Insecure (Love Triumphs 1)

“IT.”

“I still can’t help you.”

He used a Dillon line. “What can I do to change your mind?” It felt oily sliding off his tongue and slippery falling off his lips. He wiped a hand across them.

“Look, give me a message and I’ll pass it on to her.”

Mace groaned. He didn’t have a message. He had an all-consuming desire to see Jacinta again and the desperate thunk of knowledge he’d left it too late to step up. “Tell her. Tell her. Jesus,” he smacked the heel of his hand into his forehead. “Tell her Mace called and I’d like to see her.”

“That’s it?”

That was like slitting a wrist with a machete. “That’s it.”

“I don’t know when I’ll next speak to her, and it might be a while, but I’ll tell her.”

“What does a while mean?”

“It means she’s travelling and I don’t know when I’ll get to talk to her.”

“Okay, I get it, thanks.” His throat was still neck-tied by vines Tarzan could’ve swung on. “Oh wait. She doesn’t have my number either.”

“Right.”

Because that didn’t that make him sound like someone Melanie should protect Jacinta from. “She would’ve had my company contact.”

He gave Melanie his new number and she rang off. He stood with the boxes and the packing tape. It didn’t feel right that she’d quit. Compared to him, she had a lot to quit on. He searched her name online and came up with a couple of newspaper reports. One was straight-out company propaganda saying she’d left to pursue other interests. The Jacinta he knew didn’t have other interests. The other two were more like real journalism. They voiced all the concerns Mace had, which amounted to speculation she was knifed, suddenly and spectacularly, in the career guts.

He stomped around the house, throwing things in boxes, earmarking others for St Vinnie’s or the garbage. Melanie said Jacinta was travelling, which meant she wasn’t at the apartment. And neither was Jay. Dillon had tried to reach Jay, but his office said he was overseas and unavailable. They made it sound like for Dillon he’d be permanently that way.

He’d hit a dead end. They were no further ahead on Ipseity, it could take months to sell the house and he was skint. All he could do was hope Melanie passed his number on and Jacinta felt like using it. And if that didn’t happen, well, it’s not like he didn’t already have enough to do and hell, what was he thinking anyway? Jacinta out of work was go travelling indefinitely, while he was sponge off Dillon till the sale of the house happened. They might’ve shared a laugh about quitting Wentworth, but what else did they have in common?

He taped up another box of Buster’s romance books and stacked it in the hall with the others. He might as well clean out the notion that his weekend with Jacinta meant anything more than something once enjoyed voraciously but not worth keeping.

22: Waiting

Jacinta tried lying on a deckchair and lasted three days, the third day only because she’d converted her sit-on-your-butt-and-pretend-to enjoy-it holiday into a walk-till-you-drop trek that started the next morning. Now she had blisters on her blisters. She also had a suntan, a haircut and new casual clothes and shoes.

That took care of the urgent need to fill her unemployed time for the first month. And now she was back in town she needed to find somewhere new to live and give Bryan back his spare room and garage. She also needed to stop dodging Jay’s calls. She plonked herself in a serviced apartment and hired a car while she went flat hunting.

Her first instinct on getting an email from Mel was to ignore it. She didn’t want to think about Wentworth, she wasn’t past the grief, or the anger. But it wasn’t Mel’s fault she reminded Jacinta of where she’d be if not stomping around the place with a rental listing and a crabby temper. And Mel had a problem. After leaving her languishing with almost nothing to do since Jacinta left, HR had finally found a new position for her, but it was a sideways shift and Mel wanted advice. It was the least Jacinta could do.

They met for coffee in that cute neighbourhood with the cafe and restaurant strip, the

gallery, gift shops and boutiques where she’d last gone the day Henry wrote the obituary on her career.

“Oh my God, you look amazing, Jacinta.”

She shook her head and her hair swished about her neck and shoulders. “New hair.”

“No, you look...” Mel put her hand to her lips then blurted, “You look ten years younger.”

“It’s the suntan.”

“It’s having a life.”

Jacinta sipped her coffee. She wasn’t having a life; she was waiting for something similar to her old one to come along, and checking her email constantly. Carrying her phone in her pocket wasn’t making it happen any quicker.

“I’m still coming to terms with that.”