by Ally Blake
“I don’t need notice,” he’d said.
“What do you mean?”
“Go.” He’d cocked his head towards the office door. “If you don’t want to work here any more, just go.”
She’d recoiled physically, taking a step back. “You don’t mean that.”
“When have you ever heard me say something I don’t mean?”
And so, without another word to the man she’d worked alongside for the past several years, she’d walked out of his office on boneless legs, cleared out her desk, packed her meagre possessions into her big handbag and left. Nobody had noticed. Everyone had been too high, celebrating the Remède success.
Lucinda tuned to her sister. “If he’s a for ever guy, Cat, then why did he let me go?”
Cat took her by the hand, wrapping it up tightly between hers. “He’s hurt.”
“He’s hurt? I’m the one who’s had to deal with his moods all week. With the fact he could barely even look at me. As if I’d done something unforgivable. We were both there that night.” Oh, wondrous night.
Cat snorted. “I’d put money on him looking at you. The man can barely stop looking at you. If you guys weren’t both equally mad about one another, it would be creepy how much the man looks at you.”
Lucinda’s lungs started to tighten with the effort of trying to hold in the words that were so desperate to come out. “What do you mean, he looks at me?”
“Are you kidding? The man could be the poster boy for longing.”
Lucinda slowly kicked off her other shoe and leaned against the hallway wall.
“And don’t get me started on how he looks at you when you’re with Sonny. It’s heart-breaking. Like watching a little homeless kid standing outside a candy shop window.”
“Why would he do that? He’s not a family kind of guy. You know his background. You know how hard he had it as a kid. His dad leaving, his mum and her string of appalling boyfriends. Family to him is a four-letter word.”
Cat crossed her arms, no longer looking lost so much as mad. “Are you telling me, seriously, that you don’t consider Angus family? That you’d let anyone else come into this house, sick, when your boy is here?”
“Well, no.”
“Is there anyone else you’d text before watching a new episode of Warlock Academy?”
“Never.”
“Has he seen you cry? Snort-laugh? Trip over? Swear? Has he seen you without make-up? In that God-awful green pashmina wrap thing? Has he ever played a board game with you, seen what a bad loser you are and come back for more?”
Lucinda nodded.
“And yet, with all that evidence to the contrary, he looks at you as if he’s stumbled on a fairy princess in a secret, magical glen.”
Lucinda leant harder against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, letting her bare legs kick out in front of her.
Cat, her annoying, clever, difficult, stubborn, wonderful sister, slid down next to her.
“That’s not normal, is it?”
“For a mere boss and employee? Ah, no. Have you ever seen any of my editors over here? Have they ever followed me away on a holiday weekend?”
“Why didn’t you ever point this stuff out to me before?” Lucinda asked.
“I did. In my way. I say the grass is blue, you agree, saying it can look bluish in the right light. I say night is day, and you agree it can seem that way when the moon is bright. But, when I even think about saying something against Angus, you bite my head off and proceed to wax lyrical about how amazing the man is. I picked on him because I hoped you’d one day notice that the only time you stop trying to please everyone and simply tell your truth is when you’re defending him.” Cat nudged her with her shoulder. “I could stick a mirror up to your face, but what can I do if you refuse to open your eyes?”
Lucinda thought about it. Really thought.
Watching him struggle over the Remède account had changed things for her. The man had created a shiny, incisive, clean, fresh rebrand over which any company would salivate. It would have won awards, no doubt. But he’d known it wasn’t right, had known it had missed the heart of the business. The soul. So he’d gone deeper, pushed himself outside his comfort zone, talked to people on the ground level, immersed himself in the product—learned the difference between lipstick and lip-gloss, for goodness’ sake—to make it right.
Throughout, there had been no hiding the fact that beneath the Angus Wolfe mask was a man with a heart of gold. Not gold powder, or veins of gold, but the pure, twenty-four-carat good stuff.
Yet, so afraid of being left was she, she’d made a habit of pushing, of making it impossible for most men to bother. All men, bar Angus. He’d refused to budge. Refused to be disappointed. Refused to let her down.
And, the more she’d grown to care about the man, the more terrified she’d become of losing him. Losing him as she’d lost so many of those she’d cared about most.
When she’d felt things turning, changing, when a chance to find out what might actually be possible between them had presented itself, she’d pushed him away. Telling herself she was protecting her son when really she’d just been using his love as a shield.
“I was eighteen when I met Joe, can you believe that?” Lucinda heard herself say. “Mum and Dad had died not that long before. You were living overseas and I was at home. Alone. When Joe came on the scene, I saw him as my out. A chance to not be the good girl, to run away, to quit being me for a while. I think I was so happy when I found out I was pregnant, not because it was Joe’s baby, but because it was mine. Because there’d be someone to love who would love me best.”
Lucinda didn’t realise she was crying until she tasted a tear on her bottom lip.
Thinking of Sonny, she wanted to crawl into his bed and gather up his toy fish, donkey and the headless rabbit. How long had it been since he’d even cuddled those toys? He was more into more grown up toys now. Transformers. Superheroes of his own.
