by Nikki Logan
She flicked on the light.
His eyes scanned the room, giving nothing away. ‘This is...’
Crazy and shambolic? Nothing like the outside? She saw it how a stranger must, the explosions of random colour, the stacks of books and home-beautiful magazines. Trailing plants everywhere.
He touched the nearest green frond. ‘How do you get them to look like this inside?’
She crossed to the double doors opening onto her small courtyard and pulled back the blind. ‘I rotate them every day. One day in, three days out.’
His eyes swung to her. ‘How many do you have?’
It was too dark to see outside, too dark for him to discover the full extent of her guilty pleasure. ‘I’m kind of the crazy cat-lady of trailing ferns.’
He looked around him again, then found her eyes. ‘It’s not what I expected.’
That could mean anything, but she chose to interpret it positively. ‘Surprise!’
His focus fell onto the stack of brightly packaged CDs stacked up on her corner desk. He crossed to them. ‘Are you studying?’
‘Espionage through history. I’m getting ready for the spy class.’
He flipped one of the CDs over and read the description of the lectures. ‘You’re doing homework before the class?’
‘I like to be prepared. And I’m really looking forward to the spy classes.’
One brow quirked. ‘As distinct from the others?’
Heat rose and consumed her in the tiny apartment. ‘I listen to them when I’m gardening. On the bus to and from work. Or when I’m walking.’
‘You walk?’
‘Regularly.’
‘Where?’
What was this, the Inquisition? ‘Anywhere I haven’t been before. Deep in some wood somewhere.’
His nod was distracted. He suddenly looked intensely uncomfortable.
‘I bought these with my own money.’ In case that was what was putting that deep frown on his face.
‘Why?’
‘Because your money is for things that interest your listeners.’
He turned towards her. ‘You don’t have to hide things from me. If there’s something you want to do, do it. The money is for you.’
It wasn’t him she was hiding from. She took the CDs out of his hands. ‘It’s not... I feel like these are normal me, not new improved me. Besides, you’ve already indicated that the things I’m interested in aren’t that...exciting.’ She cleared her throat. ‘For your listeners.’
His eyes fell on her heavily. Searching and conflicted.
‘Coffee?’ she asked just to break the silence.
He broke free of her gaze, bustling towards the door as though this were all the most terrible inconvenience. ‘No. I should get going.’
And suddenly she was feeling self-conscious for agreeing to his request. She followed him back out into the hall. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘No problem.’
He had to stop at the door to the street to negotiate the intricate series of locks. If not for that, she wondered if he might have just flown down the stairs and path and been gone. She opened it for him and stood below the arch.
‘And for the restaurant. It was fantastic to see.’
‘We’ll find you new cooking classes. You don’t have to go back to the French guy.’
‘The not-French guy...’
‘Right.’ He practically squirmed on her doorstep. Confusion milled around them both. This had been his idea? Or had she just misunderstood?
‘Well, see you next time, then,’ she said quietly.
‘OK. ’Night, Georgia.’
And then he was gone. Not quite running as she’d imagined, but certainly making good time on those long, marathon legs. Into his car and away. Expensive tail lights glowing until they turned onto the high street in the distance.
And still she stood there.
OK. That was just weird. Their whole night had been genial enough, the silence in the ride over here mutual and comfortable. Or so she’d thought. She’d only offered him coffee, not exactly controversial.
Modest, plain but well kept. Was that what he’d been expecting her place to be like? She resecured the front door and turned off the porch light, then crossed back to her gaping apartment door, assessing the inside critically. Shambolic but not unclean. She had nothing to be particularly embarrassed about.
Maybe he had a plant phobia.
She sighed. Maybe this was a Year of Georgia test. See how she was going with the judgement of others. Not well, apparently.
She cared what people thought. She didn’t run her life by it, but criticism did impact on her. Especially someone like Zander Rush. Rich, powerful men might not particularly matter to her professional life, but this one mattered to her personal life. She had a year ahead of her with Zander, they were going to be in each other’s faces a reasonable amount. She’d really rather not have that time be tense and awkward.
And below that, somewhere deeper that she only peeled a corner back on, lay her secret fear: that the same lack that made Daniel not interested in marrying her might have occurred to Zander as he stood here in her little apartment. Some undefined deficiency. Was she too geeky? Too dull? Was she so left-of-normal that even a man whose connection to her was only professional felt the need to run for the hills? If so, he was in for a disappointing year.
There was only so much that reinvention was going to fix.
* * *
Zander tossed his keys and wallet into the shallow dish by his bed and then took himself off for a shower. As hot as he could stand it. Desperate to scald himself clean of the sudden tingle of awareness he’d experienced standing in Georgia’s apartment just half an hour before. He’d learned to live with the perpetual hum of sensual responsiveness that resonated whenever she was around, but this was different, this was...
Interest.
