Blame It on the Bikini

chapter SIX



BRAD’S tension didn’t ease as he unlocked the car and opened the passenger door in the middle of the night for her. For someone so independent, her inability to drive threw him. They lived in New Zealand. Everyone drove here. And she shouldn’t be walking home alone night after night after work at the bar. She was so pale; the amount of work she had on bothered him. It didn’t help that he’d lumbered her with this party as well. He was thoughtless. And, yes, selfish.

Because all it had been about was him stealing time with her. He’d wanted her—and any excuse would do to get that time. But now? Now he really was concerned.

‘I’ll teach you to drive,’ he said, putting his car in gear and pulling out into the quiet, dark street.

‘Thanks all the same but it’s not necessary. I live centrally. I walk to work. I use public transport—it’s better for the environment.’

‘You’re happy to learn bar tricks from Jonny,’ he pointed out, annoyance biting at her refusal.

‘I wouldn’t want to damage your car.’

His body tautened to a ridiculous degree, urging him to pull over and kiss her into silence. Into saying yes—to this, to anything, to everything. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman. Who’d have thought that a picture could have affected him like this?

No. It wasn’t just the picture. It was every time she opened her mouth and shot him down while eating him up with her eyes. If they ever got it on, it would be mind-blowing. He knew it. But that wasn’t happening. She wasn’t into flings and he wasn’t into anything else and he was man enough to back off. He’d drop her home now and go out tomorrow night and find a new friend to play with.

But the idea left him cold. Instead, he went back to thinking about her.

‘About Lauren’s party.’ He revved the engine while waiting at another infernal red light. The ten-minute drive seemed to be taking for ever. ‘If it’s too much for you—’

‘It’s not too much.’ She interrupted him and he heard the attempted smile in her voice. ‘I just got behind on this one assignment and I’ll get that done tonight. At home. I want to help. I can do it. Just to the left here is fine.’ She pointed out her apartment.

‘I haven’t thought much more about it.’ He hadn’t thought about the party at all. He’d spent all his spare moments imagining the delicious things he’d do to Mya the minute she let him.

She turned to face him as he cut the engine. ‘The cocktails will be fun. Just get in a good band and a DJ and good food. It’ll be fine.’

He flicked on the interior light so he could see her properly. ‘You wouldn’t be lowering your standards for me, would you?’

The colour ran under her skin but she kept on her smile as she shook her head. ‘I’d never do that. I still expect the best.’

Brad grinned despite his disappointment. She’d have got the best. Her automatic, instant refusals of anything he offered? They pricked his pride. He wished she’d come to him, wished she’d be as unable to resist their chemistry as much as he seemed unable to.

‘I really don’t know how to thank you.’ She clutched the door handle, her eyes wide and filled with something he really wished was desire.

‘I can think of a couple of ways.’ He couldn’t help one last little tease.

‘You’ve a one-track mind, haven’t you?’ she teased right back, but she looked away from him, drawing a veil over that spark.

The devil in him urged to press her for a date, but he already knew her answer. She was either working or studying, every waking minute. So he let her go and drove home in the darkness. But once there he remained wide-awake and restless and hot. Nothing was going to happen between them, but that hadn’t diminished the ache and the hunger. Lust. He’d get over it. But as he sat in front of his computer, the sky lightened and he got to wondering whether she’d finished her assignment. Whether she was working her shift. Whether she was okay. And then he realised he wasn’t going to be able to rest until he knew for sure that she was.

Mya knew that if she could survive tonight, she could survive anything. She showered to refresh her system but it was a bad idea. The warm water made muscles melt and her mind wander into dangerous territory. She flicked the jets to cold. Then she dragged herself to her desk and pulled out the piles of paper and opened her ancient laptop. She had four hours. She didn’t have time to lust after anyone.

Finally she got in the zone. She read—fortunately she was fast at it—assimilated, analysed and wrote, fingers thumping the keyboard. Her phone alarm beeped at seven forty-five just as she was finalising the formatting. She packed up and sprinted to the café. There was Internet access there. She grabbed a coffee and hit Send on the email. Her assignment was safely en route to her lecturer’s inbox. She straightened and stretched out the kinks in her back from hunching over her keyboard. Exhaustion hit her like a freight train. Only now she had to put on an apron and start making everyone else’s coffees.

