The Last Guy She Should Call

by Joss Wood

  ‘What does he do?’ Cat asked.

  Rowan fiddled with her gold hoop earrings. ‘His family have a shed-load of property in Cape Town and he oversees that. He also does something complicated with computers. He has a company that does...um...internet security? He’s a nice hat... No, that doesn’t sound right.’

  Cat sat up suddenly. ‘Do you mean a white hat? A hacker?’

  Rowan cocked her finger at her. ‘That’s it. Apparently he’s one of the best in the world.’

  ‘Holy mackerel...that is so cool! I’m a bit of a comp geek myself.’

  ‘So is he. He’s a complete nerd and we’ve always clashed. He’s book-smart and I’m street-smart. His and Callie’s house is within spitting distance of my parents’ house and I spent more time there than I did at home. I gave him such a hard time.’

  Cat looked intrigued. ‘Why?’

  ‘Probably because I could never get a reaction out of him. He’d just look at me, shake his head, tell me I was a brat and flip me off. The more I misbehaved, the more he ignored me.’ Rowan wound a black curl around her index finger.

  ‘Sounds to me like you were craving his attention.’

  ‘Honey, I craved everyone’s attention,’ Rowan replied.

  This was one of the things she loved most about travelling, she thought. Random conversations with strangers who didn’t know her from Adam.

  ‘Anyway, I could bore you to death, recounting all the arguments I had with Seb.’ Rowan smiled. ‘So let this be a lesson to you, Cat. Remember, always have a stash of cash. Do as I say and not as I do.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Cat called as she walked towards the bank of public phones against the far wall.

  Rowan lifted her hand in acknowledgement. She sure as hell was going to need it.

  * * *

  Seb Hollis shot up in bed and punched the comforter and the sheets away, unable to bare the constricting fabric against his heated skin. He was conscious of the remnants of a bad dream floating around the periphery of his memory, and as much as he tried to pretend otherwise it wasn’t the cool air colliding with the sweat on his chest and spine that made him shiver. The blame for that could be laid squarely at the door of this now familiar nocturnal visitor. He’d been dreaming the same dream for six days... He was being choked, restrained, hog-tied...yanked up to the altar and forced into marriage.

  Balls, was his first thought, closely followed by, Thank God it was only a dream.

  Draping one forearm across his bended knees, Seb ran a hand behind his neck. He was sweating like a geyser and his mouth was as dry as the Kalahari Desert. Cursing, he fumbled for the glass of water on the bedside table, grimacing at the handprint his sweat made on the deep black comforter.

  Habit had him turning his head, expecting to see his lover’s head on the other pillow. Relief pumped through him when he remembered that Jenna had left for a year-long contract in Dubai and that he was officially single again. He didn’t have to explain the nightmare, see her hurt face when he wouldn’t talk about the soaked sheets or his pumping breath. Like most women, and despite her corporate career, Jenna had a need to nurture.

  He’d never been nurtured and he had no need to be fussed over. It wasn’t who he was, what he needed.

  Besides, discussing his dreams—emotions, thoughts, desires—would be amusing in the same way an electric shock to his gonads would be nice. Not going to happen. Ever.

  Intimacy hadn’t been part of the deal with Jenna.

  Intimacy would never be part of the deal with anyone.

  Seb swung his legs off the side of the large bed, reached for the pair of running shorts on the chair next to the bed and yanked them on. He walked over to the French doors that opened onto the balcony. Pushing them open, he sucked in the briny air of the late summer, early autumn air. Tinges of the new morning peeked through the trees that bordered the side and back edges of his property: Awelfor.

  He could live anywhere in the world, but he loved living a stone’s throw from Cape Town, loved living at the tip of the continent in a place nestled between the mountains and the sea. In the distance, behind those great rolling waves that characterised this part of the west coast, the massive green-grey icy Atlantic lay: sulky, turbulent, volatile. Or maybe he was just projecting his crappy mood on the still sleepy sea.

