Playing by the Rules (7 page)

Before she had a chance to work it out, she found that Josh’s arm was around her waist and he was steering her through a nearby door into what, in a fancier building, would be called the foyer. Here, it was just a long, draughty, semi-enclosed space outside the main hall, which obviously hadn’t merited Belinda’s decorating magic. It was cold, and slightly redolent of the sweaty teenagers it more commonly played host to, but at least it was private. He steered her over to a lone plastic chair, gently forced her to sit down and pushed a handkerchief into her hand.

Kate wiped her eyes and blew her nose gratefully; although she couldn’t help thinking that if Josh ever had thought she was beautiful, he would have changed his mind by now. Crying was not her best look. Some people can cry elegantly, but Kate knew perfectly well that she was not one of them.

‘Thank you, Josh. I’m sorry I made a scene. You can go back in if you want to. I’ll be fine in a minute.’

‘Sure, I’ll leave you here crying, shall I? I think not. No, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stay.’ He left her briefly, to fetch another chair from a stack in the corner, and Kate looked after him in surprise. Alain had hated scenes, and detested Kate crying, particularly in public. She had, until now, assumed it was a man thing. But maybe it wasn’t.

Josh put the chair in front of her, fished another hankie from somewhere, gave it to Kate, then sat down and took her free hand in his.

‘Now. Why are you crying?’

The question set her off again, so it was a while before Kate could reply.

‘You know what? This will sound really stupid, but I don’t really know.’ Kate wiped her eyes and blew again. Josh squeezed her hand and stayed silent.

‘I guess it’s because Madame is looking old. I’ve known her for more than half my life. She’s part of me. I don’t want to think about losing her.’

Josh smiled at her. ‘She is looking a little frail, I agree, but I don’t think you need to worry about losing her for a while yet. She still seems to have a fair amount of fight left.’

‘Do you think so? I suppose you’re right. I’m probably being silly. I guess I’m kind of sensitive to the idea of losing people at the moment.’ She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.

‘That’s understandable.’ Josh ducked his head around so that he could look into her face. ‘But is that all there is to it?’

Kate swallowed and felt the tears welling up again. Her hand clenched around his as she felt a band tighten around her heart.

‘No. No, it’s not all. Did you see her husband? Did you see how his hand was shaking?’

‘Yes, I did notice. I think he might be in the early stages of Parkinson’s. Why?’

‘Did you see Madame? Did you see how she helped him to hold his glass? Did you see how he looked at her?’

Once again, the tears got the better of Kate and she let go of Josh’s hand, to try to find a dry spot on her crumpled hankie. Josh absently ran his hand through his hair, looking a bit lost. As soon as Kate had a hand free, he took it again and held it firmly.

‘Yes, I saw. I thought she handled it really well. Respectfully and lovingly. But why should it make you cry?’

‘Oh Josh, don’t you see? That’s what I want!’

Understanding began to dawn on Josh’s face, but all he said was, ‘What? Parkinson’s?’

As jokes went, it wasn’t very clever, but it succeeded in making her smile, albeit somewhat shakily.

‘No, silly.’ She sighed. ‘Madame met Monsieur when they were both fifteen. They got married when they were nineteen and have been together ever since. In all the time I’ve known them I have never seen them ever be anything but loving to each other. I’m sure they fight sometimes. I can’t believe Madame is always sweetness and light, even to that darling man. But they’re still together, aren’t they? And now they’re getting old and it seems they only love each other more.’ She raised her tear-swollen eyes to look at him.

‘
That’s
what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I want love like that. I want “happily ever after”. I want “in sickness and in health, till death do us part. For richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, as long as we both shall live.” Is that too much to ask?’

She smiled again – or tried to.

‘I know life isn’t a fairytale, Josh. But I thought I had it all worked out. I had a plan and I was working through it and I thought I’d made it. I thought I’d found a happy ending. I thought he was “the one”.’ She tried to take a deep breath, but it was hijacked by a sob. ‘How could I have been so wrong?’

