How to Get Over Your Ex (6 page)

Well... ‘Not quite, actually.’

His shaggy head tipped. But his hazel eyes darkened with
warning. ‘Georgia...’

‘I’m... I signed a contract with the radio station, for the
whole...’ She couldn’t even use the word
proposal
.
‘I have to see it through.’

‘I hope you mean “I” and not “we”.’

‘Not we. I made it a condition that you weren’t involved at
all.’ Something she should have thought about originally, perhaps. ‘It’s not
about us, it’s about me. Me getting myself all fixed up.’

God love him, he frowned. ‘You weren’t broken, George. It was
just a really stupid thing to have done.’

‘I know. But for me that’s symptomatic of being broken. I don’t
do stupid things. I’m supposed to be rock-solid and reliable and never-changing
like you.’ It was why she’d allowed herself to think they might make a life
together at all.

His scowl deepened.

Say what you have to say and get
out.
‘So I really just wanted to make sure you were OK and to tell
you why you’ll be hearing more from me on the station.’

‘Are you kidding?’ He snorted. ‘I’ll never listen to them
again.’

Oh, right.

‘You realise it will just stir things up again every time you
go on there?’ he huffed.

‘Zander thinks that it will help draw attention away from you.
Keep it on me.’ Where it belonged.

‘Zander?’

‘He’s the station manager. It was his promotion.’

The scowl returned. ‘Forgive me if I don’t put a lot of faith
in the opinion of anyone who would think up a promotion like that.’

The intense desire to defend Zander burbled up out of nowhere.
‘This is my responsibility, Dan. I’m trying to fix it as best I can.’

His brilliant mind ticked over behind carefully shielded eyes.
‘I know. Sorry. You do whatever you need to, George.’ He took a breath. ‘And
I’ll do whatever I need to, to stay out of it.’

Intriguingly cryptic but fair enough. ‘OK.’

They both shuffled awkwardly. ‘So...I’ll let you get back to
your sick pitcher plant.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know what I’m working on?’

‘One of your colleagues told me.’ And for no good reason at all
she expanded. ‘Blonde hair, flashy dresser.’

Cripes, Georgia, you might as well just
ask him outright.
‘Why wasn’t I good enough for you?’

His eyes grew even more guarded. ‘Right. Yes, she’s new.’

‘Pretty.’ Pretty different from everyone round here, that was.
Because actually she was gorgeous.

He shrugged. ‘I guess.’

OK, he wasn’t going to play. She should have known. ‘Well, I
should get going.’ It hit her then that she would quite possibly never see him
again. She frowned. ‘I don’t quite know how to say goodbye to you for the last
time ever. It feels really wrong.’

But that was all, she realised. Just intensely awkward. It
didn’t really hurt.

Huh.

He walked forward, wiped the earth from his hand and then took
hers. ‘Bye, George. Don’t be too hard on yourself. No one died, here.’

No. Except the part of her that used to be happy with herself.
She squeezed his fingers. ‘Take care, Dan.’

‘Maybe I’ll see you round.’

She turned. Left. And then it was done. That entire of her life
closed as silently and gently as the hydraulic doors of the greenhouse.

And still, no hurt. Just sadness. Like losing a good
friend.

Did Dan feel the same? Was that why he’d never wanted their
relationship to be more? His sister had always hinted at something big in his
past, but he’d never shared and she’d never felt she could ask. Kind of
symptomatic of why they weren’t right for each other, really. He didn’t want
more because he didn’t have more in him to give. And maybe neither did she. How
long might they have gone on like that if she hadn’t brought their
non-relationship to a startling and public end?

She’d had no trouble at all imagining herself as Mrs Bradford,
obligatory kids hanging off her skirts. As if it were just the natural extension
of the life they’d had. She enjoyed his conversation, she liked to share
activities with him, the sex was as good as she figured she would ever get. He
was bomb-proof and reliable and she’d been drawn to the qualities in him that
screamed
stability
. Because she’d had so little of
it in her past. But she’d never gone breathless waiting to walk into Dan’s
office. She’d never felt as cherished with him as she had standing behind a
perfect stranger in an elevator as he protected her from prying eyes.

