Marriage Make-Over

‘I did get your preposterous letter,’ she said, ‘and I would appreciate it if that was the last of its kind.’

‘Fine. Don’t write rubbish and I will have no reason to refute it.’

Her first response was a slow, steadying blink as he walked past her without another glance and took his bags of groceries into the kitchen. She followed, striving to drag her treacherous gaze from the tempting sight of tanned, tensed forearm muscles as he carried the heavy load.

‘Rubbish?’ she yelled when she finally found her voice. ‘I would have you know the women I write about are all real people. Real women with real experiences and real hopes that have been dashed one too many times by men.’ She all but spat the word in his face.

He continued to unpack his groceries all but ignoring her outburst. ‘That column of yours has to be damaging. Individual women have the capacity to make up their own minds about their individual relationships. The last thing they need is some unqualified post-feminist hack spreading easy wholesale answers to serious situations.’

Kelly coughed and spluttered her way back into the conversation. ‘I would have you know that it is the most popular new column in the magazine’s history.’

He shrugged. ‘Popularity is fleeting and not something to hang your hat on. Think plaid flares. Think fluorescent socks. Need I go on?’

‘Readers love me!’

‘I thought your job was to convince your readers there was no such thing as love.’

She counted to ten in her mind. ‘No such thing as romantic, everlasting love between a man and a woman. Respect and heartfelt thanks are out there in droves and they are coming my way.’

‘Fine. You are a star. But you are also a liar.’

Steam was streaming from her ears, literally, she was certain. She could feel it heating up her scalp! ‘Me? A liar? How dare you—?’

The steam faded. She was a liar, wasn’t she? Of sorts. Nobody knew she was married. But then again she did not know if Maya was married. And to all intents and purposes she was alone. And single. But before she could tell Simon just how wrong he was, he turned on her.

‘Did you actually read my letter?’

Only a hundred times. ‘Yes,’ she said through clenched teeth.

‘And that’s why you’re here?’

‘Of course. Nothing else would possibly have dragged me here. But my editor wants me to respond to your ridiculous statements in the next column.’

Simon smiled, his beautiful mouth turning up at the sides and revealing lovely, naturally neat white teeth. Her heart leapt. She mentally slapped it down.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I look forward to hearing your response.’

‘My response, Simon, is that you can stick your letter up your—’

Simon’s sensibilities were saved by the shrill ringing of his mobile phone. He turned away and answered it. His voice switched into professional mode. After a few moments he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘It’s my broker. Won’t be a moment. Don’t go away.’ He walked out of the room, talking residuals and percentages as he went.

She had never seen him talk like that to anyone. Her Simon had been a thinker, a dreamer, not someone who lived in a museum, carried the latest in mobile phones, and had a stockbroker! And not someone who could demand her to stay with such authority that she could not help but shoot him a saucy salute behind his departing back.

After a few moments she followed, intrigued despite herself, and peeked around the corner.

He was in his bedroom and it was as sparse and flavourless as the rest of the apartment. He had already whipped off his soaked top and tossed it on a gargantuan white bed and was pulling the belt from his trousers. One glance at the broad naked shoulders and tanned buff chest on show was enough for Kelly to spring back into the dining room, her heart beating a million miles a minute and her head swimming with mixed images of Simon at twenty-one, slim and fit, to be sure, but certainly not the strapping man she had just glimpsed.

Well, several seconds of solid ogling were probably more than a glimpse…

Kelly’s self-consciousness returned in full measure. She worried that compared to her eighteen-year-old self she looked too thin, too grown up. She rushed through the bare apartment searching frantically for a mirror and had to settle for her reflection in the microwave.

She needed all the body armour she could muster. She tugged at her dress, smoothed out her hair, ran a finger under each eye to make sure her eyeliner was even. She sucked in her stomach, puffed out her minimal chest and waited for her one-time paramour to return.

He did, soon enough, wearing dry chocolate-brown trousers and a deep red shirt, untucked with the top two buttons open showing a glimpse of the enviable physique beneath, and went straight to unpacking his groceries without even a glance her way.

