Kiss Don’t Tell

‘Sarah, stop!’

Sarah stopped.

‘Draw breath, Sarah!’

Sarah, obligingly, drew breath. And then: ‘Whew, okay!’ she said more calmly. ‘So this morning, I popped into Mum’s for coffee, and I was talking to her about something that had nothing to do with Lane, something completely different, but she knew—’

‘She wormed the real story out of you the way she always does.’

‘Ha ha ha! I was going to say that she knew there was something seriously bothering me and …’ She threw up her hands. ‘And yes, all right, she wormed the story out of me. And I was glad, too, because she had the perfect solution. Only now, because you couldn’t do one simple thing, it’s turned out to be not so perfect after all.’

‘If you’d told me it was Mum’s idea, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.’

‘Which of course is why I didn’t tell you.’

‘And now I’m stuck in the hell of being pimped out not only by my sister but by my own mother as well! It’s fucking disgusting, Sarah.’

‘Language!’

‘You are on such thin ice, I suggest you step carefully with the “Language” stuff.’

‘Then perhaps I’ll just remind you, again, that you were supposed to talk Lane out of it. That was the basis of Mum’s suggestion. It was all supposed to be over and done with tonight. And let me tell you, I have no idea what Erica’s going to expect you to do when she gets back.’

‘So you and Mum and Erica-whoever-the-hell-she-is—’

‘Erica Wilder.’

‘—are basically a coven of fucking witches standing over a cauldron and controlling my moves. And do not say “Language!” to me, or I will pick you up bodily and throw you out of this fucking house.’

‘I weigh more than you think.’

‘You weigh about as much as a half-starved sparrow but every gram is packed with pure evil when you get a plan in your head.’

‘Sheesh, Adam, you signed the contract, not me!’

‘Sarah …’ Warningly.

‘How about if I promise not to discuss it with Mum again? I’ll tell her you did the job you were supposed to do, scared Lane silly, as you’d scare any girl with even half a brain let alone Lane with her one-and-a-half, and it’s all over, and her plan worked. Okay?’

‘Not okay! You know she’ll worm the truth out of you again.’

‘No she won’t. This morning was my one window of opportunity with her because tonight, Massimo raised the prospect of taking her on a Mediterranean cruise in a few weeks’ time and then home to Siena to meet his family, and now she’s not interested in anything else. She’s told me she’s going to be popping in and out of the house but staying with him until they depart. She is seriously goo-goo eyed over him, so forget getting any sense out of her for the foreseeable future.’

Adam shook his head in disgust. ‘She’s going away with Massimo before the divorce is even final?’

‘Yep,’ Sarah said, and sighed.

Adam examined his sister’s face, saw that she was blinking away an out-of-character tear, and his temper drained away. ‘Want a drink, squirt?’ he asked, all gruff, the way he always was when confronting emotion.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do,’ Sarah said.

‘Whisky?’

‘Why not?’

Adam got up to pour her a small measure of Scotch, and by the time he brought it to her, she had herself under control again.

‘How about we move you out of the granny flat while she’s gone?’ he asked. ‘Then you won’t have to deal with what I’m sure will be her new husband when they get back. If they ever get back, that is. She’s gone so far off the deep end about Italy lately I wouldn’t put it past her to move there.’

Sarah sniffed at her drink, wrinkling her nose. ‘Massimo’s okay, and I’m pretty isolated from the main house anyway.’

‘Yeah, well if he’s ever not okay, you know you only have to say the word.’

‘I think one attempt at stepfather-castration is enough for this lifetime.’

Adam poured more whisky for himself and took his seat again. ‘I castrate on a needs-must basis.’

Sarah giggled then, and reached across for his hand. She held it, then squeezed it, and Adam’s heart squeezed right along with it as he gripped her hand back. ‘I’m sorry she’s dumping Bertie,’ he said. ‘I know how much you love him.’

‘He’s the only decent step-parent in the bunch. I just wish I knew what she thinks is missing. Not that Dad’s any better. What are they looking for, Adam, and why can’t they find it?’

‘They’re looking for the same thing you keep looking for. Perfect love. And they can’t find it for the same reason you can’t find it—because it doesn’t exist.’

