by Ally Blake
Her hands flew to cover her warming cheeks. ‘Oh, heavens, I have, haven’t I? I’m going to blow this before it even starts. You have permission to stuff a napkin in my mouth if I let it run away from me again.’
‘Thank you,’ Adam said, ‘that’s always worth knowing.’ He eyed her warily over his herb bread. ‘Anyway, I don’t mean about the show itself. I know more than I would like to about all that. I was wondering about specifics. For example, will Chris be at work tomorrow?’
‘Well, I guess I can tell you that it will take about two weeks. By tomorrow morning at the latest, all of those involved will be sequestered in the Ivy Hotel in the city. And nobody will be able to come and go unless authorised by the producers.’
She watched for Adam’s reaction to this news. When Jeff had told her she had all but freaked out, her mind running over with everything she would have to do that night to get her regular life up to date before she disappeared from the face of the earth. But this guy merely nodded and blinked and she had no idea if he was happy or sad or freaking out behind those dark blue eyes.
‘Why will you be sequestered, do you think?’ he asked.
‘To keep any of us from blabbing to the press.’
‘About what?’
‘The juicy details. The name of the show…’
Adam smiled and it was all Cara could do to go on, the charming appeal it brought to his strong face was so unexpected.
‘The star of the show,’ she continued. ‘The fact there even is a show. When word gets out, the producers want to control the spin. I’ve worked in the fashion biz for a number of years now and what it boils down to is the fact that sex sells. Television is sexy. Secrets are sexy. There is nothing sexier to eighteen-to-thirty-five-year-old women than a man so in tune with himself that he is openly looking for love. And the producers of the show want to reap the benefits.’
She finished her statement with a deep intake of breath. Now she was certain of it. The way he was watching her, weighing her words so carefully—this guy had ulterior motive written all over him. He smiled easily enough, and his body language certainly showed that he was open to anything she had to offer. Any conversation topic, she thought, giving herself a mental slap. But if for some reason he wanted this all to go away, she was pretty sure he would have his way. And it made her so nervous her chest hurt.
It sure didn’t help her nerves that he continued to be just as unreservedly attractive as he was when she first laid eyes on him. It would have been more helpful for her jitters if he slouched, or fixed his hair an inordinate number of times, or if he professed a predilection for polka music.
She took a sip of water to stem the urge to babble and her mind whizzed back, hoping desperately she had not said anything idiotic or anything she shouldn’t have. She was pretty sure she had done well. ‘That’s all I’m prepared to tell,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
He shrugged. A movement so slight she didn’t know if he’d really shrugged at all or if she’d just caught his essential indifference.
‘OK, then, back to the reason why we’re here,’ Cara said, deciding it was about time she took control of the conversation if she was to get anything useful out of him. ‘Tell me about Chris.’
‘What would you like to know?’ Adam asked.
‘What does he look like, for starters?’ Though Adam was recognisable to her, she could not have picked the other owners of Revolution Wireless out of a line-up if her job depended on it.
Adam blinked. She had already pegged the fact that he did that when he was biding his time. Cara bit her bottom lip. Time-biding was not on her list of most favourite things.
‘Does he look anything like you, for instance?’
‘In some ways, yes. In other ways not at all.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And what does he do for fun?’
This time the blink was different. It was loaded with thought. But she knew not what about.
‘He creates telecommunications innovations,’ Adam finally said.
Her lip-biting increased to a calorie-burning rate.
‘OK. So how do you two know each other? Just from work? What rings his bells? What sort of woman do you think he is trying to land?’
Give me anything, please!
‘We know each other from school.’
She waited for more but…nothing came.
‘Fantastic,’ she said, her patience finally running down. Sure, she had the job, but the last thing she needed was for it to work out so badly that she never worked again. Even with a mortgage paid off, a girl had city council rates and amenities to keep her working ad infinitum. And this guy had nothing to offer her but a bit of a crush.
‘Well, that’s all I needed,’ she said, refolding her napkin and making ready to leave. ‘Now I know he looks exactly yet nothing like you, he invents stuff for a living and he once went to school, I’m all set. With those specifics in mind I can now make sure he doesn’t look like a complete dud for the millions of people who will watch him eagle-eyed every week.’
‘Wait,’ Adam said, his hand landing atop hers.
Cara let out a nervous breath, seriously glad her bluff had worked. She sat down slowly and shot him her best blasé expression, but she knew already she was up against a professional in that department.
This time she waited for him to talk. If she was sitting with the best she might as well learn from him. And after a few seconds of duelling silence she realised that his hand was still atop hers.
Her gaze flittered down. His hand captured her attention once again. It was big and broad and tanned, especially lying on top of her own, which was small and pale. As she stared the silence changed. It became thick and noisy with unuttered complications.
Slowly she slipped her hand away and he didn’t stop her. She bit her lip to bring herself back to the present, then looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Adam, please tell me about your friend so I can make this as easy for him as I can.’
Adam had been ready to convince the girl to have Chris decked out with spats and a walking stick if that was what it would take to have his friend give up the game. But with her looking at him like that, beseeching, pleading, he found himself wilting. He told himself it was only because she made a good point.
