Leaving at Noon (17 page)

Zoey whimpered and squirmed, letting Theo
know exactly what she wanted.

“
Your delay tactics are
good. The best.” And left him with a serious set of blue balls.
“But that’s all they are. Delay tactics. Which tells me I’m on to
something—and you don’t want to acknowledge it.”

Zoey let out a frustrated
harrumph
,
sat up straight and folded her arms over her chest and one leg over
the other. She stared moodily at the telly.

“
Zo?”

She didn’t take her gaze off the quiz show
neither of them had been watching. Her lips were pursed, although
they twitched every now and again as though she wanted to say
something but didn’t know how.

Theo had no choice but to give her time. To
sit patiently and wait until Zoey was ready to speak. Not that he
felt patient. His gut told him he’d been right. Something had
happened. Something Zoey hadn’t mentioned.

Finally she squeezed her eyes shut, wrinkled
her nose and tucked her chin into her neck, effectively shutting
him out of her view while hiding her face from him. “I saw my
father.”

Theo sat up so fast, he almost fell off the
couch.

Fucking hell. She’d seen Richard? That was
huge. “What? When?”

She studied her nails. “Two months ago.”

Still reeling from her confession, he pursed
his lips, doing the mental calculation—and fighting the surge of
anger that came with the answer. “Right before our marriage went to
hell in a handbasket.”

She’d been withdrawn before that, silent and
moody from work, but they hadn’t started their bitter battles until
then.

Zoey nodded.

“
Christ.” Words escaped
him. Zoey hadn’t met with her father in years. Not once in all the
time Theo had known her. Seeing him must have blown her sanity
clean out of the water. It must have messed with her head and
fucked with her heart—and left a well of hurt in her chest. “You
never told me.”

She hadn’t mentioned a thing about it. Not
one single fucking thing.

“
I should have,” she
whispered hoarsely. She opened her eyes but refused to look at him.
Instead she studied her fingernails. “It threw me really
badly.”

Yeah, Theo bet it did.

She swallowed. “I should have come home and
talked to you about it. Told you what happened.” Her hand shook,
and when she finally looked at him, tears shimmered in her green
eyes. “I sh-should have breached the silence between us, worked
through it all with you. I know you would have understood. I wanted
to tell you.”

So why the fuck hadn’t she? Jesus, she knew
he was aware of every dynamic of her and Richard’s relationship. He
even knew about dynamics she had no clue existed. He could have
helped her, held her afterwards. He could have contained the
emotional minefield—if she’d just given him the chance.

“
B-but…but…” Her voice
caught. “I got home, and you weren’t there, and I really needed
you.”

Ah, so he’d failed her by not being
home?

“
By the time you walked
through the door, I was so mad at you and my father and the whole
world, I just lost it.”

He wondered which time that was. There’d
been so many, he had trouble differentiating one unpleasant scene
from the next. But this one he’d have understood—if Zoey had just
explained the reason for her anger.

He’d have taken whatever bullshit she’d
thrown at him, let her get it out of her system, and then they
could have worked through it rationally. Only Zoey hadn’t said a
fucking word.

“
I was drunk,” she said.
“Blotto. Spent the time waiting for you polishing off a bottle of
tequila.”

Ah!
That
night. Yeah. Theo remembered
it clearly. She’d gone out with Ava and Liv to a restaurant in
Darlinghurst and been in a shocking state when he’d arrived home.
The empty tequila bottle was on the floor and an empty glass was in
her hand. He’d expected more silence from her. What she’d delivered
had been the polar opposite.

She’d laid into him before he’d closed the
front door. Her words had been venomous. So foul, apparently, Theo
had failed to notice his wife was upset about something other than
his late arrival home. He’d taken offense to her viciousness and
fought back. The insults they’d exchanged escaped him now, but the
poison in her voice and fury in her eyes had made a lasting
impression.

