The Rules of Engagement

by Ally Blake

  ‘Fine. I’ll apologise to her. Is that all?’

  When Lauren said nothing, Dax glanced up to find her staring at him hard. Then something she saw made her face soften. She closed the door behind her, ambled inside, then smoothed her skirt beneath her backside as she rested it on his desk. ‘So spill. What’s wrong? Your favourite suit at the cleaners? Grammatical errors in every proposal? Love life gone awry?’

  He felt the muscle beneath his left eye twitch.

  Lauren sat bolt upright. ‘What happened? You kids have a fight?’

  He looked back at his computer where the words had melted into one another. ‘Caitlyn and I are no longer seeing one another.’

  ‘No!’ Lauren cried. ‘What did you do?’

  Giving up, he closed his laptop. ‘What makes you think it was my fault?’

  ‘You’re the man. Of course it’s your fault.’ Lauren bit her bottom lip and looked honestly upset. ‘I know I busted your chops, but I liked her. Best of all I like how much you liked her. I really thought she might be a keeper.’

  ‘As did I,’ he admitted, yet the hitch in his voice surprised even him. He frowned even deeper. Emotion had no place in his life. Anger, disappointment, fear, love... Gone. He was a husk, a successful workaholic husk, and it suited him just fine.

  Lauren’s face fell. ‘Oh, Dax. What happened?’

  Dax shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does to me.’

  The need to be Lauren’s rock, to be the one stable influence in her life, was a hard habit to break. But as she sat there, so straight-backed, and married, and level-headed, he realised that his little sister was all grown-up.

  He picked up a round paperweight filled with bubbles, then leant back in his chair and looked at his sister as an equal. ‘She wasn’t who I thought she was.’

  ‘Pfft. Who ever is?’

  Ignoring Lauren’s outburst, he continued. ‘It appears that she had been affianced before.’

  ‘Oka-a-ay.’

  ‘Three times.’

  Lauren’s eyes widened, but she said nothing for a while as she let that gem soak in. ‘Married?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. But come on, Dax, are you really that surprised only three guys have fallen in puddles at her feet?’

  ‘Four,’ he said before he’d even felt the word forming. He cricked his neck. In for a penny... ‘I’d bought a ring.’

  He ran his finger and thumb over his tired eyes. He’d been walking down Collins Street when he’d glanced through the window of the antique jeweller and there it had been. The thing had just screamed Caitlyn, glinting so prettily and joyfully from its bed of velvet, as if it had been made for her.

  ‘Show me,’ Lauren said, hand outstretched.

  ‘It’s not here. In fact I don’t know where it is. She might still have it for all I know.’ He shrugged. What did he care where it was? He never wanted to see it again, much less think about it, or her for that matter.

  He leant forward on his chair, ready to tell Lauren to shove off, when she asked, ‘Do you want me to get it back?’

  ‘What back?’ Dax asked, rubbing a hand over his tight neck.

  ‘The ring. I’d be happy to go over there and demand she give it over so you can get your hard-earned dosh back. Spend it on a holiday to Ibiza, or another grey suit, or a flash new car. Girls like flashy cars, you know. Especially the kind of girls who make break-ups easier to forget.’

  Dax breathed in deep and attempted to picture himself with such a girl. He really did. Instead his mind drifted to the image of Caitlyn draped over the bonnet of a sleek, curvaceous Z9. A red one. Caitlyn liked flashy cars. No, she liked cars in general. It was one of the cool things about her. And when he was with her she’d made many things easy to forget.

  Frustration and regret stabbed him through the gut in ferocious strokes. So much for being a husk. But he’d get there. Another few all-nighters chained to his desk, reading through application after application for money, would be enough to drain any man of all sensation.

  ‘Dax,’ Lauren said with an insistence that made him think it wasn’t the first time. ‘The ring?’

  ‘Leave it be, Lauren. Please. I’m a big boy. If I decide I want it back then I’ll get it back.’