The prickle of intrigue and the glow of connection. So much more than just sexual. Unexpected, unwanted, and unacceptable. And the slither of empathy, that his words made her doubt herself, made her so defensive.
He stood under the hot, thumping water and let it stream over his head.
The crazy cat-lady of trailing ferns.
Of all the things to suddenly bring this burbling inside him to the surface...that little touch of self-deprecation, her modesty about her lived-in, loved-in apartment, her raw defence of a place that was clearly special to her. That was clearly her. She defended her property and herself with a gentle kind of resignation. As though she knew full well that she didn’t fit the conventional moulds and was reconciled with that.
And he was there telling her that her mould wasn’t interesting enough for his listeners.
Then showering himself raw just half an hour later because of how interesting it was to him.
Hypocrite.
His life was so laden with false, socially aggressive people, all hungry to climb ladders that they had to jostle for. So full of noise and gloss and professional veneer. He did his best to limit his exposure to it to his working hours, running from it—literally—on weekends, but when you worked as much as he did it had a way of just dominating your consciousness.
Until you stood in the middle of someone’s small, packed greenhouse of an apartment and felt as if you’d just walked into some kind of emotional resort. Far from everything and everyone.
Until you breathed in for the first time in fifteen years.
Zander shut off the water, towelled off, and stepped out into his bedroom. Carefully styled by the owner before him, all beige and tones of brown and harmless neutrals he’d never bothered to change. Then he walked out of the hall, into every room one by one, growing increasingly incredulous.
Not one single plant, anywhere? Seriously?
He kept looking, kept not finding one. Until he did. A small cactus in a pot that Casey had given him before she’d twigged to the fact that gifts between them weren’t going to do anything but make their relationship more awkward. He’d plonked it
on his kitchen window sill and never given it another thought. It survived only on the steam issued by his coffee maker. And maybe the dishwasher.
But it survived.
The similarity to his thorny, parched heart was ironic.
He flicked a switch and lit up the entire length of his rambling back garden. Did it even count if you paid someone to tend it for you? If the most you did was cut roses to take to your aging mother and the only time you walked through it was on a shortcut back from the local coffee house?
The fun Georgia would have if let loose in there...
He killed the lights, plunging the whole garden and that train of thought back to darkness.
There would be no letting loose. There’d be no more curious visits to her apartment. He’d only gone to assure himself that her home would have been as lacking in personality on the inside as the exterior. As some kind of ward against finding her interesting.
Well, that had bitten him well and truly in the arse.
He couldn’t blame his complicated mess of interest and appreciation and affection on her botched proposal any longer. Georgia Stone might have started out as the embodiment of every professional and ethical compromise he’d made on his meteoric corporate trajectory—and he still felt the cuts every time someone praised him for the sensational PR surrounding her proposal—but she was rapidly morphing into something else.
A living, breathing, haunting reminder of the man he used to be. Before the heartbreak of being jilted by Lara. Before the humiliation that drove him headlong into his intense professional life, and the professional life that drove him headlong into his insane training regime just to balance out all the noise. Before all of those things left no room for an actual life. He missed life. And moments like tonight didn’t help him to keep that longing safely tucked away where it couldn’t gnaw at him.
But work did. And running did. And he had plenty of both to be getting on with this weekend.
Neither of which were served by flashes of the sheer contentedness in Georgia’s face as she stood in the midst of her meagre worldly possessions, richer than he could possibly conceive.
FIVE
May
Wednesday night salsa dancing was an education—a great way to discover she had three left feet and not just two. Georgia danced with a raft of partners of various coordination—some more patient than others—but never Zander. He was always careful to share the love around with strangers, favouring the much older or much younger and discouraging the interest of anyone in the middle.
Her, most especially.
She’d only made the mistake of asking him once.
We’re here to work, he’d said.
Right.
This was the side of him his staff saw. Officious. Distant. Work-centric. That other side of him that she’d glimpsed only lasted as long as it took him to tire of the novelty of following her to endless courses and classes and experiences. The more they did together, the less civil he became.
So maybe she’d been demoted to minion in his mind?
The only blessing was that the segments he was producing from their time together in class didn’t reflect any of his impatience and ennui. She’d moved past her instinctive cringe at hearing herself as others heard her and let herself enjoy reliving the classes through Zander’s eyes. His ears. His art. Because while they were commercial by necessity, they were also pretty good. Floating out across the airwaves once a month.
And she’d busied herself finding things to do in class that didn’t amplify this awkward...blech...between them.
Thursday night was Michelin-starred restaurants night and she’d become adept at pretending she didn’t know the handsome man at the next table. And at eating alone. There was a certain loveliness that London’s service staff reserved for a woman taking a meal by herself. At first she worried that it was pity, but then she realised they just wanted to make her solo experience as nice as possible. She got twice the smiles and extra free bread that Zander did. That pleased her to an unnaturally high degree.
