‘I’ll bet,’ he muttered, so softly she couldn’t hear, unable to stop a smug grin breaking through.
Not many women challenged him. Because he moved around a lot he dated sporadically, but never longer than a few weeks.
He never, ever, wanted to leave a woman waiting for him to come back, the way his mother had constantly, tragically, waited for his father.
‘Don’t you love Melbourne?’ She reverted to distant and cool as she gestured at the graffiti-covered walls they strolled past. ‘So many hidden gems like this.’
Personally, he didn’t get the appeal of the laneways that criss-crossed the city. Some Einstein had thought spraying a bunch of ugly murals and opening up dive bars, hole-in-the-wall cafés and boutiques with crazy clothes would spruce up the place.
‘It’s messy,’ he said, taking another gulp of coffee and ignoring her glare that read ‘you’re a Philistine’.
She didn’t speak after that so he filled the silence by whistling his football club’s song. That was one thing he did love about this city: Aussie Rules, and the North Melbourne Football Club in particular. He attended every game he could because for those all too brief few hours when the elite athletes kicked an oval ball around the field he remembered the one and only thing he had ever bonded over with his dad.
Stupid, he knew, but he didn’t hate easily. It was a wasted emotion. So he preferred to remember the good times rather than the bad. Eating pies and drinking soda while cheering for a long fifty-metre goal on the run rather than sitting at the kitchen window in their shitty two-bedroom weatherboard in the middle of outback Victoria, waiting for his dad to come home. Something Stephen Holmes had rarely done.
‘My place is just around the corner.’
He stopped whistling as they rounded the final block, wishing he hadn’t been thinking about his dad. It always made him tetchy and he needed to focus on giving the princess a quote then heading over the West Gate Bridge to Williamstown to oversee a new project.
‘Here we are.’ She threw her arms wide and he found himself glancing at a hint of cleavage before dragging his gaze towards the glass-fronted shop, the window filled with music memorabilia and an ornately scrolled Hope and Harmony etched across the top.
‘I take it the harmony angle refers to your music and not a twin?’
‘I’m an only child,’ she snapped, her curt response belied by a hint of sadness.
Great, he’d touched a nerve. This got better and better.
‘This is prime real estate.’ He pointed to the park opposite, flanked by apartments. ‘Inner city with the feel of suburbia.’
‘I like it.’ She shrugged, as though the fact a twenty-something woman could afford to teach music from an expensive place like this meant nothing. The fact that she wanted a quote on renovations meant she didn’t rent, she owned it, making it all the more startling.
Yeah, Hope McWilliams intrigued him, so the sooner he focussed on the job at hand the better.
‘The quote will work better if you show me around.’
He expected her to bristle again so her chuckle disarmed him. ‘The renovations I want done are out the back.’
She unlocked the door and punched in an alarm code before locking the door behind them. ‘Follow me.’
As they moved further into the shop, he couldn’t help but stare. The regular, square shop front opened into a hexagonal room that housed a grand piano, a cello and a drum kit. The wooden floorboards glowed, the walls were covered in framed sheet music and light poured into the room via an expansive skylight. His immediate impression was one of peace, and not many places made him feel peaceful these days.
‘You teach those instruments?’
‘No, I like the way they look in the room.’ She rolled her eyes and he barked out a laugh. Sarcasm. He liked that.
Her nose crinkled. ‘Sorry. It’s just that I’m tired of teaching and I want to do something more, hence the need for renovations.’
She opened the double wooden doors at the back, revealing darkness. ‘What I need you to build is through here.’
When she flicked a light switch, Logan gaped. If the hexagonal room was unique, this one was truly odd. Sandstone floor, three roughly concreted walls and one brick, scattered with mediaeval light sconces and a glass-domed ceiling with more cracks than a plumber’s convention.
‘I need this converted into a soundproof recording studio.’ She faced him, hands on hips, a worried frown slashing her perfectly shaped brows. ‘Is it doable?’
‘Anything’s doable.’
And there it was, the unmistakable flare of excitement in her eyes.
He hadn’t imagined it earlier.
She was into him.
Considering he hadn’t got laid since he’d arrived in Melbourne three weeks ago, ruffling the princess to the point of unravelling could be fun.
Copyright © 2019 by Nicola Marsh
ISBN-13: 9781488048562
King’s Ransom
Copyright © 2019 by Jackie Ashenden
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