Insecure (17 page)

When she slept that night her breathing was steadier. He worked from a chair outside her room where there was light and he couldn't disturb her, but could still see her chest rise and fall.

He was still on the chair when Dillon woke him. Dillon looked in on Buster, grabbed Mace's USB and took off. Mace relocated to the chair in Buster's room and settled in to doze the day away. At lunchtime he helped her eat and remembered to call Nolan. Got lucky and got his voicemail. Told him he had a family emergency. He left a message for Dillon too, wondering if he'd submitted to Anderson Abbott or not, trying not to care.

In the afternoon he read to Buster. Something he often did, but usually it was magazines or the newspaper. She wanted him to read one of the skinny books that regularly came in the mail and were jammed in their hundreds into the bookshelves at home.

They should probably be talking about the future, about what he wanted to do and how he needed her to be careful not to get sick again, not to scare him so badly. Plus the book looked cringe-worthy.

“We should talk, you know about...”

“You talk.”

He snorted, his resolve gone. He didn't know how to tell her not to die without sounding like a stupid kid, like a selfish man. And she was so much better than yesterday, colour in her face, able to eat and stay awake. It could wait, he should simply enjoy being with her.

He picked up the book,
An Affair to Remember
. “You want me to read this one?”

“Please.”

“The things I do for you.”

He opened the book at her dog-ear. He made her wheeze with laughter when he stuttered over a love scene that came a few pages on. It wasn't graphic, didn't mention a single body part, but his face got hot and he flapped his jaw all the same.

In the book, the couple had reunited after a steamy affair years ago. There was all this sappy stuff about wasted years and wrong-headedness, but how their love was stronger than the winds of change and the tides of fortune.
Fricking heck.

“How long was their affair?”

Buster held up two fingers.

“Two years?”

“Nights,” she croaked.

He laughed. “Two nights! How many months ago?”

She held up a trembling hand.

“Five months!”

She shook her head.

“Five years!” He laughed. That was insane. “I'm not sure you should be allowed to read this stuff. It's pretty...” He didn't know what it was, it wasn't porn, despite the passionate lip-locking, it wasn't racy, no one even swore. But it was delusional. He flicked back to the cover. Maybe it was meant to be a fantasy, but no, two perfectly normal people in a clinch, pictured inside a floral porthole design; no fangs, no wings.

Despite the crappy cover art and the wacky set-up, it'd sucked him in good and proper, and as weird as it made him feel, he wanted to keep reading to see if Antonio and Lucinda finally got it on again.

Antonio was some kind of billionaire who never worked, with boofy hair and a yacht. Lucinda was his secretary. Antonio was a tortured alpha douche predator and Lucinda was a breathy waif with stars in her eyes, not quite a dumb blonde, but close.

“He's going to dump her, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Man, that's twisted. He's her boss.”

Buster rolled her lips into her mouth, she was laughing at him.

He slapped the book on the railing of the bed. “She's not my actual boss and I'm not naive enough to think she'd wait for me for five months, let alone five freaking years.”

“Who knows? Maybe.”

“I bloody well know. It doesn't work like that in real life.”

“That's why...” she coughed.

“That's why you like these books, right?” She liked them because they were nothing like the life she'd had. A husband who'd abandoned her with a young baby, the baby who grew up not strong enough and had her own kid too young, then having to raise that kid too. Not much romance in Buster's life; not much comfort, security, support, or love flowing back her way.

She nodded and he wished he could build her a Tardis, time travel her, have her meet a man with money and boofy hair who'd kiss her like she was his sun and moon.

“Keep hoping, Mace.”

He squinted at her. Did she mean the book? There was no hope for the book, or any reality to Antonio and Lucinda, and Buster was no dummy, she'd worked as a florist for most of her life and volunteered at the local library. She knew about all sorts of books, but yet she chose these flaky romance ones. He shook the book, he had no idea why she liked this junk so much.

