Husband Stay (Husband #2)

by Louise Cusack

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I hear the way you say his name. You like him. Do you love him?”

  I blinked in shock. There was no way I was having this discussion with Jack, of all people. I looked around blindly and saw the doorway to his bathroom. “I’m going to clean up.” I snatched my clothes and marched into the sprawling luxury of white marble and glistening gold tapware.

  “Angela!”

  I locked the door and went and sat on the toilet.

  A good long pee clears the head.

  Jill had always said that, so I took her advice. Jack knocked on the door, several times, but after I flushed the toilet he stopped. I wasn’t ready to go out there, however, so I helped myself to a fresh towel from the stack and had a fast shower. Then, when I was clean and dressed again—albeit with no panties which was disconcerting—I exited the bathroom to find Jack, still naked, leaning against the opposite wall, his arms crossed.

  “I’m going,” I said unnecessarily.

  “You like to get angry with me, don’t you? It makes it easier to walk away.”

  He was perceptive, and I’d given him plenty of time for thinking. “Yes it does.”

  “I’ll be back next month. I want to see you again.” His chin was up, but there was something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. I hesitated to imagine it was vulnerability, but whatever it was, it tugged at my marshmallow heart. I was still thinking about what to say when he added, “I don’t just want to see you. I want to fuck you. Any way that makes you come. And I don’t want you to fuck anyone else.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I didn’t want to make love with anyone else either, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Jack. It would only make him feel like he’d won. And I wanted to win. The prize was a family of my own, and I deserved that.

  “I’m sorry, that won’t work for me,” I said, clutching my yellow jacket in front of me, desperate to leave. Because, naked and with his dark hair ruffled from my hands, he was incredibly sexy.

  Take a last look…

  No, bad advice. Thinking this was the last time I’d see him, made it harder to leave. So I tilted my chin up and said, “The future I want doesn’t have any place for this.” I waved my clumsy cast hand between us. He shook his head as if he didn’t understand, so I went on with, “And even if this is the best sex you’ve ever had…” such a flattering thought “…you clearly don’t want to make it permanent or you’d be proposing to me.” His delicious mouth fell open in shock, just as I’d hoped it would. “Which I would refuse,” I went on, “for previously mentioned reasons.”

  It took him a few seconds to regain his composure. “Your future.”

  I nodded.

  And he nodded back. “I suppose this Doug, he’s good for your future in some way that I’m not.”

  “Correct,” I replied crisply, even though I had no idea if that was true.

  “Okay then.” He pushed himself off the wall and held out his hand to shake mine. “I don’t want to stand in the way of a promising singing career, even if you do have to fuck the right people to succeed.”

  Somehow I managed to stop my own mouth falling open in shock. But this was Jack, and I should have seen it sooner. He’d never imagine sex to make babies. To him, it was either for personal pleasure or material gain.

  “Goodbye,” I said, ignoring his hand because I couldn’t bring myself to shake it, impossibly rude though that was. “Don’t call me anymore.”

  “No problem with that,” he replied flatly. “You are so not who I thought you were.”

  I’d been turning away to the door and had to grit my teeth to stop myself turning back, but I couldn’t stop myself saying over my shoulder, “Yet you are exactly who I thought you were when you were vomiting on my shoes and making lewd suggestions in the hospital. Good day!”

  “Good day?” Jill snorted on the other end of the phone. “Tell me that isn’t the last thing you said to him.”

  “It was,” I admitted, lying back onto my bed. “I was completely furious. I could have said anything.”

  “You could have said Thanks for the orgasms.”

  I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me. “I’m sure he knows they meant a lot to me, but it’s over now. I need to move on.” And this afternoon I had—signing Rosie’s contracts and emailing them back to her. I was officially ‘agented’ and that felt good.

  “Fair enough. There’s no point in putting yourself through emotional upheaval if there’s no future in the relationship.”

  “There isn’t. He made that clear.”

