Marriage Make-Over. Ally Blake

sensed the scream welling inside her as he continued. ‘Or why not stick to obituaries?’

      That stifled the scream in an instant. So he had been keeping up with her career for a while. It had been months since she’d had the reward of that particular job.

      ‘Why write this column?’

      ‘Because I have the in-the-trenches experience to have real insight. With Single and Loving It! I really have something valuable to say.’

      ‘Which is?’

      ‘Love is an illusion and what the illusion promises exists in the woman’s mind alone and never in real life.’

      She wondered if he too felt the words sounded rehearsed, as though she had repeated them like a mantra inside her head a thousand times before.

      His glance shifted her way and held and all the body armour in the world could not have kept her safe. Kelly’s breath faltered. Her skin warmed. And her long-since-dormant libido whirred back to life. As, standing before her, his beautiful hazel eyes boring into hers, he seemed as far from an illusion as could be.

      ‘Do you really believe that?’ he finally asked.

      Kelly swallowed. How was a woman to stand up to such focussed attention from such a man? Unless armed with the knowledge that the promise in his eyes and the tumbling feelings in her own stomach were all precursors to disillusionment, any woman would be sucked in only to be spat out at a later date. Thankfully her column was around to prepare women for just such an occasion.

      ‘I do believe it,’ she said, and she meant it.

      Simon shook his head and several damp locks of hair flicked onto his forehead and it was all Kelly could do not to close the distance between them, reach out, and brush them away, just as she would have done all those years before. How could she expect her readers to follow her advice to disregard the very real physical sensations one experienced at times like this if she was finding it so hard?

      All the more reason to be strong.

      ‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

      ‘This is my apartment.’

      Kelly’s fingernails dug into her palms. ‘I mean why are you back? In Melbourne?’ Living barely streets away from me?

      Simon turned back to his groceries and Kelly expelled the breath she had been holding. He loaded up a platter with fresh bread sticks, soft cheeses, and other trimmings and walked into the dining room. Kelly could do little but follow. He set the platter down, and pulled out a chair for her. When she remained standing, he pressed her into the seat, his achingly familiar fingers leaving warm imprints on her bare shoulders, then sat in a chair on the other side of the gleaming oval table.

      ‘I am back for all sorts of reasons.’

      ‘Being?’ she prompted. Not fair for him to grill her and expect to be let off the hook.

      ‘Work. Family.’

      If you took that to the nth degree she would be considered family.

      ‘How are your family?’ she asked, deciding to take his statement literally.

      ‘Well, actually.’ He softened immeasurably, his secret smile once more tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘My sister is married with two kids now.’

      ‘Nikki or Kat?’ Wow. Neither was even dating when she had last seen them.

      ‘Nikki. Kat is a nanny in London.’

      ‘And your mother?’ Kelly knew this had always been a sore point for Simon but she had to ask. She had always truly liked Simon’s mother despite her shortfalls.

      ‘She’s good. Really good. Remarried and living in Sydney.’

      Again? Kelly thought, wondering if that would be the fourth marriage or if she had married more times since their estrangement.

      Simon grabbed a hunk of bread, lathered it in a hefty chunk of Brie and a good measure of pepper before popping it on a plate and handing it to Kelly. She stared at the food. She had not eaten this exact combination since the night of their wedding. Had he remembered or was it a fluke?

      She glanced up and saw him making his own favourite with Swiss cheese and cherry tomatoes. This felt all too intimate. All too familiar. All too far from where she had imagined she would be when she’d woken up that morning.

      But her poor neglected stomach rumbled in anticipation of the delicious-looking food so she bit down. It was as delicious as she remembered but the bread soon stuck in her throat as the memories that it invoked came tumbling down upon her. She placed the remaining food on the plate and wiped the telltale crumbs from her fingers.

      ‘How long have you been back, Simon?’

      ‘A little over a week.’

      Her heart wrenched. It had taken him that long to contact her, and even then it had been in a most obscure manner. Despite her promises to be strong it ached to think they had once been the best of friends and here they were engaging in small talk like a pair of acquaintances.

      He made no apology and did not seem even to notice the awkwardness of the situation.

      ‘It was a couple of weeks ago,’ he continued, ‘when I overheard several women in my office talking about this amazing new column called Single and Loving It!. Because of the column they had decided to cancel their plans to go to a nightclub that weekend and were instead going to have a few girlfriends around for a night at home.’

      Kelly listened in silence to the familiar story, concentrating on his expression as he retold the tale. And where usually people would have a glimmer in their eye, as if they were sharing in some grand inside joke about the perils of singlehood, Simon watched her with a shuttered expression, all evidence of good humour gone.

      ‘I was about to move on until one of them said, “That Kelly Rockford is my new hero. She’s a genius. I wish she had been writing this column five years ago. Would have saved me a lot of wasted Saturday nights.” Understandably that caught my attention.’

      The corner of his mouth kicked, revealing a sexy crease in his right cheek. You cannot keep a good smile down, Kelly thought, feeling her stomach warm absurdly in response.

      ‘I asked around, found Fresh, and saw not genius but sadness. I saw not the wit and vivacity of the Kelly Rockford I had once known but hostility and bitterness that I refused to believe could come from the same woman. Even when your picture appeared above your byline, I had to come and see for myself in order to believe it was really you.’

      He stopped talking and looked her over. Kelly straightened up under the meticulous inspection.

      ‘You’ve changed, Kell.’

      The shortening of her name flowed over her like the endearment it once had been. She shook it off.

      ‘Not surprising,’ she scoffed, ‘considering it has been five years.’

      ‘Still…’ His voice trailed off.

      Still what? she ached to ask. Still you expected me to be the bubbly bundle of fun and fancy I was at eighteen. Well, you’re the one who eradicated that girl, my friend.

      ‘Am I to take it that after five years of nothing, after five years of not having the courtesy to let me know if you were dead or alive, you are only now back simply to assure yourself that I have not become all bitter and twisted?’

      After five years of my not knowing if you were healthy and happy. If you had moved on to other relationships. Or if you still missed me so much it physically hurt.

      His mouth opened. He had something to say, Kelly was sure of it. She waited in agonising anticipation for answers to questions that had plagued her for years. But he must have thought better of it and clammed his mouth shut. And that was enough for Kelly to regain her purpose. She gathered up every last ounce of courage and laid it on the line.

      ‘Well,