Madeline smiled. ‘Look, there is someone out there for you,’ she said. ‘Someone who’s going to make you really happy. And you deserve that, Simon.’
A hot ball of emotion in her chest took her by surprise. It was really over. Ten years of her life and the reality could no longer be ignored. As much as she knew it was the right thing to do, it was still hard saying goodbye to someone who had been such a huge part of her life.
‘I hope we can still be friends,’ she said, ‘there’s too much history to stop being part of each other’s lives.’
‘Of course.’ He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t want it any other way.’ Madeline smiled back and removed his ring from her finger, holding it out to him.
Simon shook his head. ‘Keep it. It’s been on your finger for four years. It belongs to you.’
He held out his arms and she curled the ring into her palm and accepted his parting hug, holding him tight, grateful beyond words to have known him for a decade. But it was impossible to be held by him and not compare. His hands on her back were nice, comforting.
Marcus’s hands made her tremble. Made her hot. Made her needy.
Simon eventually turned and left and she stood staring after him for a long while, the claws of the ring cutting into her palm. To her horror she could feel tears in her eyes. ‘I am not going to cry,’ she muttered. ‘Absolutely not.’
And then promptly burst into tears.
CHAPTER SIX
Madeline had no idea why she was still crying an hour later but it was enough now.
Determinedly, she wiped the tears from her face. She’d given the official end of their relationship its due, grieved for the closing of a wonderful ten-year friendship, because honestly that was what it had been more than anything, but now it was time to stop.
Madeline stared into the rippling water below. From behind her somewhere the soulful beat of modern jazz drifted to her on the breeze, as did the excited laughter of children splashing around at the nearby city beach. The wake of a passing River Cat disturbed the surface and brought her out of her reverie.
She’d been sitting on the low wall that ran beside the Brisbane River at South Bank for half an hour. The waning rays of sunlight reached across the water, glittered on the surface and caused a kaleidoscope of colours to sparkle in the depths of the diamond ring she still held in her palm.
The tears were gone and she knew that to be fully free so she could move forward, the ring had to be gone, too. She looked at the river and smiled. Veronica would be completely horrified at what she was about to do. The only thing the receptionist had thought any good about Madeline’s relationship with Simon was the ring. She’d tell Veronica she sold it, but tossing it into the river had an air of finality she couldn’t ignore.
She closed her fist, lifted her arm, drew her hand back behind her head and flung her arm forward. A fist closed around hers from behind, halting the ring-hurling process.
Madeline got such a fright she nearly fell off the wall.
‘What the—?’ she said, as she quickly turned around.
Marcus.
Her startled heart settled a little when it realised there was no immediate danger to her life but took up a different tempo, a slower, louder throb, as she recognised that this man posed an even bigger danger than that.
He was a danger to her sanity.
A tantalising thought slithered into her brain like the serpent in Eden. Rebound sex.
No. Damn you, Veronica.
He was wearing boardies, which were damp, a button-up shirt worn Marcus-style — unbuttoned and flapping open. He had obviously dried himself hastily. His dark chest hair was still damp and she could see a lone water rivulet tracking its way down his washboard abs. His hair was wet and he had a damp towel around his neck. His feet were bare and sandy.
Rebound sex.
No!
Marcus opened her hand, saw the ring and plucked it off her palm. He looked into her eyes. She’d been crying. Something had obviously happened. ‘You know it’s against the law to litter, right?’
Madeline laughed and turned back to the river view because he was so gorgeous she wanted to bite him. But still, she could feel his presence behind her, feel the heat radiating in waves off his body.
Rebound sex.
Enough already!
‘Maybe you should think about this.’
His voice was low, his mouth close to her ear, and she shivered. Part of her wanted to scream at the unfairness of his effect on her, part of her wanted to lean back into him and rub herself against him like an appreciative feline.
Rebound sex.
I mean it, get a grip!
Marcus sat beside her, facing the wide paved walkway, and watched the ebb and flow of human traffic for a few minutes. He was conscious of their arms brushing occasionally and of the weight of the ring in his palm and the hum deep in his loins as his mind wrestled with the possibilities.
Did this mean the engagement was off? ‘What happened?’
She sighed. ‘Simon and I split up.’
Marcus couldn’t tell from her voice whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. But she’d obviously been crying so she must be upset. Despite the delicious potential, Marcus had an unexplainable urge to go and find her too-busy ex-fiancé and punch him on the nose.
‘Want me to beat him up?’
She laughed, the humour in his voice making it sexier than ever, and the urge to rub herself against him intensified. She looked at her hands instead, desperately trying to banish the serpent’s whisper and not think about rebound sex when they were talking about a serious issue. ‘Actually, we split a couple of months ago.’
‘Oh?’ Marcus frowned. So, all this time he’d been
