Her phone rang under her hand, and she jumped, spilling her tea, then answered, her heart pounding hard. “Hello?”
“It’s Josie,” she heard, and she shut her eyes and thought, Of course it isn’t. Of course it wouldn’t be. He backed off, because you practically ordered him to. And no matter how good his lips had felt on hers or how strong the hand on her shoulder had been—no matter how much she yearned for the feeling of a man lifting her, in every possible way—for all she knew, he’d been showering so he could go down to a bar, find a less burdened, less cynical, and far less prickly woman who wouldn’t think twice about a fling with a fit All Black, and bring her home.
He wouldn’t have the curtains open anyway. He lived with his sisters.
“Hi,” she said to Josie, since her friend was, after all, still on the other end of the line.
“How did the apartment hunting go today?”
“Four places. Four rejects. Never mind, I’ve still got five weeks.” Except that those had been all the good ones.
She shoved the fear ruthlessly down. Something would come up. Something always did.
Josie paused a moment, then went on with too much actress-casualness, “So have you seen much of Kevin?”
“Maybe,” Chloe said. “Maybe he took me to dinner tonight.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “But it’s not even eight o’clock. Not your type? You couldn’t find a more easygoing fella.”
Chloe considered describing the less easygoing side of Kevin’s nature, but didn’t. It would make Josie think the day had meant more than really had. “Yes. No.” She sighed. “I don’t know.” She heard a phone ring somewhere close by, heard the rumble of a male voice answering it, and shivered, unwound herself, and blew out her candle.
Eavesdroppers never heard good things, they said. She didn’t want to find out if it was true.
“That’s definite,” Josie said. Chloe heard another male voice on the other end of the line, and Josie added, “And that’s Hugh come in.”
“Talk to you soon, then,” Chloe said, and rang off. She listened, but she didn’t hear Kevin’s voice anymore. She thought again about walking around that corner, and didn’t. Instead, she walked upstairs.
Tomorrow would be here soon enough. Time to set foolish dreams aside and get ready for it.
Monday morning, she was back into her usual groove, the temporary aberration a thing of the past. She woke before six, did a half hour of Pilates to strengthen her core and warm up her body, then woke Zavy, fed him breakfast, and took him to Carolyn’s. After that, it was across the Harbour Bridge to class at Auckland Ballet, the same as every weekday morning.
Class. That unchanging constant in every dancer’s life, from the greenest student to the most lofty principal dancer. An hour and a half of the basic and not-so-basic steps and movements, the ones that underpinned everything you did. No matter if you’d performed until ten-thirty the night before and would be going to rehearsal for four hours afterwards and then performing again, class was never optional.
It was that much less optional for her. The day she stopped going to class was the day she stopped being a dancer. The day she stopped being alive.
Afterwards, as always, she felt ... not just better. She felt right. She said her goodbyes to her fellow students, climbed into her hardworking Toyota once more for the ten-minute drive to Ponsonby, then rode the absolutely industrial, bare-is-better lift to the ninth floor and knocked on a bright blue door.
“Darling.” Fiona Donaldson enveloped her in a cloud of expensive scent, then stood back with her hands on Chloe’s arms and looked her over, settling on brushing her hair back. “I do wish you’d grow your hair again. Just enough to put it up.”
Since Chloe had heard that only about a hundred times before, she didn’t react to it other than saying, “And I’m not made up, and my track pants have seen better days. How have you been?”
“Oh, you know. Busy-busy. It’s the Symphony gala this next week, and you know what that is.” Her mother led the way through the whitest apartment in Auckland, its brushed-concrete floors smooth underneath Chloe’s bare feet until she was hopping onto a molded white plastic stool at the breakfast bar—which was white. Her mother poured her a cup of tea, added a slice of lemon to the saucer, and handed it across, then sat beside her and said, “Eat.”
Chloe helped herself from a glass bowl filled with sliced peaches, cubes of melon in jewel colors, and blueberries, almost the only color in the room, and added a slice of carefully lowfat roasted vegetable frittata to her plate. “Thanks, Mum.”
