by Nikki Logan
From anyone else he’d take that as a come-on. ‘MooreCo’s not going to run itself.’
‘But what about fun? What about pleasure?’
He lowered his face and his voice. ‘Are you offering?’
She let that one go through to the keeper. ‘Can you even remember what fun felt like?’
God, she was fearless. ‘I have a very good imagination.’
The tart smile she threw him should not have been such a turn-on. But it was. The women he dated were either amenable or aggressive. Great socially or under the covers but never both. The kind of forceful he liked in the bedroom didn’t fly too well at gatherings like this. And the obliging, easy-going ones tended to be that way about sex, too.
What he wouldn’t give for a woman who struck a reliable, happy medium. Confident socially. Confident in bed. Confident at business. Confident about themselves. The image of Tash all trussed up in her glass-blowing gear—and then just all trussed up—blazed into his mind.
‘Aiden?’
He forced himself back into the conversation. The echo of her words reached his eardrum. ‘Tomorrow? Working. What else would I be doing on a Monday?’
She let his inattention go, and it pleased him on some unwanted level that she didn’t pout or make a big deal out of it. ‘Silly question, I guess. Can you make any time in your day?’
‘What for.’
‘A road trip.’
That didn’t sound like some time. That sounded like a lot of time. ‘Where to?’
‘I schmoozed your room. Now it’s payback time.’
‘Payback?’
‘A glimpse into how the other half live. Tomorrow is half-price day at the underwater observatory.’
He blinked at her. ‘No. Tomorrow is a work day.’
‘You work every day.’
She had a point. But he wasn’t about to ditch MooreCo to go sightseeing. He’d only just got his father back on task. The echo of Jardine’s insidious crossed his mind. ‘How about we go on the weekend and I’ll shout you the ticket price?’
‘That would be flagrant condescension.’
This had all the hallmarks of a set-up, but damned if he was going to let her think he wasn’t up to it. He could work while he played thanks to the smartphone in his pocket. ‘All right. Half-priced aquarium it is.’
‘Underwater observatory.’
‘Whatever.’
‘No. An aquarium is perfectly lit and artificially stocked. What we’ll be looking at is nature as it happens. You never know what you’re going to see.’
He knew he was going to see her, and that was all that mattered. And that was a vaguely disquieting thought. He hadn’t blown off work for a woman for a decade. If you didn’t count a hot-and-heavy interlude with a catwalk model a few years back, and that had been so brief he’d barely been missed at the office.
But he’d sure got a lot of work done that afternoon. Sex always energised him. No matter how much he put into it. Not that anything physical was on the agenda for tomorrow; this was purely a psychological exercise. One good mind against another.
Weirdly, just as stimulating.
Though he wouldn’t be hitting the office pumped up and ready to take on the world, afterwards. More was the pity.
‘Better make it after lunch.’
SIX
Seriously? All that beauty out there and he was going to stare at his phone the whole time.
‘I can see you,’ Tash murmured. ‘In the windows.’
Aiden lifted his eyes after a short pause, just long enough to finish reading his latest email. Glass panels surrounded them, keeping them dry and alive in this 360-degree submarine observatory. Curious fish bobbed around them, occasionally nosing the glass as if trying to work out why they couldn’t cross into the human world.
‘You’re working,’ he pointed out. ‘Why can’t I?’
‘Because the whole point of this is to show me that you can take as good as you give. I was hoping your competitive spirit would have kicked in by now.’
He glanced compulsively back down at his phone and didn’t quite catch himself in time.
‘How many deals have you negotiated since we got to the observatory?’
The look he gave her would have made a lesser woman quail. ‘I don’t negotiate deals by email...’
‘But?’
A long breath huffed out of him. ‘But I’ve approved three.’
‘Your guests are going to be so bemused when I come to dinner on Friday night and sit in the corner sketching.’
‘It’s not the same.’ He smiled.
‘It’s exactly the same.’
He regarded her and then switched his phone off. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Not until it’s in your pocket.’
He actually hesitated.
‘Seriously, Aiden...’ Tash laughed. ‘I would have thought half a day’s wait for your attention would keep your clients on their toes. Isn’t that straight from your playbook?’
‘It’s not about them.’
‘What’s it about?’
He shrugged. ‘Managing my workload.’
She turned back to her sketching very purposefully. ‘Mmm-hmm.’
He fidgeted slightly in her peripheral vision. God, she loved silence. All the more because it was one of his favourite tools.
‘Okay, Ms Corporate Coach, what do you think it’s about?’
She flattened her pencil on her sketchpad and turned back to him. Since he’d asked so nicely. ‘I think it’s about controlling, not managing.’
‘Not the first time I’ve been called a control freak.’
‘There’s nothing freaky about it. I’m sure it’s very necessary in your role. But surely part of the skill of wielding control effectively is to stop it controlling you.’
He turned and stared at her. She ignored him and went back to her sketching. ‘You’re twitching to turn your phone back on right now,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘Admit it.’
