Jo remembered how Amy had been at thirteen, bustling around their bleak first apartment like the sugarplum fairy on crack. Jo had been seventeen at the time and working two jobs as well as finishing high school, but she’d always looked forward to coming home. Still did. Amy always made her smile.
Sipping on her champagne, feeling the bubbles go straight to her head, Jo spun her chair around and looked over the salon. Amy had come a long way in the past three years, since she’d purchased a run-down corner florist shop and done it up. It was perfectly situated, only ten minutes from Amy’s house in the old convict-built part of Fremantle, five minutes from Jo’s apartment overlooking the river and just a stone’s throw from the city.
The minute she’d gotten the keys, Amy had split the place into a beauty shop named Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and a barber’s named Babyface, after two of her favourite movies. Both sides of the business were decorated in a retro 1950s style.
It was the only salon of its kind in the city. Taking care of hair, nails, waxing and increasing the average waistline of its customers a thousandfold with Amy’s sinfully delicious home cooking and luxuriously rich hot chocolate, not to mention the odd glass of bubbly. Not only did the beauty shop have a waiting list of female customers, but the barbers kept the men coming in too, offering the best shave in town.
Peeking at her petite, curvy sister in the mirror, with her bright-blue eyes and beautifully styled hair, all window-dressed with a gorgeous pair of white capris, four-inch red heels and little polka-dot shirt, Jo had a feeling the cake wasn’t all the men turned up for.
Two hours later, the world had refashioned itself into a nicer, kinder place. Jo’s hair was now a deep chestnut and shaped to accentuate her high cheekbones and bring out the warmth in her dark-brown eyes. She was also now blessedly free of mono brow, leg hair and bikini line hair and was getting high on the smell of acetone while Amy painted her toenails a delightful slutty red.
‘So you gonna tell me why you didn’t want me to know you’ve been cosying up to the Hardys enough to sublet my place out to Stephen?’ Jo casually asked Amy’s head of carefully arranged loose platinum-blonde curls as she painstakingly applied polish to Jo’s little toenail.
‘Nope.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Yep.’ Amy looked up with a cheeky grin dimpling her round cheeks before her expression turned serious. ‘Seriously, hon, I’m really sorry. I didn’t think you’d mind since you were going to be away on holidays in Brazil. If I’d known you were going to come home like this I wouldn’t have gone along with it. Scott’s taking care of it though, right?’
‘Yeah. Think so.’ Jo bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to sort it out but he’d better. You have no idea, Amy. I work with men all day, every day. Coming home unexpectedly to some guy sleeping in my bed when all I wanted to do was pass out . . . it really sucked.’
Amy patted her leg and offered her a conciliatory smile. ‘I’m really sorry about that. But don’t worry. It’ll all be fixed. It’s Scott. He’s Superman, remember?’
Jo chuckled, remembering the day they’d found a Superman costume stashed in the back of Scott’s wardrobe years before. He’d sworn it was for a Halloween party, but the girls had their doubts.
‘Yeah. Superman cleaning my house with a super mop and bucket along with a super sponge and super disinfectant. Superman using his super powers to kick Stephen and Mike Hardy’s backsides out my front door.’
Amy laughed. ‘Whatever it takes. So did he tell you anything about this show tonight he’s doing with Myf?’ Their good friend, Myfanwy Lane’s wildly violent abstract paintings had begun to gain a lot of attention in both local and international art circles of late.
Jo shook her head. ‘Nope. Is it a warm-up for the big one he’s doing in New York at the end of the year?’
‘Nah. I think it’s more to raise Myf’s profile. You see that interview they did with him in Vanity Fair last month?’
Jo’s wide mouth hiked up in a proud half-smile. ‘I saw it on the net. They made him look like a Samurai with his hair out like that. Bet that pissed him off.’
