by Emma Lea
Zoë’s life had been all about work and hitting the hottest clubs in the city—seeing and being seen by all the movers and shakers. She’d helped her best friend Willa land her billionaire boyfriend and thought she’d found her own partner in Tanner. Her life had been complete…until it wasn’t. Tanner had burned her and she didn’t think there would ever be a time when she would be prepared to put herself in that position again but the man sitting next to her challenged that belief.
She wanted to make room in her life for him. He really had no idea how much of a workaholic she was. This mini-break with her family was all just pretend. This wasn’t the real Zoë Farraday. The real Zoë spent long hours in the office and often brought work home with her over the weekend. She went to clubs and bars with the specific intention of making connections with the big names in the city. It was through such a connection that she’d first heard about the position at Austin Industries. She’d learned a valuable lesson from Tanner. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew and she wasn’t liable to forget it anytime soon. If she wanted to get ahead, then the next twelve months meant head down, arse up. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by dimples and sparkling blue eyes and orgasms that rocked her world…could she?
“I’ve never driven this road,” Blake said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Really?”
He shrugged, his eyes darting to the water and the cliff face of the very edge of Australia. “My family aren’t really big on road trips,” he said.
“It’s been a while for me,” she said. “I get so caught up in work that I kind of forget how to relax.”
He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher and she noticed his hands gripping the wheel a bit tighter. “You really love your job,” he said. It was an observation, not a question.
“I do,” she replied. “I can be a little obsessive about it. I’m one of those people who can get so involved in their work that they forget there is a world outside the office.”
He didn’t reply and she wondered if she was ruining this thing between them before it even got started.
“My family is a bit like that,” he finally said, his voice soft. “My grandfather, my father, and now my older brother. The job is everything to them.” He turned to her giving her a crooked, rueful smile. “Me, not so much.”
“Your job seems like it would be kind of fun. It’s not exactly the type of job that—”
“That’s important?” he asked, his voice hard.
“No,” she said slowly. “I wasn’t going to say that. I just meant that working with kids and dressing up doesn’t really lend itself to being trapped in an office or even something that causes you to bring your work home.”
“It’s not my only job,” he said.
She swivelled in her seat to face him. “It’s not?”
He shook his head. “I took twelve months off to backpack around the world but I do have a real job too. In an office and everything.” He smiled with his lips but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t love it, but I don’t really have a choice either.”
“You always have a choice,” she said, turning back to the front. “If it’s not what you want to do then why waste your time doing it? Find something you love and do that.”
He huffed out a breath. “I don’t think my family would be very impressed with your philosophy,” he said. “They practically disowned me when I took off overseas. The only way back into their good books is to find a real job.”
“Then they’re arseholes,” Zoë said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” he said. “Your family are great. I bet if you decided to pack it all in and told them you wanted to spend your life dressing up and entertaining kids they’d support you.”
“If it made me happy, then yeah they would. My family are not perfect, no one’s can be. We have our issues and they annoy me with their constant interfering in my personal life but they would support me in whatever I chose to do, even if they didn’t agree with it.”
“Is that why you brought me home? Because they would support your decision to swear off men?”
She bit her lip and looked away. He was right. Bringing him home had been a cop out. She just didn’t want to sit down and have the conversation with her mother. She didn’t want to reveal just how much Tanner’s betrayal had hurt her. She didn’t want to see the disappointment on her mother’s face when she realised that Zoë wouldn’t be giving her grandchildren any time soon. She was being a coward.
“Touché,” she said quietly.
Blake sighed and reached for her hand. “I get it,” he said. “If anyone can understand not wanting to disappoint their parents, then it’s me. The fact that I’ve been a fuck up my entire life in their eyes doesn’t mean that I don’t hope that one day I will see pride in their eyes when they look at me. Your mum and dad are pretty great. Don’t underestimate them.”
“We’re here,” Zoë said as the sign for the Twelve Apostles car park came into view, glad that the conversation was cut short.
Blake pulled of the road and parked the car. They grabbed their picnic lunch and he held her hand as they walked the boardwalk down to the viewing platform.
“This is incredible,” Blake said, standing at the railing.
She looked up at him and made a decision. She would come clean to her parents and then maybe she would see just how hard it would be to fit Blake into her life. She wasn’t ready for this week with him to be over. She wasn’t ready to go back to the boring Zoë she had become. What was she working so hard for, if not to have someone to enjoy it with?
“What?” he said, looking down at her upturned gaze.
“I really like you, Blake,” she said before pressing up to kiss him.
22
Zoë’s phone chimed with an incoming email. She stretched languidly, her body wonderfully sore after the workout Blake had woken her with earlier. He was gone, hitching a ride into town with her cousins. She didn’t know what their plans were, but it meant she could crawl back into bed and sleep a little longer.
