Faking It to Making It Read online

  Lissy deflated into a chair. “I’m not sure, to tell the truth. Bam was fun. A crazy kind of challenge. But when I see you and Nate together—the chemistry, the way you complement and challenge and fit—there’s this aura, like the glow of possibility, that gleams around you. I want that.”

  Stunned into silence because it really wasn’t all in her head, Saskia flinched when the door was knocked upon again. She glanced in its direction, wanting to press Lissy for more about the glowing and the aura.

  The knock sounded at the door again.

  “If that’s Bam, I’m not here,” said Lissy as she plonked herself at the kitchen table.

  “Why would he think you were?”

  Her eyes narrowed a moment. “I told him this was where I’d be if he realised he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life and decided to send flowers or diamonds.”

  Saskia shook her head at the logic, or lack thereof, then in a kind of daze went to answer the door.

  She didn’t even notice Ernest was nowhere to be seen until she swung the door open and found herself face-to-face with—

  “Stu?”

  “Hey, Sas. How’s it hangin’?”

  Chagrin had brought dimples to his cheeks. Add that to the elegant height, the puppy-dog eyes, the Byronesque mien, the guy was better-looking than a man had a right to be. But looking at him now—at the way his eyes darted anywhere but at her, at the defensive slump of his shoulders, the shuffling of his feet—Saskia wondered how she’d ever dated him at all.

  “Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”

  Her heart beat in her ears and her vision narrowed to about a square metre in front of her eyes as, watching Stu she felt like Alice watching her old life from the other side of the looking glass.

  “Why on earth would I do that?”

  He blinked.

  “What are you doing here, Stu?”

  When he didn’t look as if he had plans to go anywhere else, she let him in. Then followed in a kind of haze as he walked into her apartment, making appreciative noises about the work she’d done. He poked his head into her lounge room, glanced at her new TV—not as big as the last, but new all the same—then at Ernest, who was curled up in his cosy bed, pouting. It seemed she wasn’t the only one hanging onto reality by a fingernail.

  “Hey, boy,” Stu said, taking a step Ernest’s way.

  But Saskia put herself bodily between the man and her dog. “Hands off.”

  He backed up in shock. “Steady on.”

  “Steady...?” She barked out a laugh, encroaching while he continued to back away. “Stu, you stole from me. And more than just my things. You’re so lucky I felt like so much of a fool after you left that I didn’t press charges.”

  His soft brown eyes slanted back to hers before flickering quickly away.

  “You know it too. So why on earth have you come back?”

  He looked at her, hard, and she saw the cool beneath those warm eyes. The calculation. God, the guy must have seen her coming from a mile away.

  “And if you even dare say you missed me—”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  She flinched, but she didn’t let him see it. “Spit it out, Stu, and then you can get the hell out of my house.”

  He took a breath, his lean chest lifting and falling, his expression more hangdog than puppy dog. “I’d like to repay my debt.”

  That time there was no hiding her shock. As long as she’d known him he hadn’t made a cent from anything other than unemployment benefits. “Wow. Did you sell something? Apart from my gear, I mean? Did you sell your book?”

  The flicker of surprise in his eyes told her he’d probably not written another word of the mysterious text.

  “Then how? Five dollars a fortnight out of your dole payment? It would take you years.”

  He lifted his chin as if she’d wounded his pride. “If that’s what it takes.”

  The idea of having this man in her life for all that time, of getting fortnightly reminders of the fool she’d been, made her want to rip her new TV off the wall and give it to him if it meant never to having to see him again. And by the look of him he’d have taken it too.

  “You should know I am so pissed off right now—even more than when you left if that’s at all possible. So before I tie you to the chair and call the cops, tell me: why are you here? Honestly.”

  “It was made clear to me that this was my only option.”

  “Clear? By who?”

  A flash of malice crossed his face before he reached into the back pocket of his torn jeans and pulled out a business card. A card with “BonAventure Capital” written in a perfect black font on a perfect white card.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That guy Mackenzie came and saw me yesterday. We had a conversation about responsibility and recompense.”

  If the card hadn’t convinced her Nate was involved in Stu’s reappearance, that did.

  “He told me to come here, to pay you back, to...apologise, or else.”

  “Nate threatened you?”

  “Not in so many words. He made it clear he was a better judge of my priorities than I was.”

  The irony was not lost on her. She’d spent the better part of a year believing—erroneously—that she’d convinced Stu she was the better judge of what was good for him, while Nate had actually convinced him with one conversation.

  She didn’t realise she was rubbing at her temple until she’d pressed her thumb to the spot hard enough to leave a mark. Why? Why would Nate have done this to her?

  Did he want his money back? It made no sense.

  Her phone rang. She instinctively rose then she heard Lissy take it. She’d forgotten Lissy was even there. It brought her back to reality with a thud.

  “I’d like you to leave, Stu. And this time please don’t ever come back.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll deal with this,” Saskia said, flicking at the corner of the business card.

  “So that’s it? You’re not calling the cops?”

