by Ally Blake
Evie looked to Armand but feared what he might do, so she spun around and said, “We were wondering why you’ve had us trying to find a problem in a program that has no problem.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Jonathon.” Armand had found his voice. “It’s time to put an end to this.”
After a few tense moments Jonathon looked to Evie and began a slow clap. “Well done you.”
For half a second Evie thought about taking the applause when she saw her future—working for Game Plan, mentored by the man she’d called her hero. But that was before she’d known what that word really meant.
“It was Armand,” she said. “He figured it out days ago.”
“I don’t doubt it. Cleverest man I know. Days ago, you say? Then I wonder why he didn’t confront me sooner, don’t you?”
Armand moved around Evie with the grace of a man half his size. “You know why.”
“Tell me,” Jonathon said. “Better yet, tell her.”
Evie looked between them, realising there was an undercurrent slipping and sliding beneath their words. “Tell me what?”
Armand took a deep breath in and turned to face her, blocking her completely from Jonathon’s view. “I didn’t say anything because it would mean that this was over.”
Evie made herself swallow. “Armand, that’s sweet. But I knew once we were done here you’d be going home.” She’d counted on it, needing to put this experience behind her so she could start her life afresh. Not that it stopped the pressure around her heart.
“I don’t mean for me, Evie. It’s over for you.”
Evie made to look past him to Jonathon, but Armand moved, blocking her. Snagging her gaze and not letting go.
Armand’s grip tightened on her arm before easing up, his body rigid with barely checked tension. “Jonathon didn’t give you this job because he thought you were ready for it. He gave you the job for me.”
“For you? I don’t understand.”
“He knew I was in a bad way. That I’d been living in a fugue for a long time. He brought me out here in an effort to wake me up. It wasn’t working, until the day you came into his office. Don’t you remember? When he saw us together he hired you on the spot.”
“You knew this was why? And you let it happen anyway?”
“I thought he was being facetious. I’d convinced myself that the spark he’d claimed to see was all in his head. I was wrong.”
Head spinning, heart aching, foundation shaking beneath her, Evie pushed Armand aside and stalked up to Jonathon Montrose. Her boss. Her one-time hero. Right now a person she wanted to smack. Hard.
“Is that true? Did you hire me as some kind of lure?”
Jonathon took a sip of his coffee while he considered his response. “I saw an opportunity for an interesting collaboration. I think we can all agree, here and now, that it worked a treat.”
Evie’s stomach sank and in the same breath anger so bright it filled her vision with a burning white light filled her entire body.
Before she knew it she was off the ground, legs kicking, arms flailing, as Armand lifted her bodily out of the way. “Let me at him,” she cried. “You said you wanted to kill him with your bare hands at times. Let me at him.”
“No,” Armand crooned, “killing him won’t solve anything. I’d rather see him suffer.”
Then he gave her a smile, his mouth kicking up at one side, his eyes glinting in that way that made her feel as if to him she was a natural wonder.
When she went limp he held her close and let her slide down his body.
And damn it if her body didn’t respond. Her skin warmed up. He lungs squeezed tight. Her heart skipped a beat. “Screw him,” she said, her voice soft, just for him. “Don’t leave.”
No, she hadn’t just said that. But yes, she had. And she meant it. Because, despite telling herself it would be okay, that losing him was how it was meant to be, looking into the reality of watching him walk away was heart-breaking. She wasn’t strong enough.
“Stay,” she said again. “Stay.”
Then she made the mistake of looking into Armand’s eyes. And what she saw—the heady mix of desire and regret—made her want to weep.
He hadn’t trusted her enough to include her in his concerns. That hurt. Now it was clear he didn’t want her enough to even consider staying, years of abandonment fell in on her like walls in a demolished building.
She braced herself against the side of the chair as her knees gave way. Armand, being Armand, held out a hand to help her.
“I don’t need your help, Armand. Or your protection. I’m tough, tougher than I look.” And she was, she realised, as in a case of really wretched timing she felt her heart harden. “I’m an orphan. I’m farm stock. I’m educated. I’m capable. No matter what befalls me I will land on my feet because I say that I will.”
“I know you will,” he said, his accent, that warm, rough voice of his, nearly undoing her completely. “You are the strongest, sweetest, most fearless woman I have ever known.”
Then stay, she begged inwardly; fight for me. Love me.
“While every time I let someone close they get hurt. If this doesn’t show you that, I don’t know what will. This is all my fault, Evie, and I cannot apologise to you enough.”
He cared about her. He’d just said so. And she knew it. Deep down in that place that could read his eyes, his smiles, his tells, in a way she’d never been able to read another living soul. But to hear him say it took her knees out from under her.
“I care about you too,” she said. “But for me, caring takes the form of sticking around. When anyone offers you attention, affection, love, you push them away, telling yourself it’s because you’re terrified that anyone who comes into contact with you would be poisoned by mere association. When the truth is, you’re just terrified.”
