“What do you think?” she asked. “I really want to know.”
“I think,” he said, as her eyes, the clear green of dark emeralds, looked into his, “that I remember them because they were beautiful, and they were fantasy, but they weren’t sexual, or not just sexual. He didn’t seem to see them through that lens. They were about freedom, and magic, and beauty, and living all the way. They appealed to my adolescent self, you could say. The idea that reaching for the moon and stars was a wonderful thing, and you should go for it. And hit a shark in the nose to get there, if you had to. Most people never do get there. Most people never come close.”
The world had narrowed to this. To the two of them, this tiny table, flowers and fruit and scent and color. To her gaze fixed on his face. “You hate the sea,” she said slowly. “Yet you were on the beach, in a suit. Why?”
Exactly where he didn’t want to go. But if you had this moment, you had to take it. “Because it was time to try. I don’t hate the ocean, or not just the ocean. I hate the water, when it’s powerful.”
“There’s a reason,” she said.
A pause. “My father drowned in a river,” he said. “A long time ago. I was there. It was thirty years ago. Time to leave that fear behind.”
Wonderful. Now she felt sorry for him. Never your desired response. “Which you did,” she said. “You were out there to your waist, pulling that little girl in. Pulling me in.”
“Not exactly pounding a great white shark on the nose.”
“No. But close enough.”
A long moment, when they floated there. And then she started, asked, “What time is it?” and he looked at his watch, which had survived the traumas of the morning, as per advertised specifications, and said, “Almost ten.”
She closed her eyes and mouthed something that could have been a curse, and he stood up and said, “You need to get started.”
“Yes. I do. That event. Those rich wankers spoiling the countryside. I need to feed them.” She smiled, painfully now, and said, “You think you weren’t as brave as you wanted to be. I think it every day.”
“When can I see you?” he asked.
A sigh. “Tonight. If you’ll buy the pizza and pay for the stupid movie we stream, because that’s all I’ll want to do. If you’ve got a couch to lie on, though . . . I’m there.”
He glanced down at himself. The slogan didn’t look any better upside-down. Chill the Fuck Out. Never his mantra. “I’m an exclusive kind of guy,” he said, not that he wanted to say it.
“You’re not a resident kind of guy, though,” she answered. “Or are you?”
“Not even close. And yet.”
She smiled faintly. Ironically. And said, “Then not tonight, I reckon. You’ve caught me midstream, it seems. Reality bites, hey. You can keep the clothes.”
An hour and a half later, and another change of clothes. Why had she worn that dress? Why had she invited him to breakfast? Why had she done any of it? Call it temporary insanity, or the aftermath of the shark. Or maybe just his insane attractiveness, even in Gordy’s ridiculous clothes.
What was it? That he knew who he was, and that who he was—was somebody. He was powerful. That was the only word for it. Batman hadn’t just been a joke, and bloody hell, but that was sexy. And it was the way he paid attention. The way he’d listened, the way he’d looked at her when her dress had fallen down . . .
How carefully would a man like that kiss you? How long would he want to look at you? How seriously would he take the slow, sweet job of pleasing you? He’d want you to sit in his lap while he kissed you, too. She’d bet money on it. And he’d be so deliciously possessive.
How warm could you get in an air-conditioned van?
She needed to break up with Gordy. You couldn’t help your thoughts, but these were too many thoughts for a woman in love. There was only one answer. She wasn’t in love. Why hadn’t she faced it before? Because she’d wanted to have somebody. Bad reason.
She couldn’t have lied and said she wasn’t entangled. How would she feel if she found out he had? Horrible, that’s how. Betrayed. And if the way he’d drawn back on hearing it only made her want him more—well, that was those thoughts again.
He was American, he was nowhere close to being a resident, her fantasies were just that, because she had no idea who the bloke really was, and the episode was over. She didn’t even know his name. And, yes, if she’d been thinking faster, she could have said she’d get herself disentangled, but she so rarely did think that fast. Anyway, it would have sounded so desperate. Was a night on the couch with him worth feeling desperate? Plus whatever she’d feel afterwards?
