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.’