Amy giggled. ‘Yeah. It did, but apparently he couldn’t do anything about it because he wanted the publicity for Women in War,’ she said, naming Scott’s pet project of the last couple of years. He was primarily a war photographer, who’d come to national and then international fame at an early age for his ability with portraiture, partially thanks to photographs he’d taken when hanging out with Jo and Amy in secret when he visited his family farm as a kid. As a Japanese-Aussie kid, he’d never quite fit in and the minute he’d snuck up on Jo and Amy hiding out in a clump of bush, ratty and tattered after two weeks of camping and living off nothing but baked beans and the odd peanut butter sandwich, they’d struck an immediate affinity. They’d been friends, or more like family, ever since. Scott had saved the girls’ lives once and they’d both do the same for him if they ever got the chance to pay him back.
Amy shrugged, her expression turning wistful. ‘Anyway, it’s such a pity about Mike and Stephen. If I were you, I’d guilt-trip them into staying around and being your personal slaves for at least a week. You could dust a few cobwebs off the old lady bits and have some fun.’ She waggled her perfectly groomed and pencilled eyebrows before breaking into peals of laughter at Jo’s disgusted expression.
‘Yeah, right. Keep dreaming. I’m sure that’s the first thing they’d be keen for,’ Jo mumbled, swallowing a generous mouthful of bubbly. ‘Never mind the fact that I’m so pissed at them I can’t see for the red.’
‘So close your eyes. I’d happily dream about Stephen and Mike Hardy all day, any day.’ Amy laughed. ‘You know, Mike’s a nice guy even if he’s still a total slut, from what I hear. He comes in here to get his hair cut whenever he’s home from the UK.’
Jo looked around at the pink walls, newly plucked brows raised. ‘Yeah, I could see him fitting right in.’
‘Not this side, you cow, the barber’s.’ Amy smacked Jo on the leg while focusing on spreading polish on her big toenail. ‘Stephen comes by quite a lot too. I have to say, he’s so gorgeous the girls fall over him. It’s pathetic really.’
‘Yeah, you are, aren’t you? Watch out or your boyfriend is going to get the wrong idea,’ Jo shot back while saying goodbye to her fantasy of Stephen being overweight and unattractive nowadays. Then she remembered exactly how hot Mike Hardy had looked standing there in his naked glory and felt her cheeks go warm.
Stephen and his brother had always been pretty much identical in looks. For some reason Mike didn’t do it for her but Stephen . . . well, Stephen had, ever since he’d defended her against Jeff Rousse, a school-bus bully, when they were both twelve. It probably hadn’t meant anything to him but to Jo . . . for years there, until the night she and Amy had run away from home, he’d filled her world.
‘I’m allowed to fantasise,’ Amy interrupted Jo’s wayward hormones with a cheeky smile. ‘I’m not surrounded by big beefy men talking about putting greased pipes in holes all day.’
‘Trust me. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Jo muttered, mood instantly turning despondent as her thoughts shifted to the other big problem in her life right now: her fly-in, fly-out job of the last decade. After working almost her entire adult life on the rigs as a petroleum engineer, Jo was over it. The fun of all the travel, the money and making it in a male-dominated industry had worn off and she was exhausted. ‘I’m thinking of quitting.’
Amy’s head shot up. ‘Really?’
‘Thinking about it.’ She wanted to unburden herself about the last few months but couldn’t do it right now. This newest blast from the past wasn’t helping either. Especially since she couldn’t go into the Stephen Hardy house-sitting thing without bringing up Amy’s newest boyfriend.
Amy was, and always had been, completely illogical when it came to her men, and it was the only thing that had ever come between the two of them. Ever since she and Amy had a fight res
ulting in them not talking for an entire year when Jo was twenty-two, she’d done her best to be a model supportive sister. Besides, she knew full well Amy would run over her head with a number-one pair of clippers if she ever stepped over the line again. She might look like a blonde little ray of sunshine, but an angry Amy was someone to fear.
Sometime later, after yet more cake and a coffee to sober up, Jo hauled her backside out of her comfortable pink chair and picked up her helmet, reluctantly cramming it on her new do.
‘Wear your sexy secretary shoes tonight, petal. If I see you in flats after all the effort I’ve just put in to make those pins of yours presentable, I’ll have to commit murder,’ Amy warned Jo as she walked out the door.
Not committing to anything, Jo waved, then climbed on to her bike. She hoped to heaven that her place would be in a better state than when she’d left it. Thanks to her sister, champagne and cake, she was in the mood to forgive.