“Lucinda will win him back,” she said.

“Jesus, why would she want to?”

“She loves him.”

“She's an idiot.”

“Don't knock it till you've tried it.”

He laughed. So simple. So stupid. These books were grandma crack, addictive and probably not good for you. “Have you read this before?”

She moved her head, no.

He flicked through the pile of books and magazines on the dresser. “If you've guessed what's going to happen, maybe I should read something else.”

“No, finish what you started.”

He grinned. That was such a Buster thing to say. Keep trying. Finish what you started. Don't worry what anyone else thinks. Be your own person. The phrases he and Dillon had grown up with. “You want me to keep reading this?”

She nodded.

“You just want to make me squirm.”

She gave a breathy cough.

So he read on. Antonio dumped Lucinda as predicted. Lucinda cried a lot and quit her job, so now she was both heartbroken and unemployed. Antonio suffered, which meant he walked around in a bad mood shouting at his employees and tearing at his boofy hair.

“He loves her, Mason.”

He looked up and grinned at Buster's use of his full name. “He's a bad-tempered bastard. He doesn't deserve her.”

“Not yet.”

He turned the page and discovered another year had passed. Antonio was still a crank until the day Lucinda walked back into his life. She was all grown up, sophisticated and independent. She'd inherited money from a rich relative she didn't know she had, and didn't need to work anymore.
Lucky bitch
.

“This is where you tell me you've got a secret Swiss bank account and I'm going to be able to buy a yacht and a vintage Norton motorbike, after I start a business with Dillon.”

Buster frowned. “No bike.” And no secret fortune either. She wiggled a finger so he read on.

The new Lucinda managed to reduce Antonio to a quivering wreck by refusing to look at him, though secretly heartbroken, every time they ran into each other—which seemed to Mace to be every second page for no apparent logical reason.

“These two are ridiculous.”

“It's love, silly.”

“If you mean love is silly, yeah I'm with you.”

“You'll learn.”

“Not from reading this I won't.”

They both laughed and he went back to the book. Antonio finally grew a pair and confronted Lucinda. This part was full of sentences Mace could hardly spit out.

“‘
I can't live without you'
,” he spluttered.

“‘
I would give up my fortune, my business, my world if you'd agree simply to smile at me
like
you once did
.' Freaking heck!”

And finally, “‘
I do not deserve you, my darling, but I will dedicate my life to becoming worthy'
,” after which he put his fingers to his open mouth and coughed to indicate he could vomit. “This is a train wreck.”

“It's a happy ending.” Buster made an impatient go on gesture.

On the last page, after way too many useless misunderstandings that might've been fixed with a quick discussion, Antonio and Lucinda kissed. There was no tongue. There wasn't a hint of moisture and definitely no grinding hip action, but it was oddly satisfying in a way he would never admit to a living person. Antonio was less of a desperado with Lucinda and Lucinda stopped being a stuck-up bitch and became, if not a cool chick, at least less of an airhead.

He looked across at Buster, her eyes were closed and her breath quiet. He didn't know if she'd managed to stay awake till her happy ending, but he hoped so. He kissed her cheek and she didn't stir. He went home via the nurse's station. They were pleased with Buster's progress on the new drug and urged him to get some sleep. In a day or two they could see about transferring her back to St Ags.

He drove home, relieved, belatedly remembering there wasn't a lick of food in the house. The house phone was ringing when he put his key in the door. The hospital; they were very sorry, perhaps she'd been waiting for him to leave, it happened like that sometimes. It was an easy death. Would he be able to come back, they had paperwork for him to sign?

Fuck, fuck, fuck
. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was getting better. She'd been able to talk and laugh today. He was going to bring her home.

She'd said it was a happy ending.

He hung up the phone and went to the yard. He didn't glove up because he wanted the pain to come. He hit the bag until his shirt clung to him, till his knuckles split and bled, and he was a punch away from breaking a hand. He had to hug the leather to stay on his feet.

