So Now You're Back (10 page)

‘E
rr-hem.'

The sound of throat clearing beckoned Halle back to the present.

‘You want to tell me why you've entered a fugue state?' Luke's adult voice, gruffer now and with a cynical edge, hauled her the rest of the way out of memory and into the Airbus 380. ‘And why you appear to be fixated on my family jewels?'

She blinked and lifted her head, feeling as if she'd had an out-of-body experience. Out of body except for the hum of heat still throbbing at the memory of his clumsy but devastating caresses. Strange to realise the long fingers now dusted with hair, resting benignly on the armrest, had once sent her soaring into the stratosphere so eagerly.

As a teenager, Luke had been a generous, inquisitive lover. Their sex life hadn't always been good. In fact, it had been bloody awful at times, like the first time they'd had penetrative sex. And the second. And the third. But still he'd tried, always striving to get her off as well as himself. She doubted many teenage boys, now or then, would be that bothered about their girlfriends' satisfaction.

She blinked away the sentimental thought. Luke may have been a generous lover, but why should he get a medal for that? Especially considering he'd had an ulterior motive. He'd been practising his moves on her only so he'd be ready when someone better came along.

The prickle of jealousy made the question in her head spill out of her mouth. ‘Do you still forget to wear underwear, like you used to at school?'

It probably wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say, but she suddenly wasn't feeling all that diplomatic. This man had fingered her to her first climax at a fifth-form recital. An erotic moment that was far too vividly imprinted on her brain.

His cheekbones flushed a dull red but it took her several seconds to realise he was blushing. Because she'd only ever seen him blush once before—when she'd come out of the bathroom to show him the pink PREGNANT sign on the pee stick.

‘I'm wearing pants now,' he said. ‘If that's what you're asking?'

‘Why did you?'

‘Why did I what?' He looked affronted now as well as embarrassed. A double whammy.

‘Forget it. Because now I think about it, that was rather skanky.'

It hadn't seemed at all skanky at the time. It had been hot, but why boost his ego.

‘Skanky? Gee, thanks.' The flush spread over his cheekbones.

‘Why are you blushing? You used to boast about your commando status at school.'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Then how come everyone knew about it?'

‘Because I got caught without them once in the locker room by Mr Spurgeon, the gym teacher, and he humiliated me in front of the whole class. I guess word got around after that.'

‘All the more reason to try to remember to wear them more regularly, then,' she volleyed back, suppressing the niggle of sympathy.

Luke had forever been in trouble with the teachers. Mostly he shrugged it off, or played up to it. But she had hated the way they treated him back then, making snide remarks and cruel jokes at his expense. Miss Pickles, their perpetually sour home economics teacher, had gleefully referred to him as ‘the worst of those Best children'.

No teacher would be allowed to talk to a pupil that way now, especially one who came from a family where free school meals were a way of life. But twenty years ago, the PC revolution hadn't quite found its way to Gallagher Cross Comprehensive.

‘I didn't forget to wear them,' he explained. ‘I just didn't always have any.'

‘Why not?' This was new.

‘I had four younger brothers, who I shared a room with, and we didn't have a washing machine, or money for the launderette.' The blush deepened. ‘You try keeping clean underpants available when you've only got a couple of decent pairs and every time you wash them and hang them out to dry some little bugger pinches them to wear himself.' He scowled at the memory of his pants-thieving brothers. ‘After Spurgeon laid into me, I made clean pants for gym day a priority, but that left the other days pretty hit-and-miss. Mostly miss.'

‘Why didn't you ever tell me that?' She'd always thought
he had a choice, and he'd chosen not to wear pants so he could be naked, for her.

‘Why would I? I wanted you to think I was cool, not some saddo who only had two decent pairs of pants.'

Why were they talking about his underwear crisis at school? Seriously? He'd paid an extra five grand for this?