  Jill sighed, and I remembered her dramas while Finn had been pursuing her and trying to marry her and she’d been making him crazy by sleeping with other men. Her situation had been worth working through because there’d been a ring and babies on the other side. Which reminded me, “Have you got the dress sorted yet?” I knew Finn was holding her to their wedding date, even though she was hopeless at planning. “Did Louella go shopping with you?”

  “Yeah. we got it. Quite different to the bridesmaids’ gowns, but all our shoes will be silver. That will be cute.”

  “It will be glam,” I agreed, clutching the phone tighter to my ear. I still had no clue how to replace the shoes I’d lost in the nightclub, but I wasn’t going to admit that until I’d exhausted every avenue. There were still a couple of shoe shops who’d promised to ring me back after talking to their suppliers. “So a fortnight?”

  “Yay, excitement.” She sounded anything but. “However,” she added, “It will be wonderful to see my gorgeous Finny in a tux again. And the surprise honeymoon—”

  “Will be amazing. Oh, and speaking of amazing, I got an email this afternoon from Rosie. You know, Rosie Tatts, my agent…”

  Jill sniggered.

  “…who sent news that a documentary team is going to follow me for a fortnight while I lay down tracks.”

  “Missy Diva.” I could well imagine Jill shaking her head. “Not only snuggle buddies with Noah Steele, but now the star of her own reality television show? Do you need an assistant?”

  “No!” I laughed, and it felt good after all the drama of the day to relax, sprawled out on the bed chatting to a bestie. “You’ve got enough on your plate. I just need to stay calm and enjoy this.”

  “The key is to care less what other people think. It’s your life, not theirs.”

  ‘Other people’ was code for my mother, but I didn’t want to open that discussion again. Jill had very clear ideas on how I should disengage myself from my mother’s manipulation, and none of them were polite.

  “So I’d better get some sleep,” I said, wriggling to settle myself more comfortably into the single bed in Kamal’s guest room. “I don’t want to look like a wreck on my first day.”

  “I’m proud of you, A,” Jill said, and unexpectedly my throat tightened. “You’ve had a crap year, and even this Jack thing has been a drama. But you’ve handled it all without losing your shit. You’re taking risks and moving on with life. Can’t ask more of yourself than that.”

  “Thanks J,” I whispered. “I love you too.”

  She laughed at that, and it was okay. I knew she was awkward with emotions. “So I’ll see you when I’m wearing white.”

  “Yes you will!” Hopefully, by then I’d have silver shoes…

  If I’d been worried about having too much time on my hands to think about Jack, I shouldn’t have. The next week was fully-loaded, thanks to Rosie.

  “Thanks, Angela. Sounded perfect to me.”

  I smiled at my producer, Mal, through the glass window that separated my booth from the control room and took off my headphones, allowing myself a shoulder roll while I waited for him to confer with the engineer. The documentary crew were filming me from the other side of the glass, but in the week they’d been following me, I’d learnt to ignore them completely.

  On my first day I’d felt horribly self-conscious and had sweated so much my deodorant had let me down. But now I could see—exactly
as Rosie had predicted—that this was good practice at focusing on what was important. In a live performance, I’d need to ignore any cameras to concentrate on the audience.

  I was pretty sure I had that down pat now, which meant I could do what I’d always wanted to—simply sing, although the choice of music was not what I’d have expected. Rosie had met me alone on the first day and grilled me about my current emotional life as she called it, making me sing snatches of songs that were front of mind, almost like word association.

  After consciously trying to steer the direction toward classical jazz—which Rosie hadn’t bought for a second—we ended up with The very thought of you, All of me, Till there was you, and several other romantic or blatantly sexy jazz numbers.

  No prizes for guessing that my thoughts were all on Jack and what I wouldn’t be doing with him ever again. Rosie, bless her, hadn’t asked questions. She’d just run with what was ‘hot’ and we’d selected some sexy, and some torchy numbers for my debut album.

  I was to record twenty and she and Mal would select their favorite ten, at which time I could decide on the final choice. The super-sexy songs seemed weird when Rosie was asking me to wear white all the time to fit my signature look—the Angel. But I’d put myself in her hands so I was determined to trust her.

