How to Get Over Your Ex Page 11

  He just didn’t know why.

  ‘Partners!’ the dance instructor called.

  They knew the drill. They’d done weeks of this. He’d gone a little bit crazy getting all the audio he needed, grabs from Georgia, the dance instructor. That should have been heaps. But he’d interviewed just about everyone else, there, too. Every single one of them had an interesting story, their own personal reasons for learning to dance at seventy, or despite being widowed recently or coming alone. And for every single one of them it wasn’t about dance at all.

  It was about living.

  There were thirty interesting stories in this room. But he was only paid to tell one of them.

  The instructor clapped his hands again. He and Georgia were supposed to partner up. She was supposed to step into his arms, assume the salsa start position. But the stance they were supposed to assume was the vertical version of the one they’d found themselves in a few nights ago: lying there in the long grass as the sun extinguished in the ocean.

  A little bit too familiar.

  A little bit too real.

  She hovered indecisively. And again, this was his mess to sort out. He was the one who’d failed to control his wandering thoughts and hands that night. He was the one who’d lacked discipline. Folded to his barely acknowledged need for human contact.

  He stepped closer to her, kept his body as formal and stiff as he could. Raised his hands. ‘Georgia...?’

  Her smile was tight, but she stepped into his hold carefully, and stood—just as stiff, just as formal—close to his body. As the music began he did his best not to brush against her unless essential—out of respect for her and a general aversion to self-torture—and they stepped as they’d been taught, though nowhere near as fluid as it had been in the past.

  It was as clunky as them, together, now.

  But it was functional.

  The instructor drifted around correcting posture, demonstrating steps, voicing words of encouragement, but when he got to the two of them he took one look at their total disconnect, his lips pursed and he said in his thick accent, ‘Not every day is magic. Sometimes this happens. You will have the magic again next week.’

  No. There would be no magic next week. There would be no salsa next week. And the guilt in Georgia’s eyes confirmed exactly what he’d suspected. This sudden change to belly dancing was about him.

  ‘I could have just stopped coming,’ he gritted as she moved close enough to hear his murmur.

  She drifted away again. But he knew the steps would bring her right back. He tried to read her face and see if she was going to feign innocence or not.

  ‘I wanted something that didn’t force us to dance together,’ she breathed, her total honesty pleasing him on some deep level. A level deep beneath the one where he hated what she was suggesting. ‘The only other solo option was pole dancing. Belly dancing seemed like a decent compromise.’

  And suddenly his mind was filled with poles and Georgia and seedy, darkened venues. He forced his focus back onto the key issue.

  ‘What about the segment?’

  ‘You’ve got more than enough for a salsa segment. In fact, why do you have so much? You’ll never use all of that in a two-minute piece.’

  Prime-time air was too expensive to dedicate more than two minutes a month to the Year of Georgia. So why had he spent all that time recording everyone else in the session as well? ‘The laws of documentary-making,’ he hedged. ‘Get ten times more than you think you’ll need.’

  ‘This isn’t a documentary,’ she reminded him, her breath coming faster with the dancing. ‘It’s a stupid commercial promotion.’

  Stupid. Nice.

  But he was too distracted remembering the last time she’d been this breathless to argue.

  He yanked her towards him as the funky music crescendoed. As usual the whole room was slightly out of synch so what was supposed to be a passionate crash of body against body always looked like a vaguely geriatric Mexican wave.

  She pressed against his chest, staring up at him, angry colour staining her cheeks. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My reluctance to have a stranger come along with me. You can go back to your paperwork and give me the work-experience kid as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘You think our schedules are that elastic? That I can just make a change like that with no warning? Disrupt everyone’s plans every time you change your mind?’

  ‘It’s called dynamism, Zander,’ she gritted. ‘Maybe your station could use some.’

  OK, now she was just picking a fight.

  He stopped when he should have twirled her into open position. She stumbled at his misstep. Then he curled his hand around hers and hauled her back towards the door. A few eyes followed them, including the speculative ones of the instructor.

  ‘Next week!’ he shouted at their backs. ‘Magic!’

  She shook free as soon as they hit the cool June air. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What’s going on, Georgia?’

  ‘Nothing’s going on. I just realised that I needed to be true to myself or this whole thing is a crock.’

  ‘Which part is being true to yourself? The part where you start switching all our plans around or the part where you’ll do just about anything not to get too close to me.’

  ‘Aberration,’ she parroted back to him. ‘That was your word, Zander. You wanted things back on a professional footing.’

  ‘Not at the expense of any civility at all between us.’

  Her breath hissed out of her. ‘The changes I’m making are trying to keep things civil. So they don’t end up like this every night.’

  Boundaries. She was stacking them up and he kept knocking them down. Why? He should be thanking her. He took two deep, long breaths. ‘We just kissed, Georgia. Heat of the moment, influence of the sunset, romance of the wall. Whatever you want to call it.’

  He had to call it something, otherwise he was just a jerk for hitting on her while she was still vulnerable from her breakup with Bradford.

  ‘Who are you trying to convince, Zander? Me or yourself?’