  Jenna. Was she what his crazy dreams were about? Was he dreaming about commitment because he’d been so relieved to wave her goodbye? To get out of a relationship that he’d known was going nowhere but she had hoped was? He’d told her, as often and as nicely as he could, that he wouldn’t commit, but he knew that she’d hoped he’d change his mind, really hoped that he’d ask her to stay in the country.

  It hadn’t seemed to matter that they’d agreed to a no-strings affair, that she’d said she understood when he’d explained that he didn’t do love and commitment.

  Women. Sheez. Sometimes they just heard what they wanted to hear.

  Seb cocked his head when the early-morning silence was shattered by the distinctive deep-throated roar of a Jag turning into the driveway to Awelfor. Here we go again, he thought. The engine was cut, a car door slammed and within minutes he saw his father walking the path to the cottage that stood to the left of the main house.

  It was small consolation that he wasn’t the only Hollis man with woman troubles. At least his were only in his head. Single again, he reminded himself. Bonus.

  ‘Another one bites the dust?’ he called, and his father snapped his head up.

  Patch Hollis dropped his leather bag to the path and slapped his hands on his hips.

  ‘When am I going to learn?’

  ‘Beats me.’ Seb rested his forearms on the balcony rail. ‘What’s the problem with this one?’

  ‘She wants a baby,’ Patch said, miserable. ‘I’m sixty years old; why would I want a child now?’

  ‘She’s twenty-eight, dude. Of course she’s going to want a kid. Have you told her you’ve had a vasectomy?’

  Patch gestured to the bag. ‘Hence the reason I’m back in the cottage. She went bat-crap ballistic.’

  ‘Uh...why do you always leave? It’s your house and you’re not married.’ Seb narrowed his eyes as a horrible thought occurred to him. ‘You didn’t slink off and marry her, did you?’

  Patch didn’t meet his eyes. ‘No, but it was close.’

  Seb rubbed his hand over his hair, which he kept short to keep the curls under control, and muttered an expletive.

  ‘Don’t swear at me. You had your own little gold-digger you nearly married,’ Patch shot back, and Seb acknowledged the hit.

  He’d been blindsided when he’d raised the issue of marriage contracts and his fiancée Bronwyn wouldn’t consider signing a pre-nup. Like most things he did, he’d approached the problem of the marriage contracts intellectually, rationally. He had the company and the house and the cash, and pretty much everything of monetary value, so he’d be the one to hand over half of everything if they divorced.

  Bronwyn had not seen his point of view. If he loved her, she’d screamed, he’d share everything with her. He had loved Bronwyn—sorta...kinda—but not enough to risk sharing his company with her or paying her out for half the value of the house that had been in his family for four generations in the event of a divorce.

  They’d both dug their heels in and the break-up had been bruising.

  It had taken him a couple of years, many hours with a whisky bottle and a shattered heart until he’d—mostly—worked it all out. He believed in thinking through problems—including personal failures—in order to come to a better understanding of the cause and effect.

  It was highly probable that he’d fallen for Bronwyn because she was, on the surface, similar in behaviour and personality to his mother. A hippy child who flitted from job to job, town to town. A supposed free spirit wh
om he’d wanted—no, needed to tame. Since his mother had left some time around his twelfth birthday to go backpacking round the world, and had yet to come home, he’d given up hope that he’d ever get her love or approval, that she’d return and stay put. He’d thought that if he could get Bronwyn to settle down, to commit to him, then maybe it would fill the hole his mother had left.

  Yeah, right.

  But he’d learnt a couple of lessons from his FUBAR engagement. Unlike his jobs—internet security expert and overseeing the Hollis Property Group—he couldn’t analyse, measure or categorise relationships and emotions, and he sure didn’t understand women. As a result he now preferred to conduct his relationships at an emotional distance. An at-a-distance relationship—sex and little conversation—held no risk of confusion and pain and didn’t demand much from him. He’d forged his emotional armour when his mum had left so very long ago and strengthened it after his experience with Bronwyn. He liked it that way. There was no chance of his heart being tossed into a liquidiser.

