I could have warned her that Max appeared to be uninterested in casual sex, but really, that was none of my business, so I simply stated the truth.
“I’m not going to fuck Banks.”
Because, for a start I didn’t like him as a person. But the bigger issue was that I didn’t trust him. He had way too much ‘charm’ for my liking, and that put me off. I slept with men because they were hunky and I was horny, or simply because I felt like I had an itch to scratch. Not because of some sleazy line they were spinning.
Casual worked for me. I’d had a live in boyfriend and he’d cheated on me. So despite my melodramatic everyone’s getting married but me pity-party at the wedding, I felt safer with nostrings-attached sex. It was easy and uncomplicated.
Everything Max Banks wasn’t.
“I’ll be discreet,” Marika promised and I refocused on her face.
“No means no,” I reminded her. “Don’t persist if he brushes you off.”
She nodded at me solemnly, making me feel like some ancient Yoda of sex. Respect his boundaries, you will…
It was at moments like these that I realized how much older I was. Sammie was thirty, only five years younger than me, but Marika was a whole decade fresher, which didn’t exactly make me feel like the cream of the crop. More like that bad fruit nobody buys…
Still, with age should come authority, so I waved Marika off with an order, “Prosecco.” Then I smoothed my hands down the front of my pretty pink sundress and turned on my heel to walk back to the booth, taking my time and deliberately stopping at a few tables to ask the patrons if they were enjoying their meals. Chatting to customers was part of my job, so I was damned if I’d rush back to Mr. Hot and Cold Banks, especially when I had no idea how to change his mind about featuring Bohemian Brew.
When I finally reached the booth, however, I was disconcerted to find him chatting to Marika, smiling that charming smile of his that made me feel breathless even while I was gritting my teeth at the idea of him sleeping with one of my staff.
Not that it was any of my business, I reminded myself as I slid into the booth. So long as it didn’t happen on the premises or during Marika’s shift, there was no reason to care what either of them did. Still, I could feel myself getting worked up about it, and I wasn’t sure how to dial down my angst.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Banks,” Marika said breathlessly. “I will do that.”
When she was out of earshot I said, “She will do what?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Blow me,” he said on an expelled breath. “Am I not allowed to—?”
“What!” I hadn’t meant to screech, but my pulse had jumped through the roof. The last thing I’d expected was such an explicit admission of guilt.
“Lower your voice,” he demanded, glancing around.
“What did you just say?”
“My private conversations are none of your—”
“Blow me. You said blow me.”
He stared across the table at me for endless seconds, and the longer it went on, the further my stomach fell, because I knew there was something wrong. He didn’t look guilty, or smarmy or defensive. He looked stupefied.
So I was already starting to feel embarrassed when he said slowly and clearly, “Blimey. I said, Bly. Me. It’s an expression of surprise.”
“Crap.” I knew what blimey was. I’d grown up watching cockney dramas on television. My mother loved them. So…I was an idiot, and he didn’t have a blowjob date with Marika. He’d already told me he wasn’t a casual sex sort of person. So why did I keep assuming that he was?
“I’m sorry,” I said, squirming on the velour bench seat, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d misread a situation so completely. “I’m a twit,” I added, unable to stop frowning. “I’m usually much better at hiding the fact.”
He nodded and his beautiful eyes softened in what looked like reluctant sympathy. “I saw you with your customers.” He nodded toward the tables I’d visited on the way over. “You couldn’t have been more delightful. With them.”
But not with me.
That was the unspoken part. And I felt so damn bad in that moment I picked up my glass and took a gulp of my wine, even though I never normally drank in the daytime, especially at work. But today I needed something to slow down my runaway tongue and give my brain time to think about things before I blurted them out.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and put down my glass. “I’m not normally mean to people.”
“So I’m told.” He frowned then, and appeared to be about to say something else. Only, before he could, a deep, sickeningly familiar voice boomed across the shop at us.
“Frithy!”
Max turned instantly to see who it was. But I kept looking at the table in front of me because I knew. And despite all that had gone before, this was worse.
Much worse.
CHAPTER THREE
“Where’s my girlie?”
I wanted to suck in a deep breath, to prepare myself somehow, but I was frozen into the past, and when I raised my eyes, Max was looking at me. God only knew what expression I had on my face, but I couldn’t think about him now. I needed to think of myself—of survival.
Outside. Get them outside.
I knew my mother would be trailing behind my father, even before I’d slid out of the booth and turned to face them. I wanted to usher them out, but I wasn’t quick enough. Before I could do anything, my father was looming over me, all six foot, four inches of lard, his jowly face ruddy with what looked like several bottles of beer.
I had to force my tongue to work and it felt stiff as I said, “Dad.” How did you find me? “Good to see you.” Mom had halted to his right, the obligatory two paces back. “Mother.” She looked even more haggard than the last time I’d seen her, and had stopped dying her hair which was pulled back into a grey bun with only hints of the lustrous red she’d had when I was young.
“Now then,” dad said, and glanced at Max for the first time. “Who’s this?” His tone was accusing, as if I was fourteen and caught naked with a stranger. “A suit?”
