The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps!

by Nikki Logan

  The image of her, standing at his door, her slim hands reached out, beseeching, while he let a muscle-bound black-ops specialist physically push her away came back to him now.

  Not his finest moment.

  Where would all his sisters’ pride be then?

  He took her arm and turned her for the door and her practised composure finally slipped a little. As though his touch were all it took.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped.

  He knew where he was going for even entertaining a conversation with Izzy. Masochism Central, population: one.

  ‘Somewhere more private.’

  * * *

  Izzy let herself be towed out into the bright spring sunlight and around the side of the house to a small sub-garden with hanging willows and perfectly positioned ornate benches. Very pretty. Very old.

  Very easy to toss her from the property from here.

  He released her and stood, arms folded, like a Roman centurion.

  His fingers on her skin had just about broken her. The torment of his flesh on hers, but done with such icy calm. While her head was spinning with the right thing to say. To do.

  Izzy struggled to clear her head, desperate not to be intimidated. Or at least not to show it.

  ‘I called my mother after you left,’ she started, again. ‘I hated that my first proper call to them was because I needed something, but I really needed her. Her wisdom. Her composure. I needed someone who hadn’t been charmed by your smile and wasn’t influenced by having seen me so ridiculously delirious with you. I needed her clarity.’ She curled her arms around her body. ‘She suggested it might have been for the best, as unpleasant as our parting was. That I deserved better than someone who couldn’t be honest with me, who couldn’t share of themselves. Someone who could believe such a vile thing about me when I’d done nothing to earn that suspicion. Someone less damaged.’

  The pulse at the angle of his jaw, that place she’d used to love to press her lips, worked visibly under his skin. Not reaching out to it took all her strength.

  ‘I feel sure there’s a point coming,’ he said.

  ‘Mum was right,’ she gritted. ‘But I couldn’t get past what she’d said about damage. I couldn’t help the suspicion that everything… all this we’ve been through…wasn’t really about me, at all.’

  She looked around her, at the expansive gardens, the grand old homestead. ‘You must meet a lot of people who are very attracted to all this. People who are in it for the money. Now that I see it in context, it only reinforces what I was wondering.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Who it was that burned you so badly. That made you not trust anyone.’

  His nostrils flared. ‘You think I’m that oblivious? Or that careless with my assets? Especially my heart. In this family it pays to be guarded.’

  Understanding blazed through her. ‘You’ve never let someone in? You’ve never loved someone at all?’

  Sorrow washed through her.

  You never loved me.

  ‘Bad investment,’ he simply said. ‘And I have too much uncertainty on my plate as it is. Love is a luxury I can’t afford. I got slack. Forgot why people like us don’t get to have ordinary lives.’

  Oh, Harry… ‘And that’s why it was so easy for you to believe I’d been lying to you?’

  ‘Look at it from my point of view, Izzy. You pursued me. Pitching Broadmore for funding, coming to my house, sliding so effortlessly into my life. And then I discover you knew who I was—’

  ‘Just one hour, Harry.’

  ‘One hour. One week. One month. In that moment, I felt…’

  ‘Betrayed?’ Yep, she knew that feeling. Like a hot knife between the ribs.

  ‘I felt played.’

  ‘But I didn’t know.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe it was the wake-up call I needed. I was killing time in London, building up the experience I’d need to run Broadmore in the future. I wasn’t there to make a life or fall in love. I’d lost sight of my purpose.’

  ‘So you just…excised me?’

  His eyes glittered. ‘Why not? You did it to your parents.’

  Ice-cold grief crystallised in her chest. Was this how they’d felt when she’d let them go? This awful…emptiness?

  ‘My life was about to change anyway,’ he urged. ‘I was just pre-empting it. An emotional entanglement across the world from where my responsibilities were was exactly what I didn’t need at that moment.’

  Sudden pain curled like a fist in her throat.

  Entanglement. Bound by twisted, clinging vines.

