Gentleman Playboy
Page 1
Gentleman Playboy
By USA Today Bestselling Author
Donna Alam
Copyright © 2018 Donna Alam
Published By: Donna Alam
Copyright and Disclaimer
The moral right of this author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the express permission of the author
This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Donna Alam
Contents
Gentleman Playboy
Copyright and Disclaimer
A Short Note
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Part Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Part Three
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Chapter Ninety-Two
Epilogue
More By Donna
Acknowledgements
About the Author
A Short Note
The setting in this book is true to life, according to my experiences and the years I spent living in the countries mentioned, plus those neighbouring. That is to say the backdrop is, at least to my mind, true to life. The same goes for Kate’s place of work. Although the school is fictious, I was lucky enough to work in a school very much like Kate’s. As for the events, some of these actually happened, some have been heavily embellished, and some plucked from my head—complete fiction!
Fancy that.
But one thing is for sure, I was never wined and dined by a devilishly handsome and charismatic stranger, one with the bank balance equivalent to the GDP of a smallish country. Because if that had happened, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here in my pyjamas writing about this stuff. Or maybe I would. I imagine my husband and children would’ve had something to say about the matter.
All colloquial or non-English terms have been translated by me (via friends of subsequently embarrassed friends) so please take these as absolutely accurate. That said, I’ve endeavoured to be as accurate as possible and explain through context. Same goes for the local customs.
I’ll leave you in peace now. I do hope you’ll enjoy.
Part One
Chapter One
‘So when you said you caught him with his trousers down . . .’
With a sigh, I reach for my fishbowl-sized glass, taking an unladylike slug. The dissection had to begin sometime. I can’t expect play Lady Macbeth forever, not without an explanation at some point, I suppose. Large gulp on the way to loosening my tongue, I finally answer.
‘Pants down. Literally.’
Niamh’s brow furrows as she waits for the punch line. So I deliver it while still examining my glass.
‘Jeans around his ankles, his bare butt working like a fiddlers elbow.’
‘He was . . . and you . . .’
‘He was and I did.’ I lean forward placing the much lighter glass down, the glass clattering against the table. ‘Coitus interruptus. Sort of. Anyway, he was doing her on my sofa.’
I don’t think I’ve ever shocked Niamh into silence. She isn’t the silent type. However, it doesn’t last long, her next sentence delivered in a verbal explosion.
‘Ohmyfuckinggod!’
‘Funny, that’s what she said. Only more like, Oh, Shane, oh, oh, ohhh my fucking . . . god! Shane, you’re so big! Total lie, by the way.’ I’d know, having laboured under his pimply butt for the last couple of years, affianced-to-be-married in, oh, a month or so.
‘The absolute bastarding shite!’
Australians are pretty sweary. I think it’s a cultural thing. Where else in the world is a stranger referred to as mate, while your best friend forever is greeted with abuse? Niamh’s lot, the Irish, are also pretty profane. But they seem to do it with a bit more style, somehow.
‘You’re serious? Of all . . . you walked in on him and he was nuts deep? Ah babes, what did you do?’
‘Just stood there.’ I shrug, shoulders hovering around my ears as it transforms into a slow but violent shudder, unwelcome snapshots of that evening filtering through my mind. A perverse Hansel and Gretel trail of slutty undies scattered from the front door to the lounge, the cheesy soundtrack playing softly in the background, punctuated by noises more suited to the gorilla enclosure at Taronga Zoo.
‘It was a bit like watching bad porn.’ Really bad, upsetting porn. ‘I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I had an out of body experience or something.’ The last part of my sentence comes out in a manic laugh, tears teetering on the edge of my lids. ‘Bloody ironic, seein
g as it wasn’t my body he was in.’
Mistaking Niamh’s silence as sympathy, I raise my head. Her blue eyes are levelled on mine, mouth pursed like the ass of a cat.
‘Kitty, tell me you hurt him. Please tell me you trashed his car? Brained him with the nearest vase, at least?’
‘We hadn’t bought a vase yet.’ With a sigh, I reach for my glass, realising its almost empty status. ‘I thought you were supposed to be getting me drunk?’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ she says, despite heading for her tiny kitchen.