‘What if it does exist?’

‘Then we obviously don’t carry the gene for it—giving or receiving.’

Silence, and then Sarah sighed again and released his hand. ‘So okay, let’s talk about how we extricate you from the thing with Lane.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I can’t be extricated.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘I signed a contract, Sarah.’

‘Yes, but it’s not legally binding. It can’t be. It’s a sex contract. Like Fifty Shades of Grey. They’re not enforceable.’

‘It is not like Fifty Shades of Grey. Jesus, Sarah! Do you really think I have a red room?’

‘So you’ve read Fifty Shades have you?’

‘No I bloody well have not, but I haven’t been living under a rock, you know.’

‘Anyway, how would I know whether or not you have a red room?’

‘Because you’ve snooped all over this house, that’s how! And that’s not the point, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether the contract is legally enforceable or not. I signed and that’s it. You know how I feel about commitments. If you make them, you keep them.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. Which is why you don’t make them to women, as you’ve been at pains to point out ever since you hit puberty. So I just can’t work out why you did it. I mean Lane is a woman, isn’t she?’

Why had he done it? It was a question Adam had been asking himself ever since signing on the dotted line. He didn’t like the only answer he’d come up with: that Lane’s particular combination of defencelessness and intractability had goaded the self-control and common sense right out of him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to admit such a thing to his sister.

‘This isn’t a commitment to a woman—not as such,’ he said. ‘It’s a paid business proposition.’ Which was the truth—what was between him and Lane Davis was nothing like a normal relationship—but damn if he didn’t sound like a snake oil salesman saying it.

‘“Paid business proposition”?’ Sarah scoffed. ‘As if you need either the money or the proposition!’

‘And anyway, she’s more ice cube than woman.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Brr.’

‘Not funny.’

Another over-the-top shiver. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘As it happens Lane’s got fire under the ice—that’s what she’s been told.’

‘Who’d say such a dumb-ass thing?’

‘Someone who knows women very well. You’re not the only expert out there, you know.’

‘I hope you don’t mean Mum,’ Adam said, even though he knew from Sarah’s irritatingly smug smirk she meant nothing of the kind.

‘Not a female,’ she said.

Adam decided he needed more whisky and picked up his drink.

‘Although I’m sure Mum would agree,’ Sarah went on. ‘She keeps saying she sees Lane in the colour red, which is a hot-not-cold colour.’

Adam choked on his Scotch. ‘Hang the hell on! Are you saying Mum knows Lane?’

‘Hmm, she’s met her quite a few times, at least. And why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Trying to get my head around the fact that my mother met the girl I’m supposed to be having a sexual affair with before I did.’

‘Yes, well at the risk of repeating myself, you’re not supposed to be having a sexual affair with Lane, and I wasn’t intending for you to ever meet her, and I only let you meet her out of desperation. As I’ve told you and told you, I’m over introducing my friends to you. They always fall in love with you, you never reciprocate, and they end up hating me. And I do not want Lane to hate me.’

‘You’re safe in this instance. Lane isn’t going to fall in love with me—I’m not her type.’

‘Early days, Adam,’ Sarah said darkly.

‘Time won’t change the fact that she needs a man she can boss around and that ain’t me.’

‘You’d better make sure of it. You are not allowed to make her fall in love with you. Got it?’

‘I don’t “make” girls fall in love with me.’

‘You do something to them. Maybe you’re the one with the cauldron, cooking up spells.’

‘If I were going to cook up a spell, it would be to get you over your “be still my throbbing heart” one-true-love claptrap.’

‘My heart doesn’t throb.’

‘So stop trying to make it.’

‘Why? So I can be as miserable as you?’

‘I wasn’t miserable until my sister and my mother lumbered me with a frigid bed partner for three months.’

‘As I keep saying, you lumbered yourself.’ She sniffed at her glass again. ‘And she’s not frigid. Mum says she just has a little … complex.’

‘Yeah well last I heard Mum was an interior decorator, not a psychologist.’

‘She’s good at this stuff, Adam!’

‘She’s good at interior decorating.’

