by Ally Blake
And I promised—literally promised—I wouldn’t let that happen.
I have wondered, since we began to chat, if she knew you wouldn’t come running. Perhaps that’s even why she put the provision in her will that I stay.
Maybe she wanted me on your case, hoping I’d be able to out-stubborn you, and convince you to come home.
I don’t know what happened between the two of you, she never said, but perhaps all of this is her effort at giving you closure, whatever that might mean for you.
Perhaps she wanted you to come home to say goodbye.
Nora
The massive streak of coarse grey fur huffed and puffed and pulled so hard on the lead, Nora could no longer feel her fingers.
“Anyone would think you’ve never walked a dog before,” called Misty as the huge dog dragged Nora past the Vintage Vamp.
“I haven’t!” Nora managed, waving as she passed, before using both hands to grip the lead.
None of the families she’d been sent to live with had been the warm and fuzzy types. Which should have told her all she needed to know before she’d let herself get her hopes up about any of them falling in love with her. Benefit of hindsight.
She’d visited Playful Paws Puppy Rescue to talk to them about coming to pick up Pie, and somehow been roped into fostering yet another dog, claiming Cutie—that was his name—might draw Pie out of hiding. She should be taking lessons on making people do her bidding from them.
The fact that Mr Stuffy McShoulders had said “no pets” might have been a slight sweetener. Especially since she’d woken to still no response after her very nice email overnight.
The breath oofed out of her as Cutie took off across the street. She managed to angle him towards the front gate, up the path and through the front door once she’d managed to jiggle the key in the lock.
Her phone rang just as Cutie bolted, bumping into the walls, sniffing everything, lead following behind him like a manic snake. She could only hope Pie’s hiding spot was a good one.
She grabbed her phone, slid her thumb over the answer button, and sing-songed, “The Girl Upstairs!”
The pause was so long, it had to be a telemarketer. She nearly hung up.
Until a voice—deep, rough and definitely male—eventually intoned, “Ms Letterman?”
There was no way she could be certain the voice belonged to who she thought it belonged to. All he’d said was her name, and yet...the way it was said—low, rumbling, with a burr at the edge. Whoa. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. And every cell in her body slowed to a grinding halt.
“That’s me,” said Nora, her voice a little tight, breathy. “I’m Nora Letterman.”
“Bennett Hawthorne.”
Her breath left her lungs in a whoosh.
It was him. On the phone. Which was excellent! Her conciliatory little email must have made a difference. Yay her!
Only she wasn’t ready for him. Not in the least.
If she’d known he was going to call, she’d have prepared. Done some deep breathing. Plastered a smile on her face then drowned him in kindness till he agreed that she was right and he was wrong.
“Ms Letterman?” That voice. It was like molten chocolate. Like promises made in the dark.
“Yes,” she croaked. Water. Most ailments could be solved by a drink of water. She hustled into the kitchen. Filled a glass an inch and skulled it. “Sorry. Hello! Well, this is unexpected.”
“Quite,” he responded.
She tapped the phone onto speaker and poured herself another drink. “I’m glad, though. Glad you called. There’s a lot to discuss. Unless you’re calling to tell me what time to pick you up from Melbourne airport?”
“Ah, no.”
“Sigh. Then what can I do for you this fine afternoon?”
Another beat slunk by. “Fine, is it?”
“Mmm-hmm. Sunny, blue skies. Prefect spring day here in Melbourne. You?”
“Cold. Dark.”
“Dark? It has to be, what, eight in the morning over there?”
“Seven. And it’s raining hard enough I can’t see anything beyond my office window.”
“Man, you need a holiday. And I know just the place.”
Hang on, was that a laugh? And had she just called him “man”? Whatever had just happened, he found it necessary to clear his throat before saying, “I am calling to apologise.”
“Oh.” Oh, indeed. She hadn’t expected a phone call, or a chat about the weather. But the number one thing she’d not have expected from this man was an apology.
He went on. “I seem to have said something to upset you in our original email exchange, which was never my intention.”
That stopped her with a glass halfway to her lips. “You seem to have? According to whom?”
She heard his hesitation. Got the feeling that for Bennett J Hawthorne it was a highly unusual occurrence.
“My assistant, Damon, pointed it out.”
Nora cocked a hip against the kitchen bench and said, “I knew I liked Damon. Right from the outset.”
“Mmm,” he intoned, his promises-in-the-dark voice dropped, deepened, which she would not have thought possible. “Then you’ll be happy to know he’s quite taken with you too.”
“Not surprising. I am actually very likeable once you get to know me. You can tell him I’m taken with him too.”
After that came a stretch of silence. Not thin and chilly, the way it had felt after his last email. Loaded. Weighty. Filled with waiting.
He’s stubborn, her subconscious piped up in a panic. Clever. Disloyal. His interests do not align with yours and you are being super-shallow. You would not be acting this way if you hadn’t seen his picture.
Before she could fully convince herself, the guy had to go and say, “What if I told you Damon had no skills in coordinating ties and capes?”
