The Rebound Guy

by Fiona Harper

  She walked over to the bookcase and picked up the picture of Jason with his father and brother. She’d seen the photo a hundred times, but suddenly she sensed something in the body language, in just the feel of the image that she hadn’t noticed before. After placing it back on the shelf, she turned to Jason. ‘He’s the favourite, isn’t he?’ she said, nodding back at the picture.

  Jason didn’t look at it. ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘But he deserves to be.’

  ‘No parent should pick and choose. I love both my boys the same, even if they’re very different.’

  Jason shrugged. ‘Families like mine can’t help themselves. It’s all about being the best, having the most. They can’t just switch it off when the kids come along.’

  She shook her head. A family didn’t have to be rich and powerful to have favourites. Just look at her father! He’d adored his two strapping lads, but hadn’t known quite what to do when a little girl had unexpectedly joined their family. She’d had to be twice as much of a boy as Dan and Jonathan to keep up, and even then there had never quite been the same glow of pride in their father’s eye for her as there had been for her brothers.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to accept it,’ she told him. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s right. You have to fight it!’

  ‘No point,’ Jason said, shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t matter what I do now. Brad’s already won. He’s triumphed through the adversity I caused. He’s got the gold medal that I’ll never have. No one can compete with that.’

  ‘But you still try,’ she said quietly, because that was what the shoes were about really. Suddenly it all made sense.

  Jason huffed and stood up to look out of the window across the London skyline. ‘For all the good it does.’

  ‘Don’t you dare give up!’ She shocked herself at the vehemence of her outburst. ‘Those shoes are good and you know they are.’

  Jason turned round and leaned against the window. ‘I know that.’

  She walked over to stand next to him, nodded over her shoulder at the paperwork on his desk. ‘So sign...’

  Jason just heaved in a breath and let it out again.

  ‘You don’t want to.’

  He turned and looked at her, the truth as evident in his eyes as the crumbs on Cal’s shirt after he’d raided the biscuit tin.

  ‘As good as Benson is, you don’t want him, do you? You still want McGrath.’

  He exhaled heavily. ‘I can’t envision the whole thing without him. He’s the best. And with him on board, people would have to take notice.’

  Jason might have said people, but Kelly heard the silent word behind it. My father would have to take notice....

  She recognised this for what it was: defeat mixed in with an unhealthy dollop of self-pity. Kelly didn’t like self-pity. It sucked the life out of a person. She should know. She’d almost succumbed to it when the cancer diagnosis had come and Tim had left. But then she’d got angry. Fighting angry. And that fight had got her through.

  She took a deep breath. By saying what she was going to say next she might just find a boot in her backside and security officers to escort her to the front door, but she was going to be doing Jason a favour. He needed the same kind of medicine she’d had, and she was going to make him take it.

  She put her hands on her hips and stared him down. ‘You’re a coward,’ she said. ‘You’re too scared to go after what you really want, and you’re letting Mercury down by settling for second best. And if your heart’s not in it, Mercury will flop and you’ll prove to them—to everyone, including your father—that you aren’t up to it.’

  His eyes narrowed as he looked back at her and—whoomph!—it was like a pilot light had ignited a boiler behind them. Kelly fought back a smile.

  ‘I didn’t give up and I didn’t settle for second best,’ he said with a clenched jaw. ‘I put everything into that promotional package, but McGrath wouldn’t listen.’ His voice rose in volume as he reached the end of his speech and Kelly knew her plan was working.

  ‘Then tear up this contract and go after what you want. Care enough to take a risk rather than going for the easy option!’ she yelled back at him. ‘Make McGrath listen!’

  Jason just stared at her, looking as if he’d like to set her alight.

  ‘I researched him,’ she said, ‘after he knocked us back.’

  Jason shook his head. ‘You don’t think I did that before I jumped into this? I know everything about the man—what his kids are called, what subjects he studied at school, even his dog’s name! None of it helped.’