  “You really think I would have strapped you to a chair?”

  He glanced at the plump love seat behind her, and of everything he’d told her that day it was the only thing that made her smile. Despite all his nasty words, he actually thought her strong enough to take care of herself. From that moment on she was certain she’d never forget it either.

  “Go,” she said, pointing at the door, “before I change my mind.”

  He nodded. Smarter than she’d ever given him credit for. Then, as he made to move, he said, “You’re different. It suits you.”

  “While you’re exactly the same.”

  He took it as the insult it was meant to be, then walked out through her door. And this time she couldn’t have been happier to see him go.

  On wobbly legs Saskia moved to the lounge and sat. Ernest uncurled himself from the bed and came over to rest his chin on her knees. She rubbed his soft wiry ears. “I know, boy. I know. But this is better. Beyond better.”

  A minute later Saskia felt Lissy sink down on the chair beside her.

  “You okay?”

  Saskia lifted her head to look into her friend’s big worried eyes. “I’m fine. We’re both fine—aren’t we, Ernie? We’re survivors. We’ll be just fine.”

  “Men suck,” said Lissy.

  “Some,” Saskia said, as she rubbed noses with Ernest before he padded off to the kitchen in search of crumbs. “Some stick up for you when you least expect it. Who was on the phone?”

  “Nate.”

  Nate.

  “I said you’d call him back.”

  Saskia let out a long, slow breath. One man situation sorted; a whole other one to endure. She’d thought her relationship with Stu was complica
ted, but now it seemed two-dimensional and black-and-white compared with the situation with Nate.

  When Saskia made to stand Lissy pressed her back to the couch. “Leave it for a bit. Catch your breath. Have a glass of wine. Hell, have a bottle. Nate can wait.”

  “You know what?” Saskia said, standing. “I’m done waiting.”

  She felt as if she’d been waiting her whole life for men to make up their damn minds. A little pressure here, a nudge or two there, giving them the time, the place, the opportunity, the incentive, the dossier with its encouraging white spaces, the yellow legal pad covered in blatant questions so that they’d open up to her, let her in, love her. And none of it had worked.

  She tossed a jacket over her maxi-dress, pulled on the closest pair of shoes at hand, stuck a scarf round her neck and a hat on her head and grabbed her bag.

  It was time she did this face-to-face, woman to man, to stop tiptoeing and just have it out.

  * * *

  Saskia worked her way through the maze of Nate’s home, up three stairs, turn right, down seven, split levels and closed doors, thinking how hard the guy made it to get into his home, much less his life.

  Finally she was out in the wide open living area, all blonde wood trim and gunmetal-grey paint. The ceiling was all vicious angles and the place smelled of chopped wood and leather and a spice she couldn’t name. No warm-blooded human being would ever choose to live there. And yet Nate did.

  She saw him in the kitchen, tasting something he was cooking on the stove. It stopped her short. He cooked? How had she not known he cooked? And it smelled...amazing. It smelled like the best of Mamma Rita’s.

  But she was not to be deterred by the fact the man could cook...

  When Saskia threw her bag—containing the legal pad and dossiers for incontrovertible proof should she need it—on the slab of rock that constituted his kitchen bench, Nate looked up.

  “Men suck!”

  He stood taller, wiping a towel across his mouth. “Why, thank you.”

  “Bamford dumped Lissy, you know.”

  “I didn’t, in fact.”

  “Yet you don’t seem shocked. Why? Lissy rocks. He was lucky to know her, much less...the rest!”

  “She does. He was. But you have to admit they were an unlikely couple.”

  Unlikely? No more unlikely than a hippy statistics maven and the King of Collins Street. At that she began to pace.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked, tilting his chin at a bottle of red wine. “Can I take your hat? Scarf? Jacket?”

  She glanced down at her outfit and blinked. From the floppy felt hat to the floaty beige dress, the dressy caramel jacket, ancient multi-coloured scarf and the knee-high ugg boots she only ever wore at home, she looked like the result of a market stall explosion. Whipping off the layers and tossing them at a bar stool, she wondered what she’d been thinking. Oh, that’s right...

  “On the subject of men sucking...”

  She pulled the card from her bag and tossed it to him. Damn jock snapped it out of the air easy as you please.

  “Why?” she asked, and that one word was filled with more emotion than she’d thought any one word could be. Because his response would give her the answer she’d wanted more than any other in her entire life.

  “Closure.”

  And like a whip across the face she got it. Closure. Of course. Right in the moment she realised she was in love with the guy he was plotting his extrication. The end. Finito.

  It was Stu all over again. Only this time he wasn’t making off with her TV while she was out working. He was taking her heart, in broad daylight, right in front of her face.

  Knees buckling, she sat on a wooden barstool. Hard.

  Nate moved around the bench and slowly slid to the stool beside hers, his knees close enough that she could feel his latent heat.

  “Why?” she said, needing more, needing every last skerrick of data to understand fully.

