Nobody came back from hours spent one-on-one with her uncle looking relaxed. Simply not possible. Maybe it was drugs.
He wasn’t taking drugs anymore, though. Face facts. It was Brett.
He’d unrolled the sleeves and added the jacket and tie for dinner at Patina, the flash new restaurant on the river, and he looked as perfect, and as perfectly at ease, as he had when she’d seen him at that first event. His hair was cut short and neat again, with that silver at his temples like he’d had it done on purpose, and his tie was a rich crimson that had to be silk. If she hadn’t handed him the blue plastic bag when he’d been sick in hospital, she wouldn’t have believed he was capable of a weak moment.
As for her, she was wearing her blue bandanna-print sundress. It was the floatiest thing she owned, and this seemed like a floaty-dress occasion. But when she and Azra came out of her old bedroom after dressing for dinner, Brett looked at Azra first. She was in a structured, wine-colored jersey frock that stopped above her knees, making the most of the bombshell potential Willow didn’t usually see, and wedge heels that flattered her pretty legs. Her shiny dark hair was blown out, her huge brown eyes expertly shadowed, and if her mum had seen her tonight, maybe she wouldn’t have been so worried.
Brett said, “You look beautiful, Azra,” and so clearly meant it, and if Willow hadn’t been in love with him before? Surely, that would have been the moment.
And then he looked at her. At the hair Azra had helped her put up, the dress he’d seen before, and her new sandals. They weren’t anything towering, but they were so pretty, fawn-colored suede with buckled ankle straps and cone-shaped heels, the leather studded with silver in a badass way she hadn’t been able to resist. Her favorite thing she’d bought today, even if she’d had to close her eyes at the price. Brett took it all in, slowly, and said, “And so do you.”
She said, “Hope you like them, mate, because you bought them. I can actually walk in them. That’s the only reason I let Azra persuade me. I bought a purse, too, see? Actually, I bought two. Azra said I had to. I’ve got a black one as well. After this, though, I plan to go back to the plastic zip bag. Fair warning. I am wearing makeup, though. I hope you’re pleased.”
Uncle Colin looked surprised, or maybe that was amused—she could never tell—but Brett laughed out loud and said, “I am. Pleased, that is. I’m also a lucky man.”
Now, she was sitting on the upper terrace of the old Customs House, eating chargrilled prawns, grilled barramundi with sunflower seeds and lemon, and tender gnocchi with roasted pine nuts, while Aunt Fiona brought Azra ever-further out of her shell, and Brett chimed in from time to time with a word, his smile, and all the warmth in his gray eyes. Azra blossomed under the attention, and Brett didn’t wilt once under Colin’s gaze, something Willow didn’t always achieve herself.
As for her, she crossed her legs like the pretty girl she so rarely felt, or like a woman whose hair was put up in a soft, braided twist complete with a few tiny white orchids stuck into one side, something she’d feared would look stupid and Azra had insisted on anyway.
Just for tonight, she shoved the worry about Nourish into a back room of her brain, slammed the door, and let the conversation, the summer-warm breeze, and the buzz of the night wash over her. The purple lights of the Story Bridge were reflected in the black water of the river, the sleek white CityCat ferries passed alongside like ghosts, and the bright diamonds of light shone from the nosebleed-tall high-rises, backlighting the golden glow of the Customs House dome, its columned façade and classical pediments still stately after all these years. Beside her, Brett wasn’t holding her hand, but she knew he was as aware of her as she was of him.
It was enough to be going on with. It was, actually, pretty bloody perfect.
They lingered over the sweet course—in her case, a crème brûlée with fresh raspberries that tasted like silken heaven—and she knew they should start home soon and get ready for tomorrow’s flight, but she didn’t want to leave. Out there was the unknown, and here, tonight, it was all warmth and laughter, the soft strains of classical music, and Brett’s gray eyes.
The music stopped and started again, a familiar tune that she couldn’t place, evoking full skirts and ballrooms. She looked the question at Brett, and he said, “Tchaikovsky. Waltz of the Flowers.”
“Why do Russians write the most beautiful music?” she asked.
“Maybe because it’s so cold there,” he said, “and they’re desperate to feel something. I’ve been familiar with that myself. Formerly.”
