Naughty or Nice

by Rachael Stewart

  But there’s also unease building, and I want it gone.

  She makes a delectable little hum in her throat. ‘No, the food is fantastic.’

  I barely hear the words I’m so focused on the satisfying sound and on her lips as they turn the food over.

  Distracted?

  I force my focus. ‘So, what is it?’

  Silently she chews, her eyes on me as if she’s gauging my potential reaction.

  ‘I’m not about to kick you out in just my T-shirt if that’s what you’re worried about—you can tell me.’

  Her lips quirk. ‘No, I don’t think you’d do that.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  She looks me over and that unease mounts.

  ‘It’s nothing, I’m just...’ She shrugs. ‘I’m just enjoying this. It’s nice...like old times.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same.’

  I like that she feels it too. Really like it. And it’s a problem—I know it is—but the warmth it brings is there regardless.

  Suddenly she gives a little giggle and that cosy feeling inside me blooms, edging out the unease. ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You remember that time when Mum went all vegetarian on our arses and wouldn’t let a scrap of meat into the house?’

  My smile is instant, the memory as vivid as yesterday. ‘You mean the ribs fiasco?’

  She giggles again and I hook on to the sound. It’s so carefree, so easy. ‘I don’t think that Chinese takeaway had any left by the time you, Nate and I finished raiding it.’

  ‘True—but Nate was the worst offender. He could put away a truckload.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was your idea.’ She looks at me and licks her lips. ‘You were mortified when Mum found the remains in the bin the next day.’

  ‘Can you blame me? If you’d only taken the bin out, like you were supposed to, that never would have happened.’

  ‘Well, you and Nate got your own back—tossing me into the pool fully clothed.’

  A wicked rush surges south and I tense against it. I remember that moment too. And I remember when she stepped out of the pool, soaked and ranting, not realising that her white tee clung to her every curve. It was a month before her eighteenth birthday, and the day I acknowledged that my feelings towards her had changed.

  Unfortunately Nate had sensed it too.

  I clear my throat and shake my head at her. ‘You deserved it.’

  ‘Hmph...’ she says over her spring roll, her eyes alive and holding my own.

  I don’t want this to end.

  ‘Stay the night?’ It’s out before I can stop it, but I manage to avoid adding please, begging.

  Her lashes lower; her eyes flicker away.

  The mood is shattered—once again thanks to my big mouth.

  She drops the last bite of spring roll onto her plate and wipes her fingers on some kitchen towel. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  It’s more abrupt than I want to be, but I know that after she leaves we won’t get this back—this moment, this connection.

  Her watch goes off again, her phone echoing the buzz, and she glances at it.

  Anger fires in my veins. I know the answer even before I ask, ‘Who is it, Eva?’

  Her eyes flick to mine, her cheeks now pale. ‘I think you know.’

  ‘Your father...mother... Nate...?’

  ‘Try all of the above.’

  She suddenly sounds tired, weary, and my body pulls with the need to comfort her. Which is madness, since I’m likely at the heart of it all. But I’m pissed off. I’m sick of being seen as the bad guy. I loved every last one of them and they...they...

  Fuck, what does it matter?

  ‘What’s so urgent that they have to bombard you at this time of night?’ I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  She gives an incredulous laugh, surprising me. ‘You can’t guess?’

  I take up my beer, having a slug before answering. ‘Are they worried the evil Lucas Waring is leading you astray?’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘They’re just worried about me.’

  ‘Good for them.’

  ‘Lucas, please—if you just tell me what happened then maybe I can help...maybe we can see a way to put the past to bed.’

  My laugh is derisive. ‘You really don’t know your brother if that’s what you think.’

  Hell, I thought I knew him and look where it got me.

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  There’s something in the way she says it that has my ears pricking, my attention shifting. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Things changed after you left—he changed, and not for the better... He’s...suffering.’

  The admission is weighted, and she looks away from me as if she’s said too much. I don’t know whether to push or let it go. I should let it go. Digging further implies I care too much. About her, about Nate, her family. But I can’t.

  I lean back into the sofa behind me and take another swig of beer. ‘Why don’t you be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you?’

  * * *

  He looks so relaxed in his stonewashed jeans and white tee, leaning back against his deep grey sofa, beer in hand. But it’s his eyes that tell me otherwise. There’s a dangerous glint to them that tells me to shut up. Even though I know we need to do this, get it all out in the open.

  ‘Why don’t you be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you?’

  It’s what I came for.

  And maybe if he understands the way things are with Nate now, he’ll understand why I have no desire to interrogate my brother. Why I need to hear it from him.

  I look at my near-empty bottle of beer. ‘Can I get another?’

  ‘You stalling?’

  ‘Call it Dutch courage.’

  I remember the last time I used that kind of courage to do what I needed to with him and my cheeks colour as I roll my shoulders, shaking it off. The move draws his eye and I tug at his T-shirt, feeling suddenly naked against his fully clothed state.