She could learn from that. From Sonny. The way he loved. And forgave. Forgave Cat when her patience ran thin. Forgave Lucinda when she ran late from work. Forgave Angus when he forgot the name of a Pokémon.
Lucinda dropped her head into her hands.
The fact that Angus Wolfe knew the name of even one Pokémon should have been a sign. One of those huge, flashing road signs you can practically see from space.
He loved her. Angus loved her. And he’d done so for a very long time.
“But I’ve quit,” she said, tears now flowing freely as it fully hit her what she’d done.
“So, un-quit.”
“I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure I should. I’m not sure he’d take me back. You’re right. I hurt him. The one person he knew he could count on walked out, right when he was enjoying the biggest high of his career. I should have talked to him. Told him how I feel. Instead I treated him as if his opinion about us didn’t matter. I let him down so very badly.”
“Fitz is right. You two doofuses deserve each other, you really do.”
“Fitz?” Lucinda said, the weirdness of that statement somehow making its way through the fog. “When have you been talking to Fitz?”
Cat looked down at her toes, wriggling them back and forth. “We...may have hooked up at that Christmas party of yours a year or so ago. And a handful of times since.”
Lucinda gawped, then realised she didn’t have the energy to care.
“Come here, you,” Cat said, holding out an arm.
And Lucinda leaned over and rested in her sister’s embrace.
Tomorrow she’d deal with tomorrow.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“WHOA, HOLD UP, there, cowboy.”
Angus pulled up outside Fitz’s office when Velma positioned herself bodily between him and the glass door.
If she’d been anyone else he’d have feinted left and
cut round her, but rumour had it Velma had wrestled in her youth, and even in the heightened state he was in his self-protective instinct kicked in just in time.
“I need to speak to him,” Angus gritted out. “Now.”
“Honey, what you need to do is take a breath. Calm down. And remember that boy in there is family. He loves you. And he only has your best interests at heart.”
All Angus knew right then was that he was wound so tight he could feel his blood stuttering through his veins. “Fine,” he managed. “I’ll give him a head start.”
Velma’s cheek twitched before she knocked on the door and called out, “He’s here.”
“I can see that,” Fitz’s voice called back. “Send him in.”
Velma moved aside and slowly opened the door for Angus, who burst through it like water through a crack in a dam.
Fitz sat behind his desk, feet up on the table, ridiculous red glasses on the end of his nose. “Sit,” he said.
“I’m not going to bloody well sit.”
“Sit. Or I’ll get Velma to escort you from the room.”
“She can try.”
“Whatever.”
Fitz dropped his feet to the floor then came out from behind the desk. The man clearly had a death wish.
“I’m assuming you’re here about the lovely Lucinda,” said Fitz as he sat on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms and glared at Angus.
“She quit.”
“Yes.”
“And you let her.”
“What are you suggesting I should have done? Tied her to the chair? Blackmailed her? Stuck my fingers in my ears and said ‘la-la-la-la-la’ till she gave up and went back to work?”
“You could have called me. Let me know what she was thinking of doing.”
“And what would you have done? Ridden up here on your white steed, thrown her over the saddle and swept her off to the top of a high tower?”
Angus gritted his teeth so hard he swore he heard a crack.
Fitz breathed out, long and slow, then said, “She can’t work for you any more, Angus. Not after what happened. Hell, I should have split the two of you up years ago. My reasons were purely selfish, and for that I apologise. Together you guys make the rest of us a ton of money.”
“Nothing happened. Before last weekend. Nothing had ever happened.”
“Angus, mate, every time the two of you are in the same room something happens. The air crackles and heats up several degrees. A yeti could walk through the middle of the office and you wouldn’t notice. Knowing that, I should have moved her to another department, if only because it would have given you both one less reason not to go for it.”
Angus went to say, “Go for what?” but he knew. It seemed everyone but him had been aware of it for a long time. He slowly lowered himself into Fitz’s spare chair, his head falling into his hands. “Where is she now?”
“My spies told me she left a little while ago.”
“Was she okay? When she left?”
“What do you think?”
Angus didn’t need to think. Not after the way she’d looked at him when he’d told her to go.
She’d looked as if she’d been slapped.
If he’d been attempting to redraw the line between them—after she’d made it clear at the weekend that despite their night together she didn’t see a future between them—he’d gone about it the right way. For he’d turned a fluid line in the sand into the Grand Canyon.
“How about you?” Fitz asked. “Are you okay?”
Angus rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know. I truly don’t. I can’t imagine going back down there and doing what I do without her beside me.”
Neither could he imagine looking up and seeing someone else sitting in her chair. Or going a day without talking to her, hearing her stories about Cat and Sonny. Without watching her work a phone, or seeing her smile.
Life without Lucinda was a life he truly couldn’t fathom.
Angus grabbed hold of his hair and tugged, the pain barely registering.
But life with her, really with her...
Lucinda had told Sonny that he wasn’t ready for fatherhood. That he couldn’t take care of anyone else until he learned how to take care of himself.
