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Ohhhhh.
Saturday. The fourteenth of February.
Not that the momentousness of that date would have entered Scott’s head. He wasn’t a Valentine’s Day kind of guy.
And in this instance it was a moot point. Because her sister Shay, and Shay’s partner Rick—who were Valentine’s Day kind of people—were leaving their two gorgeous daughters with Kate while they went out for a romantic dinner.
So she should just get straight on the phone and tell Scott she was busy on Saturday. No need to embarrass herself by mentioning Valentine’s Day. She didn’t want him to think she was angling for something other than sex. Something like… Well, something Valentine-ish.
Even if she had a lump in her throat about the whole stupid day.
A lump so big it was physically impossible to get a word out of her clogged-up throat. Which made a phone call impossible.
Okay, she would email.
Got your note, Scott.
I’m babysitting my nieces, Maeve and Molly, on Saturday night. I’m free Sunday if that suits?
Kate
There. Cool, businesslike. Contract-worthy.
Three hours later, back came a two-word response: No problem.
And Kate released a big, sighing breath.
Right.
Good.
Good…right?
Because Valentine’s Day actually sucked. If Kate had a dollar for every now-divorced couple who’d managed either their proposal or their actual wedding on February the fourteenth, she’d be retired already! Valentine’s Day was all about spending too much on wilted roses and eating overpriced restaurant dinners.
Stupid.
The worst possible day for scheduling a date with a sex-only partner.
Valentine’s Day? As if!
Kate went to her kitchen, looked again at the calendar stuck on her fridge.
Yep, there it was. February the fourteenth. With a nice big red heart on it, courtesy of whoever printed stupid refrigerator calendars. A big red heart. A love heart.
And, to her absolute horror, Kate’s eyes filled with tears.
Kate had a hectic day of meetings, followed by a catch-up with the girls for drinks after work, and by the time she clambered into bed that night, she was sure she was over the whole weepy Valentine’s Day phenomenon that had blindsided her.
So when she woke on Saturday morning to find that depression had settled over her like a damp quilt, she went the whole tortured-groan route. What had happened to her brain during that awards dinner on Thursday night to have resulted in her losing all her common sense?
Sex-only partners did not celebrate Valentine’s Day. Sex-only partners scheduled sex on days like the fifteenth of February. A perfectly legitimate, much more appropriate day for having no-strings sex with guys who left two-word notes on your kitchen counter.
A two-word note. And a two-word email. That encapsulated her relationship with Scott very nicely—two words: sex contract.
Imbued with a burst of damn your eyes energy, Kate got out of bed and on the spot decided to clean her apartment. An activity that was not some kind of displacement therapy twisted up in her need to wash that man right out of her hair, but a simple household activity. A spring clean—just in summer.
She got underway with gusto.
Gusto that lasted approximately fifteen minutes.
Which was how long it took for the first memory to sneak in.
Kate was wiping down the dining table—and there in her head was the memory of that first night… Scott reaching across to hold her breast…and then the whole dining chair thing. Ohhhhhhh.
It was like a switch, throwing open the floodgates—because the memories started pouring in, room by room, after that. Plumping up the couch cushions—that night when he’d thrown the cushions off and dragged her on top of him… Cleaning out the fridge—Scott, coming up behind her, hands all over her… Bathroom—three separate shower scenes.
Her bedroom—holy hell. So vivid it was painful. And the most painful of all that last time… Scott drawing her gently down onto the bed…kissing her as if he wanted them to merge.
Okay, enough cleaning.
She hurried to the laundry to dump the housekeeping paraphernalia, only to be hit by another memory. Oh. My. God. Had she—? Yes, she had! She’d had sex with Scott Knight in every single room of her apartment—including the damned laundry room! What normal person had sex in the laundry room? Sitting on top of the washing machine, with the vibrations adding a little extra hum to proceedings as you wrapped your legs around—
Arrrggghh.
She had to get out of the apartment. Maybe even sell the apartment.
She took a cold shower, changed into I am not in need of antidepressants clothes and hurried out of the building.
The boats were what she needed. Up close and personal. Escape. So she crossed the road to the marina and breathed out a sigh of relief as she reached the jetty. The boats would float her stress away as they always did—on a tide of dreams. Adventure. Possibilities.
One day she would hire a sailing instructor and she would learn… She would learn…
Uh-oh.
Her eyes darted from yacht to yacht…and on every deck she could picture Scott Knight eight years ago, young and free, teaching people to sail. Scott as he was now, teaching her to sail.
One of those now-familiar tortured groans was ripped out of her and she turned her back on the boats.
Coffee—she needed coffee.
She hurried to the marina cafe and was horrified when Dean the barista’s eyes popped at her as if she was a crazy person. ‘You okay, Kate?’
What the hell did she look like?
‘Fine, fine, fine,’ she said reassuringly—before realising that two more ‘fines’ than were strictly necessary did not denote ‘fine’. ‘I just need coffee, Dean.’
‘Really? Because you seem a little wired.’
Forced smile. ‘Really, Dean. Just the coffee.’ Subtext: Give me the damned coffee and shut up.