As tears burned the backs of her eyes, Evie moved around Armand and reached out a hand to Jonathon. “Thank you, Mr Montrose. For giving me a shot, for forcing me to take a risk and for teaching me a life lesson. Armand, it’s been an education.”
She grabbed her backpack, her beanie, her keyboard, and headed for the door.
“Take the rest of the day off, Ms Croft,” said Jonathon. “You deserve it.”
“I will, thanks. Because I need to find myself a new apartment. And a new job.”
As she headed out the office door she heard Jonathon’s murmur: “What just happened? I don’t understand.”
“She quit, you fool. That woman is the best thing that ever happened to your sorry soul and you never had a clue.”
Jonathon’s voice lifted as if shouting at a departing back as he said, “Maybe you should look in a mirror as you say those words.”
When she heard footsteps following her, Evie ran down the stairs. Armand’s strides were bigger; he caught up fast, taking her by the elbow, turning her to face him. “Evie. Don’t do this.”
“Which part?”
Mercury swirled behind his eyes, shifting with his mercurial thoughts. “Don’t give up.”
“Give up what? On us? On you?” She knew what he’d meant but she needed to hear him say it. For that connection that had drawn them to one another from that very first day made her refuse to believe he could simply let her go.
“Don’t give up this opportunity. I warned you, that first day, that this place could eat you alive. But now I know better. You would flourish here. Jonathon is a manipulative bastard, but he’s the best there is. Use him. Whatever gig, whatever pay, whatever you want, it will be yours.”
Evie reached out and gave him a shove. Then another. “I do not need Jonathon Montrose to get what I want. And if you can’t see that...”
She’d risked, she’d leapt, she’d put herself further out on a limb than she’d ever intended. And she had fallen. Landed badly. And now felt broken�
��in her ego, in her head, in her heart, and seventeen other places besides.
She’d thought breaking the fortune’s curse would set her free. Instead she’d banked her future on a mirage.
The other shoe had finally dropped.
She was done with this city. Done with trying to do the right thing and failing anyway.
As she walked out through the door and into the alleyway the bright, beautiful Melbourne winter’s sky beaming down on her, she felt as if she was falling still.
There was only one place she could think of that would cushion her landing.
It was time to go home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE RETIREMENT VILLAGE where Evie’s granddad now lived was light, bright and inviting. No wind whistling through the old walls the way it had on the old farm. Central heating rather than a tetchy fireplace. And plenty of company of people his own age.
It must have been someone’s birthday, as helium balloons bobbed about on the ceiling.
She spotted her granddad through the crowd the moment he spotted her.
“Evie, love!” he cried. “Christmas Evie. Happily Evie After.” He came at her with a plate full of cake. And when she fell into her granddad’s wiry hug she felt as though she could cry for a year.
“Come,” he said. “Sit.”
Evie came. She sat. Perched on the edge of a cool plastic chair. A table covered in paper plates, with half-eaten cake, scones and smatterings of cut soft fruit.
“Evie!” a woman called, and the word went around, “It’s Evie.”
She knew what they were after. She handed over her bag of beanies, and the women snapped them up, oohing and ahhing over the pom-poms, the cats’ ears, the lurid colours.
Her granddad frowned at the stash. “Hope you haven’t been spending all your spare time knitting for this lot.”
“Hush,” said one, giving him a nudge. And a smiling side eye. Norma, Evie thought, giving herself a mental note to ask about that later.
“Not all,” Evie said. “I’ve been working a lot. Hanging out. Making new friends. Just like you wanted me to do.”
“And Zoe?”
“Lance is back. For good. He’s moved in with her, in fact. They are blissed out.”
“Good for them. And you, Evie, love,” said Granddad. “Have you found yourself a nice young man who...blisses you out?”
Evie smiled even while her heart throbbed painfully. “I didn’t come here to talk about me, I came here to talk about you. And the latest JD Robb. How good was it?”
She’d dropped the magic word and now her table mates were off and running.
Soothing her with their touches on the hand. Quieting her pain with their ribald jokes. Easing her mind that, while she’d left her granddad behind, he was doing just fine. Better, even, than she’d ever imagined.
It gave her the tiniest kernel of hope she could one day feel that way too.
Not today.
But one day.
Borrowing her granddad’s ancient truck, she swung by the farm.
She waved to Farmer Steve, son of their closest neighbour, who now rented the farm. He’d offered to buy her out, more than once. She told herself she’d kept it so her granddad could know that he’d left out of choice, not because she and his doctors had pushed.
But as she pulled up to the old farmhouse she knew. She’d kept it for herself. A back-up plan. A reason not to give herself completely to the Melbourne experiment in case it all went belly-up.
“Evie,” Steve called, heading over to the fence, cattle dog in tow.
She hopped out of the truck and gave the dog a quick pat. “How’s things?”
“You know.”
She did. The life of a farmer was a difficult one.
“You staying?” he said, nudging his chin towards the house. “Your old room is the guest room.”
She hadn’t actually planned anything beyond fleeing the city, but in the end she said, “Sure. That’d be great.”
