck types who brayed too loudly and got handsy with the dogsbody who collected the glasses because she was too terrified to try anything more challenging. She had spotted him at the end of the bar, watching her silently while the noise faded around them. One of those dream moments where time stands still, except it hadn’t really. It had just slowed to a pace she could finally reckon with.
He had come to seeher. Not a coincidence at all.
She’d headed to the back, knowing he would follow. Through the alley exit, the sound of him echoed behind her, a slow motion chase that sent her blood soaring. He had sought her out and just knowing that he wanted her even when he knew she was an odd, broken duck had taken her over the edge. Within five seconds of the cool air hitting her face, his hot mouth and body slammed into hers and she gave it up to him without a word.
More surprising was the fact he wanted to see her again. He took her home to his flat, one of those fancy lofts on the South Bank overlooking the river. She had felt as if she had entered a closed-off world. Jack’s world.
Two months it lasted. Fish and chips on the way home from the pub, scrambled eggs and rashers in bed, mornings spent tangling up the sheets before he went to work. She was finally someone else’s Number One, the center of another person’s universe, the sun in this man’s world.
She swallowed hard and met Tad’s steel-eyed gaze. “A couple months later, I was pregnant and he was back with his wife. The one he had neglected to mention.”
Anger simmered below the surface, finally coming to a head when he violently shoved back the chair, the scrape like a scream. He stood over her, the tension in his body fighting every muscle.
“And he was a friend of Jack’s?”
She nodded up at him. “He was the best man at Simon’s wedding. Of course, I only found that juicy morsel out later. Jack would go nuts.”
“This fucker took advantage of you. Of course he’s going to go nuts, but Jack’ll have to get in line and hope there’s something left when I’m done with him.”
Oh, he didn’t understand at all. There was so much wrong between her and Simon but she was done painting herself in victim colors. Standing, she placed a calming hand on Tad’s chest and took the measure of his overactive, macho Italian heart.
Emotion thickened like custard in her throat.
“No one took advantage of me. In London, I was—I was a different person. I’ve slept with a lot of guys, Tad, but with every man I was with, I felt some measure of power. I played the bad girl, the girl who backed up every tease, and I enjoyed it. They used my body but I used them right back.”
Saying it aloud rang even more hollow than the mantra in her head. She had given it up easily, and while there were plenty who came back for more, she was under no illusions about what she did for them. Toward the end, even Simon got antsy the moment he had finished shagging her. Checking his phone (she knew why now), telling her he had to get up early to receive the deliveries at the restaurant, inching her to the door and kissing her into a cab.
She pretended it was exactly what she wanted. Intimacy had never appealed to her, or more accurately, she had never appealed for intimacy. That would require some measure of self-respect, some acknowledgment that she was deserving of that kind of human affection.
“Jules,” he whispered, and the way he said her name smashed her to the ground.
Tears came hot and fast. “Don’t look at me like I need to be hugged. I’m sick of people judging my situation and thinking I’m some victim that needs to be coddled. Jack, Shane, all of you. So my reading sucks, I had an unplanned pregnancy, my brother pays my rent. But I’m not some delicate flower. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been and I don’t need a man to be my savior.”
He pulled her into his arms and it was the best, best place she had ever visited.
“Tesoro,I get this guy hurt you and it’s okay to be pissed off about that. It doesn’t make you a victim, it makes you a survivor. Get angry, honey. Don’t hold back.”
The anger had passed a long time ago, but the lessons she had learned remained.
