Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  Kate had to give Crystal points for poise under pressure. There was only the tiniest of pauses before she replied.

  ‘I’m not married, Josephine.’

  ‘Well, what do you know?’ Jo’s eyes widened in apparent amazement, although Kate was fairly certain that she had been able to see Crystal’s ringless left hand all along. ‘Who would ever have believed that Kate would have beaten you to that, as well?’ She shook her head wonderingly. ‘Oh well, in that case, you mustn’t waste your time on boring old us. If you’re still single there are bound to be scads of men dying to catch up with you. Why, your ex-boyfriends alone must run to dozens! We’d hate to hold you back. Go! Mingle! We positively insist!’

  Crystal knew when to concede a battle. Pausing only to kiss Kate – which Kate assumed was mainly to give Josh a good close view of her cleavage, since she gave only the briefest of goodbyes to everyone else – she took the hint and went.

  And somewhere inside Kate, some old hurts faded and in their place she felt the beginnings of something that might almost be called mojo.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kate watched Crystal’s progress across the room with a mixture of relief, elation and amazement. Relief that she was gone, elation that she’d left without her trophy this time, and amazement that old grievances could still be so fresh in both heart and mind ten years after the event.

  Josh seemed more amused than anything. Under the cover of his sister explaining to Matt (at some length) the background of the story, he murmured, ‘Penny for your thoughts.’ Kate looked up at him. ‘You seemed miles away.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry! It’s just . . .’ She trailed off, suddenly embarrassed.

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Oh, it seems so silly, now. I just realised that meeting Crystal was one of the things I was dreading about coming to this reunion. Can you believe that? It was all so long ago!’ She shook her head, really feeling silly now that it was all over. ‘You’d think we’d all be old enough to know better!’

  Josh smiled at her. ‘Well, she apparently isn’t. She doesn’t like you, does she?’

  The residual tension from the encounter forced itself out of Kate in the form of a giggle. ‘No she doesn’t! She never did. And I never understood why. I didn’t do anything to her – not deliberately, anyway. It was as though I offended her just by existing.’ She shook her head, reflecting that there was another thing that had survived the ten years untouched: she still didn’t understand what made that girl tick. ‘Maybe it was the new-girl thing. I don’t know. But luckily, not everyone was like that. There were some people who liked me!’

  For a reason unknown to Kate, it was suddenly very important to her that Josh know that not everyone hated her.

  Now it was Josh’s turn to laugh. ‘Kate, relax! You don’t need to tell me that. Even if no-one else had ever liked you, I know my sister worships the ground you walk on and I trust her judgement more than I trust my own. Besides, I was there, remember? I knew you when you were at school.’

  He looked straight into her eyes as he spoke and she was intensely aware that his arm was still around her, and that they were so close that she could feel the heat of his body through the thin fabric of her dress. Was it natural for his skin to be so hot? Or was it hers? Whichever, it felt to Kate as though, between them, they were generating enough heat to be a fire hazard.

  With an effort that felt much bigger than it should have, she tore her eyes away from his and looked over her shoulder.

  ‘You know, Josh, Crystal’s gone now. You really don’t need to keep your arm around me.’ She hoped he didn’t know how hard she had to work to sound casual.

  Josh pouted and the mischief was back in his eyes.

  ‘Now, Kate, is that any way to speak to your fiancé?’

  Kate felt the heat in her face and wondered desperately how many times this man was going to make her blush in twenty-four hours.

  ‘Oh, Josh, don’t tease! You know I only said that for Crystal’s benefit. You don’t have to pretend when we’re alone.’

  Josh put on a look of great seriousness as he shook his head.

  ‘Ah, no, my dear, that’s where you’re wrong.’

  Kate felt her insides do a flip at ‘my dear’.

  Immediately, her self-preservation instincts kicked in and she started rationalising as though her sanity depended on it – which, in the circumstances, it possibly did. Jo called her ‘hon’ all the time. Terms of endearment were obviously a family trait. It didn’t mean anything. But neither her insides, nor her cheeks, which were rosy again, seemed to be getting the message.

  ‘You’ve made your bed and now you must lie in it.’

  It’s just a saying! It’s just a saying! the self-preservation instincts chanted, like a mantra. But they might as well not have bothered. Kate’s insides had progressed from flips to full somersaults, she had become hotter still, and all she could do was hope fervently that he wouldn’t mention beds again any time soon.

  ‘You have claimed me as a fiancé. So for tonight at least . . .’

  At least? her mind echoed. With a sinking feeling, Kate realised that her self-preservation instincts had gone AWOL and apparently taken her better judgement with them. Now her thoughts had joined her body in responding to Josh in quite inappropriate ways. What would be next? She pressed her lips together so at least her tongue wouldn’t betray her.

  ‘. . . that’s what I must be. Because people will be watching.’

  ‘But —’ Kate began. Before she could get past the first word, Josh gently turned her around so she was looking in the same direction as he was. She didn’t need him to point out who he was looking at. She saw her, too. Crystal, giving them an evil look, over the heads of some people she was ostensibly talking to.

