Kiss Don’t Tell

‘“Paid business proposition”?’ Sarah scoffed. ‘As if you need either the money or the proposition!’

‘And anyway, she’s more ice cube than woman.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Brr.’

‘Not funny.’

Another over-the-top shiver. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘As it happens Lane’s got fire under the ice—that’s what she’s been told.’

‘Who’d say such a dumb-ass thing?’

‘Someone who knows women very well. You’re not the only expert out there, you know.’

‘I hope you don’t mean Mum,’ Adam said, even though he knew from Sarah’s irritatingly smug smirk she meant nothing of the kind.

‘Not a female,’ she said.

Adam decided he needed more whisky and picked up his drink.

‘Although I’m sure Mum would agree,’ Sarah went on. ‘She keeps saying she sees Lane in the colour red, which is a hot-not-cold colour.’

Adam choked on his Scotch. ‘Hang the hell on! Are you saying Mum knows Lane?’

‘Hmm, she’s met her quite a few times, at least. And why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Trying to get my head around the fact that my mother met the girl I’m supposed to be having a sexual affair with before I did.’

‘Yes, well at the risk of repeating myself, you’re not supposed to be having a sexual affair with Lane, and I wasn’t intending for you to ever meet her, and I only let you meet her out of desperation. As I’ve told you and told you, I’m over introducing my friends to you. They always fall in love with you, you never reciprocate, and they end up hating me. And I do not want Lane to hate me.’

‘You’re safe in this instance. Lane isn’t going to fall in love with me—I’m not her type.’

‘Early days, Adam,’ Sarah said darkly.

‘Time won’t change the fact that she needs a man she can boss around and that ain’t me.’

‘You’d better make sure of it. You are not allowed to make her fall in love with you. Got it?’

‘I don’t “make” girls fall in love with me.’

‘You do something to them. Maybe you’re the one with the cauldron, cooking up spells.’

‘If I were going to cook up a spell, it would be to get you over your “be still my throbbing heart” one-true-love claptrap.’

‘My heart doesn’t throb.’

‘So stop trying to make it.’

‘Why? So I can be as miserable as you?’

‘I wasn’t miserable until my sister and my mother lumbered me with a frigid bed partner for three months.’

‘As I keep saying, you lumbered yourself.’ She sniffed at her glass again. ‘And she’s not frigid. Mum says she just has a little … complex.’

‘Yeah well last I heard Mum was an interior decorator, not a psychologist.’

‘She’s good at this stuff, Adam!’

‘She’s good at interior decorating.’

‘She says Lane’s problem is a lack of personal confidence, and that’s arisen because of her fractured relationship with her mother. A Mommie Dearest complex, Mum calls it.’

Adam stared at her. ‘Have I fallen through a portal into some parallel universe or something?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’

‘Mum diagnosing people’s psychoses? Jesus! And a Mommie Dearest complex? I’ve never heard of anything so bloody ridiculous.’

‘Erica agrees with her, and she knows all the background. Although she says calling it a complex is just a fancy way of saying Lane’s mother is an absolute cow—which happens to be an insult to cows if you ask me.’

Adam’s head was in his hands—not an unusual position to find himself in whenever he spoke at length with his sister. ‘And yet I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, well you can guess, can’t you? Just from the name of it! Lane is desperate to make her mother proud of her, to the point of being completely fixated on pleasing her, but her mother ignores her and focuses completely on Lane’s brother, Brad. The Brad obsession stems from him being a sickly kid. Leukaemia, so anyone could understand that. But I’m sorry to say that doting on him kind of stuck even after he was cured, and sadly—although I swear I can see glimmers of something good hidden in there—he’s basically turned into the biggest no-hoper you could ever meet. He’s lazy, idle, indolent, slothful, incompet—’

‘Spare me any more adjectives, for the love of God!’

‘Fine! He’s just abominable—there, one word. But the thing is, Lane keeps trying, and endlessly failing. Brad’s jealous as hell of her accomplishments and her mother therefore point blank refuses to be proud of her. It’s almost as though she makes a conscious choice to keep Lane at arm’s length.’ She looked at her glass again and gave the whisky a sad swirl. ‘You know, it’s hard to stand by and shut up when the three of them are together.’

‘Yes well that all sounds very sad and tortured and psychoanalysis-worthy, but it in no way explains the need for Lane to draw up a contract and pay someone for sex.’

‘Okay so think about this—it may help. She came dux of her school. She got into university a year before she should have and ended up with an Honours degree. She landed a job at a top consultancy straight out of university and within a month, nailed a promotion. When she moved on to the bank where she is now, she was placed in the exact area she wanted and her salary zoomed sky-high. All of this because she’s driven to succeed so her mother will say, “Well done, Lane.”

‘But instead, you know what her mother started saying to her three months ago? “Gee, Lane, how come you never go on any dates? I’m not getting any younger you know, and I’m going to want grandchildren one day.” Nice, huh? She can’t criticize Lane for anything she has achieved, so she’s starting on something she hasn’t. Thank you, Mommie dearest.’

‘Okay, I get it.’

‘So now, having had no time to even think about getting a boyfriend because she’s been working like a dog at school, then at university, taking extra classes on the side she thought would help her career, and nailing her career … Now she has to become some man magnet ASAP as well? Sheesh! And I promise you, we’re coming off a low base here when it comes to men. The night I first met her, at an orientation week event at uni, there was a guy trying to ask her out on a date and she had no idea! I remember thinking he’d need a flashing neon sign on his head before she realized it.’

‘So she’s not exactly desperate and dateless then. Or she wouldn’t be if she just loosened up and looked around. Any man would be up for a little experimentation.’

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Really? Because it seems to me you’re being dragged kicking and screaming in protest over your fate.’

‘I— That’s … different.’

‘Is it? Seems pretty similar to me. And just so you know, that guy didn’t ask her out in the end, he gave up. They always do, you know. They give up because they see what you saw tonight: the outer shell. The ice, not the fire.’

‘Yeah, well the fire’s got its work cut out for it—if it really is under that glacier-like coating of hers.’

‘You just wait and see. I know Lane. If she says she’s going to learn something, she’ll learn it. She’s never failed a course yet. She’s going to cram seven years of sexual experimentation into as short a time as she can get it done.’