Her mother put a hand on Chloe’s back for a moment and rubbed. “How’s Xavier? I had a good thought. Next time, I’ll take him to MOTAT. Don’t you think?”
The museum of transportation. “That’s not a good thought,” Chloe said. “It’s a brilliant one. He’ll love it.” Her mum and dad kept Zavy one weekend a month, an experience that had tended to be fraught in earlier years, as their flat was the last thing from childproof. Fortunately, leather was cleanable, children actually did learn new rules for the grandparents’, and two more people in the world who loved you could never be a bad thing.
Chloe hesitated a moment, then said it. It wouldn’t be a secret long. “We’re going to be moving, by the way.”
Her mother stopped rubbing her back. “Oh, dear. The new owners decided not to continue the lease?”
“That’s it.” Chloe tried to make it brisk. “So I’m looking. You could ask your friends. Granny flat, apartment over the garage, highrise, lowrise ... we aren’t particular. The North Shore would be best, but we’ll take what we can get, if it’s good.”
“I’d tell you that you could move in here, but, you know ...”
Chloe smiled. “Yeh, Mum. I don’t think that would work out well.” Her parents had moved here the year Chloe had turned eighteen, the year after she’d left home. They’d sold the big house in genteel Remuera with its first-rate schools and relocated to ultra-fashionable, ultra-central Ponsonby, where her dad could walk to his law offices in Chancery Lane and her mum was in easy reach of all her commitments.
One bathroom, two bedrooms, and the four of them? Recipe for disaster.
“You’re all right for money?” her mother asked. “If you need our help ...”
“No,” Chloe said firmly. “Thanks.” She was doing fine, or close enough, now that the school was well established, and anyway—it would be much too galling for a woman who’d been earning a living since the age of seventeen. Help would make her feel like she hadn’t just changed her life, she’d failed at it. And it would give her mother a say. If you paid, you got a say.
“And you know ...” Her mother hesitated. Chloe knew that normally, she’d have worked up to whatever this was, but this weekly visit was only a half hour, all Chloe could spare. No time for tact. “Would it make things easier,” her mother probed with the delicacy of a microsurgeon, “if Rich had Xavier once or twice a month besides your dad’s and my weekend? Zavy could get to know him at last. And you’d be so much freer.”
Chloe had stopped eating. She’d stopped wanting to. “Exactly what,” she said slowly, “are you saying? Why are you asking?”
Her mother put a hand on hers, and Chloe looked down at the discreetly shell-pink, perfectly manicured nails, because she couldn’t look at her mother’s face.
“Darling,” Fiona said, “listen a minute. A boy should know his father.”
Chloe’s mouth was so dry, it felt burnt. She tried to say, “What?” but it wouldn’t come out. Her mother was off the stool, going to the front door. Chloe sat there and couldn’t, for once, feel her feet. Couldn’t move. All she could think was, No. Please, no. My baby.
She wasn’t sitting down anymore when he walked into the lounge behind her mother. She was standing, and if her hand was gripping the back of the stool, no wonder.
He said, “Chloe.”
She centered herself and breathed. “Rich.”
They’d establishe
d that they still knew each other’s names, then. Brilliant.
He was in a trim-fitting suit of deep gray, looking sleek and successful, dark and handsome. Smoldering, in fact. Black hair, piercing blue eyes.
He looked around and took a few confident steps inside as if he owned the place. He was familiar with it, of course. They’d done a lot of their wedding planning in here, and Rich had been as interested as Chloe. She’d told herself that was a good sign. Now, she wondered. He’d wanted the wedding to meet his standards, that was all. Exactly like everything else.
Her pulse was quickening, her heart beating harder. In response, her feet went into fourth position almost by themselves, and she was standing as if at the barre. Prepared and attentive, willing the tension out. Except that it wouldn’t go.
“Mum,” she said, “what’s all this about? Why is he here?”