He didn't care if he sounded churlish. He was feeling pretty churlish, so it fit. The way she'd gazed at his crotch had reminded him of how she used to look at him, with that scary combination of lust and adoration and complete and utter trust. Seeing that glazed arousal again had made him feel raw and exposed … and actually kind of hot.

Which was very bad news. He and Halle had always had a strong sexual connection as teenagers, despite a few hiccups in the early days. That connection had cooled off considerably once she'd had Lizzie—because she'd wanted it less and he'd wanted it more. But getting the hots for Halle now was out of the question.

This trip was supposed to open up the lines of communication between them, not turn it into a replay of one of the biggest fuck-ups of his entire life.

‘But I wouldn't have told anyone,' she said.

‘I know.' Maybe he could stop this canter down memory lane by giving her the answer she wanted.

‘Then why didn't you confide in me?'

She wanted to go there? After twenty years? From the earnest expression, it seemed she actually might.
Not gonna happen.
‘Probably for the same reason you didn't want to tell me about your fear of flying. It's humiliating.'

‘I do not have a fear of flying,' she said, far too indignantly to be believable.

‘Uh-huh, which would explain why I had to prise your hand off the armrest before you broke a finger.'

‘Yes, but I'm fine now,' she declared defensively.

From the glazed look when she'd been staring at his lap, and the pink flags in her cheeks, he suspected that was only because she was high as a kite, and still recovering from that freak-out during take-off.

Truth be told, her freak-out had freaked him out a little, too.

By making him remember the girl he once knew. The girl who trusted to luck, believed the best in people and had always been sure that everything would come out right in the end.

Take the day he'd first noticed her. He'd been in the year above, already cultivating a rep for being a waste of good teaching resources. The rest of his class had gone on a history trip to the Tower of London that day, but because he'd failed to bring in the permission slip and the five-pound coach fee—as if he was going to risk a kicking from his dad to pinch a fiver for some dopey school outing—he'd been forced to join Hal's Year Ten drama class.

Sulky and pissed off with himself, because if he'd remembered the stupid trip he would have bunked off, he was not in the mood to do some stupid trust exercise, especially when the teacher had paired him with Hal. Short and cute thanks to a soft layer of puppy fat, she had looked like a studious pixie, her hair sticking up all over the shop. She'd sent him an excited smile and he'd slapped her down, telling her he wasn't going to do the stupid stunt, which involved falling backwards into her arms, because she probably caught like a girl. She'd surprised him, though, with her ballsy comeback: ‘Fine, then, you sexist snot-bag, you can catch me.'

He'd stood too far back, ready to let her crash to earth for
calling him a snot-bag, but secretly expecting her to step back, because everyone did when they started to fall, didn't they? But not little Haley Dunlop. She'd spread her arms out like Christ on the cross, straightened her spine and launched herself into thin air. And gone down like a plank. They'd ended up in a heap on the floor, him jumping in to break her fall at the last second before she broke her stupid neck.

But instead of bitching at him, or blabbing to the teacher, she'd laughed, the sunny expression returning as she dusted herself off and said: ‘If that's how boys catch, it's a good thing I catch like a girl.'

Reconciling that brave, eager, witty girl with the woman sitting across the aisle from him earlier was impossible. How could that girl, who only three years after their first meeting had screamed her head off through fifteen excruciating hours of labour, but still came out smiling when their newborn daughter was placed in her arms, have been so irrationally terrified of taking off she'd practically given herself lockjaw?

She fronted a live TV show every week. That had to require a lot of guts. She ran her own business empire and had brought up two kids virtually solo. How could she not still be Indestructible Haley?

But as he'd observed her sweating and trembling and trying to hold it together with every last ounce of her strength, he couldn't shake the conviction that the fact she didn't feel lucky any more was down to him.

He'd hurt her. He'd always known that. By bolting like that without a word. But, at the time, he hadn't had a choice. It was either get out or get sectioned. That didn't mean he hadn't felt like shit about what he'd done once he'd pulled himself together. But, until ten minutes ago, he'd had no problems qualifying the guilt.