Two hours later she switched her phone to mute and put it in the cubby so she’d no longer be bothered by the zillion messages she was receiving. Brad had sent the invites to everyone about the same time she’d sent the assignment to her lecturer. She’d never expected he’d follow through so quickly or with such impact. She should have known better. Brad Davenport was all about impact.

She’d been impressed by the slick black-and-white mysterious message that had spread over the screen of her phone when she’d clicked on it. Yeah, she’d been fielding texts and calls all morning with people wanting the inside deal on what the plans were for the party—all excitement and conjecture. Because the Davenports were the ultimate in cool. Stylish, unique and rolling in it, and anyone who was anyone, or who wanted to be someone, wanted this invite. She’d answered honestly that she hadn’t a clue what was planned but that they’d better be smart enough to keep it secret from Lauren. Mya had threatened them with a prolonged and agonising social-death sentence should anyone spoil the surprise.

Her shift crawled to its end. She was almost in tears with relief and at the same time ready to drag herself across town. She’d doze in the bus on the way. The last person she expected to see just outside the café door was Brad.

‘What are you doing here?’ Was she so tired she was hallucinating?

‘I thought I’d give you a lift home. You must be exhausted.’

Not a hallucination, he was real. Looking so strong and smiling, and she wished she didn’t have any stupid scruples.

‘I’m okay.’ She was so tired, it was harder to control her reaction to his proximity and the urges he inspired.

‘You got it done?’

She nodded, glad he’d reminded her of her work. ‘Thanks for coming in but I’m not going home. I’m having lunch with my parents.’ She was due there this minute.

‘I’ll give you a ride.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she hurriedly refused. ‘I take the bus.’

He looked at her. ‘I can give you a ride.’

‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ She really didn’t want him taking her there.

‘I’m due a lunch break too.’

‘But—’

‘Can you stop saying no to me in everything?’ he asked. ‘I’m offering as a friend, Mya. Nothing more.’

She opened her mouth and then shut it again as she registered the ragged thread of frustration in his voice. He must be tired too—that invitation would have taken some time on the computer. Had he not slept a wink either?

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said softly ten minutes later as they headed towards the motorway that would take them right across town and to the outskirts.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you.’ He reached over and gave her knee a teasing squeeze. ‘I won’t tell them you like sending people racy pictures of yourself.’

She managed a light laugh but her discomfort mushroomed as she realised he was going to see the worst.

‘Are you embarrassed?’ he asked quietly. ‘You don’t want me to see your home?’

‘No,’ she argued instantly. ‘But you wouldn’t be the first person to look down your nose at my neighbourhood. We come from totally different worlds, so don’t act like you’re all understanding and down with it. You can’t ever relate.’

‘Your shoulders aren’t broad enough for a chip this big.’

‘Oh, it’s a chip, is it? It’s just me being oversensitive?’ She twisted in her seat to face him. ‘What would you know? Have you ever faced the judgments and expectations from each side of the economic divide? Girls from the wrong side of the tracks like me are only good for a fling.’ Never marriage material. That was how James had treated her. At first he hadn’t known. He’d been attracted to her academic success, but when he’d found out about her background, he’d run a mile. ‘All you ‘ve ever wanted from women like me is sex.’

‘All I’ve ever wanted from any woman is sex,’ he pointed out lazily. ‘It has nothing to do with your family background.’

About to launch into more of a rant, she stopped and mentally replayed what he’d said. And then she laughed.

‘I mean really—’ he winked ‘—you don’t think you’re taking this too seriously? We’re in the twenty-first century, not feudal England.’

She shook her head. ‘Twenty-first century or not, the class system operates. There’s an underclass you know nothing about.’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ he said. ‘I’m not ignorant. I’m aware of the unemployment figures and I’ve dealt with worse in my work. You’ve got no idea of the dysfunction I see. I can tell you it crosses all socioeconomic boundaries. Sometimes the worst are the ones who have the most.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t know the stress financial problems can bring.’

‘That’s true. I don’t have personal experience of that. But I’m not totally without empathy.’

‘And salary doesn’t necessarily equate with effort,’ she grumped. Her mother worked so hard and still earned a pittance. That was why she’d insisted Mya study so hard at school, so she’d end up with a job that actually paid well. And Mya wanted to work to help her parents.

