Kate Hardy - Wear My Ring

She rolled onto her tummy and pressed her face into her pillow. If only he were outside her door with a condom tucked in the back pocket of his old jeans. Then he could have his wicked way with her, and they’d be even, and that would be that. Perhaps. Probably not.

It was a Sunday, she had nowhere else to be, so she closed her eyes and pictured herself flinging open her front door to find him standing there after all, though this time in her head he wore black leather trousers, a loose white shirt open to the navel, an eye-patch. He was so big and tall he’d fill her small kitchen—

Her eyes flew open and she sat up with a start as she remembered the wedding dress in its fluorescent bag still hanging over her dining chair.

She rubbed the heels of her palms against her eye socket and breathed out hard. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror. Her eyes were smudged with old eyeliner, her hair a scrambled mess. And her mouth? It tasted like three-week-old bread.

Looking as she looked, with a wedding dress in her kitchen, hearing one note of that voice and she would still have let him into her apartment in half a second flat. No, she would have dragged him in. Had she completely lost her self-control?

That was that. Until his party Friday she was using the stairs.

As Gabe leaned against the wall of the lift transporting him silently to the fifteenth floor offices of BonaVenture Capital he couldn’t help comparing it with the one at the Botany Apartments. Light, bright, luxuriously spacious and prompt as this one was, it hadn’t the added benefit of having deposited pure temptation in the shape of a leggy blonde at his door two nights before. He knew which he preferred, hands down.

He was quite sure this casual dalliance would end up being a most welcome postscript to the unwelcome trip. Casual being the key word.

He liked women. Downright adored some of them. He’d been raised by a strong woman—his gran, after his parents died a week before his tenth birthday—so he respected the hell out of them. But his work kept him on the move, which made casual more workable. That, and the fact that the one and only time he’d attempted a hearts and roses relationship he’d been burned to a crisp.

He shifted his stance, but the discomfort that had settled over him remained. He preferred not to look back to that time. It was a big black hole in his past with the capability to suck him in if he gave it half a chance. Being back in Melbourne, heading into the BonaVenture offices where it had all come to a head made it nearby impossible not to remember, but he was determined to try.

And if losing himself in the warm, willing arms of Paige Danforth every now and then helped, then who was he to argue?

He was rubbing at the bite marks she’d left on his shoulder when the lift dinged. He pressed his feet into the floor and held his breath, only to lose it in a rush when the doors opened to an expansive foyer with a shining dark wooden floor, blood-red walls, and sunlight seeming to pour from every corner of the place even though he couldn’t see a single window.

He glanced back at the floor number to make sure lifts all over the city hadn’t suddenly gone mad.

It was only when he looked up that he saw a sign twice as long as he was tall advertising BonaVenture Capital in elegant white type that he was sure he was in the right place. This was his company, only nothing like it had been when he’d last been in Melbourne. Two years before? Three? Now he remembered Nate carrying on about paint swatches during a lot of emails and calls at one point. He’d agreed to Nate spending whatever he liked on the refit so long as he didn’t have to read another memo about the critical difference between Egg White Omelette and Alabaster Dream. Whichever way Nate had gone, it worked.

‘Wow,’ he bit out, shocked laughter rumbling in his chest.

Shrugging his laptop bag higher on his shoulder, Gabe slowly walked through the foyer dodging the hive of men and women in sharp suits bustling back and forth to and from hallways hidden away to the sides. To think it had been less than ten years since they’d started their venture capital firm with Nate’s trust fund, Gabe’s hard-earned savings from every job he’d had since he was twelve years old, and a business plan mapped out on a handful of beer napkins in a dark corner of their favourite pub while their college mates downed shots at the same table.

He remembered like it was yesterday, walking through the city the next morning, while the grey city turned gold with the magic touch of sunlight, feeling as if his life was finally about to begin. As if he literally had the whole world at his feet. As if brilliance was within his grasp.

And then a smidge under three years later he’d nearly lost it all. And he’d spent every second of the last seven years of his life making up for it.

He pressed his boots into the expensive floor and for the first time since that time he let himself wonder if they might have finally pulled through.

‘Buddy!’ Nate said, appearing from nowhere as if by osmosis. He must have noticed the surprise on Gabe’s face as he laughed loud enough to turn heads. ‘So what do you think? Gorgeous right?’

‘Egg White Omelette?’ he asked, pointing a thumb at the company name.

‘Plain old White,’ Nate said.

‘Who’d have thought?’

‘Want to see your office?’

‘Hell, yeah,’ Gabe said. Though for half a second he wondered if he deserved anything more than a hole in the wall considering how often he used the place. But Nate’s excitement soon had him feeling a glimmer of anticipation at what lay beyond the doors Nate had led him to. ‘So what does a partner in a schmancy joint like this get for his buck?’

Nate grinned as he opened the doors with a flourish to reveal a corner office big enough to host a pool tournament. Huge gleaming glass desk. Acres of lush dark carpet so thick you could swim in it. And that was it.

Gabe found himself forced to school his face so as not to show his intense disappointment at its lack of … something. Nate had decked it out exactly the same as his apartment. Bare. Static. Distinctly lacking garnish .

Nate slapped him on the back. ‘I’ll give you a minute to settle in. Take a lap or ten. Spin around like Julie Andrews on the hilltop.’

Then he was out of the door, leaving Gabe alone in the big empty room.

Feeling tight and antsy, he whipped the beanie off his head and ran his fingers hard through his hair, realising it needed a cut. At the rustle of his leather jacket sleeve it occurred to him he was probably the only person on the entire floor not in a suit.

‘And this is why I don’t come back here,’ he told the walls, which could only be Light Grey. Turned out slapping on a fresh coat of paint didn’t nullify his history with the place after all. He could feel it pressing in on him from every angle.

The only time he hadn’t felt the pressure was when he was with Paige. Deep in the rush he got when a blush rose up her elegant neck. In pounding lust every time he witnessed the love-affair her teeth had with her bottom lip. Drunk on the taste of her sweet skin. Unleashed by the bottomless wells of desire clouding her big blue eyes.

That was that. When he wasn’t doing what he came to Melbourne to do, he’d bury himself to the hilt in a most agreeable leggy blonde. And once the job was over, he wouldn’t be seen for dust.

His relief was short-lived when he saw Nate’s arms were filled with a pile of daunting-looking binders. Throwing them on the desk with a hearty thump, Nate said, ‘No need to tell you, I’m sure, how hush-hush this has to be.’

Gabe merely stared at Nate while he waited for the irony to sink in that he was telling that to the one man who’d learned that lesson the hard way.