Even in her barely-there dress she felt hot. Hot and bothered. Yet he had barely even taken in her sexy short dress. She had not caught him checking out her legs or anything! It was plainly obvious he was not back for all that and she fought to squash the rising disappointment. So why was he back?

‘Why are you writing this column, Kelly?’

‘To pay the rent,’ she spat out. It meant infinitely more to her than that but she had no intention of letting him know the power he held by simply being on the scene.

His hands stopped shuffling for a brief moment before taking up where they left off.

‘With folks like yours I wouldn’t have thought that would be a major concern for you.’ He must have sensed the scream welling inside her as he continued. ‘Or why not stick to obituaries?’

That stifled the scream in an instant. So he had been keeping up with her career for a while. It had been months since she’d had the reward of that particular job.

‘Why write this column?’

‘Because I have the in-the-trenches experience to have real insight. With Single and Loving It! I really have something valuable to say.’

‘Which is?’

‘Love is an illusion and what the illusion promises exists in the woman’s mind alone and never in real life.’

She wondered if he too felt the words sounded rehearsed, as though she had repeated them like a mantra inside her head a thousand times before.

His glance shifted her way and held and all the body armour in the world could not have kept her safe. Kelly’s breath faltered. Her skin warmed. And her long-since-dormant libido whirred back to life. As, standing before her, his beautiful hazel eyes boring into hers, he seemed as far from an illusion as could be.

‘Do you really believe that?’ he finally asked.

Kelly swallowed. How was a woman to stand up to such focussed attention from such a man? Unless armed with the knowledge that the promise in his eyes and the tumbling feelings in her own stomach were all precursors to disillusionment, any woman would be sucked in only to be spat out at a later date. Thankfully her column was around to prepare women for just such an occasion.

‘I do believe it,’ she said, and she meant it.

Simon shook his head and several damp locks of hair flicked onto his forehead and it was all Kelly could do not to close the distance between them, reach out, and brush them away, just as she would have done all those years before. How could she expect her readers to follow her advice to disregard the very real physical sensations one experienced at times like this if she was finding it so hard?

All the more reason to be strong.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

‘This is my apartment.’

Kelly’s fingernails dug into her palms. ‘I mean why are you back? In Melbourne?’ Living barely streets away from me?

Simon turned back to his groceries and Kelly expelled the breath she had been holding. He loaded up a platter with fresh bread sticks, soft cheeses, and other trimmings and walked into the dining room. Kelly could do little but follow. He set the platter down, and pulled out a chair for her. When she remained standing, he pressed her into the seat, his achingly familiar fingers leaving warm imprints on her bare shoulders, then sat in a chair on the other side of the gleaming oval table.

‘I am back for all sorts of reasons.’

‘Being?’ she prompted. Not fair for him to grill her and expect to be let off the hook.

‘Work. Family.’

If you took that to the nth degree she would be considered family.

‘How are your family?’ she asked, deciding to take his statement literally.

‘Well, actually.’ He softened immeasurably, his secret smile once more tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘My sister is married with two kids now.’

‘Nikki or Kat?’ Wow. Neither was even dating when she had last seen them.

‘Nikki. Kat is a nanny in London.’

‘And your mother?’ Kelly knew this had always been a sore point for Simon but she had to ask. She had always truly liked Simon’s mother despite her shortfalls.

‘She’s good. Really good. Remarried and living in Sydney.’

Again? Kelly thought, wondering if that would be the fourth marriage or if she had married more times since their estrangement.

Simon grabbed a hunk of bread, lathered it in a hefty chunk of Brie and a good measure of pepper before popping it on a plate and handing it to Kelly. She stared at the food. She had not eaten this exact combination since the night of their wedding. Had he remembered or was it a fluke?

She glanced up and saw him making his own favourite with Swiss cheese and cherry tomatoes. This felt all too intimate. All too familiar. All too far from where she had imagined she would be when she’d woken up that morning.

But her poor neglected stomach rumbled in anticipation of the delicious-looking food so she bit down. It was as delicious as she remembered but the bread soon stuck in her throat as the memories that it invoked came tumbling down upon her. She placed the remaining food on the plate and wiped the telltale crumbs from her fingers.