  ‘You’re sure you’re ready to hear the lurid details of what happened five years ago? Sure you want your golden-boy brother tainted?’

  Golden-boy? I almost snort and he sharpens his gaze. He doesn’t miss a trick.

  ‘About that beer...?’ I say.

  ‘About Nate...?’

  I take a breath and raise my chin. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what the last five years have been like if you promise to tell me what happened.’

  His eyes flicker; his jaw pulses. ‘I’ve already agreed, and I don’t go back on my word—no matter what your family think.’

  The way he stresses ‘your’ isn’t lost on me, and he slaps his beer bottle on the coffee table as he rises.

  ‘But also know I still want dessert.’

  My insides clench and my lips part. I’m so glad he isn’t looking at me to see the effect his words have had. It doesn’t matter how deep our conversation goes, how much pain it dredges up, his effect on me is impossible to prevent, and I need to muster my strength if I am to get through this unscathed.

  Perhaps walking out, ringing Nate, dealing with his ineffectual tantrum, would be preferable to opening myself up even more to Lucas. I was vulnerable enough before, but now...

  I don’t finish the thought. Instead I scoop up the empty trays and roll the leftovers onto one plate. My mind shifts helplessly to ‘dessert’.

  What the fuck, Eva?

  I know I shouldn’t be contemplating it. Loyalty is a huge thing in my family—we stand by one another through thick and thin. The Beaumonts stand united, as Dad would say. But everything I’ve done with Lucas, everything I am doing, goes against that.

  Or does it?

>   I’m only trying to get to the truth, to get the other side to this tale.

  I join him in the kitchen. ‘Where’s your bin?’

  I scan his super-smooth cupboards, the walls—avoid looking at the solitary framed photo.

  ‘Here.’ He presses a rectangle and out it pops. I drop the rubbish in as he turns to me with a beer bottle.

  ‘Ta.’

  My hand rests over his as I take it. Our eyes lock and the crazy narration taking place in my brain ceases and then starts again tenfold.

  Why does he have this power? No one else has ever come close. No one...

  ‘Evangeline.’

  His voice rasps and suddenly it annoys me. I’m sick of being out of control with him. Sick of being hounded by my family to do the right thing.

  ‘Let’s talk.’

  I stride back to the living area and sink onto the sofa, my legs curled up alongside me.

  He’s slower than me to return. ‘Is it safe to sit next to you?’

  ‘If you like.’

  I don’t look at him as he lowers himself onto the sofa. I focus on chucking back a mouthful of beer rather than on the way my body reacts to his proximity, the fuzzy warmth that radiates all down the side that’s closest to him. I taste nothing.

  ‘So?’ he probes, looking at me.

  But I don’t turn. Reliving the past isn’t something I find easy. It changed me for the better, made me stronger, more determined to go after what I want and gain my independence. Nate’s the opposite.

  ‘Nate’s not the man you remember.’

  ‘So you say.’

  I give him a quick look, more to shut him up than anything. His cold dismissal isn’t what I need right now.

  ‘It wasn’t like it happened overnight,’ I say. ‘At first it just seemed like he was putting in enough hours for two, filling in for his AWOL partner—’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  I cut him off with another look. ‘You want me to tell you how things went down over here when you swanned off to the States or not?’

  ‘Apologies—go on...’ He retreats, his shoulders relaxing as he sinks back into the sofa and gestures with the tail end of his bottle as he drinks.

  I tear my gaze from the movement in his throat as he swallows and look at my bottle, toying with the corner of its label as I work out where to start.

  ‘He started to become hard to reach,’ I say eventually. ‘We’d have people messaging us to say they’d seen him in this bar, this club, this restaurant, asking if he was okay. Which was bizarre in itself. I mean, Christ, he was a grown adult, but even I, his younger sister, was getting concerned messages.’

  Hair falls over my eyes as the memory makes me animated. I scrape it behind my ear and throw back some beer, letting it settle before I carry on.

  ‘We put it down to him networking at first—trying to pull in investors to save the company. But of course that was a load of rubbish. The company was past saving. The highlight came when he got himself into a fight. I mean, I knew he was quick to temper—how could I not, being his annoying little sister? But losing it with a sibling is very different to a public fist fight with a billionaire you’re trying to impress.’

  Lucas clears his throat and I sense he knows this already—the incident made it into the papers so it’s no surprise.

  ‘Dad insisted he come home for a bit. He helped him get straightened out, gave him a role in the family business and what-have-you, but he was never the same...not without you.’

  I expect Lucas to say something, but he doesn’t, so I press on.

  ‘He doesn’t trust himself. Dad thinks he’s okay now but he’s not. He calls me too often, asking my opinion, needing advice on things that he really shouldn’t need me for. And then when things go south it’s me that gets the call.’

  ‘Christ, Eva, you have your own work—you shouldn’t be wiping his arse.’

  I see red. Hot tears burn my throat as my eyes snap to his. ‘Maybe if you’d stuck around longer it never would have come to this. He missed you—needed you.’

  He pales, and I wonder who I’m really talking about. Me or Nate.