The heat of his regard burned into the side of her tilted face. But then he simply swapped his phone to his left hand and held it out to her. It was impossible not to smile, yet it was only half smugness. The other half was genuine pleasure that he’d seen the truth of her words and not made an issue out of it.
She took the phone from him, slid it straight into her handbag and quietly went back to her sketching.
He stood. Paced up to the glass. Turned and looked at the whole space. Made much of examining the engineering. Then finally he returned to the comfortable leather bench by her side.
‘Now what are you doing?’ she asked.
‘If I can’t work I’ll watch you work.’
Hmm. That’s not distracting at all. She stabbed her pencil in the direction of all the water. ‘Watch the fish.’
‘I am watching the fish,’ he said, not taking his eyes off what her fingers were doing. ‘I’m seeing them as you see them.’
‘I’m pretty sure we see them the same way.’
‘Our eyes might but our brains don’t.’
She turned away from her sketching. ‘What do you see?’
He looked out to the dozens of grey bodies drifting around the observatory, then back at her occasionally flashing with silver from the sunlight far above. ‘Lunch.’
Tsk. ‘Heathen. Wait just a few more minutes; this thing happens on the half-hour...’
‘What thing?’
She found his eyes. He really was bad with delayed gratification. Well, she wasn’t about to enable him. ‘A surprise thing. A delightful thing.’
‘Delightful? What are you—Mary Poppins?’
‘I enjoy nice things.’
He snorted. ‘All women like nice things.’
/> ‘Nice moments. I’m not that fussed by possessions.’
‘You grabbed my two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar smartphone with quite a bit of glee just now.’
She turned to him. ‘Aiden, if this is genuinely difficult for you I will happily give you your phone back.’
Really, what could he say without looking pathetic? Or desperate. Nothing at all.
‘Nah. I’m good.’
The smile wouldn’t be denied. ‘Excellent,’ she said through it. ‘Give it a chance. If the sea life isn’t spectacular enough for you now...’
Sure enough, the lights around them started to dim until the whole space was lit only by the fluorescence of the emergency exit sign to their far left. The natural light streaming down from the ocean’s surface far above formed an eerie shaft of brilliance in the dark of the water. Then, as a slow reveal, a series of black lights mounted to the entire outer of the spherical observation bubble glowed into life, illuminating everything in the immediate surround in ultra-violet.
Those same drab, dark grey fish suddenly morphed into new creatures. One deep purple, one a deep blue, another almost crimson. Glittering, sparkling. All against the deep teal of the UV-lit depths.
Aiden caught his breath.
‘Amazing, huh?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he whispered into the darkness and it was more intimate than if they were alone together in a bedroom. ‘Is this how they see each other?’
‘I like to think so. Who else is it for if not each other?’
She felt the exact moment that he turned to look at her. ‘Is that how you see them?’
‘I always see the potential before the actual.’ Did space itself shrink under black light? Her tight breath certainly thought so.
‘Some people might call that fanciful.’
‘Some might. But there’s a hidden side to the dourest creature. You just have to catch it in the right light.’
His gaze fell on a starfish, clinging to one of the pylons that held the jetty above them up off the ocean floor. Moments ago, he’d not even noticed it, she’d wager. But under new light, it was a rich orange rather than a dull brown to match the crusted timber of the pylon.
‘Is that what you were drawing? There on the left?’
The left side of her notepad was filled with little sucker feet. She returned to one to give it some imaginary detail in the ethereal light. ‘I’m going through a foot phase. Last time I visited, he was climbing the glass. I think I stayed for about six hours. Until he eventually moved on.’ Every edge, every crease, every subtle shift of weight in those super-glue suckers. Imagining the whole time how it was going to translate in glass.
They fell to silence and Aiden stood and roamed quietly around the observation bubble that was empty of anyone but them. The more he looked, the more he saw and his curiosity gave Tash minutes of silence until, eventually, the automatic timer dimmed the external UV and raised the interior lights back to a dim glow. Back to reality.
She sighed.
‘Why wouldn’t they leave that on the whole time?’ Aiden murmured, returning to her side.
‘Because then it wouldn’t be special. People might think that’s what it really looked like below the surface. I like to imagine their world as vibrant and brilliant rather than dull and grey, but I know that the vibrancy is not for me.’
‘So why confuse us with two different perceptions?’
‘It’s so spectacular their way. I think it’s healthy for us to know there’s a whole part of the spectrum that we don’t experience. Keeps us humble.’
‘Is that what you try to create? In your artwork?’
Was it? She did tend to see things in an extrasensory way while being creative. And she tried to portray that in her work. ‘I don’t have a problem with perceiving something differently in different environments. So maybe my work does the same thing, yes.’
She’d never thought of it that way before. Were her pieces doing for people what the black light did down here?
‘Are we still talking about fish?’
Her eyes lifted to his. ‘People too. Humans are particularly context-dependent.’