  That was a damned fine question. ‘It doesn’t have to change anything. We just agree to let it go.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  Sure. He was a master at denial. ‘I have a job to do and you have money to spend. Let’s just focus on that.’

  ‘You don’t object to any of the changes?’

  ‘I don’t care what you do with the money, I just want you to be—’ he caught himself a half-breath before saying happy ‘—comfortable with it.’

  ‘I’m hoping I’ll be more comfortable this way. Forcing myself to do things way outside of my usual interests was probably a mistake. I was trying to be someone I’m not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I thought it was what was expected. What your listeners would expect. What you wanted.’

  Her eyes flicked away and he struggled with the deep satisfaction that she’d done any of it for him. ‘Listeners are the first to spot falsity on air. If it’s not of interest to you it’s going to show in the segments.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, hopefully we’ve taken care of that now.’

  We. He liked her accidental use of the collective. For the same reason he liked coming along to these crazy classes even though he had much more efficient things to be doing with that time. It legitimised his being with Georgia. He could play at relationships without actually being in one. Enjoy her company without the commitment. She was generous with her wonder and excitement doing new things and he could live off that for a whole week back in the soul-destroying environment of the station.

  If he spaced it out right.

  Kisses... Those he could live off for a year.

  She chewed her lip. ‘Should we go back in?’

  Her reasons for changing classes were valid. The more he had to put his hands on her, the harder it was going to be taking them off. ‘No. Let’s just call it
a night.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Courteous but cool. It bothered him enough to glance down the street for the nearest coffee shop. He saw the blinking LED sign a few blocks down. So much safer than having her in his house. So much safer than a bar with a few drinks under his belt. So much safer than the back of a black taxi, pressed together for twenty minutes.

  ‘Let’s grab a coffee,’ he said and turned her west.

  Georgia did her best not to flinch at the feel of Zander’s hand at her lower back. It was just a courteous gesture. Unconscious. It didn’t mean a thing. Even if it did feel more intimate and personal than the salsa clinch they’d been in just moments before. Something about the way it failed to entirely disengage even once she was fully moving...

  It took a few silent minutes to get to the Tudor-style coffee shop. Then a few more to get seated and settled and their drinks ordered.

  She struggled to not be distracted by his long fingers tapping on the tabletop—fingers that had traced her skin so beautifully just nights ago and curled so strongly in her hair. But if she looked at his face she’d either drown in his eyes or start obsessing about his lips.

  All of which were entirely off limits to her now. Despite the torment of the taste-test after the marathon.

  So she fluctuated between looking at the place where a lock of his hair fell across his forehead, a spot of fluff on his collar and glancing around the room at the other patrons.

  ‘Tell me about Ankara.’

  That managed to bring her eyes back to his. ‘Now?’

  ‘I know nothing about it and I’m going to be going with you. Why is it so special?’

  ‘Cappadocia.’ Amongst other wonders.

  He shrugged. ‘Old cities and ballooning. That’s it?’

  She pressed forwards against the table. ‘Seriously? You can’t understand why someone would want to float high above a city where houses and chapels are carved into the rockfaces? Where entire communities used to live underground to hide from invaders two thousand years ago? Cities that were founded twenty centuries before Jesus?’

  He just stared. ‘You’re serious?’

  Excited warmth warmed her cheeks. ‘Where else could you do it? It’s so intriguing...’

  ‘It’s not to put me off?’

  ‘It’s not about you at all.’ Lies! ‘It’s something I’d like to do. I saw it in a documentary years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.’ And if Zander came along, bonus. Good things happened to them when they got out of London. Things just tended to go south when they were back in it.

  His eyes burned into hers. Deciding. He slid his recorder up onto the table. ‘OK. Tell me more.’

  She did. For the next hour and a half. All about Göreme, where she wanted to stay, all about Cappadocia’s extraordinary ancient lunar-scapes and traditional villages and the amazing peoples that had lived there for forty centuries. All about how it had wheedled its way under her skin all those years ago.

  ‘And you can stay in these underground buildings?’

  ‘They carve them out of the side of enormous rock faces. And they’ve been modernised. Electricity, water. They even have Wi-Fi. So you won’t be slumming it.’

  He’d been smiling for the last five or six minutes straight, though she knew she wasn’t saying anything funny. His eyes practically glittered looking at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just...’ He struggled for the right words. And he turned the recorder off. ‘You love life, don’t you?’

  Generally, she just endured life. But maybe that was because she’d been missing the best of it. ‘I love the possibilities. I love that you’ve given me this opportunity and I’m going to do something I’ve always wanted to. I couldn’t do this without you.’

  ‘Without the station,’ he clarified.

  Right. Just in case she was thinking he was doing this for her. ‘Without help.’

  ‘You might have got there by yourself. Eventually.’

  ‘Maybe not. I was this close—’ she pinched her fingers ‘—to consigning myself to the role of wife and mother. That would have meant a lot less flexibility and freedom for a really long time.’

  He shrugged. ‘A different kind of adventure, perhaps?’