  Kelly walked back to Jason’s desk and rested her backside on the edge of it, folding her arms. ‘The presentation was cool, it was fun, it was everything you wanted it to be but, at the end of the day, it was all smoke and mirrors, and that’s not what McGrath responds to.’

  He gave her a disbelieving look.

  ‘Think about it! You know what a lot of sprinters are like—they swagger, pose for the cameras, show how cool they are before a race. Does McGrath do any of that?’

  Jason blinked, and then after a few seconds he shook his head. ‘I thought the video rocked,’ he said, just a little defensively.

  ‘It did!’ Kelly replied, excitement making her pitch rise. ‘But I think you need to save all that slickness for the ad campaign. McGrath is a cool customer. He’s serious about running. He doesn’t even pretend it’s no big deal like the rest of them do. I think he wants a serious shoe—and that’s not what we showed him.’

  Jason frowned. ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘You and I know that Mercury is a serious shoe. Maybe we don’t need all that glitz and hype. That’s what people do to dress something up when it’s not very good. And I know that you believe in this product. I see it in the way you talk about it, how dedicated you are to it. You made me believe in Mercury and I think you can do the same for Dale McGrath.’

  The fire in Jason’s eyes solidified into determination. ‘Okay, I’m biting. But isn’t this shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?’

  Kelly smiled. ‘You’re a pretty persistent kind of guy, you know. I reckon if you transferred some of that energy into courting McGrath instead of chasing the female population of London around, you’d have a pretty good chance. What you need to do is get McGrath to talk to you face to face—solo—without all the glossy brochures and the spinning logos. I reckon you’d have him sold in under an hour.’

  Jason’s stern expression melted. ‘Thank you,’ he said, looking straight into her eyes, ‘for giving it to me straight.’

  Kelly felt her cheeks heat and she looked away. ‘Just trying to protect my own backside,’ she mumbled. ‘I need this job.’

  He walked back over to his desk, dropped into his chair and fired up his laptop. ‘He’s not due back in London for months.’

  Kelly shook her head. Men! They were always so literal.

  ‘Then don’t see him in London,’ she said softly. ‘Go to New York and see him there.’

  He froze. She knew the idea had just slammed into his brain and he was taking time to process it. And when she saw him nod, she could tell he knew it made sense.

  ‘Okay...I will,’ he said, and then he looked up at her. Right into her, it seemed. ‘But on one condition.’

  One corner of Jason’s mouth hitched and she got caught up in looking at it. ‘And what’s that?’ she asked, her voice shaky. For some reason she was having a severe and extremely lucid flashback of that kiss outside the Tube station, remembering how good that mouth had felt against her lips.

  ‘You come with me,’ he said.

  EIGHT

  ‘Go, for goodness’ sake!’ Chloe said and pushed Ben high on the swing.

  Kelly squinted at her in the low sun. There’d been just enough time to get a trip to the park in before bedtime. She
sighed. Thank goodness for long summer evenings. Sometimes, despite all the mayhem her boys caused, she longed for those days when she’d been a stay-at-home mum and hadn’t had to snatch time with them at odd hours of the day. The rest of the park was practically deserted, most of the other kids having visited after school before they went home for dinner.

  ‘I can’t just drop everything and flit off for four days!’ she said, keeping an eye on Cal, who she was trying to teach to swing under his own steam. ‘It’s impossible.’

  Her son was flinging himself backwards and forwards, legs and body working desperately to get up a bit of momentum. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten what Kelly had told him about pushing himself off with his toes and he wasn’t going anywhere fast. ‘Here, let me get you started,’ she told him gently and went to put her hands on his back.

  ‘I want to do it myself!’ Cal yelled over his shoulder, frowning, and doubled his frenzied effort.

  Kelly rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter how beyond him the task was, he never let anyone lend a hand. Why, out of all the qualities she could have passed down to her sons, had it been that dogged stubbornness? Couldn’t Tim’s anything-for-an-easy-life genes have cancelled things out a bit? He hadn’t been able to stick at anything for too long. Especially marriage.

