How to Get Over Your Ex Page 6

  And still, no hurt. Just sadness. Like losing a good friend.

  Did Dan feel the same? Was that why he’d never wanted their relationship to be more? His sister had always hinted at something big in his past, but he’d never shared and she’d never felt she could ask. Kind of symptomatic of why they weren’t right for each other, really. He didn’t want more because he didn’t have more in him to give. And maybe neither did she. How long might they have gone on like that if she hadn’t brought their non-relationship to a startling and public end?

  She’d had no trouble at all imagining herself as Mrs Bradford, obligatory kids hanging off her skirts. As if it were just the natural extension of the life they’d had. She enjoyed his conversation, she liked to share activities with him, the sex was as good as she figured she would ever get. He was bomb-proof and reliable and she’d been drawn to the qualities in him that screamed stability. Because she’d had so little of it in her past. But she’d never gone breathless waiting to walk into Dan’s office. She’d never felt as cherished with him as she had standing behind a perfect stranger in an elevator as he protected her from prying eyes.

  Zander.

  About as unsuitable for her as any man could be, yet he’d stirred more emotion in her in a few meetings than had the man she’d been planning on marrying.

  All outstanding reasons to keep her distance, emotionally.

  This was the Year of Georgia. Not the year of panting after sexy, rich, unavailable men. She’d made enough bad decisions in the interests of what her friends or the rest of the world was doing; she needed to have a good look inside and see what she wanted to do.

  Even if she was a bit scared that she’d look deep inside and find nothing left.

  FOUR

  April

  The buzz in the perfume-rich room hushed but intensified as Zander walked into it. Georgia saw him from the corner of her eye but made a concerted effort not to see him. Every other woman in the place did the same but for totally different reasons.

  ‘Dieu merci! The testosterone balance in the room just doubled,’ the male chef joked and drew even more anti-attention to Zander’s arrival. He smiled thinly.

  Georgia had quickly realised that attending alone was a mistake. Every other woman there was paired up with a girlfriend, so, quite apart from whether there were any men in the room, she felt like a failure already. Learning to love doing things solo was going to be a much bigger challenge than just growing accustomed to doing things without a man by her side. Hard enough to be doing things that weren’t in her comfort zone, but to be doing them alone...

  Effectively alone. Her eyes snuck to Zander again, briefly.

  ‘Alors.’ Chef clapped his chopping board onto the bench top a few times to call the unruly crowd to order. ‘Places.’

  What did that mean? Her first reaction was to watch Zander but if he was any wiser he wasn’t giving anything away, so she took her cues from the other participants instead. They each dragged a tall stool along one edge of the oversized kitchen bench as Chef laid out a generous wine glass in front of each place from the other side. Two women practically turned an ankle vying for the spot closest to Zander who—wisely—took up the seat right at the end so that he only had to negotiate one interested feminine neighbour.

  Georgia waited until last and found herself in the space furthest from him. She filled her glass with water before anyone could put anything more ill-advised in it from the rapidly emptying bottle of chardonnay doing the rounds.

  Getting tipsy in front of Zander once was bad enough.

  ‘First point of the evening to the woman down the end. What’s your name, petite fleur?’

  All eyes snapped her way, including Zander’s.

  Every awful moment of her school career came rushing back with the unexpected attention. It never paid to be the brightest—and poorest—at secondary school. It led to all kinds of unwanted attention. ‘Georgia.’

  ‘Well, Miss Georgia,’ Chef improvised in ever-thickening French, ‘while wine is perfection for enjoying the consumption of a meal, water is, without question, the best choice for preparing one. Until you know what you’re doing, of course. You want your tastebuds unassailed. You want your nose and palate unconflicted and clear-headed as you assemblé the ingredients you’ll need...’

  ‘An unconflicted palate. Score one for me,’ she murmured.

  Their prosaic teacher was fully underway by now and his continental theatrics and charm managed to recapture the focus of the women in the room. But Zander still stared at her, eyes lightly creased.

  Stop smiling, her eyes urged him. We’re supposed to be strangers. Though there was something just slightly breath-stealing about the game they were playing. Pretending to be strangers. Hiding a secret from the whole room.

  It was vaguely...kinky.

  Which said a lot about how very not kinky her life usually was.

  She forced her attention back to Chef. Did her best to listen and understand what he was saying and not pay any further attention to Zander perched at the end of the bench, deftly deflecting the interest of the two women closest to him and studying everything that was happening in the room. Parts of what the chef was saying really resonated for the scientist in her—the parts about the chemistry of food and how ingredients worked together—but they were totally overshadowed by his try-hard vocabulary and his staged theatrics, which really didn’t work for her. She caught herself smiling more than once at something ridiculous he said or the way he gushed over his rapt female audience. She was fairly certain he wasn’t actually French.

  ‘Excuse me, Chef?’ she interrupted when he paused for a rare breath and before she could change her mind. ‘Will we get to cook something tonight?’

  ‘So enthousiaste,’ he fawned, and she groaned. ‘Non, you won’t get hands-on until week six. In Chef André Carlson’s class we first develop appréciation for the art of the food, then we progress to construction of the food.’