‘Mya.’ He silenced her. ‘I know this might amaze you, but I’m not that stupid or that insensitive.’

She put her head in her hands. Of course he wasn’t. ‘Sorry.’

She heard his chuckle and let his hand rub her shoulder gently—too briefly.

‘I’ll let you away with it because I know how tired you are,’ he said.

But her discomfort grew as they neared. He’d been right—she didn’t want him seeing it. She was embarrassed. Embarrassed she hadn’t done something sooner to get her parents out of there. She should have done so much more already. ‘You can just drop me, okay?’

‘Sure,’ he answered calmly. ‘They must be impressed with how hard you’re working at the moment.’

Mya chewed her lower lip. ‘They don’t know.’

‘Don’t know what?’

‘Don’t know anything.’

‘That you work at the bar, the café or that you’re not at uni full-time?’

She shook her head. ‘They don’t know I lost the scholarships. They don’t know I’m at summer school. They can’t know. Can’t ever.’ She felt tears sting. Stupid tears—only because she was tired.

He took his eyes from the road for too long to stare at her. ‘And you’re that stressed about them finding out?’

‘Of course I am. Watch the traffic, will you?’

He turned back to stare at the road, a frown pulling his brows. ‘I think you should tell them.’

Her breath failed. ‘I can’t tell them. They’re so proud of me. It’s … everything.’

‘They’d understand.’

They wouldn’t. She’d be a failure. She didn’t ever want to let them down. She didn’t want disappointment to stamp out the light in their eyes when they looked at her. ‘You don’t get it. I’m the only one to have even finished school. They’re so proud of me, they tell everyone. I can’t let them down now. This is what I am to them.’ It was all she was.

‘Everyone stuffs up sometimes, Mya. I think they’d understand.’

‘They wouldn’t. And I couldn’t bear for them to know. It alienated me from the others. My cousins, the other neighbourhood kids … They gave me a hard time then. I don’t want more of a hard time now. I don’t want my parents disappointed. Life’s been tough enough on them.’

She’d been bullied as she walked across the neighbourhood in her school uniform—the only kid in the block to go to a school with a uniform. Taunted—told she’d become a snob, torn down. Freak. You think you’re better than us?

She hadn’t thought that. She knew just how hard those in her ‘hood worked—or worked to try to get a job. Sure, a couple hadn’t. A couple had gone off the rails in the way Lauren had once threatened to. But she knew better than anyone that snobbery worked both ways. In the one hand she’d carried the hopes and dreams of her parents; in the other she’d been burdened with the spite and jealousy of others. She didn’t fit in here any more, but she sure hadn’t fitted in with her new school either.

And now she was held up as the neighbourhood example—her cousin’s five-year-old daughter had said she wanted to go to uni and be just like her. She couldn’t let them down.

She’d had opportunities others hadn’t had and she’d squandered them on a man who was so removed from her own sphere—that elite, born-to-it world that she’d never once felt comfortable in. She couldn’t let them know what an idiot she’d been. And she couldn’t be that naïve girl again. This damsel was doing her own rescuing. No man, no fairy-tale fantasy, would come between her and her studies.

‘How will you get home after lunch?’ he asked as they neared her home.

‘Same as always.’

She knew he was looking at the gang symbols graffitied on the fences they passed. The lush greenery of the affluent central suburbs gave way to unkempt, sunburned brown grass and bare dirt. The old-looking swing-set in the park and the new activity set that had already been defaced, litter spilling from the bin. She knew what he was thinking; she thought it too. The neighbourhood wasn’t just rough; it was unsafe and was worsening. Her resolve firmed. She was getting her parents out of here as soon as she could.

They were sitting on the porch when Brad turned into the driveway. The two-bedroom government-supplied house had been modified so her father could walk in easily. He didn’t rise as Brad stopped the car, but her mother hurried over. Brad got out of the car and greeted her with his intensely annoying polite manners. Mya watched her mother blink a couple of times, watched his full impact on her—that overpowering charm. And she helplessly watched him accept her mother’s invitation to join them at lunch. All done before she’d even said hello.