‘She says Lane’s problem is a lack of personal confidence, and that’s arisen because of her fractured relationship with her mother. A Mommie Dearest complex, Mum calls it.’

Adam stared at her. ‘Have I fallen through a portal into some parallel universe or something?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’

‘Mum diagnosing people’s psychoses? Jesus! And a Mommie Dearest complex? I’ve never heard of anything so bloody ridiculous.’

‘Erica agrees with her, and she knows all the background. Although she says calling it a complex is just a fancy way of saying Lane’s mother is an absolute cow—which happens to be an insult to cows if you ask me.’

Adam’s head was in his hands—not an unusual position to find himself in whenever he spoke at length with his sister. ‘And yet I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, well you can guess, can’t you? Just from the name of it! Lane is desperate to make her mother proud of her, to the point of being completely fixated on pleasing her, but her mother ignores her and focuses completely on Lane’s brother, Brad. The Brad obsession stems from him being a sickly kid. Leukaemia, so anyone could understand that. But I’m sorry to say that doting on him kind of stuck even after he was cured, and sadly—although I swear I can see glimmers of something good hidden in there—he’s basically turned into the biggest no-hoper you could ever meet. He’s lazy, idle, indolent, slothful, incompet—’

‘Spare me any more adjectives, for the love of God!’

‘Fine! He’s just abominable—there, one word. But the thing is, Lane keeps trying, and endlessly failing. Brad’s jealous as hell of her accomplishments and her mother therefore point blank refuses to be proud of her. It’s almost as though she makes a conscious choice to keep Lane at arm’s length.’ She looked at her glass again and gave the whisky a sad swirl. ‘You know, it’s hard to stand by and shut up when the three of them are together.’

‘Yes well that all sounds very sad and tortured and psychoanalysis-worthy, but it in no way explains the need for Lane to draw up a contract and pay someone for sex.’

‘Okay so think about this—it may help. She came dux of her school. She got into university a year before she should have and ended up with an Honours degree. She landed a job at a top consultancy straight out of university and within a month, nailed a promotion. When she moved on to the bank where she is now, she was placed in the exact area she wanted and her salary zoomed sky-high. All of this because she’s driven to succeed so her mother will say, “Well done, Lane.”

‘But instead, you know what her mother started saying to her three months ago? “Gee, Lane, how come you never go on any dates? I’m not getting any younger you know, and I’m going to want grandchildren one day.” Nice, huh? She can’t criticize Lane for anything she has achieved, so she’s starting on something she hasn’t. Thank you, Mommie dearest.’

‘Okay, I get it.’

‘So now, having had no time to even think about getting a boyfriend because she’s been working like a dog at school, then at university, taking extra classes on the side she thought would help her career, and nailing her career … Now she has to become some man magnet ASAP as well? Sheesh! And I promise you, we’re coming off a low base here when it comes to men. The night I first met her, at an orientation week event at uni, there was a guy trying to ask her out on a date and she had no idea! I remember thinking he’d need a flashing neon sign on his head before she realized it.’

‘So she’s not exactly desperate and dateless then. Or she wouldn’t be if she just loosened up and looked around. Any man would be up for a little experimentation.’

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Really? Because it seems to me you’re being dragged kicking and screaming in protest over your fate.’

‘I— That’s … different.’

‘Is it? Seems pretty similar to me. And just so you know, that guy didn’t ask her out in the end, he gave up. They always do, you know. They give up because they see what you saw tonight: the outer shell. The ice, not the fire.’

‘Yeah, well the fire’s got its work cut out for it—if it really is under that glacier-like coating of hers.’

‘You just wait and see. I know Lane. If she says she’s going to learn something, she’ll learn it. She’s never failed a course yet. She’s going to cram seven years of sexual experimentation into as short a time as she can get it done.’

‘I still say she could get laid seven nights out of seven by going to a bar and choosing a guy, any guy. She won’t even have to pay for a drink; she’ll be picked up before she even orders one.’

