by Ally Blake
“What if I am?”
“Then you should know; I’m beyond help.”
Eyes on hers, Finn lifted his glass and downed the lot in one go. Then he turned till his legs settled back under the bar, lifted his glass towards the bartender calling for another. This time just the one.
April felt like she’d been flung from a moving merry-go-round – her head spun, her tummy came over all funny.
Figuring Hazel couldn’t possibly say she hadn’t given the exercise a red hot go, April slid carefully from the stool, gritting her teeth as it wobbled. “Thanks for the drink, Finn. I hope you figure out whatever it was you came here to figure out.”
He nodded as she backed away, his body once again tight as a high wire. It seemed he’d used his allocated number of man-words for the day.
Or maybe not.
“Wait,” he said, forcing her to stop.
She spun. Adrenaline depleted, all she had left in her was a raised eyebrow.
A ghost of a smile hooked at one cheek. “Your dress.”
His gaze dropped, as did hers to find her bustle had shifted and was sticking out at one side. Tugging it back into place she discovered that wasn’t the worst of it. The other side of her dress must have caught on the stool as she’d dismounted and had bunched up at one side revealing a goodly portion of bare thigh.
Her cloud of hair fell over her face as she bent to yank the hem of her dress back to a more modest length to avoid a “hi there” to the bar at large.
“Thanks,” she grumbled, pushing her hair back into place only to nearly lose her hand in the riot of curls. She twirled the length into a low bun only to have a curl spring free and dance over one eye. She blew it away with a frustrated burst of air.
“No,” he said, “thank you.”
He lifted his glass as the smile hit his eyes.
And this time there was no fighting the laugh that spilled out of her.
Grabbing the hem of her wonky dress she curtseyed – deeply and humbly. Then she walked away, feeling like the entire room full of men were now watching her. Because flashing her wares was apparently a great way to make herself irresistible.
And lo and behold, there was Hazel, sitting innocently at their table, sipping on her champagne. “Success?”
“I have no idea how to measure that,” April said as she plonked, exhausted, on the chair trying not to calculate how many metres behind her Finn sat since she could still feel that magnetic pull.
“Did you make a mark? Will he think of you again at home tonight? Will he remember you when next he comes to this bar?”
Considering she’d had her skirt shucked up to her hoo-hah? “There’s a good chance.”
“Mmm. And how does that make you feel?”
April opened her mouth to make a joke... and stopped herself. How did she feel? Her heart raced. Her skin hummed all over. Her synapses were firing on all cylinders. Like she’d run a race, eaten a spoonful of sugar, and been bitten by an experimental spider, Spidey-style.
It was the complete opposite of the foreboding sense of ennui that had been hovering over her for weeks.
“It was exhilarating.”
Hazel smacked one hand against the other. If she’d been standing she might well have leapt in the air and tapped her heels together, cowgirl style. And April finally got it. No matter her methodology, Hazel was in her corner. And having anyone in her corner was a wonderful thing.
“Remember that feeling, darling,” Hazel said. “In life, at work, in love. Less than that is never enough. Never.”
“I will.”
“Good girl. Now... What about the man?” Hazel casually—not casually—sipped at her bubbly. “Was there a connection there?”
A thousand thoughts fought for supremacy – Finn’s warm breath scooting past April’s ear and his strong hand at her waist when he’d stopped her from falling from the stool, his deep, dark blue eyes looking into hers as if he was trying to figure her out, the unexpected breadth of his smile as she’d flashed him –
More like being smacked across the back of the head with a plank than a “connection”.
April shook her head. “I told you he’s not my type.” Then, belatedly, “Which doesn’t matter. Because I’m not after a date.”
“So you keep telling me.” Hazel sat forward. “Trust that your fairy godmother has been around the block a few times and bear with me for a second. Have you noticed that you meet the most handsome, witty, intelligent, successful men when you are no longer available to them?”