‘How long have you been back, Simon?’

‘A little over a week.’

Her heart wrenched. It had taken him that long to contact her, and even then it had been in a most obscure manner. Despite her promises to be strong it ached to think they had once been the best of friends and here they were engaging in small talk like a pair of acquaintances.

He made no apology and did not seem even to notice the awkwardness of the situation.

‘It was a couple of weeks ago,’ he continued, ‘when I overheard several women in my office talking about this amazing new column called Single and Loving It!. Because of the column they had decided to cancel their plans to go to a nightclub that weekend and were instead going to have a few girlfriends around for a night at home.’

Kelly listened in silence to the familiar story, concentrating on his expression as he retold the tale. And where usually people would have a glimmer in their eye, as if they were sharing in some grand inside joke about the perils of singlehood, Simon watched her with a shuttered expression, all evidence of good humour gone.

‘I was about to move on until one of them said, “That Kelly Rockford is my new hero. She’s a genius. I wish she had been writing this column five years ago. Would have saved me a lot of wasted Saturday nights.” Understandably that caught my attention.’

The corner of his mouth kicked, revealing a sexy crease in his right cheek. You cannot keep a good smile down, Kelly thought, feeling her stomach warm absurdly in response.

‘I asked around, found Fresh, and saw not genius but sadness. I saw not the wit and vivacity of the Kelly Rockford I had once known but hostility and bitterness that I refused to believe could come from the same woman. Even when your picture appeared above your byline, I had to come and see for myself in order to believe it was really you.’

He stopped talking and looked her over. Kelly straightened up under the meticulous inspection.

‘You’ve changed, Kell.’

The shortening of her name flowed over her like the endearment it once had been. She shook it off.

‘Not surprising,’ she scoffed, ‘considering it has been five years.’

‘Still…’ His voice trailed off.

Still what? she ached to ask. Still you expected me to be the bubbly bundle of fun and fancy I was at eighteen. Well, you’re the one who eradicated that girl, my friend.

‘Am I to take it that after five years of nothing, after five years of not having the courtesy to let me know if you were dead or alive, you are only now back simply to assure yourself that I have not become all bitter and twisted?’

After five years of my not knowing if you were healthy and happy. If you had moved on to other relationships. Or if you still missed me so much it physically hurt.

His mouth opened. He had something to say, Kelly was sure of it. She waited in agonising anticipation for answers to questions that had plagued her for years. But he must have thought better of it and clammed his mouth shut. And that was enough for Kelly to regain her purpose. She gathered up every last ounce of courage and laid it on the line.

‘Well, for whatever reason you are here, you are here. And we have managed to avoid talking about this since we haven’t, well, talked in the last five years. But this is just ridiculous. We really can’t go on being married.’

His warm eyes glossed over so fast, so icy cold, it made her shiver. ‘Is there someone else you wish to be married to?’ he asked. He took a slow bite of his bread but his gaze held fast to hers.

‘No!’ Kelly shook her head manically and flapped her hands in front of her face.

Simon’s smile warmed up again, this time even enough to showcase a sexy crease on each cheek and she cringed.

Hmm. Probably could have made that ‘no’ less emphatic.

‘So what’s the rush?’ he asked, his expression a model of nonchalance.

If my readers find out I am married, my life as I know it is all over! That’s the rush!

‘Five years is hardly a rush. And considering I could not find you for the first three, that shortens the time span a little.’

The last of the cool in his eyes melted. ‘You looked for me?’

‘What do you think I did? Do you think I just said, “Oh, well, my husband has disappeared, but them’s the breaks, so may as well get on with the rest of my life”?’

Still he was silent, yet he seemed to be basking in the knowledge that she had cared enough to search. And it made Kelly furious. The hurt, the confusion, and the loss she had spent five years overcoming swarmed in on her all over again.

‘Well, think again, boyo. You may have enjoyed running off to the other side of the country and reinventing yourself into this!’ She flicked a hand around the cool apartment. ‘But I was left here to face my family and try to explain why the man I had spent my life defending had done the very thing they had always warned me he would do.’