  His father, Peter Pan that he was, just kept it simple: blonde, long-legged and big boobs. Mattress skills were a prerequisite; intelligence wasn’t.

  ‘So, can I move back in until she moves out?’ Patch asked.

  ‘Dad, Awelfor is a Hollis house; legally it’s still yours. But I should warn you that Yasmeen is on holiday; she’s been gone for nearly a week and I’ve already eaten the good stuff she left.’

  Patch looked wounded. ‘So no blueberry muffins for breakfast?’

  ‘Best you’re going to get is coffee. No laundry or bed-making service either,’ Seb replied.

  Patch looked bereft and Seb knew that it had nothing to do with his level of comfort and everything to do with the absence of their elderly family confidant, their moral compass and their staunchest supporter. Yasmeen was more than their housekeeper, she was Awelfor.

  ‘Yas being gone sucks.’ Patch yawned. ‘I’m going back to bed, Miranda has a voice like a foghorn and I was up all night being blasted by it.’

  Seb turned his head at the sound of his ringing landline. ‘Crazy morning. Father rocking up at the crack of dawn, phone ringing before six...and all I want is a cup of coffee.’

  Patch grinned up at him. ‘I just want my house back.’

  Seb returned his smile. ‘Then kick her whiny ass out of yours.’

  Patch shuddered. ‘I’ll just move in here until she calms down.’

  His father, Seb thought as he turned away to walk back into the house, was totally allergic to confrontation.

  * * *

  ‘Seb, it’s Rowan...Rowan Dunn.’

  He’d recognised her voice the moment he’d heard her speak his name, but because his synapses had stopped firing he’d lost the ability to formulate any words. Rowan? What the...?

  ‘Seb? Sorry, did I wake you?’

  ‘Rowan, this is a surprise.’ And by surprise I mean...wow.

  ‘I’m in Johannesburg—at the airport.’

  Since this was Rowan, he passed curious and went straight to resigned. ‘What’s happened?’

  He would have had to be intellectually challenged to miss the bite in the words that followed.

  ‘Why do you automatically assume the worst?’

  ‘Because something major must have happened to bring you back to the country you hate, where the family you’ve hardly interacted with in years lives and for you to call me, who you once described as a boil on the ass of humanity.’

  He waited through the tense silence.

  ‘I’m temporarily broke and homeless. And I’ve just been deported from Oz,’ she finally—very reluctantly—admitted.

  And there it was.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ He kept his voice neutral and hoped that she was now adult enough to realise that it was a fair question. For a long time before she’d left trouble had been Rowan’s middle name. Heck, her first name.

  ‘No, I’m good. They just picked up that I overstayed on my visa years and years ago and they kicked me out.’

  Compared to some of the things she’d done, this was a minor infringement. Seb walked to his walk-in closet, took a pair of jeans from a hanger and yanked them on. He placed his fist on his forehead and stared down at the old wood flooring.

  ‘Seb, are you there?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do you know where my parents are? I did try them but they aren’t answering their phone.’

  ‘They went to London and rented out the house while they were gone to some visiting researchers from Beijing. They are due back in...’ Seb tried to remember. ‘Two—three—weeks’ time.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! My parents went overseas and the world didn’t stop turning? How is that possible?’

  ‘That surprised me, too,’ Seb admitted.

  ‘And is Callie still on that buying trip?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Another long silence. ‘In that case...tag—you’re it. I need a favour.’

  From him? He looked at his watch and was surprised to find that it was still ticking. Why hadn’t time stood still? He’d presumed it would—along with nuns being found ice skating in hell—since Rowan was asking for his help.

  ‘I thought you’d rather drip hot wax in your eye than ever ask me for anything again.’

  ‘Can you blame me? You could’ve just bailed me out of jail, jerk-face.’

