Playing It Close (33 page)

He hadn’t called her
nymph
all week. Not since he’d deliberately got them stuck in the lift together. They’d texted since then, but neither had mentioned the incident or anything related to it. She’d had her appointment at the clinic yesterday, but when he called her last night he hadn’t asked about it and she hadn’t told him.

She wasn’t going through with the procedure. Her body was her body, and she was good with that—especially now that she understood the power it possessed.

Didn’t mean she was ready to surrender her push-up bras, though. With one last glance, she adjusted herself in the mirror.

Steeling herself to hear all of her work troubles dredged up again, Tess grabbed her handbag and left for the inquiry. After today, it would all be over. She would be able to concentrate on rebuilding her career and reputation while enjoying her remaining time with Liam. The World Cup semi-finals were tonight. England had triumphed over the odds and would face South Africa in about twelve hours. Come Monday, she and Liam would be colleagues again. The time they had to explore what was between them would be over.

But she needed to save those worries for Sunday. Today she had to shore up enough courage to step through the doors of the Royal Courts of Justice one last time.

When she arrived, Gwen was waiting for her outside the courtroom. Tess’s heart swelled as she went up on her tiptoes and Gwen bent down so they could kiss each other’s cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to come today.”

Shrugging, Gwen said, “I had the morning off. Dad and Mum both wanted to be here but Dad has a faculty meeting he couldn’t reschedule and Mum threatened to go for Michael’s throat if he showed up, so I convinced her I’d come in her place.”

Tess took Gwen’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Cheers for that. The last thing I need is to have to hold her down.”

Gwen snorted. “I know you’re strong, Tessy, but I don’t fancy your chances against her. I bet Mum’s a biter.”

They walked into the courtroom and found seats a few rows back from the lawyers. Tess was never so aware of her small stature as she was when she was with her sister. Six feet tall when she wore flats, Gwen towered over her. In fact, Tess had grown up feeling that Gwen bested her at most things. She’d been brilliant at school and perfect at all things domestic. Like their mother, she could spout off the periodic table of the elements and, like their father, she could name the dates of every battle the British army had engaged in since Hastings. She could whip up gorgeous cupcakes with professional-looking icing without consulting a recipe. If she hadn’t cried herself to sleep most nights from the time she was ten and a boy had called her Freakzilla, Tess would probably have despised her.

Gwen was built like their parents: big. She’d hit a growth spurt that probably hadn’t stopped yet, even though she was twenty-five. Her shoulders were broad and she had to special-order bras. As far as Tess knew, she’d never had a serious relationship. Only one boy had asked her out in school, and Gwen had returned home sobbing with a torn dress, saying the boy had thought she’d be grateful enough for his attention that she would at least give him a blow job. Tess had made the boy pay by passing out fliers with a picture of him getting out of the school pool with an erection. She’d been suspended from school.

In hindsight, she probably should’ve remembered that experience when she’d launched her blog. Lightning might not strike the same place twice, but Tess seemed cursed to remake her stupidest mistakes, only making them bigger and stupider each time.

Lord Justice Tarrington entered the courtroom with the experts who had quizzed her and other witnesses throughout the months of the inquiry. Tess’s stomach knotted as she glanced across the aisle and found the man who had made her life hell: Michael, the scum dog she’d slept with.

Why was he here? Throughout the inquiry, none of her ex-colleagues had shown up unless they’d been called on to give testimony, and then they’d lied through their crooked teeth. She expected they were all at work now, trying to pretend it was a normal day.

It probably was. Nothing would change as a result of this inquiry. Filthy, shitty laundry had been aired, and the public had been titillated and outraged by some of the normal working practices they’d heard about, but nothing would really happen. The inquiry was not like a trial. People wouldn’t be sentenced to jail time unless Lord Justice Tarrington recommended criminal proceedings. A month from now, he would simply publish a report listing his recommendations for how to improve working conditions in the financial services. He would probably apportion blame, which would be embarrassing for the people involved, since it would become a public document of historical record. But once his report was released, it would be up to the politicians to decide whether to implement his recommendations.

