Blame It on the Bikini (18 page)

‘No one can be more organised than you. Your problem is that not only are you studying, you’re working two jobs. That’s not a normal workload.’

‘In my world it happens all the time. You do what you have to do.’

‘Yeah, but
you
don’t have to do that much.’

‘I do if I need to eat.’

‘Why not let me help you?’

She whirled away from him. ‘You don’t need to help me. All I want from you is—’

‘Yeah, okay. I got it.’ He didn’t want to hear what
little
she wanted from him. He’d made the bed. But now the bed wasn’t enough for him.

What was wrong with him? He’d never turned down sex. Ever. If a pretty woman was offering, he was on it. Easy come, easy go and a good time had by both.

She’d wanted to ravish him, and he’d lain there like a log. And ironically harder than a piece of petrified wood. He’d definitely come down with some kind of mind-altering fever. And now she was halfway down the hallway again.

‘You’re not leaving,’ he stated, striding after her.

‘I’m not staying where I’m not wanted.’

‘You’re wanted. You
know
you’re wanted. All you have to do is look at me to know you’re wanted.’

‘That’s just a normal state of being for you.’

White-hot fury ripped through him because this was
not
normal for him.

She turned in time to read his expression and suddenly shook her head. ‘Don’t make this complicated.’ She kept backing up the hallway. ‘I think I’ll spend tonight at my place. Catch up on my beauty sleep.’ A pointed look. ‘And I need to get to my parents’ place early in the morning. We can get together next week.’

He caught up to her in a couple of quick strides. He
pulled her against him and kissed her until she was panting. And so was he.

‘You couldn’t look more beautiful than you do right now,’ he said.

When her attention was riveted on him. When desire filled her eyes and blood pounded in her lips and she was seconds off breathing his name.

But that hurt look in her eyes grew—dimming that light. ‘You just don’t like me walking out on you right now. But you started it.’

‘What I don’t like is how hard you’re working. Why not work smarter instead of harder?’

‘What is that piece of management-mag speak supposed to mean?’

‘Get just one job. A better job. Get an internship at a firm.’

She shook her head.

‘You could clerk for me over the summer.’ It was the worst thing to suggest; he knew it before he’d even opened his mouth but he couldn’t stop the words.

‘I’m not a charity case. I’m tired of charity. I want to do it myself. I want to deserve it myself.’

‘You do deserve it,’ he argued, his volume lifting along with his frustration. ‘You’re super smart. You’ve got amazing grades. Any firm would want you.’

‘You only do because of this … connection,’ she said. ‘It’s the sexual equivalent of the old boys’ network. Only because you know me. I’d rather send my CV out and get a job on my own merit.’

‘Okay, fine. Will you send your CV to my firm?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So you’re doing the opposite. Because we do know each other, you won’t work with me?’

‘We couldn’t. I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? We’d make a great team.’

She just stared at him.

‘Everybody makes connections, Mya,’ he said, his body clenched with frustration. Wanting to shake sense into her some way or another and knowing already that he was doomed to failure. She was so
damn
obstinate. ‘That’s why they have networking groups. Young lawyers, young farmers, young fashion designers. People have mentors. It’s normal.’

‘You set up on your own,’ she argued. ‘You turned your back on any help your father could offer.’

He drew a hard breath. ‘You know I had my reasons for that. And I still had help. I might have turned my back on my father’s help, but I still had his name.’ He sighed. ‘And to be honest I know that helped. It helped that I had money.’

‘It helped more that you’d won all the prizes in your year at university. Your own merit, Brad. I want to do the same.’

‘I still had help,’ he ground out through his teeth, hating to have to admit it, but knowing it was the truth.

‘Well, I’ll get my lecturer to write a reference or something.’

‘So it’s just me you won’t accept help from?’

‘I’m not using our personal relationship for professional gain.’

‘So we have a relationship.’ He pounced.

‘No,’ she denied instantly, swallowing hard. ‘This is a fling. Stress relief.’ Mya stared at him in all his naked glory. What was the man thinking? Why was he changing the rules—why was he offering for her to work with him? As if that were possible? What did he think would
happen when he decided he’d had enough of sleeping with her? No way could she take this from him.

