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He turned away, zipped his duffle and shouldered the strap of his laptop bag. She couldn’t read his eyes; so steely blue they were closer to grey, a washed out watercolour that didn’t fit with his solid acrylic vitality.
It should be easy to watch him back away, a relief he was handling it so reasonably, so unemotionally. They were the two states she’d built her career on: rationality and logic, but this morning they tasted like chaff on her tongue; flaky, insubstantial and utterly lacking in the nutrients she needed. She missed him and he was still standing in front of her. She was ill equipped to deal with these emotions, they didn’t have a place in her life and they weren’t welcome.
He picked up his duffle.
“You have everything?” Not that he’d unpacked and scattered his stuff everywhere, but it was something to say that didn’t give away the strange emptiness she felt. Once she was dressed and in the office she’d stop feeling this way. She’d have no time to think about anything that wasn’t Wentworth business and she’d be caught in the rush that came with her job.
“Everything I came with.”
She moved around him to the front door, opened it and held it ajar with her back. He was still standing in the other room. If he asked to see her again, she’d say no. If he tried to kiss her again, she’d move away. She had everything she needed and he took nothing away by leaving.
He gave her a slow nod as he stepped into the corridor. He wasn’t limping this morning. She watched him walk to the end and call the lift. He kept his eyes on the floor monitor. Rationally that was the best thing. Logically it was what she wanted. She should be in the shower, dressing, but she couldn’t make herself look away from him.
If he turned his head and smiled, she’d call his name. If he glanced around, she’d beckon him. If he came back, she’d let him touch her and tell him they could see each other again. If he looked back, she’d find a way to fit him in her life.
It was neither rational nor logical.
Please look back. Please look back.
The lift arrived and he got in, the doors closing behind him, leaving her looking at an empty corridor. She stepped away from her front door and it clicked closed behind her. She almost laughed aloud at her ego. Why did she think he’d want to be with her? She was world’s worst girlfriend material with no desire to change, and she’d made that perfectly clear to him.
She was in the bedroom when she heard the pounding. She went back to the door. It had to be him, and he had to have gotten out of the lift before it went anywhere because he didn’t have the code to make it ride back to her floor.
She opened the door. “What did you forget?” That had to be it, a split-second recognition he’d forgotten his wallet, or house keys. He stood outside frowning. He must be annoyed, his nice clean, unemotional exit buggered up by a forgotten USB stick or a sock.
“You.” He pushed past her and dragged her into the room with him, dumping his bags. The door swung shut behind him. “I have everything I came with except you.”
12: Responsibility
Mel’s darting eyes told Jacinta what she needed to know about how wild and out of control her morning was going to be. But it couldn’t be any more out of kilter than the last hour. She’d almost let Mace lift her onto the kitchen counter and turn her into a writhing heap of jelly again. He’d made do with a promise she’d call him when she had a handle on her various work crises. She’d warned him that might be days, a week even, not to expect her to call anytime soon and not to call her. That’s the way it would need to be.
There’d been a suspended moment where she’d watched him consider; weigh her conditions with his expectations, her requirement for control against his obvious desire to take this thing they had and see if it had wings that flapped.
It was only then, when he’d drawn away, she noticed the tension in him, straining the muscles at his neck and along his jaw and knew it was for her. It made it worth the logic crunch, the irrational leap to see him again, even if what was between them never became anything more than the heat and the crackle of their bodies in motion.
He’d looked away, rubbed his hand over his face, then given her that raised eyebrow, and said, “I can deal.”
Mel handed her a printed summary of the morning’s media. “Malcolm’s been in here twice already. Are you sick or something?”
Yes, that had to be it, but not sick in any way a doctor could fix. “Give me fifteen minutes and a short black then ring Alison and tell her I’m coming to see Malcolm.”
Fifteen minutes was only enough time to glance at the contents of her inbox. It was 8.30am, an hour and a half after the time she usually started work. She sipped the coffee, scanned the printout, then her email subject lines. A dozen of the list Mel had culled for her attention positively glowed with menace, but the ones she needed to see first were those from Malcolm and Henry.
Her intercom buzzed, Mel said, “Do you want Henry?”
Yes. Deal with the chairman before the CEO. If Henry was calm it had the effect of putting a plug in Malcolm’s volcano. “Put him through.”
“Henry, good morning.”
“What happened to you? Mel says you’re not ill. Were you away this weekend? You should’ve said, or maybe cancelled, given Friday. You do know they went with the other bid.”
She unclenched her teeth. “I want us to immediately move on Plan B.”
“I’m not sure I remember what Plan B was, Jacinta. The rest of the board certainly won’t and might not be in any mood to consider it.”
The door opened, banging against the wall where there was already a well excavated divot in the plaster. Malcolm strode in. Mel stood behind him, shaking her head, rolling her eyes in a sorry gesture.
“Who are you talking to?”