Another bump of her heart. The music became more lyrical, more insistent, and Uncle Colin’s chair scraped against the stone terrace as he stood.
They were going, then, even though all she wanted was five more minutes. Pity you couldn’t always get what you wanted.
Her uncle didn’t suggest it, though. Instead, he held out a hand to his wife and said, “Would you do me the honor, Mrs. Blackstone?”
Aunt Fiona, wearing a deep-blue dress and heels of her own, didn’t answer. She just smiled, stood up with the poise of a woman who knew she was loved, and put her hand in his.
It wasn’t that Willow hadn’t known they could dance. Army social functions had always included dancing, and she’d seen them dance at their sons’ joint wedding just months ago. But the sight of her uncle, absolutely unself-conscious, his posture as perfect as always and his figure as trim, leading his wife down the stone steps, then taking her in his arms and beginning to waltz her in slow circles on the pedestrian walkway below, made her heart fill with longing. The two of them danced through circles of light and pockets of shadow, while Fiona’s skirt billowed out around her and she looked twenty, falling in love with a man who treated her like a queen.
Pedestrians veered around the two of them, a tourist stopped to snap a photo and then another one took a video, and all of it was making a lump rise in Willow’s throat. The music turned to something more delicate, and Colin pulled Fiona closer and looked at her as if it were the first time, not like they’d been doing this for nearly forty years.
Beside her, Azra sighed and said, “Relationship goals.”
“Yeah,” Willow said. “You could say so.”
“Can you dance?” Brett asked her.
“Yes, though not as well as that. How about you?”
“Not now, unfortunately,” he said.
When the song was over, they left. But it had been a beautiful moment.
Back at home again, after Brett and Azra had climbed back into the car after saying goodnight, Aunt Fiona pulled her away from it, gave her a cuddle, and said, “You smell wonderful, darling, and you look even more beautiful than that. Something about happiness, I’d say. Maybe even something about love.”
“I don’t . . .” Willow started to say, then stopped. “I don’t know what it is. It’s too soon for that, surely. Definitely too soon to be meeting his mum, all the way in the States. What am I doing?”
“Following your heart. It works sometimes, I hear. And too soon? Brett doesn’t seem to think so. I’ve never seen a man more sure of what he wants, or more at home in his skin. Other than your uncle, that is.” Fiona glanced over at the car, then lowered her voice and went on. “I won’t have a chance to say this over the next week, because you’ll be too stubborn to ring me and share. So I’m going to share myself. He’s a lovely man, Willow.”
“He’s so bloody rich, though,” Willow tried to explain. When her aunt laughed, she said, “All right, but what if I’m being swept off my feet?”
“I’m sure you are,” her aunt said. “I think I am, and I’m just standing to the side and watching. How sweet is he with darling Azra? That’s down to his character, surely, because he doesn’t have to do that. He walked the golf course on crutches with your uncle today, too. He must have known he’d be put through the mill, but I reckon he wanted to clear that hurdle, because it’ll matter to you that he did. He did clear it, too.”
“Really? What did Uncle Colin say?”
Her aunt laughed. “Said, ‘He’ll do,’ like he was judging the sheepdogs, but I know what he meant. That doesn’t come along every day, and it doesn’t have anything to do with how much money he has. Is Jace a different person than he was at twenty? Is Rafe? If not, why would you imagine Brett is?”
“He is different, though,” Willow said. “I’m sure of it. He’s—all kinds of things.” She was so very bad at explaining, even to herself. Especially to herself. “He’s complicated. And—all right, yes. He’s bloody wonderful. So wonderful he scares me.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” Fiona said. “Sometimes, life comes along when you least expect it, for better or worse. You’ve had the ‘worse.’ Maybe you could start to believe in the ‘better.’ Sometimes, you just have to go on and surf the wave, even if it’s a big one. Especially if it’s a big one. What are you going to do, let it go on without you? But think about this. Just because you’re being swept off your feet, that doesn’t mean your eyes aren’t open. You could trust yourself to ride that wave, and to decide for yourself how it feels, and whether you want to keep on riding it, too. It’s an option.”