The warmth in Simon’s eyes switched to a burning flame. ‘I bet they relished the fact.’

Kelly jumped to her feet and slammed her hands on the table.

‘Of course they did! You proved them right. What about proving me right? What about proving yourself right?’

‘I think I have done that, don’t you?’

‘No. Unless all this is some sort of charade, you have sold out. But somehow I don’t think it is. I would put money on the fact you would have more suits in your closet than old jeans, and if so you have become what they wanted you to be. Not what I loved you for being.’ Her voice finally cracked. The cool Kelly act was fast coming apart at the seams.

Simon slid to his feet and was around her side of the table in a second. His hands taking a tight hold on her upper arms were the only things keeping her upright.

She wished he would stop looking at her like that. As if he was so sure he was right. As if he had all the answers and all she had to do was surrender to them. His beautiful hazel eyes burned deep into her mind.

‘I have become what you always knew I would be, Kelly. I am wealthy. I am successful. Just as you always predicted.’

And then she realised he was only centimetres away. Not the miles and miles he had been for so very long. Centimetres could so easily become millimetres and then she would be enfolded in his strong arms. But she knew, from his fervid objection to what she had become, if he even sensed what she was feeling he would be appalled by the very thought.

It is all just an echo, she reminded herself, an echo of bygone desire. A mirage, a shimmering memory that belongs where it came from. In the past. He is here to ease his own guilt, no other reason.

Kelly’s strength returned and she pulled away, rubbing away the tingle in her arms where he had held her. Her head swam. She had to get away. Away from the stifling apartment. Away from him.

‘No, Simon, you are wrong. What I wanted was for you to do whatever you felt you had to do, but with me at your side. But that is all water under the bridge now. Now I want a divorce. I’ll send you the papers.’

She turned and walked to the front door, her legs all but turning to jelly beneath her. As she closed the door she looked his way one more time and her heart lurched in her chest as she watched him slump into the dining-room chair and lower his head into his hands.

Kelly felt more herself when her home, St Kilda Storeys, an old, no-frills apartment building located a block from the beach, came into view. Her parents thought it a rundown hovel but Kelly preferred to think it had loads of character. Add to that the fantastic location, and the dozen fabulous young neighbours, on her meagre budget she could not have hoped for better.

When Kelly opened her top-floor apartment door her tiny dog, Minky, bounded into her waiting arms.

‘Hey, baby doll,’ Kelly cooed. ‘Gracie not home?’ she asked the diddering dog.

Kelly called out, but her flatmate must have left already. She worked shifts at the Crown Casino as a croupier in the high rollers room so they crossed paths between shifts and on weekends, which worked well for both and gave Minky plenty of company.

But right then Kelly wished her little-seen flatmate were home. She needed a friendly ear. She kept Minky with her and walked back down the stairs until she reached the ground-floor apartment.

She knocked on the door. Her other Saturday Night Cocktails buddy, the young owner of the St Kilda Storeys apartment block, and sometime stylist for Fresh, classy Cara, opened up chewing on a slice of honey-covered toast. Kelly eyed the food and salivated. Minky did the same.

Cara happily fed them both. And when she heard the good news, she threw her arms around Kelly, careful to keep her sticky, crumby fingers away from her friend. ‘A contracted columnist at Fresh. Didn’t I tell you the two of you were made for each other?’

‘So I can get you the rent in a week if you can wait.’

Cara fluffed a hand across her face. ‘Next week’s fine. Don’t worry about it. So Single and Loving It! is here to stay. But can you do it? Is there enough vitriol in that tiny frame of yours to castigate men infinitum?’

Kelly thought back to Simon’s self-righteous certainty and nodded. ‘You bet. With more and more ammunition coming my way on a daily basis.’

‘Ooh, that sounds juicy. What happened?’

‘Ran into an ex today.’ Close enough. ‘Wasn’t fun. But did make me feel that much more right about sending my ideas and resolutions out into the world for other women to emulate.’

‘How not fun? Details, darlin’.’

