was doing the right thing. Love was a fool’s paradise. Relationships never lasted. His disastrous involvement with Lucy was further proof if he needed any. So why was he back here, hanging on Tara’s every word? Was he some kind of glutton for punishment?
Must be, to have agreed to stay and talk after the meeting, he decided. He resolved to make it brief, snare a few quotes for his column, then get the hell out.
Remembering why he was here, he dragged his attention back to what Tara was saying, although it wasn’t necessary. Even while he was thinking about their relationship—former relationship, he amended inwardly—the journalistic side of his brain had absorbed every word. His mind had always worked that way. Compartmentalized. Tomorrow if he had to, he could give her entire speech himself.
That left the greater part of his thoughts free to focus on Tara herself, noting the graceful way she moved on the podium and the innate sexiness she projected like a beacon. Part of it was her training as a model but mostly it was natural. She was totally unselfconscious. Except when her eyes rested on him, then she tensed in a way he didn’t like at all. As a result, she didn’t look at him half as often as he found himself wanting her to.
He was annoyed to find his thoughts straying to their talk after the meeting. Maybe he wouldn’t hurry away, after all. They had a lot to catch up on, purely as friends. Perhaps they could do some of it at his new apartment overlooking Sydney Harbor. By night, the view was truly spectacular.
His body stirred again and he knew the view had nothing to do with it, other than the one right in front of him now. Remember what Tara had always said, he ordered himself angrily. “Modern women want more from a relationship than sex.” He had to remind himself again that he and Tara didn’t have a relationship anymore. She probably didn’t want anything from him except the sight of his back as he left.
She had been happy to see it once, when he went away, he reminded himself. When she refused to discuss coming with him, he had been so furious that he had gone without a backward glance, sure that there must be someone else. When he demanded a name, she had gone quiet, leaving him to draw his own conclusion.
It was partly why he’d turned to Lucy. She was all the things Tara hadn’t been, malleable, loyal, deferring to him in everything. Until he got exhausted doing her thinking for her, and demanded that she develop a mind of her own. Then she changed into a tigress who was never satisfied with anything he did. Coming from a wealthy family, she couldn’t understand his need to take care of himself, and that his job sometimes took him away from her at inconvenient hours. Her daddy could take care of them, she insisted, refusing to accept that Zeke might prefer to make his own way.
So the relationship had ended and he wasn’t particularly sorry, except for having to face the rare fact of his own failure. Lucy had a new partner, her daddy’s right-hand man, who had none of Zeke’s pigheadedness when it came to accepting a house, a job and support from her daddy. Zeke wished them well.
When he let the paper lure him back to Australia with the promise of the chance to write features of his own choosing, he hadn’t meant to see Tara again, at least not consciously, but some part of him must have planned it all along. When he read about this meeting, it had seemed like fate. He had already started the charity exposé so it had seemed logical to add Tara’s group to his list of targets.
Except that this target was proving elusive. He knew if he wrote up the foundation as worthwhile, he might be accused of going easy on his former lover. But he wasn’t sure he could condemn her work as bunk, either. Too many things she’d said touched an unwelcome chord with him. There was nothing for it but to investigate further before he made up his mind. But first there was the talk she had promised him. Zeke was amazed how much he looked forward to it.
Chapter 2
Zeke took his time clipping his notes and Tara’s handouts into his folio while the room emptied around him. The journalist and the photographer had left, disgruntled by his refusal to be interviewed. Now only one other man remained. Todd Jessman, Zeke thought, his brain automatically supplying the name. Tara’s foundation had helped him and his family, he recalled. From old journalistic habit, he tuned his ear to their conversation.
“I’d love you to send me photos of the baby,” he heard her tell the man. A slight catch in her voice made Zeke frown. Didn’t she know she shouldn’t get emotionally involved with the people she was supposed to help? Zeke had always prided himself on his objectivity. Emotional involvement was a weakness that clouded judgement. Another point they disagreed on.
“I’ll be sure and send some. Thank you again.” The man touched her arm and Zeke tensed, surprised by the force of his instinctive reaction. The man was married with a kid, for pity’s sake. On the other hand, maybe he needed reminding of the fact. If he wasn’t getting enough attention at home, he could mistake Tara’s professional concern for something more.
Before he had completed the thought, Zeke was at the front of the room, coming between them physically. He was a big man and while he didn’t deliberately use his size to his own advantage, he didn’t mind if it occasionally had that effect. His actions annoyed Tara, he realized when he saw her take a step back. From him? He didn’t like that, one bit.
“I have to go now,” she said to the young man, and Zeke swore he heard a tremor in her voice.
The young man looked from her to Zeke and swallowed, getting the message at last. “Okay, I’ll be in touch.”
She raked Zeke with a look. “Do you enjoy intimidating people?”
“It never worked with you.”
“Perhaps you should keep it in mind.” She began to gather up her things. “You didn’t say much to the magazine people.”
So she had noticed. Good. “I told them this was your show and they would have to get their quotes from you. What did you expect? A hatchet job?”
She tried to keep the pain out of her eyes and suspected she failed. “Isn’t it what you came to do?” He couldn’t deny it, she saw as his expression fleetingly revealed the truth. She pushed files into her briefcase. “I have to go.”
“You promised we would talk.”
It was out before she could stop it. “Why am I the only one who has to keep promises?”
He took a deep breath. “I never made you any promises I didn’t keep, Tara.”
It was true, he hadn’t. He had promised she would be the only woman in his life and she had been, while they were together. He had promised her the sun, the moon and the stars and she had found them all in his arms. But he had never promised her forever because he didn’t believe in it.
She understood that his upbringing argued against it, creating a barrier around his heart that he allowed no woman to penetrate, least of all her, but it didn’t lessen the hurt. Had Lucy managed to break down the barrier? Tara doubted it.
She had always suspected that if Zeke let her into that secret place deep inside him that he guarded so fiercely, he would be a lover without equal. He very nearly was already. But his reserve remained as a silent warning to come close but no closer.
“Why did you come back to Australia?” she asked, hearing herself sound hollow with the strain of the evening.
“You sound regretful.”
Probably because she was. “We hardly parted on