Willow was quiet on the hour-long flight to Sydney the next day, and Brett wished he knew how to interpret that. Nervous about this trip, probably, and wondering what it meant.
She was always two steps forward, one step back, and it was driving him crazy. She’d only brought one small suitcase, in the end, which she’d borrowed from her aunt. When she’d wheeled it out to the car last night and he’d said, “That’s not much shopping for an afternoon,” she’d said, “Two pairs of jeans, three jumpers, this sweater thing—coat thing—whatever, and three pairs of shoes? Not to mention those purses. Suitcase full of money, more like. I knew jeans could cost hundreds of dollars. I just didn’t know anybody actually paid it.”
Azra had rolled her eyes at Brett, he’d grinned at her and said, “Baby steps. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart,” and she’d laughed. He could imagine the tug-of-war that had taken place in those dressing rooms, because he’d sneaked a look at his MasterCard status. Azra was tougher than she looked.
She’d done a good job on today’s outfit, too. Willow was wearing a whisper-light, sleeveless, ribbed red sweater that had some silk in it, with a wide neckline that showed off her beautiful skin. It wasn’t anything like winter-ready, but he wasn’t going to be complaining. She’d tucked it into the skinniest of indigo jeans, her boots were low, Western, embroidered all over, and would have inspired lust in his sisters’ hearts, and her hair was down and curly, with a jeweled comb stuck into one side to hold it away from her face. Over her arm, she held the cream-colored “sweater thing. Coat thing. Whatever,” which looked like it had come from an appropriately soft and fleecy animal. That and the shoes, he’d bet, had been Azra’s toughest battles, but she’d won.
Of course, when Willow had climbed the steps to the jet, the pilot had stared, forcing Brett to give him a hard look, so there was that.
She’d dressed, in fact, like a woman who believed at last that her body was beautiful, and if that made his life a little less comfortable, that was how it was going to have to be.
She must have noticed that he’d stopped making notes on the yellow legal pad beside his laptop, because she asked, “What? Did you find something?”
“Not yet.” He’d decided that this trip was the time to go through Nourish’s numbers. So far, the amounts paid to vendors matched the invoices, right enough, and the receipts matched the invoices to the clients. He didn’t know enough about caterers’ pricing structures, though, to tell if something was off. His nose was twitching, that was all he could say at this point. “What I need,” he told her, “is something else. There must be a database that includes the info for each event. The client, the menu, the event location, the breakdown of the outlays, and preferably photos. That’s how I’d do it if it were me, at least. A database, so I could sort it different ways. I’d want to have a sort of . . .” He made a gesture.
“Look book,” she said. “That’s what Azra would call it. You’re right, though I haven’t seen it done with photos. Good idea. I’m visual. It would help me.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m guessing there’s something like that. The menus for each event, at least, in a digital file, even if they aren’t matched to the outlays in the way I’d do. I’d like to get an idea of how much a certain type of menu should cost and what extras you might or might not have, more of a macro picture. If the database doesn’t exist, I’ll match things up the old-fashioned way, but I need the menus, at least, and the numbers served. Where’s that file?”
“I don’t know.” She was looking worried again. He’d rather not have brought it up at all, but problems didn’t go away because you shut your eyes. “I’d have to ask Amanda, and I don’t know how she’ll take it.”
“You don’t need to worry about what she thinks,” he tried to explain. “She needs to worry about what you think, and I’ll bet she’s doing it. She had a good thing going, and she messed it up. Send her a text and ask her for the other documents, the ones that detail the bookings and the associated menus. Don’t ask if there is such a thing,” he added before she could say it. “Ask like you already know there is, and she’d better hand it over. It’s a power struggle, and if you haven’t come out ahead so far, it’s because you haven’t called her on the fact that she needs you more than you need her. Time to do it.”
“Not so much,” Willow said. “You forget that I’m the one with the eighty thousand sunk, and who isn’t holding the checkbook. I’m not feeling like the winner in any power struggle just now, especially with Azra possibly leaving. More like a woman who just cut her own brake cables. If it weren’t for that job of yours—which I no longer have, I’ll point out, and a week before I was expecting it to end—even next month’s rent would be looking dicey.”
