Ransacked Heart

by Jayne Bauling

  ‘That would be taking a risk,’ she agreed tartly.

  ‘Especially as once we start, we can never confine ourselves to just kissing,’ Luke quipped with harsh humour, and paused. ‘What time are you likely to be finished here?’

  Maria’s eyes blazed as she understood what he was asking.

  ‘We have a weekend relationship, Luke,’ she reminded him pointedly.

  ‘Necessarily, as I can usually only be here at weekends,’ he reminded her shortly.

  ‘My life is my own during the week.’

  She was compelled by an urge to attempt to hurt him, simply because she herself was hurting, but she was angrily aware that she probably couldn’t succeed, because without love, there could be no hurt. At best her rejection could only frustrate him.

  Luke’s face was shuttered.

  ‘Shared with whom?’ he wondered contemptuously. ‘Who goes home with you on weekday nights, Maria? Jones is in the building, isn’t he? Is that who you’re waiting for?’

  ‘I’m not waiting for anyone. I’m working—being here for my jocks and engineers in a crisis situation, and it may surprise you to know that Florian is also working.’ She was blisteringly angry, but then she managed to suppress her fury as she remembered that, while they were here instead of at her apartment, their relationship was a professional one. ‘He’s appointed himself to the temporary monitoring team. He loves a crisis of this sort, rallying people and so on. It’s a novelty and a distraction.’

  ‘It sounds as if he’s bored—restless, then,’ Luke commented tauntingly. ‘Doesn’t having two women in his life provide sufficient excitement for him?’

  ‘Professionally, he may be a little restless,’ Maria began, having noticed the signs.

  ‘But personally he’s well stimulated and satisfied?’

  ‘Ask him or Nicky Kai—I wouldn’t know,’ she flared, shaking her curls back angrily.

  ‘Are——? What’s that?’

  Luke moved swiftly round the desk to where she sat, and she flinched as he put out a hand, lifting a loose, shining curl away from the side of her brow.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she protested agitatedly, distracted by his sudden proximity.

  ‘What happened?’ Luke asked grimly, touching a slightly sore place on her temple.

  ‘Oh, does it show?’ Maria was surprised. ‘I couldn’t see anything last time I looked in a mirror.’

  ‘There’s a bruise,’ he told her curtly, releasing her hair as she pulled away from him defensively, the inner disturbance that was her inevitable response to his lightest touch suddenly infuriating her.

  ‘It’s not serious. I bumped it against a door-frame when the earthquake started this morning and I lost my balance.’

  ‘Was it your first earthquake?’

  ‘Yes, although I’ve experienced severe tremors in other places. This was something else, though.’

  Luke studied her in silence for several seconds before saying abruptly, ‘Go home, Maria.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to——’

  ‘As your boss, I’m ordering you to go home,’ he cut her short. ‘I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the situation here for you. Does your head ache?’

  ‘A little,’ she admitted reluctantly, but it had only just begun to do so, and she suspected that the tension induced by his presence at the end of an unusually demanding day was more responsible than the bump.

  ‘Take a taxi,’ he instructed her peremptorily, anger tightening his features as he marked her wary expression. ‘Relax, Maria—I’m staying here. As little control as I have where you’re concerned, I’m not such an animal that I’d deny you a peaceful night when you’re so obviously in need of one. I won’t be joining you after all.’

  But he would deny her the simple comfort of being a presence in the apartment, she reflected savagely.

  ‘Of course, no sex—no reason for you to join me, right?’ she challenged caustically.

  ‘Exactly,’ Luke confirmed brutally.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ she demanded tempestuously—masochistically too, she realised.

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘So am I, Luke,’ she offered bitingly as she pushed back her chair and rose, wincing as her head throbbed slightly.

  His smile of acknowledgement was a travesty. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll still be here tomorrow, as air traffic is functioning normally and I have some urgent matters to attend to back in Hong Kong, but I’II see you on Friday anyway.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Bitterly.