  The word ‘if’ hung on the air between them. But only he knew what it really meant. Whatever other unpleasantness had gone down between them, the ring had been meant for Caitlyn. It wasn’t his to return.

  Finally, Lauren pushed herself off his desk and planted a kiss atop his head before sashaying towards the door. Once there she turned. ‘You’re so darned decent, and honourable, and you hold yourself and everyone around you to such high standards.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It wasn’t a compliment, Dax.’ She gripped the door handle. ‘I’m saying it must have taken some guts for her to tell you about the others when she did, knowing it might blow up in her face.’

  ‘Lauren,’ he growled.

  She held up a hand.

  ‘Just put yourself in Caitlyn’s shoes. She’s had some pretty spectacular fails when it comes to relationships, and that kind of thing leaves chinks in a girl’s confidence. I know. Then she meets this guy. A guy who is sort of funny, and urbane, and okay-looking I guess. A guy who clearly likes her back. That’s scary stuff for a girl with chinks. Marry her, don’t marry her, but at the very least give her a break. And give yourself one while you’re at it.’ She nodded towards the pile of papers teetering on his usually impeccably neat desk.

  He stared at her then, this smart, sassy, astute woman who had appeared as if out of nowhere.

  Then Lauren said, ‘I, of course, know the apparent vision of perfection sitting before me is all a ruse. And if she’s half the girl you thought she’ll have figured that out too.’

  With that she knocked twice on the door before disappearing into the foundation’s halls.

  Dax flipped open his laptop and stared at it blindly for a good several minutes. Then, looking for a distraction, he went through his desk, yanking out drawers, looking for something to do. Anything hard and laborious and boring he’d been putting off for a rainy day. Pens rattled to the front of one drawer before landing softly against a fold of delicate silver silk and satin, and his breath lodged in his throat.

  Caitlyn’s scarf. His dry cleaners had found it in his suit jacket a couple of weeks back. It was the one he’d shoved into a pocket the night she’d cried in his arms.

  The night she’d opened up about how much she missed her father. About her difficult relationship with her disillusioned mother. The night he’d told her about his parents. About professional aspirations he’d barely even shared with himself. The night they’d made love on her couch, tenderly, staring into one another’s eyes, both knowing it was against the rules for both of them.

  He pulled the scarf from the drawer. The scent of her hair rose up to tempt him. He wrapped it around his fingers, the shift and slide reminding him too vividly of her sighs as she took him inside her.

  He wondered if she’d gone looking for the scarf. If she’d remembered he still had it. If thinking about him made her feel as rotten as he felt thinking about her.

  Then he remembered as clearly as if she were standing right in front of him the look on her face when he’d told her it was over. Once he saw past the glorious dishevelment and half nakedness that haunted his dreams still, the look on her face was so forsaken it could make a lesser man cry.

  Then Franny had called once at the start, trying to plead Caitlyn’s case. Telling him she’d always got over past break-ups with panache but this time she was a mess. He’d gritted his teeth and reminded himself that things had never been as they appeared. He’d thought her the one, to her he was one of many.

  And maybe that was where the biggest problem had been from the outset. He’d mistakenly thought her different. She’d clearly thought him exactly the same. And for the both of them that had
never changed.

  ‘Damn it all to hell,’ he said to nobody in particular as he shoved the thing to the back of the drawer.

  His assistant poked her head in the door.

  With a grimace, he waved her away. She’d been with him long enough to know it was best to shut his office door.

  * * *

  On the outside it was just the same as it had been after George and the others; three in the afternoon on a Saturday, Caitlyn slumped under a blanket on the couch, still in her pyjamas, toenails painted black, Franny supplying her with endless hot chocolates and slasher flicks on DVD.

  But on the inside she couldn’t have felt more different. Relief hadn’t come on the day and it certainly hadn’t come in the days since. Loss, anger, and disappointment had overcome her in waves. And yearning. So much yearning. She missed Dax to the point it throbbed within her like an open wound.

  God, why couldn’t she just get over him already?