It was in her power to make Chris look like an idiot. And when she had asked what Chris did for fun, Adam had baulked because he knew that Chris did nothing. Chris had worked tirelessly for years to achieve their joint goal, and now he was simply asking for some ‘him’ time. Didn’t he deserve at least that much?
‘So you really don’t know what he looks like?’ Adam asked.
She shook her head, slowly, as though if she went any faster he would not be able to keep up. ‘Nope. Not a bit. I have no idea if he’s old, young, thin, fat, balding or has a glorious head of hair.’
It was fair enough that she didn’t. Come to think of it, he was the only one who seemed to end up in any of those other types of magazines, the ones that the guys at work liked to snip out and stick on the corkboard in the kitchenette.
Cara blinked at him, her lashes sweeping down onto her cheeks in a look that spoke of pure and simple time-biding. And it took him a second to recover. He had to remind himself of the good-head-behind-the-pretty-face theory he had stumbled onto earlier.
Adam shifted in his seat, unused to being on the receiving end of his own tricks. This woman was a quick learner and he knew then and there he would have to stay on his toes. If this was to go smoothly for Chris, and thus work out to Revolution Wireless’s best advantage, he would have to keep a close eye on this one.
‘OK, then,’ Adam began, ‘first things first, Chris ain’t anywhere near brazen, so wipe that idea out right now. Picture a man…’
Cara leant forward, resting her chin on the heel of her palms as the guy across the table gave a rundown of the life and times of Chris Geyer. Stories of childhood antics, of bad dates, of a love of education, of a twenty-year friendship ran thick and fast. Cara
listened with half an ear, smiling in all the right places, building up the idea of a friendly teddy-bear type whom she was more and more looking forward to meeting.
But the other half of her mind was focussed on the man telling the story. All efforts at nonchalance put aside, he became a charismatic, vibrant story-teller. Her nerves dissolved with every captivating word and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
She could tell that he usually hid behind his laconic attitude so that he could measure the world without it measuring him. But behind the attitude lurked the guy who ran one of the most successful marketing campaigns the country had ever seen. This was the guy who could sell cookies to Girl Guides, he was just that compelling.
As she often did when she met new people, Cara pictured how she would light him. If ever, one day, she had the chance to do so, it would be all about shadows, taking advantage of those fantastic cheekbones and that straight nose. She would brush his hair back a tad further, knowing that he would only curl up more inside himself and make himself that much more intriguing. The carefully constructed remoteness, the seriously attractive mystery, the gorgeous depths of those navy-blue eyes…
‘Don’t you need to take any notes?’ Adam asked, his hands stopping mid-demonstration of how a mobile phone was built.
Cara snapped back to the present with such a jolt, her elbow slipped off the table and she had to catch herself before her chin followed in its wake.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, lifting from his seat, reaching for her, his expression bright with surprise.
Bad. Bad Cara. What on earth had she been doing, daydreaming like that? Her attention had become wrapped in the words of some strapping stranger when her focus for the next two weeks should be blissfully caught up in the ins and outs of the most challenging and significant job of her life.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And no as well. I don’t need to take notes. Really.’ She jabbed furiously at her temple. ‘All stored up here.’
‘So are you a Cary Grant fan?’ he asked as he poured her a glass of wine.
Cara fought to remember a single word of his conversation and came up blank. ‘A who…what?’
Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘Cary Grant. Chris’s favourite actor? He’s in The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday…’
Cara shook her head hard to clear out the soft and fuzzies that had gathered therein. ‘Sure. Of course. I love Cary Grant. I think he’s marvellous. I can even do an impression if you’d like.’
‘No need. Really.’
She fully deserved Adam’s bemused smile.
‘So to recap, Chris is a great guy who loves Cary Grant, collects bells—’
‘Shells,’ Adam corrected, pouring himself a glass of wine.
‘Shells,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘And shells…sells telephones for a living.’
Adam nodded slowly. ‘In a nutshell, yes. And he deserves a toast, don’t you think, for being the one to bring us together for this lovely lunch?’
‘Who?’ Cara asked, the soft and fuzzies winning hands down. ‘Cary Grant?’
Adam laughed, his head shaking, his eyes bright with amused confusion. ‘Why the heck not?’ He lifted his glass. ‘To Cary Grant.’
Cara had had enough. Another second of this conversation and she would probably forget her own name. She stood, dropped her napkin to the arm of her chair and then didn’t know where to put her hands. ‘You’ve been a fantastic help, but it’s time for me to be…elsewhere. Thanks for lunch. And I guess I’ll…see you ’round like a rissole!’
Before she could plant her foot deeper in her mouth Cara took off. She weaved through the tightly packed restaurant tables with her mind on the task ahead. Get to the television station. Meet Chris. Do the best job she could. Keep said job. Take home pay. Own St Kilda Storeys. So long as she kept that mantra going through her head, she was unstoppable. Surely?
Adam Tyler and his dreamy, distracting blue eyes did not come into the mantra once, so the bigger the distance between the two of them, the better.