  ‘Oh, I think you also say so, Maria.’ Luke was arrogantly confident. ‘We’re not nearly done with each other yet, are we?’

  But they had to be, she knew, or the relationship would destroy them.

  She looked at him, loving him. She would tell him on Friday. This wasn’t the time or the place, she excused her procrastination, guiltily aware of what she was doing.

  ‘Friday,’ she confirmed, and left her office, pausing to explain to Penny that Luke would be taking over from her.

  He must have left Taipei again later that night or early the following morning, because there was no sign of him the next day. The remainder of the week proved busy, the demands made by the earthquake having caused a backlog of normal work, in addition to a sudden need to do something about the restlessness she had begun to notice in Florian Jones.

  She met him emerging from their tall block of apartments as she was returning from work on the Friday evening, having stopped to buy groceries on the way home, her mind flying ahead to Luke’s arrival and all that she planned to say to him now that she had made up her mind to end their affair.

  ‘Flo! I’ve been meaning to talk to you, but you’ve ducked out of the building so fast after finishing your show these last two days,’ she told him when he stopped to greet her and ask if she had heard the brilliant spontaneous earthquake joke he’d cracked on air that morning. ‘You must have a guilty conscience! Don’t worry, it’s not the joke, even if it was slightly sick. It’s all over town already—I’ve heard it twice today. No, this is something I think you’ll like.’

  ‘Go and dump your shopping quickly and I’ll wait for you at the first bridge,’ he suggested, indicating the expanse of parkland their building overlooked.

  ‘I’m not doing any jogging,’ Maria warned lightly, cynically inspecting his trainers, trendy running shorts, vest and headband.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he retorted, confirming her suspicions. ‘I just felt I ought to get out and fill my lungs with some good clean exhaust fumes. I’m looking a bit peaky, don’t you think?’

  Maria glanced at her watch. It was shortly before the time Luke usually arrived on Fridays, and up until today she would have made some excuse to Florian, but reviviscent pride demanded a gesture. It would prove something to both Luke and herself if for once he didn’t find her waiting for him when he came.

  Besides, he had keys if he arrived while she was out, so he would wait for her, especially having come all the way from Hong Kong, she comforted herself, with a vague feeling that she was somehow cheating.

  ‘Hawaii!’ she announced when she rejoined Florian a few minutes later. ‘Three weeks sitting in for the regular breakfast show jock on a commercial station there, while he takes over your show here. The airline we’ve got to sponsor the exchange is agreeable to the deal including Nicky and the other jock’s wife or girlfriend, and obviously the two of you will be expected to take every opportunity to rave on air about what a wonderful flight you had, how royally you were treated and all the rest of it. I worked with the Hawaiian manager for a while once, and we organised a similar scheme for two of our jocks when I was with the Wellington station last year.’

  Florian’s face had lit up and the questions he started asking fizzed with enthusiasm, but Maria knew that the exchange would only drive his restlessness into temporary remission, not cure it. Ultimately, the urge to move on that afflicted so many media people, and Florian more severely than most, would demand satis
faction, but she suspected that Luke would be shrewd enough to tempt him with an offer of his choice of all the other stations in which he had an interest. He might not like or respect Florian personally, but he knew he was too good a jock to lose.

  ‘You’re brilliant, Maria!’ Florian praised her exuberantly as they retraced their steps a little later, having discussed the United States’ and Taiwan’s regulations and requirements concerning such exchange schemes. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii. I’ll love it, and the listeners there will love me. I just knew I was inspired when I proposed you for this job here, that it would come back to me in some incredible way. Didn’t I tell you we were good together?’

  He slapped her on the shoulder and performed a jubilant hip wiggle before leaping ludicrously into the air with a triumphant clenched-fist salute. Her shoulder was stinging, but Maria couldn’t help laughing at his effervescent antics.