April breathed out hard. “No, I haven’t.” Then again, Erica had always complained that April walked through life like some kind of ambivalent cartoon princess, too busy spreading fairy dust and worrying about everyone else’s immediate happiness to notice anything not directly in her sights. “But I have known men who are restless, if that’s what you mean. Always looking outwards to find satisfaction.”
Hazel smiled, though it was a slightly sad smile.
“But that’s only an alpha thing, right?” April asked.
“Mostly.” A beat, then, “Marcy, my assistant, she calls them ‘alpha-holes’. I do fear for her generation.”
Hmmm. Another reason to adore a beta. So much simpler. In fact, give her a luckless epsilon and she’d have her absolute dreamboat.
But Hazel wasn’t done. “Imagine, then, that you are what other men have.”
April shuffled on her seat. Hazel held up a staying hand.
“On the other side of that same coin, picture yourself sexless, alone, and disinterested. Now imagine how that might bleed into other parts of your life.”
April crossed and uncrossed her eyes in an effort to disentangle that thought. “Are you suggesting that if I was dating someone fabulous, the people in charge of hiring would find me more hireable?”
Hazel held out both hands and leant back in her chair, all here endeth the lesson.
April smiled, no teeth.
For all her “trust me” vibes, April was pretty sure Hazel hadn’t given up on the idea of getting April a man to go with her promotion. Lucky for April she was used to stubborn women having grown up around nothing else.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Glad to hear it,” Hazel said, glancing over April’s shoulder with her own brand of enigmatic smile.
Five minutes later, April walked out of the Chaser bar and back into the foyer of the Hotel Rouen feeling as if she’d been to the moon and back through a wormhole.
Untying her scarf and stuffing it into her bag she spared a glance for the fountain.
Thankfully the impulse to get in the water with a stone god of the sea had dissipated, the urge now replaced with a new focus – the Cinderella Project. Left of centre Hazel’s methods might be, April already felt as if things had shifted. In a good way.
She broke eye contact with Triton—or was it Neptune?—and narrowly avoided running smack, bang, into a potted palm.
Because at the last second she noticed that with the granite jaw, the sweeping hairline, the pure masculine energy, the god of the fountain looked a heck of a lot like Finn.
Shaken, she apologised to the palm as she backed away. And, yep, that was a blush creeping into her cheeks. Holding a hand over her face so as not to make eye contact with the statue again, she fled.
There had to be an easier way to get a promotion.
Chapter Three
There had to be an easier way to leave a job behind.
Set to silent, Finn’s phone vibrated on the bar beside his elbow.
Ignoring it, he tugged at the loosened knot of his tie, undid the thing, and shoved it into the pocket of his pants.
The phone buzzed again.
“Your phone,” the bartender said, eyeing the vibrating phone as it juddered in an untidy circle over the bar.
“That it is.”
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
“Whoever wants you, wants you bad.”
In Finn’s experience he’d always been the o
ne who’d wanted things bad. Those who wanted him didn’t want for much at all.
The phone quieted. Finn sensed the bartender holding his breath.
It rang again. Locking his jaw Finn grabbed the phone, swiped right, lifted the phone to his ear. “Ward.”
Frank’s voice barked into his ear. “Where are you?”
“Out and about.”
“Clearly. The Jamesons were expecting you with the contracts a half hour ago.”
Finn pressed a thumb into his temple. “They got them twenty-five minutes ago.” Finn had the text with photo of delivery signature to prove it.
He didn’t expand on the fact that he’d sent a runner to do the job because he’d been double-booked. The job was done. Problem fixed. In his experience, the hows rarely mattered.
“Also, my wife was trying to get you –”
“She got me.” Finn growled. Hence the double booking.
Frank laughed. “Before I did? The woman has skills.”
And an eagle eye. She’d cornered him at Frank’s New Years party as he’d been about to make his great escape, hounding him with questions about his work, his personal life. Asking whether he was happy.
