by Ally Blake
She took a breath, licked her lips, sent his body temperature up a notch in the process, then said, ‘So what do you think?’
He leant back in his chair, but his eyes never once left hers. ‘Here it is, hopefully clear enough none of it will flutter over your head. I do not respond well to threats. I do not respond well to having my business or my family singled out so publicly by upstarts with an agenda. I think the stunt you pulled out there might be a lucky winner for one news cycle, but in taking me on you have bitten off more than you can chew. I think you should shine your green light elsewhere before you find it’s dimmed forever.’
She blinked up at him, those warm brown eyes somehow holding in whatever it was that she was thinking. Eventually she uncrossed her legs and she stood. She ran her hands down the sides of her thighs and he noticed they were shaking. His gut clenched. He pinched himself on the arm, hard.
She gave a small nod, and said, ‘Okay, then. That sounds like my cue to thank you for your time and let you get on with your day.’
She made her way to the door of his office. He pushed himself from his chair and followed. Halfway there he laid a hand on her lower back to guide her. Guide her? It was a straight line to the office door. He held his hand as still as could be while the muscles of her back and hips slid against him in an erotic rhythm.
There was no professional reason to touch her. If she’d been Jerry he wouldn’t have even left his chair. If she’d been Jerry she wouldn’t have made it past the front door. He was touching her as a lightning rod, as a way to stop himself from doing anything more extreme.
When she reached the hallway and turned towards him, his hand slid around her waist. The twist of her shirt, the soft dip of warm skin…He pulled his hand away quick smart.
She looked at him as though she had no clue as to the commotion raging inside him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for this afternoon. We appreciate your time.’
Suddenly he found himself not quite ready to have seen the last of her. He leant his shoulder against the doorframe of his office door. ‘Thank you for this afternoon. It has to be the most eventful Tuesday we’ve seen around this place since Melbourne Cup Day.’
‘Stock prices soar by triple figures, did they?’
His laughter carried out into the hall and several lackeys rushing past stopped to see why. He ignored them and explained, ‘A bunch of guys and girls from the legal floor dressed up as horses and jockeys and replayed the race for our amusement.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I can only hope that when you tell the board about our meeting today you do so with as much verve and enthusiasm as you had for an inter-office lark.’
Her voice was pure sarcasm, yet she stayed where she was on the ocean of polished wood with its discreetly papered walls and sculpted cornices, and flurry of assistants keeping the place abuzz, and she clung to her small purse with both hands.
And it hit him like a three-foot fishhook through the guts. She wanted more than their two companies to work together. She wanted him. She was standing there acting as if she had ants in her pants as she was crushing on him big-time.
For the briefest moment he imagined sliding a hand into the back of her hair, pulling her to him and kissing the daylights out of her.
It rankled. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get suckered in by the simple sweet tug of desire. Only those of a particularly cool and indifferent ilk warranted his time. And Wynnie Devereaux appeared neither cool nor indifferent. While she was outwardly vivacious and implacable, he had the sense that on the inside she was as fragile and beautiful as the jewelled butterfly her fingers were tracing on her purse.
She was also a lobbyist working the other side of the table.
He pushed his way back upright and looked into her eyes just long enough that he didn’t feel the strange, warm, encouraging trap closing over him, and said, ‘I’ll plant a tree this weekend and think of you.’
Her full lips curved into a slow smile. ‘Plant a dozen and think of your kids.’
‘I don’t have kids.’ He added a wink. ‘So far as I know. Goodbye, Wynnie.’
‘Till next time, Mr Kelly.’
After one last long look, one he understood all too well, she turned and walked down the hallway.
He couldn’t help but grin when he spotted one half of her handcuffs swaying and bouncing against her sweet backside until she rounded the corner, out of sight.
CHAPTER THREE
WYNNIE nudged her high heels off her feet, let them fall to the floor beneath her bar stool, and massaged one bare foot with the other. She then closed her eyes and pressed her fingers into the tops of her eyelids.
