‘Sure.’ Emma steered clear of Jake, muttering a quick goodnight without looking at him, and from a safe distance on the other side of the table, then headed for the stairs.
‘You okay, Em?’ Stella asked beside her as they drove home. ‘You’re awfully quiet.’
‘Wayne came into the restaurant while we were there,’ she said, her voice tightening. ‘With his fiancée.’
‘Oh. Oh, Em. I’m sorry. You guys split up—what?—only a month ago?’
‘What did you expect?’ her mother piped up from the back seat. ‘If you mixed with the right people like your sister, instead of hiding away in that studio night after night, y—’
‘I’m not hiding.’ Emma sighed inwardly. Stella had nursed their mother, then fallen in love with a wealthy man; in Bernice Byrne’s eyes her younger daughter could do no wrong. ‘I enjoy what I do, Mum.’
‘Like you enjoyed cleaning other people’s toilets and stocking supermarket shelves after school too, I remember. Just another excuse not to meet people.’
Emma pressed her lips together to stop the angry words from rushing out. Yeah, Mum? Where would we be if I hadn’t? In a rented bedsit on the wrong side of town. Not in Gran’s home, that’s for sure.
‘Mum, that’s not fair.’ Stella spoke sharply.
‘It’s not, Stella. But then, life’s not always fair—right, Mum?’ Emma glanced at her mother in the rearview mirror. ‘And sometimes it makes us hurt and lash out and say things we shouldn’t. So I forgive you. You’re not sorry about Wayne, Stella, and neither am I. And I don’t want to talk about it. Him.’
‘No, you’d rather kiss that good-for-nothing Jake Carmody behind the palms like some floozie,’ her mother muttered.
Emma jolted, her whole body burning with the memory. And her mother, of all people, had obviously seen the entire catastrophe. Something close to rebellion simmered inside her and made her say, ‘Jake’s hardly a good-for-nothing, Mum—he has a well-established practice in business law.’ She couldn’t help feeling a sense of indignation on his behalf.
The strip club aside, she knew enough about Jake to know he’d worked hard all those years ago, taking jobs where he could get them to pay his way through uni.
Whereas Ryan came from old money. He’d graduated in the sciences and held a PhD in Microbiology—all expenses paid by Daddy. Then he’d volunteered his skills in Africa for a couple of years before hooking up again with Stella.
From the corner of her eye she saw Stella shift in her seat and turn to look at her. Suddenly uncomfortable, Emma lifted a shoulder. ‘What?’
‘Jake kissed you?’ she said slowly. ‘Like a proper kiss?’
‘Not exactly.’ Emma couldn’t resist a quick glance at her mum in the mirror again. ‘Mum got it right. It was more like … I kissed him.’ As she relived that moment something like exhilaration shot through her bloodstream. ‘What about it?’
‘Ooh, that’s so … hmm … You and Jake?’
Emma heard the smile in her sister’s voice, could almost hear her mind ticking over.
‘Wouldn’t it be cool if—?’
‘Not me and Jake. You know him. Every red-blooded female in Sydney knows him. Didn’t mean anything.’
‘But—’
‘No buts.’
‘Okay. But … The wedding will give you two time to catch up. You liked him well enough when we were younger, I remember.’
‘Yeah—in a galaxy far, far away.’
‘Not that far, Em. He lives in Bondi now. Only an hour’s stroll along the coast … if you feel inclined.’
‘I don’t. I won’t.’
But she couldn’t blot him from her mind when she crawled into bed that night. She had been looking forward to seeing Jake again, even if it was only to assure herself she was well and truly over him.
But she didn’t want to catch up with a seedy strip club owner who used women for his own purposes—both for his personal satisfaction and his burgeoning bank account.
But, oh, that moment of insanity … his lips on hers, his hands tugging her against the heat of his hard, muscled body …
And it was insanity. She stared up at the music room’s low stained ceiling and tried not to hear the thick elevated thud of her heartbeat in her ears. She could have kept it simple. A friendly few days in the company of a good-looking guy. But she’d kissed him like one of his Brandies or Candies … and she’d changed everything.
CHAPTER FOUR
STIFLING a yawn, Emma glanced at her watch and wondered if Stella’s hen’s party would ever end. Twelve-thirty. The male stripper had done his thing and left to raucous feminine laughter and a wildly improper proposition or two over half an hour ago. The girls were now sitting around Emma’s table drinking what remained of a bottle of vodka.
Emma had sat on one glass of wine the entire evening. She needed a clear head. She still had half a dozen orders to fill when the others left.
Emma glanced at the bleary-eyed girls in various stages of intoxication as Joni poured the remains of the vodka into her glass and laid the bottle on its side on the table. ‘Don’t any of you girls have to work in the morning?’ she asked.
‘It’s Friday tomorrow,’ Joni said, spinning the bottle lazily between two fingers. ‘Nothing gets done on a Friday anyway.’
‘Well, I don’t want to be a party pooper but I’ve got work to finish tonight.’
Karina pointed at her. ‘You need to get a life, Emma Dilemma.’ She downed her drink, slapped her glass on the table and slurred, ‘Seriously. Your hormones must be shrivelling up with neglect. When was the last time you got laid?’
‘Kar, give it a rest.’ Stella shot Emma a concerned look. ‘She broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago.’
Karina squinted at Emma through glazed green eyes. ‘You had a boyfriend?’
Emma could see it in Karina’s eyes—How did you find the time?—and her whole body tightened. ‘He wasn’t a boyfriend as such …’ She picked up her glass, touched the rim against her lips. ‘He was convenient. More like a bed buddy.’ Even if Wayne had seen their relationship that way, in Emma’s book bed buddies didn’t cheat. When the gaggle of giggles subsided she angled her glass in Karina’s direction. ‘You’d be familiar with the concept of bed buddies.’
‘Totally.’ Karina grinned. ‘Way to go, Em,’ she enthused, then raised a hand. ‘Okay, enough of the true confessions. We’re hungry, aren’t we, girls? And since you’re the only sober one here, Emma Dilemma, how about being a good little bridesmaid and fetching us a burger from that shop down the road?’
‘And fries,’ Joni added, stuffing another chocolate in her mouth.
‘I’ll go to the drive-through. It’s closer.’
Karina shook her head. ‘Nuh-uh. We want real hamburgers with proper meat—not that cardboard stuff.’
‘Yeah,’ Joni agreed. ‘With lashings of bacon.’
Stella leaned to the side and massaged Emma’s neck a moment. ‘Come on, Em. I looove you, sis,’ she cajoled in a boozy voice, then pulled her purse from her bag. ‘My treat.’
Emma pushed up. Anything for peace. ‘Okay. Providing you take your orders and eat them somewhere else. I’ve got to work.’