The Dating Game

by Avril Tremayne

  ‘I want you, Sarah, any way I can get you.’

  ‘And I want you! How can you not see I want to be … to be locked in with you, shackled to you, throw away the key?’ She was crying hard now. ‘What will it take to convince you that I’m not her, David? I. Am. Not. Her.’

  ‘I know that, Sarah.’

  ‘Then stop treating me as though I am. See me! Trust me when I say I love you, only you. Trust me to want you, only you, no matter what. Unless you can do that—and you clearly can’t—then I don’t think I can endure this thing between us.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I have to, David, because it’s crushing me.’

  ‘No, just listen. Just … listen, okay?’

  ‘I have to—’ She stopped, choked, waved a distraught hand into the house. ‘I have to go through. Just … to my flat. Can I still go there, now that you own it? Just for a … a minute? To … to think. Or … I don’t know. To think.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She walked past him. Into the house.

  But David knew what she was really doing was walking out of his life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was the painting that stopped her, the minute she stepped into the entrance hall.

  The painting at the top of the staircase, of her, in her ruby dress, her red shoes peeping from beneath the hem. It all became instantly, beautifully clear. David had done the painting in the cream sweater for the exhibition, but this painting, in the red dress with her shoes peeking out, was for her. He’d taken her ‘Gustave Leonard de Jonghe’ dress and shoes all those weeks ago not to make room in her wardrobe for his suit for a work meeting, but because he wanted to paint this picture for her. And now that she was seeing it, she knew that what she was wearing wasn’t important. It was the other things—the love, the joy, the fear, the hope—that were important.

  The painting held her spellbound, forcing her to see past herself and see … him. She didn’t know how it could be that she could see David so clearly through a painting of herself—and yet, she could. It felt like it was the first time she was seeing all of him. His struggling need, the towering love that allowed him to risk being hurt by her in a way he hadn’t risked nine years ago. His past, his future, all together. In a painting of her.

  What the hell was she doing, running away because he came to her scarred by the past? So what if he was scarred so deeply he may never fully trust her to stay? Those scars and doubts were what had kept him waiting while she grew up. Those scars had brought him to her when they were ready for each other. Who cared if the future wasn’t all unicorns jumping over rainbows? Unicorns weren’t real. But he was, and she was, and God help her, if he was going to lay his heart out for her to trample on, she could risk him trampling on hers in return. She could stick like the burr up his arse he said she was and prove she was going nowhere without him.

  And the first step was to stop running.

  ‘You said, that first night in my apartment, that you wanted timeless elegance,’ David said, coming up behind her. ‘The kind of portrait you could hang at the top of a sweeping staircase. Something that would look good in fifty years. You wanted that dress, and those shoes, and …’ Pause. ‘But I suppose you don’t want the painting, either. Not now.’

  She turned to him, raised drenched eyes to his face. ‘I want the fifty years any way they come, as long as they’re with you. And I want the painting, God I want it, because it shows me you love me, it shows me you. And because of that painting, just there like that, I can’t bear not to have the house—as long as you’re in it. So what do we do, David, to make it work?’

  ‘I guess we meet halfway and … try?’ he said. ‘We try, and I keep loving you like crazy, and try to believe you when you say you love me enough to take things as they come.’

  ‘I can live with that.’

  ‘But I bought you one more “thing”. Well, in addition to the acre of flowers that didn’t get delivered today.’

  ‘Flowers?’

  ‘Sunflowers. Real, not fake.’

  ‘Oh, now sunflowers I can handle.’

  ‘Maybe not an acre, though, right?’

  ‘I’ll take your acre of real flowers, Dreamboat. Every single one of them.’

  ‘This last thing … I hope you’ll like it. I hope you’ll want it.’ He jammed his hands in his pockets, jerked his head towards the mantelpiece, where a solitary snow dome was sitting. ‘It’s there.’

