Escaping Mr Right Read online

  ‘Chloe?’ Nick said, cutting her off, keeping his eyes on me.

  Evie tried again. ‘She means –’

  ‘Chloe?’

  Blink, blink, breathe, and I shook my head at Evie. I’ve got this. ‘I mean everywhere we go, I’ve seen the girls tying themselves into knots for you. It’s sickening, the way you guys use and discard them.’

  ‘More sickening than only being wanted for what’s in your pants? Because that’s all she wanted, Chloe – wallet and junk.’

  ‘Well, you brought her! You must have wanted to show her your … your junk. I hear lots of girls are interested in seeing it, Casanova Savage.’ I could hear the jeer, see Evie’s shock, feel the sweat of fury pop out along my hairline. This was not me – and yet it was.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Chloe. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’

  ‘Except I don’t want to see yours,’ I said, as the blood raced to my face. ‘You see, you’re not all interchangeable for me, Nick. I don’t choose people by occupation. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be with one of your kind.’

  Could his eyes get any narrower? ‘Then what kind would you be with? What does a guy have to do, be?’

  ‘Easy,’ I shot back. ‘He just has to not be a massive bastard!’

  ‘The “massive bastard” being my ‘kind’?’

  ‘If the big shoe fits.’

  ‘You know what they say about guys with big feet, don’t you, Chloe? You sure you’re not interested in my junk?’

  Aaaaand we were back to the subject of the day: size.

  I heard a strangled snort come out of Evie, and dared not look at her. Thank God Drew was in the kitchen or I would have lost it.

  ‘Something about matching the size of their inflated egos?’ I managed to get out, forcing my eyes to stay exactly where they were. Do not look at his lap, do not look at his lap, do not look at his lap.

  He shrugged. ‘That, too.’

  ‘So I hear!’

  ‘That’s right. “Casanova Savage”. You really have been checking up on me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Ha! Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not that interested.’

  He leaned further across the table. ‘Shall I make you interested, Chloe?’

  I matched him lean for lean. ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Is that a gauntlet you’re throwing down?’ he asked. ‘Because you can come over here, sit on my lap, stick your hands under my shirt, just like Ruby, and prove it’s not possible, if you like. But be careful, Chloe. I’m not Marcus, and for you I might make an exception and let you touch whatever you want. No stop sign.’

  How could he talk like that? In front of Evie? With Marcus in the apartment? ‘Animal.’

  ‘I’ll wear that tag, if it will get you over here. I’ll even let you punch me afterwards if it makes you feel better about it. Hell, I’ll let your boyfriend punch me, too, if you’ll give it a go.’

  I reeled back. ‘Stop talking about that punch. I don’t make a habit of punching people. It’s not … not excusable, that I did it. I hate thinking about it. And I wouldn’t have … have lost it if you hadn’t been … been … been looking at me the whole night.’

  ‘How the hell was I supposed to not look at you? You were beautiful. You are beautiful. Everyone was looking at you. Why didn’t you punch any of the others, if that was what was bothering you? Why did you only punch me?’

  ‘Because you made me feel –’ Stop. Choke.

  ‘Good start, Chloe. I made you feel. Keep going.’

  ‘Like her!’ Out it came, like a bullet. ‘“Bye bye, Ruby, it’s your turn now, Chloe, how about you ditch Marcus and give me a go.” Well, get it through your thick head – I’m not like that. I won’t be interchanged, and I won’t ditch someone just because I get a better offer.’

  ‘Better offer. Is that a Freudian slip, Chloe?’

  ‘Oh! You! I could –’

  ‘Punch me? Go right ahead. I’ll take it, Chloe, I’ll take it.’

  ‘Nobody should take that! I don’t like it that you say you will. Just … just leave me alone!’

  ‘Now that I can’t do.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I saw you, that night. I saw you, Chloe – and now I can’t unsee. I just … can’t.’

  Silence. Deafening. Except for my harsh breathing.

  ‘Okaaaay,’ Evie said when the silence had stretched to an almost unbearable tension. ‘Uh, speaking about … about shirts, that’s a nice one you’re wearing, Nick. I’m not sure inviting girls to put their hands up there is a good thing. It might damage it. Stretch it. You know?’