But vase ownership or not, that’s just not me. I don’t do confrontation well, or at all, really. So I didn’t reach for the nearest thing to throw at him, or give him the satisfaction of my tears. Not even afterwards, when modesty had been restored, and the slutty side piece escorted to the door. Even following, it never occurred to me to shove something unsavoury under the seat of his beloved ride, or to list his number in the gay classifieds. Instead, I did something way crazier. I packed a bag and got the hell out of dodge, joining Niamh on the other side of the world.
‘I wish I’d been there. I’d have brained the bastard,’ by bestie says, returning from the kitchen, brandishing the new bottle like a cranium-crushing weapon of destruction. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘Shame. Disgust. The possibility of herpes.’
‘What?’ she asks, suddenly horrified.
I wave a hand, silently conveying at least that was okay. ‘It’s one negative I can turn into a positive, hey?’
‘Well, it’s something, at least,’ she replies uncertainly. ‘But you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Those kinds of thoughts don’t deserve headspace.’
‘Deserve?’ The word hits the air in a rush. ‘No one deserves to find their fiancé screwing a stripper on their new sectional sofa. The same sofa they’d waited twelve weeks for delivery!’
I hold out my glass, my insides twisting as I recall three uncomfortable months of bean bags and kitchen chairs. My delight as the sofa had arrived, my delusion of making our new house a home.
‘Calm down, Kitty.’
‘I am calm,’ I retort. Calm-ish, anyway.
‘He slept with a stripper?’ she says, twisting the bottle top from the neck.
‘Sleeping wasn’t what they were doing on my sofa.’
‘All that fake tan and glitter . . . ’
‘Eww,’ I complain.
Ignoring me, she fills my glass almost to the rim. ‘How long had it been, you know, going on?’
‘He said it was just the once, not that it matters.’
‘I should hope not. I’d like to give him just the once, right over his pretty feckin’ useless head.’
I hadn’t expected to feel so hollow, admitting that this is the end. Niamh’s the first person I’ve confided in completely. My humiliation. My abject shame. Isn’t it supposed to be cathartic? I thought I’d feel unburdened—a problem shared and all that?
Stage Three Alert: The Void. Or so I’m reliably informed by my newly purchased break-up book, Leaving with Healing. Or as Niamh renamed it, Heaving while Reading. She wasn’t impressed, picking it out of my hands with a contemptuous look.
‘Chapter 4: It’s Okay to be Sad,’ she’d read aloud. ‘Let me know when you get to the It’s Okay to be Angry chapter and I’ll get the scissors out.’
‘What did your mum say?’
‘What?’ I raise my head, Niamh’s question breaking through my thoughts. ‘Oh. We haven’t talked about it much. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her everything. She shed a few tears, stoically, of course, like he’d been cheating on her almost. When she realised people would have to be told the wedding was off, I thought she was going to take to her bed. Not so much worried about losing a daughter, but you know.’
‘I do,’ she replies with a small shake of her head. She’s seen it all first-hand.
Introspection fills the room, neither of us possessing the appropriate words to address my mother’s response.
‘Well, Kitty-Kat,’ Niamh says eventually. ‘I’ll say this; you don’t do things by halves.’
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘Most women get a new haircut, buy new underwear.’ She shields a growing smile behind the rim of her glass. ‘Gets drunk, then gets even by shagging the next half-decent man that crosses her path. You, babes, moved to the other side of the planet.’
‘I haven’t run away,’ I mutter defensively. ‘I just needed a change, that’s all.’
‘A change,’ she repeats sceptically, raising her glass in a toast. ‘Memento mori.’
‘What-a-mori?’
‘That’s my one bit of Latin, and a bit worth remembering.’ One blue painted fingernail points in my direction. ‘You’re a long time dead.’
‘Remind me not to come to you if I’m ever feeling suicidal,’ I mutter in response.
‘Good on ’ya, taking life by the balls, I say, because there are plenty in the cemetery would swap places with you. So long as you’re on this side of the grass, you’re doing all right.’
‘Wish he was in the cemetery.’
‘That’s my girl!’ Leaning over the sofa arm, she clinks her glass against mine. ‘Fuck him and the stripper her rode in on.’
‘Fuck them both,’ I add vehemently.
‘You’re really staying?’
‘I said so, didn’t I,’ I reply, licking the spilled wine from my hand.
‘You did so, but I didn’t think you would. Not really. I got that you’d had a fight. And now I understand why you wanted to get away, but it’s still a big step. This place is nothing like Australia.’
