The Collector's Edition Volume 1 (28 page)

“Thanks, Evan,” he said, picking up his glass, composing himself in a flash. He smiled at his friend, master of himself, master of the situation, and lifted his glass in a toast. “You did yourself and your book proud today.”

“You listened to the radio spots?” Evan’s grin was pure delight.

“With keen attention. You warmed up very nicely. Tomorrow should be a breeze for you.”

His comments echoed Lauren’s assessment of Evan’s performance, reminding her how closely in tune they had seemed to be, the sense of real sharing. It gave her a hollow feeling, knowing she had rejected it all. What if there had been no malevolent intent to deceive and seduce?

She picked up her glass, sipping the sharp tangy drink while Evan rehashed the interviews, inviting Michael’s opinion on various aspects of them. It was obvious he valued and respected Michael’s judgment, hanging on his words as though they were pure gold.

No gold for her, though, Lauren caustically reminded herself. His judgments where she was concerned had been downright nasty, making her out to be a promiscuous siren, luring men to her bed for one-night stands. And that totally uncalled for crack about her husband being a poor sucker. Lauren gritted her teeth in bitter resentment. What right did he have to paint her so black? He knew nothing, absolutely nothing about her marriage!

On the other side of the ledger, she didn’t really know what had gone on in his marriage. She only had Roxanne’s word for how he had behaved, what he had thought and felt and said. Graham Parker was sceptical of Roxanne’s version of the truth, yet what she had told Lauren about Michael’s attitude towards her struck a few truths with Lauren.

His quickness to make harsh judgments was not a trait that endeared him to her, no matter that she had given him some cause to think badly of her. He had jumped right in and thought the worst. No
benefit of the doubt. No pause for reflection. No wondering if he had done something wrong.

Lauren didn’t need that.

Destructive.

She’d been through one destructive relationship. She certainly didn’t need another. She wanted. how that one night with Michael had been. But he’d shown her the other side of the coin of love, the blind passion of hatred.

A shudder ran through her.

As though his sensory perception was acutely tuned to her, Michael snapped his attention from Evan, his laser eyes sweeping Lauren like searchlights, determined on pinpointing what she was feeling and thinking.

No. No more, she thought.

The memory was spoiled.

Irrevocably.

“Ansett Flight AN37 is boarding now. Would passengers please proceed to the departure lounge?”

Lauren set her glass down and stood. She was going home. The only person she wanted right now was her mother.

R
EGRETS
savaged Michael’s stomach as they moved out of the Golden Wing lounge. Roxanne! His teeth gritted at the name. So many times during that magical night with Lauren the warning had rung in his mind—Tell
her now. Tell her about Roxanne.
And he had put off doing it because he hadn’t wanted to break the incredibly exhilarating and soul-lifting rapport flowing between them.

And that critical piece of communication had become less and less important as the night wore on. Their intimacy had been too precious, too intensely felt to admit any third party. To have introduced the subject of Roxanne would have been crass. It could be done in the morning before Lauren left, he had told himself.

If only he hadn’t slept on.

If only Lauren had woken him before going.

Yet would he have told her?

If he was ruthlessly honest with himself, the answer was almost certainly no. Roxanne had become totally irrelevant, lost in the wonder of all Lauren promised. He hadn’t even given her a fleeting thought when he had rung Global that morning, eager to speak to Lauren, ebullient with a happiness so intense and pervasive there hadn’t
been room for any thought but renewing the link with Lauren.

A link that had already been broken.

A link he had just comprehensively smashed, probably beyond repair, in his bitter attack on her supposed lack of morality and callous using of people.

He didn’t have to look at Lauren to know how effective he’d been in destroying the special bond they had shared. The three of them were heading towards the departure lounge together, but they weren’t together. She walked with them but apart. Michael keenly felt the separation.

He’d seen the decision crystallise in her eyes, the vulnerable bright blue of cornflowers hardening, glinting into the cold, hard surface of sapphires, shutting him out. The walls were up, forbidding any entry to her space. She walked alone.

And it was all his own damned fault! No, not all. His precious ex-wife had a few things to answer for. Couldn’t keep her nose out of his business despite having bagged a husband who pandered to her self-centred little soul. But, of course, the idea of him and Lauren together wouldn’t sit well with her, not after all she’d said about both of them. It would show her up for the shallow, selfish, twofaced person she was.

God! Couldn’t Lauren see that?

They turned into the nominated departure lounge, he and Evan automatically hanging back for Lauren to hand in her boarding pass first. She went ahead without demur. No feminist stand about
equality when it came to traditional courtesy. There rarely was, Michael reflected. Not that he classed Lauren as a rabid feminist anymore. She was an intelligent woman who wanted her intelligence respected. Nothing extreme in that attitude.

She picked up a packet of headphones on her way into the boarding tunnel. It was an ominous sign. Headphones would provide a communication block during the flight. He needed to talk to her, needed to get things straightened out between them, needed to apologise for the rotten things he’d said. And thought. And done.