How was it not fun? They had been fairly polite. They had even broken bread together. It had all been terribly civilised. And that was where the fun was lost. In the past they had been beyond passionate. Whether clawing at each other’s throats or at each other’s clothes, the one thing they had never been was civilised.

‘Saving it for the column.’

‘Thank God names must be changed to protect the innocent or I have a feeling this guy would be pulp by the time you were finished with him.’

And Kelly smiled. Simon had blown that one. By writing to her and begging a response, there would be no need for protecting the innocent. Or the guilty as the case might be.

‘Cocktails Saturday night?’ Cara asked.

‘Always,’ Kelly promised, planting a kiss on her friend’s cheek. ‘Thanks for the ear, Cara. I’d better go.’

Kelly had a column to map out and the ideas were flowing thick and fast.

CHAPTER THREE

KELLYISM:

YEARNING FOR A MAN WITH WHOM TO SPEND YOUR TIME?

GET A HOBBY INSTEAD!

BY SIX the next morning Kelly was up at the front of her kickboxing class. She had almost become used to picturing her mother’s disappointed face on the punching bag and to have Simon’s face there in its place felt like a huge step backwards.

But it was enough to put extra vigour into her kick. She spun on her left heel and her right foot caught the huge bag precisely in the centre, sending a satisfying zing up her leg.

The capability to kick the sense out of a perfectly docile leather bag had been her saviour and a much more affordable option than the therapy her mother had offered to pay for. Twice a week for five years had kept her fit and kept her mind clear. You couldn’t mope and achieve the addictive endorphin rush at the same time, so she’d had to give up one for the other.

Kelly jogged on the spot, working up a sweat and a new appetite to take on Simon’s assertions head-on. The more ammunition she had, the better her column would be. She had found at least one wonderful woman to feature this week, and she knew that Simon’s insensitivity to the delicate nature of a woman’s heart would be obvious in comparison.

Kelly slowed to a light bounce. Class was over. But a few last-minute punches to a point on the bag about six feet off the ground did not go astray.

Kelly hopped off the tram and walked the block to the melon-coloured two-storey stuccoed building that held the offices of Fresh magazine. It was her first full day as a real staff writer at Fresh.

The world was a good place. One or two minor irritations could be brushed over as long as she had the job of her dreams, a forum from which she could spread the word. Be fearless. Be resolute. Be heard. And whatever else, be who you have to be.

She pushed open the glass doors that led to the front reception and all but gasped as she saw Simon leaning on the reception desk.

It was bad enough having to face him in his apartment when she’d had time to prepare herself, but him showing up in her place of work shocked the hell out of her. Besides, he was dressed down in a form-fitting white T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, and he looked unbelievable. It was too much to cope with all at once.

Upon Kelly’s arrival, Judy, the receptionist, stopped batting her eyelashes at Simon at once, leapt from her swivel chair and disappeared into the office behind her.

‘What are you doing here?’ Kelly snapped, her eyes darting about the open space to see if anyone was within hearing distance. ‘Apart from flirting with my coworkers, that is?’

Simon’s eyes narrowed and Kelly wished she had learnt the ability to keep her trap shut. She was learning that telling it as it was in print was one thing, but thinking before speaking could not be overrated.

‘We had not finished our conversation when you ran off yesterday,’ Simon said.

‘I did not run off. I left. Something you should recognise since you are such an expert at it.’

He didn’t even blanch. Pity. Standing there before her all manly and gorgeous, with all that healthy glowing tan, was entirely too disconcerting.

‘Besides, I had said all I wished to say to you.’ Kelly tilted her nose in the air and walked past Simon on stiff legs. ‘Now please leave. Anything else you have to say can be said through a lawyer.’

Simon shot out a hand and took Kelly by the arm. His hand was warm beneath the steely strength, and it felt so deliciously familiar. Familiar. She looked down at his hand. It was large and square, with clean clipped fingernails. But it was not soft like that of a man who worked in an office all day. It was lightly roughened from outdoor work as it always had been. So, beneath the city-worker exterior there were hints of the Simon who had lived his life in the sunshine, who did not stop working on his beloved boats until the weak moonlight made it impossible.