  “You’re better than him. Better than any man who needs a restraining order to keep him away from you. Better than every damn bozo you pass on the street. I thought you needed to look Stu in the eye to see that. To know you’re better off without a TV, without a fridge, without a coffee maker if it means not being with a man like him.”

  Her eyes flickered to his to find his blue eyes serious. No charm, no pretence, just Nate. And even while everything inside her felt as if it was unravelling her love for him was like a constant warm hum.

  “Then you didn’t find him to get your money back.”

  His raised eyebrows reminded her he’d met the guy.

  “Or in the hopes I’d want to get back together with him?”

  This time Nate looked as if he’d been slapped. Better at her at the dissembling thing, he pulled himself together far quicker, his jaw hardly clenching as he said, “Why? Are you?”

  “Good God, no!”

  He breathed out long and slow, and his voice was a little raw when he said, “You don’t let me get away with anything, and yet you let him get away with what he did. So I wondered if maybe it was because he...he meant more.”

  “No,” she said. The warm hum was getting louder, fuelled by a new and faint hope that maybe, just maybe, Nate actually cared. “He didn’t. He doesn’t.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Only fair he had all the data too, Saskia looked at the hands twisting in her lap. “Stu wrote me a note, you know.”

  “Today?”

  “Back then. That was why I didn’t chase him down and kick his ass. I didn’t want to have to face that...hatred ever again.”

  “What did it say?” Nate asked, his voice now less raw, as if had Stu walked through the door he’d not have got another foot without having his manhood kicked up into his neck.

  It helped. It really did. Especially as she made herself remember the words she’d tried so hard to forget. “He called me emasculating. Controlling. He said that I only ever pretended to care.”

  “Hell, Saskia—”

  “He was right. In his way. I never loved him, and yet I let him move into my home. I do that. I try too hard to be what I think people need me to be. Because what I am has never been enough.”

  “Saskia,” Nate said again, his eyes fierce as they roved over every inch of her face, “Stu’s an ass. A petty, sad, small-minded toad. He tried his damnedest to take something away from you—something he knew he’d never have—your fierce spirit. But he failed. Fool only made you shine stronger still.”

  She wanted to believe him. She wanted it more than she’d wanted anything in her whole life. To believe not just the words but the sentiment, the tenacity, the possibility... But if the men in her life had taught her anything it was that potential was a pipedream.

  Take a man as he is, or don’t take him at all.

  “You think I shine?”

  “I know you shine.”

  “You couldn’t have just said so?”

  No, his expression said, he couldn’t. Almost as if he knew she’d read too much into it.

  But, hand to his heart, Nate said, “I’m sorry to the tips of my very everything that I forced you to have to see him again.”

  Her mouth twisted and she couldn’t drag her eyes from the hand across his heart. “Do you plan on tracking down all the men who’ve wounded me?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  She laughed despite herself. “I keep telling you I don’t need you to take care of me.”

  “And yet once in a while it would be nice if you just shut up and let me.” His brows knitted together. Then, “Odd.”

  Not odd, she thought. Sweet. Darling. But the fact that he couldn’t see it, didn’t understand what it might mean, scared her silly.

  “It’s not your job to make up for their sh
ortfalls,” she said.

  “Not yours either.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “I am right. Always.”

  She coughed out a laugh, her eyes landing on her bag with the legal pad therein—all the things he’d revealed whether he’d wanted to or not.

  “Not always.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Every mistake I’ve made has been in a full-bodied effort to find my place, my people. While you have it all, right at your fingertips, and you’re determined to throw it away.”

  She felt Nate still even before her eyes swung back to his.

  You have me too, she said with her eyes. If you want me. But the stillness didn’t abate. If anything it cooled about ten degrees, and she knew she had her answer. Even if he saw, even if he had any kind of sense of how she felt, he clearly didn’t want to.

  “I appreciate it,” he said. “I do. From afar.”

  She’d never seen him look more like granite personified. He looked as if he’d been born of the grey walls and blond wood, and faux taxidermy. Maybe that was what the designer had seen. The true heart of the man—cold as any stone.

  “I wonder if you know how far away you are. You’re way over there. And you don’t let anybody come close. Not your gorgeous family, who adore you to their very ends. And certainly not me. Paying me off, bringing me Stu, reminding me every two seconds that the end is nigh. Love isn’t poison, Nate. It won’t kill you. It’s natural, it’s complicated, its crazy-making, but it’s a fact of life.”

  “Like death and taxes.”

  Saskia threw her hands in the air and swore like a sailor. “Why the hell am I bothering? You’re a lost cause. I knew it, and still it didn’t stop me.”

  “Stop you, what?”

  “Oh, no. All you’re getting from me any more is exactly what I want to give—which right now is less than diddly-squat.”

  She wouldn’t have thought a man could be as still as Nate was in those next moments. While she had so much energy pouring through her she wanted to stamp her feet and throw her arms in the air, he didn’t even blink.

  Then he said, “You constantly—and I mean constantly—amaze me.”