  Besides, anything that required me to think was a good distraction from memories of Jack’s lovemaking and the heat between us. I knew I should stop thinking about him, but I simply didn’t know how.

  When my new white jeans pulled across my groin—as they did now on the stool—I remembered Jack’s hands there. When the wind stirred my hair, I remember Jack’s hand at my nape, gripping it so he could kiss me. And even the smell of toast reminded me of his skin.

  It was crazy, but so many triggers in my day brought him back into my mind, and I seemed to be drifting around in a state of semi-arousal. All I could hope was that time would somehow erase him.

  Ultimately, I didn’t regret walking away, no matter how much sexual longing I felt. I’d done the right thing, but I couldn’t help feeling sad that I hadn’t waited just a little bit longer. There were ‘once in a lifetime’ things I’d wanted to do with him, which I now probably never would. Fellatio for one. He’d told me so many times that he’d loved my ‘luscious mouth’ and I’d always wondered if he’d fantasized about having it wrapped around his very hard—

  “Angela!”

  My head snapped up, and I belatedly realized that Mal was knocking on the glass wall between us. Had he called me several times? I could feel heat rising up my face, and it took all of my will-power to keep my hands at my sides and not bring one up to press against my hot cheek.

  “Sorry. Yes?” Somehow I managed to sound professional, and even though I wriggled on the stool, I made it look as if I was preparing for the next song. “Are we ready?” I put my headphones back on and heard his voice through them.

  “We’ve found a wobble in that last chorus. Do you want to just re-do that, or the whole song?”

  “The whole song,” I said automatically. I appreciated the fact that he gave me the easy option every time they found a glitch, but I wanted the song to build, to have continuity. That wouldn’t happen if they cut and pasted bits.

  “Okay, when you’re ready.”

  I sat straighter, reminding myself of the core of the song—a woman who’s so much in love that she can’t leave her man, even though she obviously wants to. My voice probably wobbled at the end because that was my deepest fear—that I’d go back to Jack and be locked into some bizarre holding pattern of sex and regret for the family life I’d never have.

  That’s why I’d broken away, because the sexual heat between us was so addictive, if I didn’t cut off the supply now, I might confuse pleasure with emotion and genuinely fall for him. I was already worried about how he was feeling, and that was crazy.

  Imagining soft feelings on his side was pure fantasy. He couldn’t have been clearer about what he’d wanted—temporary pleasure. My pleasure, so he said. But in time that relationship would have encompassed my curiosities about how to give him pleasure.

  I’d wanted that. I’d wanted to know what it feels like to bestow the sort of pleasure he’d given me. And that was my connection to the song—imagining that future where I’d overstepped the mark and found myself trapped by lust. Every song we’d picked had the same core, so even though I wouldn’t let myself go there in reality, I cast myself adrift now in imagination, pretending I was in thrall to Jack and completely unable to release myself.

  The soft ticking of metronome in my headphones cued me, and I started out slow, soulful, closing my eyes as I pretended I was singing to Jack, pouring my heart out about the trap I’d fallen into, allowing myself to believe it in that moment.

  When the last line died out, the soft ticking of the background metronome felt like a counterpoint the throbbing I could feel inside. I came back to myself and opened my eyes, only to discover my hand was at my upper chest, as though it had travelled there over my body and was holding my heart in.

  Sweet Shiva, had I touched my breasts?

  I flashed an embarrassed glance at the documentary team, and while the camera operator continued to film me, the sound recordist was grinning like a loon, completely ignoring his big puffy microphone which he’d aimed in the general direction of Mal and the engineer.

  I knew they had a separate recording of my singing, and any sounds I made in between, so I was careful to keep my breathing slow and even as I lowered my hand to rest beside my cast. I turned a fake smile in Mal’s direction.

  He conferred with the engineer for another few minutes, then gave me the thumbs up through the glass. After gazing at me for a few seconds, he said, “You look tired, petal. Had enough for the day?”