The last thing Finn needed was for Frank to be worrying if Finn was “happy”. He needed Frank to believe everything was as it always had been. For the time being, at least. Frank didn’t deserve to be kept in the dark either, but it was best for now. Safest.
Finn ran a hand over his face. “If you don’t need anything else, I’ll call it a day. See you in the morning.”
Frank’s silence was telling. Finn had never called anything a day in the decade and a bit he’d been working for Frank. Had never finished a minute before his boss, and often hours after. It was how he’d risen from nothing to become Frank’s right hand.
“Good with me,” Frank said as if nothing was amiss. “See you then.”
Finn rang off. Then slipped a note onto the bar to cover the two scotches he’d drunk and the two he hadn’t – one of which sat half full on the bar, the tinge of barely there lipstick kissed to its rim.
He stared at the kiss mark for a beat. Then dragged his eyes away.
Gathering his jacket, he yanked it over one arm then the other, flicking it into place across his shoulders.
And caught Hazel’s eye.
To anyone watching there’d have been nothing between them. No recognition. But the woman could communicate a novel with little more than a twinkle in her eye.
He hadn’t needed a novel, just an indication that she was content with his work. He’d need her on his side when the time came to make a decision. He’d need her for Frank.
Hazel lifted her glass of bubbly, took a sip, left a tip and a note, grabbed her bag and sashayed from the bar.
Passing her table, Finn picked up the note to find it written on expensive paper covered in tiny embossed hearts.
It read—
No wonder my husband adores you. You are a gentleman of the first order. Thank you for the help. It is much appreciated. Hazel, xXx
He breathed out his relief. Glad he’d never have to go through that again.
When she’d called asking for a favour, Hazel had played like it was some kind of time-critical emergency. She’d filled him in on the fact that she’d landed a client for her new business. Officially her first. He might be needed to act the part of “stranger in a bar”. He might not. But if he could show up at a certain place and time just in case. He’d waited. Half expecting to be left alone. Half expecting a panic-stricken spinster on death’s door. Never having a problem knowing which end of a woman was up—even before the swank job and the tailored suits—he’d planned to shout her a chardonnay while smiling kindly at stories of her hairless cats and her intolerance to bad language.
Then he’d seen the girl.
With her wild auburn hair, wide pink mouth, and achingly sweet face, she was less nervous spinster than bewitching wood nymph.
When her direct, smoky-grey eyes had settled on him like a charm, he’d known – the way a good soldier knows when he’s besieged – he’d have to find another way to handle Hazel. For the only solution was retreat.
Only the wood nymph hadn’t backed down. Blunt as a used pencil and as refreshing as a hit of lemon. She’d marched on, determined despite all deterrents. Forcing him to play.
Frank would have thought her delightful.
Finn’s father would have preferred the term “perfect mark”.
While Finn couldn’t remember ever having met a woman who’d seemed so alive. The way she fidgeted, constantly, on the wonky stool, her eyes drinking him in, her words refusing to let him get away with anything, she was a livewire in danger of setting the place, and him, on fire.
Shaking off the sense that he could still feel the woman’s warmth as if it lingered on his skin, he slipped the note into the inner pocket of his jacket. Not the one that held the letter he couldn’t seem to leave home without. The other pocket.
Then he stalked out of the bar, through the lobby with its ostentatious fountain, and out the door into a balmy Sydney late afternoon.
Making his way under the eponymous bridge spanning Sydney Harbour, he ducked between long patches of shade cast by its massive, dank pylons.
Twenty minutes later he was inside his apartment. The place was crisp and modern. All sharp edges and cool greys. An example of Spartan chic, it boasted a couch, a TV – for company rather than entertainment – a bed. He used the kitchen bench for his laptop, and owned linen for one. Compared to living out of a duffel bag it was practically ostentatious.
The lights in his kitchen turned on by themselves as he hit the raised platform. He opened the fridge, divested it of a bottle of chilled water and took himself to the couch.