  Right.

  Izzy took a long, unsteady breath. She’d flown across the world on the off-chance that she could talk him around, once things were calmer, his father’s condition stable. Once he’d heard her side of the story.

  ‘I feared this would happen,’ she murmured. ‘That you’d rationalise everything, file it away as a thing that happened once with a woman you knew for a few weeks. That you’d forget how good it felt being together. How perfect we were.’

  ‘We dated for a few weeks, Izzy.’ He shrugged, his eyes empty and hard. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I loved you for every one of those weeks,’ she urged past the lump. ‘Harry Mitchell, the man who blew his hard-earned wages on ferries and let me pluck the olives off his pizza and pledged to protect me when we walked at night.’ Tears welled dangerously. ‘And, I hunted for any kind of sign that you felt the same and cobbled together this stupid, misguided belief that you could care for someone like me.’

  His throat worked visibly. ‘How long would you have lasted in this world, anyway?’

  If he’d given it half a chance? Maybe for ever.

  But they’d never know now.

  Izzy smoothed her dress and then stood as steadily as her physical and emotional exhaustion would allow. Her cold, dry palms were almost refreshing where the sun had just been.

  ‘Because your world is so special, Harry? Doesn’t really look it from here.’

  She turned and took a few steps before pausing and turning back.

  ‘For the record? You pursued me. You came to my house, seduced me in my bed, then again in yours, invited me to dinner and into your world. I wanted to trust you despite all the secrets and caginess—your mystery family, your clandestine past, your unspecified future. But you made me doubt what little you did tell me about yourself and, worse, you made me doubt myself. My worth.

  ‘You kept yourself back from me like I meant nothing. But you also made love to me like I was a princess. And you looked at me like I was the centre of your world.

  ‘And I believed your eyes.’ She shuddered. ‘Despite every fibre of my being warning me not to. Because I didn’t want fear to keep me from letting myself love you. My inability to believe that poor little Isadora might have finally struck it rich, emotionally. I wanted to be braver than that.’

  Those beautiful lips pressed flat across his jaw.

  She turned and curled her hands around his arm, appealing to him.

  ‘But my courage wasn’t what I should have been worried about.’

  His voice tightened. ‘Don’t worry about me, Izzy. I won’t be single for long. The world is mine for the taking.’

  Her jaw ached from clenching her back teeth. ‘Something priceless was yours for the taking, Harry. All you had to do was believe in me.’

  Her voice cracked entirely on those last words.

  He cleared his throat but stood stiff and unrelenting. ‘Do you need money for a taxi?’

  Hurt surged along her bloodstream. That he thought a fistful of notes could buy her out of his life. Out of his conscience.

  ‘I’m not interested in your money,’ she said, stepping away from him. ‘But thank you for reminding me it’s there.’

  THIRTEEN

  ‘There’s some things tea can’t cure,’ Izzy murmured towards the boxroom door that had crept open enough to let a stream of light into her darkness. She totally understood why
wounded animals would find a log or a hole in the ground or in the rocks to curl up and die in. The closeness provided a strange kind of comfort.

  Womb-like.

  Tomb-like.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Poppy said, peering through. ‘I’ll never believe that.’

  Izzy swung her legs over the edge of her bed and sat up slowly, gingerly receiving the piping-hot cuppa. Poppy’s gentle smile was almost her undoing. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Flat.’

  ‘Well, flat is an improvement. Flat isn’t sobbing.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had my quota of that today, too. And raging. And denial.’

  Each one as futile as the others. Harry had made his mind up. The whole butterfly and tornado thing again.

  ‘Why not come and sit out at the table?’ Poppy implored, her dark eyes gently angled.

  Poor Poppy. She had her own dramas to deal with and here she was having to babysit a hysterical flatmate. She, Tori and Alex had even taken it in turns to take a day off work to make sure she wasn’t alone until next week when she was going home to Manchester and the gentle and accepting hands of her parents.