  His words sank in. If marriage was an adventure, then shouldn’t you enter into it with someone that you’d want to be adventurous with? Discover new worlds with? Fly across a lunar landscape with. Her breath tightened up. She said the first thing that came into her head in order to stop anything more inappropriate appearing there.

  ‘Is that what you think marriage is? An adventure?’

  ‘I used to.’ He pressed his lips together the moment those few tiny words voiced.

  The unexpected glimpse into his past was tantalising. She wanted more immediately. ‘Is that why you created the Valentine’s promo?’ she fished. ‘To celebrate marriage?’

  His answer was fifty-per-cent snort. ‘Definitely not. I created the promo to cash in on the leap year commercialisation. Nothing more.’

  Well, that was depressingly cynical. ‘You don’t think matrimony is worth celebrating?’

  ‘On the whole I think marriage is highly overrated.’

  She stared at him. ‘I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Otherwise you’d have been snapped up ages ago.’

  One expressive eyebrow lifted. ‘You don’t think I’d have done the snapping?’

  ‘You strike me as a man who gets what he wants. If you wanted a wife in that big lonely house of yours there’d be one there now.’

  He drained the last of his second coffee. ‘You have a very high opinion of my desirability. Not everyone would agree with you.’

  His staff perhaps? ‘Maybe you work too hard keeping people at a distance...’

  ‘You’re here.’ He tossed it out like a challenge. ‘I can’t seem to shake you at all.’

  His light words filleted her neatly along her ribs. Although, she could see he wasn’t saying them to be cruel. In fact, if anything, he looked more engaged and more intent than ever. And positively mystified.

  ‘I’m particularly uncaring about societal niceties,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure there’s been a hundred not-so-subtle hints I should have been taking.’

  If she weren’t so busy looking for hints that he might be more interested than he was letting on. Maybe than he even knew, himself. But for every sultry look, for every gentle touch, for every unexpected waterside kiss there was a frown, pressed lips, words like professional and aberration. And ill-equipped.

  They kind of cancelled each other out.

  ‘Besides,’ she braved on, ‘I’m not your target market.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Really? Who is?’

  She looked around. A lone woman sat reading a thick book in the far corner. Her perfectly manicured nails were the exact same shade as her shoes. ‘Her. Maybe...’ She looked around for someone else. ‘Maybe her?’

  Two glamour queens in one coffee shop. Convenient.

  Zander looked around far more subtly than she had. ‘They’re both very attractive.’

  Of course that would be the first thing he noticed.

  ‘And stylish,’ he went on.

  ‘And well educated.’ She nodded to the woman with the thick hardback. ‘She’s reading Ayn Rand.’

  ‘And that’s who you think my target market is? Stylish intellectuals?’

  ‘I can see either one of them in your house very easily.’ Much as it galled her to admit it.

  His grey eyes pierced her. ‘Can you see them sitting on the side of a weather-beaten old track for an hour making conversation with the locals while waiting to hand me an energy drink?’

  She just stared. Because, no, she couldn’t.

  ‘So maybe my target market isn’t as clear-cut as you think?’ His chin rested on his steepled fingers and he lifted it enough to tilt his head.

  Maybe not.

  ‘It’s a moot point, anyway,’ she breezed. ‘If you’re not actually in the ma
rket.’

  He started to answer that but then changed his mind. His mouth gently closed again without making a sound.

  ‘So three weeks before the underground cities?’ he hedged, after a moment.

  ‘And two dance classes before then.’

  ‘What about my garden?’

  She studied him. This man was more baffling than any of the complex scientific mysteries she’d studied at university. His garden had sat there, untouched, for years. Now suddenly he wanted it to progress immediately? ‘What about it?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see how it’s progressing?’

  Did she want to see what some other lucky sod got to create with? ‘When it’s done.’

  It was never too late to implement some self-restraint.

  That triggered a couple of lines between his brows. ‘Guess I should trade in my dancing shoes and get onto a visa for Turkey, then.’

  ‘Ten minutes and ten pounds at Heathrow.’ She nodded. ‘I checked.’

  He considered her. Then smiled. ‘You’re really excited.’

  There was something looming on her horizon and every cell in her body told her it had something to do with Turkey. It had been swaying her away from Ibiza almost the moment she agreed to Spain. Making her look east. Agitating subconsciously for her to change her mind. And then, the moment she’d made her decision, this odd kind of emotional hum had commenced and it had been slowly building ever since.

  Ankara. Cappadocia.

  Something was going to happen there. Something life-changing. Something that felt almost fated. Briefly she wondered how she ever would have found her way there if not for the disaster that was her botched proposal, if she hadn’t met Dan before that. And suddenly everything started to feel very...

  Meant.

  Excited? About standing on the edge of something so huge and new?

  ‘You have no idea,’ she breathed.

  * * *

  Georgia stood at the door to the curtained-off change area in the dance studio and hovered awkwardly in the doorway. Possibly she hadn’t thought this through as thoroughly as she might have.

  Imagine that.

  ‘Off you go...’ the woman behind her nudged. Emma. A friendly, motherly sort. A total born-again about belly dancing, given she’d only been coming a few weeks herself.