The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! (14 page)

Harry's forkful
of rice paused halfway to his mouth. ‘I want to make a joke, but I'm worried you're serious.'

‘I am,' Izzy said, polishing off the last of her spring rolls. ‘My only aspirations as a kid were to get to adulthood.'

He blinked at her. ‘What the hell happened to you?'

‘You've never grown up in a housing estate, obviously,' she joked. ‘They're pretty rough. At least ours was. But that's not what I meant. When I was a kid I didn't want to be a doctor or a scientist or a vet. I just wanted to be of age so that I could make my own money and my own decisions. Get a steady job, go to a busy office, buy clothes from a regular shop. Have a fridge full of food on the safe side of its use-by date.'

She'd started on her goal as soon as the law said she could get a job. Cleaning the kitchen at a greasy fast-food outlet. Her parents thought she'd been taken over by aliens with her burning desire to work. They'd grown so used to going without.

Yet she saw, every day, that
without
didn't apply to some families. And she wanted to be in those families. The ones who bought the burgers she scraped the hotplates for.

A deep frown marred Harry's pretty face.

Yeah. Poverty wasn't the most delicate aprèsdinner topic.

‘Were there no good moments at all?'

‘Of course. Heaps of them. I turned out okay, I think.'

His frown deepened.

‘What?'

‘I'm trying to work out what that angry edge is in your voice. You seem pretty accepting of your childhood.'

It wasn't anger. And it wasn't about her childhood. It was much, much more recent.

‘It was what it was, Harry. I can't change it.'

Wow. Didn't that sound thoroughly Zen? He didn't know it had taken her years to get to that
happy place. Assuming this was happy. And if it was, shouldn't she feel…happier?

‘Would you want to change it? If you could?'

‘Our childhoods are what make us, don't you think? If I'd had everything handed to me on a platter I might have grown up lacking initiative.'

The frown wasn't shifting tonight, obviously. ‘Is that what you think wealth automatically makes a person?'

‘Well…not automatically, perhaps. But if you've never had to reach for something why would you bother stretching for anything? That has to change how a person forms. On the inside…' Her words faltered as she finally understood his expression. ‘You disagree?'

‘People with money still have plenty to reach for.'

‘Like what?'

And with those two little words she got the distinct impression she'd disappointed him. But he masked it well.

‘Happiness. Fulfilment. Love.'

‘Important things,' she admitted. ‘But luxuries compared to ensuring food on the table and heat in your house.'

‘I'd consider love to be as basic a human need as food and warmth.'

The sincerity in his gaze pinned her against the wall behind her. ‘Maybe. But you can live without love.'

Unlike food. Unlike shelter.

And she knew that to be fact.

His eyes didn't waver. ‘Spoken like someone who had an abundance of love in her life.'

Instantly the old guilt rushed back in, heavy and uncomfortable. It was true. She'd been the centre of her parents' world.

If she hadn't, she wouldn't feel as much shame.

‘Past tense.'

His handsome face folded. ‘I'm sorry. Did you lose them?'

Silence ticked on as she stared at her crumpled napkin. Finally she raised her gaze and found no judgement at all in his. Just curiosity.

‘They lost me, really.'

Yeah, he didn't understand. How could he? She barely understood it.

‘I haven't been in touch as much as I'd like,' she tried to clarify.

‘Why not?'

Such a simple question. Like picking up a phone and dialling it.

Simple.

Except when it wasn't.

‘Our conversations are…'
Empty. Awful. Laden.
‘…uncomfortable. They're so disappointed by my absence.' So hurt by it. ‘And that just makes the next absence longer.'

Vicious cycle.

He stared at her, wordless, until she couldn't stand the thickness of it. She tossed back her hair. ‘I'm giving you a run for your money on the dysfunctional parent stakes, huh?'

Indecision brawled in his gaze until he finally spoke.

‘My school offered a residential programme for the boys of pastoral families from across the state and families from south-east Asia. They all flew in at the start of term and went home at the end.'