She lurched out of her chair and turned away, torn between her anguish and her horror at spilling it out like this in front of him. She felt like a fool. A fool for wanting love so much, a fool for trusting the plan to bring it to her, a fool for believing in Alain, a fool for not seeing that it was over and, maybe worst of all, a fool for letting that fiasco turn her into a simpering idiot in front of Josh.

What was the matter with her? Wasn’t it just a moment ago that she had been feeling good and celebrating moving on? And now here she was, feeling gutted again, like a giant, gaping wound bleeding all over Josh, who surely hadn’t signed up for this. She had to pull herself together.

She patted her eyes as best she could with the sodden handkerchiefs, blew her nose and turned to apologise. But before she could speak, she found herself pulled into a fierce embrace. At first she stiffened, horrified that Josh thought she needed to be rescued again. How many times was he going to have to pick up the broken pieces this evening? He must think she is the most dreadful crybaby.

She wanted to pull away; to show she could be strong. But she hesitated too long and in the end, the comfort of his sympathy was more than she could resist. Cursing herself for her weakness, she relaxed against his chest and wept.

Josh, too, was wrestling with some unfamiliar emotions.

For a start, he was feeling a powerful urge to kill Alain. This was disturbing. It wasn’t as if he was the kind of man who regularly felt moved to violence against complete strangers. Nor was he in the habit of feeling over-protective towards the women in his life (with the possible exception of Jo). But the sight of Kate in pain seemed to have woken a caveman inside him, and he found himself itching to hit something.

He was also fighting the temptation to kiss her. In normal circumstances, the temptation to kiss a beautiful woman wouldn’t give Josh a second’s concern. He would just act on it. But these circumstances weren’t normal. Kate was on the rebound. She was vulnerable and she was his sister’s best friend and he was supposed to be looking after her, not seducing her!

Besides, he was uncomfortably aware that this was no ordinary desire. He didn’t want to merely kiss Kate. He wanted to possess her. To kiss her until her breath was gone and until he had driven even the memory of that bloody Frenchman out of her mind, and every other part of her, for good.

As impulses go, it was about as wrong as it could be. It wasn’t appropriate. It wasn’t sensible. It wasn’t even civilised. But he was afraid that if he held her for much longer he was going to act on it. He had to put some distance between them before he did something unforgivable.

Gently, gingerly, feeling as if he was peeling off a piece of his own heart, he slid his hands to her shoulders and separated himself from her. Surprised, she lifted her head; her face was so sad and full of longing that he could almost have cried himself, although in his case it would have been from frustration. Every muscle in his body was aching to haul her back into his arms and make her forget. It took all of his resolve to keep her at arm’s length and speak instead.

‘Are you okay?’

Kate wondered how she should answer that question. She definitely felt calmer. She seemed to have cried herself out, at least for now. But she couldn’t help wondering when her unruly emotions might ambush her again.

This night was supposed to be about moving on and learning how to have fun again, with a handsome man as her guide. Yet all she seemed to be doing was collapsing all over him. The thought made her cringe. Some impression she must be making!

Then there was the apparently unavoidable, but nonetheless disconcerting, effect he was having on her libido. She was beginning to think that nothing short of death would put a dampener on
that
. When she had gone into his arms, her distress had been real and all-consuming. Yet for at least two and a half of the roughly three minutes he had held her, her pain had been subsumed by the sensation of every nerve ending in her body standing to attention and agitating for closer contact.

Even now, when he had pushed her away and clearly wanted the embrace to end, all she could think of was what it would be like to kiss him. She should have been answering his question, but instead her eyes were tracing the contours of his mouth, wondering what his lips would feel like against hers. Her lips twitched in anticipation and she felt herself sway, ever so slightly, in his direction. Horrified, she pressed her lips together to try to dispel the thought, but all that produced was a mental image of him forcing them apart with his tongue. That definitely was not an image she could afford to indulge – not if she wanted to maintain any shred of composure.