Zander.

About as unsuitable for her as any man could be, yet he’d
stirred more emotion in her in a few meetings than had the man she’d been
planning on marrying.

All outstanding reasons to keep her distance, emotionally.

This was the Year of Georgia. Not the year of panting after
sexy, rich, unavailable men. She’d made enough bad decisions in the interests of
what her friends or the rest of the world was doing; she needed to have a good
look inside and see what
she
wanted to do.

Even if she was a bit scared that she’d look deep inside and
find nothing left.

FOUR

April

The buzz in the perfume-rich room hushed but intensified
as Zander walked into it. Georgia saw him from the corner of her eye but made a
concerted effort
not
to see him. Every other woman
in the place did the same but for totally different reasons.

‘
Dieu merci!
The testosterone
balance in the room just doubled,’ the male chef joked and drew even more
anti-attention to Zander’s arrival. He smiled thinly.

Georgia had quickly realised that attending alone was a
mistake. Every other woman there was paired up with a girlfriend, so, quite
apart from whether there were any men in the room, she felt like a failure
already. Learning to love doing things solo was going to be a much bigger
challenge than just growing accustomed to doing things without a man by her
side. Hard enough to be doing things that weren’t in her comfort zone, but to be
doing them alone...

Effectively alone. Her eyes snuck to Zander again, briefly.

‘Alors.’
Chef clapped his chopping
board onto the bench top a few times to call the unruly crowd to order.
‘Places.’

What did that mean? Her first reaction was to watch Zander but
if he was any wiser he wasn’t giving anything away, so she took her cues from
the other participants instead. They each dragged a tall stool along one edge of
the oversized kitchen bench as Chef laid out a generous wine glass in front of
each place from the other side. Two women practically turned an ankle vying for
the spot closest to Zander who—wisely—took up the seat right at the end so that
he only had to negotiate one interested feminine neighbour.

Georgia waited until last and found herself in the space
furthest from him. She filled her glass with water before anyone could put
anything more ill-advised in it from the rapidly emptying bottle of chardonnay
doing the rounds.

Getting tipsy in front of Zander once was bad enough.

‘First point of the evening to the woman down the end. What’s
your name,
petite fleur
?’

All eyes snapped her way, including Zander’s.

Every awful moment of her school career came rushing back with
the unexpected attention. It never paid to be the brightest—and poorest—at
secondary school. It led to all kinds of unwanted attention. ‘Georgia.’

‘Well, Miss Georgia,’ Chef improvised in ever-thickening
French, ‘while wine is
perfection
for enjoying the
consumption of a meal, water is, without question, the best choice for preparing
one. Until you know what you’re doing, of course. You want your tastebuds
unassailed. You want your nose and palate unconflicted and clear-headed as you
assemblé
the ingredients you’ll need...’

‘An unconflicted palate. Score one for me,’ she murmured.

Their prosaic teacher was fully underway by now and his
continental theatrics and charm managed to recapture the focus of the women in
the room. But Zander still stared at her, eyes lightly creased.

Stop smiling
, her eyes urged him.
We’re supposed to be strangers
. Though there was
something just slightly breath-stealing about the game they were playing.
Pretending to be strangers. Hiding a secret from the whole room.

It was vaguely...kinky.

Which said a lot about how very not kinky her life usually
was.

She forced her attention back to Chef. Did her best to listen
and understand what he was saying and not pay any further attention to Zander
perched at the end of the bench, deftly deflecting the interest of the two women
closest to him and studying everything that was happening in the room. Parts of
what the chef was saying really resonated for the scientist in her—the parts
about the chemistry of food and how ingredients worked together—but they were
totally overshadowed by his try-hard vocabulary and his staged theatrics, which
really
didn’t
work for her. She caught herself
smiling more than once at something ridiculous he said or the way he gushed over
his rapt female audience. She was fairly certain he wasn’t actually French.

‘Excuse me, Chef?’ she interrupted when he paused for a rare
breath and before she could change her mind. ‘Will we get to cook something
tonight?’

