She held up a finger to excuse herself, slipped off the stool, and headed out into the icy Melbourne night. She stuck her spare hand under her armpit and banged her feet against the ground in an effort to keep warm as she answered her mobile.
‘Hey, Gabe!’ Paige scrunched up her face. Even in the age of number display, she should have at least feigned nonchalance.
As Gabe’s rich laughter rumbled down the phone she realised she needn’t have worried about the cold; every time she heard that voice a wave of heat followed in its wake.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. As if she didn’t know that either! She bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything else daft.
‘I do believe I promised you dinner,’ he said.
‘Right. So you did.’ There, that was better. Now she might get away with him not guessing she’d spent much of her Saturday daydreaming about where he might take her. Or what she might wear. If Gabe’s sweet tooth was enough to make them last till dessert. Or if his taste for her was stronger still.
A tram thundered noisily down the street, sparks flinting off the overhead cables and disappearing into the inky blackness above. Paige pressed the phone to her right ear, and a finger in the left. ‘I’m sorry, I missed that last part.’
‘I said we’ll have to have a rain check.’
Her feet stopped stamping and she came over all still.
‘I’m in Sydney for work. Flew down first thing this morning. Not sure when I’ll be back.’
He was in Sydney? A thousand miles away and he hadn’t even told her he was going? He hadn’t even had anything like this on the cards as far as she knew. Because she didn’t known much of anything? Unless he’d simply changed his mind. Maybe his claustrophobia was so bad he’d only asked in the aftermath of post survival euphoria!
‘Paige? Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah. I got that,’ she said. She rubbed at a spot under her ribs where she suddenly felt as if someone were poking her with a chopstick. ‘Cool. I understand. I’ve got so much going on at work this week as it is. I guess I’ll catch you when you get—’
‘Paige.’ He cut her off, his deep drawl pouring through her like melted chocolate.
‘Yep?’ She closed her eyes and slapped herself several times on the forehead for good measure. When she opened her eyes it was to see a couple, arms linked, scooting as far around her on the footpath as possible. She sent them a sorry smile but they were jogging too fast to see.
‘I’ll be back in a couple of days, and then I’m sure we can squeeze in a night out if we both try real hard.’
He didn’t say, ‘before I leave for good,’ but it was out there, like a big black piano waiting to fall down on her head. Paige pressed the heel of her palm to her chest as the chopstick beneath her ribs grew thorns.
‘I’ll call when I know more,’ Gabe said.
‘Sure. Fine. Or not. Whatever. Honestly, I’m cool either way.’
Gabe laughed again, the smooth deep sound vibrating down her arm and landing with a warm thud deep in her belly. ‘I’ll call,’ he promised, ‘even if you’re cool either way.’
‘Okay,’ she said on a long drawn out breath.
‘Goodnight, Paige.’ He rang off.
Paige turned towards the bar, but there her boots stopped short. She tapped her phone against her front teeth, her eyes misting over to the soft pink light spilling through the windows of the funky cocktail bar as she forced herself to think.
Good God, had she really floated the idea that Gabe was in Sydney avoiding her? She needed to get a grip. A man she wasn’t attached to had merely postponed a date that till the night before had never even been on the cards. And yet her heart thumped at triple its normal pace. That wasn’t her. She did not obsess about men she couldn’t have. She was not her mother …
No. Time apart was the exact wake-up call she needed. Her life had been plenty satisfying before Gabe Hamilton moseyed into her lift and into her life, and she could do with a few days without him to remind her of that.
She breathed deep, the thin cold air slipping into her bloodstream, and she felt far less wobbly than she had a minute earlier. In fact she felt positively urbane. Then the extreme mixed scents of Richmond’s Asiatic restaurant row hit the back of her throat and hunger followed in its wake. Teeth chattering, she hustled back inside the bar.
‘Trouble in paradise?’ Mae asked as Paige plonked herself back on her stool.
Paige opened her mouth to say everything was fine, but Mae’s open palm stopped her in her tracks.
Mae said, ‘Let me tell you a little story while you consider your answer. There I was the other night, enjoying my miniquiche at your gorgeous neighbour’s housewarming, when I spotted you and the hot pirate, looking all cosy. I barely had time to jab Clint in the ribs when you were off, running for the door as if you couldn’t wait to find somewhere private in which to tear one another’s clothes off.’
Paige blinked down into her milky cocktail as the heat rose in her cheeks; a healthy mix of mortification that if Mae had noticed there was a good chance others had too, and regret that Mae knew she’d been keeping her fling with Gabe a secret.
‘So what’s going on with the two of you?’ Mae asked.
‘Nothing,’ Paige insisted. ‘Okay, something. But not what you think.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It all happened so fast.’
‘So fast you couldn’t send me a text? Preferably with image attached.’
Paige frowned at Mae’s pink cocktail, and tried to find an answer her best friend might understand, and couldn’t. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. Maybe because I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I’m still not.’
‘Sounds serious.’
‘Lord, no! It’s a fling. That much I am sure of.’
‘You’ve had flings before, Miss Paige. Before Clint came along the two of us were the queens of the no-strings fling and you never kept it from me before. So what made this one different?’
She risked looking at Mae, and saw the one person in the world who knew her best. Her next breath out felt awash with relief that the truth was out, tempered by a little stab of heartache that she’d found it so hard to tell her.
She leaned forward, and wrapped her fingers around her cold glass. ‘Maybe it’s that from the moment I met him it felt different. Which has been thrilling, but also kind of terrifying. I might be struggling a bit with remembering where my limits lie.’
‘Maybe you’re struggling because, with him, you don’t want limits.’
Paige let herself wonder for about half a second before she remembered the unbearable feeling of the chopstick jabbing her under the ribs. She shook her head. ‘Oh, no. With this one I want them more than ever.’
Mae nibbled at the inside of her cheek a few moments as if she was grappling with some inner turmoil, before leaning over and wrapping cool hands around Paige’s. ‘I know you like putting your life into neat separate little boxes, Paige—work, home, friends, lovers—and I get why. Having them in boxes makes them feel like they’re under your control. I used to be the same way. And then I met Clint.’
Paige got her usual tummy ache at the mere mention of Clint’s name, only this time the jab of the chopstick under the ribs joined it. Which made no sense at all.
Oblivious, Mae went on. ‘I thought he was goofy and shy and way too sweet for the likes of me. I could have put him in that easy-to-ignore box on day dot and that would have