Till then...
Till then she stretched her arms high over her head, lifted till the arches of her feet screamed at her to stop, shook out her hair and danced to the sound of the rain drumming on the windows. Danced till sweat dripped into her eyes. Danced until her breaths grew ragged, her heart hammered, and her legs could barely hold her.
Power still out, muscles shaking and spent, she rugged up, turned things off as best she could, and left.
By the time she got downstairs, the storm had passed. And Ryder’s luxe car was long gone. Not even a dry patch on the edge of the otherwise drenched and shiny street evidence he’d ever been there.
For that she had the burn of self-disgust riding deep in her belly and the crescents of still-tender love bites on her chest.
Nadia twisted her summer scarf into a ball at her neck, and walked the other way.
* * *
It was closer to dawn than midnight by the time Ryder turned onto the beach road leading to his Brighton home to find a pancake-flat, electric-blue sports car facing the wrong way and blocking his driveway.
Angry and frustrated, and wishing that he were back in his suit and not the ridiculous workout gear he’d worn to score points with Nadia, he pulled to a stop beside the outrageous car. The window of the mid-life-crisis-on-wheels slid down at a sulky pace.
Ryder said, “What do you want, Fitz?”
Ryder’s father glanced up at Ryder’s home, three stories of luxury living the younger Fitzgerald had designed himself, the daunting wall of dark windows looking out over Port Phillip Bay and the white stucco walls gleaming, even in the cloud-shadowed moonlight.
“Nothing more than I deserve,” Fitz finally drawled.
Knowing he could spend a week giving his father the earful he truly deserved, considering the hour, and the fact that he wanted to spend as little time in the same vicinity as the man as humanly possible, Ryder decided on brevity. “I know what you tried to pull tonight. Just leave her the hell alone.”
The man actually laughed, his light hazel eyes crinkling as he let loose a deep booming sound that made Ryder’s teeth hurt. “Don’t be ridiculous, kid. She’s my daughter.”
“And any good father would respect his daughter’s decision.”
“Respect? That’s rich. Not only did she choose you to walk her down the aisle over me, she didn’t even invite me to the damn wedding. I’m the only one should be harping on about a lack of respect right about now.”
Yeah, Ryder thought, should have occurred to him “respecting others” wasn’t a concept in his father’s emotional vocabulary.
The man leant towards the window leaving only his eyes still in shadow. His infamous crooked smile, the one all those women had seemed hell bent on falling for, crinkled his age-defying face. “Come on, kid. Put in a good word. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Ryder rolled his fingers into a fist before shoving it into the deep pocket of his track pants. Then he curled the fingers of the other hand over the window sill of the sports car, and felt a kick of satisfaction as his father reared back. “The right thing? Sam is your daughter, Fitz. One who has given you more chances to be an actual father than you could ever deserve. And your sweet, kind, only daughter is about to get married, and unlike you she plans for it to be the only time she does. So after a good deal of soul-searching she decided to spend that special day with Ben’s family, a few close friends, her mother, and me. That’s it. Because even while she loves you—heaven only knows why—she recognises that if you are there the whole day, her wedding day, will be about you.”
Fitz scoffed, but Ryder went on, lifting fingers stiff from gripping the metal and pointing one at his father’s nose. “And if you have even the slightest twinge of affection for Sam you’ll do the right thing and suck it up. Because if you dare to turn up, if you send her a message, if you so much as think about her on that day...”
Before he did anything stupid, anything he’d truly regret, Ryder sucked in a deep breath and leant back, then he banged a fist on the roof of the car, only just stopping himself from denting it.
Either way, Fitz took the hint and with a kind of roar only a top of the range substitute for actual manhood could achieve he took off down the road in a screech of tyres and guttural noise.
Only after the sound of the car faded did Ryder close his eyes and suppress his anger. Or at least he tried. The man’s influence echoed in the back of his mind, motivating him to do better, to achieve more, to prove the man wrong. But it had been a while, years in fact, since the effect had been so acute.
He couldn’t remember feeling so incensed since that moment on the worksite during that long-ago internship, when his father had dismissed him so inexorably. A switch had flipped inside him that day. Emotions cooled. Ambitions honed. He’d lived that way ever since.