His gaze was drawn to the sensual undulation of her buttocks as her long legs put more distance between them on the short walk along the tunnel to the aircraft. He could feel the imprint of their softly cushioned roundness pressed against his groin in the aftermath of lovemaking. It reawakened the wanting that had hit him the moment he had seen her again. He wrenched his eyes up, but the vibrant bounce of her glorious hair made the ache of desire worse.

Damn, damn, damn! he could feel himself bulging, stretching the crotch of his jeans.
Think cold,
he commanded. If he couldn’t match Lauren’s coolness, he was a dead man. He was probably dead anyway. At the present moment, he doubted she would touch him with a barge pole. How he was going to recapture what he’d lost he didn’t know, but he had to start somewhere and he’d better get it right.

The stewardess smiled a greeting, her eyes sparking female interest at him. It irritated him. Unreasonably. Hadn’t he been instantly and strongly affected by Lauren’s physical attractions? Still was. Yet what was inside her head and heart was far more important to him. And more than anything he wanted a woman who could see and share what was in his head and heart. With honesty. Not the pretence Roxanne had given him in the beginning.

Lauren. Her openness had delighted him, enthralled him, entranced him. He followed her down the aisle the stewardess directed them to, determined to break through the barriers that now shut him out. Lauren Magee was the woman he craved in every sense there was. his other half. Or certainly the closest he’d ever come to it. He had to win her back.

She stopped by two vacant seats on the window side. A third vacant seat was directly across the aisle in the middle section of the plane. She looked at it and Michael knew it would be her choice if he didn’t do some fast manoeuvring.

“There’s some space in the overhead lockers a bit further along, Lauren,” he directed.

She glanced up and moved, intent on storing her briefcase and jacket out of the way.

Michael turned to Evan who was behind him. “Better take this seat,” he advised, steering him straight into it. “Easier to catch the drink waiter’s eye right here on the aisle.”

Evan cheerfully obliged. Lauren cast a sharp look over her shoulder, saw the fait accompli, and without a word proceeded to stow her excess belongings into a locker. Michael jammed his flight bag in beside them, then backtracked to allow her to move in to the window seat ahead of him.

She stopped by Evan. “The view over Sydney is so lovely, like a fairyland with all the lights on, Evan,” she said persuasively. “You really should take the window seat. I’ve seen it dozens of times. Besides, if I sit here, you’ll be seated right next to Michael and can talk to him more easily.”

Evan clearly wavered for a moment. Then he had the good sense to look at Michael and get the message in no uncertain terms. “No, no, I’m fine here,” he declared, waving magnanimously as he added, “You and Michael sit together.”

Done! And she knew it was done. She didn’t bother to argue. With a nod of compliance she moved to the seat allocated to her by Michael, but if she felt trapped by the situation he had engineered, she didn’t show it. Not a hint of frustration, vexation, resignation or surrender. She sat down with an air of insular dignity, fastened her seat belt, folded her hands in her lap and turned her face to the window.

He settled beside her.

She ignored his presence as steadfastly as though he didn’t exist.

He had to strike now, Michael decided, before she put the headphones on and blocked her hearing.
“I apologise,” he said, his voice low, throbbing with sincerity.

There was no indication she had heard. She remained wrapped in stillness, her face obscured by her hair so he couldn’t see if there was some change of expression on it. He stared at her hands, their long elegant fingers quiescent, as withdrawn from him as the rest of her. They could be part of a marble statue, he thought, so white and lifeless, yet the memory of their warm, erotic touch set his skin tingling with the want and need to feel it again.

“What for?”

Flat words, disembodied, ejected without any physical accompaniment to reflect that she had spoken them, but they were a response. Michael’s mind went into a spin, like a roulette wheel bouncing the ball around until it stopped at what he hoped was a winning number.

“For not trusting what I’d felt with you.”

That was the core of it. She hadn’t trusted it, either, letting Roxanne colour her natural response to him, cutting him off without even granting him a fair hearing. A sense of injustice welled up, rekindling the frustration and fury that had fed the false image she had given him in brushing him off like the used mate of a black widow spider after she’d devoured all she wanted of him.

How could she have been so ruthless, so destructive? On the spurious strength of Roxanne’s self-serving view of him? Michael was working himself up to a fine sense of justification when
Lauren spoke, shattering any feeling of selfrighteousness.

“You judged.” Hard, implacable words, delivered without inflexion, without a trace of bending movement.

He heard the black hood of condemnation in her voice, felt the sentence of death hovering over him and instantly fought it. “You did, too, Lauren.”

A slight shake of the head. Slowly she turned to look at him. Sapphire eyes. No quarter given. “I let it go, Michael. No rancour, no nastiness, no coming after you with guns blazing.”