That fight had changed everything. It had
been round one in their ongoing attempts to out-hurt each
other.

“
I said terrible things.”
Zoey swallowed as though speaking were difficult. “Accused you of
committing wrongs you’d never committed.”

Wait. That rang bells.

Her drunken words came back, like pieces of
a puzzle falling into place.

“
Nice of you to come
home, asshole,”
had been her greeting.
“Nice of you to
remember you have a wife and a home.”

When he’d gaped at her, stunned by her
attack, she’d simply taken a deep breath and continued her
diatribe.

“
I’m sick to death of your
apathy. Your disinterest in our marriage. I’m sick to death of you.
Why not just do what we both know you want to and walk away? Wipe
your hands of the marriage and the responsibility you’re sick of
and get the hell out of here?”

She’d questioned whether he loved
her—whether he’d ever loved her—and accused him of being exactly
like every other man out there, someone who’d forget her in a
heartbeat if he didn’t live with her.

Befuddled—and aware she was more than a
little drunk—Theo had tried to take her in his arms and placate
her.

Her response? She’d held up a pen and
threatened to castrate him if he came a step closer.

It wasn’t the words that stopped him, but
the abhorrence in her eyes and in her tone. That repugnance had
been aimed at him. All of it.

At which point he’d snapped back, telling
her there was no need. Simply holding her was enough to shrink his
cock to unusable proportions.

The fight had degenerated at that point to
unflattering references to his penis and her opinions of how he’d
failed her as a husband. He’d suggested she get treatment for her
alcohol problem.

Fun times.

Not.

Fuck.

“
You went to bed then.
Faked falling asleep so we couldn’t talk or work things out.” That
had been the first time.

Once again, Zoey dropped her gaze to her
nails. “I couldn’t talk to you. I would have had to tell you about
my father, and…and honestly, Theo, I just couldn’t go there.”

Theo took a few deep breaths, battling once
more against the rage of Zoey’s unprovoked attack that night. For
the sake of their marriage, he had to get past it—again. Maybe if
he handled it right this time, if he got to the heart of the
problem, he could change the outcome. “What happened with your
dad?” he asked, forcing a gentleness in his tone he wasn’t really
feeling.

“
He left a message on my
phone a few weeks before, saying he’d like to see me and asking
that I call back so we could arrange a time and place.”

Theo rubbed his temples. She hadn’t even
told him that much. “And you called him?” That in itself blew his
mind. Apart from the odd email, Zoey refused to have any personal
contact with her father.

“
No. I ignored it. He
phoned a few times and emailed twice, but…” She
shrugged.

“
You ignored all his
messages.” Okay, that sounded more like the Zoey he
knew.

“
I didn’t want to see
him.”

Avoiding Richard was easy. He lived in
Canberra. “So how did you meet if you never responded to him?”

“
Uh, that’s the thing. We
didn’t actually meet.” She chewed on her lip.

“
You said you saw
him.”

“
I did. See him, I mean. I
never spoke to him.”

“
Oh, Zo.” He plopped his
hands on his knees and stared at her sadly.

Christ, he wished Zoey hadn’t cut the guy
out of her life. Much as she refused to acknowledge it, Richard
loved his daughter. Fiercely.

“
Theo, he abandoned
me.”

“
No, babe. Your mother
took you away from him.”

“
And he never came after
me. Never tried to get me back. He didn’t even file for joint
custody.”

No, but he’d filed for sole custody,
although Zoey didn’t know that. “Your mother threatened to smear
his name through the mud. She would have ruined his career.” She
would have ruined his life, given the chance.

“
And God forbid an
accountant should let that happen. God forbid he should put his
child in front of his career.”

“
She didn’t leave him with
any options.” Theo’s guilt struck deep. He knew this for a fact but
couldn’t tell Zoey. Richard had made him swear not to.

“
You have a kid, you find
options. It’s what parents do.” Her shoulders slumped. “Or it’s
what parents are supposed to do, anyway.”

