‘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? Sh
e’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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRAD was lost in thought when his sister thumped his shoulder.
‘What was that for?’ He frowned, rubbing his biceps more from surprise than pain.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Lauren asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean those two women just swished past you with hips and bits wiggling and you didn’t even look at them. Plus I almost beat you today, which has never happened in our whole lives.’
Seated at the tennis-club lounge, Brad felt more confused than ever. ‘What women?’
Lauren’s mouth fell open. ‘Are you sick?’
Okay, he had been somewhat distracted this morning. ‘I’ve got a tough case on.’ He offered a genuine excuse. Gage Simmons was truanting again and still not speaking to his psychologist, and the idea of his parents coping with a mediation conference was a joke.
‘Isn’t that even more reason for you to scope out some action?’ Lauren said sarcastically. ‘That’s your usual stress release, isn’t it?’
Once upon a time it had been, sure. But he hadn’t looked at another woman in days—there was another consuming his brain space. ‘Have you seen much of Mya recently?’
‘My Mya?’ Lauren’s pretty nose wrinkled. ‘Not much. Why?’
‘I ran into her recently,’ Brad hedged. Seemed Mya hadn’t told Lauren about the mis-sent photo. Good.
‘Where?’
‘At that bar she works at.’
Lauren nodded and sighed. ‘She works all the time.’
‘Mmm.’ Brad knew if he left the space, Lauren would fill it.