‘So
enthousiaste
,’ he fawned, and
she groaned. ‘
Non
, you won’t get hands-on until week
six. In Chef André Carlson’s class we first develop
appréciation
for the art of the food, then we progress to
construction
of the food.’

And clearly much drinking of the wine, despite his own
protestations.

She nodded, politely, and started counting the endless minutes
until her first class was over. How would Zander feel about her dumping the
first thing he’d sent her to? She glanced up. He had a resigned nothing
plastered to his face. It hit her then that she was wasting two people’s time on
this terrible class.

‘Excuse me, Chef?’ This time he looked more irritated to have
been interrupted mid-fake-French-stream. ‘I have a terrible migraine. I’m going
to have to leave.’

Much clucking of concern and old fake-French remedies for
migraines later and she had her handbag over her shoulder and her feet pointing
towards the door. No one cared.

‘You’ll need someone to walk you to your car,’ Zander
volunteered and then excused himself from the woman next to him. That got their
attention, but he reassured them, ‘I’ll be right back.’

No, he wouldn’t. Not if he was as dumbstruck by that class’s
awfulness as she was.

They practically bolted down the hall for the street door,
together.

‘You were going to leave me there!’ he accused as they fell out
into the street.

She laughed as she skipped down the steps to the footpath.
‘Sorry. Every man for himself on the culinary Titanic.’

‘That was awful,’ he gritted. ‘Why would anyone put themselves
through that?’

‘They looked like they were having a good enough time.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone coming away from that actually
appreciating
food more.’

Her laugh redoubled. ‘No.’

‘I take it the migraine was fake?’

‘As fake as his accent. I think we should just cut our
losses.’

He halted her with a warm hand to her arm. ‘No. You came here
tonight wanting to discover what’s so special about cuisine.’

God, was he warming back up to another invitation to see his
etchings?

‘Let me just make a call...’

He made it. Brief and murmured, his back half to her. Then he
turned and smiled at her. ‘OK, all arranged.’

‘What is?’

‘We have a job for the night.’

‘A job?’

‘In a commercial kitchen. That’s where you’ll see what cooking
is really all about.’

‘I can’t cook in a commercial kitchen!’ She could barely boil
water in her own home.

‘Trust me, Georgia.’ He slid his hand around behind her back
and smiled. ‘We won’t be cooking.’

* * *

He
wasn’t kidding. Within fifteen minutes
they were installed up to the elbows in suds in the back of the busy kitchen of
an Italian restaurant and they’d washed more dishes in less time than she’d even
dirtied in her whole life. But she didn’t even notice.

The owner of the restaurant where Zander had called in his
favour elevated the usual dishwashers to kitchen assistants for the night and
had one of his demi-chefs explain everything happening in the kitchen for their
benefit.

She and Zander eavesdropped on every word between suds.

And his digital recorder—totally approved by the owner—captured
it for EROS’ segment.

The kitchen ran like a ballet. Every item on the menu
choreographed; every technique a combination of hard-learned steps. Every
resulting dish a work of art, never the same twice.

The chef—a real, proper chef this time, with a real
accent—yelled at everyone just enough to keep them moving, and didn’t hesitate
to yell at his trainee dishwashers if she and Zander fell behind. She felt more
welcome being yelled at in this kitchen than being fawned over in the last one.
The clunk and clatter of knives and pots and whisks merged with the hiss of
frying fat and draining pasta pots to create a symphony of experience that had
so much more excitement and interest than just how to cook a good cordon
bleu.

And such language! The night was an education for more reasons
than one. She loved even that. Though she knew Zander’s editors would be busy
with the bleep button.

The symphony and ballet went on for hours. She grew transfixed
trying to take it all in even as her feet started first to ache, then protest
and finally give up and just burn. But her sore feet were the least of their
worries. A whole dish went wrong and sent the kitchen into desperate chaos
catching back up and she felt the adrenaline of the race, the thrill of
contributing, the deep satisfaction of getting the replacement meals out in
time. Even if her role was only keeping the clean cutlery coming.