“
He’s tried to make up for
it.” God, he hated arguing about this. All Zoey knew was she’d been
hurt immeasurably by her parents’ divorce.

“
By waiting until I was
eighteen? Too little too late as far as I’m concerned.”

Richard had contacted them both after the
wedding, wanting to meet and wish them congratulations in person.
Theo had agreed immediately. Zoey had refused.

Theo and Richard had met, and Theo was
surprised to find himself liking Zoey’s father a great deal. He was
a decent, principled man who carried around a boatload of guilt and
frustration for not having been a part of his oldest daughter’s
life.

“
He supported you your
whole life.”

“
Financial support doesn’t
count for much in matters of the heart.”

“
You’d never have had the
kind of education you did otherwise.” Her father had paid for the
various private schools she’d attended and for medical
school.

She set her lips in two thin lines. “And I
made sure to send a polite thank-you note every time those bills
were paid. But I detest being indebted to him. I’m working my ass
off to pay back every cent I owe.” She made a point of sending her
father a portion of her salary every month.

“
That you are.” Theo
nodded.

Zoey folded her arms across her chest. “I
sent him a card after our wedding, announcing the marriage.”

“
Not denying it.” She’d
sent the same one to her mother. “But it was a soulless
announcement, made after the fact. You never invited him to be
there.”

Theo’s family had crowded around them, his
sisters and parents welcoming her into the Hughes family with open
arms. Their friends had filled the spaces of Zoey’s absent
parents.

“
I didn’t want him there.
It was the happiest day of my life. Why would I ruin it by inviting
a man who made me miserable?”

“
Christ, babe, I get so
frustrated when we talk about this. You and your dad are so alike.
You look like him, you act like him. You use the same gestures and
laugh at the same stupid jokes.”

“
I’m delighted you and he
have become so close you know all of this.” Her tone indicated she
was anything but.

“
You’d like him. You’d
genuinely enjoy his company if you just gave him a
chance.”

“
I gave him a chance. For
thirteen years I gave him a chance, waiting for him to come back
into my life. I would have forgiven him anything if just once he’d
made an effort. Once.” She smacked her hand over her heart. “I’m
still five years old inside when it comes to him.” The tears
shimmered in her eyes again, and she looked at him with all the
anguish of a heartbroken little girl. “I’m still waiting for my
daddy to come save me from the evil queen.” She sniffed and wiped
her nose with her hand. “But he
never
came. He didn’t rescue
me. I was eighteen before he made an effort to get in touch. And by
that stage I’d already escaped—without his help. I was already
living on my own when he thought it would be appropriate to try to
contact me.”

“
Ah, babe.” He wrapped his
arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, holding her tight.
“I’m sorry it still hurts so much.”

She shrugged and stiffened her shoulders.
“Yeah, me too. But whatever.”

Fuck, Theo ached to tell her the truth. The
words sat on his tongue, desperate to escape. But he couldn’t do it
to Richard.

He had no choice but to steer the
conversation away from the past and back to the present. Or the
not-so-distant past, at any rate. “Take me back to that night you
saw him. What happened?”

Zoey began to fidget again, twisting his
T-shirt in her fingers, releasing it, then twisting it all over
again. “Liv, Ava and I were sitting in The Apollo, and they walked
into the restaurant.”

“
They?”

“
My father, Cynthia,
Victoria and Jack.”

“
The whole family.”
Cynthia was his wife, Victoria, Zoey’s twenty-one-year-old
half-sister, and Jack, her eighteen-year-old
half-brother.

Theo had met them a handful of times—without
Zoey. “You recognized your brother and sister?”

“
Half
-brother and
-sister,” she corrected and shrugged again. “He sends me photos
every few months.”

“
Victoria looks like you
and your dad. She has the same hair and eyes.”

“
I suppose.”

“
Did they come and say
hello?”