When Brad walked into the house, he was shocked—but not for the reasons Mya might have thought he might be. He’d seen way smaller, emptier properties. No, what shocked him was the wall in the lounge.

It was smothered in the evidence of Mya’s achievements. There were certificates everywhere. Certificates going back more than a decade—from when she won spelling competitions at age six. Competitions far beyond her years at that. There were newspaper articles citing her academic successes. There were pictures of her in her uniform. Pictures of her accepting cups and prize-giving. But there were no pictures of her playing.

Proof of their pride in her was everywhere and he realised she hadn’t been kidding about the pressure. No wonder her identity was so bound up in performance—perfect performance. But surely her parents weren’t so success-obsessed for her that they’d disown her if they knew she’d failed? She was their only child.

‘Brad’s a lawyer. A tutor at university.’ Mya walked in with her father, who was leaning on her arm. ‘He’s been helping me with my studies this year. He just gave me a ride because I was running late to get here.’ She bit her lip and looked at Brad as if worried she’d made a slip in mentioning law school given she was supposed to be on holiday.

‘She doesn’t need my help, you know.’ Brad went with her story with an easy smile. ‘She’s just trying to make me feel useful.’

The sad thing was he liked feeling useful to her. Even if in truth he wasn’t.

‘She’s a genius.’ Even as he was saying it, he realised he was buying into the Mya-brain-box worshipping—doing it as badly as her parents. Talking her up until she was terrified of failing. Mya, who needed no help academically because she was such a star. Never-fail Mya. Never dare fail.

So he switched. ‘But she works really hard at it.’

He encountered a beseeching green gaze just at the moment her mother’s proud tones came from the other side of the table.

‘Mya always works hard.’

Brad worked hard himself then, keeping the conversation light—and away from work. Mya was abnormally quiet and giving him keen looks every so often. It bothered him she was so nervous—what did she think would happen? Did she trust him so little? He wouldn’t let her down and give her away.

‘I hope it wasn’t too bad my staying.’ He finally apologised for butting in when they were back in his car and driving towards town. ‘But I really enjoyed it.’

‘It was hardly your usual restaurant standard,’ she answered brusquely.

‘You couldn’t get fresher than that salad,’ he pointed out.

That drew a small smile. ‘It’s the one thing he likes the most but tending the garden takes him a long time. He has chronic pain and he gets tired.’

‘It was an accident?’

‘In the factory years ago.’ She nodded. ‘He’s been on a sickness benefit since. Mum does the midnight shift at the local supermarket.’ She sighed. ‘So now you know why I want to get the big corporate job.’

He nodded.

‘I want to move them somewhere else. Somewhere much nicer.’

‘I can understand that.’ He paused. ‘You really care about what they think of you, huh?’

‘Don’t you care about what your folks think of you?’

He laughed beneath his breath. ‘It no longer matters to me what either of them think.’

‘No longer? So it used to?’

‘When I was a kid I wanted to please Dad.’ He laughed—the small kind of laugh designed to cover up real feelings.

Mya didn’t want him to cover up. ‘But you don’t any more?’

‘I’m really good at my job and I enjoy it. What he thinks is irrelevant.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He didn’t do anything.’

‘I’m not stupid either, Brad.’ She turned in her seat to study his profile directly.

‘So you know what he does.’ Brad trod harder on the accelerator and gave her the briefest of glances. His warm brown eyes now hard and matte. ‘Buys his way out of anything.’

‘What did he buy his way out of for you?’ Mya asked quietly.

Attention. It was all about attention. For him. For Lauren. He’d once asked his father to come and see him in a debating contest of all things. Sure, not the most exciting of events, but he’d been fifteen years old and still young enough to want his father’s approval. At that time he’d wanted to be his father. A brilliant lawyer, top-earning partner in his firm with the beautiful wife, the yacht, the two kids and the dog.

‘I caught him.’ Brad surprised himself by answering honestly.

‘Doing what?’

‘Betraying us.’ He glanced at Mya. She’d revealed a part of her life that she preferred to keep private and that she wanted to fix. He wanted her to know that he understood that. So he told her. ‘I wanted him to come to see me in the debating final when I was a teen. But he said he had an important meeting he couldn’t get out of. I won and went up to show him the medal.’ He’d gone up to his father’s office, excited with the winning medal in hand, anticipating how he’d quietly hold it up and get the smile, the accolade. Instead he’d discovered that the very important meeting his father hadn’t been able to wriggle out of had been with one of the junior lawyers. Fresh from law school, whether she was overly ambitious or being taken advantage of, Brad didn’t know and no longer cared.