‘Look, I made the mistake of going for one job based on a relationship already. I’m not doing it again. James had suggested I apply for an internship at a particular firm last summer.’ She’d been thrilled when they’d both been accepted. ‘But then he found out some of my grades and I took him home to see my parents … and it was like he turned into a different person overnight.’ It wasn’t until later that she learned how average James’s grades really were. ‘But his grades didn’t matter because he was getting a job at the most prestigious accountancy firm in town anyway because his dad was a partner there. Meanwhile I spent my first pay packet in advance buying clothes that might possibly be acceptable to work there, but after he broke up with me, and just before those exams, the company withdrew the offer, saying they had no need for so many interns. So no, I’m not trusting any job offer based on any kind of connection other than merit. I’m not having any kind of relationship interfere with my future.’

‘So you have to earn everything yourself? You can’t accept a gift? I only have money thanks to
chance
at birth. You can’t take anything from me?’ he asked, completely frustrated.

‘That’s right.’ She wouldn’t take anything from him. Because what he was offering wouldn’t ever be enough. ‘I need to earn it myself.’

‘You have to be so independent, don’t you? You have to be the best,’ he said bitterly. ‘So insanely competitive you’re on the brink of a breakdown from the sleepless nights and caffeine overdoses. Well, why don’t you go
ahead and study yourself to death? Then work yourself to death and become a corporate lawyer.’

‘Is that such a crime?’

‘It is when you have huge talent in another area.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t go there.’

‘You should make time for your wearable art. It’s important to you. You should be happy as well as successful.’

That wasn’t what was going to make her happy.

‘It’s something you’re so good at,’ he continued. ‘You should take the opportunity. You should put your work out there.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’d rather not compete at all rather than come second?’ He shook his head. ‘Is being the best
so
important to you?’

‘Success requires sacrifice,’ she said firmly. ‘What would you have me do, Brad? Give up all I’ve worked so hard for, to try and scrape a living selling some recycled tat? That’s not realistic. It’s not going to happen. Yes, I love doing that but I also love the law.’

‘So strike a
balance
.’

‘I can’t yet.’

‘You won’t ever,’ he said, going quiet. ‘There’ll always be something else you feel you have to achieve. Your parents wouldn’t want you to live like this. Your parents want you to be happy.’

‘Don’t talk to me about what my parents want. I know what they
need
.’ And she was the only one who could help them.

‘You don’t. You can’t face up to what
you
need, let alone anyone else,’ he argued. ‘You lie to your parents.
What’s worse is you lie to yourself. You’re so scared of failing you can’t take any kind of real risk.’

‘And you can?’ So hurt, she poured it all back on him.
‘You’re
the one who constantly has to be the epitome of charm. You’re as bad as your parents. You project this perfect façade—all funny and capable and unable to admit to anything being wrong or
needing
anything.
You’re
the one who’s scared. You’re the one who can’t take any kind of support.’ She paused and saw he’d gone pale.

He drew in a deep breath but she didn’t give him the chance to try to argue—because there was no argument. ‘We want different things, Brad,’ she said sadly.

He didn’t answer. And she turned and left.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
S DAWN
broke on Christmas Day, Gage Simmons pushed his blistered feet and aching back onward. He knocked on the door. She opened it in less than a minute—the woman he wish, wish,
wished
were his mother. The one he’d walked miles and miles to get to. The one he wanted to stay with. The one who’d shown him more love and compassion and simple fun than any of his blood relatives.

‘Will it be okay?’ His voice wobbled as she pulled him into a super-tight hug.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured into his hair. ‘But we’re going to try.’ For a moment they watched the sunrise together. ‘We have to call them, you know. It’s not fair on your parents not knowing where you are.’

Gage closed his eyes and thought none of it was fair. But he nodded.

‘Look at the day, Gage.’ She kept her arm around him. ‘It’s going to be a beauty.’

He didn’t want the sun to move. It had taken so long to find her and he didn’t want to leave. Not yet. He didn’t want another second to pass.