  Perhaps it was the consciousness of having an audience. Perhaps it was the warmth of Kate’s bare shoulders under his hands. Or perhaps it was the sweet, flowery scent that seemed to be coming from her hair. Josh himself couldn’t have said with any certainty what prompted him – but in that moment, he forgot that he had promised his sister he would behave himself.

  Slowly and deliberately, savouring the smoothness of her skin, he slid his hands from Kate’s shoulders to her waist. Then, before she had time to object, he put his arms around her, pulled her in so her back was snuggled against him, bent his head and kissed the nape of neck.

  Kate told herself that he was doing it for Crystal’s benefit; that it didn’t mean anything; that she should ignore it. But streams of what felt like liquid flame were spreading through her body from where his lips had touched her skin and they were impossible to ignore.

  It wasn’t as though her embattled self-preservation instincts weren’t trying. She could feel them, rummaging around furiously in her brain for something appropriate, something witty, something clever – anything, in fact – to say. But then he kissed her again, behind her ear, and the streams turned into rivers. Then the rivers turned into rapids, and started bubbling their way into some extremely interesting parts of her anatomy. With the feeling of a woman going under for the third time, she found she was rapidly losing the ability to think at all. She had already lost any inclination to insist that he keep his hands to himself.

  For Josh, who had been half-expecting to be slapped, this was an extremely satisfactory result. Since he had inhaled the fragrance of her hair, he had more or less stopped thinking too and he wasn’t in any particular hurry to start again.

  Of course, if anyone had asked, he would have said it was all about getting one up on Crystal. As it happened, he did have a good memory, and he had no trouble remembering the grief she had caused his sister and her friend. Why it should matter so much to him that she get her come-uppance at this late date, though, was something he chose not to examine too closely.

  Nor did he choose to think about why he was so ready to be known as Kate’s fiancé. He, Josh Marchant, whose most serious long-term relationship had been with his car. Josh Marchant, self-procla
imed commitment-phobe, who had once literally left the country when a girl had started hinting at marriage.

  All he knew was that, from the time he had held Kate that morning, he had had a very decided inclination to do it again. If this fiancé act gave him that excuse, he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

  Fortunately for Kate, who was beginning to feel that she was not so much a fire hazard as actually on fire, a watching sibling can hose down the hottest of encounters. Having finally finished explaining things to Matt, Jo had got around to noticing the state of affairs between her brother and her friend. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She merely raised an eyebrow – but to her brother, it was obviously eloquent enough. Under its influence, Josh didn’t quite manage a blush, but he did release Kate, contenting himself with one last kiss for the top of her head and with shooting his sister a look that dared her to make something of it.

  A silence descended on the group. Jo was still looking at her brother with the air of someone who was not going to make things easy for him. Josh was pretending not to notice. Matt was gazing curiously in Crystal’s direction, apparently trying to get his head around teenage female politics. And Kate had temporarily lost the use of her tongue, as well as her brain.

  ‘So, shall we mingle?’ Josh asked, eventually, of no-one in particular. His face wasn’t giving anything away, but he seemed disinclined to look directly at his sister or her best friend.

  Kate thought mingling was an excellent idea, but since she imagined coherence was probably still beyond her, she settled for nodding. Matt was occupied with looking at his feet and muttering something that sounded like ‘Women!?! Sheesh!’ So it was left to Jo to actually answer Josh’s question.

  ‘Yes, brother dear, perhaps it is time to spread our charms around,’ Jo said, with another arch look, which Josh ignored. ‘I see some of my old art-class cronies over there and I really should catch up with them. You never know, one of them might be turning out stuff I can put in the gallery.’

  As lucid thought returned to Kate, she marvelled that Jo could think of work at a time like this. But then, Jo was at least as committed to her art gallery as most people were to their partners. She was probably thinking about it all the time. Besides, Jo wasn’t the one trying to deal with a casual fling that felt anything but casual and a fake fiancé who seemed determined to act like a real one.

  Kate accepted another champagne from a waiter with great timing and downed it in two gulps. It might only be counterfeit courage, but right now she’d take any sort she could get.

  Jo smiled at her approvingly. ‘Go, Kate! We’ll make a party girl of you yet. Here, have another,’ she said, pushing her own fresh champagne into Kate’s hand. ‘I don’t need it. Places to go, people to see! I’ll see you two at dinner.’ And with that she was gone, cleaving through the sea of people like an elegant battleship on a mission, dragging Matt along in her wake.

  Leaving Kate alone with Josh.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Well, not alone exactly. The room was full of people, but for all Kate was aware of them, they might as well have been furniture. All she could see was Josh. Specifically, the way his black, black hair curled behind his ears and made her want to tangle her fingers in it. And how, in the soft light of the gym-turned-wonderland, his eyes were exactly the colour of chocolate. High-quality couverture, the sort that if you blended it with cream, would soften to the colour of his skin.

  It was possible that she’d had just a touch too much champagne in too short a time.

  Luckily, they weren’t alone for long. Almost before Jo had disappeared, two girls Kate recognised immediately as having played Helena and Hermia in their final-year production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream descended on them, with smiles and hugs for Kate, and admiring glances for Josh.

