‘I knew it was you,’ he said.
Her expression told him a kiss on the cheek, a hug, even a handshake would not be welcome. He kept his hands to his sides.
She looked much the same. More grown-up, of course. But the same sharp, intelligent face. The same black hair—only shorter now, and all tousled around her face. The piercings she’d sported so defiantly at school had gone, leaving tiny telltale holes along the top of her right eyebrow and in her nose, and there was just one pair of discreet gold studs in her ears instead of multiple hoops.
There was something indefinably different about her. Perhaps it was her air of assuredness. He didn’t remember that. Back then she’d emanated a miasma of misery that had made other adolescents uncomfortable around her. The ‘keep away’ glower hadn’t helped either. He’d considered himself privileged to have discovered the amazing person behind it all. Until he’d blown their friendship.
‘I didn’t think you’d recognise me,’ she said.
He’d forgotten what an appealing voice she had: mellow, slightly husky.
‘You mean you hoped I wouldn’t.’ He’d intended his words to sound light-hearted, but they came out flat.
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t say that. It’s been years.’
He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Strange way to meet again. In an earthquake.’
‘A “tremor” the management called it,’ she said with a wry twist to her lips. ‘Playing it down so as not to freak out the tourists.’
‘Whatever name you give it, it scared the daylights out of me.’
She reacted with a raising of her perfectly shaped black eyebrows. ‘Me too,’ she said, with the shadow of a smile. ‘I thought my end had come. Still think it’s a possibility.’
‘Where were you when the quake struck?’
‘Having a body massage down at the spa.’
Where she must have been naked. So that was why she had only a towel wrapped around her.
Mitch willed his eyes to stay above her neck. Before today he’d only ever seen Zoe in a shapeless school uniform. He hadn’t taken much notice of her body back then—it was her brain that had interested him. Besides, he’d had a girlfriend. Now he realised what great shape Zoe was in—in her own quiet way she was hot.
‘Where were you when it hit?’ she asked.
‘Just about to dive into my lap pool. Then I noticed the surface of the water shimmering, which was kind of weird.’
‘That must have been scary.’ She shuddered as she spoke.
‘Yeah. It was.’
‘So much for relaxing in a tropical paradise,’ she said, with a bravado that didn’t hide the shadow of unease in her eyes.
She clutched her towel tighter to her. Mitch refused to let himself imagine what might happen if it slid off.
An awkward silence fell between them. Zoe was the first to break it. ‘I’m going to head back to my villa,’ she said.
‘How about I come with you? Who knows what we’ll find when we get back to our rooms.’
Her response was more of a cynical twist than a smile, but it was nonetheless attractive. ‘Thank you, but I don’t need a big strong man to protect me. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ he said. ‘But I... Well, I don’t really want to be on my own if we get any aftershocks.’
He wasn’t afraid to admit to vulnerability. Just never on a football pitch.
‘Oh,’ she said.
For the first time she seemed flustered.
‘You’re not...you’re not with someone?’
‘You mean a girlfriend? No. What about you? Are you on your own?’
‘Yes,’ she said, with no further explanation.
He glanced down at her hand. No wedding ring. Though that didn’t necessarily mean no man in her life. ‘I’d like to catch up, Zoe. Find out what you’ve been doing in the last ten years.’
She paused. ‘I don’t need to ask what you’ve done since we last met,’ she said. ‘You’re quite the sporting hero. The media loves you.’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah... That... Don’t believe everything they dish up about me. But seriously, Zoe, I’d really like to spend some time with you.’
* * *
Zoe looked up at him and her heart gave a flip of awareness. Mitch Bailey. Still the same: so handsome, so unselfconscious, standing before her in just a pair of swim shorts that did nothing to hide the athletic perfection of his body. So full of the innate confidence that came with the knowledge that he had always been liked, admired, wanted. So sure she’d want to spend time with him.
And she’d be lying to herself if she said she didn’t.
He was the best-looking man she’d ever met. Had been then—still was now. She couldn’t deny that. But all those years ago she’d seen a more vulnerable side of Mitch that had endeared him to her before he’d pushed her out of his life. Had it survived his stardom? It was difficult to resist the chance to find out.
‘I’d like to catch up too,’ she said lightly. ‘After all, it isn’t every day an earthquake brings long-lost school buddies together.’
He didn’t seem to remember the circumstances of their last meeting. It had been a long time ago. Devastating to her at the time. Insignificant, it seemed, to him.
Had she had a crush on him back then? Of course she had. A deeply hidden, secret, impossible crush. He’d been so out of her league she would have been relentlessly mocked if anyone had found out.
‘Great,’ he said with a smile.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was tinged with relief.
‘The manager said it was business as usual. We can order drinks. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a beer.’
‘Me too,’ she said.
And the first thing she’d do before she spent any more time alone with Mitch Bailey would be to put on some clothes.
CHAPTER TWO
ZOE’S VILLA HAD suffered minimal damage from the tremor—just a few glasses she’d left out had smashed to the tiled floor. Still, it was a shock—a reminder of how much worse it could have been. Might yet be.
