The Chocolate Lovers' Club (9 page)

‘I guess this is down to all the great Asian food that Nadia’s cooking for me,’ Chantal continues. ‘Plus we get to keep the fridge stacked with chocolate and blame it on Lewis.’

‘We must start the new year in a better, healthier and more wholesome frame of mind,’ I observe piously. ‘I have no boyfriend. No money. No room in my clothes. This year can only bring about an improvement.’

‘We have to do something,’ Autumn says. ‘Something positive.’ With Autumn, that normally involves doing a circle dance or something strange with runes or joss sticks.

‘We could go on a detox diet,’ Nadia suggests tentatively. ‘Give up chocolate and stuff.’

We all breathe in sharply.

‘Sorry, that was a very idiotic statement.’ She hangs her head in shame.

‘I started
Carol Vorderman’s 28-Day Detox Diet
,’ I admit. ‘Well, I watched the DVD, then I lasted twenty-eight minutes before I gave in to a Kit-Kat.’ I have no willpower. So sue me.

Perhaps I can get hold of a copy of Victoria Beckham’s book – she surely must have some tips on how I can sick-up to a size zero in six days. Not that I don’t have some experience in that area myself, but no self-respecting celebrity is without an eating disorder these days. Or so it seems. They set us ‘real’ women impossibly high standards that anyone with even a vague addiction to Cadbury’s Caramel couldn’t meet. What’s the attraction in a grown woman having the body of a seven-year-old girl? That’s so dodgy, it’s untrue. Even a modicum of slenderness would do for me.

Tristan comes into the café and leans on the counter. ‘How are our best customers today?’

‘Depressed,’ I answer for us all. ‘We’re fat. We’re broke. We’re not getting any action.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Nadia corrects me with a wink.

‘We need to diet. We need to rejuvenate ourselves,’ I tell him. ‘Preferably without giving up chocolate. Or cheap wine. Any suggestions?’

Tristan mulls it over. ‘Isn’t there a spa somewhere that bases all its treatments on chocolate?’

There is much hyperventilating around the table. Could it be that our dreams have all come true?

‘Where?’ My voice holds a note of disbelief. If Tristan is joking then this is too, too cruel. I could withhold my custom for less than this. Well, not really.

He muses some more, rubbing his chin in a scholarly manner. ‘California, I think.’

It had to be.

‘I’ve heard of this place, I’m sure,’ Chantal says. ‘It’s supposed to be great. Why have we not thought of this before now?’

‘My goodness.’ Nadia has gone all glazed and vague. ‘We could spend all day being smothered in chocolate and still lose weight. That’s my dream come true.’

We all let out a blissful, ‘Ooohhh.’

This makes my tub of Body Shop Cocoa Body Scrub pale into measly insignificance.

‘You ladies are
too
sad,’ Tristan tells us with an indulgent shake of his head.

‘If this doesn’t sort out all our problems, then nothing will,’ Autumn says with a breathy voice. Even she can see that this would be better than anything to do with chakras or chanting.

‘We need to go there,’ Chantal states. ‘We need to go there now.’

‘Oh, we do,’ I agree. ‘We certainly do.’

I daren’t think about the pain that this will cause my credit card. I just have to think how good it will be for my body and soul.

Chapter Sixteen

I
’m feeling wretched. Much chocolate has been consumed. I’m busy at work – which is very depressing in itself – and Marcus has already texted me ten times this morning to say that he loves me. Ten times, I’ve ignored him.

Burying the phone in the depths of my handbag, I gaze into middle distance. Marcus has been calling me every day since our supposed one-night stand to tell me that we should be together. I’m weary with arguing that we shouldn’t. What am I going to do about him? This is a decision too big to be made without excessive sugar intake and, besides, I have work to do. Too much of it. I rifle through my chocolate stash and choose a Toffee Crisp for my sugary succour. Even the vanilla vapour from it is making me feel better. I pull a pile of papers towards me. Things must be really bad if I’m using work as an avoidance technique.

Behind me, I hear whistling and cheering. I spin round, unable to imagine what has roused the employees of Targa from their usual lethargy. Ohmigod. My eyes can’t believe what they’re seeing. They go wider and wider and wider,
but still the view is the same. Large as life, Crush is standing there.