“I can answer that,” Rich said. “But first, let me say that you look good. Still beautiful, and like you’re ready to take the stage. Except for the hair, of course. I miss the hair.”
She didn’t say, “It’s not your business.” She also didn’t say, “I don’t care, and my hair’s not yours to miss.” She certainly didn’t say, “I miss you, too.” Instead, she said, “What do you want? And why are you here?” She wanted to blast her mother, but that would have to wait.
“Ah.” Rich smiled ruefully and rubbed his straight nose. He hadn’t got any worse-looking himself over the past three years. “Look. We have a child. I think we should start putting his welfare first, don’t you, instead of continuing this hostility?”
Her head was going to blow straight off her shoulders. Or she was going to slap him again. Or both. “What do you imagine that I’ve been doing for the past three years? What is that thing I’ve been doing alone?”
“Not fair,” he said, still calm, still earnest, still unruffled. “Part of the reason I backed off was your hostility. I’ve never missed a child support payment, either, and they aren’t small.”
“Hoo-bloody-ray for you. In case nobody ever told you, that’s not the hard part.”
“I didn’t see you turning the money down.” He wasn’t quite as unruffled now.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Fiona said. “Richard, sit down and have a cup of tea. We can talk about this like civilized adults.”
“No,” Chloe said. Forget taking it up with her mother later. She was doing it now. “What’s been going on, Mum? Why are you in contact with Rich? Why would you invite him here? I’m your daughter.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said. “If he came by once or twice to see Xavier, that’s nothing but a good thing, no matter what mistakes he’s made in the past. You need to let things go, darling. You hang on too hard.”
It took a second for that to sink in. “And you didn’t think you should tell me about that. About him coming by.” Her feet were shifting, moving. She had a hand on the back of the stool, rising onto her toes and rolling down again. All that anger—it had to go somewhere, or she was going to explode. “I’m his mother.”
“And I’m his father,” Rich said. “I have a right to see him and spend time with him, no matter how you feel about it. I understand that you don’t like me, that you think I behaved badly. I’m sorry you were hurt, but I’d maintain that I saved both of us from unhappiness and regret by being honest.”
His deep blue eyes met hers with all the persuasiveness of his lawyer’s soul. As if she were a jury, and his job was to convince her, to persuade her. To seduce her.
“I’m not denying that you did me a favor,” she said. “You definitely did me a favor. I know the difference between ‘you were hurt’ and ‘I hurt you,’ too. I wasn’t ‘hurt.’ You hurt me. The way you did it was cruel. It was humiliating. I was nine months pregnant, the mother of your child, and you did that to me in front of my family and friends. You didn’t even have the decency to take me someplace private.”
She’d never said this. Getting the chance at last should make her feel better. It didn’t. It didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t care.
She was right. “I was young,” he said. “Not prepared. I thought I could go through with it, and at the last minute, I couldn’t. I explained it all to your mum. I’d explain it to you if I thought you’d listen. Anyway, your mum’s right. The past is over, and there’s no point in rehashing it. Let’s get to the point. I’d like to take Xavier the way we agreed and get to know him, start on a new path.”
“You were young? You were thirty-three.” That wasn’t what mattered, and she knew it. Her mind kept wanting to skitter away, and that’s why it needed to be focused right here. “And why would you want to get to know him after all this time? I can’t imagine that glamorous girlfriend of yours is keen.”
She wanted to snatch the words back as soon as she’d spoken them. She didn’t want Rich to have the satisfaction of knowing she cared about his life, that she knew he was dating an up-and-coming actress ten years his junior. Somebody so much like the woman she’d been herself. A rising star, in the spotlight—and shining it on Rich as well.
“There’s no point in this,” he said. “We have a co-parenting plan that lets me take him every other weekend. You must remember that. We can go back to court, of course, and you can tell the judge why it should be changed, why I shouldn’t be allowed to see him at all, because—what? You don’t like me? It’ll be expensive, and you’ll lose, and that’s that. I can afford it and you can’t, unless you ask your parents to pay. I don’t think they will, because your mum agrees with me. Or you can agree to let me take him every other weekend as we agreed, and both of us can avoid all the trouble.”