The lawyer representing the investment firms gave his closing argument, focusing on how the industry had been instrumental in advancing women throughout the last century and other bollocks. Tess’s phone vibrated in her bag. Glancing around to check whether anyone had heard, she swiftly unzipped the bag and pulled the phone out to turn it off, but stopped when she saw the first few words of Liam’s text on her screen:
That guy’s a complete dick.

The hairs on her neck stood up. She texted back.
What guy?

The lawyer.
Anyone with half a brain can tell he’s a lying scumbag.

She sat up straighter. Trying not to draw any attention to herself, she pretended to stretch, twisting her back slowly to the right and left and glancing through the audience. Her phone vibrated in her hand.
Three rows behind you.

Why?

There was an excruciatingly long pause, long enough for Tess to regret asking the question. Finally, the answer came through.
Because I wanted to be your support team
,
even if I couldn’t be right at your side.

Joyful endorphins flooded Tess, and she touched the shells where they lay against her chest.
Thank you.

A nudge from Gwen’s sharp elbow brought her back to the courtroom. In a very soft whisper, Gwen said, “You’re attracting attention.”

She gestured subtly toward the other side of the courtroom, where Michael considered Tess with narrowed eyes. She raised her brows mockingly and battled her inner teenager, who desperately wanted to find a humiliating photo of the dickhead and spread it around.

“It’ll be over soon,” Gwen whispered.

Yes, it would. Perhaps then she could have a life again and start making plans for the future.

When the lawyers representing all of the parties involved had finished making their statements, Lord Justice Tarrington wrapped up the inquiry and promised to deliver his recommendations to Parliament in a timely manner. The inquiry was over. Tess released a deep sigh of relief as Gwen put her arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tightly.

“Done,” Gwen said. “Now, my shift starts at one, but I’m famished. How about lunch?”

Tess stood and casually turned around. As promised, Liam sat a few rows behind her but, in his gold-rimmed spectacles and a perfectly tailored dark gray suit, he looked so much like just another lawyer or City boy. He’d slicked down his hair so it looked darker and straighter than it really was. Only his green tie—Legends green with a tiny embroidered rugby ball on it—gave a hint of his work. A casual observer would probably have passed him by.

A corner of his mouth flexed in a small smile, and he gave her a subtle wink. She ran her fingers along the strand of shells, watching his smile grow as he noticed them.

“Tessy?”

“Hmm?” She faced her sister again. “Oh, lunch. That sounds great. Let me just see if—” but when she turned back, Liam was already out the door, striding away with his phone in his hand. Seconds later, her mobile buzzed. “Hold on a sec, Gwenny. That might be work.”

The text made her flush all over.
Come over after the final on Sunday.
Bring the shells.
Bubbly’s on me.

Gwen cleared her throat loudly. “Nice of him to turn up.”

“What? Who?” Tess flipped the cover over her phone to hide the text, too late apparently.

“Oh, please, Tessy. Who do you think? The same man who came over way too late for a social call last week. The one who got you to not only
eat
vegetables but
cook
them. The one, I suspect, who’s responsible for that giddy smile on your face right now.” Gwen hooked her arm through Tess’s and the two maneuvered their way through the thinning crowd of lawyers, City workers and journalists until they reached the entry hall of the Royal Courts.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tess demurred. “That smile’s there courtesy of this torturous inquiry finally ending.”

“Perhaps you should’ve thought of that before you launched your shitty little blog.”

The biting voice behind her raised her hackles, and she stopped to face the man who’d inspired her to launch her shitty little blog in the first place. “Michael. Lovely to see you, as always.”

“Oh, fuck off, Tess. None of us would’ve had to go through this if you’d just acted like a professional in the first place.”

Tess gasped, head shaking slowly in utter disbelief. Her temper rose from the depths of her gut, bringing with it a string of curses and insults that bubbled in her throat, desperate to escape and pummel him. But Gwen flexed her biceps around Tess’s arm, a silent message of support that encouraged Tess to do the unnatural, to swallow her tit-for-tat instinct and take the high road.