  And...hello, there it was: the tone of voice that had irritated him throughout his youth and into his twenties. Cool, mocking...nails-on-a-chalkboard irritating.

  ‘Your parents didn’t want me to—they were trying to teach you a lesson. And might I point out that calling me names is not a good way to induce me to do anything for you, Rowan?’

  Seb heard her mutter a swear word and he grinned. Oh, he did like having her at his mercy.

  ‘What do you want, Brat?’

  Brat—his childhood name for her. Callie, so blonde, had called her Black Beauty, or BB for short, on account of her jet-black hair and eyes teamed with creamy white skin. She’d been a knockout, looks-wise, since the day she’d been born. Pity she had the personality of a rabid honey badger.

  Brat suited her a lot better, and had the added bonus of annoying the hell out of her.

  ‘When is Callie due back?’

  He knew why she was asking: she’d rather eat nails than accept help from him. Since his sister travelled extensively as a buyer for a fashion store, her being in the country was not always guaranteed. ‘End of the month.’

  Another curse.

  ‘And Peter—your brother—is still in Bahrain,’ Seb added, his tone super pointed as he reached for a shirt and pulled it off its hanger.

  ‘I know that. I’m not completely estranged from my family!’ Rowan rose to take the bait. ‘But I didn’t know that my folks were planning a trip. They never go anywhere.’

  ‘They made the decision to go quite quickly.’ Seb walked back into his bedroom and stared at the black and white sketches of desert scenes above his rumpled bed. ‘So, now that you definitely know that I’m all you’ve got, do you want to tell me what the problem is?’

  She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I need to get back to London and I was wondering whether you’d loan...’

  When pigs flew!

  ‘No. I’m not lending you money.’

  ‘Then buy me a ticket...’

  ‘Ah, let me think about that for a sec? Mmm...no, I won’t buy you a ticket to London either.’

  ‘You are such a sadistic jerk.’

  ‘But I will pay for a ticket for you to get your bony butt back home to Cape Town.’

  Frustration cracked over the line as he listened to the background noise of the airport. ‘Seb, I can’t.’

  Hello? Rowan sounding contrite and beaten...? He’d
thought he’d never live to see the day. He didn’t attempt to snap the top button of his jeans; it required too much processing power. Rowan was home and calling him. And sounding reasonable. Good God.

  He knew it wouldn’t last—knew that within ten minutes of being in each other’s company they’d want to kill each other. They were oil and water, sun and snow, fire and ice.

  Seb instinctively looked towards the window and saw his calm, ordered, structured life mischievously flipping him off before waving goodbye and belting out of the window.

  Free spirits...why was he plagued with them?

  ‘Make a decision, B.’

  She ignored his shortening of the name he’d called her growing up. A sure sign that she was running out of energy to argue.

  ‘My mobile is dead, I have about a hundred pounds to my name and I don’t know anyone in Johannesburg. Guess I’m going to get my butt on a plane ho... to Cape Town.’

  ‘Good. Hang on a sec.’ Seb walked over to the laptop that stood on a desk in the corner of his room and tapped the keyboard, pulling up flights. He scanned the screen.

  ‘First flight I can get you on comes in at six tonight. Your ticket will be at the SAA counter. I’ll meet you in the airport bar,’ Seb told her.

  ‘Seb?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That last fight we had about Bronwyn...’

  It took him a moment to work out what she was talking about, to remember her stupid, childish gesture from nearly a decade ago.

  ‘The one where you presumed to tell me how and what to do with my life?’

  ‘Well, I was going to apologise—’

  ‘That would be a first.’

  ‘But you can shove it! And you, as you well know, have told me what to do my entire life! I might have voiced some comments about your girlfriend, but I didn’t leave a mate to rot in jail,’ Rowan countered, her voice heating again.

  ‘We were never mates, and it was a weekend—not a lifetime! And you bloody well deserved it.’

  ‘It was still mean and...’

  Seb rolled his eyes and made a noise that he hoped sounded like a bad connection. ‘Sorry, you’re breaking up...’