Especially when Halle had made such a staggering success of her life on the back of his desertion. Because she hadn't just scraped a nil-all draw away to Wigan in the relegation play-offs, she'd scored a bloody hat-trick against Germany and won the World Cup.

But what if her wealth and success were only a mask? What if he'd damaged her in some irrevocable way? What if he'd turned Indestructible Haley into Fallible Afraid of Flying Halle? Did that mean all the ways he'd absolved his own actions were really nothing more than grubby excuses?

The sort of grubby excuses his dad used to reel off, after he'd slapped Mum's head against the table and knocked her front tooth out, or shouted at his youngest brother, Curt, so aggressively he'd made him wet himself. The sort of excuses that meant sod all, because you never learned from them, and they would all be reeled out again the next time you went on a bender and came home tanked up to the eyeballs on self-pity and too many cans of Special Brew.

What did he really know about her life now? The few puff pieces he'd seen in
HELLO!
magazine while waiting in the dentist's didn't count.

It was a sobering thought, guaranteed to make this next fortnight even more complicated than he had anticipated.

‘You know what, this was always exactly the problem between us.' Halle interrupted his thoughts. ‘You never came clean about anything.'

She shot him her dick-mincing look to reiterate the point. And he had a moment of clarity.

Damn it. He couldn't go back and change what he'd done sixteen years ago, so there was no use getting cut up about it now. And he certainly wasn't the cause of her fear of flying. They'd never flown anywhere when they were together, for the simple reason they couldn't afford it.

‘I'd really love to know how my lack of clean underpants became a major problem in our relationship,' he countered.

‘I'll tell you how. Because those pants are yet another symbol of your complete failure to communicate about anything.' She pressed her hand to her chest. ‘I thought the sun shone out of your arse for four solid years. And yet you never once trusted me with a single one of your secrets.'

She was right, he'd never told her his secrets. But he'd had very good reasons for that. Reasons it had taken him two whole years of therapy to put behind him. And which he had no plans to discuss now, with a woman who had refused to speak to him for sixteen years.

‘I thought we just established that my lack of clean underpants wasn't a secret,' he replied. ‘The whole school knew about it, remember.'

‘Stop being so bloody facetious.'

‘I'm
being facetious? You're the one who's suddenly turned into the underwear police.'

‘Fine.' She threw up her hands. ‘Make a joke about it, have a good old laugh about how neurotic I am.'

‘Does this look like my joking face to you?' He wouldn't be able to crack a smile right now if he had dynamite to hand. ‘And when exactly did I accuse you of being neurotic? Because I must have missed that bit of subtext.'

‘Oh, shut up.' She clicked off her seat belt and stood, the furrow on her forehead deep enough to rival the Grand Canyon. ‘I'm going to the toilet.' She grabbed her purse from under her seat. ‘And I'd really appreciate it if you would leave me alone when I return. Getting through this flight without having a breakdown is my main priority and mulling over the crappiest four years of my life is not going to help make that happen.'

She marched off, leaving him to stew in her wake.

Since when had he been the one suggesting they take a stroll down memory lane? Was he the one who had brought up their schooldays? No. And where did she get off saying their four years together had been the crappiest years of her life?

They hadn't all been crap. Had they?

And what, exactly, did any of this have to do with his underpants?

After slamming the toilet door hard enough to rattle the frame, Halle glared at herself in the mirror above the sink.

Are you on crack? What the hell were you thinking?

Arguing with Luke Best had always been a futile and frustrating task. When they'd been together, she'd spent four long years believing that if she just kept chipping away at that emotional shield, she'd eventually discover the real Luke beneath and be able to fix him. Unfortunately, the real Luke had turned out to be as shallow and thickheaded as the fake Luke. The man had about as much empathy as a slab of reinforced concrete.

So he hadn't had enough clean underwear as a boy? So he'd kept the squalor of his home life a secret? None of that mattered now.