  She walked slowly over to pick up the snow dome and shake it, and as the snow settled she saw that inside was a blond man on his knees, wearing a replica of what David was wearing today—and he was holding out a ring, two-handed. A ring. A life-sized ring. A real ring. A magnificent sapphire ring. And damn, she was crying again. This love thing was a strain on the tear ducts; that was for sure!

  ‘The thing is, Sarah,’ he said, coming up behind her again, ‘you’re not just my Fan Caulofrino Fin Fish—you’re every fish in the ocean to me. And you’re the sun, and the moon and stars. You’re all the sunflowers in the world, and every other bloom and leaf and branch and stem and twig, but the only bluebell. And every ice cream flavour is more delicious when I’m eating it with you. I’ll love you all the way to heaven or hell, but I love you most here with me, on earth. I want you so much I’ll do anything, give you anything, be anything you want. So please say yes.’

  She turned, giving the snow dome another shake, waiting for the snow to settle. ‘Well, I would say yes,’ she said, twisting the snow dome around. ‘If I could work out how to get the ring out.’

  ‘Oooh, shit,’ David said, with an almost comical look of chagrin on his face. ‘I didn’t think of that when I commissioned it. I’ll have to take it back.’

  ‘Like hell,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m not waiting one more second for you, so stand clear.’

  ‘What are you going to— Oh!’ as the snow dome shattered on the floor.

  Sarah smiled. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m a little over the perfection of snow domes. I needed to break one.’ She stooped to snatch the ring off the tiled floor, and shook off the water. ‘Now I know I’m probably supposed to be ennuied at this moment as the imminent Mrs Bennett, but I’m sorry to have to tell you that’s the one thing you’re never going to be able to teach me to be.’

  ‘That’s okay—I’m not feeling so ennuied myself just at the moment.’

  ‘Good, so it won’t shock you when I demand that you get that ring on my finger before I have a nervous breakdown.’

  David laughed as he took the ring. But before he could slip the ring onto her finger, she snatched her hand back. ‘Just one thing. Those Rebel paintings have to go.’

  ‘See? I knew they bothered you. Which is why they’re already gone. Anyway, they’d served their purpose, dampening my excessive masturbatory tendencies most effectively. Not that I wrote that in the note I enclosed when I sent them to Rebel.’

  ‘Oh, so she gets a note in with her returned goods!’

  ‘I’m a nice guy. I keep telling you.’

  ‘Then how come I didn’t get one when you sent my stuff back?’

  He smiled, touched her face. ‘Because I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye to you.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ she said shakily. ‘I hope you realize your wild oats, barley, rice, corn, and any other grain you care to think of have been sown and harvested, and the farm sold.’

  ‘They were sent to market the moment I saw you.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve had almost three months without me.’

  ‘Eighty-five days. During which time I looked at your portrait and … well, talking about masturbatory tendencies …’

  Sarah started laughing. ‘With your past comments about the Atacama drought in mind, I’m relieved. Things could have been worse. So, how about we do something to break the drought and curtail your self-help efforts? Although without a bed we might have to get creative.’

  ‘Oh, there’s a bed. It’s the
only piece of furniture in the house.’

  ‘So you managed to get one thing right today, then.’

  ‘One day I’ll tell you exactly how much help I had planning today’s fiasco, because it was a four-way disaster.’

  ‘I will not believe it was one of them who suggested you get your eyelashes tinted.’

  ‘Once! I did it once! They’re already back to natural.’

  ‘They were always too black for my peace of mind.’

  ‘Brat. Now, get serious. If we’re going to have sex, we need to get onto it right away.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’re meeting my parents for dinner.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They want to meet you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Margaret and Carly will be there too—they made a special trip down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All four of them like the Langman painting, by the way.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And your father is coming too. And Bertie. Sorry your mother can’t make it but I video called her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you going to keep saying, “What?”’