“Nah, mate,” she muttered aloud. “Not so much.” You didn’t get into the match when you could already see you’d be bowled out.
Never mind. She’d see Gordy on Sunday night, and they’d have the talk. Too late for Mr. Hotness, but at least he’d shown her what she was missing. Meanwhile, it was time to get back to the part of her life that was actually going somewhere, which was why she was steering the white van off Coolamon Scenic Drive and onto a gravel road over which a brand-new white banner moved with the breeze.
Coorabell Heights
The Place of the Four Winds
Luxury view homesites selling now
The potholes on the onetime farm track had been filled, and the gravel was newly laid, probably about the same time that the rosebushes in their half-barrels lining the drive had been lifted off some truck. The rolling hills, though, in shades from lime to emerald, that unfolded like a rumpled patchwork quilt all the way to the sea in a hundred-eighty-degree view of serenity, space, and peace, were the same as always, and so were the birds calling from the trees, all trills and squawks and liquid melody, making her wish for a camera and a free afternoon.
Serenity and space and peace for now, that is. You could see the Cape all the way over to the right, and you could even see the lighthouse. That would add a half million to every overpriced property, she was sure.
Well, you couldn’t change the world. The Council had given its approval, and the development was going ahead. Hence today’s celebratory party/sales event, the kickoff before the earthmovers and heavy machinery came rumbling in and the peace went away.
An event that wasn’t going to fly if the tables weren’t even set up in the marquee. Bloody hell. She’d pulled the van to a stop and was jumping out on the thought, approaching Jamie, one of the waiters, because he was closest.
“Why aren’t the tables set up?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Dunno. The hire firm dropped everything off and scarpered.”
“Well, did you ask them?” she asked.
“Not my job, was it,” he answered sulkily. “I reckoned they were going for a smoko and they’d be back. How was I to know?”
She closed her eyes for a second, counted to three, reminded herself, You are a partner. It’s nobody’s job to fix this but yours, and opened them to find Jamie sidling away. She said, “Well, we’ll take care of it now. Grab the others, and let’s get cracking.”
Crystal, a pretty brunette who was, Willow was fairly sure, sleeping with Jamie, asked, “Are you sure we should be setting up? It's an injury risk, surely."
Willow kept her temper, if only just. “Well, we’d better do it all the same,” she said, managing a reasonably cheerful tone, “or none of us is going to get paid. Thank goodness the marquee’s up, anyway. That would’ve been a stretch.”
“What do we do about cutlery, though?” Crystal asked.
“What?” Willow asked. “Surely it’s here.” She walked over to a plastic tub beside the flat-folded tables and chairs and opened it. Wine glasses. Fine. Past that, pasteboard cartons from the wine dealer holding red wines, and sparkling and white wines in tubs of ice.
But no silverware?
No. No silverware. And no plates. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.
More crunching of gravel and slamming of car doors in the makeshift car park, and the rest of th
e wait staff, consisting of Beatriz, a Portuguese girl with liquid dark eyes and a lilting accent, and Martina, a blond German, hustled up. Martina asked, “Why aren’t we set up? We need to start, surely.”
Martina, Willow thought as usual, deserved a pay rise. She and Beatriz, unfortunately, wouldn’t be here long. Working holiday visas. “Yes,” she said, “we do. Here.” She beckoned them along with her. “We’ll do the tables in an elongated C, as usual, in the marquee. Two facing the sea, just here, and a leg on either side. The side toward the road,” she thought to specify. If she didn’t, Jamie was perfectly capable of setting them up on the seaward side, giving the guests a lovely view of the road, and then sulking when he had to move them. “Work space over to the left, behind the trees, where I’ll park the van once we unload some of this, so carry two tables over there, please. Jamie and Crystal, you take that, then start on the chairs. Conversational groups, please, off to the sides, beyond the marquee, in the shade of the trees. Or where the shade will be in an hour or two. Pretend it’s your party, and you want it to go. Martina and Beatriz, table linens, and then get started on the van.” Jamie had his mouth open, and she told him, “‘Other duties as assigned.’ They’ve just been assigned. Make a decision.”