She wanted to clear up the broken glass. But she felt awkward dressed only in the towel and she still felt very shaky. For every piece she picked up, she dropped another.
Mitch insisted he do it for her. Thanking him, she escaped into her bedroom and pulled closed the door that divided the room from the living area. The villa was like a roomy one-bedroom apartment, with all the external doors folding back to access the enclosed courtyard and private lap pool.
Her heart was thumping like crazy. Residual fear from the earthquake? More likely the effect of being in close proximity to Mitch Bailey.
She hadn’t stalked him over the years. Not that. But when a boy she’d gone to school with had shot to fame she wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t read the magazine stories, watched the television interviews, cheered for him when he’d been the youngest ever player in the Australian Socceroos team for the World Cup.
All the while she’d been getting on with her life—first studying, then working, dating, and only ever thinking about him when the media brought him to her attention.
Now he’d been thrust into her life again. And she was clad in a towel, with no make-up on and her hair all mussed up with massage oil.
Hastily she pulled on a sleekly cut black bikini, then slid into a simple sleeveless dress in an abstract black-and-white print. It fell to just above her knees. The humid tropical heat made anything else uncomfortable. She pulled a brush through her hair and slicked on a natural toned lipstick.
Did she want to look her best for Mitch? Her ‘best’ involved twenty minutes in front of a mirror with a make-up kit and heated hair tongs. She shouldn’t be worried about how she looked now; he’d seen her at her worst ten years ago. She shuddered at the memory of what she’d looked like back then. The mono-brow. The bushy hair. The prone-to-eruption skin.
But still, she wished today she could look
her usual polished, poised self. Her best self. There was no denying she’d feel more confident with straightened hair and more make-up. But she didn’t want to waste time fussing over her appearance when she could be catching up with Mitch. Who knew when she’d see him again—if ever?
He’d switched on the television in the living area and was watching the screen when she came back out of her bedroom.
‘The manager was right—there’s minimal disruption,’ he said. ‘Seems like Bali gets small tremors like this quite often. But the risk of aftershocks is real.’
Aftershocks. She knuckled her hand against her mouth to suppress a gasp; she didn’t want to appear too fearful. Not when Mitch seemed so laid back about the risk.
He switched off the TV and turned to face her. Had he grown taller since she’d last stood so near to him? They were both in their bare feet. He seemed to stand about six-foot-one to her five-foot-five.
Six-foot-one of total hotness.
Mitch was an elite sportsman in his prime, and he had celebrity status with as many fans as any actor or musician.
Her proximity to his bare chest was doing nothing to slow down her revved-up heartbeat. If she’d had a T-shirt big enough to stretch over all those muscles, she would have offered to lend it to him. But wouldn’t it be a crime to cover that expanse of buff body?
She wanted to take a step back, but didn’t want to signal how disconcerted she felt by said buff body being so close to her. Instead she stood her ground and forced her voice to sound controlled and conversational.
‘So this region sometimes gets harmless tremors? That didn’t stop it from being frightening, though, did it?’ she said. ‘I huddled under the massage table, making all sorts of bargains with myself about what I’d do if I got out safely.’
‘What kind of bargains?’ he asked.
‘Spend more time with friends and less at work. Give more to charity.’ She shrugged. ‘Stuff that wouldn’t interest you.’
His eyes were as green as she remembered them, and now they looked intently into hers. ‘How do you know they wouldn’t interest me?’ he said, in a voice that seemed to have got an octave deeper.
A shiver of awareness tingled through her. Sexiest man alive, all right.
‘Our lives are so different. It’s like we inhabit different spaces on the planet,’ she said.
‘What do you think is my space on the planet?’
‘Spain? I believe you play for one of the top Spanish teams. I’ve never been to Spain.’
‘I live in Madrid.’
‘There you go. I still live in Sydney. Fact is, the air you breathe is way more rarefied than mine.’
‘I don’t know if that’s true or not. We’re both staying in the same hotel.’
‘My booking was a last-minute bargain on the internet. Yours?’
He smiled. The same appealing, slightly uneven smile he’d had at the age of seventeen. ‘Maybe not.’
‘That’s just my point. You’re famous. Not just for being a brilliant football player but for being handsome, wealthy, and photographed with a different gorgeous woman on your arm every time you’re seen in public.’
And they were all tall, blonde and beautiful clones of Lara, back in high school.
‘That’s where you have an unfair advantage over me,’ he said. ‘You’ve read about me in the media—seen me on TV, perhaps. That’s not to say what you’ve seen is the truth. But I know nothing about what’s happened to you since we were at Northside High.’
‘Because we occupy different space on the planet,’ she repeated, determined to make her point. ‘I went to another school after Northside, but I was still in Sydney. Away from school I hung out in the same clubs and went to the same concerts as other kids our age. But our paths never crossed again.’
‘Until now,’ he said.
‘Yes. It took an earthquake to shake us back into the same space.’
He laughed, and she had to smile in response.
‘You’ve still got a quirky way of putting things. Seriously, Zoe, I want to know all about you,’ he said.
