Just Breathe (13 page)

‘Okay, so he rang on Friday to set up another meeting. He’s apparently devised some incredibly entrepreneurial plan to save my disastrous career. Guess I’ll have to get all business-y.’

Both Leon and Arianne looked at her with disbelief, which was better than tears.

She waved a hand at them. ‘I know, it feels weird to me too. But Val’s putting the pressure on to start looking at apartments so I need to get to Shit Together status pretty quick. Besides, he’s persuasive and, well, nice actually. He asks questions and doesn’t make me feel stupid. I do that all on my own.’

Leon pointed a finger at her. ‘You want to be a Roxburgh Girl.’

‘Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.’ She remembered the look on Ethan’s face when the Shelby woman turned up at the café. ‘Guys like him don’t date their charity cases.’

‘So when are you meeting him? I’ll buy you coffee afterwards so you can fill me in on the next embarrassing instalment,’ Leon offered.

‘Thanks a heap. Thursday at one-thirty.’

‘Isn’t that right after the funeral?’ Arianne said.

‘Oh, you’re right. I’ll have to phone his scary secretary and cancel.’ She checked her watch and shot to her feet. ‘Bugger. Sheila wanted me early today. Gotta go.’ Sad and all, she still had to earn money. She threw change on the table for the coffee and ran out the door, forgetting all about Ethan.

‘I don’t like the rain either but I’m not going to sit in the middle of the road and wait for it to stop.’ Dee cursed her car again as water sprayed through the window. She grabbed another handful of tissues, wiped her face then the fog off the windscreen. She should’ve spent her money fixing the ventilation system because even after new tyres and a grease and oil change, the heap of shit was still useless in wet weather.

Thursday was never going to be good – the inevitable overload of emotion over Emily’s funeral was already pushing her anxiety level up – but did it have to start so badly? It’d been bucketing down all night and, as far as her car was concerned, there was no way it was going to get its underbelly wet driving through puddles when it could sit quietly in the street and annoy the hell out of Dee. By the time she coaxed it to life, it was so late she had to cancel her seven-thirty private.

It stalled twice on the way to her next lesson and she had to park two blocks away so she could point it downhill in case of a clutch start. When the class finished, rain was pouring from the sky in a solid sheet, which would have been fascinating if her umbrella hadn’t flipped inside out and left her saturated to the undies by the time she threw herself in the driver’s seat.

She tried the ignition. Nothing. Nothing. And
nothing
. Then something crazed and furious popped in her head. She throttled the steering wheel, yelled at the smug bloody motor, turned the key, pumped the accelerator like she was stamping her foot on the floor. Again nothing. She screwed her hands into fists, felt the skin stretch, her fingers ache, her jaw clench.

Settle, Dee. Take a deep cleansing breath. Take several deep cleansing … Okay, now you’re hyperventilating. She closed her eyes, trying to relax. Reminded herself that a couple of years ago she would’ve been in the throes of a full-blown panic attack by now. Head spinning, vision blurring, fingers tingling, hard to breathe, no air, like being suffocated, like … Okay, stop
now.

She tried the key again. Deep breath, Dee.

And again.

Yes!

Her pulse was still racing from the almost panic attack when she joined the traffic. There was an hour before the funeral started but a lot of traffic lights to coax the car through. Please just get me there, she begged it. The engine could fall right out on the road after that, she didn’t care – just so long as she got to the funeral. She’d never get a cab or road service in this weather.

She was waiting at an intersection, cooing soothing words to the ungrateful piece of junk, when her phone rang. She glanced at the display, forced some cheer into her voice. ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Trudy, I’ve organised for us to inspect that nice flat this afternoon.’

What? ‘I can’t today.’

‘But you said you’d be able to look at it in the afternoon.’

Dee breathed hard. She never should have agreed to anything. ‘I said
one
afternoon. I work in the afternoons.’

‘Well, where are you working today? If you’re close, you could pop in and have a look.’

Her tyres slid on the wet road as she over-revved out of the crossroad. ‘One of my students died on the weekend, Mum, and the funeral is this afternoon.’

