Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Kensey’s news was lovely. Despite their erratic and fly-by-night childhood her sister had made good and then some. They both had. There was really nothing for Chelsea to be feeling this edgy about.

  ‘Your ticket, ma’am,’ a girl behind the counter said.

  ‘Right.’ Chelsea searched her handbag. The pockets of her jacket. Down her bra where she often slipped notes to herself when she didn’t have her phone or pockets to hand. She glanced up to find the blonde watching her blankly.

  ‘I seem to have misplaced it.’

  ‘It’ll be hot-pink. Hard to miss.’

  ‘Yet visualising it still hasn’t helped it appear.’

  The blonde raised an eyebrow. Chelsea took a deep breath and managed to count to seven before she leant over the counter and said, ‘It’s black. With a silver spine, off-white buttons, and if you flip it open it will have this picture upon the screen.’

  She slipped the blonde a Pride & Groom business card with the hot-pink dog-print logo upon it. The blonde took the card and then her right eyebrow joined her left.

  ‘Cool. You work for those guys?’

  ‘I am those guys.’

  ‘Ri-i-ight. Weren’t you on the telly a few months back? On that celebrity pet show? You’re the one who clipped that rock star’s poodle and he freaked out that you’d swapped his dog, and sued you.’

  The rock star had threatened to sue, had been appeased by the show’s producers that the dog was his just with a haircut, and by the next day couldn’t even remember a word of it. Pride & Groom’s business had doubled overnight, making Chelsea believe whoever said all publicity was good publicity deserved a cookie. ‘I am the very one,’ she agreed.

  The blonde tipped her chin and looked up at Chelsea from beneath clumpy eyelashes. ‘I have a Basenji. Any chance you could swing me some freebies?’

  Chelsea blinked back. ‘Any chance you could find my phone? Black, silver, off-white keys…’

  The blonde smirked and ran a finger along the wooden boxes until she found the only one that was locked. She pulled out Chelsea’s black and silver friend. ‘This it?’

  Chelsea slid it out of the girl’s hand and wrapped her fingers around the familiar length, comfort seeping into her joints at having her life somewhat back under her control. ‘This is it.’

  ‘Any time you need a table at short notice, just ask for Carrie. That’s me.’

  ‘Thanks, Carrie. I’ll keep it in mind.’

  The give and take of commerce, Chelsea thought as she snuck a knee-length wool scarf from her handbag and wrapped it twice around her neck and headed outside into the crisp, but at least now dry, Melbourne autumn morning. Luck out with the right product and today you were on everybody’s speed dial. Dream too big in the slight wrong direction and tomorrow you’re toast.

  She pulled her hair out from under her tight scarf as she headed down the street towards the underground car park where she’d left the Pride & Groom van.

  And promptly began dreaming big in the exact wrong direction. Each footstep heralded the memory of another delicious moment locked in the arms of a tall dark handsome stranger from so far on the other side of the tracks he was in a different postcode.

  And Kensey had made a point that had hit deep.

  She was twenty-seven years old. Self-sufficient. Post puppy fat and pre middle-aged spread. She could still touch her toes and her hair had yet to turn mousy. These were meant to be her golden years, yet the only man she’d purposely dressed up for in weeks was the bank manager.

  She felt a sudden desire to turn on her high heels, march back into the restaurant and ask the blonde if she could find out the booking name and phone number of Mr Suit and Tie. Even though he’d been too beautiful for her, too beautiful for anyone bar maybe three or four of the world’s top supermodels, he’d looked at her as if … as if he’d wanted to see more of her.

  The way his arms had tightened around her, the way his gorgeous blue eyes had darkened, made her feel that having a man like him hold her, touch her, bury himself in her, call out her name, even just the once, would be some kind of validation that she was young and single and would be perfectly fine if life deemed she remain that way evermore.

  But then again, if she ever had the chance to experience such a dreamy specimen, would she, being of London genes, find it impossible to appreciate ordinary pleasures ever again?

  CHAPTER THREE

  DAMIEN burst into Caleb’s office without knocking. ‘Don’t laugh or I will hit you.’

