She's So Over Him

He had to be. Under the steel-grey buttoned-down shirt he wore she could see that his shoulders were as broad, and his forearms beneath the rolled-up sleeves were tanned and corded with muscle.

Cale nodded. ‘Occasionally. I switched to adventure racing.’

‘Which is?’

‘Triathlons on acid. Trail running, cycling, paddling and orienteering. Climbing,’ Cale replied, and looked frustrated when she had to turn away to serve a customer.

Maddie caught a glimpse of his date as she made her tottering way back to the bar, and lifted her chin to give Cale a heads-up.

‘It was good seeing you, Cale,’ Maddie told him.

Cale leant across the bar. ‘Listen, can we meet for a drink later? To catch up? I can come back here after I drop Bernie off.’

Maddie cocked her head, considering. What would be the point? Except to show him that she’d made a marvellous life for himself without him? To let him see what he’d been missing out on? They were good, valid reasons, but she suspected that the real truth was that she wanted to see what she’d missed out on, to find out what his life was like, whether he’d missed her at all. Pride… one of these days it would get her into serious trouble.

Maddie took the money he held out for his drinks and slowly nodded. ‘It’ll have to be late. I won’t finish until after midnight.’

‘That’s okay.’ Cale’s mobile and firm mouth briefly twisted. ‘I don’t sleep that much anyway. I’ll see you back here, around midnight.’

Maddie nodded, felt a hand on her arm and turned to face Jim. She leaned into his tall, stodgy frame, briefly seeking support. Over the years this man and his partner had become her best friends, and had rented and eventually sold her the flat above theirs in the small block they owned across the parking lot of the Laughing Queen. As a result, and also because she hated cooking and loved their company, she’d made the LQ her second home. They were a strange little family: two gay older men and their wayward neighbour slash emotional ward.

‘Why don’t you take a break?’

Jim ran a hand down her arm and Maddie caught the piercing look he sent Cale.

‘I’ll take over for a while.’

Maddie shook her head. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Jimbo. All suspicious and speculative. Been there, done that, fumigated the T-shirt.’

Cale saw Bernie to the door of her flat and deftly sidestepped her blatant offer of sex disguised as coffee. At thirty-five he required a little conversation with his sex, some intellectual connection.

Back in his car parked on a side street, Cale leaned his forearms on the steering wheel and stared down the mostly empty road.

Madison Shaw—all grown-up and looking fine—was the last person he’d expected to see serving drinks from behind a popular bar in Simon’s Town. Cale tapped the steering wheel with his index finger, staring into the inky night.

Oliver would get such a kick hearing that he’d met up with Maddie again… Habit had him reaching for his mobile to call his twin, and he cursed when sharp pain slashed through his chest. Two years dead and he still automatically reached out to him… Would the complete reality of his passing ever sink in?

Don’t go there… Cale took a deep breath and forced his thoughts away from Oliver and back to Maddie. At eighteen she’d been mature and so smart, with a wicked sense of humour. Compared to those breathy, earnest girls who’d made no secret of their availability, Maddie and her reticent and sarcastic attitude had been a breath of fresh air.

For months he’d listened to his instinct and common sense—honed from twenty-five years of trying to keep Oliver under control and out of trouble—that told himself that getting deeper involved with Maddie, getting involved with any woman, was a train wreck waiting to happen.

But at one of Oliver’s legendary parties the combination of one too many tequila shots consumed and Maddie in a very brief pair of denim shorts lowered his IQ and he’d taken her to bed.

He’d kept her in it for eight tumultuous weeks.

Madison. Five-feet-four of pure attitude. She’d flipped his life upside down and he still wasn’t sure what it was about her that had had him, Mr Cool, chasing his tail like a demented puppy.

Accustomed to calling the shots with women, Maddie had turned him inside out. He’d had no idea how to handle her, no clue how to deal with those weird sensations she’d pulled to the surface. He had known that she expected more from him than he could give—his time, his attention, a large chunk of his soul. But his time had been split between his work and his studies, his attention was always half on Oliver, trying to anticipate trouble, and his soul had never been on offer anyway.