He muttered something she could have foreseen, then headed for the stack of folding tables with zero enthusiasm.
“What are we going to do, though?” Crystal asked. “There aren’t any forks. We can’t serve without forks. Or plates.”
How about if we stand here and moan some more? Willow thought. How do you suppose that will work? “I’ll worry about that,” she said instead, as firmly as she could manage. She made sure they were starting to move, then retreated to the van and pulled out her mobile.
Damn the party suppliers. What had they been thinking? And why didn’t Nourish have its own basic stock of flatware and dinnerware, and another couple dishwashers in the kitchen? Why were they paying somebody else’s overhead and markup?
Before she could ring up, Coorabell Partners’ PR, Wendy Mulligan, came around the corner. Black hair pulled back into a knot, red lipstick, and severe summer-weight black trouser suit that said, I’m either your boss or a possible serial killer, her red mouth pressed into a thin line.
Oh, bugger.
“I was assured,” Wendy started out, like a woman auditioning for the role of “Bossy Headmistress” in the end-of-term play, “that your lot would have everything set up well before one. Here you are, nothing at all set up, and you have, what, four staff? How is that going to work?”
Not well at all, if you don’t bugger off and give me a chance to get it sorted, Willow thought and didn’t say. “I have it under control,” she said. “It’s not one yet.”
“How?” Wendy demanded. “Exactly how do you have it under control? Explain, please, because this is a dog’s breakfast, and it’s not what I paid ninety-five dollars per person to see.”
“Problem?”
The voice that came from behind Willow was calm. It was assured. And, she realized with an absolute sinking of her heart, it was familiar. She was glad to have had that brief heads-up, though, before she turned to look at him. He just looked gobsmacked.
Whatever his name was.
She asked, “How did you get your suit cleaned that fast? Or . . . how many of those do you own?”
“This one’s mid-gray,” he said. “The other was charcoal. If you explain the problem to me, maybe I can help.”
He wasn’t wearing his Chill the Fuck Out T-shirt anymore. But then, he didn’t need the shirt. He was already there.
“I’m handling this, Mr. Hunter,” Wendy announced—yes, bossily. “I’ll report in.” She definitely needed the shirt.
“Excuse us,” he told her pleasantly. She hovered a moment, then retreated three paces and pulled out her mobile, as if she were barely restraining herself from calling the Disaster Police and reporting Willow for Conduct Unbecoming a Caterer.
“You’re one of them,” Willow said. “You’re the client.”
“Yes. One of the ‘rich wankers spoiling the countryside,’ in fact. I looked up ‘wanker’ after I left you. That wasn’t very nice.” Before she could think of an answer to that, he looked around and said, “I don’t know much about catering, but I know something about unexpected wrinkles in the program. In fact, you could say they’re my specialty by now. Tell me what’s going on, and we’ll see what we can do.”
She sighed. “It’s so hard to hate you.”
He smiled. His calm, she’d discovered, was contagious. “I know. It’s my gift. What’s going on?”
“I’m finding out. Five minutes, and I’ll have a report and a plan.”
He nodded. “Five minutes.”
It took her longer than that. To start off, Amanda, her partner, who’d presumably engaged this particular underperforming vendor, or whose husband had done it, wasn’t answering, which closed that avenue. She finally ran Todd Ehrlich, manager of the party supply firm, to earth, and had the dubious pleasure of hearing him say, “I’ll ask Jim why he didn’t set up the tables. Must be a reason. As far as the rest of it—if it’s not there, we weren’t contracted for crockery and flatware. If it had been ordered, it’d be there.”