‘How far did you fly?'

‘My house was one suburb over. And I attended camps during much of the school holidays.'

Oh.
‘No time at home at all?'

‘A few days each holiday.'

‘So, when did you see your family?' She hesitated to even ask.

‘My sisters all went to the neighbouring girls' day school so we'd hunt each other out at lunch
breaks and before they went home. Talk through the fence. My mother I mostly saw during holidays. My father would sometimes be home. Now and again one or other of them would come to school to see me.'

From all of one suburb away. Jeez…

‘Wait. Your sisters got to go home in the evening and you didn't?'

‘Dad thought it would be character forming. And he'd gone to boarding school his whole life.'

‘How old were you when you started?'

‘Primary school.'

‘That must have been hard.' She knew it was. Because Poppy had been young, too, and she'd heard her stories of nights curled up under her bed weeping.

‘We all got by.' He shrugged. ‘It was a good school. And it had great security.'

That was a weird thing to focus on, surely? ‘Clearly it made you very independent.' Enough to move across the world at the earliest opportunity.

‘I'm sure that was the point. I suspect my father feared I'd be raised as one of the girls if I stayed at home.'

‘How many sisters did you say you had?'

His eyes shifted left briefly. ‘I didn't. A few.'

She gave him her best Tori look. ‘So many you can't remember, exactly?'

‘What difference does it make?'

‘It doesn't make a
difference
, Harry. It makes a
conversation.
' But she wasn't going to force him to unwrap the mystery parcel that was Harry Mitchell. He'd start peeling when he was ready.

A pretty waitress came and cleared their empty entrée dishes away on a shy smile. Izzy couldn't help herself. She stacked them and moved the cutlery to the top. The woman bowed and thanked her in a small voice.

‘Listen, Harry, I'm sorry if I offended you. I was speaking generally about people with money.'

The tension didn't dissipate any. ‘Why would I be offended?'

‘Expensive boarding school. Absent parents. Flitting off to London to work. I'm guessing you weren't raised by delicatessen owners.'

His careful smile belied the tension in the rest of his face. ‘It's Australia, Iz. Land of hard work and opportunity. A delicatessen owner is likely to be just as rich as a real-estate mogul.'

She took a breath. ‘Is that what your father was? A mogul?'

Something indefinable blazed in his eyes.
Some desire she couldn't quite put her finger on. But he glanced at the waitress, who refreshed their drinks and when they returned to hers they were empty again.

‘You seem very interested in my net worth,' he said easily. ‘First you grill me back in the apartment, now this. What's with that?'

Grill?
‘I'm not—'

‘And for someone who apparently doesn't have a lot of time for the wealthy you've sure gone out of your way to emulate them.'

She pressed her lips shut.

‘The flash clothes, the steady diet of champagne, the upmarket address…'

‘Our
upmarket
address has free-ranging rodents and I sleep in a boxroom,' she reminded him.

‘Only very recently. A turret, I believe you said, previously?'

Her parents' faces returned, large and critical, in her mind. The same unvoiced criticism alive in their faces. She shoved them away. ‘Poppy and Alex had to lose someone they loved for that flat, so it came at quite a price. Besides, is it wrong to enjoy nice things if I can afford them?'

And sell them online when she couldn't.

‘Not at all. But I think you're going to need to
pick either side of the fence on the question of the comparative merits of wealth and stick to it.'

She let her eyebrows do the talking. ‘Are you suggesting I'm a hypocrite?'

‘I'm suggesting that for someone who is so okay with her upbringing and so down on wealth you've spent a lot of time creating the trappings of it around you.'

Embarrassment flushed through her. Because of how right he was. ‘Says the man with the Thameside apartment.'

‘Hey, I've worked just as hard as you studying and building my career. The difference is I don't judge you by what you do or don't have.'

‘You're judging me now,' she challenged. ‘And finding me lacking.'

And wasn't that just a little bit too familiar?

‘It's not judgement, Iz. I'm just getting to know you.'