‘The meeting was with a trainee,’ he said. ‘She was on her knees in front of him.’

‘Oh, Brad.’

His father had winked. Winked and put his finger to his lips, as if Brad was old enough—‘man’ enough—to understand and keep his sordid secret. His scheduled screw more important than his own son. And the promises he’d made to his wife.

So many dreams had shattered that day.

The anger had burned like acid as he’d run home and hidden in the damn tree hut that he hadn’t built with his father, but that his father had paid some builder to put in for the look of it.

Brad decided never to be a lawyer like his father. It would never be a father-and-son firm as his father had always envisaged. No insanely high billing rates for Brad. He’d turned to the far poorer-paying child advocacy in direct retaliation to his father. He had the trust fund from his grandfather. He was never going to be short of money. So there was something more worthwhile that he could do. Something that would irritate his accolade- and image-driven dad.

But eventually he realised his father really didn’t give a damn what he did. Brad just wasn’t that important to him. His gestures might be grand, but they were empty. Just purchases. There was a missing element—no true paternal love. All his father was, was hungry for success, money and women—and for maintaining that façade of the perfect family in society.

‘I thought Mother didn’t know,’ Brad scoffed lightly. ‘I thought I was protecting her.’ Brad had kept that bitter secret for months, feeling all kinds of betrayal—for himself, his sister and his mother.

‘But she did,’ Mya said.

He nodded. ‘We have an annual barbecue at home for all Dad’s staff. And that trainee turned up all confidence and Mother greeted her so politely. So knowingly. Coolly making it clear to her that while Dad might screw the secretaries, he’d never leave his wife.’

His mother was as selfish as his father. She wanted what she wanted and was happy to put up with the inconvenience of having a faithless husband. Money and status mattered more than truth. She was so busy projecting the perfect image. That was the moment that Brad decided not to help her project that image any more. That was when he removed himself from home as much as possible. He’d gone off and found his own fun—with his own rules.

He looked at Mya. He’d never told anyone that. Not anyone. Had lack of sleep got to him too? And, yeah, he regretted mentioning any of it now he saw what looked like pity in her eyes. He didn’t want pity, thanks very much; he had it all under control. He was more than happy with the way he managed his life.

‘I’m never going to marry,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m not going to lie the way they both do.’

‘You don’t think a long-term relationship can work?’

‘Not for me.’

‘You’re not willing to take the risk?’

‘Why would I? I can get all I want.’ He smiled, acting up the playboy answer again. And he figured the women in his life got what they wanted too. Which wasn’t really him but the things he could give them—good sex, fancy dinners, a flash lifestyle. And fun. ‘I care about my work. I like to have fun. I like my space. I like it uncomplicated.’

‘Easy.’

‘Is that so wrong?’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Not if that’s what both parties want. And understand.’

He trod on the brake and turned to look at her. ‘I don’t do relationships, Mya. I do fun and flings and nothing more.’

‘Message received loud and clear.’ She echoed his words of the night before, calmly meeting his stare.

He felt sorry, tired, resigned. ‘So this … chemistry between us,’ he said slowly.

‘Goes nowhere,’ she answered. ‘It’s just one of those things, you know—the friend’s older brother …’

‘The sister’s best friend.’

‘We’re such a cliché,’ Mya acknowledged with a lift of her shoulders. He’d have believed she was amused had her laugh not cracked at the end. ‘We’ve seen too many movies. And you know how it is—you always want what you can’t have.’

‘We’ll be friends.’ He did want to remain in contact with her.

She hesitated. Too long for his liking. ‘We’ll do this party for Lauren.’

And after that? Back to zero contact? It would be for the best. But it wasn’t what he wanted at all. He still wanted her to the point of distraction. He’d just have to get over it. Another woman maybe?

