The Game You Played (25 page)

Probably her bed.

He was somewhere next to a clock. I could hear the
tick tick tick
. We had no analog clocks at our house.

“Did Gilroy get in contact with you yesterday afternoon?” he asked.

“No. I was probably at Sass’s. What was it about?”

“Don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“If it was about Tommy, he would have told you. Why’d you text me to say this was urgent?”

He paused and then sighed. “I just wanted to hear your voice. And know that you’re okay.”

I exhaled in annoyance. “I’m okay.”

“Where are you tonight? I called you at your nan’s, but she said you were out again. She told me what happened with Nanna Rosie. So, I know you’re not with Sass.”

“I’m just out with a friend.”

“What?
A guy
?”

“What does it matter?”

“Who is he?”

“You don’t have the right to ask me that.”

He sighed in a low, drawn-out voice. “I don’t want you to start seeing other men. If you care about our marriage at all, you won’t do this.”

“But you—”

“Phoebe . . . I’m so fucking confused right now. I feel like if we don’t get together and talk this out now, then things are going to go so far that we can’t fix it. We need to talk. Please?”

“I’m sorry you’re confused about which woman you want,” I said dryly.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant.”

“Phoebe . . .”

“I don’t even care. And I don’t want to talk to you.”

I ended the call.

Luke’s idea of relationships was as strange as Nan’s. He obviously didn’t think that him seeing another woman had irreparably damaged our marriage. But he thought that me seeing another man would.

I felt
burned
after the conversation. I didn’t know him anymore.

I’d call Gilroy in the morning to see what he wanted to talk to me about. He was probably just keeping an eye on me. To check that I wasn’t up to more crazy stuff.

Like what I was planning to do later.

I returned to the table.

“Anything wrong? You look like you just swallowed a lemon,” Dash remarked.

“Everything’s all right.” I waved a hand in front of my face. “Okay, I just reset my expression. No more sour lemon.”

He shot me an amused glance. “Maybe a bit less sour.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you do kind of have that
resting bitch face
thing going on.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. You’ll just have to put up with it.”

“I ordered for you while you were on the phone.”

“What did you order for me?”

“Something nice.”

“Guess I’ll find out.” I relaxed, smiling. Ruining my resting bitch face. “So, what do you think of Sydney so far?”

“I’ve been here before.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup. Last December.”

“You were?”

“Sure was. Setting things up for the seminars that are happening now. Choosing the venues and all of that. I left a New York winter to head straight into blistering heat. This time, I left the sunshine to head into your doom-and-gloom winter.”

“It’s been a nasty one.”

“Hey, I think that’s when I saw you before. In December. Can’t remember where, though.”

Okay, so he really did see me before? Maybe it hadn’t been a pickup line. My face had been all over the news back then.
I swallowed. “I live in Sydney. Maybe we walked past each other?”

“Or maybe I saw you in a newspaper.”

“What?” My voice went weak.

“Maybe your photo was with one of your articles or something. Either a newspaper or online. But your hair was different.”

I relaxed again. He still didn’t remember me as being the mother of an abducted boy. My hair had been cut in a shoulder-length layered style then. And I was carrying a lot more weight—I was one of those people whose faces looked very different when they gained or lost weight. I needed to change the subject. “Maybe. Hey, I didn’t get an answer to my question earlier. About Sydney?”

“Okay, yeah. I haven’t had a lot of time to look around, either time I’ve been here. But I like what I’ve seen. You guys are spoiled. It’s a sexy-looking city. And the wait staff are nice even though you don’t tip them. But the bad thing is that everything starts shutting down just as I’m ready to head out. The place is like a teenager on curfew.”

“Good analogy, I guess. Sydney
is
a bit like a teenager. Subject to curfews, a bit awkward, a bit self-conscious about its pimples.” I shrugged. “But a lot of fun to be around.”

“Maybe you could show me some of the fun places I haven’t seen.”

“Don’t you have a tight schedule?” I tried to keep a hopeful note out of my voice. I wanted him to be too busy.

“I still gotta eat and have some downtime.”

“And spend some time working on being notorious.” I laughed.

He laughed with me, but then his eyes grew serious. “Well, don’t go believing all that you’ve heard about me.”

He had no idea that I didn’t know who he was. Without knowing his last name, I wasn’t able to look him up earlier. I lifted my chin, studying his face. “I don’t take anything at face value. There’s always more to a story than you know.”

“I’m warming to you.” He kept his gaze on me. “I bet you’re someone who does interesting things in their spare time.”

My one and only hobby is the relentless search for a little boy.
“I do amateur theatre. I guess that’s my big love.”

“I like that.”

“What about you?”

He grinned. “Cause mayhem. Gotta keep the notoriety going somehow.”

I grinned back. “I like that.”

The scent of steaming-hot food reached me before the waiter placed the plates on our table. I already knew what we were having before I laid eyes on it. Dash had chosen pumpkin ravioli for the two of us.

“Did I choose good, Phoebe?” Dash asked.

I jerked my head up, stunned. “My name’s Saskia.”

He shook his head, rubbing his temple. “Dammit, sorry.
Saskia.
I must have heard someone calling out that other name last night. Somehow, the two names got mixed in my brain.”