  I wasn’t normally a quitter, but that last song had taken me somewhere deep, and the last thing I wanted was to dig even deeper with another torchy number. I had a lunch date with Doug—thanks to Louella’s prompting and my own impulsiveness—and I didn’t want to turn up emotionally hollow, on top of the lack of enthusiasm I felt for the outing.

  So I nodded and said into my mic, “Bad night’s sleep. Is it okay if I go home and nap for a few hours, then come back, say around three?”

  “Sure, luv. We can all take a break and come back then.”

  I made a point of going into the control room to thank the film crew and ask if they needed lunch money. I knew they didn’t. Rosie had them well funded, but I wanted to make sure they had other plans than following me.

  My bank balance had gone up to the tune of twelve grand only days after I’d stormed out on Jack, so I could afford to be generous, and I didn’t have many other costs.

  I was having a holiday in renovated 1920’s Art Deco apartment building around the corner from the recording studio. Rosie’s company owned it and used it for visiting musicians, so it had everything I might need, from furniture and linen to a stocked pantry. She’d told me I was welcome to stay even after the recording was finished, so Kamal had helped me move my things there.

  I hadn’t heard a peep from Jack, and was relieved that he didn’t know where I lived anymore. So I had a relaxed stroll back to my apartment down the tree-lined streets, enjoying the dappled sunlight on my face. In two hours, Doug The Dud—stop thinking that!—would meet me at a seafood bistro on Bondi Beach. He’d found it on a restaurant review site and had remembered that I loved lobster.

  Thoughtfulness was a good trait in a prospective father—at least I told myself that when I was back in my apartment pulling out a lime A-line sundress that fell just below the knee. It was one of my most demure dresses, and I wasn’t sure why, but as I pulled out a pair of matching lime sandals, I had to admit I was aiming for ‘friendly’ rather than ‘sexy’. Which was weird. I wasn’t going out shopping with the girls. I was going on a date.

  My first since I’d left Danny. If you didn’t count Jack.

  Which of course I did, because at the slightest provocati
on he slid into my thoughts as easily as he’d slid into my body. And speaking of easy, it was all too easy to imagine him finding my sundress as sexy as hell because he’d know exactly what was under it and how to manipulate those various body parts into spectacular orgasms.

  It was almost as if my mind was stuck on a loop of think about Jack—get aroused—don’t think about Jack—get cranky—think about Jack…

  So I stripped off and put on the plastic sleeve the chemist had sold me, so I didn’t need to fuss as much about water ruining my cast. Then I got into the shower, only this time instead of rushing the proceedings so I wouldn’t think of Jack—which only ended up making me more sexually frustrated—I took my time soaping myself up, and then I pulled the shower head down to rinse myself off and when the spurt of water teased my clitoris, I let it.

  In fact, I defiantly angled it in (as I’d read about in women’s magazines) and leant back on the shower tiles with my eyes closed and my head back, remembering in vivid detail the way Jack’s tongue had felt there, and how the pleasure had seemed to dig into me like probing fingers.

  My nipples ached as they tightened, and my legs started shaking as the tendrils of an orgasm built, and I wantonly let myself fantasise about Jack being there, kneeling in front of me in the shower, his clever tongue driving me crazy until—

  There!

  A shuddering orgasm wracked my body and I opened my eyes to watch my breasts bouncing around, exactly as Jack would have. That warmed my cheeks even more, and somehow, instead of feeling empty or stupid for my fantasies. I felt empowered.

  When the glow of the orgasm settled, I realized this was a way I could have Jack, and have my family too. If I could compartmentalize him into sexual fantasies…although…I didn’t want to fall back into the trap of faking orgasms.

  So I would need to ensure that Doug—or whoever I ended up with—was capable enough to allow me to orgasm with them, even if I had to suffer the embarrassment of touching myself when I was with them. I could do that. And then I didn’t need to fight my attraction to Jack anymore. I could simply sideline it until I was actually going to have sex, and bring it out then.