The Best Man for the Job

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‘Oh.’ Celia frowned. ‘When did you sleep?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You must be tired.’

Oddly enough he wasn’t in the least bit tired. Right now he was about as awake and alert as he’d ever been. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve gone twenty-four hours and I doubt it’ll be the last.’

‘You’re very loyal.’

‘Dan’s my best friend. Why wouldn’t I be?’

She shrugged and carried on looking at a point in the distance so that, he assumed, she didn’t have to look at him. ‘Well, you know...’

Something that felt a bit like hurt stabbed him in the chest but he dismissed it because he didn’t do hurt. ‘Maybe I’m not everything you think I am,’ he said quietly.

She swivelled her gaze back to his and sighed. ‘Maybe you aren’t.’

‘Just what did I do, Celia?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why the hatred?’

‘I don’t hate you.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘No? Seems that way to me. You never pass up an opportunity to have a go at me. You judge me and find me lacking. Every time we meet. Every single time. So what I want to know is, what did I ever do to earn your disdain?’

She frowned, then smiled faintly. ‘I’ve just told you about my father’s relentless philandering and the misery it caused,’ she said with a mildness that he didn’t believe for a second. ‘Can’t you work it out?’

Ah, so it boiled down to the women he went out with. As he’d always suspected. But he wasn’t going to accept it. It simply wasn’t a good enough reason to justify her attitude towards him.

‘Yes, I date a lot of women,’ he said, keeping his voice steady and devoid of any of the annoyance he felt. ‘But so what? All of them are over the age of consent. I don’t break up marriages and I don’t hurt anyone. So is that really what it’s all been about? Because if it is, to be honest I find it pretty pathetic.’ He stopped. Frowned. ‘And frankly why do you even care what I do?’

Celia stared at him, her mouth opening then closing. She ran a hand through her hair. Took a breath and blew it out slowly. Then she nodded, lifted her chin a little and said, ‘OK, you know what, you’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s not just that.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’

‘Well, how about you trying to get me into bed for a bet?’ she said flatly. ‘Is that a reasonable enough excuse for you?’

Marcus stared at her, the distant sounds of chatter and music over the wall fading further as all his focus zoomed in on the woman standing in front of him, looking at him in challenge, cross, all fired up and maybe a bit hurt.

‘What?’ he managed. What bet? What the hell was she talking about?

‘The bet, Marcus,’ she said witheringly, folding her arms beneath her breasts and drawing his attention to her chest for a second. ‘You set about seducing me for a bet.’

As he dragged his gaze up to the flush on her face her words filtered through the haze of desire that filled his head and he began to reel. ‘That’s what’s been bothering you all these years?’ he said, barely able to believe it. ‘That’s what’s been behind the insults, the sarcastic comments and the endless judgement?’

She nodded. Shrugged. ‘I know it sounds pathetic but that kind of thing can make an impression on a sixteen-year-old girl.’

An impression that lasted quite a bit longer than adolescence by the looks of it, he thought, rubbing a hand along his jaw as he gave himself a quick mental shake to clear his head. ‘You should have told me.’

‘When exactly?’

‘Any point in the last fifteen years would have been good.’

She let out a sharp laugh. ‘Right. Because that wouldn’t have been embarrassing.’ She tilted her head, her chin still up and her expression still challenging. ‘In any case, why should I have told you?’

‘Because I’d have told you that there wasn’t a bet.’

She frowned. ‘What?’

‘There wasn’t a bet.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Really. I swear.’

She stared at him and the seconds ticked by as she absorbed the truth of it. ‘Then why did you say there was?’

Marcus inwardly winced at the memory of his arrogant, reckless, out-of-control and hurting teenage self. ‘Bravado.’

‘Bravado?’

‘I was eighteen. Thought I knew it all. When you pushed me away it stung. Battered my pride. It hadn’t happened before.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said dryly.

‘Your knock-back hit me hard.’

‘I find that difficult to believe.’

‘Believe it.’

‘You called me a prick-tease.’

Marcus flinched. Had he? Not his finest moment, but then there hadn’t been many fine moments at that point in his life. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted you badly. You seemed to want me equally badly. And then you didn’t. One minute you were all over me, the next you basically told me to get off you and then shot out through the door.’

‘It wasn’t entirely like that.’

‘No? Then what was it like? Why did you stop me that night?’

‘I was a virgin. I got carried away. And then I suddenly realised I didn’t want to lose my virginity to someone who’d probably be in bed with someone else the following night.’

‘I might not have been.’

Celia rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, sure.’

And actually, there was no point denying it, she might well be right. At eighteen, with the death of his father six months before and his mother’s all-consuming grief that had left no room for a son who’d been equally devastated, and ultimately no room for life, he’d been off the rails for a while. The night of Dan’s eighteenth birthday party, which had fallen on the anniversary of the date his father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he’d been on a mission to self-destruct, and he hadn’t cared who’d got caught up in the process. In retrospect Celia had had a lucky escape. ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know.’

‘I guess we won’t.’

‘I was pretty keen on you, though,’ he said reflectively.

‘Were you?’

‘Yup. Even though you were Dan’s sister and therefore strictly off-limits.’

‘Not that off-limits,’ she said tartly. ‘If I hadn’t put a stop to things we’d have ended up in bed.’

‘No, well, I didn’t have many scruples back then.’ As evinced by the fact that following Celia’s rejection he hadn’t wasted any time in finding someone else to keep him company that night.

‘And you do now?’

‘A few. And you know something else?’ he said, taking the fact that she was still standing there, listening, as an encouraging sign.

‘What?’

‘Despite everything that’s happened between us over the years it turns out I still am pretty keen on you.’

FOUR

Just when Celia didn’t think she could take any more shocks to the system, bam, there was another one.

She was still trying to get her head around the fact that Marcus thought that what she’d achieved with her career was impressive. That she’d got quite a large part of him badly, badly wrong. That there’d never been a bet and the enormity of what that meant. That ever since that night her attitude towards him—and men in general—had been fuelled by one tiny misunderstanding and could have been so very different if teenage angst hadn’t got in the way.