‘We’ll work it out, Gage. I promise.’

There was a single-sentence mention in the morning news bulletin—that the boy who’d gone missing had been located and was well. Mya desperately wanted to call Brad and ask if everything truly was okay. But it wasn’t okay enough between them for her to be able to do that. And there was something else she had to do—urgently.

Utterly sleep-deprived, Mya walked up the overgrown path towards her parents’ house. She’d fantasised for so long about turning up there with a property deed in hand tied by a ribbon. Her gift to them—a Christmas gift. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To be able to move them somewhere so much better. And she would do it; one day she would. It just wouldn’t be as soon as she’d hoped it might. And she was so sorry she hadn’t been able to be everything they’d wanted her to be.

Brad was right, she had lied—to her parents and to herself about what she really wanted. Because she was so scared of letting them down and of being let down herself.

She sat on the sofa and told them—about losing the scholarship, about working two jobs on top of summer school, about what she wanted to do for them more than anything.

Her parents were appalled, but not for the reason she’d feared.

‘We wouldn’t expect you to do that for us!’ her mother cried. ‘We’re okay here.’

‘You’re not.’ Mya wiped her own tears away. ‘I wanted to do this for you so much. I wanted you to be so proud of me and I’ve let you down.’

‘You’ve never let us down,’ her father argued gruffly. ‘We let you down. I gave up. I got injured and gave up and put all our hopes on you. That wasn’t fair.’

‘No wonder you’re so thin and tired,’ her mother exclaimed, rubbing Mya’s shoulder. ‘All we want for you is to be happy.’ She put her arms around her. ‘What would make you happy?’

So many things—her parents’ comfort now certainly helped. There was that other thing too—but she didn’t think he was hers to have.

‘Can we get rid of all those photos of me winning prizes?’ Mya half laughed and pushed her fringe from her eyes, determined to focus on the future and fixing things with her family.

‘They bother you?’

Mya nodded. They took down most of them together, leaving a few, finding a few others with the three of them together. The cousins turned up, and the Christmas eat-a-thon began. As the day faded, Mya picked up the discarded lid from a soda bottle and started playing with it, twisting it—tempted for the first time in ages to create something silly-but-stylish just for the sake of it.

Brad was almost two hours late getting to his parents’ place for the obligatory big Christmas lunch. The calls between Gage and his stepmother and his parents and their lawyers had gone on and on until they’d wrangled a solution for today at least. Gage would stay with his ‘stepmother’ until this afternoon, when he’d have time with each parent.

Poor kid. But at least now Brad knew what his client wanted, where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with. He’d demonstrated it in an extreme way, but Brad was determined they’d work it out. He’d not stop working on it until they did.

He walked into the ridiculously decorated home and spied Lauren looking sulky at the overloaded table. He
wasn’t in the least hungry and stared at the twenty perfect platters of food for the four of them. Hell, it was the last thing he felt like—some fake happy-family thing. Surely there was a better use for them today?

‘Why don’t we take all this food down to the local homeless shelter?’ he asked his mother.

She looked appalled.

‘We can’t eat it all.’ Brad shrugged. ‘Honestly, Mother, what’s the point? Let’s do something decent with it.’

He looked at his mother, who looked at his father, who said nothing.

‘Great idea,’ said Lauren, standing up.

‘Okay,’ said his mother slowly.

‘I’m not that hungry anyway,’ his father commented.

‘Good,’ Brad said. ‘Why don’t you two go down together to deliver it?’ He stared at his parents, who both stared, rather aghast, back at him.

‘That’s more your mother’s scene,’ his father eventually said.

‘It’s Christmas Day,’ Brad answered firmly. ‘You should be together.’ He moved forward. It’d be a relief to escape the picture-perfect scene with the empty undercurrents. ‘We’ll
all
go.’

Open-mouthed, Lauren watched him gather up a couple of platters.

‘Come on,’ Brad said insistently. ‘Let’s do it.’

He was surprised that they actually did. They loaded all the food into his father’s car, and Brad and Lauren followed in Brad’s car.