  Since Kate had only been stage crew, not cast, she was a little surprised that they remembered her so readily, but she was also amused. On this, surely one of the oddest nights of her life, it seemed appropriate to be connected by a play that was all about going to strange places and having very strange experiences, all in the name of love.

  Then, when they left, there was Tara from the yearbook committee, Emily from the maths club, a very heavily pregnant Clare from the social justice group and Rebecca and Mila, who had sat next to her in French for three years running.

  After them came girls who remembered that Kate had been good at dancing, but lousy at sport; girls who remembered that she had always carried a clean hankie, but frequently couldn’t remember where it was; girls who said they used to hate her for being so smart, but didn’t any more; girls who said they had wished they were as smart as she was, but never told her; girls who remembered that her mum made the best chocolate meringues; and one girl Kate had a lot of trouble placing, until she revealed that she had had three lots of cosmetic surgery since they had last met.

  In fact, Kate was a little surprised by just how many people wanted to talk to her. She had enjoyed the academic side of school and (Crystal aside) had got on well with most people, but she had never thought of herself as especially popular. She hadn’t been expecting this many people to even remember her, let alone be so keen to catch up.

  She couldn’t help wondering if it was Josh who was keeping them coming. He was certainly no liability in the popularity stakes. Most of the girls seemed very happy to get an eyeful, and delighted to find that he was as charming as he was gorgeous. But, unlike Crystal, their interest was generally good-natured and congratulatory, rather than predatory. The happily married Clare seemed to sum up the general consensus when she whispered behind her hand, while Josh was talking to her husband, ‘Half your luck!’

  At first, this attitude, while flattering, didn’t do much for Kate’s peace of mind. After all, in reality, Josh wasn’t even her boyfriend, much less her fiancé, and she had been supposed to come to this reunion with a real fiancé. Now that Josh was refraining from interfering with her thought processes – although he was still showing a disconcerting tendency towards holding her hand – she couldn’t help thinking of Alain.

  It really should have been Alain here with her. He should have asked her to marry him. All the signs had been there – or so she had thought. What was the matter with him? What was the matter with her? Did she handle it badly? Was she just not marriage material? Why hadn’t he asked her to marry him?

  It was a pointless merry-go-round. He hadn’t and that was that. No amount of thinking was going to change it. But it didn’t stop the thoughts going around and around on a seemingly never-ending loop, just as they had ever since that dreadful dinner. Even as she exchanged updates and mobile numbers with her old friends, she could hear the thoughts in the back of her mind.

  The difference was, though, that now, she could also hear Jo’s voice, telling her that it was time to move on and have some fun. And by her side was Josh: a walking, talking, charming personification of exactly the sort of fun Jo was suggesting.

  The combination was powerful and, in the break from small talk provided by nose-job girl asking Josh a barrage of questions about New York, Kate decided she should pay attention. After all, who was better to listen to? The bastard who left her, or the friends who picked up the pieces?

  Kate took a deep breath and tensed for the effort of stopping the broken record in her mind. It was past time. Alain was gone and that was all there was to it. He’d made that quite clear. She gripped her glass and prepared to swallow the hippopotamus-sized lump that normally appeared in her throat when she contemplated that reality.

  To her surprise, though, when she went to sip, she found that it didn’t feel very hippopotamus-y tonight. Perhaps a baby hippo. That was a nice change. She took another sip and found that it had, miraculously, become smaller still. Platypus-sized, she thought, with a touch of humour that she had never before associated with this pain. Miracles upon miracles. She tried again. To her amazement, this time the lump was only the size of a goldfish – and not a very well-fed one,
at that.

  Kate had no idea what had brought about this transformation. She shrugged off the whispers coming from her left hand, which was firmly encased in Josh’s right. Yes, Josh was hotter than January in Coober Pedy. He was also a great sport and apparently willing to do almost anything for his sister. And he was here, in the comforting, disconcerting flesh.

  But he was hardly a replacement for Alain. She had meant to marry Alain. She had made plans around him. Alain had represented everything she’d always dreamed of: family, stability, happiness. From what she’d heard from Jo, Josh was in no hurry for a family and didn’t know the meaning of stability. And for all she knew, he could be leaving in a few days. He was undeniably lovely, but he was quite a different prospect from Alain. Or what she had thought Alain was, anyway.

  Kate pulled herself up short. There was no point replacing one merry-go-round of speculation with another. It didn’t matter what had caused it. However it had happened, and no matter how short-lived it might prove to be, this hippo-to-goldfish miracle was definitely worthy of celebration. And that’s what she would do. With her right hand, she flagged down a passing waiter, swapped her empty glass for a full one, threw back her head and washed that puny little goldfish right down the big red lane.

  When she looked up, she found that the cosmetic surgery girl had gone and Josh was looking at her with an amused expression.

  ‘Jo didn’t tell me you were such a drinker.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m not! I mean . . . I was just . . .’

  ‘Drowning your sorrows?’

  ‘Oh . . . not exactly. More . . .’

  Too late, Kate realised that she should have just agreed. This was hardly the time or the place to start a conversation about her complicated feelings about Alain. Nor was Josh the right person to have it with.