  ‘Okay,’ she sighed, and Poppy couldn’t hide her relief. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  It might have been dinner time but it was still light out and Izzy squinted in the rich evening light streaming in the windows.

  All right, maybe she had been sequestered away a little too long.

  Through the kitchen doorway, Alex stirred a large pot of something that made her empty stomach growl while Tori laid the living-room table. Business as usual. Except that Tori being here smacked of intervention.

  She looked up. ‘Hey, stranger.’

  God, this was humiliating. Being the focus of so much pity. But only one person could change that.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ she offered, overly bright.

  Poppy looked straight to Alex, who smiled and manufactured an impromptu task. ‘Ah…I could use some help slicing the stir-fry.’

  Okay. Stir-fry it was. She crossed to stand next to Alex in front of an array of market vegetables. ‘Just thin sliced?’

  ‘Nothing fancy.’

  She took the chopping knife and began with the mushrooms. In her periphery, he kept a close eye on her. Very close.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything drastic,’ she confirmed.

  ‘I’m more worried about me. The token male in the room. You could totally make it look like an accident.’

  Hey, look at that; her lips still worked.

  ‘Good to see you smile, Iz,’ he murmured.

  Sigh.

  ‘Why are men so difficult to understand, Alex?’

  If he only just caught on to what he’d signed up for when he found her a task, Alex hid it well. Or took it on like the warrior he was.

  ‘We find you lot just as incomprehensible.’

  She fell back to chopping and he fell back to stirring. Without looking, she could feel Poppy and Tori busying themselves with stay-close tasks.

  He stepped aside and let her scrape the mushrooms into the vat of pasta sauce he was making before she reached for the peppers. But he paused and then turned to her, his voice low.

  ‘Iz, this isn’t about you. If he wanted to, he would have found some other way you failed him. No matter what you did.’

  The thing about friends who said very little… you tended to listen very closely to what little they did say.

  This isn’t about you. Hadn’t she come to much the same conclusion after all those long talks with her mother?

  She nodded—just once—and lifted her eyes to her best friends, still hovering nearby on purposeless tasks: refolding the napkins and straightening the perfectly aligned cutlery. At all those familiar, beautiful faces. All staring at her. All full of concern.

  ‘I love you guys,’ she murmured. ‘And I’m going to be okay. Tomorrow morning I’ll start running again and I’ll touch base with all my clients.’

  Life could only pause for so long.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, Iz,’ Tori reminded her gently.

  Oh…right. Monday, then.

  ‘Izzy, don’t—’ Poppy gnawed her lip.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  She leaned forward intently. More focused than Izzy had seen her in a long time. ‘Don’t let this put you off. For ever, I mean. Harry was a good guy with some good qualities but he was just one man. You’ll meet someone lovely who’s able to be completely open with you and who sees you for who you really are. I promise. Please don’t shut down emotionally.’

  Someone lovely. That sounded so sweet and safe and…beige.

  Someone lovely wasn’t likely to twist her insides up tight enough to explode. Or make her weep with his touch. Or make her laugh out loud in public.

  But, truth be told, a little emotional shut-eye sounded pretty good right now. It had been one hell of a fortnight.

  She smiled tightly at the curious intensity in Poppy’s eyes. Curious coming from a woman who hadn’t been in a relationship since…ever.

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am.’

  But all of their faces said they heard the hollowness of Poppy’s words, too. Alex excused himself and went into the kitchen to start dishing up.

  ‘Knock knock?’

  Izzy lifted heavy eyes to the doorway as a familiar face peered around it. Lara, from downstairs.

  ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt,’ she said. ‘But there’s a man down on the street who’s trying to buzz your apartment but can’t raise you. He’s trying everyone in the building in rotation. I said I’d run up.’

  ‘We muted it,’ Poppy said, ‘so we could have dinner.’