  She caught her sister-in-law’s eye and found her smiling. Kelly knew exactly what was going through her brain.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said.

  She was not being stubborn about going to New York with Jason. She was being practical.

  ‘But you’ve always wanted to go,’ Chloe said, a little too reasonably for Kelly’s tastes. ‘The Empire State Building...Central Park...Little Italy.... Now’s your chance! And you’d get to go business class, stay in a nice hotel—it will be a nice hotel, won’t it?’

  Kelly nodded reluctantly. ‘I expect so. Jason does seem to like the finer things in life.’

  Chloe leaned over and gave her a nudge. ‘He likes you...’

  ‘Stop it,’ Kelly said again. ‘I used to think you were fairly sane until you married my brother, but he’s having a bad influence on you. Now you’re just as pushy as the rest of the Bradfords.’

  Chloe smiled sweetly at her. ‘I like to think of it as having discovered my inner mule.’

  Kelly snorted. She didn’t like it much, whatever it was. ‘It was supposed to be the other way around,’ she said mournfully. ‘You were supposed to mellow him out a bit.’

  ‘I just want to see you have a little fun, Kells. You deserve it.’

  There was that. But there was fun and there was fun. Chloe’s version was all tied up with a pair of long legs, some broad shoulders and a devilish grin. ‘I married that particular brand of fun and ended up in the divorce court,’ she told Chloe, ‘which turned out not to be so hilarious after all. I think I’ve had enough of feckless men to last me a lifetime.’

  Chloe made a scoffing noise. ‘I’m not suggesting you marry this one,’ she said with a saucy glint in her eye, ‘just that you have a little—’

  ‘Fun?’ Kelly interjected, her voice low and grim.

  Chloe shrugged. ‘I was going to say fling, but whatever.’

  Cal had obviously worn himself out with his flapping backwards and forwards and decided the slide was more appealing. Kelly glanced at the empty seat. Stubborn child.

  Ben, as always, copied his brother and dashed off for the slide too. Thankfully, it was the smaller variety, with raised edges and a rubberised floor underneath. She sat down in Cal’s empty swing and Chloe came and sat beside her while they both kept a beady eye on the boys a few feet away.

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, ‘say I did decide to go. What would I do with the boys? I can hardly leave them home alone with a can opener and some ready meals.’

  Chloe thought for a moment. ‘Easy. They can come and stay with us.’

  Kelly frowned. ‘But I thought your mother was coming to stay—you’ve been moaning about it for weeks now.’

  ‘That’s what makes it so brilliant,’ Chloe said, nodding. ‘She can help us with the boys. She’ll no doubt love showing me just how proper childrearing should be done—’

  Kelly muffled a laugh with her hand. ‘Good luck with my two!’

  Chloe gave her a quick smile then forged on. ‘I’ll have the perfect excuse not to drag round behind her on her annual shopping spree uptown...and I might even be spared the lecture on having my own offspring before my eggs go bad. Sounds like a win-win deal to me!’

  Kelly watched Cal showing Ben how to untangle his legs from underneath himself at the top of the slide and something inside her melted. Stubborn, yes. Generous and caring, also yes. As much as they made her life interesting at times, she didn’t know what she’d do without her boys.

  ‘Don’t you and Dan want kids?’ she asked, then realised belatedly it was probably another one of those things she shouldn’t bring up.

  Chloe sighed.

  ‘Just tell me to shut up,’ Kelly said. ‘Most people do.’

  ‘It’s not that...’ Chloe looked at the pale yellow clouds gathering on the horizon. ‘I’d love kids, but it’s...complicated.’ Her expression hardened a little and she turned to Kelly. ‘And I’m not doing it just to suit my mother’s timetable.’

  Kelly nodded. She might be a plain talker, but she could read between the lines as well as the next woman.

  So Dan was a little hesitant. It made sense, she supposed. His first marriage had ended catastrophically after his baby son had died, and he and Chloe had only been married a couple of months.