I pressed my palms against my midriff, wanting to say something, to rescue the situation, but in the five years since I’d last heard that voice, nothing had changed. It still had the power to shred me.
Max slid silently out of the booth and extended his hand. “Maxwell Banks,” he said quietly. “I’m pleased to meet you…Mr. Wynde?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I blurted.
Of course dad had no idea who he was, so he just said, “Pommie eh?” and left Max’s hand hanging in dead space.
A few seconds later Max dropped his hand and glanced at me.
“Please,” I said to him, “Enjoy your lunch. We’ll resume our meeting when I’ve spoken to my parents.”
I could hear my voice trembling, and was further disconcerted when Traci materialized beside Max and eyed my father assessingly, as if she was about to phone the police.
Someone may need to, but I wanted to try and diffuse the situation if I could. Running away—my usual recourse with avoiding parental dramas—wasn’t going to solve this. They knew where to find me now, and I wasn’t about to quit Bohemian Brew, so I said to them, “Let’s find a table and have lunch.”
I walked off, and they must have followed me a way before my father’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
“A meeting, is it?” he sneered. “That old Mumbai hag told us you were a big shot now.”
I swiveled to face him, thankfully out of Max’s hearing range, although he was watching us with a frown. The Mumbai hag would be Angela’s mother who must have heard about Bohemian Brew at the wedding. Of course she would have blabbed that around Dakaroo as soon as she’d gotten home, and my parents must have heard.
“Yes,” I said simply. “I have meetings. If I’d known you were coming I could have—”
“Stupid slut like you?”
I swallowed hard to try and push down
the hurt but it was opening up like a wound inside my chest, spurting acid pus. Time and repetition had made me far too sensitive, so my cold cheeks and trembling hands told me I simply couldn’t bear this, but I had to. I was in charge of the shop. I had to think about damage control.
We were in the middle of the teahouse and people were turning around, wondering what was going on. Luckily I wasn’t wearing my uniform, so out-of-towners might think I was a customer involved in a fight.
When I didn’t reply to my father he sneered, “Gone upmarket now,” and waved a loose hand at my outfit. “Wearing fancy duds so you can charge more?”
I’d never charged anyone for sex. He was just being cruel, and I knew it was only because his life was so lame it made him feel better to criticize me. But the knowing didn’t make it any easier to bear.
“Dad,” I said quietly, as I had done a hundred—a thousand—times before. “That’s not nice.” It was exactly what mom had always said to him, before he’d backhanded her once. Now she said nothing at all.
“Nice?” he said, and took a step toward me, his piggy eyes narrowing. “Since when do I have to be nice to a lazy, stupid—”
That was as far as he got before someone’s phone burst into blaring life with a jazzy muzak ringtone. I jerked in surprise and saw my dad wince. So his hearing aids must still be giving him grief. Good.
“This way,” I said and pointed, sending a prayer of thanks for the accidental intervention. Luckily he followed me through the shop and I soon had him and mom out on the shaded sidewalk. “Why did you come?” I asked, because the only way to get through to my dad was with blunt questions.
He put his hands into the pockets of his overstretched shorts and rocked back on his heels. “Wanted to see if the bullshit was true, if you’d made something of yourself. Or are you still sleeping around with losers and living in a dump?”
The ten-year-old inside me wanted to shout You can talk about living in a dump! But I knew from experience that nothing I said would make this easier. I just needed to find out what they wanted and get rid of them.
Harsh, but realistic.
They’d been thought of as ‘hard-working folk’ when I’d been growing up, and for some reason, other residents of our little outback town had respected them. Not me. I couldn’t respect a bully, and I couldn’t respect my mother after I’d offered to help her get away from him and she’d stayed, out of love.
But I had to stop thinking about that or I’d throw up. My stomach was already in turmoil after the dramas with Max. This was only making things worse.
“Well?” he snapped. “Cat got your fucking tongue?”
“This is Jill’s restaurant—”
“That slut—”
“And she pays me to work here. I’m a glorified waitress.” Not a complete lie. I did help out when it got busy. “I’m saving up to go to India, so I won’t be working here long.”
“India!” He spat on the sidewalk beside him and I shuddered. It had almost landed on my mother’s worn sandals.
I pressed my lips together, trying to keep my rebellious stomach from erupting. Get rid of them. Fast. “So I don’t know what Mrs. Patel was talking about. I’m no big shot—”
“Far from it,” he snapped. “Same stupid slut you always were by the looks of it.” He sounded disappointed, as if he’d actually wanted me to have made something of myself. Not that I’d ever be praised for it. But maybe he’d hoped to get a bit of mileage out of it at the local bar. Saw my girlie. She’s a manager now. As if he had anything to do with it.
I pressed my palms harder against my midriff. “So I’ll come home and visit with you guys,” I lied. “Maybe Christmas if I’m still in Australia.”
I glanced at my mother but she wasn’t looking at me. She was gazing at dad, same as she always did, with that attentive expression she wore, as if pandering to his every need would somehow avert any nastiness, which it never did. Nastiness was a given. The only way I’d learned to cope with it was to get away as soon as I could.
