Chapter 21

After the blow-up with Liza, Wade headed for the one place he felt safe.

The office.

It had been his refuge for as long as he could remember, whether in Melbourne or London, the one place he was on top and in total control.

The office he could rely on, whereas family could be as changeable as the wind and his fractured relationship with his father over Babs proved it. Girlfriends, he'd chosen with deliberation, the kind of corporate women who expected nothing and were content with a brief fling, which meant he was close to none of them.

The publishing business had been the one constant in his life, the one thing he could depend on.

Now, courtesy of Liza's lies, he could lose that too.

It had taken a full hour of checking with his legal team and exploring all possible scenarios for him to calm down. Even if Liza's biography wasn't one-hundred-per-cent accurate, according to the contract the readers would have no recourse if the truth of Cindy's existence came out.

He'd assumed it wouldn't be a problem but needed to know for sure. After all, how many celebrities invented backgrounds and touted it as truth?

In the heat of the moment, when he'd realised she'd kept something as important as her sister from him, he'd snapped and said he could lose everything. He'd thrown it out there to shame her; to intimidate her into telling him the truth—why she'd done it—when in reality the eight hundred grand from his own pocket wouldn't make or break him.

Now that he'd calmed down enough to rationally evaluate the situation, he might not have lost his dad's company but he had lost something equally important.

The woman he loved.

How ironic that the first time he let a woman get closer than dinner and a date, the first time he'd learned what it meant to truly desire someone beyond the physical, had turned into the last time he'd ever be so foolish again.

And a scarier thought: was he like his dad after all? Had Liza played him as Babs had played his dad?

He wouldn't have thought so; the times they'd been intimate had been so revealing, so soul-reaching, he could've sworn she'd been on the same wavelength.

But she'd sought him out at the very beginning. She'd blackmailed her way into a job. Had that been her end game from the start?

Was their relationship a way of keeping him onside while she milked the situation for all it was worth?

After all, she'd done it before. According to her biography—if any of it was true—she'd been thrust into the WAG limelight by default when her high-school sweetheart became pro, but with the basketball star she later dated she implied they'd had an understanding based on a solid friendship and mutual regard.

Yet when he'd studied the pictures of her and Henri Jaillet, her body language spoke volumes. If the cameras were trained on her, Liza stood tall and smiled, while subtly leaning away from Henri's arm draped across her shoulders or waist. In the candid shots, she stood behind Henri, arms folded, shoulders slumped, lips compressed.

Those photos implied she hadn't enjoyed a moment of their relationship yet she'd done it regardless, enduring it for a year.

What had she told him at the start? ‘We all do things we don't want to?'

If so, why? Had it been to support her sister? Had she deliberately thrust herself into the limelight? Had it been for the adulation or was there more behind it?

That was what gutted him most, that he felt closer to her while reading her biography, as if she'd let him into her life a little, when she hadn't let him in at all.

He swirled the whiskey he nursed before downing the amber spirit in two gulps. The burn in his gullet didn't ease the burn in his heart and the warmth as it hit his stomach didn't spread to the rest of him. He'd been icy cold since he left Liza's, unable to equate the woman he'd fallen in love with to the woman who'd hide her disabled sister out of shame.

His door creaked open and he frowned, ready to blast anyone who dared enter. Damn publishing business, one of the few work environments where it wasn't unusual to find employees chained to their desk to meet deadlines at all hours.

‘Go away,' he barked, slamming the glass on the side table when the door swung open all the way.

‘I said—'

‘I heard what you said.' Liza stood in the doorway, framed by the backlight, looking like a person who'd been through an emotional ordeal. He knew the feeling. ‘But I'm not going anywhere.'

He swiped a hand over his face. ‘I'm not in the mood.'

She ignored his semi-growl, entered the office, and closed the door.

He watched her walk across the office, soft grey yoga pants clinging to her legs, outlining their shape, and desire mingled with his anger. She sat next to him on the leather sofa, too close for comfort, not close enough considering he preferred her on his lap.

Her fingers plucked at the string of her red hoodie, twisting it around and around until he couldn't stand it anymore. He reached out and stilled her hand, watching her eyes widen at the contact before she clasped her hands in her lap.

Great. His touch had become as repugnant as him.

‘We need to get a few things straight,' she said, shoulders squared in defiance. ‘Firstly, Cindy is the most important person in my life and I'd never be ashamed of her.'

He waited and she glared at him, daring him to disagree.

‘Secondly, I've spent most of my life protecting her and that's what my omission was about. Ensuring she wouldn't cop the same crap I have all these years, which may have a detrimental effect on her condition physically.'

‘How?'

‘Extreme emotions or mood swings can increase the spasticity in her muscles, which in turn can lead to long-term complications. Serious complications that could lead to permanent deformities.'

A tiny sliver of understanding lodged in his hardened heart, cracking it open a fraction, letting admiration creep in. And regret, that he'd unfairly accused her of something so heinous as being ashamed of her sister when she'd been protecting her.

‘And thirdly, the rest of my life laid out in the biography is true. Not fabricated. Elaborated? Yeah.' Her fingers twitched, before she unlinked her hands and waved one between them. ‘And for the record, what happened between you and I? All real. Every moment, and I'd hate for you to think otherwise.'

Admiration gave way to hope and went a long way to soothing the intense hurt that had rendered him useless until she'd strutted through his door.

But he wouldn't give in that easily. It might have taken a lot of guts to confront him now, so soon after their blow-up, but he couldn't forget that she'd shut him out when he'd let her in.

‘Prove it.'

A tiny frown crinkled her brow. ‘How?'

‘Let me into your life.'

The frown intensified. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘I think you do.' He shuffled closer to her on the couch, buoyed when she didn't move away. ‘I want to see the real you. Not the persona you've donned for years to fool the masses. Not the woman you've pretended to be from the beginning of our relationship. The real you.'

Liza stared at Wade as if he'd proposed she scale the Eureka Tower naked.

The real her? No one saw the real her, not even Cindy, who she pretended to be upbeat for constantly. The way she saw it, her sister had a tough enough life, why make it harder by revealing when her own life wasn't a bed of roses?

Liza had always assumed a happy face even if she'd felt like curling up in bed with a romance novel and a pack of Tim Tams.

So what Wade was asking? Too much.

She shook her head. ‘I can't—'

‘Yes, you can.'

Before she could move, he grasped her hand and placed it over his heart. ‘I'm willing to take a chance on us. Without the pretence. Without the baggage of the past. Just you and me. What do you say?'