Fly In Fly Out

by Evie Snow

  Peeking at Amy in the mirror, with her bright blue eyes, beautifully styled blonde curls, and petite, curvy body window-dressed to perfection in a gorgeous pair of white capris, a little polka-dot shirt, and four-inch red heels, Jo had a feeling the cake wasn’t all the men turned up for.

  Two hours later, the world had refashioned itself into a nicer, kinder place. Jo’s hair was now a deep chestnut and shaped to accentuate her high cheekbones and bring out the warmth in her dark-brown eyes. She was also now blessedly free of monobrow, moustache, leg hair, and bikini line and was getting high on the smell of acetone while Amy painted her toenails a delightful slutty red.

  “So, you gonna tell me why you didn’t want me to know you’ve been cozying up to the Hardys enough to sublet my place out to Stephen?” Jo asked Amy’s head of carefully arranged platinum-blonde curls as she painstakingly applied polish to one of Jo’s little toenails.

  “Nope.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Yep.” Amy looked up with a cheeky grin dimpling her round cheeks before her expression turned serious. “Seriously, hon, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d mind since you were going to New York. If I’d known you were going to come home like this, I wouldn’t have gone along with it. Scott’s taking care of it though, right?”

  “Yeah. Think so.” Jo bit her lip. “You have no idea, Amy. I work with men all day, every day. Coming home to some guy sleeping in my bed when all I wanted to do was pass out . . . it really sucked.”

  Amy patted her leg. “I’m really sorry about that. But don’t worry. It’ll all be fixed. It’s Scott. He’s Superman. Remember?”

  Jo chuckled, remembering the day they’d found a Superman costume stashed in the back of his wardrobe. He’d sworn it was for a Halloween party, but the girls had their doubts.

  “Yeah. Superman cleaning my house with a super mop and bucket, along with a super sponge and super disinfectant. Superman using his superpowers to kick Stephen and Mike Hardy’s backsides out my front door.”

  Amy laughed. “Whatever it takes. So did he tell you anything about this show tonight he’s doing with Myf?” Their good friend Myfanwy Lane’s wildly violent abstract paintings had begun to gain a lot of attention in both local and international art circles.

  Jo shook her head. “Nope. Is it a warm-up for the big one he’s doing in New York at the end of the year?”

  “Nah. I think it’s more to raise Myf’s profile. You see that interview they did with Scott in Vanity Fair last month?”

  Jo’s mouth hiked up in a proud half-smile. “I saw it on the net. They made him look like a samurai with his hair out like that. Bet that pissed him off.”

  Amy giggled. “Yeah. It did, but apparently, he couldn’t do anything about it because he wanted the publicity for Women in War,” she said, naming Scott’s pet project of the last couple of years. He was primarily a war photographer who’d come to international fame at an early age, partially thanks to photographs he’d taken when hanging out with Jo and Amy on his family’s farm. As a Japanese-Aussie kid, he’d never quite fit in, and the minute he’d snuck up on Jo and Amy hiding out in a clump of bush, ratty and tattered after two weeks of living off nothing but baked beans and the odd peanut butter sandwich while camping, they’d had an immediate affinity. They’d been friends, or more like family, ever since. Scott had saved the girls’ lives once and they’d both do the same for him if they ever got the chance to pay him back.

  Amy shrugged, her expression turning wistful. “Anyway, it’s such a pity about Mike and Stephen. If I were you, I’d guilt-trip them into staying around and being your personal slaves. You could dust a few cobwebs off the old lady bits and have some fun.” She waggled her perfectly groomed and penciled eyebrows before breaking into peals of laughter at Jo’s disgusted expression.

  “Yeah, right. Keep dreaming. I’m sure that’s the first thing they’d be into,” Jo mumbled, swallowing a generous mouthful of bubbly. “Never mind the fact that I’m so pissed at them I can’t see anything but red.”

  “So close your eyes. I’ll happily dream about Stephen and Mike Hardy all day, any day.” Amy laughed. “You know, Mike’s a nice guy even if he’s still a total slut, at least from what I hear. He comes in here to get his hair cut whenever he’s home from the UK.”