‘What are you doing?’ Hannah asked.
‘Trying to permanently block out several particular moments of my day.’
Hannah laughed. ‘Come off it. You did brilliantly! Better than we could ever have hoped. You’ve already made the four-thirty reports. You actually got inside the building. As far as the CFC is concerned you’re a rainmaker.’
‘Nevertheless I’m still of the opinion that threatening to start a campaign whereby I would blame the most influential business in town with single-handedly poisoning the planet on purpose was a real high point.’
Wynnie let her head thunk onto the shiny red bar of the funky Eagle St Pier beer garden. But the knock to the head did nothing to shift the images stuck fast to the outer curve of her skull.
Dylan Kelly’s knee-weakening half-smiles when she flirted with him. His debilitating dark smiles when she pushed him a step too far. And most of all his delicious parting smile, which had made her think, for one brief shining moment, that maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d spent the afternoon having a professional conversation on the outside and a very personal one on the inside.
‘Nah,’ Hannah said before downing the rest of her cocktail in one gulp and asking for another in one swift move. ‘I’m going to have to vote for the nickel allergy as my favourite Wynnie moment.’
Wynnie lifted her head, flicked her fringe away from her face and ran gentle fingers over the bandages on her wrists. ‘That’s not funny.’
Hannah laughed so loud a dozen heads turned to see what they were missing. ‘Right. You went from making a business contact no one at the CFC has ever managed to wangle, to having a just-out-of-med-school doctor diagnose you with being too cheap to buy quality handcuffs.’
Wynnie sat on her hands. ‘No way was I going to use the funds of a non-profit organisation to spend as much as I could on top-of-the-line handcuffs.’
Hannah only laughed so hard she had to push her stool back so that she could clutch her stomach. Wynnie grabbed her so-called friend by the belt loops of her jeans and tugged her upright before she took out some passer-by.
As Hannah continued to giggle Wynnie took a deep breath, drinking in the aroma of beer and lemon-scented banksias filling big earthenware pots around the floor. It was a deeply Australian smell, and, after many years living abroad, it was unexpectedly comforting. As were the last vestiges of Brisbane spring sunshine pouring through massive skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The labours of her day finally began to ease away.
Wynnie glanced down the bar. ‘I’m not sure if a nickel overdose can make a person thirsty but I am dying for another drink.’
Problem was, since she was on cortisone for her red wrists, she had to stick with pineapple juice, which did nothing to help her forget Dylan Kelly’s brawny forearms, the curve of short thick hair that turned from gold to brown just above his ears and those deep, glinting, hooded blue eyes.
When their drinks arrived, the nice barman had added a sugared strawberry to the edge of her glass, and an umbrella for good measure. He also gave her a long smile.
He was terribly cute. She was pathologically single. And obviously in need of some mollifying male company if her performance that afternoon was anything to go by.
But there was a kind of puppy-dog softness about the eyes that told her he was a boyfri
end kind of guy. Girlfriends shared stories of family and past folly as pillow talk, something she’d never be able to do, which meant she’d never be a girlfriend kind of girl.
She gave him a short nod, then turned her body away from the bar and towards Hannah, who was grinning at her over her Fuzzy Navel.
‘Wynnie has a new little friend,’ Hannah sing-songed.
‘Wynnie has no such thing.’
‘Give him another five minutes and he’ll be back with a rose between his teeth and a mandolin. Better yet, you order the next round of drinks and save us twenty bucks.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘And why not? A new man for a new town. After the hours you’ve put in this month you deserve to let your hair down some.’
Wynnie raised a hand to her hair, which she’d pinned up off her neck while at the doctor’s surgery, sliding her butterfly clip above her ear to hold back her fringe. ‘It was down today. And look where that got me.’
‘Ah,’ Hannah said, with way too much of an inflection.
‘What does “ah” mean?’