And now the night was nearly over. The last customers were on
their desserts and only one big pot bubbled away in the half-empty kitchen. The
promoted-for-a-night assistants were more than happy to cook something simple
for the people who’d triggered their unexpected elevation, and Georgia and her
sore feet were more than happy to be cooked for by them.

Who knew, maybe the two men would get to do it more often now
that they’d been ripped out of their sudsy pigeonhole.

She’d watched them make it from scratch. Pasta. Carefully
mixed, rolled, strung, cooked. And the leftover sauce from the night’s
bolognese. The owner-chef passed through and plated up for both of them, a
modest bowl for Georgia and an enormous mound for Zander. With a barrage of
hasty Italian between.

‘Are you pregnant?’ she joked, settling her heat-wrinkled
fingers around one of the forks she’d washed herself.

He chuckled. ‘I’m carb-loading.’

‘Which is what for the uninitiated?’ She curled a dozen strands
of beautifully shaped pasta around her fork.

‘The day before a big run you load your body up on
carbohydrates and water to ensure it’s full of energy.’

‘Energy you burn off running fifty kilometres?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Where will you run tomorrow?’

He hesitated answering. She didn’t let her sigh show. ‘You
don’t like to talk about it much.’

‘I’m unaccustomed to anyone asking. It’s usually just my
thing.’

That rankled just a tiny bit. ‘I’m not going to invite myself
along again if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘I know,’ he replied as she slid a fully loaded fork into her
mouth.

Oh, my God...
She liked spaghetti.
She’d even been excited enough once or twice to make her own lumpy Napolitano
sauce in her slow cooker. But this...
this
! The
combination of home-cooked bolognese and minutes-old, fresh pasta on top of the
bone weariness, hollow stomach and flat-footed agony of having stood doing
dishes for hours...

‘This is amazing, Zander!’

‘One of my favourite bolt holes.’

She glanced up at him. His choice of words struck her. ‘Where
do you bolt from?’

How could a shrug be so tense? ‘Life. Work. Everything.’

She could understand that, if the man bursting out of his
office was a regular occurrence.

‘We could both do worse than running our workplaces the way
Chef ran this kitchen,’ she said softly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Firm. High expectations. But fair. And everyone here was
working with him, not despite him.’

Zander looked around the near-empty kitchen. The two assistants
had already removed any hint of evidence that their meal had ever existed. The
way they were demolishing their pasta, it very soon wouldn’t.

‘What makes you think it’s not like that already?’ he
asked.

‘Something one of your staff said when I was in your office.’
She’d been there a few times over the weeks finalising the list with Casey, so
that was suitably broad. He wouldn’t know who amongst his team it was. ‘They
said I was a lamb to the slaughter.’

He blinked at her, then recommenced eating his meal. But his
brows remained low.

‘Not saying I agree with them. You’ve been nothing but nice to
me.’ If one had a liberal definition of
nice
. ‘But,
you know, clearly they thought you were going to make things hard for me.’

He thought about that some more. ‘It’s what they would
expect.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s what they know.’

Sadness washed across his expression and then vanished. ‘Why do
you make things hard for them?’

‘Because I’m their boss. The network delivers the good news and
I deliver and implement the bad. It’s what I get paid for.’

‘That’s a miserable kind of job. Why do you do it?’

He laughed. ‘You’ve seen where I live.’ One of London’s better
suburbs.

‘And you’ve seen where I live. So what? That’s not who we
are.’

His eyes grew assessing. ‘Really? Your apartment exterior is
modest and plain, but well kept. Someone cares for that building. I’d hazard a
guess that the inside would be the same. Everything in its place, nothing
unessential. Isn’t that exactly as you are?’

She stared at her near-empty bowl. ‘Is that how I strike you?
Orderly and dull?’

‘You strike me as someone who’s stuck in a rut. Maybe who has
been for some time.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Ruts come in all shapes and suburbs.
Besides, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.’

He lifted his chin to match hers. ‘Really? Care to put your
money where your mouth is?’

‘You want to bet on it?’ She frowned.

‘I want to see it.’

Oh.

‘When?’

‘How about now?’

‘It’s not tidy—’