‘Ah, but she doesn’t look at her arrangement with you as paying for sex. What she’s really paying for is skills transference, and confidence in her abilities. It’s no different from when she signed up for private Mandarin lessons, you know. She decided to specialize in the Chinese economy and thought the lessons would help her. And they did, too. They clinched the job at the bank for her.’

‘So I’m the sexual equivalent of Mandarin classes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fucking fabulous.’

‘With you, she’ll get the lessons she needs, all private and confidential, using a timetable she’s set for herself, and it’s all under her control because she’s paying for it.’

Adam gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Ah, my secret fantasy—a control freak who doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘Yes, well if your initiation into sex had been as bad as hers and was broadcast to half your workplace besides, you might understand her need for control over subsequent experiences.’

Adam paused in the act of pouring more Scotch. ‘Initiation? You mean the douchebag was her first?’

‘DeWayne Callaghan. First and only, and the miracle is she’s willing to try again after him. She went out with him the day after her mother dropped the first “give me grandchildren” hint.’

Pause, as Sarah gave him a speculative look. ‘You know, I’d say I’m surprised she told you about him, because she really found the experience intensely humiliating … but oddly, I’m not surprised at all. She’s like that—she never hides from the truth. She’ll tell you whatever you need to know if it helps to get her where she needs to be.’ Another look. ‘Did she tell you that despite DeWayne only lasting two minutes and forty seconds, he had the nerve to score her performance?’

‘No.’

‘He gave her one point five out of ten. And obligingly posted it on Facebook for all their colleagues to see.’

‘Shit.’

‘I would have torn his heart out and fed it to the seagulls at Manly Beach along with a bag of hot chips, right after tweeting his premature ejaculatory effort to the world! But not Lane. She was so valiant in the face of what he did to her. Just took it on the chin and didn’t say a word. It was as though she thought she deserved it for not being good enough. So she just kept going to work, not rebuking DeWayne even when their paths crossed in the corridor, until she found a new job where she could start again with a clean slate.’

Adam found that he was shaking with fury. DeWayne. Douchebag. Fucking, fucking bastard. He tossed back his drink, reached for the whisky and repoured, just in case things got worse.

Sarah was looking intently at the liquid in her glass, still not drinking it. ‘I wanted to shake the calmness out of her, make her rage and curse and slap that mongrel down. But I knew deep down that that veneer of calmness was saving her, that it was only a veneer, that she wasn’t calm. She was mortified, devastated, and hiding it, the way she hides it when her mother and brother make her feel like she’s coming up short of their expectations. But never in a million years did I think she’d dream up the idea of a sex contract.’

She looked up. ‘Can you imagine how terrified I was when she announced that plan, as though she were announcing she was going to start taking a new vitamin supplement? I had nightmares last night, imagining her swiping right on some psychopath and ending up and being cut into little pieces!’ She lifted the whisky at last and threw it down her throat, and then shuddered, gasped, wheezed.

Adam reached over and gave her a few slaps on the back, laughing.

‘Not. Funny,’ she huffed.

‘I’m not laughing about the psychopath, I’m laughing at you,’ Adam said, still laughing. ‘I thought you were never going to shut up long enough to drink that.’

She was beating a hand on her chest, in time with his back slaps. ‘Needs Coke,’ she croaked.

Adam stopped slapping and tried to take the glass off her. ‘Coke? Heathen! Give that back. Let me get you something with an umbrella in it instead.’

‘Hit me again,’ she said, handing over her glass. ‘I mean the whisky. Not my back, because I’m probably bruised from that assault of yours. I just need another drink.’

Adam poured her another measure of whisky and passed it to her, and they sat and sipped in silence for a long moment.

And then, Sarah sighed. ‘I love her you know. And she … she needs people to love her, because she can’t see anything inside her that’s worth loving. So I’m going to trust you with her, on that basis. I know you’ll do the right thing.’

‘Hey, whoa, step back from the edge, Sarah. This isn’t a romance, or a psychology session, it’s a sex contract.’

‘Just promise me you’ll do better than DeWayne.’

‘I won’t be “doing better” than DeWayne; I’ll be wiping him out of existence.’

‘Hmm. Don’t overpromise until you know what you’re facing. Remember the fire under the ice—maybe that’s why DeWayne got there so fast. She was too hot for him!’