  It was over. He’d made that perfectly clear. And she knew it could never last. So why was she feeling so uncomfortable, so prickly, as if a colony of ants had taken up residence in her stomach?

  She threw the blanket from her legs. When she stood up her feet had pins and needles she’d been sitting on her backside for so long. On wobbly legs she tottered to her bedroom.

  ‘Just so you know I’ve made my last hot chocolate,’ Franny called out after her.

  ‘My waist line thanks you!’ Caitlyn called back.

  In her bedroom she slumped on the side of her bed. Her eyes slunk to her bedside table. She picked up the small black box that had been living there, unopened, for over a week. She hadn’t been able to hide it away in the chest of drawers with the others. The others might have been her dirty little secrets, but this one felt...different.

  Before she could stop herself, she slid her thumbnail into the groove and tilted. The soft sound of the hinge working might as well have been fingernails running down a blackboard for the prickles it sent scooting down her spine. A sparkle of reflected light hit her in the eye. She tilted the box to find a bed of creamy beige velvet, tucked into which was a diamond ring. Her hand shook as it fluttered to her throat, as if that could protect her from the emotion that swarmed through her at the sight.

  On a band of white gold a modest solitaire sat nestled in a flourish of curling petals encrusted with a trillion sparkling pave set diamonds. It was just lovely. Utterly joyful. This from a man who claimed he never really knew her at all?

  A sparkle hit her right eye once more, and for half a second it felt like an extravagant version of a metaphorical lightbulb. As if the universe was trying to tell her something—

  Then the feeling came back in her feet and she cried out.

  A few moments later her bedroom door creaked open and Franny’s head poked through. ‘You okay?’

  Caitlyn waggled her feet to fend off the sharp pain of blood flooding back into them. ‘Actually I think I am.’

  Franny’s glance dropped to the ring and stayed there while her feet brought her into the room. ‘Sweet ring.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Even Caitlyn heard the sigh in her voice.

  ‘Way more you than the others.’

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing.’

  Franny’s face screwed sideways before she slumped next to Caitlyn on the bed. ‘Tell me again why you said no?’

  Caitlyn’s eyes slid back to the ring, which glinted prettily up at her, as if it were basking in the sunlight. Enchanted. Carefree. Happy. It occurred to her that wasn’t the ring she was seeing, but the feelings that lit her up from the inside when she was with Dax.

  ‘I didn’t say no. I never gave him the chance to ask.’

  ‘Right,’ Franny said. ‘Smart move.’

  After a long pause in which the birds outside Caitlyn’s window were the only noise, the bedspring creaked as Franny shifted. ‘But you do love him, don’t you?’

  Caitlyn’s eyes squeezed shut. God, how she loved him! It was like a whirlwind inside her, fast, furious and breathtaking. How could she not? He was handsome, funny, sophisticated, sweet, sexy as hell. Only such a man had a chance in hell of breaking down every barrier she’d put between herself and even the possibility of love.

  The kind of guy who was strong enough to tug her back in line. Confident enough to not let her get away with the crap she usually pulled. Who never jumped just because she’d asked him to. A man amongst men, Dax was, and she’d let him get away.

  ‘Yeah,’ Caitlyn said, ‘I do. I love him. Not that it matters now.’

  ‘Why the heck not?’

  ‘He’s my comeuppance.’

  ‘He’s not an avenging angel, Cait. He’s just a guy.’

  ‘Just a guy? Dax Bainbridge is no more just a guy than he is sorbet. He’s the best thing I’ve ever had in my life.’

  Not as if she’d told him though. Even when she’d had the chance. Even when he’d outright asked. In that moment she’d turned to stone, riddled with pure fear. Fear of loving and losing and wanting so much and not feeling as if she deserved it.

  Franny slid a comforting hand around her elbow. ‘He’s also just a guy who loves you.’

  ‘Past tense.’

  ‘Do you really think he could switch it off so fast? Could you?’

  Caitlyn knew that he could have dumped her in sky writing in front of her friends and everyone and her body still would have burned for him. ‘But I’m not him.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I mean, imagine the wedding pictures. Odd.’