Life would soon get back to the normal rhythms and sleeping in would be a luxury—as would long nights of love making and early morning trysts in the sheets. As much as she intended to keep seeing Blake—not that she’d broached the subject with him yet—she knew it wouldn’t be the same. Work would take up far too much of her time so she was determined to enjoy the lazy mornings and late nights for as long as she could.
Her phone chimed again and she growled as she rolled over to grab it from the nightstand. The office was closed and would be until after New Year’s, but it appeared someone was still working. She had two emails from Austin Industries.
Zoë pushed herself up into a sitting position and leaned against the head board as she clicked open the first one. It was an invitation to the Austin Industries Annual New Year’s Celebration. She grinned. Willa had invited her to a New Year’s Eve party with Jonathon and the rest of his friends, but she always felt like the odd one out whenever she was around them. She liked Jonathon and his friends just fine, but they were all self-made billionaires and she found them as intimidating as hell. Plus, they were all couples and she decidedly wasn’t. It would be good to have an excuse to skip it, plus it would do her good to get a jump on meeting the people she would be working with in the coming year. Meeting them in a low-key way at a party would always be better than meeting them in the office on her first day.
She made a mental note to ask Blake what he was doing for New Year’s. They hadn’t discussed anything beyond Christmas, but maybe he would like to be her plus one. It would be a litmus test for their potential future together back in the real world.
She clicked open the second email and rolled her eyes as the CEO blabbed on about his brother who would be joining the company. This was the guy Zoë would be working with. More to the point, this was the guy she would be competing against. Rebecca hadn’t specifically admitted it, but Zoë knew how these things went. She’d need to work twice as har
d just to get a look in for any future promotions and she would have to bite her tongue as the CEO’s brother got promoted over her. It sucked, but it was life—nepotism at its best.
She scrolled down, skimming the words and then stopped as a name jumped out at her. Blake. Blake Austin. It had to be a coincidence, didn’t it? The man she met in the elevator of Austin Industries dressed as an elf was Blake Spencer…it was pure crazy coincidence that he had the same name as her rival. She scrolled down lower, her stomach cramping as a picture came into view.
Blake looked back at her with a corporate smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. He wore a suit and tie, his face clean shaven and his hair slicked back. It was a side of Blake she had never seen, one that she had never expected to see.
The phone dropped from her fingers as her brain worked to try and catch up. Blake—her Blake—was actually Blake Austin. The second son of the billionaire Stephen Austin, grandson to Jack Austin Senior, founder of Austin Industries, and brother of Jack Austin, current CEO of Austin Industries and her new boss.
“Fucking hell,” she whispered, making all the connections in her head. “He fucking lied to me.”
He’d told her his name was Blake Spencer. He had to know she worked at Austin Industries or at least was going to be working there. He’d had her fucking employment contract, there was no way he didn’t know. He knew from the moment she stepped into that elevator with him that they would be working together and he hadn’t said anything. She’d told him all about Tanner and everything that had happened at FMR and he’d said nothing.
Zoë dragged in a breath and pain arced through her chest. She’d done it again. Despite her attempts to keep her distance from Blake and her determination not to fall for him, she’d failed at both. Now she was paying the price for it. Her new career was in tatters and she hadn’t even been into the office yet. There was no way she could keep the job. There was no way she could work with Blake, not now. It was too much like what happened with Tanner for her to be able to look at him the same way.
She heard his voice as he said goodbye to someone outside their cabin. She heard the sound of the sliding door open and then his footsteps as he crossed the threshold. She pulled her knees up and hugged her arms around them trying to protect herself from what she knew was coming. He walked into the bedroom, a big grin on his face until he saw her. She saw the emotions cross his features and wondered at his acting ability. He actually looked concerned about her.
“Zoë, baby, what’s the matter?” he asked, coming into the room, approaching her like he wanted to scoop her up into his arms.
She reached for her phone and turned it around so he could see it. “You tell me, Blake Austin,” she said.
Blake had taken one look at Zoë’s face and knew there was something wrong. His first instinct had been to go to her and to try and fix whatever it was that had her so upset but he froze mid-step when he realised he was the problem. His face stared back at him from her phone. The stupid corporate profile photo that he’d been forced to take.
Hearing his real name on her lips caused his breath to hitch and not just because his cover was blown but also because he’d wanted to hear her say it, had wanted her to know who he really was. He just hadn’t wanted it to come out quite like this.
“Zoë,” he said, holding his hands up, hoping to placate her and give him a moment. “Please let me explain.”
“Go ahead,” she said, her eyes snapping. “Explain to me why you have been lying to me this whole time.”
“It’s not exactly a lie—”
“No? What is the name on your driver’s license, Blake? Is it Austin or is it Spencer?”
“Austin,” he said and the name tasted foul on his tongue. Once again his surname was the cause of all the problems in his life. “I was going to tell you.”