But he’d been playing father to Sonny for years.
He’d been ready for Sonny. But the truth was, he hadn’t been ready for her. That was why he’d deferred to her. Why he’d never put his own needs first where they were concerned.
But that didn’t mean Angus didn’t know what he needed.
He needed for his work to be satisfying.
He needed Sonny. For he loved that kid as if he was his own.
And he needed Lucinda. He needed her like he needed air. It wasn’t the dodgy, supernatural teen TV shows on Netflix he loved so much, it was having an excuse to talk to her late into the night. She sustained him. She challenged him. She had taught him how to live, how to laugh and how to love.
And, as if the wheels and cogs of the universe that had ground harshly and noisily around him his entire life were finally slipping into their rightful place, silencing the constant burr in his head and dissolving the shackles around his heart, Angus knew what he had to do.
He stood. The wheels and cogs were now spinning in the opposite direction and spinning fast. “Her letter of resignation. It was addressed to me. Not to Big Picture. Meaning, while she no longer works for me, she could still work for the company.”
Fitz scoffed. “Um, yeah. I might have taken longer than I ought to split the two of you up, but you don’t think I was stupid enough to let her leave altogether? Oh, Angus, you might be the star of this operation—the Dorothy, if you will—but I am the great and powerful Oz.”
Angus let Fitz’s waffle slide. He was already too deep inside a plan. A plan to fix things. Fix everything. By pulling off the most important rebranding of his life. His own.
“Where have you put her?” His voice dropped to a growl. “She’s not working for you.”
“You kidding? Velma would curl up and die if she didn’t see my gorgeous face every day. We hadn’t hashed anything out yet. I told her to come back tomorrow and we’d work it out.”
“Good. Because I have an idea.”
“Do I need to write this down? I feel like I need a notebook and a pencil. I know I won’t look nearly as gorgeous as Lucinda in one of those skirts she likes to wear, but I’ll try.”
Angus shot him a glare, but it was barely half-strength. He was too charged to pretend to be offended. In fact, he was done pretending altogether. Any more pretending, he’d get a stomach ulcer.
Holding back his feelings as a kid, when he’d been scared or lonely or worried about his mum, had meant those hurting him had left him alone. It had helped him get through the rough.
But he wasn’t in the rough any more. He was in the prime of his life.
He’d achieved everything he could ever have dreamed of.
Only to realise he’d not been dreaming big enough.
“Get that pencil and notebook,” he commanded. “I’m ready.”
* * *
“You ready?” Fitz asked after rapping noisily on Angus’s glass door.
“Ten seconds,” Angus said, holding up a hand as he went over the plan in his head, double checking he hadn’t missed anything, so used was he to having Lucinda there to fill in the blanks.
It felt like months since he’d seen her, not days. Months in which he’d had to answer his own phone and schmooze his own clients. Call IT for help when he couldn’t open his email.
He would hire another assistant, but right now he needed the clarity of remembering what it was he loved about his work. The rush of being in the trenches.
And now it was Lucinda’s first day back. She’d taken a week off. Time owed, Fitz had said. Time to thi
nk about the offer he’d made regarding a new position in the company.
A promotion, actually. A big one. She was taking over Charlie’s job as Manager of Financial Affairs.
Charlie was brilliant, and a big part of their success, but the guy couldn’t lead. When Fitz and Angus had discussed the idea with Charlie, he’d near wept with relief. He and Kumar would continue to pound away at their calculators, making money for their clients and the Big Picture Group, while Lucinda would be the new face of the department. And the boss.
Angus’s gut had hurt when Fitz had told him her first question before accepting had been to make sure Angus would be okay with it. He wished he’d seen her face when Fitz had told her it was all Angus’s idea.
“Now or never,” Fitz said.
Yeah, that was what he feared.
Angus stood, looking around him for what he might need to take to a staff meeting.
“Come on! Hurry up! No resting on your Remède laurels, mate. Boardroom. Now.” With that, Fitz strode away.
Angus left through the small door that took him past Lucinda’s old desk. It looked eerily tidy. There was no paper, no pencils. The back of the chair sat perfectly parallel with the desk.
He opened a drawer and found it empty too. Until, when he closed it, there came a tell-tale sound just before a cheap 2B pencil rolled towards the front.
He picked it up and ran a thumb over the black and red stripes along its length.
A smile stretched across his face. Knowing how much she liked pretty notebooks, one of the first gifts he’d ever bought her was a very expensive pen. It had sat in the back of the same drawer for years while she’d continued to use her discount store pencils instead.
No airs. No graces. She was who she was. Thank the gods for that.
Holding the pencil tight, like some kind of talisman, Angus made his way down the hall towards the boardroom.
When he arrived, Fitz was talking with Velma, who tried to look stern but couldn’t contain the flicker at the corner of her mouth.
Charlie and Kumar sat against the wall, watching a video on Kumar’s phone—no doubt a stock fluctuation. Or a UFO sighting. Hell, maybe it was a kitten lost down a well.