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“You’d hate me.”
“I hate you some days anyway.”
That made him smile. “Do you really?”
She shrugged her slim shoulders in her designer suit. “Why not? Someone has to do it.”
He groaned. “I think there’s a queue, you can join the end of it.”
“Oh Will,” she laughed. “Who do you think started it?” At the door to Pete’s office she turned back. “I’ll set up something with the Financial Record. And you remember about tonight?”
“Monkey suit.”
“Yes, black tie and try to look happy about it. Are you bringing a date?”
“No.”
“Are you ever going to have a date again?”
“Don’t I pay you to do more important things than worry about my love-life?”
“You pay me to make sure your business is positioned well with stakeholders, here and internationally. You are the business, Will. Of course I worry about you.”
“I might have to start paying you more then. Danger money.”
Aileen laughed. “You already pay me a fortune, but go ahead, if it makes you feel better. Who am I to say no?”
When the door clicked shut and Will was finally alone, he measured his options. He should go through the connecting door to his ow
n office. He had two engineer’s reports waiting and a full inbox of emails unanswered. He could just fuck the day off and hit the gym or go home and sleep, it was going to be another late night. He reached for Pete’s phone to call Bo. He’d have him drive him out to the plant, he could burn off some angst doing an inspection. He let the phone handset drop back into the cradle before Bo answered.
There were a thousand ways to mask cowardice and they were all open to him. Each one was preferable to the further mess he’d make if he faced up to Darcy Campbell. He couldn’t afford to compound his mistake by seeing her again, even knowing she’d want to spit in his face and he’d deserve it. Neither Pete nor Aileen had earned the extra hassle either.
He swung the chair around to face the windows, closed his eyes against the sun and saw her face, flushed from the heat of the bath where she’d sung a Green Day song mostly off-key, making him laugh till he got a cramp in his side. He felt her hands on his back, tracing the edge of the big tat, resting her cheek there when he told her what it meant to him.
He’d had a weekend full of crystallised moments of pleasure, some so commonplace as to be unremarkable to anyone but him. It wasn’t unusual to find himself in bed or the bath with a beautiful woman, but none of them had tried to make him laugh by singing badly, or lay so tenderly in his arms to sleep. And none so hot, so challenging, so gut-wrenchingly pure; he knew it would be a long time until he forgot Darcy Campbell and forgave himself the sin of hurting her.
12. Real World
“If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.” — Confucius
Darcy needed a long shower to get her act together. It was a good thing the interview wasn’t till 10am. Her whole body felt gloriously used. She’d known she’d wake up alone. Tara wasn’t a poignant goodbye type of guy. Still, she’d gone into the dining room with a sense of trepidation. Her Shangri-La fantasy would taste sour if he’d left a soppy note making promises they both knew wouldn’t be kept.
No note. But a lovely breakfast spread—for one.
She watched CNN and ate strawberries and yoghurt. She drank two big milky coffees and tried to review her notes one last time. But images from the weekend kept working their way into her head.
She couldn’t look at the baby grand without remembering him sitting her on the closed lid and taking the seat. She’d asked if he played. And he’d answered by laying her down so her feet were on the keys and then playing her like a virtuoso.
A breeze through the open balcony door lifted a photo of tall, dark, dashing and probably myopic, given the glasses, Will Parker, and floated it to the floor. Even the plush pile could make her blush. There was barely a surface in the suite they hadn’t used, despite it being equipped with the biggest bed in Darcy’s known world.
The reason the balcony door was open was he’d taken her against the railing with the sultry heat of the night cloaking their nakedness. She hoped. Not that it mattered. She was a long way from home and anyone who knew her. She could tie this weekend up in a box, stick a label on it called ‘extraordinary’ and file it away till it got dusty and lost its attraction.
She wondered how long that would take. She’d just had an experience that could pervert a girl’s expectations of romance for good.
To say Tara was an expert lover was like saying Gerry Ives liked to ‘do lunch’. It was a statement of the obvious. But Tara was more than that. He was a complex, accomplished man.
He was also guarded, controlling, aggressive and closely wound and instead of that being a turn-off, it’d been a challenge. She might not have won, but she knew she’d gotten to him.