‘It means so that’s why you’re all down about the mouth when considering the success your day has been you should be as high as a kite.’
‘I’m not high because I’m not the one on my fourth cocktail,’ she said out of the side of her mouth.
Hannah waggled a wobbly finger in her general direction. ‘First my little recruit has proven herself professionally, making me look shiny and fabulous for insisting she be hired, and now she has gone and got herself a little crush on Mr Dylan Tall Blond and Handsome Kelly. I’m celebrating!’
Wynnie’s naked feet pointed hard at the floor as some kind of strange physical response shot through her at the mere mention of Dylan Kelly’s name.
She opened her mouth wide to deny everything, but suddenly she was too exhausted to bother. ‘It might have been nice to have a heads up that he is that gorgeous.’
‘I thought the fact that I had to wipe drool from my chin every time his name was mentioned in passing during strategy meetings was giveaway enough.’
‘Not nearly enough. You do know he’s stunning. Matinee-idol, suit-model, high-school-crush, knee-weakening, supermodels-only-need-apply stunning.’
‘Did your voice just crack a little?’
‘It did not,’ Wynnie shot back. Then for some unknown reason added, ‘But it’s not just his looks. He’s sharp, and focused, and canny and funny when you don’t expect it.’
‘So I’ve heard. But I am a respected lawyer, you know. I must show some decorum. Did you? Show decorum?’
Wynnie’s hands went straight to her eyes to rub them again. ‘I might have become a tad tongue-tied on more than one occasion, and made inferences that I wanted to go to bed with him, but that’s it.’
Hannah’s laughter turned heads the whole way around the bar. ‘So are you gonna ask him out or not?’
Her hot hands dropped to cup her blissfully cold glass. ‘For what purpose?’
‘Um, dinner, a movie, the horizontal tango?’
‘Han! He’s the only mark. The one who can make or break this deal.’
‘And that’s why you won’t ask him out?’
‘No. Yes! Well, that and the fact that he’s probably got a line-up of women wiping drool from their chins.’
Hannah’s answering smile was most unfriendly.
‘My working hours are far too full on right now to even think about starting up any kind of anything with any man.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah, he’s just a huge flirt. He flirted with me, every female reporter within eyeshot, some of the men, and a pot plant on the way into his office. It’s pathological.’
‘Finally something I understand! Now this isn’t the kind of thing you would have found in the stuff the researchers gave you, so here goes. The stories do circulate that he is…How do I put this?’ Hannah tapped her chin and looked to the heavens. ‘He’s a man with a limited attention span.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Never appears to date the same girl twice. Though they are all beautiful. All fabulous. All about as warm as ice sculptures.’
Wynnie blinked. ‘And you think I might be interested in being one of those girls of the week, and that I fit that description? I’m not sure which part of that I should be insulted by most.’
Hannah slapped her on the arm. ‘Stop trying to be offended and think about it. You’ve found time this month to come bowling with me, to go out for drinks, to see a movie, a bunch of DVDs. I could sacrifice a little of that down time for the sake of your love life before you start sleeping in the office to get a head start on the working day and unknowingly muttering carbon emission averages beneath your breath.’
Wynnie shook her head. ‘It feels like things have fallen into place for me for the first time in a really long time. I believe in the organisation with every fibre of my being. Their philosophy is my very lifeblood. To be their advocate is an honour and an obligation. Every hour I spend working for them I feel like I am contributing, and helping and redeeming…’
She shook her head hard and let her voice drift away.
Of all the people she could have talked to about her acute need to make amends, Hannah was it. She’d been with Wynnie the day Felix had disappeared—even finding her a great lawyer through her professors at school. But even after all this time, saying the words out loud felt too raw.
‘I’m not asking Dylan Kelly out. Okay?’
She sipped at her drink. All of the excuses were fine but they didn’t come close to her main reticence. She’d been known to do stunningly self-sacrificing things for men she regarded highly, and the only way to never let that happen again was not to put herself in the position where it might.