‘Talking about ice, the stuff you’re standing on is getting thinner, Sarah. A lot, lot thinner.’

‘I guess the contract will work just as well for you as it will for her, though,’ Sarah said, slanting an interested look at him. ‘Sex on tap for three months, no strings—gotta love that, right?’

‘I already have sex on tap, no strings.’

‘Well, this one comes with a nice, bloodless breakup at the end, which should suit you to a T, Mr Love-’em-and-leave-’em. No histrionics. No stalking. No drunk texting.’

‘Shut up, Sarah.’

‘I just hope I haven’t oversold your abilities.’

‘The ice is cracking,’ he warned.

‘Although I’m sure Lane has non-performance covered in that contract of hers.’

That startled a laugh out of him. ‘As a matter of fact, she does.’

‘Well don’t tarnish the family name, please. I’ll never be able to hold my head up if you don’t go the distance.’

Adam gave her a look of acute dislike.

She laughed, but then stopped and winced. ‘But God knows what Erica’s going to make of all this,’ she said.

Adam slammed his glass down on the table between them. ‘Okay, I think I’ve heard Erica’s name a time too many, and I also think it’s time for you to bow out of the business. Not one word on the subject from you, got it? Not to me. Not to Lane. Not to Mum. Not to bloody Erica. It’s going to be hard enough to get through it without being instructed from the sidelines by the fucking coven.’

‘Language!’

‘Fuck my language.’ He glared at Sarah. ‘From now on, what happens between Lane and me is none of your goddamn business. I’m bound by a confidentiality clause, thank God, and so is she!’ He stood, snagging the half-empty bottle of whisky from the table along with his glass, and prepared to storm out of the room. ‘And I don’t remember asking you to wait in my house.’

Sarah smiled, unperturbed. ‘She sure got under your skin, didn’t she?’

‘Leave your key behind on your way out,’ Adam ordered, striding past her.

‘You know you’ll just end up giving it back to me.’

‘Not for three months, at any rate,’ Adam said and slammed the library door after himself to drive home the you-are-barred-from-the-house message.

And then he realized he’d effectively banished himself from his favourite room, leaving the spoils to Sarah, and his satisfaction at getting in the last word vaporized. His sister was such a manipulative wretch; he wouldn’t put it past her to have masterminded the whole evening not to scare Lane off her idea but to get him to sign the contract. She needs people to love her … she can’t see anything inside her that’s worth loving … I’m going to trust you with her … I know you’ll do the right thing. Jesus wept!

Well, if his sister thought he was going to be jumping to anyone’s command when it came to implementing that damn contract, she had another think coming. Lane too. And should the flight attendant ever make an appearance, he’d be only too happy to show her who was boss while he was at it.

Poor vulnerable, valiant, complex-riddled Lane? His arse! Controlling and rigid and uptight is what she was. Surrounded by a force field that zapped out beams to repel any humans from approaching her personal space let alone invading it. He was even starting to disbelieve that he’d really seen that flash of vulnerability—because every other time she’d looked at him, it had been out of cool, assessing, icy eyes. Like he was an object. An ‘alleged’ expert who had to prove himself. And that contract, aimed at getting him to prove it, was so impersonal it was downright scary.

The contract. It all lay in the contract.

He was going to have to read it again, just to make sure he hadn’t imagined the offensiveness of it. He retrieved it from his back pocket where he’d folded and stuffed it into what he’d thought was submission, and took it, and his whisky, to the kitchen. He went through the pages once … and then once more … plus one last time to make one hundred per cent sure he wasn’t missing anything …

And then he smiled.

By the time he stumbled into bed an hour later, his mood had improved to the point where he was actually whistling to himself.

Nothing to do with the dent he’d put in the rest of the single malt.

Everything to do with the contract and his own devious mind.

Because one little detail Lane Davis had left out of her precious contract was what they’d actually spend their two to four nights per week doing. Imagine that! A contract, a three-page checklist—but no mention of an actual sex act!

An amazing oversight, but a fortuitous one. There was a lot he could teach her without actually consummating their relationship. An awful lot.