  ‘No,’ Sarah said, and smiled evilly as her fingers went to the buttons on her trench coat. ‘First, I’m going to show you my underwear. Prettier than solid gold knickers, I promise, and easier access too.’

  She opened her coat wide and David’s mouth dropped open. ‘Christ almighty, Sarah, you should have done that slowly. The drought, remember the drought; you have to water a man slowly or his heart can’t take it.’

  ‘It’s not your heart I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about another body part altogether. In fact, I’m wondering what might happen if I were to say, “I like your cock, David”. What will that get me, do you think?’

  ‘Darling one, say it again and you’ll get just about anything you want. Well, actually, you might have to stump up for the Lear Jet, the yacht, and the private island, rich as you are.’ David reached for her left hand, slid the ring onto her finger, then yanked her into his arms. ‘But the shackles are on me.’

  Loved The Dating Game?

  Turn the page to read Lane’s story in

  KISS DON’T TELL

  CHAPTER ONE

  He was late.

  Thirty minutes late.

  Late enough for her to wonder if he’d changed his mind and wasn’t coming.

  Lane tried to get her head around the fact that she may need to go back to the drawing board and find someone else for the job, but she couldn’t bring herself to face that possibility. It had seemed like fate, the way things had fallen so quickly into place and presented Adam Quinn as the answer to her dilemma; she couldn’t give up on fate yet.

  Instead, she recalculated how long it would take him to drive from his house in super-cool Newtown to her house in not-quite-so-cool Mascot at this time of night. Maybe longer than the fifteen or twenty minutes she’d initially thought—especially if he’d got stuck in traffic. That happened sometimes, when people were driving to her place; it was one of the downsides of living near Sydney Airport.

  Maybe he wasn’t even coming from home. Maybe he was coming from some far-flung construction site, where he’d been bricking a wall or laying concrete or … or whatever it was that builders did. There were lots of reasons he could be running late that had nothing to do with standing her up.

  And anyway, she knew he’d turn up because his sister Sarah had said he would. Sarah could get any guy to do anything she asked—and she’d assured Lane that was doubly true of her big brother, who’d been like a one-man vigilante squad smoothing her path in life ever since she’d been born. Sarah had promised she’d laid it all out for Adam and that he not only knew the score, he’d already agreed to the score as well. Tonight was just a formality. Signatures on the page. Therefore he—would—turn—up!

  ‘So—stop—freaking—out!’ she ordered herself.

  But despite the stern order, and the cool-headed reassurances she’d given Sarah and her other best friend Erica when she’d shared her grand plan with them last night, she was finding it almost impossible to subdue her roiling insides now the moment was upon her. As evidenced by her hands—always the most reliable clue to her state of mind—which were clenching and unclenching. She wiggled her fingers, trying to ease the coiling tension in them, but it seemed a lost cause.

  She looked around her living room, checking one last time that nothing was out of place, taking a series of deep, silent breaths in an effort to calm herself down.

  She hated being nervous. Hated nerves. Had perfected the art of not letting them show, because the dithery fluttering of them made her look like an unsettled flamingo.

  Logical, rational financial economists weren’t supposed to look like fluttery flamingos. They weren’t supposed to pace floors. Or chew fingernails. Or clench their hands into fists. Logical, rational financial economists stayed unemotional and invulnerable as they crunched numbers and analysed data and predicted market trends with level-headed precision.

  That was how she’d approached drawing up the contract for tonight, how she’d prepared the checklist for each of them to review before the contract was signed. Rationally, unemotionally, with a level, invulnerable head. Because she would not be vulnerable. Not ever, ever, ever again. And okay, that was two more evers than required, which didn’t suggest a lack of emotion, which meant she had to work harder to get herself under control. Like now.

  Maybe taking one more look at the checklist would do the trick. Checklists always soothed her.

  She walked swiftly to her briefcase and slid out the relevant paper-clipped pages. Three of them. Neat. Error-free. Black type on white paper.