  Treacherous relief replaced amusement and was followed by a great surge of pure excitement as she glanced up at their apartment building. For once she had no need to count up and then across in order to identify her own balcony. Familiar, beloved, Luke’s motionless figure had drawn her attention instantly.

  ‘I must get back,’ she told Florian, who hadn’t looked up.

  She heard her own shaming urgency and winced self-consciously, but even if he had been an observant man, Florian was currently too preoccupied to have noticed it, still busily congratulating himself and probably fantasising about taking Hawaii by storm.

  He gave her an absently unfocused look.

  ‘Me too, I suppose. Yeah, wait until Nicky hears about this!’ he added excitedly, belatedly absorbing the fact that Nicky was to share the adventure and then regarding Maria suspiciously. ‘Or have you told her already?’

  ‘Would I spoil your fun like that?’ Maria retorted with a tart smile for his childishness. ‘I just hope she’s as pleased as you are.’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ Florian urged eagerly, satisfied.

  It was typical of his self-absorption that he displayed no curiosity about her sudden haste to return to her apartment or her plans for the evening and weekend. He rarely wondered about others’ lives except where they touched his; his mind was perpetually occupied with his own concerns.

  Just as her own concerns were now absorbing her fully, the desire to see Luke, to be in his arms again paramount, the need to end their relationship ignored for the moment. At this hour, the building’s lifts were all in use, crowded with homecoming tenants, and the one she and Florian finally entered stopped on every floor on the way up, prompting a series of grimaces from an impatient Florian and frustrating Maria unbearably.

  When they reached her floor eventually, she bade him a perfunctory farewell and stepped out of the lift with a feeling of release, hurrying towards her apartment, heart and hormones defeating any intention of greeting Luke’s arrival as coolly as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other.

  They met in her lounge, and Maria’s tilted smile faltered and then faded as she saw Luke’s expression, the glittering hostility with which the dark grey eyes swept the vivid marigold colour of her short tight skirt and her creamy blouse trimmed with hamdmade lace.

  ‘All alone? You haven’t brought him back with you, then,’ he commented derisively, ignoring the hand she had held out him.

  ‘Who?’ Distracted, she let her hand drop. ‘Luke——’

  ‘From the ecstatic behaviour I witnessed just now, I thought you must be promising him instant gratification at the very least,’ Luke added with savage humour.

  ‘Oh! Florian?’ Maria guessed, coldness creeping into her heart.

  ‘Who else, unless you’re favouring more than two of us?’ he taunted insultingly, his mirthless smile stabbing at her. ‘But I don’t believe that. It’s just Jones, always Jones…It never changes, does it?’

  ‘Florian is a colleague!’ she flared, trying to contend with the wrenching anguish that rose in response to the sexual jealousy that seemed to mock her with its similarity to the emotional sort.

  ‘Only office hours aren’t enough for you, are they?’ Luke’s lips twisted. ‘When it took you so long to get here, I thought you must have gone on up to his place with him, but I suppose Nicky Kai is still in residence. I was really hoping you’d bring him here with you, though, so I could…What happened? Did you see me on your balcony and decide you’d have to defer your reunion—if that’s what it was going to be? Or are you here to make some pretty excuse that will enable you to see him? Such as a function you have to attend in your professional capacity? How about another music industry bash, for instance? How many times have these affairs been genuine? It was fortunate for you that I never insisted on accompanying you.’

  ‘But think of the embarrassment, Luke!’ Maria jeered caustically, driven partly by masochism but also by a need to lash out as she realised that in addition to all the other contemptible things he believed of her, he was now also convinced that she was a liar. ‘People might have guessed I was involved with you.’

  Luke’s face tightened, but instead of reacting to the taunt, he pursued his earlier accusation.

  ‘So what’s the excuse going to be this time, darling? Come on, let me hear what you have to say!’

  Maria looked at his grim expression and knew what she had to do. Ashamed of wanting her, ashamed of having let himself start their affair, Luke was no happier with it than she was.