Beyond the smoky windows and in between the silhouette of a building or two, a curved corner of the Sydney Opera House gleamed back at him, the setting sun glinting off her peaks and troughs.
As a kid he’d never have conceived of living in such a place. Or that he’d one day be contemplating the most bloodless way to leave it all behind.
But he could do it. If that was what it came to, he could walk away.
Last time it hadn’t been pretty. Sleeping wherever he landed – inside or out. Working for literal scraps. He’d inched so close to falling back on the deeply ingrained grifting skills he’d vowed to leave behind for good. Then, on the knife’s edge of discovering whether his instinct for survival trumped his need for self-respect, Frank had walked through the door of the diner in which Finn was bussing tables, and had seen the banked energy behind the busboy’s careful facade and taken a risk.
This time it would be easier. Too easy, really. He had the skills and the means. Enough squirreled away to keep him fed and sheltered for ten lifetimes.
It would take very little effort for Finn Ward to no longer exist.
The fact that he wanted to be Finn Ward was beside the point.
Knowing he was only delaying the inevitable, Finn pulled the letter from his suit pocket, his tired eyes running over the interstate address of his father’s lawyer.
The letterhead was simple; black on white, no logo. The paper cheap; a little slippery to the touch. The language dry. The request impossible.
He read it. Slowly. One word at a time as if hoping the words would change. But the sentiment was clear cut—would he please write a letter to the parole board in support of his father’s early release.
Why the ever living fuck would anyone in their right mind believe he would be amenable to such a petition?
He’d not seen his father in fifteen years. Finn had done everything in his power to put the man’s very existence out of his head. Despite Finn’s atrocious past, he’d made something of himself. Hell, this evening he’d thrown down a fifty dollar bill on the bar like it was nothing.
Yet in the slicing open of an envelope none of that mattered. He was back in that place; a scared kid, with a broken shoulder, a decimated heart, and blood on
his hands.
When the vowels and consonants started to swim before Finn’s eyes he folded the creased paper back into a rectangle and slid it into its envelope.
Yet, as he fell asleep later that night, it was not to a cacophony of dark shadows or phantom memories, it was to dreaming of a kiss mark on a glass.
The next day, April nudged her Fiat into a spot in the staff car park at the Halcyon Whole Foods Wholesale home base, a massive double-storey warehouse in Woolloomooloo.
The rear of the warehouse was a bustle of activity with palettes, trucks, and containers filled with magical, organic wonders from the vast reaches of the planet, loading and unloading day and night.
April waited for a small forklift to bump along the roadway then jogged carefully to the curb, her sandals slapping happily against the bitumen, her long maxi-dress swishing about her legs as she moved through the staff gate towards the public face of the operation – the show room.
The company’s mission statement had been burned over and over again into the pelmet running the breadth of the building—Balance In All Things. And inside was a glorious advertisement for the Halcyon brand.
Pocked-concrete floors, covered in deliberately scattered sawdust, glowed gently beneath high ceilings crisscrossed in gorgeous old beams. The decor boasted a feast of texture in an infinite range of beige. Music piped through the expanse as if from the heavens above – African drums, Asian strings, South American jungle noises. Wide aisles invited wanderers to dip into wooden crates filled with shiny piles of single-sourced coffee beans, whole grains, seeds, and super foods of every kind.
One corner of the monolithic space housed a cafe run by tall, gorgeous, mung-bean-thin waifs and – three times a week – Erica, for all the thanks that had gotten April for getting her sister the job. They sold health-centric recipe books as well as decaf, dairy-free, soy, sugarless muck. Not that she’d ever say so out loud!
Edging around a group of bearded, sandalled, dreadlocked gents who were enjoying a collective orgasm over the aroma of sun-dried legumes—which April quietly thought smelled like dirt—she disappeared behind a wall of Hessian mats and poked her security key into the discreet slot in a rustic, wood-panelled wall. Industrial lift doors opened and she slipped inside, and was soon whisked to the office space above.