  Jo looked around at the pink walls, newly plucked brows raised. “Yeah, I can see him fitting right in.”

  “Not this side, you cow, the barber’s.” Amy smacked Jo on the leg before going back to spreading polish on a big toenail. “Stephen comes by quite a lot too. He’s so gorgeous the girls fall over him. It’s pathetic really.”

  “Yeah, you are, aren’t you? Watch out or your boyfriend is going to get the wrong idea,” Jo shot back while saying goodbye to her fantasy of Stephen being overweight and unattractive nowadays. Then she remembered exactly how hot Mike Hardy had looked in all his naked glory and felt her cheeks go warm.

  Stephen and his middle brother had always been pretty much identical in looks. For some reason, Mike didn’t do it for her, but Stephen . . . well, Stephen had ever since he’d defended her against Jeff Rousse, a school bus bully when they were both twelve. It probably hadn’t meant anything to him but to Jo . . . he’d filled her world right up until the night she and Amy had run away from home.

  “I’m allowed to fantasize.” Amy interrupted Jo’s wayward hormones with a cheeky smile. “I’m not surrounded by big beefy men talking about putting greased pipes in holes all day.”

  “Trust me. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Jo muttered, mood instantly turning despondent as her thoughts turned to the other big problem in her life: her fly-in-fly-out job. After working as a petroleum engineer on the rigs for almost her entire adult life, Jo was over it. The thrill of travel, money, and making it in a male-dominated industry had worn off. “I’m thinking of quitting.”

  Amy’s head shot up. “Really?”

  “Thinking about it.” She wanted to unburden herself about the last few months but couldn’t bring herself to do it right now. This newest blast from the past wasn’t helping either—especially since she couldn’t go into the Stephen Hardy house-sitting thing without bringing up Amy’s newest boyfriend.

  Amy was, and always had been, completely illogical when it came to men, and it was the only thing with the power to come between the two of them. Ever since Jo was twenty-one, and she and Amy had had a fight resulting in them not talking for an entire year, she’d done her best to be a model supportive sister. Besides, she knew full well Amy would run over her head with a pair of clippers if she ever stepped over the line again; Amy might look like a blonde little ray of sunshine, but an angry Amy was someone to fear.

  Sometime later, after yet more cake and a coffee to sober up, Jo hauled herself out of her comfortable pink chair and picked up her helmet, reluctantly cramming it over her new do.

  “Wear your sexy secretary shoes tonight, petal. If I see you in flats after all the effort I’ve put in to make those pins of yours presentable, I’ll commit murder,” Amy warned as Jo walked out the door.

  Not committing to anything, Jo waved then climbed on to her bike. She hoped to heaven that her place would be in a better state than when she’d left it. Thanks to her sister, champagne, and cake, she was in the mood to forgive.

  * * *

  Her apartment was spotless. Possibly cleaner than it had ever been, it smelled blessedly of apple-scented disinfectant. There wasn’t a stray sock in sight, and a huge vase holding at least fifty long-stemmed yellow roses sat on her coffee table. Stuck between the flowers was a scrap of white paper with “Sorry” written in big, messy man-writing.

  Hearing Jo’s surprised exclamation, Boomba padded into the room and gave a not-so-polite chirrup, requesting that he be picked up and scootched under the chin pronto.

  “I see you’re taking all the credit. Where have they gone, you big lump?” Jo hauled the giant cat into her arms with a grunt and patted his furry tummy.

  The only ans
wer she got was a wide, pink-tongued feline yawn and a gold, squinty-eyed stare.

  “Ah. You ate them. Well that’d make sense, wouldn’t it? You’re fatter every time I see you. I’d love to know what Amy feeds you, but I suspect it’s her pansy ex-boyfriends, and we wouldn’t want to be knowing accessories to murder, now would we?” Jo walked over to the roses and bent down to sniff them. They smelled old-fashioned and wonderful.