He went inside and sat on the floor in the dark hallway to call Dillon. He still didn't feel anything, but his face was wet and his eyes stung. He could taste salt and bile. He needed to take great gulping breaths and his nose ran. He hugged his knees because there wasn't enough air, and blood from his hands dripped on the floor.

And he didn't feel anything, anything at all.

Jacinta plunged a knife into the canvas and ripped it corner to corner. Why had she come into the room if not to torture herself? Nothing good happened in this room. She'd cried the last time she was here. Cried and let Mace, a virtual stranger, see her tears over stupid paint and idiotic canvas.

She stared at what she'd done. Grey and black and red so sharp it hurt your eyes to look at it, now ripped in half. A kindergarten kid could've done better. She could no more paint her way out of her angst than she'd been able to negotiate it, and she was a fool to try.

Tom
. Malcolm was going to bring Tom into the board meetings. That could only mean one thing, the job she'd planned on having wasn't as in the bag as she'd thought it was.

She should've found a way to deal with the Kincaid issue differently. Gotten under Malcolm's claw less obviously. She'd been cocky and arrogant and hadn't done enough pre-meeting lobbying. It was entirely her fault things had gone the way they did.

She'd been so busy fucking her one night stand she'd fucked her career.

That, and the board was a herd of gutless sheep, more interested in their annual payment and the kudos that went with being a non-executive director of Wentworth, than in leading the company with dignity, honour and compassion.

She dropped the knife and left the room, slamming the door. But there was nowhere else in the apartment she wanted to be either. In her office her phone and PC were quiet. After the mess of work she'd avoided last weekend, this weekend she'd have welcomed it to fill in the gaps, but it was as though she'd already been passed over for Tom; no one wanted to talk to her, no one needed her counsel, or felt the need to aggrandise themselves by demonstrating they were working on the weekend too.

In the lounge room, the television was airing interviews with Roger Kincaid's family. His wife saying though they were estranged she was horrified because Roger wasn't a violent man; that he'd been under too much pressure and snapped. His sons saying their dad was a good guy, and they were scared to go to school because other kids were beating them up.

All week the media had focused on the victims of the bombing, now those stories were all played out, it was the Kincaid family's turn to parade their pain. Roger's mother simply sobbed and tried to push the insistent camera away.

It was a miracle the link between Kincaid and Wentworth went uncovered. She had mixed feelings about that. It was better for the bank, but it made her look like a scaremonger, it weakened her argument.

Jay should've been here, in the kitchen, cooking, reading the paper, letting her rave till she'd exhausted her ranting and felt better. He'd have talked her out of the radical idea of leaking the Kincaid link herself. He'd have told her it was too risky. He'd have talked sense into her. But Jay was busy this weekend. And she was seriously considering going to a trusted media source with the inside story.

But if she did that, and she was ever revealed as the source, she'd be terminated with cause and her career really would be over. She couldn't decide if that was a stupid or brave way to go out.

It was tempting to blame it all on Mace, but he'd done no more than distract her, in a way that left her unbearably unsettled. She kept seeing him sulking at the kitchen counter, sitting on the end of the lounge while he massaged her feet, and stretched out on her bed in all his muscle-bound naked glory that'd been so inspiring she'd wanted to sketch again.

Welcoming distracted thoughts of him had to be a reaction to the horror week; to the shock of Tom's elevation, to the disappointment of not getting her way on the reforms she wanted.

Jay would've told her to focus on the new acquisition strategy and keep a clear head. Jay would've been right, and in his absence, and unable to banish the ghost shadow of Mace, she was climbing the walls. She spent too long at the gym and made herself sore all over.

She was back in the office Monday at 6am, grateful for the structure another busy week would provide. Grateful turned to anxious when Em told her a journalist was sniffing around the story the bank had a link to Kincaid, then suspicious when she said Malcolm was going to do the interview.