Insecure (Love Triumphs 1)

’d be the same old clever chops and it’d be like we’d spoken yesterday.”

Jacinta shook her head. He definitely wanted something. “And my best ruthless, heartless, no friends in business, that didn’t come across?” She’d put proper clothes on for this, makeup. Carmen would’ve had something outrageously funny to say. Ingrid would’ve given them an update on her online dating challenges. No one would have used the expression clever chops and thought they were being amusing.

Ron laughed again. He’d gotten fat and his hair was thinning. He’d been the one to watch in their class intake and proven it by launching his own consulting firm and then not crashing it in a blaze of bad decisions. “I must’ve missed it.” He had a hide like a well-fed croc, he’d have ignored it. He’d also gotten rich, quick, if the magazine lists were in any way accurate.

“Hmm, maybe that’s where I went wrong.”

“I heard the old man cut you off at the knees. True?”

She inclined her head. “True enough.” It was no secret, and no one in the industry bought the idea it was her free choice to explore other options, follow private passions. Odd that, so far, that’s exactly what she was doing.

“What did you do to deserve that?”

“Did you ask me to lunch to get the gossip, Ron?”

“Of course I did.” He waved at a waitress. “Did you just call me Ron?”

This meeting was a waste of good lipstick and she’d only been in the restaurant for fifteen minutes. “Good Lord, what do you want,” she enunciated clearly, “Aaron?”

“Don’t be like that. Tell me how you’ve been?”

For seconds, while he scanned the menu, she thought of telling him she was at a weird place in her life where wearing her work clothes felt like playing dress-ups, where she was more likely to have paint under her nails than polish on them, that she was making friends for the first time since school days, and had a lover she cared about for the first time in forever.

That would shut him up because it was deeply personal and there was little place for that in business. Particularly this kind of business, masquerading as a friendly catch up lunch, but in reality, all about using the sucker you share a tablecloth with for your own personal gain.

She wondered what Ron would do if she forgot the unwritten rules of a business lunch and confided in him about her sex life. Told him her man knew how to turn her into a writhing, screaming, pleasure-seeking hoyden, but that she’s scared him recently and he was being so careful with her she wanted to string him from the ceiling and beat it out of him. Too much information, and not just for Aaron, she wouldn’t tell anyone that, but it would be fun to fluster Aaron with bawdy bedroom talk. He almost deserved it.

But if she told him exactly how much of a private passion Mace was and exactly how she spent most of her time in front of an easel, Aaron would write her off as a serious career contender before their order went in. And he had an influential network, the members of which would chew up that information like a stoner with the munchies.

If she wanted this lunch to be the shortest on record, she’d dangle the idea of being in a permanent relationship with Mace because that was virtually the same thing as announcing she was fifteen months pregnant with quads, or becoming a nun, or retired. Or dead.

She looked at her copy of the menu, wondering if they had duck, because it was unlikely they had goose or gander but that’s what was going on here. Two ex-wives, attendant public scandal—wife two was almost a teenager—and four kids weren’t a liability for man. A wedding ring on a woman’s hand was a bat signal there could be serious, long-term work-incompatible distractions coming.

God, where did that thought come from? Marriage wasn’t anywhere on her agenda. A serious relationship wasn’t either, but now that she had one, she was intending to hold on tight, even knowing more than Mace did about what stresses they’d need to get though. He was easily the best thing that that had happened to her. Without him, and without her brushes and her art classes, she’d have been far less mentally capable of waiting out her waiting period and more inclined to snap Aaron’s head off.

“Really enjoying the time off, but very keen to get back into it again,” she said, giving good old Ron almost nothing he could work with.

He gave her a calculating look. Searching for a line to read between. He could search all he liked.

“I’m bored, Aaron. I want to be working again, but it’s a waiting game.” Maybe that was what he was waiting for. If he had anything up his sleeve to offer that was his introductory line.

“How’s Tom?”

They’d probably throw her out, maybe charge her with malicious use of silverware if she lurched across the table and stabbed Aaron with a fish fork. He should’ve asked Tom for lunch. She could’ve had this discussion with Aaron on the phone. If she made some excuse she could skip lunch altogether and be back in her studio before the light died. “Busy, I imagine.”

“Sure, but how’s he coping?”

She studied the menu so hard the type blurred. That was better than screaming at the lunch crowd about Tom being a scumbag opportunist, much like Aaron. “You mean is he in the market for consulting services? I have no idea.” She had no idea if Tom still had two arms and legs either, but she assumed so. She’d had no contact with him. She’d have to do something about that, Tom wasn’t Malcolm and he hadn’t deliberately gone out of his way to steal her best ideas. Even if it did feel that way. “You’d have to ask him.”

“Right, but I thought you’d have insight on the best way to approach him.”

Which translated into that’s the way you pay your share of the use of this tablecloth and that cutlery in these very pleasant fine dining surroundings.

She could be in her car in ten minutes, home in thirty, have a paintbrush in her hands in another five. Or she could swing by the school and see if anyone was around for coffee, or to sneak in a movie; all of that would be more fun than this. If Mace wasn’t so stressed about his presentation she could kidnap him for a late lunch. But none of that would keep her network humming, none of that back scratching and favour bank building would be in place when she needed it, and she was going to need it. She took a calming breath, the kind that traditionally went with yoga pants, and ordered a salad.

While they ate, she talked Aaron through the best way to approach Tom, and the most likely needs for consulting services. It hardly mattered since her Wentworth bridges were torched with intergalactic fire. While they ate, Mace would be fretting his pitch. Though he had it locked, nothing to worry about. She’d rehearsed him till he was almost verbose with it, even threatened him with a re-enactment of the Hugh Jackman, John Travolta interview scene from Swordfish. In her version, he’d pitch instead of hack, and she’d intended to give him more than sixty seconds of distracting attention involving her mouth and tongue and the most sensitive, responsive piece of his anatomy.

She smiled at the memory of Mace’s horror, and how he’d laughed when she’d explained he was most free with his tongue when she wasn’t able to be free with hers. It put an end to rehearsing, but not to laughter.