Suddenly Expecting

After she sent it, she scrolled back to their texts from two months ago, a painful reminder that only rekindled her inner turmoil.

Have a good trip to France.

Hate to run and fly. We shouldn’t leave last night without talking about it.

Nothing to say. Let’s just blame it on booze and stupidity and forget it happened, okay?

Are you cool with that?

Totally. Erasing from my memory in three...two...one...

J Okaaaay. See you in a few weeks.

And that was it. Due to both their schedules, they had a mutual phone blackout during his assignments, although he always managed to send a few photos of the local scenery. But now he was back and wanted to do the usual drink-and-talk, and she had no idea what to tell him.

You can’t avoid him forever.

“You can’t avoid him forever,” Connor confirmed five minutes later when she returned his call.

“What the hell, I’m gonna give it a shot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He deserves to know.”

Kat slid her hip on the corner of her desk and sighed. “I can hear your disapproval all the way from Brisbane.”

“Kat, I’m not disapproving. But I’m one of the few who know exactly what you’ve gone through these past few years. The guy deserves to know.”

Trust Connor to tell it to her straight. Marco, Connor, Kat and Luke—the Awesome Foursome, they’d called themselves in high school. All so very different in personality and temperament, yet “perfectly awesome together,” as Marco had put it. He’d been the cocky one, a skilled charmer, whereas his cousin Luke had had the whole bad-boy thing going on, always in trouble, always on detention. Connor was the devastatingly handsome silent-and-deep one, her unbiased sounding board who always told her the truth, uncolored by hyperbole or emotion. Sometimes it was scary how detached he could actually be, which was, ironically, what made him an exceptional businessman. He never let anyone into his private circle and she was always grateful she’d been allowed entry all those years ago.

“I...just can’t tell him,” she said now. “I’m already a wreck, and I can’t deal with all the emotional baggage, too.”

“That’s unfair, sweetie. Marco would never do that to you.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and then glanced up as a runner gave her the wind-up signal, indicating she was due on set.

Kat nodded. “Look, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

Connor sighed. “Stay safe during the storm.”

“I will.” She hung up, firmly pushed the conversation to one side and made her way to makeup just as her phone rang again.

It was Marco. “I do not want to talk to you,” she muttered and slid the phone to Silent.

“Avoiding a call from the boyfriend?”

Kat slid a glance to Grace Callahan, the star of Queensland’s number one breakfast chat show, Morning Grace, sitting in the makeup chair, getting her hair done. The woman was forty, only seven years older than Kat, but she had that polished, shiny look of someone who’d not only spent enormous amounts of time and money on her appearance, but was convinced it was the most important thing in her life. Her blond hair was curled into an artful tousle, her fake-tanned skin smooth, her body gym-honed. Yet for all her high-maintenance appearance, she had an addictive personality that attracted people by the bucket load. Which was probably why Marco kept coming back.

Kat glanced at her phone and nodded, unwilling to explain further. “No, just...a guy.”

“Really?” Grace’s wide eyes met hers in the mirror. “A real-life guy? Oh, my God, where’s my phone? I want to take a picture of this moment.”

Despite her mood, Kat smiled. “You make me sound like a nun.”

“I was beginning to think you were, hon.” She winced as the makeup girl pulled a lock of hair through the curler. “This is exciting—makes a change from all the Cyclone Rory news. Can I put it in the show?”

Kat snorted a laugh. “You know you can’t, so stop asking. I’m not newsworthy.”

“Are so.” Grace waved the girl away and ripped the makeup cape from her shoulders. “You’re a celebrity, and celebrities are always news.”

“Please, don’t remind me. I hate those people who’re famous for just being famous.”

“Sorry, hon, but your little scandals have fueled the gossip columns for ages. It only takes another to set it off again.” She straightened her dress then walked to the door, Kat following.

Kat sighed. It was true. She was nothing particularly special: the daughter of a merchant investment banker and an events planner, a private school student. The gap year she’d spent between high school graduation and university had been twelve months of partying, but just as she was about to begin her journalism degree at Brisbane Uni, she’d been offered a job as society reporter for The Tribune instead. Then, she’d gone spectacularly off the rails a year later, after her mother’s death.

“You never did set the record straight about everything, you know,” Grace said over her shoulder as they continued down the corridor. “It’d make a fabulous feature.” She swept her hands out, indicating a huge headline. “Former It Girl Katerina Jackson finally spills the dirt on her marriages, the seedy side of French football and those scandalous photos.”

“Never going to happen, Grace.”

“We could start at the beginning, make it a full show. We’d do background, talk about your childhood, your upbringing. How you beat up Marco when you were fourteen—”

“It was a shove, not a hit—”

“—and how you all ended up on detention like some modern-day Breakfast Club scenario—”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.”

Grace laughed. “I’m not going to say anything, hon, unless you want me to. But I do find it fascinating that your closest friends are a soccer superstar, a billionaire merchant banker and the nephew of a rumored mobster. All hot alpha men. All completely different. And all newsworthy.”

Marco, Connor and Luke. Her best friends since high school, since that awkwardly hilarious lunchtime detention had played out like some eighties teenage movie and they’d bonded over their hatred of school and their shared tastes in movies, music and computer games.

“What were you all there for again?” Grace casually asked as they walked to the studio.

“You know full well what.”

“You’d decked Marco—”

“A shove, Grace. For showing off in front of his mates and getting all up in my face.”

“Why? What did he say?”

“Honestly, I can’t even remember.” Yeah, she did —a stupid teenage comment about her lack of “womanly attributes” that, to Marco’s credit, he’d apologized for later.

“Whatever. Luke had been caught defacing the toilets and... What was Connor’s crime?”

“Correcting the economics teacher then threatening to bankrupt him.”

“Wow, harsh.”