* * *
Evie slept like the dead, waking hours after the dairy farm had been up and at ’em. More proof she was a city girl now—her body clock clearly no longer on farm time.
By the time she sauntered out to the kitchen the wildlings were at school, Steve was out fixing fences and his wife, Stacey, had headed into work at the local supermarket. The logs in the old fireplace had burned down to embers.
There was a note on the old kitchen table.
Eggs, bacon and fresh milk in the fridge. Warm your towel over the heating rod in the bathroom.
She put some bread in the ancient toaster and while she waited for it to pop she took a quiet tour about her childhood home—finding the burn mark from when she’d discovered chemistry, the notches of her growth chart behind the pantry door. She’d passed her mother’s height when she was thirteen.
As she slathered the hot toast in homemade butter and jam, she let herself wonder what it might be like if she decided to stay. She could teach senior citizens how to use the internet, fix computers, get contracts with the local schools to help out with their IT programs.
It was a beautiful town. Slow and quiet, lovely and dear. But it wasn’t her home. Not any more.
Armand might have let her down but he had changed her too. With his deeply held sense of duty and love. His spirit of adventure. His bravery, his determination to stand up for what he thought was right.
There was no going back after that. No more cautiously hacking her way through the levels of her life—she wanted to meet it head-on. There would be bumps and bruises, there would be mistakes made. But that was okay. More than okay. More challenging. More engaging. More wonderful. For that was life.
And she wasn’t going to go another day not living it.
Sticking the toast between her teeth, she grabbed the notepaper from the kitchen table and turned it over to scribble a note to Steve:
If you want the farm, it’s all yours.
As soon as she wrote the words down she felt a sense of relief. Of letting go of the final shackles holding her back.
Now to figure out what it was she truly wanted so she could go out and get it.
Top of that list: Hot Stuff in the Swanky Suit.
For Armand was her “it” and had been from the moment she’d set eyes on him. And she was his. He might have taken longer to realise it—because he was stubborn and brooding and a man—but she knew he felt it too.
He’d told her so. In his own way.
But, while he claimed he was no hero, he felt it was up to him to fix everything, save everyone, all on his own. When things went wrong he shouldered all the blame. That was why he’d let her go. Not because he didn’t care, but because he did.
All she had to do was make him see he wasn’t alone any more. She’d be there, backing him up, patching him up, holding his hand, listening, caring right on back.
She’d been too scared to look for her life’s passion, but she’d found it anyway.
She moved to the height chart and placed a kiss on her mother’s last notch, then took one last turn about the farm kitchen to say goodbye.
Now what? Evie turned right, then left, like a chicken with its head chopped off.
Stop. Think. Finish breakfast, put on clothes, get the car back to Granddad and head to the city.
Wrapping herself in a blanket off the back of a couch, she bit down on her toast and stepped out onto the porch to see if she could see Steve out in the field to let him know she was heading off, when...
She choked, spraying crumbs all over her clothes. “Armand?”
Armand looked up at the sound of his name, his shiny brogues stopping halfway up the farmhouse stairs, his gaze travelling over her as if making sure what he was seeing was true. Or maybe it was her wild bed-hair, old brown blanket and scuzzy old Ugg boots that had him transfixed.
“How did you find me?” she asked, mind scrambled, senses in a tizz.
While, in his elegant chinos, button-down shirt and cashmere sweater, he looked the picture of cool. Only his eyes gave him away, all tempestuous stormy blue and focussed on her like a laser beam. “I asked Zoe, but even after using extensive torture techniques she didn’t budge.”
“And you with all your training.”
At her sass a spark lit within the stormy depths of Armand’s eyes.
Her voice was husky as she said, “Jonathon.”
“He owed me. He went to HR. Your granddad is your next of kin. The farm is his address.”
“Your friend has no respect for propriety.”
“For which I am extremely grateful.”
Evie took another step forward. Then, caught in the man’s magnetic pull, she stepped forward again.
A muscle worked in Armand’s jaw as he took the final step up onto the porch so Evie had to tilt her chin. He looked...tired, fraught and beautiful.
Evie hitched the blanket up. Curled her toes into her socks. Asked, “Why are you here?”
“You know why,” he said, that accent sending delicious shivers down her spine.
And okay, maybe she did. Because she was smart and he wasn’t a man to make empty gestures. Yet her heart thumped hard enough against her ribs that it knocked her forwards a step.
Right as Armand reached out to wrap an arm about her waist, haul her to him and kiss her.
Evie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him right on back.
This, she thought. This is what life is all about.
Then she didn’t think much at all for quite some time.
When Evie pulled back she breathed deeply of the chill farm air, of Armand. The feel of him filling her with warmth, with hope, with bliss.
I’m blissed out, Granddad! she thought. Already looking forward to introducing her two favourite men in the world.
With a sigh she tipped up onto her toes, wrapped her arms around Armand and buried her face in his neck. Then tossed the toast still gripped in her cold fingers out onto the dry grass, the chickens and ducks squawking as they swarmed to tear it apart.