‘They’ve both got sand. And camels,’ I reply. ‘And I’ve accepted the job now.’ I say this more to myself than to her. ‘I couldn’t pull out, especially as it’s apparently God’s will that the old teacher didn’t come back after her holiday.’
‘Serendipitous,’ Niamh agrees, laughingly.
‘That’s what Shane said about meeting me.’ Suddenly, I feel my shoulders deflate. When will the past stop sneaking up and kicking me?
‘That’s a big word for someone with only half a brain,’ Niamh mutters.
But my stomach still twists as I stare into my glass. ‘He was going to include it in his wedding speech. I wonder what the opposite of serendipitous is.’
‘Unlucky. And just the opposite of what you should consider yourself. Imagine if you’d married the twat.’
‘At least that was something I didn’t have to see.’ I raise my gaze to hers, wrinkling my nose. ‘The loser had the decency to cover it—her, I mean.’
‘What the hell with?’
‘This tiny throw cushion,’ I reply, approximating the size of it with my hands. ‘He tried to cover his own junk with it first, then seemed to think it’d be better to cover her vag. Was that for her benefit or mine? And I couldn’t help but think about how I’d balanced my soup bowl on that cushion at lunch time.’
I shake my head and the images away as I realise Niamh is struggling not to laugh. For a minute, I can see the scene through her eyes. Shane’s stricken face as he scrambled to pull up his drooping jeans with one hand, the other ineffectually waving a furry throw pillow, not sure who or what to cover first. I almost laugh myself. Almost.
‘Imagine what you could’ve caught from that cushion.’ She shudders theatrically. ‘Still, could’ve been worse. He might’ve been in the middle of eating h—’
‘Nee-eve.’ Filling her name with reprimand, I screw my face up in distaste as I aim one of her own fluffy sofa offerings at her head. ‘You’re supposed to be comforting me in my hour of need, not giving me nightmarish flashbacks.’
‘I supplied wine!’ she says as it narrowly misses her. ‘Every cloud and all that.’
I expel one hard sound from my chest. I think it might’ve been a laugh.
‘Where’s the silver lining in this? I walked in on my fiancé screwing the stripper from his bucks’ night—a cliché in Perspex heels!’
&n
bsp; ‘Trust you to notice the shoes, Cinderella. So your Prince Charming turned out to be a toad. Better you find out he’s a philandering fuckwit now rather than later, yeah? A cheater never changes his spots, you know. You just have to hope that those spots turn into full-blown herpes a relationship or two down the road.’
I sigh loudly, the wind having blown out of my sails as quick as that. She’s right, maybe not the herpes hex, but the rest, yeah. Not that it makes me feel any less foolish or hurt.
‘Grab your silver linings where you can. Look at it this way, you have a do-over, a place to begin again. To be who you want to be, do what, or who, you want to do.’ Her sudden smile would put a cut watermelon to shame. ‘And his loss is absolutely my gain.’
A shiver ripples down my spine. Excitement or fear, I can’t say for sure. I still can’t quite believe I’m here.
‘And it’s like a pick-and-mix of blokes out there. The variety will blow your mind.’ Her eyes positively gleam with mischief, though I roll my own in response.
‘The difference between sour worms and jelly snakes? I’ve seen enough of dangly bits for the foreseeable, thanks. Besides, did you miss the bit where I said I was heartbroken?’
‘You’re not heartbroken,’ she scoffs, sliding me an eloquent look. ‘You’re hurt. And you know what they say, the best way to get over a bloke is to get under a different one.’
‘God . . . ’ I groan. ‘That’s so not happening.’
‘It’s always worked for me. A good revenge ride is exactly what you need.’ There’s no mistaking her actions or the way her accent twists ride into roide. It sounds so much filthier. Filthy and unwarranted as far as I’m concerned.
‘And here I was thinking you’d at least give me a chance to settle in before trotting me out like a prize heifer.’
‘Heifer? I’ve seen more fat on the pencil me mammy’s butcher uses.’
I pick imaginary fluff from my new, size smaller skirt as though I’ve discovered something new. ‘Ah, look, I think I just found that silver thread. I lost, oh . . . maybe 85 kilos, if you include the dead weight fiancé.’
‘Get on with your sexy self! What we need now is a night out to celebrate.’
‘No, I don’t. I mean I’m still—’
‘Mourning what could’ve been? Grand, we’ll make it a wake—cremate the fucker in flaming Sambuca shots!’