Adam remained seated, debating internally whether it was better to watch her walk away, her lithe hips swinging as she mastered her outrageous shoes, or to watch her from front on, her lovely face so animated, her hands forever moving with nervous energy, and that huge flower bouncing about atop her head.
He dragged his interest away with some regret.
So, it looked as though Chris was going to be The Billionaire Bachelor. He cringed again. But that would have to be the last time. He had no choice. He was going to have to join bloody Chris on the set for the next two bloody weeks and act as babysitter to his bloody best friend.
‘Sex sells,’ Cara had said. He knew she was spot on. And if that feisty employee was anything to go by, he had the unsettling but mounting feeling that this show was going to produce fireworks…and that it would be in Revolution Wireless’s interest to be seen to be lighting the match.
CHAPTER THREE
CARA went home to St Kilda Storeys, her beloved apartment building that would very soon be truly hers. There was a note from Gracie on her apartment door. She took the steps, two at a time, to Gracie’s top-floor apartment and knocked.
Cara heard scuffling and snuffling as Minky got to the door first. Gracie was looking after the fluffy, almost-white, Maltese Terrier while their fellow Saturday Night Cocktails gang member Kelly and her husband Simon were out of town visiting friends in Fremantle.
Gracie finally opened the door with a wriggling Minky in her arms. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘I got the job.’
Cara was lost in hugs from Gracie, and tiny lapping kisses from Minky.
‘I knew it!’ Gracie said. ‘Or at least I wished and hoped super hard!’
Gracie grabbed Cara and steered her toward the small old couch that took up half of the tiny lounge. ‘I have ten minutes before I have to be at work. So tell me all about…everything.’
‘I can’t, actually. It’s all seriously under wraps.’
‘Even to me?’
‘Especially to you.’
Gracie had the good grace to nod. ‘Good plan. I can’t keep a secret to save my life. Keep it to yourself. So tell me something else. Who did you meet? Anybody famous? How about that guy who hosts the movie review programme? He’s a bit of a hottie.’
‘Wrong channel.’
‘Oh, yeah, right. Anyone else I can brag about?’
‘Umm, not really. Though you’ll be pleased to know that I did have an interesting lunch with this one guy…’
Cara went on to fill Gracie in on the important points of her lunch date—no names mentioned, of course: the ominous stare, the powerful grace, the serious good looks worthy of a menswear catalogue.
‘Armani or Target?’ Gracie asked, using their usual scale.
‘Armani, without a doubt.’
Gracie nodded in pleasant surprise. But either way the truth about this guy was immaterial. Cara was going to be holed up in a hotel for the next two weeks with way too much else to occupy her to care.
Adam went back to work.
Dean, the third partner in the Revolution Wireless giant, was pacing behind his desk. Where Chris was the ideas guy, and Adam was the salesman, Dean looked after the day-to-day blood, sweat and tears side of the operation, and it showed. His tie was long gone and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, his hands flying about him as he yabbered away into a telephone head set.
Adam took a seat at the desk and waited for the one-sided staccato conversation to finish.
‘Adam, my man,’ Dean said, giving his friend a hearty handshake, before resuming his pacing. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s about Chris.’
‘And this dating show deal?’
Adam nodded.
Dean flapped a dismissive hand across his face. ‘Let him be.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Sure. It’s been over a year since he last took a holiday, so think of it that way if it helps.’
‘
It doesn’t help. I have worked my backside off to sell Revolution Wireless as a serious company, as serious competition against the giants who have cornered the market for years, and just as we’ve made the leap Chris is about to go and make us all look like amateurs.’
‘Not amateurs,’ Dean said, eyeing Adam down. ‘Human. And human ain’t such a bad angle to give a company this size, if you ask me.’
Adam blinked and Dean cocked an eyebrow at the move.
‘So you back him on this?’ Adam asked.
‘A hundred per cent. I think he’s a brave, brave fellow. He’s putting it all out there and that takes guts. And I don’t see why Revolution Wireless should suffer for showing that one of our leading lights has guts to spare.’
Adam let the idea wash over him. He was being shot down from all angles and he knew it would not do anybody any good if he fought against such diminishing odds.
‘OK, then. If that’s your decision, I want us to sponsor the show.’
Dean stopped his pacing at once. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, though it fell back into the same shambles instantly. ‘You want us to sponsor the show?’
‘Well, it certainly looks like I can’t stop the show, so why not make the most of it? Why not take advantage of the fact that it will be a significantly supported prime-time television event with the opportunity for intensive branding that is set to rake in viewing numbers like none other has done before?’
And that way he could wangle his way onto the set, insist that he be able to stay in the hotel with the cast and crew, because only then could he keep an eye on Chris. Make sure his magnanimous friend did not lose his heart and along with it his wallet to some conniving, manipulative schemer. Because for the life of him he could not see how the whole episode could end any other way.
Dean’s smile dawned slowly. ‘Sure, why not? You’re the marketing guru, my friend, so if you think it will float, you have my vote.’
Adam nodded. Decision made. ‘So will you be OK with the two of us AWOL for the next couple of weeks?’
‘Of course. So long as you’re on the other end of the phone. I mean, if we couldn’t run our business by mobile phone and email we would be in a heap of trouble!’