Desperately, she bit down, hard, on her bottom lip, to quell its wayward fancies and dragged her gaze up to his eyes. They looked sad. Oh God. He was thinking that she was still miserable, and feeling sorry for her, when really all she was thinking about was jumping his bones. What kind of sad nymphomaniac must she be? What would he think if he knew?

Embarrassed, she dropped her eyes and noticed that her tears had left a wet patch on his shirt. Oh, for goodness sake! How much more could she do to this poor guy? But at least it gave her something to say. Ignoring his original question, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For your shirt,’ she said, reaching out to spread her hand over the spot. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. Because now, pouring down her arm in a tingling rush, was the answer to the question her butterflies had posed earlier in the evening: his chest did indeed feel as good as it looked. Right now, that was information she could do without. She wanted to snatch her hand away, but she couldn’t, because Josh had covered it with his and was holding it against him as if it were a lifeline.

Words seemed to have deserted both of them. So they stood there in silence, separated only by scruples, pride and the length of her bent arm.

Which of these three would have given way first, they weren’t destined to discover. The sound of a door opening behind Josh brought them both to their senses and they sprang apart as if their hands were on fire – which, as far as Kate was concerned anyway, didn’t feel that far from the truth. So when Jo appeared in the doorway, they were standing, somewhat oddly, two feet apart and looking in opposite directions, as though they were mere acquaintances who had happened to bump into each other and were trying to be polite but were a little bored with the conversation.

For once, Jo refrained from comment. Instead, she remarked, ‘Oh, there you are. What are you doing out here?’ She paused. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that. I really don’t think I want to know. Whatever it was, you need to stop it and come back inside. Your dinners are getting cold and your absence is beginning to create comment. Clare thinks it’s
romantic
.’

Kate couldn’t have cared less about her food, but the consciousness of being talked about was enough for her. Moving faster than she would have thought possible in the deadly heels, she made it to the door before Jo had even managed to turn around. Then, with Jo and Josh trailing behind her, she all but ran back to the table, fuelled by equal parts embarrassment and the resolution never to be alone with Josh again.

Kate’s chicken was indeed cool by the time she got to it, but she wasn’t inclined to complain. She wasn’t inclined to talk at all, in fact, and was relieved to find that the conversation at the table was sufficiently lively to prevent her having to say much.

What she was inclined to do was drink. She liked a wine as much as the next person (assuming the next person was partial to a few wines from time to time) but, as a rule, she liked to stop well short of legless. Tonight, though, she thought that she might make an exception.

The evening was turning out to be even more difficult than she had feared, albeit for slightly different reasons. She had been scared of facing Crystal without a fiancé; now she was scared of her finding out her fiancé was fake. She had been scared of being alone, without a partner; now she was scared of being alone
with
her partner. She had been afraid she’d break down in front of her friends; instead she had lied to her friends and broken down not only in front of but all over a lovely bloke who must, by now, think she is a complete nutcase.

She was ashamed of herself and horribly aware that she wasn’t even close to achieving the effortless sangfroid that she wanted to take back to Paris with her.

Maybe this fling business was too much for her. Or maybe she’d been engaging with it too much. Perhaps what she really needed to do was pretend that Josh wasn’t there at all. At least, not as a man. Maybe she needed to think of him as a . . . what did the celebrities call their non-boyfriend escorts? A handbag! That was it. He was a very presentable handbag. Something gorgeous to get her through the night and that could then be returned to the wardrobe.

She knew that this was a sensible approach, because it made her feel calm and settled, like her best plans did. And yet . . . she couldn’t ignore Josh. Sitting next to him, she felt she had never been more aware of anyone in her life. His scent, the warmth of his body, the curve of his cheek as he turned to talk to Clare; even his hand, long and wiry, lying on the table near hers, tortured her. It would be so easy to hold that hand, to lean against him, to press her leg against his and to take comfort from his presence as she would if he were really hers. But he wasn’t. And he wasn’t going to be. He was just a gorgeous, wonderful, fun guy, who had stumbled into the path of the crazy mess of a woman she was at the moment and who didn’t deserve to be drawn in any further than he already had.