“The company’s fixed assets have to be worth at least a hundred thousand.” Brett hung onto his patience, because that was what he did. “The kitchen equipment, and the vans? Worst-case scenario, you have the entire value reassessed—and if it hasn’t increased since you bought in, I’m very surprised, because it’ll be based on net profit—and you get out with roughly what you put in.” He held up the document he’d printed this morning, before he’d left to visit the surgeon. Willow’s partnership agreement, which, fortunately, she’d had on her laptop. “Six weeks’ notice required to dissolve the partnership at any time, and no notice required in cases of fraud or malfeasance. You’re not locked into anything.”
“What about lawyers’ fees to make it happen?” she asked.
“Ah.” He smiled. “Now, there you have me. Always the sticky part. That’s why you keep that threat alive in the back of her mind rather than actually jumping in to do it. You don’t want to give her too much time to think that through herself. If this thing is going to work for you, though, it seems to me that it has to work differently. Now’s the time to ask for what you need.”
She took a breath, nodded, and started to text, and he thought, You’d better be right, Hunter. He also thought, This firm of hers that you’re trying to save? It’s in Australia, genius.
One step at a time.
She also might be quiet, of course, because she’d only been on a private jet once before. That much, he’d got out of her when they’d climbed aboard.
“Not even with Rafe?” he’d asked.
“He’s a regular bloke when he comes home, or as much as he can be. Imagine my uncle Colin if he were anything else. He’s got what you’d call a withering glare, you must admit. Rafe and Jace chartered a jet to bring everybody to Oz for the wedding, but I was already here, wasn’t I? Good job we’re flying to the States in the normal way, or I’d know I was reaching above my touch. Who was that bloke who flew into the sun and melted his wings? That’d be me.”
He sure hoped he’d guessed right on the rest of this.
Was it so wrong to want to spoil a woman?
When the little jet made a circle over the white sails of the Opera House and the heavy iron tracery of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Willow had to sigh. How could any building be as beautiful from the air as that? The Opera House could look like a series of white shells, or an enormous creamy-white magnolia blossom. Or, most of all, like a ship, its white sails bellying out as it rode across the sapphire surface of the harbor. At night, the golden glow of those lit-up sails was so beautiful, it stung, and on a sunny day like today, it made your heart lift as if the white wings could carry you straight up into the air.
“Can you see?” she remembered to ask Brett, drawing back.
“Well enough,” he said. “I’m fine. You go on and look.”
“You think I’m being unsophisticated. I don’t get to Sydney much, though, and it’s worth looking at.”
“I don’t think you’re unsophisticated at all. I think you enjoy life. It’s the first thing I noticed about you.”
How was he always able to make her warm up like this? “It was?”
“You were putting on your wetsuit,” he said, “so clearly wanting to get into the water, and you were about the most alive person I’d ever seen. You looked like there was nothing more wonderful than getting to have that day. That minute. That’s the only reason I saw the shark, was because I was still watching you.”
She knew she was smiling like a fool. “Lucky for me, then.”
“Lucky for me, too. Of course, I was worried for a minute, given the rainbow and sparkly glitter on your surfboard, not to mention the unicorn, that I’d been staring at a seventeen-year-old. Thanks for not being a teenager. And you’re right about Sydney. Most things don’t look as good in reality as you imagine them, but that view’s better than anything you’ve seen in pictures. Takes your breath away, if you’re paying attention, and you’re always paying attention.”
“Did you know,” she asked, wishing she could finally, just once, have the courage to tell him how much she loved him, “that there was an international competition for the design of the Opera House? They only got around two hundred entries, and the winner was a Danish fella who’d never done a design outside his country. Fairly young, and nobody had ever heard of him. I don’t think he’d ever even been to Australia, but he caught it right there, like he held the whole place—” She held out her cupped palms, “in his hands. It’s a sacred site to the Gadigal people as well, so whatever was there had to work for the place, not be just another building. I think the secret is the curve in the sails, and the way they fit into each other. It’s not symmetrical, but it fits all the same, and it’s beautiful from every side. From land and from sea, like they’re not two separate places after all. Building is what you do, so . . . how did he do that?”
Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Page 30