Her apartment was spotless. Possibly cleaner than it had ever been, and it smelt blessedly of apple-scented disinfectant. There wasn’t a stray sock in sight. Jo’s shoulders slumped with relief.
She spotted a huge vase holding at least fifty long-stemmed yellow roses sitting on her coffee table. ‘Sorry’ was written in big, messy man writing on a scrap of white paper stuck between the flowers.
Hearing Jo’s surprised exclamation, Boomba padded into the room and gave a not-so-polite chirrup, requesting that he be picked up and scootched under the chin pronto.
‘I see you’re taking all the credit. Where have they gone, you big lump?’ Jo heaved the giant cat into her arms with a grunt and patted his furry tummy.
The only answer she got was a wide, pink-tongued feline yawn and a gold, squinty-eyed stare.
‘Ah. You ate them. Well that’d make sense, wouldn’t it? You’re fatter every time I see you. I’d love to know what Amy feeds you, but I suspect it’s her pansy ex-boyfriends, and we wouldn’t want to knowingly be accessories to murder, now would we?’ Jo walked over to the roses and bent down to sniff them. They smelt old-fashioned and wonderful.
Boomba agreed. He did his best to stretch out of her arms to bat the closest one with his paw.
‘You knock those over, kitty, and I’m going to take taxidermy up as my new hobby,’ Jo warned, wandering down the hall past a spotless bathroom featuring a brand-new toothbrush and large gift basket of beauty products, then on to her bedroom. It miraculously looked just the way she’d left it, with the exception of her bedspread, which was whirring away in the clothes dryer.
She dumped the cat on the bed, where he settled on top of her pillow and began to purr louder than a lawnmower, while she debated what to wear for Scott and Myf’s opening night. It had to be something that drew a very wide, very clear line between her sixteen-year-old self and her thirty-year-old professional, successful self.
She would be seeing Stephen Hardy for the first time in fourteen years in a matter of minutes and intended on looking hotter than a habanero. She screwed up her mouth. Well, at least a mild jalapeno, considering the material she had to work with. She patted her stomach. It looked a little wobblier than usual; so did her rump, for that matter. She’d been living on a diet of Mars bars on the rig of late. The company had hired a cook so bad that the chopper pilots ferrying people from Nouakchott, the capital city of Mauritania, to the offshore facility were making a killing in black-market junk-food sales.
She looked at herself thoughtfully. Maybe Amy was right about the heels. Her legs would distract from the stomach and backside wobbliness.
From memory, Stephen was as tall as Scott and Mike, so she’d still be eye level with him, two-inch heels and all. Scott was the only guy she usually didn’t tower over in heels, but he’d proven himself more impressed by her ability to drink him under the table and burp the alphabet than by how she looked in stilettos.
In the end she decided on a pair of tight indigo skinny jeans and a simple white silk camisole, with camel-coloured wedge sandals Amy had bullied her into buying five years before.
Turning from side to side, she surveyed herself in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the back of her bedroom door, revelling in seeing herself wearing something other than faded red overalls or the old sweats she wore at work.
Pursing her lips, she decided a bit of make-up wouldn’t go astray either. Amy had tinted her lashes black, but they benefited from a swipe of mascara, and she complemented that with a frosting of pale-pink lipstick. A spritz of Chanel Chance and the addition of the chunky gold hoop earrings she’d bought last time she was in Dubai finished the job.
Dressed to impress, she wandered back out to the kitchen, grabbed a Little Creatures Pale Ale, presumably Stephen’s, out of the fridge, and flicked on the TV, switching immediately to her favourite sports channel.
One glance at the soccer match on the screen made it clear she’d done something of late to please the big bearded man in the sky. Jo’s team, Perth Glory, was beating Adelaide United. Not only were they winning, they were winning by three goals. Elation surging from newly dyed hair to slutty red toenails, it was only a matter of seconds before her philosophy that good things should never be left to chance took hold and she was screaming directions at the players on the screen.
When the Glory scored an impressive goal off a penalty kick, she almost fell off her chair, kicking her legs in the air in excitement and whooping like a lunatic.