He gripped the steering wheel with psycho-killer strength. Appalled with her schedule, he dropped her to university for an hour’s lecture knowing she then had to go straight back to the bar for another night’s shift. Despite the scratchy feeling beneath his eyelids, he found himself driving to his parents’ house. He vaguely tried to remember when it was he’d last been there, and failed. But now was a good time. His father would still be at work and his mother would be at some meeting. He avoided both the house and them as much as possible.

‘Hello?’ he called out just in case as he opened up the door and disarmed the alarm.

No answer. He took the stairs. His and Lauren’s rooms were still neat, still as they’d had them when they were growing up. On a separate floor to their parents, at opposite ends of the hallway from each other, with guest rooms and bathrooms in between. The physical distance was nothing on the emotional distance between the entire family. And though he and Lauren had grown a little closer as adults, the gap between parents and children had only widened.

His mother had read a home-organisation book at some point in one of her obsessive phases, and all their personal things were stored in crates, neatly stacked and labelled in the back of their wardrobes. Schoolwork from decades ago. When was he ever going to go through that? When would anyone? But it wasn’t his room that he’d come to grab stuff from. It was Lauren’s.

Because that photo of Mya at her parents’ house had reminded Brad that, at one stage in her turbulent teen years, Lauren had taken hundreds of photos. For a long time she’d preferred the magic of the old-style camera before messing around with digital. The old playroom had been converted into a darkroom for her, their parents eager to do anything that might hold Lauren’s interest in a topic that was actually palatable to them—not like boys and underage clubbing. It had long since been converted back into a study but the boxes of prints remained in Lauren’s wardrobe.

He sat on her bedroom floor and flicked through them, his heart thudding harder and harder as he worked through the piles. Lauren’s best friend, the natural model for Lauren’s photographic phase. It had been the two of them against the world, right? The rebel and the reject—the kid who’d not been included by anyone at the hellish, snobby school they’d gone to. Except for Lauren.

Though it was subtle, Mya had changed. The planes of her face had sharpened, those high cheekbones, the big green eyes were able to hold secrets now. In her teen years the attitude was obvious. The resentment, the defensiveness. But so was the joy, effortlessly captured in every other photo—that pixie smile, the gleam in her eyes.

Often she had a battered library book in her hand. Every other photo it seemed Lauren had snapped while Mya was unaware—and she was so pretty. The ones where she was aware were funny. The madness of some of the pictures made him laugh—terrifying teen girls.

He’d gone to university as soon as he turned seventeen and missed much of this part of Lauren’s life. It had been a relief to get out of the house. At the time he’d been too selfish to think of his sister. He’d thought she hadn’t known but of course she had. He’d discovered that in their tennis sessions. It was the great unacknowledged truth, how unhappy and dysfunctional their perfect family unit really was. The affairs of his father, the obsessive illness of his mother. They all retreated behind the façades they’d chosen for themselves. His father the distant workaholic, his mother the busy do-good wealthy woman, his sister the tearaway who acted out for any kind of attention. What was left for him but the playboy role?

He paused over one photo. Mya in that prom dress. He should have taken a better look at her in it back then. Then again it was probably better that he hadn’t.

She was leaning against the wheel of a car, parked on a lawn that looked as if it hadn’t seen a mower in a few months with ratty weeds. With broken headlights and the weeds around the wheel, that car was going absolutely nowhere any time soon. Yeah, that’d be the car she hadn’t learnt to drive in.

Brad put that picture to the side and shuffled through some more. He thought about taking the whole box home to look through at leisure but that was a step too far into stalker territory. He flicked through the pile more quickly—Mya wearing some mad hat, Mya draped in what looked like an old curtain. Mya in another dress apparently butchered and sewn together. He looked at the commonality in the pictures. Lauren’s pictures of Mya in Mya’s crazy—brilliant—creations. So many different things and so out there.

He flipped through them, faster and faster. She’d not always worn black. She’d always worn outrageous. Uncaring of what society might think. She’d made them herself, made that massive statement—‘here I am, look at me …’

Where had that fearless girl gone?

Why had she turned herself into a shadow? Now in nothing but black, slinking round as if she hoped she couldn’t be seen. Why didn’t she want to be seen? Where had the crazy fun gone? She’d grown into a pale, worried woman. A woman who worked too damn hard. Brad held the picture and looked at the smiling face, and slowly his own smile returned as it dawned on him.

It wasn’t Lauren who needed a party. It was Mya.