if that was all that was to it, then I’m a monkey’s uncle. You will give me all the deets later, Miss M.’
If only it had been that simple, Maddie thought as Jim left. Her relationship with Cale had been anything but. As she’d become part of Cale’s group of friends—older than her, but not necessarily wiser—she’d watched and shaken her head as Cale turned over women with the speed of a spinning top. She had nodded when said women called him a heartless bastard for dumping them, and rolled her eyes when he’d charmed them into being friends again.
Then the man she’d laughed, talked and played with, who was the life and soul of any party, who thought commitment was spending six hours with a girl, had turned those gorgeous eyes on her and said that he thought it was time they ‘stopped messing around and hooked up’.
His exact words. Mr So-Not-Romantic. It should have been a big clue… but she’d allowed him to cajole her into a relationship—handed him her virginity, for crying in a bucket!—despite knowing that he’d be an utterly horrible, comprehensively catastrophic boyfriend. She’d thought she’d be the one to change him.
This reminded her how, for a smart girl, she could be amazingly idiotic on occasion.
After wiping the mascara from under her eyes, she splashed water on her face and pulled a long clip from the back of her jeans. Pulling her sable-shaded hair into a rough tail, she twisted it and clipped it to the back of her head in a messy knot. There was nothing she could do about her heightened colour or the past, she told herself. And right now she had a job to do.
Maddie plucked up her courage, plastered a fake smile on her face and walked towards the store room.
Back in the bar, she dumped a box of wine under the bar and passed Dan two bottles, idly noticing that Cale’s date had to hold the record for the longest bathroom visit. She took an order before tossing him a casual comment.
‘Are you still doing triathlons?’
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