‘That’s no good, dear. What time? Maybe you could come over after.’

Dee dragged a hand through her hair. ‘I won’t feel like inspecting an apartment after the funeral.’

‘I suppose I can understand that but when
are
you going to? You’ve been telling me you will for weeks. I can’t keep putting the agent off. I want a date from you.’

Dee’s heart hammered in her chest as the lid lifted off a swell of emotion. ‘I can’t do this now, Mum.’

‘But, Dee …’

‘No!’ she snapped, hung up and flung the phone at the passenger seat.

Great. She’d cut off her mother. Dee slammed the car into gear and waited impatiently for the lights to turn green. Why did Val have to push so hard? Tears brimmed in her eyes and she knuckled them angrily away as she stamped her foot on the accelerator. Uh-oh. The engine didn’t like that. It shuddered and stopped.

‘No! Not now!’ In the middle of a busy intersection. In the middle of an almighty downpour. In the middle of a bloody awful day. ‘Shit. Shit!’

Horns were blaring behind her as she turned the key again and again. A man appeared and started pushing the car. She steered to the kerb. He waved and left.

Rain pounded the roof, washing across the windscreen in waves. Wet clothes clung to her, condensation fogged up the windows and her tears rolled unchecked. The phone was ringing again. Dee looked at the display, expecting Val with another tongue lashing, but the name on the screen made the blood run out of her face so fast she thought she was going to faint.

The meeting. She hadn’t rung to cancel. Dee wiped tears off her cheeks and swallowed hard before answering. ‘Ethan!’

‘Dee, hi, something’s come up and I was wondering if we could get together earlier.’

‘I, um …’ She heard the tearful tremor in her voice.

He must have heard it too. ‘Dee?’

‘I, um …’ Her breath hitched on a sniff.

‘It’s okay, Dee. Take a breath.’ She heard it tremble in and out. Get a hold of yourself. ‘That’s good. Now, what’s wrong?’

The concern in his voice made the emotional concoction inside her well up and squeeze out a waterfall of tears. ‘I, um, it’s my car and, um, God, I’m sorry about this.’

‘No, no, don’t be sorry,’ he soothed. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’

He was being so understanding and nice but she remembered his flinty eyes the last time she was late. ‘It’s pouring with rain and my car broke down and I forgot to ring to tell you I can’t make it today because I have to go to a funeral and now I’m never going to get there because you can never get a cab when it’s pouring and I’m really sorry to put you out again and –’

‘Dee, it’s okay. Where are you?’

‘In my car.’

‘I meant where in your car?’

‘Oh.’ She swivelled around in her seat, gave him the name of the streets at the intersection. ‘But it doesn’t matter because there won’t be any cabs for hours.’

‘I’ll send my driver. It’ll take him about fifteen minutes. Just hang in there, okay?’

She hung up, wiped her eyes. His driver?

As she shook her hair out, squeezed the hem of her three-quarter trousers and dried her feet with a rag, she thought about Ethan Roxburgh. He didn’t have to send his driver – but maybe that was the sort of thing you did when you had a driver. Don’t want to have them just sitting around costing you money.

The sound of his voice in her ear replayed in her mind and a small smile tugged at her lips. He could have told her to pull herself together, if she had a decent car and a proper job these sorts of things wouldn’t happen. But he hadn’t. He’d just shot a whole heap of those feel-good herbs right through cyberspace to her, made her feel not nearly as ridiculous for blubbering in his ear as she did now he’d hung up.

He really was lovely. The collar and tie were an issue though. It was like a uniform. He may as well be wearing a jumpsuit with ‘Corporate Guy’ emblazoned across the back. Not that she liked to generalise but there was no point exploring an avenue when it was more than likely a dead end. Much safer to look in the obvious places. She’d found that out the hard way.

Dee rubbed a hole in the fog on the windscreen and tried not to think about dead ends. She turned the radio up, couldn’t hear it over the rain and turned it off again. Her heart was still pounding, blood racing. She closed her eyes, attempted to think happy thoughts. All she got was the last dead end she’d been in. Not a happy thought at all but now it was there it was hard to eject.