Nora felt a definite something flicker inside her; the surety the man was flirting. Yes, she’d seen his picture. But they’d toyed with one another, just a little, before she’d had a single clue what he looked like.
She swallowed. “I’d feel shocked. Bemused. Totally off my game.”
“Well, we don’t want that, now, do we?”
Nora’s mouth opened and closed again. She felt as if she’d stumbled into some kind of alternate universe. One in which their emails had gone down a very different path. One in which she and Bennett J Hawthorne were on very different terms.
One in which he wasn’t simply a person who she was certain had wronged one of the few people she had ever loved. He was also a person who’d recently lost his grandmother and was struggling to know quite how to deal with it.
Nora gently cleared the tickles from her throat. “Did I imagine it, or did you mention something about an apology...?”
“I did.” A beat, a collecting of thoughts, a shift of tone that she could all but hear, then, “Hence the phone call. Text can easily be misconstrued. In my work, subtlety and nuance often breed misinformation and misunderstanding. So, I’m afraid my correspondence tone has, over time, become rather blunt. Which I acknowledge is not conducive to civil conversation outside the business realm.”
“I see,” said Nora as she tried to navigate the meander back into corporate speak. His comfort zone, she figured. “And?”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry, Nora?”
Oh, yeah. That was a definite laugh. Gentle, rough, but there. She felt it skitter down her spine, and land in the backs of her knees.
“And I’m sorry, Nora,” he said, his voice quieter now too. More intimate. As if he was trying not to be overheard. As if his words were not for anyone else but her.
Nora held the water glass to her cheek, which seemed to have come over a little warm. “Do you call all the girls you offend over email? Or should I feel special?”<
br />
She squeezed her eyes shut; hoping he might not pick up on her own flirty tone if she couldn’t see herself doing it.
This time the chuckle was louder. She heard what sounded like the squeak of an office chair. She imagined him leaning back, cocking a foot over the other knee. Running a finger along his full bottom lip—
“Special,” he intoned. “Most definitely special.”
Nora might have been in danger of losing all feeling in the backs of her knees, except a thump from down the hall had her spinning to watch out for a blur of grey fur.
Cutie. Cutie was out there somewhere. As was Pie. Neither of whom she was allowed to have, according to her new landlord. Who was on the phone right now. Her landlord who had responsibilities here. Which he was shirking. To her detriment!
But still...
This was progress.
“I hope you accept my apology too.”
“For?”
“Calling you out. I may have been a little touchy. This whole thing has been rough. Clancy’s passing, waiting to find out what would happen with the house... Taking it out on you was indefensible. And very much not like me.”
Again with the pause. As if the man was deliberate in his choice of words. As if nothing he ever said was said by accident.
Nora closed her eyes again, this time against the fact she kept revealing herself to this man. First via email, gushing about how much she loved her job, how helping people made her feel good about herself. Now this...this vulnerability. Talk about not like her!
“So-o-o?” he said, drawing the word out in that cavernously deep voice of his.
“So?”
“I’m sorry, Bennett?”
Nora felt a smile start deep in her belly before it moved, warm and slow, like molten treacle, up her throat and into her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Bennett.”
At that the man made a sound in the back of his throat. A deep, rough hum that had her leaning over her phone so as to catch it. Subtlety, nuance and all.
Her feelings just a little raw, and exposed, she found herself saying, “I’m sorry about Clancy too. For your loss. She was a wonderful woman. Possibly the best I’ve ever known. It must be hard, being so far away, at a time like this.”
When her words brooked no response, she quickly added, “That wasn’t a tactical manoeuvre, I promise. I meant it.”
When she heard a distinct woof echo from deep inside the house, she pulled herself upright, grabbed her phone, took it off speaker and jammed it against her ear. “Look, I have to go. But thank you. For the call. And the apology. And keeping the lines of communication open.”
“My pleasure.”
“But don’t think you got off that easily.”
Laughter. Absolutely no doubt that time. The kind that sent golden sparks down the back of her neck, which met the warmth in her cheeks and the erratic ske-bump of her heart until she felt utterly discombobulated.
“And why’s that?” he asked.
Woof-woof. Deep and wall-shaking that time. Definitely Cutie. She only hoped he was standing still. Either that or she’d be spending every cent of her savings on new furniture and hoping Ben didn’t notice the difference.
“Because, Ben Hawthorne, one way or the other I’m convincing you to come home.”
With that she hung up.
She’d unpack the conversation—the chuckles, and the warm, deep voice, and the complete lack of stuffiness, and her reaction to it—later. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Actually softening towards Ben Hawthorne was not an option. Not while there were so many reasons to be disillusioned with the guy.
Pretending she had, on the other hand, might be something she could learn to do.
First, she had to track down the critters who were now running amok in her house.
But it wasn’t her house.
It was his.
CHAPTER FIVE
BEN STARED INTO the takeaway container filled with some kind of meatless rice dish Damon had brought in, insisting the “slow-release energy” and “superfood content” was a necessity for “a man with his workload”.