  Boomba agreed. He did his best to stretch out of her arms and bat the closest one with a paw.

  “You knock those over, kitty, and I’m going to take taxidermy up as my new hobby,” Jo warned, wandering down the hall and past a spotless bathroom featuring a brand-new toothbrush and large gift basket of beauty products on her way to her bedroom. It miraculously looked just the way she’d left it, with the exception of her bedspread, which she could hear whirring away in the clothes dryer.

  She dumped the cat on the bed, where he settled on top of her pillow and began to purr louder than a lawnmower while she debated what to wear for Scott and Myf’s opening night. It had to be something that drew a very clear line between her sixteen-year-old self and her thirty-year-old successful self.

  She screwed up her mouth. She would be seeing Stephen Hardy for the first time in fourteen years and intended on looking hotter than a habanero—well, at least a mild jalapeno, considering the material she had to work with. She patted her stomach. It looked a little wobblier than usual—so did her rump, for that matter. She’d been living on a diet of Mars bars on the rig ever since the company had hired a cook so bad that chopper pilots ferrying people to and from the offshore facility were making a killing in sales of black market junk food.

  She looked at herself thoughtfully. Maybe Amy was right about the heels. Her legs would distract from the stomach and backside wobbliness. And Stephen was as tall as Scott and Mike, so with two-inch heels, she’d be eye level with him. Scott was the only guy in her usual circle who she didn’t tower over in heels, but he’d proven himself more impressed by her ability to drink him under the table and burp the alphabet than by how she looked in stilettos.

  In the end, she decided on a pair of indigo skinny jeans and a simple white silk camisole with camel-colored wedge sandals Amy had bullied her into buying five years before.

  Turning from side to side, she surveyed herself in front of the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, reveling in seeing herself wearing something other than faded red overalls or old sweats. Pursing her lips thoughtfully, she decided a bit of makeup wouldn’t go astray either. Amy had tinted her lashes black, but they benefited from a swipe of mascara, and she complemented that with a frosting of pale-pink lipstick. A spritz of Chanel Chance and the addition of the chunky gold hoop earrings she’d bought last time she was in Dubai finished the job.

  Dressed to impress, she wandered back out to the kitchen, grabbed a Little Creatures Pale Ale—presumably Stephen’s—out of the fridge, and flicked on the TV, switching immediately to her favorite sports channel.

  One glance at the soccer match made it clear she’d done something to please the big bearded man in the sky. Jo’s team, Perth Glory, was beating Adelaide United. Not only were they winning, they were winning by three goals. With elation surging from her newly dyed hair to her slutty red toenails, it was only a matter of seconds before Jo’s philosophy that good things should never be left to chance took hold and she was screaming directions at the players on the screen.

  When the Glory scored an impressive goal off a penalty kick, she almost fell off her chair, kicking her legs in the air and whooping like a lunatic.

  * * *

  Of the three men who filed into the room, two of them stared in amazement while the other, used to Jo’s irrational love of soccer, did his best not to piss himself laughing as she whooped again, so caught up in the anticipation of another quick-fire goal she didn’t notice their entrance.

  Scott wished he’d brought his camera along. Stephen and Mike’s facial expressions were numerous and varied enough to fill a coffee-table book on the depth of human emotion.

  Chapter 2

  Stephen stared at the leggy woman who was currently rolling around on the couch, screaming insults at the referee of a televised soccer match, and tried to reconcile her with the awkward teenage girl he’d known years before. Things didn’t quite add up.

  In all his imaginings of what Jo Blaine would look like now, he definitely hadn’t pictured this. Long legs, an amazing backside, and one hell of a rack. Well, the rack was the same, but her hair was short and dark brown now rather than the long mousy blonde it had been years ago.

  Sometime in the last few years, she’d grown into her angular features, and while she still wasn’t beautiful by any usual standard, there was something about her that drew the eyes . . .

  So far, the only information Stephen had been able to get out of Scott was that she worked on oil rigs in northern Africa and had come home to Perth instead of heading for a holiday in the States. Looking at her now, he could well imagine her in a pair of overalls—half-undone overalls that showed off all the good bits. The image was pretty damn nice.