So, she would drink. Alcohol was the answer. It would deaden her nerves and ease her embarrassment now and make her forget later. That was her reasoning, anyway. In her eagerness for some help to make it through the evening, it didn’t occur to her that drinking hadn’t achieved any of those ends so far tonight.

In her defence, there was plenty of temptation on offer. While she and Josh had been away from the table, the choice of nerve-deadeners had increased considerably. As well as the riesling she had started on, there was now a crisp sauvignon blanc, a mellow, wooded chardonnay, a soft merlot and a gutsy shiraz to be getting on with. Kate silently blessed Jo, who had somehow managed to get a bottle of each variety, instead of the one-of-each-colour that they were supposed to have, and settled down to a serious appreciation of the collection.

She also decided that the less time spent looking at Crystal across the table, the better. Accordingly, she took every opportunity she could to leave and mingle with other, less problematic classmates. It wasn’t hard to do. The formal part of the evening, such as it was, seemed to have ended with the main course and people were circulating as though there were no such things as set places.

Sometimes she took Josh with her and sometimes Jo did, if there was someone she thought he’d remember. But, wine-fuelled as Kate was, she was aware that the constant meeting of new people, whom he would likely never see again, couldn’t be that fascinating for him. So mostly she took pity on him and left him talking to Clare’s husband, with whom he seemed to get on and who seemed similarly content to remain seated as his more gregarious wife flitted about the room.

It was as Kate was coming back from one of these sorties, skirting the DJ who was setting up on one side of the commodious dance floor in front of the stage, that she realised that leaving Josh unattended might have been a mistake. In her absence, Crystal had seen an opening, pinched her seat and was leaning in towards him, all tumbling hair and cleavage and predatory smirk. And Josh was smiling at her.

Kate skidded slightly on the polished surface of the dance floor as a jolt of pure fury exploded deep inside her, seared a path through the comfortable fuzziness brought on by the wine and burst into fireworks in front of her eyes.

How
dare
she? Josh was
hers
. Okay, not really, but that message didn’t seem to have got through to her possessive gene. Until now, she hadn’t realised she had one of those, but Josh seemed to have drawn it out. It had sprung to vigorous life when Crystal had tried her manoeuvring earlier and now it seemed fully grown and flowering – in bright, bright green.

Who the hell did Crystal think she was? Did she really think she could get away with this? Did she really think Kate was still the helpless mouse of ten years ago? Kate thought she’d laid that ghost to rest at the start of the night. Apparently not. Well, she’d do it now. It was time for this mouse to roar.

Impelled by outrage, Kate stalked, in a way she could never normally have managed in such heels, until she was close enough to hear their conversation. She was fully expecting that what she heard would stoke her fury. And it did, but not in the way she expected.

Crystal, for all her simpering body language, wasn’t getting a word in. Josh was holding forth, in a way Kate was beginning to see came naturally to him, on yet another incident from her high school days. A funny one, or at least he seemed to think so. But that wasn’t how she remembered it. For her, it was right down in the vault with the memory of the Year Twelve formal. Except this one hadn’t happened at school, so none of her schoolfellows, apart from Jo, knew about it. Until now.

She stopped behind him and his audience, far from sure that she wanted to join them while they were listening to this story. Her first impulse, indeed, was to get as far away as possible. But the sight of Crystal, leaning ever closer as he spoke, rooted her to the spot.

He was telling the story well, she had to give him that. Clare, her husband and Matt were listening and smiling, and as for Crystal, she was hanging on every word as though she were a downtrodden Tibetan and he were the Dalai Lama.

Then he delivered the punchline – and his audience literally fell about laughing. From her position behind him, Kate couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. She could hear how much he was enjoying himself. He was playing his small audience the way Yehudi Menuhin played the violin. He had them in the palm of his hand and he loved it!