“Yeah, well…” He looked around as if he was bored with the conversation. “It’s not as if we’ll be invited to any wedding, will we? Who’d want you?”
“Barn,” my mother said softly, short for Barnaby Barnstorm Wynde, fastest shearer in his day, which was a very long time ago. “I gotta go.” That was code for toilet, and after the race day mishap of ’98, it was one of the few directions my father was guaranteed to take.
“Stupid women,” he muttered, then he nodded at me—a You can fuck off too jerk of his head before he lumbered away.
My mother moved to follow, but one step brought her closer to me, and she muttered, “Sorry,” under her breath, not meeting my gaze. Then she was trailing him down the sidewalk, her hands held nervously at her waist, her shoulders hunched in her faded floral dress.
I wanted to think she was pathetic, or to be angry about her spinelessness, but as I watched my father lumber through the tourists, a head taller than most, with a small grey mouse in his wake, I just felt sad, a deep aching sadness that threatened to shut me down.
On any other day I’d go home and crawl into bed. I knew my own sensitivities. My father pushed every button I owned, and I was likely to either burst into tears or get hysterical. Only…Max Banks.
I sucked in a long slow breath and looked down. My hands were clutched together at my midriff and it took an effort to unclasp them and shake them out, to loosen my tensed shoulders and stand tall.
The monster from my past was gone, they were both gone, and I knew from experience that they wouldn’t be back. In fact, from this moment on he’d be complaining about having to drive all this way to see me and all for nothing. He’d never spoil a good complaint, so that required him to drive back in the same day.
For the next month at least he’d be telling his cronies about what an ungrateful, stupid whore I was, and they’d cluck in sympathy. Not that I cared about that. It was the physical confrontation I dreaded, and although this was far from the most humiliating I’d endured, it had been one of the most wrenching, probably because I was out of practice at blocking the pain.
Tonight when I was alone I could cry or rant or do whatever the hell I needed to, to purge them from my system. But in this moment I needed to get my ass back inside. I turned back to the teahouse and saw Traci standing ten paces away, watching me closely. Had Max sent her?
I couldn’t work that out, so I ignored her to walk slowly back to the booth, chatting to customers, straightening chairs, smiling at my staff—all the normal things that might help me get myself back to where I was before my ugly past had walked in the door. Conversations were flowing around me and if anyone had noticed the incident, they’d moved past it.
Max was still standing beside the booth, watching me walk up, his expression very still.
I slid into my seat across from him and said, “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault.” He gazed at me a moment longer, then he resumed his seat and said, “I can see how you’d become sensitive to criticism, with a father like that. Is he gone?”
I nodded. “They live in Dakaroo. A tiny outback town north of here. It’s where I grew up. They’ll probably go straight home.” Now that he’s humiliated me in public for the hundredth time.
“I’m sorry you had to endure that, obviously more than once.” For a moment his mask of control was gone and I saw genuine sympathy in his gaze. “You don’t deserve it.”
Funny. That was exactly what I’d told Rosie when I’d heard her husband was cheating on her.
I shrugged, surprised that Max even cared to comment. “I try to avoid them.” I reached for my glass and was disturbed to see my hand shaking. My stomach felt wobbly as well, which was always the way. The emotional reaction was worse when it was all over.
I couldn’t pick my wine up without risking a spill, so I pretended to be straightening the salt and pepper shakers on the table.
“Do you want me to leave
?” he asked quietly.
I glanced up in surprise. “Of course not. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
My vehement response surprised me. Before my dad had walked in, Max Banks had been the big bad wolf, who I’d have gladly ordered out. Now matters were in perspective.
He leant back and put an arm across the top of the bench seat, which pulled his jacket open. “That sounded very…determined.” The way he was looking at me was anything but innocent, and without warning I could feel myself growing breathless.
My emotions were obviously all over the place.
I tried to swallow them down as I said, “I want you to do the feature.”
“I see.” He was inspecting me the way men do when they’re interested and that set my already tense body throbbing. Bad enough that I’d been ogling him, but if he was going to return the favor, I might find it harder to resist all that charmingly proper British manliness.
Having him sprawled back against the seat with his jacket open, revealing that crisp white shirt underneath was far too tempting. It was only a single layer between his skin and…potentially my tongue.
When I lifted my gaze, I found those dark soulful eyes gazing into mine, as though searching for something. Then he tilted his head to inspect my face. “There’s a childlike innocence about you.”
I shook my head. If he saw me in bed, he wouldn’t be saying that. Although, I shouldn’t be putting him and bed in the same sentence, because that could never happen. Even if, for some bizarre reason he did want to fuck me, I absolutely couldn’t. Jill would never, ever speak to me again. She was already cranky that I was screwing everyone at work.
Oh no. I needed to concentrate on the fact that he couldn’t be trusted. I should definitely expect the worst from this man. I’d seen his behavior on television.
Although…that could be acting.
“…which is at odds with your reputation for casual sex…” he went on quietly, then he leant forward and put both hands on the table, one quite close to mine. I suddenly noticed that he wasn’t wearing any rings. Not that that meant anything.
Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4) Page 4