  I looked at her, incredulous. So did Nick. And then both Nick and I looked at his shirt. It was a plain grey T-shirt, not a silk designer number.

  Nick looked at me again, lips twitching.

  ‘Evie isn’t exactly a fashionista,’ I explained, in a voice that had started to shake.

  ‘Yeah, I got that,’ he said, leaning back at last.

  And then I was laughing, and Nick was laughing, and so was Evie. As though that disastrous fight had not just occurred.

  Which was when Drew and Marcus finally re-entered the room, with a tray loaded with coffee, milk, sugar, a couple of frosty looking cocktail shakers, glasses and cups.

  ‘What, no freshly baked scones?’ I asked, and laughed again. Why, why, why was I laughing?

  ‘They’re out of flour,’ Drew said, and slid the tray onto the coffee table. ‘And we couldn’t find the aprons.’

  ‘You had enough time to get out the sewing machine and whip up an apron,’ I said. ‘A nice frilly one.’

  ‘Hmmm, enough time to miss something amusing, at any rate,’ he said, regarding the three of us with a sapient eye. ‘So, what did we miss?’

  The laughter dried up – snap – and silence descended.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Nothing consequential.’

  Drew snorted.

  ‘We were just talking about shoe size,’ Evie said. Good Lord, of all the things to latch on to!

  ‘Ah!’ Drew nodded sagely. ‘You know what they say about guys with big feet, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ Nick deadpanned, ‘what do they say?’

  Drew looked him up and down – lap included. ‘Nothing you haven’t heard before, I’d wager.’ He turned to me, eyes twinkling. ‘Well, 007? Martini?’

  I held out my glass and Drew filled it. Marcus picked up his coffee – a nice blokey double espresso that coffee-snob extraordinaire Drew couldn’t have a dig about – and Evie poured coffee from the pot for herself. She looked sideways at Nick, gesturing to the tray, but he shook his head. So what in God’s name was he doing here, other than infuriating me? He was obviously tagging along with Marcus after the Hawaii meeting, but if he wasn’t interested in drinking a cup of coffee, why didn’t he just up and leave?

  ‘So,’ Drew said, pouring a martini for himself. ‘Mark’s has been filling me in on a charity project the team has going on. It’s right up your alley, Evie.’

  Marcus – who should have been pointing out that his name was not Mark – pulled an apologetic face. ‘I know you’re only just back, Evie, so it’s probably not the time to harass you, but this has come up at short notice so I thought that since I was coming here tonight anyway you might let us – me – explain the project, and maybe offer some PR ideas.’

  ‘When you say short notice, how short do you mean?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Five days,’ Marcus said, with another apologetic grimace. ‘It’s happening the same time as our Hawaii trip.’

  Evie smiled. ‘Well, I like a challenge.’

  Drew got to his feet and threw back his martini as though it were water. ‘I’ll leave you guys to it. Saintliness is not my gig.’

  I waited for the similarly unsaintly Nick to make an excuse to escape; he was sure to have a girl stashed somewhere, waiting for him. But instead he did an about-face on the coffee, reaching to pour himself a cup as though he intended to stay for hours.

  Oh
no! No, no, no. I was not going to make small talk with Nick on my own while Marcus and Evie thrashed out a public relations plan.

  ‘You can’t go,’ I said to Drew.

  ‘Yeah, I can,’ he said.

  ‘I drove us here, remember?’ I said, only just managing to control the edge of panic.

  ‘Well you’re not driving either of us anywhere after all that wine and all those martinis, my girl,’ Drew said. ‘I’ll take a taxi. And you, leave your car in the car park tonight and Mark can drop you home.’ Half-turn to Marcus. ‘Right, Mark?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marcus said.

  When Drew compounded his infamy by leaning down with great ceremony to kiss my forehead, I pinched him. ‘Going to kill you,’ I whispered fiercely, and he had the nerve to laugh.

  ‘Don’t forget we’re meeting for a drink after work tomorrow,’ Drew said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘You, me, Evie, at Old Fashioned. I’m suddenly craving that cocktail special of theirs. Big Boy’s Brandy. Yum. Nice and creamy.’