Drew had been fun. He worked in a big law firm, was climbing the corporate ladder, looked great in a collar and tie. She had a thing for a man in a suit back then. Anthony looked great in one. That’s what he was wearing the day of the accident. The day he left her, too. She met Drew a year or so after she got back from India. She was teaching yoga by then, getting her
life back together. But her new lifestyle didn’t mesh with his professional status.

‘Why don’t you get a real job?’ he’d say.

‘Do you have to wear those hippie clothes to the cocktail party?’

‘Why don’t you put your bloody yoga mat away and concentrate on me for a while?’

Dee gripped the steering wheel as she remembered his words on that last night, how her fury had sent spasms of pain down her leg. He was embarrassed to go out with her, he told her. She was bad for his image. A joke amongst his friends. The hippie girl. The Kama Sutra personified. How could he get ahead with an incense-burning, loony-tunes-chanting, yoga freak hanging off him?

Tears burned her eyes. This was a bad day to be embracing crappy memories. Her emotions were already shot to hell.

But maybe it was time she did. Drew wasn’t the only corporate guy she’d dated but he was definitely the last. After that night, she vowed never again. And she applied a more concrete version of the yoga theory of living in the moment – creating the official two-week boundary fence around her life. No looking further than two weeks into the future. And no corporate guys.

So, Dee, you do
not
want to be attracted to Ethan Roxburgh. He had a penchant for Roxburgh Girls, he was sitting on top of a very large corporate ladder and the sole reason she was spending time with him was to get her shit together. Yes, he had lovely eyes but he was just another run-of-the-mill, dead-end corporate guy.

A large, sleek silver sedan pulled up beside her old bomb and pipped its horn, the window rolling down by remote. She rubbed another hole and peered through the rain … at Ethan Roxburgh.

Okay, maybe not so run-of-the-mill.

Dee pulled his passenger door shut. ‘You didn’t have to come and get me.’ A confusing brew of emotions got all tangled up in her chest – pleasure at seeing him, guilt that he was out in the storm, wariness of his collar and tie, vulnerability at her current lack of tear-duct control. Anxiety over all of the above.

‘My driver was out on another errand so it was easier to come get you myself,’ Ethan said, pulling into the traffic.

‘I’m glad you had your shining armour with you again today. I hope it doesn’t rust in the rain.’ She smiled, trying to shove the anxiety into its cage.

‘Shouldn’t be a problem. I had it rust-proofed last week. Where is the funeral?’

The only good thing about the day’s drama was that it had stopped her thinking about Emily for a while. But the mention of the service made the swell of emotion push up from inside her again, wanting to expel itself like a tidal wave. She gave him the address and pressed her lips together, hoping to regain some control.

Ethan briefly glanced her way before looking over his shoulder to change lanes. ‘Is it for your student who was sick?’

She nodded, not wanting to speak in case everything swelled right out her mouth.

‘I’m sorry.’

Bloody hell. Why did he have to be so nice? There was no keeping it in now. She put her hands over her face and let the tears spill.

He reached across the car and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. The sensation was warm and gentle and did nothing to quell the crying. ‘Are you all right?’

She dug around in her bag for tissues and blew her nose. ‘Yeah. Yes, no, not really. I’m a bit of a mess actually. I hate funerals and now I’m crying before I even get there.’

‘No one likes funerals so feel free to knock yourself out with the crying.’

She laughed a little. ‘Thanks.’

He left her to watch the traffic through the passenger window, which she did with mostly dry eyes until the moment she saw the church. The hearse was there, the casket was being lifted out, Mike and the girls stood watching from the door – and she was back at another funeral, sitting in the front pew with her mother and Amanda, listening as the priest talked about her father while her heart felt like it was being ripped open.

‘Oh, no,’ Dee said, tears welling again, knowing the emotional tide wouldn’t subside until it had exhausted itself. ‘You can let me out here.’ He was probably desperate to escape the crazy crying woman.

He drove on past the church. ‘No, I’ll find a parking spot.’ A block away, he reversed into a space under a huge tree. The noise of the rain was exchanged for dollops of water popping loudly on the roof. ‘Would you like some company?’