The three men filed into the room, two of them staring in amazement, the other, used to Jo’s irrational love of soccer, doing his best not to piss himself laughing. She whooped again, so caught up in the anticipation of another quick-fire goal, she hadn’t noticed them come in.
Scott wished he’d brought his camera along. Stephen and Mike’s facial expressions were numerous and varied enough to do justice to a coffee-table book on the depth of human emotion.
Chapter 2
Stephen stood by the door and stared at the leggy Amazon who was currently rolling around on the couch, screaming insults at the referee of a soccer match on TV, and tried to reconcile her with the awkward teenage girl he’d known years before. Things didn’t quite add up.
In all his imaginings of what Jo Blaine would look like now, he definitely hadn’t pictured this.
Her hair was short and a dark brown now rather than the long mousy blonde it had been years ago, as well.
Sometime in the last few years, she’d grown into her angular features, and while she still wasn’t beautiful by any standard, there was something about her that drew the eyes . . .
So far, the only information Stephen had been able to get out of Scott was that she worked on oil rigs in northern Africa and had come home to Perth instead of heading out for a holiday in South America. Looking at her now, he could well imagine her in a pair of overalls; half-undone overalls that showed off all the good bits. The image was pretty damn nice.
Mike’s quiet groan put an abrupt end to Stephen’s impromptu fantasy. ‘She wasn’t that happy when she left, mate. Or that hot. Please tell me I didn’t fall flat on my arse in front of her?’
Scott grinned widely, keeping his voice low enough for only Stephen and Mike to hear. ‘Yeah, mate. I’d say with that and the way she found you passed out in her bed, you’ve got no chance now.’
‘You sure? Because I wouldn’t mind giving it a go anyway. It’s not like I’m that bad to look at. How about we let her know we’re back and—’
‘Nah.’ Scott held out a hand to stop Mike from walking further into the room. ‘Give her a few more seconds. They’ve just been awarded another penalty kick. She’ll want to murder you again if you destroy the moment.’
‘You’re speaking from experience?’ Stephen whispered, the corner of his mouth twitching.
‘Yup. Nearly been decapitated numerous times for changing the channel at the wrong time.’ Scott reached behind him to ease the front door closed before crossing his arms over his chest. Mike followed suit, leaning against the wall.
Stephen went back to looking at Jo. He knew he’d have to talk to her in a couple of seconds and offer an apology, but right now . . .
She turned around, spotted the three of them standing in the doorway, screamed and fell over her couch.
‘Dammit, Scott!’ she bellowed in a husky voice that even at high volume sounded like distilled sex. ‘You scared me! Why didn’t you ring the doorbell instead of acting like a goddamn stalker?’
‘This was more amusing,’ Scott replied calmly, and Stephen wondered if his cousin had life insurance.
‘Thanks.’ She snatched the remote from the coffee table and turned off the TV before spinning around to glare at them. Her face was bright red. Stephen would have thought it was from embarrassment, but no one who could scream like that over a game of soccer would get embarrassed that easily. But then he remembered how her eyes had been full of tears the last time he’d seen her and felt a rush of ancient guilt that merged with the new batch over her finding Mike naked in her bedroom. He was pretty sure he could tell his family Mike had accidentally fallen off the balcony if he gave him a push. Damn. Why did Mike have to mess this up?
‘So you’ve explained to Stephen what the deal is and sorted things out?’ she demanded, eyes focused on Scott.
‘Yes and no,’ Scott replied, the amused smile kicked off his face by a distinctly conciliatory expression. ‘Uh, Stephen, I don’t need to do introductions do I?’
Stephen walked forward and held out his hand, forcing the same easygoing smile that had earned him a whole portfolio of international contracts for his family’s winery. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’ She met him with a firm, brief grip, her eyes skittering away as she shifted from one foot to the other.
There was a couple of seconds of silence before Mike cleared his throat. ‘Did you like the flowers?’
Stephen turned to look at his brother, not believing his ears. It was just like Mike to take the credit for something Stephen had sweated over getting right. The plan had been to present the roses to Jo along with his apology. Mike had spent most of the time at the florist’s chatting up the girl behind the counter.
Unforgettable You: Destiny Romance Page 3