There were only so many times a girl could change her hair, and her name, and leave town. In comparison, putting up with a little sexual tension was small fry.
Hannah leant her elbow on the bar and her head on her hand. ‘You done?’
She nodded.
‘So you wouldn’t mind, then, if Dylan Kelly and I became hot and heavy.’
Wynnie gripped the straw between her teeth. ‘Not in the least,’ she fibbed.
‘What about me and the bartender?’
Wynnie all but bounced on her bar stool. ‘Oh, do! He seems nice and sweet, the ideal complement to your rabid cynicism. And he could make you cocktails every night. He’s perfect for you!’
Wynnie’s bottom bouncing came to a halt when she realised Hannah had been pulling her leg about the bartender to get a true answer about Lady Killer Kelly. And she’d given it in surround sound, with Technicolor and subtitles.
‘I have to go,’ Wynnie said, finding her shoes with her feet. ‘The local farmer’s market closes at eight and I’m all out of kumquats.’
She grabbed her battered travel purse from the bar, slid her feet back into her shoes, hopped off the bar stool and pressed her way through the crowd.
‘Kumquats? That’s one I’ve never heard before.’ Hannah, three inches taller than Wynnie even in her flats, caught up all too easily. ‘And just because you thought the sun shone from Felix’s you-know-what and he turned out to be a total screw-up that doesn’t mean every man you ever meet will do the same. Trust me.’
Wynnie saw a gap open up within a huge group of uni students and took it. Alone.
A screw-up? Felix hadn’t just been a screw-up. Her kid brother, her only remaining family, the beautiful boy who’d never even had the heart to step on a spider he was so attuned with the world around him, had done something so heinous, so out of character, hurting people all in the name of saving the planet. And to add insult to injury he’d left her to clean up the mess she hadn’t even seen coming. And she’d never laid eyes on him since.
Trust was now a four-letter word.
When she reached the sidewalk she bounced on her toes as her eyes scanned the streets for an empty taxi.
‘Heard from him yet?’ Hannah a
sked from beside her.
There was no point pretending she didn’t know Hannah was talking about her brother. She shook her head so hard her butterfly came loose. She reached out and caught it before it hit the ground. Her heart thundered in her ears at the thought she might have broken it—the only thing she still had that had once belonged to her beautiful, brilliant, progressive parents. She could only be thankful they had both gone by the time Felix changed.
‘You will, sweetie,’ Hannah said. ‘Don’t worry. He always checks in eventually. Though why he doesn’t just leave you the hell alone once and for all I have no idea.’
She glared at Hannah, who held up her hands in surrender.
‘Fine. I won’t say another word on the subject. But if I ever bump into him in a dark alley all he’s getting from me is a swift kick up the backside.’
A taxi stopped. Wynnie put her butterfly into her purse and opened the back door. She took a breath and turned to her friend. ‘Is that your version of not another word?’
‘From this moment on, I cross my heart.’ Then she looked back inside the bar. ‘A cute bartender who can give me free drinks, or the infamous Dylan Kelly who can buy me the bar. Mmm, how is a girl to choose?’
Wynnie poked out her tongue and jumped in the cab, giving the driver the address of the Spring Hill cottage the CFC had put her up in as part of her irresistible relocation package.
After watching through the back window to see Hannah grab the next taxi that came along, Wynnie leant into the hot fabric seat, let out a long, slow breath and closed her eyes.
Only to be confronted with Dylan Kelly in full colour and three dimensions. This time instead of trying to squeeze him from her brain she let him simmer there a while.
Her breast ached where his fingers had brushed her. Her backside ached where they hadn’t. She wished her wrists still hurt and then she might not have noticed the rest, but magical white cream was keeping the most sensible of her itches at bay.
Who was she kidding? They were on two different planes of existence. The audacious, hippy environmentalist and the formidable, filthy-rich corporate giant.