Guilty heat burned across his cheekbones. He’d wanted to reduce her to nothing. She’d left him feeling like nothing. But he’d had no real evidence to suggest she might play dirty with Evan. Or that she’d ever been unfaithful to her husband. That had been pure bile on his part, pumped out of the turbulent feelings she stirred with her apparent indifference to him.

“I’m sorry. What I said was unwarranted and undeserved,” he acknowledged.

“Yes, it was. It’s indicative of what I can expect from you if your desires are thwarted,” she coolly added.

“No.” The glittering scepticism in her eyes urged him to more vehement emphasis. “I swear it won’t be like that. I know better now.”

The scepticism didn’t waver. “I’m sorry. I won’t take that risk. Just let it go, Michael. Gracefully.”

She turned away and stared out the window again.

Everything in Michael rebelled against her edict. Before he could think of any effective argument against it, the in-flight intercom came on, announcing imminent departure. The stewardesses directed attention to the television screens showing the usual safety procedures in the event of various mishaps occurring. The advice floated over Michael’s head. He was facing death of a different kind, and all his concentration was bent on changing the path of his future.

As the aircraft taxied towards its take-off runway he struggled with the most compelling urge to reach across and grasp Lauren’s hand, forcing a physical link between them. Yet she might interpret it as an aggressive act, overriding her wishes. Which it was. But if it recalled and reinforced the intimacy they had known together, might it not weaken the reservations she had against him? Would touch achieve what words could not?

The last resort, he sternly told himself. He was not under extreme time pressure. If he couldn’t break through to Lauren this evening, he still had tomorrow. He would make plenty of opportunities to wear down the rigid barriers she had erected. Each moment spent with her would be an information-gathering exercise. Sooner or later he would find the key that would open her door again. In the meantime, he had to appear to respect her wishes.

The aircraft gathered speed and lifted off. The stewardess came by taking drink orders. She provided Michael with a legitimate and inoffensive
reason to draw Lauren’s attention away from the window.

“Lauren, the stewardess is asking about drinks,” he said matter-of-factly.

She turned her head, her gaze shooting straight past him. “Nothing for me, thank you.”

So much for a companionable drink, Michael thought, and echoed Evan’s order of a gin and tonic for himself. He needed something to occupy his hands and keep them out of temptation, and gin did soothe the beast inside him.

Lauren started tearing open the pocket containing the headphones.

“Is conversation with me anathema to you?” he asked.

She paused and lifted a wary gaze to his.

He gave her an appealing smile. “I promise to be civilised.”

“It won’t do any good, Michael,” she said quickly. “We’re each carrying baggage that won’t go away.”

His smile turned rueful. “Are you referring to Roxanne?”

“Amongst other things.”

“I assure you Roxanne is totally expunged from my life.”

Her eyes derided his assertion. “Feminist, saboteur, hatred.” A succinct list, delivered with deadly aim.

“I threw away that load before I bumped the drink waiter’s arm at the party.”

“Deceit,” she added, shooting at his integrity.

“I didn’t tell you about Roxanne because I wanted what happened between us to be free of prejudice. Was that unreasonable, Lauren?”

“It was wrong not to give me a choice. You chose, Michael. You should have trusted me to choose, too.”

He couldn’t answer that. Excuses were useless. She had cut straight to the heart of the matter and laid it bare for him.

“You see?” Her smile was a wry twist. “You judged. You did what suited you. And I’m sure you’ll justify it. Men like you always do.”

“Men like me?”

“That’s my baggage, Michael.” Her eyes had changed again. Bleak winter blue, dull and flat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired. I don’t want any refreshments.”

She put the headphones on, plugged into the sound system, relaxed in her seat and closed her eyes. He let it go. for now. She’d given him a lot to think about.

His mind circled around honesty and trust. It was what he wanted in a relationship. Lauren was right in saying he had denied her that. And he had justified it. He could see how wrong he had been not to let her know about Roxanne straightaway, giving her a fair chance to make up her own mind about him. He had played to his own advantage.

However, she was wrong in thinking he would keep justifying it. He was not in the habit of repeating mistakes once he had been shown where he had erred.

Doing what suited him.
Roxanne would have fed that line to Lauren until she was brainwashed with it. Roxanne twisted everything around to suit herself. It wasn’t true of him. Or was it?

Leaving Roxanne and her lies out of consideration, how had he come across to Lauren?

It had suited him not to reveal that Roxanne was his ex-wife. It had suited him to come on this trip. He had used the excuse of protecting Evan and Tasha, but the real reason was he wanted to face Lauren with what she had rejected. It had suited him to manoeuvre her into the window seat. Selfish and self-serving. That was the truth of it.

Yet the memory of their night together was the driving force behind his pursuit of her, and it wasn’t only his future happiness at stake. Lauren had been just as committed to total involvement. He had to convince her it wasn’t a mistake, for both their sakes. He had to prove he wasn’t like the men she was comparing him to in her mind.