As if a week of blocked avenues, stalled agreements, and lack of progress on his current deal was any different from every other client in the same kind of deep mess as Metropolis Airlines.
As if, for some reason, this one was taking a toll.
Scoffing at the very thought, Ben tossed the dish to his desk and picked up his phone. To check his emails. And...other things.
The phone just happened to be open to Instagram. Damon had set him up and bade him follow a few sites—local news, NASA, Celeste Barber. The Girl Upstairs.
He’d been aware from the very first email what she was trying to do. She had the subtlety of a velvet-covered sledgehammer. What he should have done was made himself clear, from the outset: he wasn’t coming. Not any time in the foreseeable future. His life was here. His work was here. That place—the memory of the last time he’d seen Clancy—was something he wasn’t prepared to relive.
But he’d found himself looking forward to the ping of his phone, in case it heralded another message from her.
Ben sat back in his chair, his thumb swiping slowly down Nora’s page. Past a picture inside a bar, everyone out of focus aside from one dancer in the middle, hair flying. Another of a group of women laughing and clinking champagne glasses while painting matching cacti in some kind of class.
His thumb hovered over the screen, no longer scrolling when she appeared on the feed. Hair down, decked out in a long green dress that clipped behind her neck and left her lean, golden-brown arms bare, she leant against a tall menu board, drinking some kind of fruity drink from a huge plastic cup. A dimple popped in one cheek, her face lit with half a smile.
New pictures, all. He knew. It wasn’t the first time he’d given up a few minutes of his day in that space.
At first he’d gone back to her page to get a fix of the old area. A place he didn’t know he’d been missing. It helped a little, dealing with the fact that he hadn’t been there; not just at the end, but for a really long time.
But soon he’d found himself lost in the bright chaotic colour of The Girl Upstairs feed, and it felt like sorbet for his brain. There was a vitality to her page—her words, the way she cut to the quick—that he found crisp, bracing, refreshing. A relief from the standard long days and bitterly cold nights.
Ben’s phone buzzed and he actually flinched. As if he’d been caught doing something untoward.
He checked the screen to find a video-chatting app flashing a notification at him. Some other thing Damon had no doubt installed in a fit of enthusiasm. The caller was someone by the name of Dandelion.
Ready to put it down to spam, a little twitch in the back of his head made him pause, before tapping the answer button.
Big heart-shaped glasses covered half a woman’s face, sunny blonde waves tumbled over her shoulders, lips the reddest red there ever was sucked on a paper straw above a milkshake three times the size of her hand.
Nora Letterman; as if he’d conjured her out of thin air.
“Nora,” he said, his voice rough.
“Why hello!” she sang, tipping her glasses slightly forward with a single finger sporting chipped orange nail polish. “If it isn’t Bennett Jude Hawthorne himself. I figured I had about a twenty-three per cent chance you’d answer. Even then I was pretty sure I’d be looking at the delightful Damon. But there you are!”
Those big blue eyes of hers, half hidden behind the sunglasses, told a story all their own.
There was an unhurried quality to her, ethereal even, the kind that had made him wonder if the woman he’d imagined he’d been talking to was a figment, a construct. But the easy sway of her shoulders, the gentle clamp of her teeth on the straw, the glint in the small part of her big blue eyes that he could see—she was so real her life force near l
eapt off the screen.
A wave of attraction sluiced over him, like the water of an outdoor shower on a summer day. It unmanned him. And woke him up.
What was he doing stalking this woman’s Instagram, calling her to apologise, just so he had an excuse to keep the conversation going? All he knew about her was that she’d somehow ingratiated herself with Clancy in the final months of her life, and was now trying to do the same to him.
He didn’t have Clancy’s Pollyanna positivity, he never had—from the moment his mother had left him, he’d been wary, untrusting, and it had served him well—and he didn’t know her from Adam. He honestly did not have time for any of this. Or the head space. It was time to demand all future correspondence remain between their respective lawyers.
Instead he found his mouth forming the words, “Twenty-three per cent seems a little high.”
She laughed—a light, happy bark—as her head tipped back and her mouth stretched wider than a human mouth ought to stretch. Her phone wobbled as she shifted position. She sat cross-legged on some kind of bench with enough light and colour flashing all around her it looked as if she might be in an arcade.
Then she put down the drink beside her and pulled the glasses right to the end of her nose.
His determination to put an end to their correspondence was no match for the riot of sensation that stampeded through him as he got a load of those eyes. Damn, they were something. Dusky, blue, and tilted in a way that made her look permanently amused.
Nora Letterman had the sort of eyes that made sailors dash themselves against rocky shores. And gladly.
Ben cleared his throat. “What can I do for you, Ms Letterman?”
“Oh, no, we’re not going back there again. Not after our heartfelt apologies the other day.” Her hand went to her heart, the move tipping the thin strap of her floaty top just off her shoulder. “I’m Nora. And you’re Ben. And that’s that. Unless you think we’re up to the nickname stage... B-Boy. Benny and the Jets. Franklin as in Benjamin.”
Ben blinked.