His words were flattering, seductive. Not seductive in a sexual way, but in a way that tempted her to open up and confide in him because he sounded as though her answer was important to him. That she was important to him. Even aged seventeen he’d had that gift of being totally focussed on the person he was addressing.
She realised it was highly unlikely she’d see Mitch again after today. He would go home to Madrid; she would fly back to Sydney. There was also a chance that a bigger earthquake might hit and the whole resort area would be wiped out. It was unnerving in one way—liberating in another.
‘How about we get that beer and then we can talk?’ she said.
‘About you?’
‘And you too,’ she said, finding it impossible not to feel flattered. ‘I’d like to hear about your life behind those media reports.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘I’m warning you: my life story will be quite mundane compared to yours.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ he said.
‘There are beers in the mini-bar,’ she said. ‘I’ve been on an alcohol-free detox since I’ve been in Bali and sticking with mineral water. Not that I drink a lot,’ she hastened to add.
‘I think getting out of an earthquake unscathed is reason enough to break your fast,’ he said, heading towards the fridge.
He brought out two bottles of the local Indonesian beer, took off the caps and handed one to her.
‘Let’s take them out near the pool,’ she said, picking up one of the remaining glasses to take with her. The ceiling fans were circulating air around the rooms, but the air-conditioning didn’t appear to be back on yet. Besides, it felt too intimate to be alone in here with Mitch, and the king-sized bed was too clearly in view.
It was only a few steps out to the rectangular lap pool, which was edged on three sides with plantings of broad-leaved tropical greenery. Two smart, comfortable wooden sun loungers with blue-striped mattresses sat side by side in the shade of a frangipani tree. A myriad of pink flowers had been shaken off the tree by the quake onto the loungers and into the water. The petals floated on the turquoise surface of the pool in picture-perfect contrast.
In different circumstances Zoe would have taken a photo of how pretty they looked. Instead she placed the beer bottle and the glass on the small wooden table between the two loungers. She flicked off the flowers that had settled on one lounger before she sat down, her back supported, her legs stretched out in front of her. Thank heaven for all that waxing, moisturising and toenail-painting that had gone on in the spa yesterday.
She felt very conscious of Mitch settling into the lounger on her right. His legs were lean, with tightly defined muscles, his classic six-pack belly hard and flat. Even she knew soccer players trained for strength, speed and agility rather than for bulky muscle. Come to think of it, she might know that from hearing him being interviewed on the subject at some stage...
These villas were often booked by honeymooners, she knew. The loungers were set as close as they could be, with only that narrow little table separating them. Loved-up couples could easily touch in complete privacy.
She had never touched Mitch, she realised. Not a hug. Not even a handshake. Certainly not a kiss. Not even a chaste, platonic kiss on the cheek. It just hadn’t been appropriate back then. Now she had to resist the urge to reach out and put her hand on his arm. Not in a sexual way, or even a friendly way. Just to reassure herself that he was real, he was here, that they were both alive.
She and Mitch Bailey.
He swigged his beer straight from the bottle. The way he tilted back his head, the arch of his neck, made the simple act of drinking a beer look as if he was doing it for one of those advertisements he starred in.
He was graceful. That was what it was. Graceful in a strong, sleek, utterly masculine way. She didn’t remember that from the last time she’d seen him. Off the football fie
ld he’d been more gauche than graceful. At seventeen he hadn’t quite grown into his long limbs and big feet. Since then he’d trained with the best sports trainers in the world.
Yes, he inhabited not just a different space but a different planet from her. But for this time—maybe an hour, maybe a few hours—their planets had found themselves in the same orbit.
Mitch put down his beer. ‘So, where did you go when you left our school?’ he asked. ‘You just seemed to disappear.’
Zoe felt a stab of pain that he didn’t seem to remember their last meeting. But if he wasn’t going to mention it she certainly wasn’t. Even now dragging it out of the recesses where her hurts were hidden was painful.
She poured beer into her glass. Took a tentative sip. Cold. Refreshing. Maybe it would give her the Dutch courage she so sorely needed to mine her uncomfortable memories of the past. She considered herself to be a private person. She didn’t spill her soul easily.
‘I won a scholarship to a private girls’ boarding school in the eastern suburbs. I started there for the next term.’
‘You always were a brainiac,’ he said, with what seemed to be genuine admiration.
Zoe didn’t deny it. She’d excelled academically and had been proud of her top grades—not only in maths and science but also in languages and music. But if there’d been such a thing as a social report card for her short time at Northside she would have scored a big, fat fail. She’d had good friends at her old inner city school, an hour’s train ride away, but her grandmother had thwarted her efforts to see them. The only person who had come anywhere near to being a friend at Northside had been Mitch.
‘I had to get away from my grandmother. Getting the scholarship was the only way I could do it.’
‘How did she react?’
‘Furious I’d gone behind her back. But glad to get rid of me.’
Mitch frowned. ‘You talk as though she hated you?’
‘She did.’ It was a truth she didn’t like to drag out into the sunlight too often.
‘Surely not? She was your grandma.’
Mitch came from a big, loving family. No wonder he found it difficult to comprehend the aridity of her relationship with her grandmother.
From Paradise...to Pregnant! Page 2