  She drew in another one of her silent, secret, calming breaths as she skimmed the introductory description of Adam Quinn she’d compiled from the details Sarah had provided, even though she already knew it by heart:

  • twenty-nine years old

  • works for AQHP, a small architectural construction company

  • no unmanageable character flaws unless you consider ‘obscene’ (Sarah’s word) self-confidence a problem

  • no disgusting habits

  • obsessively clean

  • attractive but with a few rough edges

  • not a psychopath—underlined, because Erica and Sarah’s chief concern had been that Lane would end up with one of those.

  Sarah had summed him up as ‘the quintessential alpha male’, with hordes of women making booty calls with impressive frequency. When Lane had told Sarah she didn’t really believe in the concept of a ‘quintessential’ alpha male, Sarah had laughed her head off and told Lane she’d change her mind within five minutes of meeting her brother.

  ‘Not that it matters how we describe him,’ Sarah had added. ‘All that matters is that Adam has all the credentials for the job. You don’t have to look at anyone else, because if he can’t do it, I promise you nobody can. So stop looking. As of now.’

  And Lane had stopped looking—well, she hadn’t had time to even start looking, really, because Sarah had rushed the Adam solution at her first thing this morning.

  It was too late now to start wondering why she’d never met Adam before given he and Sarah were so close. Too late to start worrying that she didn’t actually know him. Knowing him hadn’t seemed important as long as Sarah vouched for him. Looks were immaterial, too, which was why she’d been happy enough with the grainy, out-of-focus photo of him that Sarah had emailed to her, even though it was basically nothing more than a looming dark shape with a white slash where his teeth were.

  But now that she was on the very verge, and she suddenly realized she had no idea what to say to him when he arrived …

  Uh-oh, there went her hands, clenching again. For a moment, all she could do was stand there trying not to crumple the checklist in her convulsing fingers. What if she said something stupid? What if he hated her on sight? What if he didn’t hate her on sight bu
t decided he didn’t like her after they signed the contract? Why hadn’t she put those questions on the checklist?

  The checklist, focus on the checklist. Okay, deep breath, another, another … Better.

  The checklist had everything that was important and nothing that wasn’t. It didn’t include anything about saying something stupid because it didn’t matter if she said something stupid—talking wasn’t required. Liking her wasn’t required either. They probably would like each other, though. Lane liked Sarah; Sarah liked Lane; Sarah liked Adam. Logic suggested there would be a mutuality of liking in there that would encompass Lane and Adam in some way. Especially since she knew Sarah had described her to Adam—looks and personality—and whatever she’d said apparently hadn’t scared him off.

  Or had it?

  Because he still wasn’t here.

  She slid the checklist back into her briefcase, walked to the entrance hallway, and listened carefully at the door for sounds of arrival.

  Nothing.

  She checked her watch. She’d give him ten more minutes.

  She caught sight of her face in the mirror above the glass-topped hall table. Pale—but that was normal. Blue eyes almost too calm—so deceptive. Lips very faintly smiling—nicely controlled. Hair pulled off her face—no stray wisps.

  Perhaps the hair was too severe? She tugged a few strands free of the confining band and tried to arrange them around her face. Hmm. Messy. She removed the band completely and retied her hair into a ponytail at her nape. In the absence of her housemate Erica and her miraculous curling wand, Lane’s normal hairstyle would have to do, so she gave up on the mirror and ran her eyes, as best she could, over the rest of her.

  She hadn’t had a clue what she should wear tonight and had ended up staying in the square-cut navy suit she’d worn to work. Plain. Businesslike. Possibly … boring?

  Ugh. It was just so hard, the clothes thing. Especially in situations like tonight’s. How did you go about styling yourself to look attractive, but not flirtatious? Appealing, but not desperate? Like you weren’t trying too hard, even when you were? Why hadn’t she thought to ask Sarah what he was likely to be wearing? Not a suit, if he was coming from a building site—that seemed certain.