Deep inside, she knew Michael was partly right. She shouldn’t have slept with him. Shouldn’t have written about him and her colleagues the way she had. Complaining through the company’s formal HR channels would’ve got her nowhere, but as much as she’d wanted to inflict the same humiliation on him that he’d heaped on her, she knew she’d sacrificed the high ground when she’d told the world about his diminutive manhood.

She couldn’t regret whatever good her blog had done, giving women who worked in the City a place where they could expose the everyday sexism they faced at work, but she could regret the immature way she’d written about Michael.

Squaring her shoulders, she stared him down with the blankest face she could manage. “I’m sorry for my part in this, Michael. If I could go back in time, I would’ve tried to find a different way to resolve our problems. I hope you can see that the way you treated me was despicable and unworthy of a man, but I didn’t need to retaliate the way I did. Now I’ve met someone who’s shown me what a real man is, so you can rest assured that I won’t waste any more of my energy harassing you, or even thinking about you.”

Okay, so maybe the high ground was too great an altitude for her to aspire to just yet. She’d settle for the middle ground today and work her way up.

Red stained Michael’s cheeks and his nostrils flared as his gaze flicked to the side. Tess followed it to find an older man in a rumpled coat standing near them, his ear cocked toward them and his hand scribbling quickly over a reporter’s notepad. Fucking
hell.
She’d done it again, fueled a fire that the media wouldn’t ignore.

“Tess, let’s go,” Gwen hissed.

Tess nodded tersely and exhaled a sharp breath. She spun on her heel, making Gwen stumble to keep up. “I can’t believe I’m such an idiot,” she muttered. “Why can’t I learn to just walk away?”

“Because then you wouldn’t be you, love.” Gwen tugged her closer, shoring her up as self-recriminations burned her gut like acid. “You’re our little hotheaded fireball, and we love you for it. You say the things the rest of us only dare think. Most people don’t have half the guts you do.”

“There’s a reason for that. It’s called evolution. My people get culled from the gene pool through our own utter stupidity.”

They strode toward the exit, the end nearly in sight when the door to the men’s loo opened and Liam stepped into the foyer in front of them. Tess drew herself and Gwen to a sharp halt, willing him to walk out ahead of them without seeing her, but today Lady Luck decided to crap all over her. He did a double take, his natural grin turning upside down as he took in her face. She didn’t need a mirror to know what he saw. Shoulders so tense they nearly touched her ears. Moisture stinging her eyes. Lips pressed so tight her premature wrinkles were probably furrows around her mouth. Chest heaving as she struggled to get a grip.

He closed the distance between them and she tried to silently communicate something other than her distress.
Go away.
Please.
Turn around and let’s talk about this later
,
away from the journalists.
Away from Michael.
Please.

He didn’t get the message. Worse, when he reached her, he clasped her arm in a tender grip he probably meant to be encouraging but which felt like a sharp-toothed snare. “Tess, what’s wrong?”

“Go away,” she whispered, unable to choke down the urgency that gripped her.

He blinked. “What—?”

“Please.”

But it was too late. Michael strode toward them, the reporter a few steps behind. Giving Liam an assessing once-over, Michael said, “You must be Tess’s
real man.
”

Tess closed her eyes, but she couldn’t block the confusion in Liam’s voice. “Sorry?”

“Tess said she met—hang on. Don’t I know you?” Michael snapped his fingers a couple times, as if the sound might prod his memory. Horror swept over Tess, and she opened her eyes just in time to catch comprehension dawn over Michael’s face. “You
are
. You’re Liam Callaghan.”

Liam jerked his head in acknowledgment, a reserved smile tilting his lips but his normal effusive charm nowhere to be seen.

“I can’t believe it,” Michael laughed. “You’re fucking a
rugby player?
I thought you had more sense than that, Tess.”

“You’re evidence I don’t,” Tess snapped before good sense had a chance to stop her.

Liam’s face froze, shock giving him a grotesque mask, making a mockery of the polite interest he’d shown Michael moments before. “This guy? You slept with
this
guy?”