  Caleb didn’t laugh. He was too busy running a lazy hand through his short hair while a tall lean blonde straightened her skirt. She gave Damien a quick smile before sliding out the office door and shutting it behind her.

  ‘Do I know her?’ Damien drawled.

  ‘Zelda’s from the typing pool. She was replacing my printer cartridge.’

  Damien nodded. ‘That was nice of her. But how about you stick to looking after your own printer cartridges while in the workplace? My workplace. For which I am legally liable. Now, I need your help.’

  Caleb sat back in his chair and leant his chin on steepled fingers. ‘What’s up, boss?’

  ‘You know how I suggested we try Amelie’s because they don’t let anyone use their mobile phones? How I railed that it might well become the one place in this city where a man could eat in relative peace?’

  Caleb nodded, feigning deep understanding, though when he leaned forward and started fiddling with the mouse on his desk Damien knew he had to be quick.

  ‘In some kind of karmic response to my admittedly anti-technology sentiments, when I picked up my phone from the cloakroom, they gave me the wrong one.’

  Caleb glanced up at the phone Damien held by his fingertips. ‘Looks like yours.’

  ‘But it ain’t.’

  ‘But it looks like it …’

  Just then the offending machine began to ring. The two men stared at it as it blared out its powder-puff tune.

  ‘That’s not your phone,’ Caleb said, deadpan. ‘Give it to me.’

  Damien pulled it out of Caleb’s reach. ‘Every time you go anywhere near my computer I end up with porn pop-ups I have to call on others to delete. Now every Friday for the past two months Jimmy the IT guy has asked me if I want to join him and the other techies at the Men’s Gallery.’

  ‘I can’t put porn on this phone by simply answering it.’ Caleb clicked his fingers, and, half believing him, Damien handed over the offending instrument.

  ‘This is Caleb,’ he said after answering the phone, leaning back in his chair, and proceeding to ask sensible questions. When Caleb’s voice dropped and he began to have a chat, Damien kicked hard against the side of his desk.

  ‘Right, nice talking to you, Susan,’ Caleb said, then hung up. ‘She was returning a missed call herself. Didn’t know whose phone it was. If you’d let me talk for a few more minutes we might have figured it out between us.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘I think it’s a chick’s phone,’ Caleb said.

  ‘I do believe it is. Someone rang earlier looking for a Chelsea London.’

  ‘Now why do I know that name?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Damien said, knowing that Caleb wouldn’t spot the obvious.

  Caleb grinned. ‘You bought a chick’s phone.’

  ‘On your recommendation.’

  ‘That was a month ago. Times change. I can’t see the future.’

  ‘I wonder what they did with my old one. Do you think it’s too late to get it back?’

  ‘Far too late. If they haven’t melted it down they’ve donated it to a museum.’ Caleb’s thumb began zooming over the keys at lightning speed.

  ‘You’re going through her personal files?’ Damien asked.

  ‘That I am.’

  ‘Good idea.’ He moved behind Caleb and looked over his shoulder at the bright flashing screens.

  ‘No photos of herself or her friends. Means she has no friends or isn’t the cutest thing on her bl
ock. But we do have photos of …’

  Damien’s eyebrows lifted and he was sure Caleb’s did the same. The first photo they came upon was of a black studded dog collar. He should have guessed.

  ‘Kinky,’ Caleb said.

  ‘Just your type,’ Damien said.

  ‘Ha. Ha. Okay, moving on, in her diary we have “breakfast @ Amelie’s with Kensey”. Kensey. Sounds like the name of a fortune-teller. Ooh, maybe this Kensey knows what they’ve done with your old phone.’

  Damien closed his eyes for a moment. ‘So now what?’

  Caleb held up the phone to the light pouring through the office window as though that could make it magically ring again. ‘What happened when you called your phone number to see if this Chelsea chick has your phone?’

  Damien squeezed his eyes shut all the tighter as he mentally berated himself. The caramel-blonde had done more than awoken his dormant hungers; it seemed she’d also dulled his brain cells in the process. That had never happened to him after not having seen a woman he was keen on naked. In fact, he couldn’t remember feeling such debilitating mind fuzz upon actually seeing a woman he was keen on naked.