The sales team are pumping his hand and patting him on the back, but his dreamy brown eyes lock directly on mine. He looks slightly crumpled, as if he’s just come straight from the airport. His face is tanned, the strong Antipodean sun has lightened his hair, and his body is taut and toned. Even though he’s only been gone for a short time, he’s every bit as handsome as I remember. Despite the fact that I’m wearing mascara that could well smudge, I rub my eyes in case I’m hallucinating due to sugar rush. But I’m not. Aiden Holby is really here.

He strides across the room to me in a very manly way and comes to a halt in front of my desk. ‘Hi, Gorgeous,’ he says with a big grin.

No one has called me gorgeous since Crush left.

‘W . . . w . . . w. . . w. . .’

‘What are you doing here?’ he guesses when it becomes clear that I’m incapable of coherent speech.

‘W . . . w . . . w. . . w. . .’

‘Welcome back?’ he tries. I don’t think he’s right, but then I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say myself.

‘W . . . w . . . w. . . w. . .’

‘Where have you been?’ He’s struggling now. ‘What about m . . . m . . . m . . . missed you?’

I nod vehemently.

His smile widens. ‘I’ve missed you too. You don’t know how much.’ Then, despite the office being busy, he curls his fingers round mine. ‘God,’ he says, ‘I can’t wait to get you alone. All I really want to do right now is take you in
my arms and do extremely rude things to you on your desk.’

I can feel the heat rise to my face. That sounds like a very nice idea, even though it might get us both sacked. So what? There are other jobs. But then I think of Mr Aiden Holby cavorting on his bed with the woman in the slutty underwear and my head and my heart both start to ache.

‘Why didn’t you answer my calls?’ he continues. ‘I was getting frantic with worry – as you must have been about me.’ Crush gives me a wry smile. ‘So, what have you been up to while I’ve been away, you saucy minx?’ he teases.

Still, my brain and my vocal cords won’t hook up.

‘I like the strong, silent type,’ Crush says patiently, ‘and I know that this is something of a surprise, but do you think at some point you might regain the power of speech?’

More nodding.

Crush leans in towards me. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about what happened,’ he says quietly into my ear. ‘It was a complete nightmare. The least they could do was get me straight back on a flight for a bit of rest and recuperation for a couple of weeks.’

Recuperation?

‘I guess they’ve filled you in all about it here.’ Aiden inclines his head towards the Human Resources Department. Those bitches wouldn’t tell me the time.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I finally manage to say.

‘Me.’ He gestures around him. ‘My Outback adventure.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Still no idea.’

‘I was on a team-bonding exercise.’ There’s something new. Targa employees seem to spend more of their time on team-bonding exercises than they do actually working. Crush looks for some degree of recognition from me. There’s none. ‘I’ve been missing in the Outback for two weeks,’ he says. ‘Unintentional walkabout. Didn’t you realise something was wrong when I hadn’t called?’

‘I . . . I . . . I . . .’

‘Don’t start that again, Gorgeous,’ he begs.

‘I just thought you’d gone off me,’ I say weakly.

Crush laughs out loud. ‘I’ve been at death’s door, wandering around some bloody desert, living only on the enormous stash of chocolate I’d taken with me and you thought I’d gone off you?’ He laughs some more. ‘They dropped four of us out in the middle of nowhere for a total “wilderness and survival” experience. I told you we were going in one of my emails.’

Did he? Perhaps I skipped that bit to get to the rather more interesting steamy moments.

‘It was that, all right,’ Crush continues with a hearty laugh. ‘We were supposed to be gone for three days. Just a couple of overnighters in the middle of nowhere, that’s all.’ He chuckles again at the thought of it. ‘We got hopelessly lost – not my fault, of course – and failed to make the pick-up destination. Because some bright spark had decided we should truly embrace a “back-to-basics” approach and they’d taken our mobile phones off us, we couldn’t get in touch with anyone and they couldn’t find
us. We walked for days and days, probably going round in circles, until we finally came to a road. One of those enormous road-train lorries stopped and took us back to civilisation.’

I’m obviously looking completely blank, because he says, ‘Surely someone told you what was going on?’

‘No,’ I say, and wonder why not.

‘Bloody hell.’ Crush sinks into the nearest chair. ‘It was only the thought of coming back to you that kept me going. We had some pretty hairy moments out there.’ He rakes his hands through his hair. ‘And no one told you?’

‘No,’ I repeat.

‘You must have wondered what on earth was going on.’

You could say that. ‘Can I just get this straight?’ I’m not sure how best to broach this, so I think the best way is just to blurt it out. Which is exactly what I do. ‘Does that mean that it wasn’t you that I saw on your webcam, naked and with another woman?’

