‘Thanks for the offer, Cory, but I would rather do this by myself.’
‘And you’re quite sure Brutus won’t be there?’
Sarah winced at the new nickname Cory had given Scott. Not that it wasn’t appropriate. The man was a brute to do what he had last Friday night, all under the guise of passion. Her stomach curled at all that she had allowed, and enjoyed. That was the worst part. How much she had enjoyed Scott’s ravishing of her entire body. Her face flamed at the memories of the humiliating noises she’d made, the way she’d pleaded with him not to stop.
When she’d found out the next morning that he’d acted out of jealousy and revenge, her shock had quickly changed to fury.
‘You don’t honestly think he wouldn’t have gone to work, do you?’ she said bitterly. ‘Trust me when I say only an atomic bomb landing on him would keep Scott away from his precious office on a Monday morning.’
‘From what you told me, last Saturday morning was a little like an atomic bomb going off.’
Sarah was not a girl who lost her temper easily. But when she did...
‘I can’t tell you how mad I was!’
‘You don’t have to, sweetie. I saw for myself when you arrived at my place. You were spitting chips. Till you started crying, that is. For a while there over the weekend, I thought I might need a life jacket.’
‘Please don’t try to make me laugh, Cory. That man has broken my heart. What he did was unforgivable.’
‘Why? Because he acted like a lot of men might have acted? When I found out Felix was cheating on me I was hotter for him than ever.’
‘But you didn’t love Felix and I wasn’t cheating on Scott!’
‘But it looked like you were...’
Sarah groaned. ‘I know. I know.’
‘I think you should call Scott and explain why you were at that hotel with your lawyer friend. After all, from what you told me those photos were pretty damning.’
‘And then what? Scott says sorry and we just go on to live happily ever after? I don’t think so, Cory.’
‘Ah, I forgot. You’re a Scorpio. They never forgive or forget. By the way, has it crossed your mind to wonder who might have sent those photos in the first place?’
Sarah sighed. ‘I’ve thought of little else all morning.’
‘Someone you work with perhaps?’
‘No one comes to mind.’
‘It has to be someone who hates you. Or hates Scott, more likely.’
‘It could be the same person who told Phil those rumours about Scott and Cleo,’ Sarah speculated.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Cory said excitedly. ‘I told you from the first that it had to be some kind of set-up. Otherwise how could he or she have been at the right place at the right time to take incriminating photos of you and Phil at that hotel? That’s far too coincidental. I think it has to be someone you work with, Sarah, someone who saw you leave together that lunchtime and followed you.’
‘But who?’
‘Search me, sweetie. But I do know that if you let this destroy your marriage, then that person has won.’
‘It’s Scott who’s destroyed our marriage,’ Sarah bit out. ‘The bottom line is he didn’t truly love me, or trust me. He jumped to conclusions and didn’t give me the chance to explain. He didn’t care how I would feel because he doesn’t really care about me. I can see now that I was only ever a trophy wife to him. Arm candy to be trotted out at social functions, with the added bonus of sex whenever he felt like it. When he’s home, that is. Which has become less frequent during the last six months. I actually thought he’d cut his business trip short last Friday so that he could be with me on our anniversary weekend. What a fool I was in more ways than one.’
‘Wow. You’re still very angry with him, aren’t you?’
‘You can say that again. Look, I must go. The cleaners would have left by now and I want to be out of the apartment before Brutus gets home.’
‘You’re calling him Brutus now,’ Cory pointed out drily.
‘Yes, well, if the cap fits he should wear it.’
‘You do realise that hate is the other side of love.’
‘Oh, yes. I certainly do. Have to go, Cory. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘I’ll bring home Chinese,’ he offered. ‘And some nice wine.’
‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’
Tears pricked at Sarah’s eyes as she hung up. Cory was a dear friend. And so kind. Whatever would she have done without him this last weekend? Sarah didn’t have a lot of friends, her few girlfriends from high school having drifted away after she left school and went to university. The same thing happened after her poor mother died at the end of her first year of university. Unable to study—or grieve properly—Sarah had taken off to go backpacking around the world. By the time she returned to Sydney University two years later, her earlier student friends had also moved on. Her own fault, Sarah accepted, having not kept in touch via social media, depression dogging her footsteps for such a long time, especially during the first twelve months of her backpacking getaway. Europe remained a blur, nothing of the incredible sights she’d seen touching her soul or brightening her life. She’d gone from city to city in a fog.
It wasn’t till she’d reached Asia that the fog had finally lifted. Maybe it was the truly warm, gentle people she’d met there. The children had been especially adorable and the twelve months she’d spent travelling through India and Thailand and Vietnam had banished her depression, plus her bitterness, showing her that maybe it was still possible for her to overcome her wariness where men were concerned and find love. Maybe even get married and have children. Though that had seemed a stretch at the time.
Still, by the time she’d come home to Sydney and resumed her studies, she’d been way more open to at least try to give the opposite sex a chance. Though she’d still had no intention of leaping into bed with anyone in a hurry. It had been an enormous stroke of luck that during her first semester back at Sydney University she had met Cory.
Sarah smiled wryly as she looked back on that time in her life when she’d imagined Cory might just be ‘the one’ to banish her wariness of the opposite sex—and sex—for good. Not only was he fun to be with, he was quite gorgeous to look at. Very sexy with his blond hair, bedroom blue eyes and a buffed body. Whilst she hadn’t been mad for him—she hadn’t known what it was to be mad for a man back then—she had found him attractive. He’d seemed attracted to her as well. The ‘life of the party’ type, Cory had insisted she join the university book club and movie club with him and soon they’d been going out together. It wasn’t till she’d finally decided to take the big step and sleep with him that Cory had been forced to come out and tell her he was gay. Apparently, up till then he’d tried to deny it, even to himself, afraid that his parents would reject him.
But they hadn’t. After that, she and Cory had remained close friends, with Cory dating like-minded men and Sarah eventually becoming resigned to going to her grave still a virgin. Because no way had she been going to go to bed with a man she didn’t truly love and trust; trust being the most important part. In her mind she’d pictured a straight version of Cory. Someone sexy and intelligent and kind.
Unfortunately, she’d never seemed to meet such a man, not even when she’d left university and secured a plum job at a large legal firm that had wall-to-wall men walking around their corridors, men who had showed they found her very attractive. But none of them had done anything for her, not even Phil, who was super handsome and super intelligent and really very nice. Too old, however, at thirty-five. Despite her lack of success so far, Sarah