Kate felt her heartbeat roaring in her ears as she discovered the answer to the question she’d asked Jo in the ladies. It wasn’t true. He didn’t really care for her. If he did, he’d know how much she hated making a fool of herself. He’d know that she had sworn Jo to secrecy so no-one would know just how much of an idiot she’d been over that stupid rabbit and he wouldn’t have done this to her. But he had. He had taken the opportunity she’d given him to play to an audience and run with it. It was all show. It must be, or why would he humiliate her like this?

Well, she might have given him the opportunity, but she didn’t have to put up with him running with it to this extent. Stepping forward, she reached around Josh, forcing Crystal to sit back sharply, and put her hand on his.

‘Listen, darling,’ she said, raising her voice over the sound of the DJ beginning to ply his trade. ‘They’re playing our song! Come and dance!’

With a flair for play-acting that Kate couldn’t admire as much as she had earlier, Josh smothered his surprise at this interruption and rose gracefully to accompany her. Kate was sober enough to know she was being rude but drunk enough not to care. And she was mad enough to positively revel in the filthy look she got from Crystal as she dragged Josh away from her clutches.

By the time they made it to the dance floor, it was already packed. Someone had briefed the DJ, and he had started with a medley of number-one hits from their final year at school, which was drawing people from their chairs to the dance floor like ants to a picnic. Pulling Josh into the crush, Kate put her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself up so she could whisper into his ear.

‘We need to talk.’

In reply, he plucked her right hand off his shoulder with his left, put his right hand on her back and pulled her into what a dim memory of dance lessons past told her was a tango hold. Although in dance class it had never been quite this . . . tight. In Josh’s version, they were plastered chest to chest as though they were sharing one skin.

Kate tried to put her sudden breathlessness down to the air being knocked out of her. But she knew he hadn’t pulled her that hard. It was the feel of him, hard and warm, soaking through her dress and into her libido that was making breathing suddenly an act of will rather than something she could take for granted.

He leaned the tiny extra distance it took for his mouth to be near her ear and spoke.

‘What do you want to talk about?’

For a moment, as his warm breath goosebumped its way down her neck and strayed into her cleavage, she quite forgot. Then he spun her into a theatrical, back-bending dip, people nearby clapped and she remembered.

‘Is everything a performance for you?’

It was more breathless than she would have liked, but he must have heard the undertone of anger. He snapped her upright so he could look her in the eye – although he still had to look down to do that. It would have been easy to look away without being at all dramatic. Their difference in height was such that all she had to do was look straight ahead and she’d be looking at his shoulder, not his face. And if he’d looked straight ahead, he would be looking over her head at whoever was behind her. But she held his gaze and he hers. Until he slid his hand up her back and pulled her upper body closer so he could speak into her ear again.

‘It is when I’ve been asked to play a part. Is that a problem?’

Yes. Yes, it was, when it messed with her head, her body and her heart. But how could she explain that on this crowded dance floor, with so many ears flapping? And how could she even think straight enough to try when he was holding her so close?

The answer came when he twirled her out of his arms into a spin almost as dramatic as the dip. It was as if he was showing off deliberately, to bait her. But that just made her more determined to get some answers from him. She didn’t normally seek confrontation, but nothing about this night was normal. She hadn’t completely forgotten that she had decided not to be alone with him, either. But she was angry enough – and, frankly, drunk enough – to make neither of those considerations seem important. She had to have this out with him and, at the furthest stretch of her arm, just before he swung her back to land on his chest again, she spotted something that might help her do that.

Behind the DJ, out of sight of most of the room, but accessible with a little manoeuvring, was a door she remembered from her stage crew days.

Pulling away from him, she reversed her hold on his hand and started boogieing her way towards the DJ, towing him behind her.

If anyone asked, she intended to say that she was going to request a song. But by then the dance floor was so crowded that they were able to reach her destination more or less unnoticed, except as another bump in an already very bumpy environment.

If it had been locked, she might have lost her nerve, but luck was on her side, in this at least. Screened by the DJ, she turned the handle, slipped through, pulled Josh in behind her and shut it behind him.