Her heart was beating so fast, she thought she’d pass out. She needed to sit and put her head between her knees, but she couldn’t. “Zavy doesn’t even know you. You don’t have a clue how to look after him.”
The tiniest wave of his hand, as if he were flicking the idea away. “He’s not a baby anymore. He uses the toilet. Your mum told me so. He eats regular food. I’ll buy toys.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. She couldn’t. “You make it sound like he’s a ... a pet. He’s a person. He’s going to be confused. Sleeping away from me? He’s going to be scared.” The thought of her little boy anxious and frightened, without any of the comforting rituals he protested against but relied on for his stability, was making her body seize up.
“Then I’ll start with one day. Saturday. You work on Saturday anyway, your mum says. What does it matter, really, who babysits him?” Which made the breath leave her body again. “I’m sorry this has to be so antagonistic,” he said when she didn’t answer. “I’m sorry you can’t see the benefit.”
“Out,” Chloe said. “Get. Out.”
“Chloe.” He sighed. “This is best for Xavier, too. Shouldn’t that be the most important thing? I’m sure you’ve spent the last three years thinking what a knobhead I am for not being involved, and now I am. Time may have slipped away from me a bit, but I’ve realized my mistake. I’m ready to change, and I don’t know in what universe that wouldn’t be a good thing. Next Saturday, then. I’ll come to get him at nine and bring him back by eight. I have the address from your mum.”
“I have to be at work at eight-thirty, and he goes to bed at seven-thirty.” It was like being in the sea, caught in a rip. When you were swimming and swimming, battling with all your strength, and you couldn’t get out.
“Seven-thirty?” Rich said. “That’s ridiculous. He can’t need to go to bed that early.”
“Except,” Chloe said through her teeth, “that he does. Because he’s three. You could look it up.”
“You always wanted your own way, you know that?” The first crack in the reasonable tone. “That’s the real reason it didn’t work out between us. That you were a diva. And you still are.”
“This isn’t getting you anywhere,” Fiona said. “You’ll have him on Saturday,” she told Rich. “That’s a good compromise. Let’s leave it now.”
&nb
sp; “That’s fine with me,” Rich said. “Eight o’clock Saturday, then. One day, or a weekend, twice a month? You know it’s perfectly reasonable. I’m not even asking for everything in the plan, not to start.”
He walked to the front door with Fiona behind him, and Chloe heard him say, “Thanks for trying.”
A murmur from her mother that Chloe couldn’t hear, and the door was closing, her mother coming back into the lounge and saying, “There, now. That was hard, I’m sure, but it’s for the best. Anyway, the worst bit is the shock, and that’s over.”
Chloe started to say something and stopped. Then she started again. And stopped again.
“No,” she finally managed. “Just no.” She picked up her purse. “I need to go.”
“Darling,” Fiona said. “Come on. Rich is right. You are overreacting. Xavier is an easy boy, and you loved Rich enough to marry him once. He’s not a monster. Zavy will be fine. You’re starting small with it, and it’s going to be for the best.”
“Why didn’t Zavy tell me?” Chloe seized on that, because the rest of it was terrifying. “And why didn’t you?”
Her mother gave a little sigh. Patient. Ladylike. “I told Zavy not to say anything, of course. I was checking Rich out, going slowly with it, looking out for Zavy’s interests, whether you see it or not.”
Chloe put up a hand, and she didn’t say anything. She wanted to say, How could you? She wanted to say, Don’t you love me at all? Don’t you care about me? Don’t you trust my judgment? But she couldn’t. The hurt, the fear were too deep. To have her feelings, her worries dismissed ... it more than hurt her. It panicked her.
Or maybe she was overreacting. She didn’t know. All she knew was, she had to get out of here. She’d say something otherwise that there would be no taking back. Something unforgivable, and even in this moment, she couldn’t do that. So she left.
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 7