Insecure (6 page)

When Jay went back across the hall she slapped a sandwich on a plate, poured fresh coffee and went down to the foyer. She was barefoot, but unless Mace was asleep, he would've heard the lift ping, but he didn't stir, not even when she sat beside him.

He'd bled through the plaster and his shoe was full of blood. His laptop was open at his side but it was blacked out.

“I brought you a sandwich.”

He opened his eyes. “You didn't have to do that.”

“There's a sexy man in my foyer with a hangover, bleeding and starving to death. I felt I should launch a humanitarian effort to save him.”

He tried not to smile, but it was there, a twitch of his cheek, the jump of his brow. He took the plate out of her hand. “Thanks.”

“You know I have a perfectly good working PC upstairs, fresh bandages and headache pills. You don't have to pretend to like me.”

He took a bite of the sandwich and groaned. It was a gourmet BLT because Jay made it.

“They've said it's not linked to last night. They've identified a lone bomber. A man who got ripped off in a finance scam. Lost his home, his family—his mind.”

Mace ate but didn't otherwise respond. She should leave him to stew. He could buzz if he wanted to come up. “Seventy-one injured, three on the critical list, four dead. Tragic, but I guess it could've been so much worse.”

He picked up the coffee mug and sipped. He looked out the glass doors to where a forensic squad were working. “I don't have words to...this makes everything...different.”

It was her turn to be quiet. They sat in silence and watched people in bomb disposal gear sift debris. On any other day, the street would be filled with commuters, shoppers, tourists.

He broke the unnatural stillness. “I need to use your phone.”

Back in her apartment he dumped his gear and she led him through to the bathroom, made him sit on the edge of the bath so he could sluice the sodden plaster off his foot.

“That needs stitching.” The cut was wide and angry. “You'll have to stay off it.” She was no nurse, but she figured iodine couldn't hurt, except it did because he flinched and then apologised for almost kneeing her in the shoulder. She taped him up and then showed him to her office. Her desktop PC was still on. She handed Mace her laptop and pointed out the phone. “Use whatever you need.”

“Thanks.”

“The password is—”

He was already logged on using whatever tech guru password worked. “Slick.”

“Slick would've been having enough smarts to hack your security system so you couldn't see me on the foyer camera.”

She laughed. “You did look pathetic.”

He grinned at the laptop screen.

“Why didn't you buzz to come back up?”

“You had company already.”

She leant against the doorjamb. “You can't possibly be jealous of Jay.”

He grunted an affirmative.

“Apparently you can. He's—”

“None of my business.”

“Very true.” She watched Mace looking at a message stream on an unfamiliar screen, nothing as pedestrian as Outlook or Gmail. “How's your head feel?”

He didn't look around. “Halloween pumpkin. The sandwich helped, but I'm dehydrated.”

“I'll get you a drink.”

“You don't have to wait on me.”

“You don't have to be so prickly.”

He stopped typing and swivelled the chair around. “Sorry.” He looked up. “I'm your basic antisocial muppet. I'm not good at small talk. But then you probably knew that before you hit on me.”

She smiled. “And you haven't disappointed.” She expected him to look away but he looked her over, big deliberate sweeps of her body. She popped her hip to give him something to really look at. “Like what you see?”

“I thought you'd wear suits on the weekend.”

He was completely straight-faced. He drilled her with eye contact. She shook her head. “Why did you come home with me?”

He pushed into the chair back, eyes on her legs. “You're shit hot and you asked nicely.”

She laughed. “I taunted you.”

He shrugged. “I didn't notice.”

“You're full of crap.”

“And you're not the cold bitch you want everyone to think you are.”

“Does that disappoint you?”

“I didn't have any expectations other than seeing you naked and...” he dropped his eyes to his lap.

“And what?”

“Fucking you senseless.” His head came up. “Which is exactly what you wanted.”

“True.” She moved into the room. “But that's not exactly what happened, is it?”

“You don't remember what happened.”

“Neither do you.”

He looked up. If he planned to say anything he buried the words, and she couldn't read his expression.

Her email pinged. That would be Malcolm. She didn't want to deal with him right now. She wanted to see where this conversation could go. Mace swivelled the chair back to face the desk but she caught its arm and stopped it. “You made me laugh. You were gentle. You made me feel desirable and you made me forget my world was coming apart and this morning you made me feel...” God, he'd made her feel, secure, happy, “nice.”

“Nice?” He said it on an exhale that was full of disbelief. He turned his head back to the screen. “I don't remember.”

It was almost impossible to leave the television, though there'd been nothing new said in the last hour, just a continual rehash of the morning's events from minutely varying perspectives. Jacinta drank her way through a bottle of chilled water and knew this was doing her no good, it was fuelling her anxiety. She'd normally have done a gym session and hit the office by now, so sitting on her tail doing nothing and seeing the pictures of the victims over and over was messing with her already bruised head. She could still be working but she wanted to give Mace some privacy.

He'd been on the phone when she took him a bottle of water. She heard, “What do you suggest I do about it, Dillon?” as she entered the room, but whatever frustration he was going through, he bit down on it when he saw her.

So she'd retreated to give him space. But he'd reached the end of that rope of consideration. She was about to go reclaim her office. She picked up the remote to shut the TV down when he appeared in the room with the empty water bottle and glass. “Anything new?”

“The heroes are starting to emerge now; the people who were down there and ran towards the explosion instead of away from it. I can't imagine how you make your body do that.”

He put the bottle and glass on the kitchen counter and came across to the lounge she was sitting on. He walked oddly, using only the ball joint of his hurt foot. He sat at the other end of the lounge and faced the TV.

“What switch goes off in your head that tells you to run towards certain danger?” she said.