  Caitlyn laughed for the first time in days. It lasted half a second before her heart squeezed so hard she thumped the heel of her hand to her ribs to counteract the pain. The kind of pain she’d spent her adult life trying to avoid. The pain of loving someone with all your heart and losing them anyway. Yet there she was, feeling it to her very bone marrow.

  And surviving. Yet again.

  She blinked into the afternoon sunlight, searching desperately for the glimmer of...something the ring’s sparkle had set alight inside of her. And finding it. Bit by bit, inch by inch, the fog that had descended upon her starting to clear. If she was ever going to move on with her life, for real, not just for fun, she knew what she had to do.

  She dragged herself to her feet, her legs wobbly from lack of use.

  ‘Whoa, there, partner.’ Franny stood and held her by the elbow.

  Caitlyn took a moment to ground herself. She wiped her eyes and rolled her shoulders and headed to her cupboard. Take no prisoners, she thought as she zeroed in on a clean pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, a navy blazer, and simple silver flats.

  She pulled her hair back into a no-nonsense ponytail before putting on her war make-up. She was going to need all the confidence she could muster to do what she had to do next.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Franny asked as Caitlyn brushed her teeth with as much vigour as if she were prepping for a Colgate commercial audition. ‘I know! Let’s head to Shangri-Lovely and get you perked up. Your toenails have been black for a week. It’s unhealthy. They look like they’ve been trodden on. I’m thinking a hopeful colour. Yellow. Like a bright new day.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. But first I have something else I have to do.’

  * * *

  Caitlyn stood in front of the charming Fitzroy terrace house, her knees shaking as badly as if she were about to visit the Queen.

  The Queen might well have offered tea. If the man behind the door even opened it to her she’d be shocked to the soles of her feet.

  She glanced back at the car. Franny sat at the wheel, nibbling at her fingernails. She put on a bright smile and gave Caitlyn a thumbs-up when she realised she was being watched, though she looked exactly how Caitlyn felt. Panic-stricken.

  Only, Caitlyn knew something Franny didn’t. Feeling things, even the strongest of things, wasn’t going to kill her. So long as she was absolutely honest about what she was feeling, then she could get through it. It turned out she was far stronger than she’d e
ver imagined she was. She wondered briefly if her mum would be proud of that tough streak. She ought to be, it came from her.

  Caitlyn’s hand still shook as she wrapped her fingers around the brass knocker. She willed him to be home, because she knew she couldn’t get on with the rest of her life until she put this chapter behind her for good.

  The door swung open.

  ‘Caitlyn!’ He was shocked, for sure. But he no longer looked as if she’d torn out his heart.

  An honest smile spread across her face as she said, ‘Hi, George. I know this is a surprise, and I’d fully understand if you want to shove me down the steps, but I’d really like to come in for a chat.’

  Her ex-fiancé breathed deep as he watched her, as a dozen different emotions played across his kind face, but something in her eyes seemed to calm him down. He frowned a bit, smiled a bit, then shook his head as if he’d seen it coming all along.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s nice to see you, is all.’

  Such a super guy, George. She remembered how much fun they’d had and how she’d liked him a hell of a lot.

  But compared with what she felt for Dax? Just thinking his name made her heart crumple and her blood bubble and her skin tingle like the hottest summer sun beating down on the roof of a car. What she felt for Dax was...everything. And more.

  ‘Come in,’ George said. ‘Coffee? Coke? Beer?’

  ‘All of the above.’

  As she crossed the threshold of her old boyfriend’s house her hand went to her bag where his engagement ring—and two others—sat neatly tucked, ready to go back to their rightful owners.

  The fourth ring, a lovely flower of diamonds that made a person smile just to look upon it, was back at her house, safely hidden under her pillow.

  * * *

  First thing Monday morning Dax stood up in front of the Bainbridge Foundation board while Lauren gleefully handed out the prospectuses he’d spent the weekend perfecting.