Yes, please – and a stiff drink, some dry clothes, a sunny spot by the beach. ‘No, I’ll be fine. You’ve done enough already.’

‘I’ve got to wait anyway.’

‘What for?’

‘How else are you going to get back to your car? Like you said, it’ll take hours to get a cab and you don’t want to hang around a church after a funeral. There might be another one scheduled and you’d have to cry all over again.’

Dee was torn between sending him away and blubbering in gratitude.

He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Stay here while I get the umbrella.’

She watched him run around the car in the rain. He was so nice, she could just cry.

The service was unbearably sad. A young woman taken too early. Two children without a mother. A husband left to bring up his family alone. Dee didn’t bother to quell the tears that streamed down her face.

Ethan stood beside her, comfortingly solid, just what a girl needed when she was falling apart. She wondered if he was remembering his father’s funeral. A couple of times she raised her gaze to find him watching her – not sympathetically, not judgementally. As though he’d never seen anyone cry before. When she ran out of tissues, he passed her a handkerchief.

After the service, he stayed with her while she found Mike and hugged him, sharing more tears with him.

Mike kept hold of Dee’s hand as he stepped out of her embrace. ‘Emily wanted to make sure I told you how much your visits to the hospital helped. I want to thank you for that.’

‘It was my honour. I learned a lot from Emily. I’ll miss her.’ She turned to introduce Ethan, found his eyes assessing her with what looked like, well, fascination. ‘Mike, this is Ethan. You can thank him for getting me here.’

Ethan ignored the sudden recognition on Mike’s face. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’

Dee felt a tug on her shirt and found Mike’s youngest daughter, Kate. Peering into the eight-year-old eyes, she saw her niece Amelia and swept her into her arms. ‘Hey, Kate. I’m so sorry about your mum. I really liked her.’

‘I did too,’ Kate answered.

Kate’s sister, Lauren, was there when Dee stood up. She was taller than Dee now, at that crossroads between child and woman. Not much older than Dee when her father died. She remembered the ache she’d felt under her ribs back then and held her close for a long moment. ‘You look beautiful today. Your mother would be proud of you.’

Lauren smiled, pleased. ‘Can I still come to your yoga classes?’

‘Of course. I’d love that. How about I send you a timetable?’

‘That’d be awesome.’

Dee and Ethan left them then, heading back to the car under his umbrella. The downpour was reduced to a sprinkling shower now – even the heavens ran dry eventually. She waited in the car as he walked to the driver’s door, relieved the emotional tide had finally receded, a little surprised at the way her anxiety had slithered quietly back to its box some time during the service.

She gave him a watery smile as he clipped on his belt. ‘I think I’m finished now.’

‘You look like you could do with a drink. How about I shout you a double Scotch with a sedative chaser?’

When Dee told him she had to work later, his Scotch and sedative offer was replaced with lunch and wine. He called his secretary from the car, told her he’d be out for a while then drove to a restaurant by the beach.

The rain had stopped and the sun was making a valiant effort to tear a hole in the overcast sky. While Ethan hunted down wine, Dee found a table outside and collapsed on a chair. She was shattered. Her face was puffy and stiff from wiping tears across her cheeks, and her water-logged hair felt like a damp rope down her back. She was tempted to put her head on the table and doze off for a bit but it wasn’t really appropriate when a knight in shining armour was giving her succour.

Ethan placed a glass of white in front of her, took the seat opposite and watched her a while before speaking. ‘Do you get personally involved with all your clients?’

Dee forced herself to think. ‘Not all of them. It depends on the student.’ She took a sip of
the cold alcohol and felt it warm her inside. ‘There’s a lot of trust involved in a private lesson. The student needs to know they’re not going to get hurt. Some need more involvement than others to be comfortable.’ She saw a frown slide across Ethan’s brow, guessed at his thoughts. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me it’s not good for business to get so involved.’

‘That’s usually my advice but I don’t think it applies here. I imagine a percentage of your students stay with you because you do get so involved. There’s a marketing value in that.’