  It occurred to him in some kind of cruel flash of remembrance that he’d even remained focussed in every which way during the worst of the fights leading to the eventual Break Up. Bonnie had declared him a dyed-in-the-wool Halliburton incapable of a committed relationship other than with his work. And he hadn’t even thought to argue.

  Damien looked at his watch. The markets had been open almost an hour and he’d not placed one trade for a client. So much for his impassioned commitment to his work. He clicked his fingers, and Caleb handed over the phone.

  He pressed it to his ear and paced to the window, looking out over the Melbourne city skyline. The now bright blue skies streaked with perfect fluffy white clouds mocked him as the phone buzzed ominously in his ear.

  Just as Chelsea pulled into a parking garage beneath the imposing Brunswick Street building, the phone on the passenger seat began to vibrate so vigorously it almost fell off the seat.

  She jumped in fright. She never used vibrate. Her phone was far too important for all that silent-mode nonsense. She made a mental note to write to the restaurant and let them know their cloakroom staff had been mucking about with her ring tone.

  She grabbed it, and her bag, and leapt out of the van. She screened the call. Her right foot slid to a stop in a pile of white gravel when her own mobile number looked back at her.

  She glanced about her. Hippies, Goths, punks and innumerable other marginal folk who gravitated to the funky urban je ne sais quoi of inner city Brunswick Street brushed past her on the pavement, but she saw nothing in any of their faces to help her make sense of her current situation.

  Her tone was more than a mite cautious when she flipped the phone open and said, ‘Chelsea London speaking.’

  After a pause, a deep male voice said, ‘Chelsea London, am I glad to have found you.’

  She began walking again, this time more slowly. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My name is Damien Halliburton. I’m a day trader with Keppler Jones and Morganstern.’

  A day trader, she computed. Was that some kind of market-research thing? Ooh, she hated those guys! Phone calls just as she’d settled down to lasagne, red wine and House. Though at least this one’s voice was something out of the ordinary. Booming deep, slow and easy, like really good pillow talk.

  God! Was her mind now permanently switched to hot, naked, sweaty mode?

  She shook her head and pressed the phone tighter to her ear so Mr Pillow Talk could feel the full force of her disappointment that a man with a voice like his had taken on such a job.

  ‘Mr Keppler-Jones or Morgan whoever, I never answer surveys, never tick the “please send me more information” boxes on forms. Didn’t you know that Australia’s privacy laws actually refer to you as well as the rest of the population?’

  After a distinct pause, which she saw as something of a victory, especially since he was likely being graded and recorded by a boss with a clipboard, he said, ‘I think you may have me mistaken for somebody else, Ms London.’

  Ms London? That settled it. This guy didn’t know her from Eve. She stopped atop the front porch of the large white building and crossed her spare arm over her stomach. ‘Right. So how the hell do you have my phone number?’

  ‘I have more than that,’ the deep voice said. ‘I have your phone.’

  She pulled the phone out from its nook between her shoulder and her chin as though it had emitted an electrical charge. She stared at it. Black. Silver spine. Glowing off-white buttons.

  She ducked inside. Only when she glanced through the glass door at the street outside did she tuck the phone back beneath her chin. She picked up only what must have been the end of his next sentence.

  ‘ … Amelie’s today?’

  Amelie’s? Was he some kind of crazy stalker?

  ‘Whoever you are, call me again and I will be onto the police before you can take your next heavy breath.’

  With that she hung up, and threw the phone into her handbag. Then she took a deep breath and marched up to the service desk at the local bank. ‘I’m Chelsea London. I have an appointment to see your manager about a business loan.’

  Damien held the phone away from his ear and stared at it for several blank seconds. ‘All sorted?’ Caleb asked.

  ‘Well, no. Not exactly. I think she may in fact be a crazy lady.’

  ‘The dog-collar photo didn’t ring those bells for ya? Maybe she stole your phone on purpose,’ Caleb said. ‘Maybe this is something she does to get her kicks.’

  Damien redialled. After several rings it went through to his voicemail. ‘She’s not answering.’