  And clearly much drinking of the wine, despite his own protestations.

  She nodded, politely, and started counting the endless minutes until her first class was over. How would Zander feel about her dumping the first thing he’d sent her to? She glanced up. He had a resigned nothing plastered to his face. It hit her then that she was wasting two people’s time on this terrible class.

  ‘Excuse me, Chef?’ This time he looked more irritated to have been interrupted mid-fake-French-stream. ‘I have a terrible migraine. I’m going to have to leave.’

  Much clucking of concern and old fake-French remedies for migraines later and she had her handbag over her shoulder and her feet pointing towards the door. No one cared.

  ‘You’ll need someone to walk you to your car,’ Zander volunteered and then excused himself from the woman next to him. That got their attention, but he reassured them, ‘I’ll be right back.’

  No, he wouldn’t. Not if he was as dumbstruck by that class’s awfulness as she was.

  They practically bolted down the hall for the street door, together.

  ‘You were going to leave me there!’ he accused as they fell out into the street.

  She laughed as she skipped down the steps to the footpath. ‘Sorry. Every man for himself on the culinary Titanic.’

  ‘That was awful,’ he gritted. ‘Why would anyone put themselves through that?’

  ‘They looked like they were having a good enough time.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anyone coming away from that actually appreciating food more.’

  Her laugh redoubled. ‘No.’

  ‘I take it the migraine was fake?’

  ‘As fake as his accent. I think we should just cut our losses.’

  He halted her with a warm hand to her arm. ‘No. You came here tonight wanting to discover what’s so special about cuisine.’

  God, was he warming back up to another invitation to see his etchings?

  ‘Let me just make a call...’

  He made it. Brief and murmured, his
back half to her. Then he turned and smiled at her. ‘OK, all arranged.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘We have a job for the night.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘In a commercial kitchen. That’s where you’ll see what cooking is really all about.’

  ‘I can’t cook in a commercial kitchen!’ She could barely boil water in her own home.

  ‘Trust me, Georgia.’ He slid his hand around behind her back and smiled. ‘We won’t be cooking.’

  * * *

  He wasn’t kidding. Within fifteen minutes they were installed up to the elbows in suds in the back of the busy kitchen of an Italian restaurant and they’d washed more dishes in less time than she’d even dirtied in her whole life. But she didn’t even notice.

  The owner of the restaurant where Zander had called in his favour elevated the usual dishwashers to kitchen assistants for the night and had one of his demi-chefs explain everything happening in the kitchen for their benefit.

  She and Zander eavesdropped on every word between suds.

  And his digital recorder—totally approved by the owner—captured it for EROS’ segment.

  The kitchen ran like a ballet. Every item on the menu choreographed; every technique a combination of hard-learned steps. Every resulting dish a work of art, never the same twice.

  The chef—a real, proper chef this time, with a real accent—yelled at everyone just enough to keep them moving, and didn’t hesitate to yell at his trainee dishwashers if she and Zander fell behind. She felt more welcome being yelled at in this kitchen than being fawned over in the last one. The clunk and clatter of knives and pots and whisks merged with the hiss of frying fat and draining pasta pots to create a symphony of experience that had so much more excitement and interest than just how to cook a good cordon bleu.

  And such language! The night was an education for more reasons than one. She loved even that. Though she knew Zander’s editors would be busy with the bleep button.

  The symphony and ballet went on for hours. She grew transfixed trying to take it all in even as her feet started first to ache, then protest and finally give up and just burn. But her sore feet were the least of their worries. A whole dish went wrong and sent the kitchen into desperate chaos catching back up and she felt the adrenaline of the race, the thrill of contributing, the deep satisfaction of getting the replacement meals out in time. Even if her role was only keeping the clean cutlery coming.

  And now the night was nearly over. The last customers were on their desserts and only one big pot bubbled away in the half-empty kitchen. The promoted-for-a-night assistants were more than happy to cook something simple for the people who’d triggered their unexpected elevation, and Georgia and her sore feet were more than happy to be cooked for by them.

  Who knew, maybe the two men would get to do it more often now that they’d been ripped out of their sudsy pigeonhole.

  She’d watched them make it from scratch. Pasta. Carefully mixed, rolled, strung, cooked. And the leftover sauce from the night’s bolognese. The owner-chef passed through and plated up for both of them, a modest bowl for Georgia and an enormous mound for Zander. With a barrage of hasty Italian between.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ she joked, settling her heat-wrinkled fingers around one of the forks she’d washed herself.

  He chuckled. ‘I’m carb-loading.’

  ‘Which is what for the uninitiated?’ She curled a dozen strands of beautifully shaped pasta around her fork.

  ‘The day before a big run you load your body up on carbohydrates and water to ensure it’s full of energy.’

  ‘Energy you burn off running fifty kilometres?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Where will you run tomorrow?’

  He hesitated answering. She didn’t let her sigh show. ‘You don’t like to talk about it much.’

  ‘I’m unaccustomed to anyone asking. It’s usually just my thing.’

  That rankled just a tiny bit. ‘I’m not going to invite myself along again if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied as she slid a fully loaded fork into her mouth.