But as she took her coffee to one of the tables and sipped, Dean kept giving her concerned glances from behind the coffee machine. As if she had a neon sign flashing on her forehead: Beware of woman losing her marbles. Thank heaven her coffee of choice was a nice little macchiato. If she’d had to put up with a cappuccino’s worth of Are you okay? looks she might have gone over and slapped Dean!
As it was, she could chug it down quickly and flee back to her apartment. Where she would look up the official definition of ‘pathetic’! Just to be sure she wasn’t.
Fifteen minutes later she had the dictionary open, her finger running down the column…paternalism…paternity…paternoster…
Aha!
Pathetic: arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness.
In other words, Kate Cleary: sexless on Valentine’s Day. The usually imperturbable Dean, the barista, had instantly clocked her out-of-character vulnerability. And she didn’t need a dictionary to know that she was arousing pity—in herself!
How very…well, pathetic.
Although at least she could dispute the ‘sad’ part of the definition. Because she was not sad. She was sexually frustrated! Completely different from sad. Not that two whole nights without sex was going to kill her. She’d gone way longer than two nights before! Waaaaaay longer. She wasn’t a nymphomaniac! Or…hell! Was she a nymphomaniac?
Nylon…nymph…nymphalid…nymphette… Nymphette? Good Lord—nymphette? Nympholepsy…
Nymphomaniac: a woman who has abnormally excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire.
Ohhh, crap. Maybe she was a nymphomaniac. At her age! That was just…sad.
Oh, God! Sad!
She was a fully-fledged pathetic nymphomaniac.
Kate fled to the terrace—the only place in the apartment she hadn’t had sex with Scott. And the only reason she hadn’t had sex with him on the terrace was because exhibitionism wasn’t exactly his ‘thing’. And, even though it wasn’t her ‘thing’ either, the realisation that she probably would have gone there, in full view of any passersby, flashed through her mind and shocked her.
Depraved pathetic nymphomaniac! That was her. And it was Scott Knight’s fault. Because she’d never been this desperate for sex in her whole life.
And now she wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the view from her terrace, because one quick look at the boats confirmed that Scott was now firmly entrenched as part of her escape daydream.
When the intercom finally buzzed that evening and she heard her sister’s calm voice, she almost cried with relief.
Her family always anchored her. And you had to get it together when you had two children to entertain.
When Shay and Rick had left she pushed the coffee table out of the way so the girls could take up their preferred positions on the rug—seven-year-old Maeve leaning back against the base of the couch, engrossed in a book about cake and cookie decorating, and five-year-old Molly stretched out on her stomach, leaning on an elbow and drawing her version of a fairy house in her sketchbook.
Kate was just about to pick up the phone to order pizza—the girls’ favourite meal—when the intercom buzzed again. Shay and Rick should be sipping champagne at the restaurant and surely could have telephoned if they were having a last-minute panic—but nobody needed to tell a family lawyer that parents could be irrational!
She pushed the ‘talk’ button. ‘Yes, Shay?’ she said with an exasperated laugh.
‘Um…nope. It’s me, Kate.’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ude699323-210e-5ea0-b3a7-7fc68b14d887)
SCOTT.
Kate’s vocal cords froze. God help me, God help me, God help me.
‘Kate? Come on—buzz me up. My arms are going to fall off in a minute.’
Kate buzzed the door and then just stared at it, paralysed.
Something was swelling in her chest—a mixture of joy and yearning and uncertainty. What did it mean that he’d come when she’d told him not to? He shouldn’t be doing this. She was glad he was here. No, she wasn’t—because they had rules. But it was Valentine’s Day. No, that meant nothing. She couldn’t let him get away with breaking the rules. No matter how glad she was that he was doing it.
Mmm-hmm. She sure was making a lot of sense!
She heard Scott’s voice vibrating through her door like a tuning fork. That disarmingly lazy drawl, addressed to some stranger. A laugh. Yep—he’d hooked a new fan in under a minute.
She rested her palms against the door, could almost feel him through it.
Breathe. Just breathe.
One knock.
Breathe!
She opened the door and Scott stepped over the threshold as though he owned the place.
‘What are you doing here?’ she managed to get out.
‘Why wouldn’t I be here?’
He handed her two bottles of wine—a white and a red—and carried a six-pack of beer and a paper bag containing who knew what into the kitchen.
Kate followed him, put the red wine on the counter, the white wine and beer in the fridge.
‘You can’t just buzz the intercom whenever you feel like it,’ she said, in her Don’t disturb the children voice.
Scott shrugged. ‘If the intercom annoys you, give me a key.’
Which, of course, was not the point. ‘I am not giving you a key.’
Another one of those shrugs of his. ‘Then it’s the intercom.’
‘You can’t stay,’ she said. ‘I’m just about to order pizza.’
‘I love pizza.’
‘Not for you, Scott. You shouldn’t be here. I told you I was babysitting Maeve and Molly tonight.’
‘And I emailed you back to say that wasn’t a problem.’
‘That wasn’t—? I mean… Huh?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Were you trying to tell me not to come? Tsk, tsk, Kate—you have to be more specific, in that case. Lawyers shouldn’t be leaving loopholes. So, to be clear…it’s not a problem that you’re babysitting tonight, which is why I’m here. And, yes, Sunday is fine too.’