She did some channeling of Mr. Whatever-his-name-was Hunter and said, as evenly as she could manage, “Never mind that for now. Can you bring them?”
“Don’t have a truck,” he said. “They’re all out on calls. Sorry. Wedding season, you know.”
Of course she knew. “How about bunging a few boxes into the boot of your own car, then, and driving them up to me?”
“I’m on a job, love,” he said, already sounding bored. “Sorry.”
“Your wife,” she suggested. “Your teenaged child. Your kids’ nanny. Somebody who could meet me with a key, even.”
A pause. “I’m gay.”
She stopped talking, breathed, and said, “Is there some reason you’re not able to be more helpful? Something we’ve done that’s annoyed you? Tell me what it is, and I promise, I’ll help work it out.”
“Other than paying late every time, you mean? And having to ring Tom and remind him?”
Oh. “If I remind you that I’m Amanda’s new partner,” she said slowly, resisting the urge to wipe her palms on her trousers, “and tell you I’ll be taking care that it doesn’t happen again, does it help?”
“Sorry, love,” he said, and actually sounded a tiny bit that way. “I really can’t. Everybody with keys is scattered to the four winds at the moment.”
“Right,” she said, and forced herself to think. “So tell me. Pretend I’m your . . . your friend, just getting started in the business, and I’m up here near Coorabell with no lovely white plates or handy flatware, and heaps of shiny people with too much money will be turning up in a . . .” She consulted her watch. “An hour and a half. What’s your advice, as an expert?”
“If you have glasses,” he said, “start them on drinks. And then somebody drives like hell. Sorry. Got to go. The bride’s mum is looking frantic.”
He rang off, and Willow swore. And, yes, there was Mr. Too-Cool Hunter again. He asked, “What can I do?”
Never complain, never explain. Fake it till you make it. She’d heard it a hundred times. The last thing she should do was to tell the client that he’d be getting anything second-best. She abandoned all wisdom and confessed instead. “No plates. No silverware. And my last resort just threw me to the wolves.”
“Right,” he said. “Is there someplace close enough for our purposes that sells an approximation?”
“No,” she admitted. “Not the good stuff. It’s going to have to be Woolworth’s best disposables, but it’s at least twenty minutes each way. More, on Friday afternoon. I have one girl I could send and trust to make good decisions, but then I’m short here, and we need to be serving sparkling wine in less than an hour. And I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I should be making it work, so you don’t realize it was meant to be any othe
r way and try for a discount.”
“Hmm.” There was a light in his gray eyes, and he was very nearly smiling. Easy for him. It wasn’t his brand-new partnership, and even if it had been, he clearly wasn’t reaching for that moon anymore. He was already there. “And you can’t go for them, or you won’t be serving sparkling wine in an hour. Right, then. We’re expecting eighty people? A hundred?”
“A hundred was what I cooked for. I’ll double that on plates, because you don’t put sweets on your nibbles plate. It could even be mix-and-match at Woolie’s. If they’re eating off Winnie-the-Pooh plates, do me a favor and pretend you don’t notice.”
“I’ll notice,” he said, “because I’m going. It’s my event,” he went on when she would have said something, “and I do trust my judgment. We’ll make it a picnic. In the States, we’d have red-checked tablecloths. Does that work?”
“Oh!” It was like he’d flipped the Idea Switch, and she wasn’t going to argue anyway. She needed help. “Australia Day next week. They’ll have some sort of paper tablecloths for it at Woolie’s. Get as many of those as you can grab. That’ll help. Blue and white plates, maybe, as sturdy as you can get them. And flowers, if you can find galvanized buckets for them, or anything at all rustic. We’ll put wine bottles around them, and ice inside, like it’s a theme. Country picnic. That’s what you’re selling, right? Everyone’s personal slice of previously pristine Aussie hinterland?”
“I’m ignoring the sarcasm,” he said, “and heading out to get it.”
“Wait,” she said. “You need the van, except that it’s full of trays of food. Bugger.”
Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Page 4