  Oh, my God... She liked spaghetti. She’d even been excited enough once or twice to make her own lumpy Napolitano sauce in her slow cooker. But this...this! The combination of home-cooked bolognese and minutes-old, fresh pasta on top of the bone weariness, hollow stomach and flat-footed agony of having stood doing dishes for hours...

  ‘This is amazing, Zander!’

  ‘One of my favourite bolt holes.’

  She glanced up at him. His choice of words struck her. ‘Where do you bolt from?’

  How could a shrug be so tense? ‘Life. Work. Everything.’

  She could understand that, if the man bursting out of his office was a regular occurrence.

  ‘We could both do worse than running our workplaces the way Chef ran this kitchen,’ she said softly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Firm. High expectations. But fair. And everyone here was working with him, not despite him.’

  Zander looked around the near-empty kitchen. The two assistants had already removed any hint of evidence that their meal had ever existed. The way they were demolishing their pasta, it very soon wouldn’t.

  ‘What makes you think it’s not like that already?’ he asked.

  ‘Something one of your staff said when I was in your office.’ She’d been there a few times over the weeks finalising the list with Casey, so that was suitably broad. He wouldn’t know who amongst his team it was. ‘They said I was a lamb to the slaughter.’

  He blinked at her, then recommenced eating his meal. But his brows remained low.

  ‘Not saying I agree with them. You’ve been nothing but nice to me.’ If one had a liberal definition of nice. ‘But, you know, clearly they thought you were going to make things hard for me.’

  He thought about that some more. ‘It’s what they would expect.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s what they know.’

  Sadness washed across his expression and then vanished. ‘Why do you make things hard for them?’

  ‘Because I’m their boss. The network delivers the good news and I deliver and implement the bad. It’s what I get paid for.’

  ‘That’s a miserable kind of job. Why do you do it?’

  He laughed. ‘You’ve seen where I live.’ One of London’s better suburbs.

  ‘And you’ve seen where I live. So what? That’s not who we are.’

  His eyes grew assessing. ‘Really? Your apartment exterior is modest and plain, but well kept. Someone cares for that building. I’d hazard a guess that the inside would be the same. Everything in its place, nothing unessential. Isn’t that exactly as you are?’

  She stared at her near-empty bowl. ‘Is that how I strike you? Orderly and dull?’

  ‘You strike me as someone who’s stuck in a rut. Maybe who has been for some time.’

  She lifted her chin. ‘Ruts come in all shapes and suburbs. Besides, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.’

  He lifted his chin to match hers. ‘Really? Care to put your money where your mouth is?’

  ‘You want to bet on it?’ She frowned.

  ‘I want to see it.’

  Oh.

  ‘When?’

  ‘How about now?’

  ‘It’s not tidy—’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  Yes...it is. She sighed. ‘You have a race in the morning.’

  His eyes grew serious. ‘I’m not proposing sleeping over, Georgia, just a quick look.’

  Heat flared up the back of her neck and she worked hard to keep it from flooding around to the front. She had made the immediate assumption that this was some kind of line. Zander Rush was a fit and sexy man. And so of course it wasn’t a come-on. Not for her.

  ‘I just meant...it’s late.’

  ‘I don’t run until noon. And it’s too late for you to be taking the tube.’

  It wasn’
t, but she didn’t mind the idea of a comfortable Jag ride home. She wasn’t ready for their first night to be over.

  The first night. Not their first night.

  ‘OK, I’ll take the lift.’ And show him the inside of her flat for a minute or two. And then he and his fascination would be gone. ‘Thank you.’

  They rinsed their dishes in the cooling water, thanked the chef who was enjoying a drink with his team out in the now-empty restaurant, and headed out into the dark.

  ‘You want to drive?’ he asked.

  No. She wanted him to drive. Inexplicably. So of course, she said, ‘Yes, please.’

  He pulled his coat collar up as high as possible against the cool April weather. ‘One of these days you’ll stop being so courteous and I’ll know we’re finally getting somewhere.’

  The drive took about twenty minutes. Conversation was light between them but not because they had nothing to say. She just didn’t feel the need to say anything. And besides, the scrumptious dinner was kicking in and metabolising down into a warm goo that leached through her veins. She worked hard to keep her focus sharp while driving Zander’s land-yacht.

  ‘Who else lives here?’ he murmured quietly as they crossed into the shared entry hall of her apartment building.

  She ran her fingers along the four letterboxes by the door. ‘Two students, a long-term resident...’ She traced the last box; its lettering was cool and smooth under her touch. ‘And me.’

  She led him through to the back of the entry hall where her door was.

  If Mr Lawler came out for one of his late-night cigarettes now he’d be in for quite a surprise. Not that she’d never had a man here before, but not like this...tiptoeing in late at night. All clandestine and exciting...

  She turned her key, wiggled it, put her shoulder to the door, and popped it quietly open. It swung inwards into the darkened apartment. ‘Acquired touch,’ she whispered.

  Why was she so breathless? Was it just because she was walking into her home with a virtual stranger? Or was it because she loved her apartment? It was so...her. So if he judged it, he judged her.