  Lara flushed. ‘Should I send him away, then?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Harry Mitchell. He’s here for Izzy.’

  * * *

  Poppy’s and Tori’s gasps were perfectly synchronised.

  ‘Harry?’ Izzy croaked, her breath now firmly choked by the fist that had materialised in her chest.

  ‘You don’t have to, Iz,’ Tori urged.

  She turned towards two concerned faces. ‘He’s back.’

  ‘You were just getting back on your feet,’ Poppy muttered.

  Her voice grew tiny and she turned her wide eyes to each of her oldest friends in turn. ‘Why is he back, Toz?’

  Tori shrugged her slim shoulders.

  Lara cleared her throat, awkwardly, from the doorway. ‘What would you like me to do?’

  Poor girl. What an introduction. Izzy forced herself back to some semblance of normal.

  ‘If you could let him into the building that would be super. Thank you!’ she called as Lara disappeared back down the stairs to her small bedsit right below them.

  She spun and looked straight to Tori, who knew, immediately, what she was asking.

  ‘You look great.’ But her eyes fell and her face followed suit. ‘Although you have something on your sweatshirt.’

  Tori turned and dashed into the boxroom, returning wearing a far less lived-in top.

  I shouldn’t care…I shouldn’t care…

  ‘What’s going on?’ Alex asked, emerging from the kitchen with the first two steaming bowls of pasta.

  Poppy and Tori spun towards him but Izzy couldn’t take her eyes off the door. Sure enough Harry stepped into it, puffing slightly from vaulting the stairs.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve—’ Alex gunned straight for the front door.

  Four female hands snagged him before he could get much past Izzy, and Harry skidded to a halt just outside the door.

  Like a vampire that hadn’t been invited in.

  ‘Izzy,’ he said, a whole lot of nothing in his eyes. Giving nothing away.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of dinner.’ What? Ridiculous. But her brain wasn’t doing its finest work right now. ‘You should have called.’

  ‘I tried c
alling. Your phone’s been going straight to voice mail since yesterday.’

  Oh.

  ‘The battery died.’ Sometime during her self-imposed sequester. Something to do with listening to his ‘I love you’ voice mail over and over.

  Ad nauseam.

  ‘You’ll have a bunch of missed calls from me when you charge it up. Tracking my progress from Melbourne airport.’

  The silence that fell was punctuated only by the three sets of heavy breathing behind her.

  Well…wasn’t this nice?

  ‘How’s your father?’ she asked past her tight throat.

  ‘Getting there.’ He glanced over her shoulder and then back. ‘Can I…? Can we speak, privately?’

  ‘This is their home, too.’ And she absolutely wasn’t having any kind of conversation with him in the boxroom. It was hard enough getting to sleep now, without it filling with his particular scent.

  ‘A walk, then?’

  ‘I’ll need a second.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Izzy walked, numb but steady, to her room and then to the bathroom, where she pulled on a jumper, combed her hair and brushed her fuzzy teeth. She gargled for good measure.

  Deluded optimist.

  But if Harry was here as part of some extended farewell tour, she wasn’t having his last memory being her looking like road-kill. She’d prefer to be remembered as the one that got away.

  Actually she’d prefer to be the one-that-got-to-stay but that wasn’t happening any time soon.

  When she re-emerged, the tension in their flat was richer than the colour scheme. Harry busily ignored the three sets of death stare blazing at him and kept his eyes tracked on the door she’d disappeared through.

  At the slightest noise from her Alex, Tori and Poppy all spun around.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Iz,’ Alex gritted. ‘I can make him leave.’

  No doubt, given his background. But given Harry’s martial arts training one or both of them would end up hurt. She squeezed Alex’s arm and smiled at her girlfriends.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll be back in a while. I could use the air, anyway.’

  Concern ran ahead of them and tangled in her feet as she crossed to follow Harry back down the stairs. They descended in silence and didn’t speak until they were out on the street.