“Same one that went off in yours when you tried to get that cop on the door to see your way of thinking.”

“No.” She shook her head. “That was trying to be practical. I wasn't walking into any danger.”

“You didn't know that.”

“You didn't either.”

“I couldn't sit here.”

“Which is what we're doing now. This just sitting around is getting to me.” She should've felt okay about it because she'd done something positive to help, but inactivity wasn't her friend, and unfortunately neither was the man weighing down the other end of the lounge suite. Forced rest with a lover might've been a welcome respite given the shit storm she'd get hit with on Monday. “Dillon was giving you a hard time.”

Mace glanced across. She met his eyes. Her home, she didn't have to hide what she'd heard.

“That's what Dillon does.”

“Brother?”

“No.” He sighed and turned back towards the TV. “As good as.”

And that was it for a while. They watched the broadcast until he said, “Your nickname is, er, interesting.”

“Jac?”

“Jay called you Cin.”

She pulled her legs up on the sofa. “Yeah, but he's the only one.

“What made Dillon so annoyed with you?”

“I owed him time today. I let him down.”

The words, I'm sorry sat on her tongue, but it wasn't her fault he was trapped here. “I guess you'd be out enjoying the world today.”

Mace picked up the remote and flicked the channel. She almost laughed; such a stereotypical male thing to do. He got several channels of sport, movies, music videos and more bombing coverage. He left it on the channel he'd started from. “I'd be working.”

“On Wentworth business?” She sat up straighter. “Why didn't you say? I only have to make a call to get a shift change.”

He frowned at the TV. “Could do that myself. Not company business.”

She ignored the annoyance she'd stirred by suggesting he couldn't sort out his own shift supervisor. “You have a second job? Don't we pay you well enough?” She meant that as a joke, though as soon as it was out of her mouth it sounded exactly what it was—patronising and crass. Here they sat in her multi-million dollar apartment and Mace was paid a small fraction of what she earned and would never have the chance to build the kind of future she was aiming for.

“You pay me fine for what you ask me to do. Market rate.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so—”

“Condescending.”

“Yes.”

He looked up at the ceiling at the exposed beams and pipes of the warehouse conversion. “Comes with the territory.”

She deserved that. “I'm curious about what you'd be doing today, why you wanted to leave so badly?”

“You think I wanted to get away from you?”

“I think you were more worried about blowing Dillon off than hanging out with me, even before this all happened.”

Mace shifted so he was facing her. “I didn't pick you for the hanging out type.”

She inclined her head at that. He was right. She couldn't recall the last time she'd had nothing to do, or wanted to spend time with someone other than Jay. Why would he think hanging out with her was going to be any fun? She dropped her head and laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“You. That line about me wearing suits on the weekend.”

“I was going for offensive.”

She looked up. He was watching her, a wicked little twist to his lips, brow quirked. He really didn't care what she thought about him. It was surprisingly attractive.

“Are you treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen with all the girls?”

“Only the ones I like.”

She dragged her knees under her and knelt up. “Oh-ho, what?” Was he flirting? Maybe. He was like an oyster all craggy and rough, unapproachable on the outside, but there'd be soft flesh inside and the possibility of a pearl. But she could easily slice her own hands open trying to get at the meat and value of him.

“Don't get excited.” He faced back around to the TV. “I like it here better than in the foyer. I'm attempting to be personable so you don't kick me out.”

“So this is you manipulating the circumstances.”

“Gotta use the resources you've got.”

“And you didn't think whisking me back to bed might get you temporary residency?”

He picked up the remote and shifted it hand to hand. “I'm not that kinda guy.”

She sat back on her butt, laughing. “You're exactly that kind of guy. I insulted your intelligence and you still came home with me.”

He tried not smiling, but the muscle of his cheek contracted and that sardonic curl of his lip was back. Put him in a tux, grow out the close crop and he'd give off 1940s movie villain.

“So if you're not going to kiss me stupid, tell me what else you'd be doing today: rock climbing, bushwalking, skydiving, five rounds with a heavyweight before hitting the clubs tonight?”

He muted the TV and turned his head to watch her. “On Saturdays I don't pay for a nurse to feed Buster. I do that myself.”

She sniffed a breath and stilled.

“We go out, somewhere simple, the park, McDonald's, a cafe where I can pull the car up close so I don't have to carry her far. She really hates people seeing that.”

“Mace, I'm so sorry.”

“Why? You asked. That's what happens on Saturdays. On Sundays I bring her home. She sits in the garden and listens to music too loud if it's warm, or watches TV if it's not. The rest of the time she lives in one room of a nursing home that's the best I can afford. She can't read any more. Her body is untrustworthy. She hates it, but she never complains. She was worried about me when I finally got hold of her. I'm worried about the nursing agency sending someone decent to do what I can't.”

Jacinta could have a carer with the highest degree of training and the personal qualities of a professional saint with a security escort at Mace's disposal in five minutes and never notice the cost. “I can help you with that.”

He unmuted the TV, the midday news headlines, and focused on the blonde newsreader. “What could you possibly do about that?”

“It would be no trouble to organise a—”

“It's not about the nurse.”

She sighed, there was no point him being proud, this was an exceptional circumstance and surely he'd see that. “It's no—”

“She finds it difficult to talk now. The Parkinson's is advanced. I have no trouble understanding her, but others don't take the time. It's not about finding someone to hold a spoon to her mouth so she can try to swallow. It's about giving her time to be more than the fucking disease, giving her sunlight and home comforts. Showing her she still matters.”

He put the remote on the coffee table and stood, his expression like stone; bleak, unbreakable. “I hate that I can't be there because she was the only one who was ever there for me.”