  Kelly noticed the sheen in not just her sister-in-law’s eyes. ‘He’ll come around to it,’ she told her. ‘Just like he did to the idea of marrying again. He just needs a little time to sort it all out in his head.’

  Chloe nodded, but her chin crumpled as she said, ‘I hope so.’

  Kelly was going to put an arm round her, but Chloe pre-empted her by shaking off her pensiveness and smiling brightly at her. She supposed she could help her sister-in-law out by being a distraction technique. Just this once.

  ‘So...’ Chloe said, ‘now we’ve got all that sorted out, what shoes are you going to pack for New York?’

  * * *

  Kelly fussed around with her aeroplane seat, putting her laptop in a pocket, stowing away some headphones, rearranging the magazines on offer. She picked up the emergency landing card, grimaced then put it away again. Where could she put her laptop mouse? This was a work trip. She would be working.

  ‘I can’t believe they put us in first class,’ she muttered for the fifteenth time.

  ‘The benefit of a company frequent-flier account and offices on both sides of the Atlantic,’ Jason told her. ‘I get upgraded all the time.’

  Business class would have been bad enough, thought Kelly. She was used to being in economy with her knees around her chin, but all of this—the comfy seats, three acres of legroom, the proper pillows and polished wood—just made her feel as if she was in a dream, not in the middle of what should be just another working day.

  She shouldn’t feel this excitement bubbling up in her stomach. Butterflies had arrived that morning before the alarm had gone off, the kind that only usually came with the rumble of case wheels in the pre-dawn quiet or when speeding down a deserted motorway as the sun rose. But this wasn’t a holiday; she needed to remember that. So she tried to stamp on the pesky butterflies, but they just flitted up from the floor of her stomach and messed with her heartbeat instead.

  She glanced across at Jason, who was looking cool and unconcerned. He was used to this. Even though he’d refused to book first class on the company dollar, she’d bet his family travelled this way all the time. They were certainly rich enough. And if the looming meeting with Dale McGrath was bothering him, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

  She stared at the
blank screen of the personal TV that was presently lying flat against the side of her little cubicle, or whatever they called it. She had to get a grip. This was going to be a long flight and she’d probably be sitting within centimetres of Jason for the whole time, so she really needed to stop tingling and just focus on what she was here to do—her job. She slumped back into her comfy seat and sighed. The sooner they took off and she could get her laptop out, the better.

  She turned and looked at him. ‘We’re going to go over the figures again once we’re in the air, right? I mean, the one advantage of all this space is that it has to be easier to work, yes?’

  ‘Lots easier to work,’ he said, smiling, then prised the laptop mouse she hadn’t realised she’d still been clutching out of her hand and tucked it into a convenient side pocket. ‘Also lots easier to relax.’ He nodded at a rather pretty cabin attendant and she instantly smiled and headed their way with glasses of champagne.

  Kelly took the drink but looked at it warily. It wasn’t helping with the whole ‘remember this is just work’ thing. This felt suspiciously like a treat.

  ‘Jeez, Kelly! Unclench a little,’ Jason said, laughing slightly, but then his expression became more serious. ‘You’re not afraid of flying, are you?’

  Kelly opened her mouth to say no, she wasn’t, but then she closed it again. ‘It’s been a long time. Not since before I had the boys.... And having kids made me neurotic in all kinds of new and unexpected ways.’ Perhaps that was why the butterflies were here. Perhaps that was why she was feeling so out of sorts. Nothing to do with the man sitting next to her at all. ‘Maybe I am a little nervous,’ she said, almost hopefully.

  Jason nudged her champagne glass in her direction. ‘Then this will help.’

  Kelly sighed and took a sip. It did help. But not in the way she wanted. She wasn’t sure she wanted to relax, to get comfortable chatting with Jason as they flew across the ocean. All day.

  ‘So how long has it been since you’ve been on an aeroplane?’ he asked.

  She looked at him. Jason wasn’t really one for chit-chat. The softness in his eyes confirmed her suspicion—that he was indulging in small talk to make her feel more comfortable, that he was being chivalrous. The rat.