  He executed a graceful side-step, managing to dodge my pinching fingers before they could inflict any more pain. This was the first I’d heard of our favourite bar, Old Fashioned, offering such a disgustingly named cocktail. Or that we were supposed to be catching up there tomorrow. And frankly, I didn’t want to wait until then to interrogate Drew about what he’d found out while he was playing Betty Crocker with Marcus in the kitchen.

  Drew looked over at Evie. ‘We can discuss table settings for the wedding, tomorrow, too. And I do not want to hear another mention of a gold chair bow, I’m warning you now.’

  ‘Gold chair bows?’ Nick said. ‘Passé, I’m afraid. Don’t do it, Evie.’

  Drew, Evie and I all got a case of jaw drop.

  But Marcus laughed. ‘Nick knows all sorts of weird stuff! Ask him about wild animals.’

  ‘Okay,’ Drew said, clearly enjoying himself. ‘What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

  ‘African or European?’ Nick asked, without missing a beat.

  Gasp – an actual gasp – from Drew. ‘How do you know about Monty Python?’

  ‘How do you?’ Nick countered.

  And that’s when the miracle occurred: Drew smiled. At Nick. As in a real smile!

  It took a minimum of eight meetings to get such a smile out of Drew – his belief in requiring eight meetings to judge a person’s mettle being absolute – but Nick had managed it in one. It had taken Marcus ten, and I still wasn’t sure he’d cracked it!

  ‘Okay, you may pass the Bridge of Death,’ Drew said. ‘Now, spill. How do you know about gold bows?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘I’ve been to four weddings in the past year, and three of them were gold-bowed up the … er …’ He raised his eyebrows at Evie. ‘Yin yang? Have I got that right?’

  Evie giggled like a giddy schoolgirl, and I came to the inescapable conclusion that both my friends had gone stark, staring mad.

  ‘Evie,’ Drew said, tugging her up off the couch with one of his we-need-to-talk looks, ‘you’d better see me out.’

  I strained to hear what Evie and Drew were saying as they headed for the door, simultaneously trying to listen to what Marcus was saying to Nick.

  End result: I heard nothing.

  Until the tenor of the conversation between Evie and Drew changed, and wedding words were floating through the air. Bouquet, Venetian lace and … uh oh, bomboniere! Things were going to get ugly if Evie was thinking about wedding favours.

  Suddenly, there was a loud, ‘Over my dead body,’ from Drew.

  Next moment, he was zeroing in on Nick. ‘Nick, has anyone, at those four weddings, offered their guests candy-covered almonds in a swan-shaped vessel?’

  ‘Um … no,’ Nick said, and started laughing.

  ‘There you have it, Evie,’ Drew said, all dramatic. ‘Dead. Body.’ I got the wild eye. ‘And Chloe? You are not to go all blancmange and agree with her if she tries to talk you into them.’

  ‘Hey,’ I protested. ‘I don’t go all blancmange.’

  ‘Sure you do. She can wheedle anything out of you. You’re as bad as Jack, the way you indulge her.’

  ‘Oh now come on! Nobody’s as bad as Jack.’

  ‘You come pretty close,’ he said. ‘Just remember, this wedding is going to make the news, no matter what we do to try to keep it private, so no giving in! Think of how you’d envisage your own wedding and steer her that way.’

  My own wedding? Blink. Blink. Breathe. The mere thought was enough to make me hyperventilate.

  In the whole year I’d been with Marcus we hadn’t even discussed living together, let alone marriage. I wasn’t ready to discuss it. Not with Marcus. Not with anyone. I thought Evie was incredibly brave, signing her life away to one man at the grand old age of twenty-two. By the time my mother was twenty-two, my father was dead and I was in foster care. It wasn’t exactly a comparison that brought joy to my heart. So, no marriage for me. No marriage and definitely no children to tie me up in anxious knots.

  I found myself reaching for my glass again and drinking too quickly, only vaguely aware of Drew’s final farewells.

  ‘So where were we?’ Evie asked Marcus, coming back to sit on the couch beside Nick.

  Marcus looked at Nick. ‘Nick, do you –?’

  ‘No,’ Nick said quickly. ‘Thanks, but no more coffee for me.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ Marcus paused, obviously thinking hard. ‘I – Um … you sure?’