“Yeah? When? When were you going to tell me? On my first day of work? Were you going to tell me then? Just blindside me with the fact that the man I’d spent Christmas with, the man I’ve been sleeping with was really my new boss’s brother? Was that your plan?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “I tried to tell you on the Ferris wheel but you stopped me. Remember? You wanted us to just be the people we were in that moment and in that moment, I was Blake Spencer and I was falling hard for you. I never meant to lie to you—”
“Of course you meant to lie to me,” she spat. Her cheeks were flushed with anger and her eyes flared with sparks. “Nobody can lie accidentally—”
“I never expected —”
“You never expected me to find out?” she spit out, cutting him off.
“Would you just shut up and let me explain?” he growled at her, prowling toward where she sat on the bed.
“So you can lie to me again?”
“Stop it, Zoë. Just shut up for a minute, please. I know you’re upset—”
“Upset is an understatement,” she growled under her breath.
“I never expected for this to go where it did,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “I never expected to fall for you.”
She snorted and turned her face away from him.
“You need to believe me,” he said. “My intention wasn’t to hurt you. I was just…” he tapered off. Telling her he was only trying to protect himself would be like waving a red rag in front of a bull.
“Just what, Blake? You were just what?”
“I didn’t want you to know who I was, okay?” he yelled, the frustration breaking his control. “I knew that if you knew who I was, it would change the way you looked at me. I never intended for us to get so close. I never expected to fucking fall in love with you!”
The words echoed through the cabin and then there was silence as she looked at him with wide eyes.
“You bastard,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “How dare you. How dare you say that. How dare you try and manipulate me like that.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you,” he said tiredly, his knees folding under him as he collapsed on the edge of the bed. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m in love with you Zoë.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There is no way you can be in love with me. You barely know me and I know nothing about you! Everything between us has been a lie, Blake. From that very first moment we met on the elevator you’ve been doing nothing but lying to me. Do you even work with kids at the children’s hospital or was that fake too?”
“I do,” he said, his voice flat. “I was on my way there when we met.”
“I felt sorry for you,” she said, getting off the bed and wrapping her arms around herself like she was cold. “I thought your family was a bunch of arseholes who couldn’t give a damn about you and so I thought you might have fun spending Christmas with me and my crazy family.”
“My family are arseholes and they did abandon me,” he said. “I love your family and this has been the best Christmas of my life.”
She snorted again and turned away from him, pulling on clothes over her shorty pyjamas. “Your family are freaking billionaires, Blake,” she said. “I doubt very much that you would have spent Christmas alone.”
“Being a billionaire doesn’t mean a damn thing, Zoë. Everything I told you about my family was true, having money doesn’t make it any different. My family name doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie to me? You knew we were going to be working together. I told you what happened to me at my last job. I told you about Tanner and you said nothing.”
“I was right,” he said as she started to walk out the door. “If you’d known who I was, you would have seen me differently, you would have treated me differently. You would have heard the name Austin and immediately written me off.”
She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “You underestimated me, Blake. And you underestimated yourself.”
She walked out leaving him alone in the cabin. He dropped his head to his hands and dragged
in a breath. How could everything that felt so right turn into such a shit fight? It seemed to be the story of his life.
23
Zoë stomped into the kitchen of the main house and slumped into a chair beside Cassie who was feeding Kaila.
“What crawled up your arse and died?” Cassie asked, shooting her a glance.
“Blake and I had a fight,” she said, folding her arms on the table and dropping her head to them.
“So? All couples fight.”
“He lied to me,” she replied, her voice muffled by her arms.
“Okay,” Cassie said, “and?”
“What do you mean ‘and?’ Isn’t it enough that he lied?”
“What? You’ve never lied?”
Zoë huffed out a breath and guilt churned in her gut. She was still mad at Blake. No, mad didn’t even begin to describe how she felt. Betrayed was more like it, and furious with him.
“We’re not talking about a little white lie,” Zoë said.
“Is he cheating on you?” Cassie asked, turning to face Zoë with a narrowed gaze.
“No,” she said. “But he lied about—” she stopped herself. If she told Cassie that Blake lied about his last name then Cassie would want to know how they could even be in a relationship without her knowing his real last name and then that would crack open the whole can of worms and she would have to come clean about the real reason Blake had come home with her for Christmas.
“He lied about what?” Cassie asked.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes,” Cassie said, propping Kaila over her shoulder and rubbing her back. “It does matter. You’re obviously upset and you came here hoping to talk to someone, so talk.”
“It’s complicated,” Zoë said, dropping her head back to her arms. “He’s not who I thought he was.”
“Who did you think he was?” Cassie prompted.
“I thought he was just some guy I met in an elevator. I thought he was a normal guy with a slightly weird job. I thought there was something real between us.”