Friday night wine appreciation was at least a blessing because it meant their minds and mouths were both fully occupied and so conversation between herself and Zander really wasn’t an option, anyway. But at least the wine class provided quality alternatives in the shape of other men to talk to. And women—but they never got much of a rise from Zander. It was the men that really got up his nose, presumably because it was impacting on the quality of their Year of Georgia project.
She wasn’t supposed to be on the hunt. She was supposed to be discovering who she was. And it was working; it turned out she was a woman who liked to goad surly, silent executive types.
She turned to Eric on her left and laughed loudly at something he said. Even he looked surprised to have been that amusing. He developed software apps for a living and he and his techie-mate Russell, on her right, had decided their circle of friends really needed to include someone other than the pair of them. And preferably with the X chromosome.
Hence the wine appreciation.
The three of them developed a healthy symbiosis—they honed their flirting skills on her and she let them. It felt good being appreciated by someone and not just tolerated by Zander. Buoyed by their company, she sniffed and she sipped and she spat and she was careful never to quaff in front of Zander. And, it turned out, she had a pretty good nose and palate for identifying wine types. Unlike cooking, which she’d still not really mastered at all. Though, she wasn’t above quietly taking the mickey.
She agitated the wine in her hand until it made large circles in the balloon glass and its aroma climbed. She waved the whole lot under her nose.
‘Truculent. With undertones of—’ she looked around for inspiration and her eyes fell on the earrings of the woman across from her ‘—amber and—’ she searched again and her eyes fell on Zander ‘—oak moss.’
Because that was what he always smelled like to her. One of her forests.
Russell’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’
Eric just laughed. ‘She’s lying.’
She leaned closer to both of them. ‘Truly, it just smells like good red wine.’ She tossed her sample back. ‘Yep. Good.’
All three of them laughed and she turned to place her empty glass onto the cleaning tray, but as she did so she lifted her eyes and encountered Zander’s, intense and assessing.
As usual.
Class wound up not long after and she farewelled her friends happily. They always asked her out with them after class. She always declined.
‘You can go,’ Zander said, suddenly close behind her as Eric and Russell left. ‘You’re off the clock.’
She bit down her retort. How typical that about the only thing he’d said to her all evening was boorish. ‘If I wanted to go I would go. I wasn’t waiting for permission.’
‘It’s Friday night.’
‘And this class is my Friday night activity.’ Poor effort though it was. She slid her coat more firmly on and headed onto the street.
He stuck to her heels. ‘They’re going to go off you if you don’t give them something.’
She turned and glared. ‘Something? A bit of leg? A flash of cleavage?’
‘Not what I meant.’ He glowered.
‘I know what you meant. I’m not interested in anything beyond their company in class.’ And—just quietly—the impact it had on Zander. Getting his blood up was at least better than stony silence. ‘This isn’t about dating, remember.’
‘I was wondering if you did.’
She spun and huffed in equal measures. ‘I have to talk to someone. You’re the only person I know and we’re strangers here.’ And increasingly everywhere. ‘Some of them are going to be men. It’s not dating strategy.’
He just grunted. ‘This is my Friday night, too, you know.’
She stared. ‘I do know.’
‘So it would just be useful to keep everything professional. On mission.’
On mission? ‘I’m not allowed to
have a good time, at all? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?’
‘The purpose is you getting back on track. Learning new things. Reinventing.’
A month of standoffishness took its toll. ‘I’m not sure that you appreciate how hard some of this is for me. Walking alone into a room full of people I don’t know. Striking up friendships. I would so much rather be at home curled up with a good book.’
His eyes clouded over. Was he thinking? Or just bored? ‘How hard?’
‘It’s...difficult. I’m not social, like you. I like to meet people, find out about them, but I’m just not really good at it. It’s work.’ And developing those skills was part of her twelve-month plan but it was a case of chicken and egg. She needed the skills to be able to walk into any social situation, but she wasn’t going to develop the skills unless she kept walking into those situations.
He looked truly astonished. ‘I didn’t realise. You make it look so easy.’
Was he kidding? ‘It’s exhausting.’
‘Would it be easier to have a friend along?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s do that, then. This isn’t supposed to be punishment. We can tweak the budget.’
It felt like it some nights. She let out a long breath and added yet another humiliation to her very many. ‘I don’t have anyone to bring. Not every week.’ She could probably get any one of her friends away from their parenting responsibilities once, maybe twice. But weekly? Sometimes twice weekly? Not a prayer. This was the sort of thing she used to rely on Dan for.
Her social handbag.
The great mess that was them struck her again. Imagine if he’d said yes...
‘I’m here anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’
Her heart flipped like a fish. ‘You wanted to remain impartial.’
‘The situation has changed.’
‘You know you’ll have to speak to me. Not just interview me or record me talking to others.’
Impatience leaked out of him. ‘I’ve been trying to keep things professional.’
‘What’s unprofessional about having the occasional conversation?’
‘If you’re talking to me then you’re not talking to everyone else.’