  ‘No more coffee,’ Nick said, and his eyes looked like they were about to roll. What was the deal with the coffee? And why didn’t he just bloody well leave if he’d finished his cup and didn’t want another?

  ‘Okay then.’ Marcus cleared his throat. ‘Someone I … I know is involved with this charity, and he’s hooked in a volunteer group of pilots and flight attendants from AustralAir to give it some support. The airline guys call themselves the Do-It-Right team, and they do hands-on stuff when they’re on their … their layovers, I think they call them …? Or maybe they take leave. Well, whatever, AustralAir comes to the party by rostering the guys to work certain flights together when they’ve got a project coming up, which takes care of getting them where they need to be. And while they’re there they build stuff, or paint it, or plant it, or dig it.’

  ‘What’s the project?’ Evie asked.

  ‘It’s a playground for the kids.’

  ‘What kids?’ Evie asked.

  ‘An orphanage in Manila,’ Marcus said. ‘Sorry, didn’t I say what it was?’

  Orphanage. I reached for the cocktail shaker and topped up my glass to the brim.

  ‘And where do the Scorpions come in?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Some of us sponsor individual kids,’ Marcus said. ‘Others have pitched in to help buy the stuff to build the playground. We’re also on board to be ambassadors and help raise awareness, if that’s of any use.’

  Evie was nodding madly. It was the kind of project that ticked all her boxes – worthwhile endeavor, buy-in from corporate Australia, and the gloss of celebrity to bring extra attention (something Evie had a new appreciation for, thanks to Jack).

  It was ticking other boxes for me.

  Orphanage. Forgotten children. Unwanted, abandoned, neglected children. Sad, angry, desperate children.

  I might not have been an orphan in the strictest sense of the word, but I was all those other things. My mother had never wanted me; she’d simply used me as a bargaining chip to punish my father – who, likewise hadn’t wanted me, but loved to get to her through me. It had been a lightning fast decision for my mother to dump me in foster care the moment my father was gone, leaving me at the whim of people who might care for me, or just as easily might not. And then the circus really started. Being moved on when it didn’t work out. And on. And on. Hoping someone would want to keep me. Hoping and hoping until I learned not to hope.

  Not that it mattered anymore. I was no longer that scared, unloved little girl who didn’t know how to stop screaming and hitt
ing and biting and … and raging.

  So why was I sitting there blink-blink-blinking, straightening my dress, smoothing my hair, trying to make myself calm, controlled and perfect? My chest tightening, squeezing, aching. Wanting to scream. Scream, scream, scream, the way I had those first two years, over and over, before I’d learned to hold it in because it didn’t work. Nobody wanted to keep you when you were angry and needy and demanding. When you screamed, and lashed out and cried. So it was better to be … someone else.

  ‘Don’t you think, Chloe?’

  I jerked, spilling some of my drink on my dress. ‘Sorry, Evie,’ I said, putting down my glass, brushing at the damp spot, then folding my hands in my lap. ‘I was miles away. Don’t I think what?’

  I saw Evie look at my hands. They were clenched into fists, so tight the knuckles showed white. ‘We can cover that later,’ she said quickly and smiled blindingly at Marcus. ‘Before we get to that, I’ve got an idea for –’

  ‘No, tell me,’ I insisted, and forced my hands to unclench. Just because my boyfriend had raised two projects involving children in the space of a few days was no cause for a relapse, a regression, a capitulation to the past. These were not the bad old days when I couldn’t control myself. I would not give in so easily. I would not give in at all.

  Evie looked at me, gauging my resilience. And then she nodded. ‘I was just wondering if it’s the kind of thing Around the Globe might cover.’

  Putting my game face on, I shuffled past and current stories through my head. ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while since any of the current affairs programs have done something in that vein, so it has novelty value. But, Marcus, there’ll have to be a player involved or it won’t pack the same punch, and you’ll be in Hawaii, so who’s going from the team?’

  ‘Nick is. That’s why he’s here.’

  I was so stunned, I had to shake my head to clear it. ‘Nick’s going to Manila? Not to Hawaii?’

  ‘Yes, Nick’s going to Manila,’ Nick said dryly. ‘Surprised?’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you see,’ he said, in a this-is-so-boring voice. ‘The Sydney Scorpions have a few PR nightmares on their hands and need some positive spin.’