‘How do you perceive me?’
Her snort ricocheted around the little glass room.
‘Let me rephrase,’ he modified on a glare. ‘How do you perceive me differently in different contexts?’
She made him wait while she pretended to think about it. But she’d had her fill of thinking about Aiden so the comments came very naturally. ‘In your professional context you’re arrogant and decisive, impatient. Brilliant, of course, but with a tendency towards ruthlessness if there’s something you want.’ He didn’t look entirely displeased by that description, which she perhaps should have anticipated. ‘Socially you’re good value, and a good contributor. You’re generous with your money and time and mostly at ease—’
‘You haven’t seen me at Maxima yet.’
‘That’s more work than social. Anything there will be strategic.’
He gave her that point.
‘Around your mother you’re protective, tense, yet about as vulnerable as I’ve ever seen you. And around your father you’re very much the son: respectful but frustrated.’
‘Frustrated?’
‘Like you just want him to get the heck out of the way so you can run MooreCo.’
He frowned at that. ‘That’s not how I feel.’
‘Your body language says otherwise.’
‘I love my father.’
‘I believe you.’ But then she’d yet to see him in a truly social situation with his dad. Their meetings to date were loaded with subtext. Until today. ‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive.’
He stepped closer. ‘What about when I’m with you?’
‘Like I said, you’re good value—’
‘Not socially. With you. When we’re alone.’ He leaned in as a young child sounded on the steps high above them. ‘How do you perceive me now?’ he murmured.
‘Like a shark.’ She blurted the first thing that came to her. ‘Circling. Assessing. Flashing those teeth just enough to remind me they’re there. Never taking your eyes off me. Relentless. Every move strategically planned.’
He gave her a grin full of those teeth now. ‘Yet, you’re not swimming away.’
‘Sharks are as exciting as they are scary,’ she breathed. ‘All that danger. All that power and promise. Is he or isn’t he all bluff?’
His lips hovered just a breath from hers. ‘He definitely isn’t.’
‘You’re very confident,’ she murmured.
That gave him pause. ‘Why do I get the sense that’s not the word you wanted to use? You don’t like confidence?’
‘I do. Very much. But I don’t automatically trust it.’
‘Explain.’
‘Confidence is captivating when it’s earned. But it’s exhausting when it’s fabricated.’ Kyle’s was all bluster as it turned out. When the chips were down—when it mattered—he quailed. And a blusterer abhorred assurance in others.
Or maybe it was just in her.
Aiden’s grin turned Cheshire. ‘You don’t think my confidence is justified?’
‘It could all be for show.’ But it wasn’t. She knew it.
‘Like yours, you mean?’
‘You think I lack confidence?’
‘Don’t you?’
She considered her next move for a moment. ‘Actually, I’m tempering it.’
That wiped the polished veneer off his gaze for the first time all day and Tash got the sense that he was really seeing her for a moment. ‘Why?’
But that was a story she couldn’t half tell. So best not to start. ‘Not everyone likes self-assurance in practice as much as in principle.’
‘Men
, you mean?’
She wasn’t about to answer that.
‘So you just...what? Turn it off?’
‘Down moderate it.’ Her father had taught her, cruelly, the value he placed on modesty and her inability to contain it infuriated him. So she’d had to learn fast.
He grunted. ‘I spend my days moderating. Maybe we’re more alike than I suspected.’
‘I thought I reminded you of your father.’
‘Him too. You sure you’re not a changeling stolen from my family?’
A ripple of gooseflesh ran down her back like an undersea tremor but she was saved from commenting by the arrival of a young mother and the toddler they’d heard earlier at the bottom of the spiral stairs.
Aiden withdrew with obvious regret, saying, ‘Are you done with your drawings?’
‘You trying to get me alone?’ she murmured, totally on board with that plan.
He slipped his hand around hers—all warm and promising—and hauled her to her feet. ‘I want to get you somewhere you can let all that confidence off the leash.’
* * *
‘So, not entirely misplaced, then.’ Aiden gasped, flopping onto his back next to her, chest heaving and skin damp. ‘All that confidence.’
Tash turned her head to face him—the only part of her capable of movement after such an intense workout.
‘You’re a strange man, Aiden Moore.’
‘Because I like paddle boats?’
Tash plucked her sea-soaked trousers away from her bent legs. She’d had to wade out to her hire-a-boat. ‘Because you chose paddle boats as your duel weapon.’
‘I used to come here on family holidays and race my cousins. It’s a tradition in my family.’
Her heart did a tiny flip-flop at the thought of being considered part of his family. But that was dangerous thinking. ‘Huh. So you stacked the deck.’
‘Totally. I had to cover my butt in case you were the paddle queen of the West.’
‘I was the paddle queen of the West.’
‘I still won.’
‘Your boat didn’t have a hole in it. And your legs are like tree trunks.’
They went over it one more pointless time, how only a poor worker blamed her tools. And, again, the argument ended in laughter.