Page 61 of Do Opposites Attract?

‘Damn you, Mitch,’ she replied crossly. ‘You can stop your mockery. I’m feeling my way here. I don’t know the etiquette for greeting an ex-lover.’

‘What did you do with your other ex’s then?’

‘I never spoke to them again.’

He let out a soft laugh. ‘Ouch, so cruel. I suppose I should be flattered then.’

Annoyed by his apparent ease with the situation, Brianna turned frosty. ‘No. This is a work call. I’m making it because I have to, not because I want to.’

There was a pause. ‘Consider me put in my place. Fire away then. What do you want?’

‘I’ve been talking to the chief medic in the army about the possibility of a mutually agreeable liaison.’

‘You’ve been talking to Gerald?’ His voice rose dangerously with each word he uttered.

‘Yes,’ she replied coolly. ‘He speaks very highly of you.’

‘Where is this going, Brianna?’ Annoyance crackled over the line.

‘I discussed the possibility of you doing a few training sessions with the medical staff there. Nothing major, just a couple of times a year. Sharing your experiences might provide them with valuable insight on handling field-based trauma situations. In return it would give Medic SOS a high profile within the army. Hopefully, in the longer term, some of them may choose to join us in the future.’

The silence stretched across the phone wires. ‘And did you consider, for one minute, that it might have been polite to contact me first, before you started offering my services around?’

The words were slow, measured and deadly and uttered in exactly the right tone to put her back up. Anger was a good antidote to a broken heart. ‘I didn’t realise I had to go running to you every time I wanted to speak to somebody.’

‘You’re being deliberately obtuse. I want to know why you didn’t bother to talk to me first before contacting my old boss, and discussing my time.’

All at once the heat of her argument fell away, leaving her empty. She loved him. She missed him. Talking to him now was agony. ‘The truth is, I didn’t want to talk to you,’ she admitted, her voice wobbling slightly. ‘This is hard for me, Mitch. I figured if I contacted him first and he wasn’t interested, then I would be saved a conversation with you.’

There was a long, deep sigh on the other end of the phone. ‘Just your bad luck he liked the idea then.’ She could almost picture his wry smile. ‘Look, it’s a good initiative, Brianna. If I haven’t told you already, then I’ll do it now. You’re one smart cookie.’ A pause. ‘And if it helps any, this isn’t easy for me, either.’

Tears, unbidden, crept down her cheeks.Why did you end it then?she wanted to scream down the phone at him but she was in an office, surrounded by interested females. And anyway, it was old ground and she had to move on. He was a stubborn man. Once his mind was made up, there would be no changing it. ‘Good,’ was all she said, before asking Mitch to follow up with Gerald, and quickly ending the call.

* * *

The conversation with Mitch had churned up her feelings again. She knew she had to stop brooding about him, but she couldn’t. And when she pictured him, it was often right at the moment that Henry had shouted off about Catherine. Mitch had looked devastated. It kept preying on her mind. It hadn’t been the look of a man shamed by his actions. No, it had been the look of a man tortured. A man who had obviously cared about Catherine very deeply. Which meant nothing Henry had said made sense.

‘I can’t let this drop,’ she told Melanie later that evening as they shared a bottle of wine in her apartment. Part of Melanie’scheer up Briannastrategy.

‘And meddling in Mitch’s past is going to get you back into his good books how, exactly?’

Trust a friend to be blunt. ‘I’m not meddling. Think of it this way, if he is a gold-digger . . .’ Melanie’s mouth gaped open. ‘No, of course I know he’s not, butifhe was, if he had embezzled money out of a rich old lady. Well then, I’d have a right to know, wouldn’t I? He was my boyfriend.’

‘That’s some pretty warped logic, if you ask me.’

‘No, it’s not. It makes perfect sense. Us rich girls have to be very careful, you know.’

‘Hey, who am I to stop you? I’m just the sidekick. If you really believe this is the right thing to do, I’m right behind you.Wincing and rolling my eyes, maybe, but I’m here. I’ll even get you Simon’s number.’ She fished around in her handbag and pulled out her phone. ‘Here, go for it.’

Brianna took the phone, gulped, gulped again, then punched in the numbers. ‘Simon, it’s Brianna.’

‘Well, this is a nice surprise. What can I do for you?’

Melanie leaned in to listen, nodding reassuringly at Brianna.

‘I’m a bit embarrassed really,’ she began, acting the part of the dumb rich girl. ‘All that business last week with Mitch. I’m ashamed I was so easily conned by him. I wondered if you wouldn’t mind telling me what happened with your aunt. How Mitch managed to play her.’

‘Well, it was a long time ago,’ Simon replied slowly. ‘I remember Dad telling us his sister, who’s quite a bit older than him, had instructed the family solicitor to change her will and leave her house to a boy who’d been living with her. That was Mitch. Dad wasn’t happy. We were the original beneficiaries of the will, as Aunt Catherine had no children.’

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