‘With a bit of casual character assassination?'

He studied her closely. ‘I'm sorry. I just wanted to make the point that acceptance and tolerance go both ways. Judging people by their actions not their means.'

That was what she'd been expecting of others her whole life. How could she reasonably do less?

She took a deep, long breath. ‘Look…I know I went a little bit crazy there for a while with all the spending. Everything I know about having money I learned on television. I figured that all those people telling me it wouldn't make me happy just wanted to keep more of it for themselves. I know everyone has their demons and challenges…'

Deep down somewhere, she really did know that.

Her earnest expression seemed to work a kind of magic on him and his whole body relaxed. ‘Hard to resist buying up all the things you never had, I guess.'

‘They were a great couple of years.'

His chuckle tickled somewhere left of her sternum. ‘And now?'

‘Now I'm starting to see the value in what I
do
, not what I earn.'

Not too dissimilar to what her father tried to instil in her. Except he was talking about the kind of person you were, not what you did for a living. Because…well, because he didn't have a living.

An accident driving his lorry and the nine pins in his spine had sorted that for ever.

His focus grew even more intent. ‘And that's important to you?'

‘Self-respect for the job you do every day is just as important as self-respect for the life you lead. Or the choices you make. Or the people you make relationships with.'

He nodded, as if it made perfect sense, but then pointed out, ‘Self-respect won't get you the turret back.'

She sighed. ‘The turret is occupied now, anyway.'

‘Really?'

‘Isaac. The friend of Alex's you met. Temporary, while his own place is being painted.'

A man. In
her
room. Dropping his man fluff all over her carpet.

‘You could come back to Broadmore in a heartbeat, you know that, right? We'd find you a different role. A different section. Something you could enjoy. And with a raise.'

She twisted around to face him more directly. ‘Leaving the firm was more about
me
than the job, Harry.' Despite what she'd written on his window. ‘You can't do much about fixing that.'

Except that—somehow—just being with him had started to feel a lot like fixing. Those loose, lost threads she carried around permanently
inside were beginning to twist into a stronger, surer twine.

He refilled her glass from the pitcher. ‘Here's to your four new clients, then. And the independence they represent.'

She held hers aloft. ‘And to self-respect.'

He held her eyes as his beer clanked against her glass. ‘To self-respect.'

* * *

Self-respect.

Yeah, he knew all about that. Or the desire for it, anyway. Wasn't that what being in London was all about? Earning his future instead of having it handed to him on a gilt platter? Getting inside the company he would one day be expected to lead. Getting to know the people and problems there.

The Vauxhall apartment was the price he'd paid to get here. As much a deal-breaker as the Hummer. The Broadmore heir needed a reasonable level of security and the flash apartment was a good way of ensuring he didn't end up in a share house with felons. Harry was reasonably certain that someone else on his floor was Broadmore security personnel. He had no names, just that occasional skin-tingle that said he was being watched.

It galled that he wasn't free to explain any of that to Izzy. She'd have to go on what was only partly true.

A private water taxi east to Canary Wharf and back again every day did cost money; money a normal person wouldn't waste. But, for him, the time it took to ride two underground lines all the way to work and back again or to take the chugging, endlessly stopping ferries…that was a waste. Of his time. Inefficient.

And he was all about efficiency.

Or was he just deluding himself? Was it just part of the same contempt he felt for the cash that filled his plate and padded out the place in his childhood where love should have been? It was meaningless, expendable.

Literally.

Money was the reason women flocked to him back home. Money was the reason clients flocked to him now.

It was the thing that gave him value.

Wasn't it?

Coming to London had tested that. Without his name and his father's bankrolling behind him, he'd managed to blend in a treat with everyone else in the office. Turned out he was quite unexceptional without his money. Not
bad, but nothing outstanding. Solid but not remarkable at work, good but not breathtaking at play. The women who had once flapped around Harrison Broadmore like moths were pretty much AWOL in Harry Mitchell's world. The professional fawning he'd once enjoyed also mysteriously absent.