  ‘Maybe she’s on the phone again. Maybe she’s calling her crazy relatives overseas. On your dime. That’s her con! So who do you know overseas we could call at this time of day?’

  Damien didn’t wait to hear the end of it. He simply upped and left Caleb’s office and walked down the hall to his own, wondering whom he’d hurt in a previous existence in order to have so very many women adding unnecessary pressures to what, until a month ago, had been the kind of easy, breezy, fortunate life most men would give their right arm for.

  An hour and a bit later, Chelsea trudged inside the converted house in which the first Pride & Groom salon had grown from a one-woman, one-van operation into a brand-recognised, seven-staff, three-van endeavour with room for up to half a dozen domestic animals to be washed, clipped, perfumed, primped, preened and pampered at once.

  She threw her handbag onto the white cane tub chair in the corner of her tiny office, her muscles aching as if she’d carried her own body weight from the car. Though all she’d done was carry a couple of dozen pieces of paper, which basically said if she signed them she’d owe the bank somewhere in the region of a million dollars.

  She kicked off her boots, then licked her finger and rubbed it hard over a spot of strawberry sauce on her top, which had thankfully been hidden beneath her jacket.

  She then changed into her more comfortable ‘uniform’ of faded jeans, long-sleeved white T-shirt with a big hot-pink paw print splodged dead centre, and thick socks to stave off blisters associated with being on her feet all day.

  As she sat to tie up the laces on her sneakers the office door burst open and Phyllis stuck her head in. ‘Well, now, where the heck you been? I must have tried to call you a good half-dozen times. Kept getting your voicemail.’

  ‘Sorry. Phone was on silent.’ For once. The last thing she’d needed was crazy stalker telemarketer man bombarding her whilst she and the bank manager had been chatting.

  Phyllis leaned her heavy form against the door frame. ‘So how did we go?’

  ‘It’s all ours if we want it. Enough money to buy and fit out another two salons.’

  Phyllis let out a resounding whoop. ‘I knew it. You clever clever girl. Now, just a quick warning. The Joneses brought Pumpkin in this morning and
she seems to have a slight, okay not so slight, tummy upset. She has had it all over the green room, in fact. Lily’s on lunch. Josie gags every time she walks past the room. And I would clean up but I have Agatha’s Burmese and if I leave her alone for another two minutes you know she’ll turn feral.’

  Chelsea let her sneaker-clad foot drop to the floor with a thud. It seemed her pretend life as a sophisticated city gal with a million dollars to spend and sexy city-banker types drooling over her was well and truly over. ‘Call the Joneses. Ask if they’d like us to take Pumpkin to Dr Campbell. Then give me a few minutes and I’ll clean it up.’

  Phyllis left. Chelsea pushed up her sleeves and tied her hair back into a pony-tail. She fished her mobile out of her bag and placed it on a spare corner of her desk, which was overflowing with trays filled with ‘to do’ lists, samples of dog-grooming products that arrived in the mail every day, and a just-short-of-stale half-packet of shortbread that would be morning tea.

  She stared out the small window into the rose garden next door, her eyes fuzzing over as she watched a bee flit from flower to flower. And her thoughts once again turned to Mr Suit and Tie.

  She wondered if he wasn’t what he’d seemed at first glance either. Perhaps right now he was pulling on a pair of overalls, or pulling off his shirt and tie to reveal superhero Lycra beneath. Or maybe he was still dressed in glorious top-to-toe suiting, leaning back in a thousand-dollar chair, counting his money and laughing maniacally at the little men pedalling hard to make his privileged world go round.

  Damien sat forward in his chair, the soft swish and swing of German engineering making him bob comfortably behind his oak and leather desk.

  Far more comfortably than he deserved, as his day was still occurring in slow motion since his hormones had mutinously overtaken his higher brain function. All because of a willowy body so light in his arms he could have swung her around and not done his back in, golden-brown eyes, pale warm skin, tumbling waves he’d never had the chance to touch.

  He needed to give himself a break. A man and a woman taking pleasure in one another and leaving it at that wasn’t unheard of in this day and age. And if it couldn’t be her it would have to be someone else and soon. If only he had her number.