Now Crush looks blank and perhaps he even recoils slightly. Maybe I should have couched this more sensitively.

Then he laughs and slaps his thigh as if I’ve told him a really great joke. ‘My brother and his girlfriend were staying at my apartment for a few days before Christmas. They’ve recently set off on a world tour.’

‘Lovely,’ I squeak.

‘I forgot to tell them about the webcam.’ Then his eyes go round. ‘You didn’t see them getting down to it?’

My face, which was so flushed, has suddenly drained of all colour. ‘Sort of.’

Then Aiden freezes. ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘You didn’t think that was me, did you?’

I feel the guilt-ridden gulp travel down my throat. ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I’m afraid I did.’

Chapter Seventeen

W
e each get a sandwich from the deli down the street and we sit on the low brick wall outside Targa’s offices to eat it. I get ham, which was a mistake as it tastes like plastic. Or perhaps it’s because my taste-buds feel as numb as the rest of me. The traffic roars past and scruffy streetwise pigeons pick at the crumbs by our feet. Opposite is a big branch of HMV and a Kentucky Fried Chicken place. It’s not quite the same view as afforded by the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I’m sure. Crush is quiet and I wonder if he’s regretting coming back – but then I remember that he’s recently spent a million hours on a plane and is probably just exhausted.

‘Sorry I can’t take you out to lunch,’ Crush says wearily. I feel as if he hasn’t stopped apologising to me since he’s returned when, quite frankly, it’s me who should be doing all the grovelling. ‘I have a meeting in fifteen minutes.’ He glances at his watch again. ‘They want to do a debriefing.’

I’d like to be doing my own kind of debriefing, but I guess that isn’t going to be on the cards until we’ve got things straightened out be tween us.

‘You liked Australia?’

‘Loved it. If only you’d have been able to come out with me.’

If only.

‘I wonder why no one in Human Resources kept you up to date with what was happening?’

I wonder. Not. Those Human Resources harridans wouldn’t cross the street to wee on me if I was on fire. But I will get my revenge. One day.

‘You didn’t return my calls either,’ Crush says, sounding wounded. ‘Or read my mails. That hurt. I couldn’t understand it. I thought you’d be delighted to hear from me after my unexpected walkabout. I almost wondered whether you’d gone walkabout too.’ He smiles at the thought. ‘But I know why that was now.’ His smile widens. ‘You silly chump.’

How right he is. I cannot disagree. I’m a silly chump.

‘I’ll probably have to work late too tonight,’ Aiden tells me. ‘After that, we can start to put all this behind us.’ He gives a relieved sigh which puts another knot in my stomach.

‘I thought you were here for some rest and recuperation?’

‘That comes later.’ He wiggles his eyebrows at me in a seductive manner. ‘Why don’t I come round to your place when I’ve finished?’

I shrug and try to ignore the increased pitter-pattering of my easily influenced heart. ‘You’ll have jet lag,’ I say. ‘Terrible jet lag. Perhaps it would be better if you went straight home and got some sleep.’

Crush looks slightly put out. He shrugs too. ‘Maybe.’ He puts down his cheese sandwich. Perhaps Aiden’s food tastes like plastic too. ‘This isn’t really the homecoming that I expected. I feel there’s still some distance between us. I wanted us to rush into each other’s arms and that everything would be the same, but I guess it’s not easy when we’re at work.’ His hand finds mine. ‘I want to make it up to you, Gorgeous. I’ve only got to get through today and tomorrow and then we’ll have the weekend to enjoy each other’s company.’ He kisses me gently on the cheek. ‘We can get to know each other all over again.’

‘I’d like that,’ I say. Tears spring to my eyes. How can I have forgotten how wonderful this man is? ‘I’d really like that.’ Then something in my sluggish brain clicks slowly into gear. How can I have forgotten that I’ve booked to go away with The Chocolate Lovers’ Club for the weekend? ‘Oh.’

‘What?’ Crush looks concerned. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m going away,’ I tell him.

‘Away?’

‘To California.’

‘For how long?’

‘A few days.’

‘But I’ve just got back.’

‘I’m going to a chocolate spa. I booked it before I knew you were coming.’ I sound completely pathetic. The traffic rushes by us and the fumes choke my throat.

Crush looks into my eyes. ‘Things are going to be okay between us?’