  Mike’s quiet groan put an abrupt end to Stephen’s impromptu fantasy. “She wasn’t that happy when she left. Or that hot. Please tell me I didn’t fall flat on my arse in front of her?”

  Scott grinned widely. “Yeah, mate. I’d say with that, and with the way she found you passed out in her bed, you’ve got no chance now.”

  “You sure? Because I wouldn’t mind giving it a go anyway. It’s not like I’m that bad to look at. How about we let her know we’re back and—”

  “Nah.” Scott held out a hand to stop Mike from walking further into the room. “Give her a few more seconds. They’ve just been awarded another penalty kick. She’ll want to murder you again if you destroy the moment.”

  “You’re speaking from experience?” Stephen asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.

  “Yup. Nearly been decapitated numerous times for changing channel at the wrong time.” Scott reached behind him to ease the front door closed before crossing his arms over his chest. Mike followed suit, leaning against the wall.

  Stephen went back to looking at Jo. He knew he’d have to offer her an apology in a couple of seconds, but right now . . .

  She turned around, spotted the three of them standing in the doorway, screamed, and fell over her couch.

  “Dammit, Scott!” she bellowed in a husky voice that sounded like distilled sex even at high volume. “You scared me! Why didn’t you ring the doorbell instead of acting like a goddamn stalker?”

  “This was more amusing,” Scott replied calmly, and Stephen wondered if his cousin had life insurance.

  “Thanks.” She snatched the remote off the coffee table and turned off the TV before spinning around to glare at them. Her face was bright red. Stephen would have thought it was from embarrassment, but no one who could scream like that over a game of soccer could get embarrassed that easily. But then he remembered how her eyes had been full of tears the last time he’d seen her and felt a rush of ancient guilt merge with the new batch after the debacle with Mike. He was pretty sure he could tell his family Mike had accidentally fallen off the balcony if he gave him a push. Damn. Why did Mike have to mess this up?

  “So you sorted things out?” she demanded, eyes focused on Scott.

  “Yeah and no,” Scott replied. “Uh, Stephen, I don’t need to do introductions, do I?”

  Stephen walked forward and held out his hand, forcing the same easy-going smile that had earned him a whole portfolio of international contracts for his family’s winery. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She met him with a firm, brief grip, her eyes skittering away as she shifted from one bare foot to the other.

  There were a couple of seconds of silence before Mike cleared his throat. “Did you like the flowers?”

  Stephen turned to look at his brother, not believing his ears. It was just like Mike to take credit for something Stephe
n had sweated over. The plan had been to present the roses to Jo along with his apology. Mike had spent most of the time at the florist’s chatting up the girl behind the counter.

  Jo gave Mike a smile that should have been Stephen’s. “Yeah. Thanks and I forgive you. Well, I will if you buy me a beer or two as well. It’s the first time I’ve gotten flowers in years and yellow roses are my favorite. Scott never gives me flowers.”

  “That’s because you’d probably tear them to shreds and eat them,” Scott retorted.

  Stephen noted the look that passed between Scott and Jo and felt a twinge of an old jealousy.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m pretty sure we’d all like to make it up to you, Jo.”

  “Yeah, I feel so bad. Any woman who likes soccer as much as you do has to be a total legend,” Mike added.

  Stephen suppressed a groan at Mike’s blatant ass-kissing, reminding himself to calm down and go along with the plan he and Scott had discussed earlier.

  He was fully prepared to move out tonight if that’s what Jo really wanted, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Not while he still had a chance to continue with his old plan of righting the wrong he’d done to her when they’d been kids.

  The situation hadn’t changed. She still had a cat that needed looking after while she was away working. Not to mention the repairs Stephen could make and the comfort he could bring her in knowing her apartment was safe in his care. He was a pretty good judge of artwork and knew a couple of paintings and prints on the wall were worth quite a bit. If the earrings she was wearing were any indication, there was a bit of expensive jewelry floating around as well.