He glanced away, somehow not looking convincingly apologetic. Or was I imagining that?

“No problem,” I told him.

He dug into his dinner. I followed suit. I needed this dinner over and done with.

Pouring us both another glass of wine, he frowned suddenly. “Forgot to tell you. You got pipped at the post. A female journo called me this morning. I agreed to a Skype interview. So, you’re not going to get the first interview with me.”

“How did it go?”

“She went for the jugular.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m not giving you ammunition, girl. You should have done your own research.”

“Maybe my article can be an examination of her interview. Complete with quotes from you.”

“Direct quotes, no twisting of words?”

“Direct quotes. No twisting.”

“My
spidey senses
tell me not to believe you.”

“My
resting bitch face
stares down your
spidey senses
and annihilates them.”

“Ha! Okay. Whatever. I’ll believe you when I see what you write in black and white. And if you want to know what Ms Palmer wrote about me, it’s in black and white already.” He thumbed through screens on his phone and then handed it to me. “Here, read this bit.”

I read through the paragraph. The paragraph described him as having shifty eyes and possible cheekbone implants in his
too-pretty-for-a-man
face. And his
spray tan
had apparently come from a bottle on the shelves of Evo Pysch headquarters.

The journalist had certainly been brutal in her summary of Dash.

My eyes flicked upwards, and I looked closely at Dash’s features. His eyes were deep and penetrating, but they had a directness that I would never call
shifty
. If he had cheek implants, they were perfect; he didn’t have implants. His tan was even and natural. Not something from a bottle.

Sucking his lips in, he smiled knowingly. “Do you agree with her appraisal of me?”

Heat rose behind my neck and ears. He might just be the most attractive man I’d ever spoken to. He was the kind of guy that the more you looked at him, the more you noticed how attractive he was. Luke’s looks were more angelic and innocent (even if he wasn’t those things at all).

“You’d pass muster in a herd,” I muttered. “That’s something my grandmother says.”

To cover up my embarrassment, I decided to begin the interview. I whipped out the notebook and pen.

“What would you most want people to know about your field of work?” I began. “About evolutionary psychology.”

He brushed his chin over the back of his fingers. “Hmmm. That we’re animals, I guess. Our behaviours and culture can all be traced back to things we needed to survive in prehistory.”

I scribbled down a note. “So, you consider that we’re creatures of our past?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“What kind of behaviours?”

“All. Including love. Sex. Relationships.”

“So, what is it about how we love that can be traced to our past?”

Sipping his wine, he nodded thoughtfully. “Would it surprise you that I believe that women can’t love men?”

I tilted my head, giving him a bemused grin. “They can’t?”

“No. They think they do, but they can never love a man the way in which a man loves a woman. His love is simple and complete. He loves her softness, her weaknesses, her beauty. But she can only love him up to a point, depending on what he provides for her. When he stops providing what she needs, she’s gone.”

“Okay. And what are the historical reasons she wants those things from a man?”

His mouth flicked upward. “Think about women being carted off into harems or sent into arranged marriages. She had to adapt—and quickly. Her whole tribe might have got slaughtered when she got taken away. She had to be able to leave the past behind quickly and move on. She couldn’t remain loyal to the life she had before.”

“But women today have their own resources and money.”

He hooked an eyebrow. “How many college-educated women in good jobs do you know who are marrying men in casual, dead-end jobs?”

“I know women in high-paying jobs whose husbands are at home with the kids. You know, house husbands.”

“Is that the usual?”

“Nope.”

“I rest my case.”

“Okay, Dash, you said men love women for their softness and beauty. How can you call it actual
love
, if it’s just her visual appeal that makes him love her?”

“That’s just the initial point of attraction. But it’s not just the physical—her personality should be gentle, too. After marriage, she just needs to be
nice
. And his love for her will be unconditional.”

Shaking my head lightly, I wrote his words down. “And what is it that women need from men?”

“What they’ve always needed. Stability, strength, protection, resources, good looks . . .
excitement
.”

He knew exactly how to say the word, excitement. With a low murmur that almost made me shiver. “That’s what a woman wants?”

“That’s exactly what a woman wants.”

“And after marriage, does he just have to be nice and everything will just hum along like a Disney movie?”

“Not a chance. He’s going to have to prove his worth every day of his life.”

“Every day?”

“Every day.”

“How?”

“Men have to constantly prove that they’re men. Be strong, don’t cry, improve, build assets, gain respect, raise yourself up in the male pecking order . . . and that starts from boyhood.”

“Sounds kind of sad.”

He shrugged, the expression in his eyes slightly distant. “I was a geeky teenager with a bad haircut once. Girls didn’t like me then.” Pulling himself out of his reverie, he said, “It’s the way it is. It’s our human evolution.”

“Okay”—I made a show of scribbling things down—“but what about the industrial and pre-industrial era? People were too busy for any of that. If my history knowledge serves me right, men and women worked alongside each other on farms. Her softness and weakness weren’t assets. And her beauty was soon gone. Damn hard work hoeing fields and milking cows. And he didn’t have to prove to the cows each day how much of a man he was—and his wife was too worn out to care.”