  ‘No excuses, Luke, but I have got something to say,’ she told him flatly. ‘This has to be the last weekend. It’s over.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  AFTER a moment, Luke laughed, but there was no real amusement in the sound, and Maria flinched.

  ‘At least you’re honest enough to want to end one affair before starting another——’ He broke off abruptly, his eyes narrowing as they rested on her tense face. ‘Or am I a fool to believe even that much? Has it begun already, Maria? Or I should say, has it been resumed? How much have you been seeing of Jones during the weeks when I’ve had to leave you alone here? I’ve never asked before, and until this week I haven’t even really wondered——’

  ‘Because you haven’t needed to!’ Maria inserted tempestuously, suddenly understanding that much quite instinctively. ‘You’d have known if I was involved with someone else, the same way I’d have known if you were making love to another woman during the week.’

  ‘Yes, I used to believe that,’ Luke conceded slowly, but with no relaxation of his taut features and aggressive stance. ‘But now I’m no longer sure what to believe. Perhaps it seems politic to you to end our affair now that you realise you’re suspected—found out—whereas it didn’t seem to matter while the evidence of your passion in bed could lull me into accepting that there was no one else. I’ve told you I won’t share.’

  Maria drew an angry breath. ‘I’m ending our affair because I just can’t take any more Luke! I can’t stand it, what it’s doing to us—to both of us. It’s a terrible, damaging thing, and it’s destroying us as people. We can’t like ourselves any more——’

  ‘All this sudden concern for the emotional wellbeing of someone you hate!’ Luke was openly sceptical, rejection flickering in his eyes.

  ‘And above all, I’m ending it because I’m tired of being constantly branded a liar,’ she asserted emphatically, losing her temper. ‘You haven’t even asked me directly why I went for a walk with Flo this evening, for instance. No, you’ve just made assumptions as usual. For what it’s worth, I merely took the opportunity to discuss a radio-related matter with him when we happened to meet because I’ve kept missing him at work these last couple of days. Giles Estwick has got an airline to sponsor one of those international exchange schemes, and Flo is the jock we’re sending to this station in Hawaii for three weeks. That’s why he was so excited.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this, Maria,’ drawled Luke. ‘I’m fully prepared to accept that radio forms part of the conversation whenever the two of you get together, as you’
re both so devoted to it. Perhaps having that in common is partly responsible for what’s between you. I don’t know about Jones, but you seem to be stupidly sentimental about anything that links you. These newspaper photos you’ve cut out, for example. Wasn’t one enough, or is the second intended for him? Look at the two of you, congratulating yourselves on having just donated blood during Tuesday’s emergency!’

  Maria had left the identical cuttings anchored by a small china bowl on her coffee-table, but the bowl had been moved, so he must have examined them on arrival.

  ‘I’m not sentimental, and nor am I flattered by having my photo in a newspaper, but my mother likes that sort of thing, so I’m sending one to her in England,’ she snapped, and hesitated perceptibly before continuing. ‘The other is for Rachel, Flo’s wife in South Africa, because I knew he wouldn’t get round to doing it himself and I thought she’d like to be able to show their little daughter a picture of her father doing something responsible and public-spirited for a change.’

  ‘How touching!’ Luke was openly contemptuous. ‘She must be a strangely unimaginative or insensitive woman if she can bear to keep in touch with a woman who started an affair with her husband when she was pregnant with their child!’

  Maria’s eyes blazed. ‘Everything always comes back to sex with you, doesn’t it? Every contact I’ve ever had with Florian has to have been to do with sex——’

  ‘No, Maria,’ Luke interrupted her sardonically. ‘Sex is what you have with me, whereas it’s merely one aspect of your emotional involvement with Florian Jones. I’ve always accepted that you’re in love with him, even if you conduct your relationship in a way most people would find inexplicable.’

  ‘What does it take to convince you?’ she demanded sharply over rising despair, wondering why she was even bothering to try now that their affair was in its death throes. ‘I am not in love with Florian and I never have been.’