  Does it really matter when the same applies?

  I look at the bottle in my hand, stare through it. ‘Maybe if you’d actually bothered to pick up your phone and help, you could have changed things.’

  Bad enough that he’d upped and left, but then he’d ignored my phone calls, my pleas for help...

  It didn’t matter that we had nothing much to do with one another any more. That avoidance was my way of coping after the lesson of my eighteenth birthday. But I still thought I deserved something—he owed us, owed me.

  ‘I called you almost daily at first, and I texted, emailed. Then one day your phone stopped working and my emails bounced. You were really gone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I glance at him. His hand is so tight around the beer bottle’s neck I fear he’s going to break it.

  ‘What for?’ I demand. ‘Ignoring me? Or what you did to Nate?’

  ‘I had to cut myself off.’

  ‘Had to or wanted to?’

  He shakes his head. ‘It was a choice that was made for me.’

  I scoff. ‘No one tells you what to do, Lucas. You’ve always done what you want, when you want.’

  ‘If that was the case I wouldn’t have stopped myself at your eighteenth.’

  His voice is harsh, formidable, the truth in his words undeniable. I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that. I can’t find any words—can’t seem to make a sound.

  ‘That really surprises you so much?’

  ‘Lucas, I...’

  This isn’t getting the right answers—this is getting into us, and ‘us’ isn’t going to help me get my family straightened out, end their feud and bring me the decision I need to make for my business.

  ‘I wanted you, Evangeline. I wanted to drag you off to a quiet corner, ride that dress up your hips and take all that you were offering me.’

  My heart rises in my throat. I can’t breathe past the desire and the bigger emotion that’s holding my lungs tight. ‘Then why...?’

  It’s a whisper so quiet I can barely hear it above the racing pulse in my ears.

  ‘I told you that night—because of Nate.’

  He says it so fiercely, his body rigid as he considers me.

  ‘He told me to keep away... What? You didn’t believe me?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ I shake my head. I can’t believe Lucas would give up on us because my brother had ordered it so. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He left me in no doubt as to what would happen if I went there with you.’

  I flip. The pain I suffered, my heart ripped in two. ‘He was your best friend—not your keeper! Christ, you even went out with his exes and vice versa. Why was I so different?’

  ‘You were out of bounds. You were his little sister.’

  My scoff is more of a snort this time. But this is madness. I won’t believe it.

  ‘You can’t blame him for wanting to protect you. My reputation with the opposite sex didn’t exactly work in my favour.’

  No, I remember his reputation well enough. It made it all the more painful when he rejected me—as if I didn’t come up to scratch.

  ‘Look, Eva, he was my best friend—the closest thing to family. You all were. Why is it so hard for you to believe I didn’t want to jeopardise that?’

  I can read the truth in the softening of his eyes. I want to scream that I should have been more important, that I wanted him, loved him, but it all seems so selfish now.

  And ultimately it didn’t matter. He lost it all anyway. Nate, their friendship, my family...

  ‘Fat lot of good it did you.’

  I neck my beer, washing down the bitter bite of my words.

&nb
sp; ‘Believe me, I’m more than aware of what I gave up then.’

  I ignore the flare to my heart his passion instils. His old feelings towards me don’t help now. If I was out of bounds before, when my family loved him, I’m on another playing field now.

  He reaches for me, his fingers brushing the hair behind my ear. ‘Evangeline, I am sorry.’

  I risk a look and butterflies flutter in my throat at what I see—his sincerity, his intensity. He’s so close. I’d only have to lean a little to meet him, to kiss him. And I want to so much. To drown out the pain with the crazy passion that simmers just beneath the surface.

  I know he’s thinking the same—I can feel it in the touch of his fingers still stroking at my skin, see it in the parting of his lips, the darkening of his eyes.

  ‘I really am sorry...’

  He’s closer—too close. I have a second to stop this, before it goes too far, and I almost don’t. It would be too easy to forget it all in his kiss.

  I suspect he knows it—that he’s doing it on purpose—and it’s that which has me pushing at his chest, straightening my body and forcing his hand to fall away.

  I need answers. I need to know.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ I say. ‘What happened five years ago?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HER EYES ARE fixed on mine. She’s not going to let it go.

  It wasn’t as if I’d tried to kiss her to make her forget. Honest. Although it would have been preferable to this.

  I place my beer on the table and rake my hands through my hair. I don’t owe Nate anything. And yet talking about it doesn’t come easy. Last time I spoke up I lost the entire family. Her father pushed me out and told me I’d failed them, failed Nate. He was angry, but his words stung. More than he can possibly know.

  And how would she take it—the same way?

  I meet her determined gaze and realise it doesn’t matter how she reacts. She isn’t going to let it rest until she knows. And I have nothing to be ashamed of.

  Nothing.

  Not that her father saw it that way.

  ‘Well?’ She tucks her legs tight beneath her, the challenge in her eyes bright. It beats tears. They knotted up my insides, crushed me with guilt.