He’d known he’d lost her even before she’d frightened the hell out of him with that pregnancy scare. He’d panicked and reacted in comprehensive fear… throwing his pizza into the wall and storming out to get hammered. Yeah, nobody had considered awarding him a prize for his maturity.

Cale rested his forehead on the steering wheel, wincing at the memory. When he’d returned she’d waved the negative result in his face and proceeded to strip ten layers of skin off him. Her brutal rejection had been swift and non-negotiable and had left little room for hope.

Petty enough to want to punish her, he’d ignored her calls. Two weeks later, when his emotions had subsided into a dull roar and he’d had a vague plan of action for how to talk her back into bed, he’d found out that Maddie, as she’d said she would, had dropped out of his life. Nowhere to be found.

He’d been young enough, arrogant enough, to shrug her off and shove any hurt away, choosing to concentrate on his PhD, his career, his racing, revelling in his single status.

Time passed, then his twin had died from cancer, and for months it had been a sheer battle just to get through the day.

He knew intellectually that he was still grieving. He knew how the process worked, the phases he had to get through. In every death there were unresolved issues, but he had a shed-load when it came to his twin’s life—and death—and he wasn’t nearly ready to deal with them.

Psychologist heal thyself… yeah, right.

What he also knew was that depression had gone but guilt, regret and responsibility were still his constant companions.

But then, for all of his life with Oliver those three stooges had never been far away. Guilt for the utter frustration he’d frequently felt towards his reckless, completely unaccountable twin. Regret when he’d been unable to keep him from doing something that had hurt either himself or someone else, and a feeling that he was always responsible for his brother. During his life and at his death.

Oliver had been more than a rebel, more than a free spirit. On more than one occasion, when he’d been comprehensively fed up, Cale had suspected that he might be a touch psychotic.

Guilt, regret and responsibility. Grr, indeed.

He knew how to treat his clients’ hang-ups, but it was far easier for him to operate on the surface of his own life. He could meet, flirt and even have the odd sexual encounter with women. He wasn’t interested in emotional entanglements. He didn’t have the time or the energy… and even less inclination.

And he wasn’t nearly ready to be in any conceivable way responsible for another person; he’d played that song all his life and he was sick of it.

So the thrill he’d felt at meeting Maddie again was just a flashback to those crazy feelings of his youth—a reminder of a golden time in his life when he’d thought he was so clever, that he’d had life under control. He’d had no freaking idea.

What could it hurt to share a drink with Maddie?

They’d catch up, have a laugh and walk away as friends. After all, he was older and smarter, and now he knew it was when he allowed people into his head—like brothers and lovers—that life tended to become chaotic. And God knew he’d dealt with enough chaos to last a lifetime.

The trick was keeping it all under control. And he’d earned his PhD in that as well as the real one on his wall.

After living with crazy Oliver it would take more than a tawny-eyed woman to upset the equilibrium of his life.

CHAPTER TWO

MADDIE rested her arms on the railing that ran the length of the restaurant and stopped the unwary or the intoxicated from falling into the harbour. The inky, oily water lapped the wooden pylons below, and Maddie tried to concentrate on the sounds and scents of summer morphing into autumn. Her tawny eyes drifted over the marina, idly noticing that a new catamaran now occupied the berth at the end. Hadn’t Cale once dreamt of owning such a vessel?

Maddie removed the clip that kept her riotous hair off her neck and felt the heavy curls tumble down her back. The bar had quietened down and, since Dan was fully able to cope with the remaining patrons by himself, she’d called it a night.

Lord, she was tired. Even the short walk across the parking lot seemed a mission, and climbing the stairs to her third-floor flat seemed impossible. She knew she needed to rest, yet she knew that sleep—never easy—would be scarce tonight. Her mind, so used to shoving Cale into a box labelled ‘Do Not Open, Stupid,’ was skipping from memory to memory.

‘Maddie.’

Maddie turned slowly and had to smile. With the sea breeze ruffling his hair and the shadows hiding his flat, hard eyes, for a moment he looked like his old devil-may-care self.

‘Hi.’ Maddie stepped away from the railing and nodded to the empty glass and the open bottle of wine. ‘Help yourself.’