by Ally Blake
I need you to stand up, he thought, his eyes starting to water with the effort not to stray. He wondered for a brief moment if Fitz’s tank-like assistant Velma had a twin sister he could hire instead.
Lucinda righted herself—thank everything good and holy—her glossy dark hair swinging past her shoulders and showering him in the scent of her shampoo; coconut and lime, making him think of cocktails. Of holidays. Of Christmas parties. One in particular that he did his very best not to think about. Especially in the middle of important business meetings.
“Shall I leave you boys to it?” she asked, hip cocking, swinging her pencil-skirt-clad backside right into his eyeline.
Angus’s gaze shot to the ceiling. Was that a spider’s web on the light fixture?
“Merci, Lucinda,” Louis said, saving Angus from having to answer. “You are not only an utter delight and a great beauty, with excellent taste in perfume, you can now add coffee angel to your list of super powers.”
“And I shall.”
“In fact, have you ever considered cosmetic modelling?”
Lucinda un-cocked her hip. “What’s that, now?”
“Your skin is like satin, cherie.”
“My skin?”
“Louis,” said Angus, his voice a little gruff. “Are you making a move on my girl?”
At that Lucinda twisted and pinned Angus with a look he’d never seen before. Her eyes were wide, pink sweeping fast across her cheeks. Her mouth opened as if she was about to say something before she snapped it shut and turned slowly back to Louis.
“Monsieur Fournier, beneath the satiny veneer of my glorious Remède foundation is the lamentable skin of the mother of an eight-year-old who refuses to sleep past five in the morning.”
Then she bent down and kissed the older man on the cheek.
“But you are sweet for pretending. Now, stop distracting me. I am an important person with important work to do.” With that she stalked out of the room.
Both men followed with their eyes.
Louis broke the silence. “Never let that one go.”
“Count on it,” Angus promised, even if the amazing Velma did in fact have a nicer twin.
Then, putting all thoughts of red lips and white lace aside, Angus got to work.
* * *
For the next hour, and even after Louis had said his goodbyes, Lucinda sat at her desk and vacillated between fuming and telling herself to stop being so ridiculously reactive.
But the moment Angus had said the words “Are you making a move on my girl?” something had snapped inside her.
She wasn’t usually so touchy. She knew it had been a joke. One she’d usually have played along with if it got the job done.
It was as if the conversation with Cat the night before had pried something loose. Then her earlier chat with Louis, in which he’d constantly joked about her being far too good for the likes of Angus, had further shifted whatever it was that now shook inside her.
The fact was, she was rattled. If she’d been in a mood like this at home she’d have found a way to distract herself while she got her head on straight. But, here, she couldn’t hide behind her desk all afternoon.
She was a grown-up who’d been through plenty worse. So, instead of sending an intern to clean away the cups, she did her best to shake it off and headed into Angus’s office.
“How’d it go?” she asked as she placed plates and coffee cups back onto the silver tray.
“As well as can be expected,” said Angus from his leaning spot, sitting on the wide shelf that ran under the long window, legs stretched out before him, gaze caught on some paperwork he held in one hand. “He kept reiterating that he has faith in us. In me.”
Words that would usually be music to Angus’s ears, but she could tell from his tone that they hadn’t been.
This, she thought, is what I need to find my equilibrium again.
Work talk. Pure, clear cut. Uncomplicated.
“But?” Lucinda said.
“He spent far more time talking about you. About how his perfume has never suited a woman more.”
And with that his eyes lifted to hers.
With the sun behind him he was little more than a silhouette, but she felt the glance all the same. Felt it hit her eyes, before tracing the line of her cheek and landing on her mouth.
She wished she hadn’t reapplied her lipstick as it suddenly felt too red. Too slick. And yet, conversely, as his gaze remained, she was also glad that she had.
Then he seemed to shake himself before he looked back down at the papers, lifted himself away from the window and tossed the papers onto his desk. “He also made it clear he believes that whatever I’m paying you it’s not enough.”
“He’s right, of course.”
“No doubt.” Hands sliding into the pockets of his suit pants, he rounded the desk towards her, those long legs eating up the distance between them in three short strides. “But it was a distraction. I get the feeling things are worse than he’s letting on.”
And there she was, caught up in some throwaway line, while Louis was in actual trouble. Gripping the tray harder, Lucinda said, “Could you convince him to let Charlie weigh in on his financials? Say it’s part of the service? No extra fee?”
Angus shook his head. “It was hard enough for him to come to me at all, and he could only do that by convincing himself he was doing me a favour.”
“Would you like me to put it to him?”
She saw Angus allow himself a moment to consider the offer. She wished Cat could see him in such a moment. For all his genius, and his self-belief, he was always open to her opinion.
But then he shook his head. Which was wasn’t uncommon either.
Yet, while any other time she’d have moved on, it turned out the rattle had not gone away. It trembled as she huffed out a breath filled with sudden frustration. “Seriously, I can sweet talk him into a meeting at least. I know I can.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Louis respects me. And likes me. But he also doesn’t have to worry about keeping up appearances where I’m concerned. He won’t fear that I will no longer look at him like he’s my hero.”
Angus shifted uncomfortably. “Leave it, Lucinda.”
“But—”
“Enough.” Angus ran a hand through his hair, giving the ends a tug.
Lucinda stilled. The only parts of her that moved were her shoulders, inching back, and her nostrils, flaring gently as she put the brakes on her temper. Barely.
Until his eyes once more snagged on hers.
“Was there something else?” he asked, slowly leaning back against his desk and folding his arms over his chest.
While he acted as if he hadn’t just shut her down, as if they were in the middle of a regular conversation, the rattle inside her began to shiver and shake until it bumped against her ribs like a drumbeat. Like a call to arms.
“Actually, yes,” she said before she even felt the words coming. “It’s about this weekend.”
“What about it?”
“My plans. I am going away with...” She stopped there. As if her words had smacked up against a stone wall. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip in an attempt to loosen them.
“Is this a guessing game?” Angus asked, his voice now edged with impatience. “You’re going with... Catriona? The Easter Bunny? Elvis?”
And just like that the rattle stopped rattling. As if a storm inside her had stilled. And her voice was calm, even, as she looked her boss in the eye and said, “I’m going away with a man.”
She watched Angus closely. As closely as one person could watch another. She noticed the flare of his nostrils. The tightening of his jaw. The way the rest of his body went preternaturally still.
Then she did her very best not to read anything into it. To pretend she was simply a
n employee passing on a titbit of little interest to her boss.
“A man,” Angus finally managed.
“Yes, a man. Not just any man,” said Lucinda, the floodgates now wide open. “The man I’ve been seeing. For a few weeks now.” Off and on. When he hadn’t been called away to surgery. Or to phone calls with doctors in developing countries needing his advice stat. He was a doctor. Had she mentioned that?
“Sonny?” Angus asked, his voice a mite strained. But that part she understood. That part made her shoulders relax down away from her ears. Raised by a single mother himself, Angus took Sonny’s welfare nearly as seriously as she did.
“Hasn’t met him yet,” she assured him. “But if this weekend goes well...”
Her boss blinked at her and said nothing. And now she couldn’t get a read on him at all. Only the fact that he looked so utterly disinterested told her that he was trying too hard.
Which, in turn, brought the rattle back to life. With a vengeance.
“Would you like to know where we’re going?”
There, a flicker below his right eye.
“A resort. Near Daylesford. Called Hanover House. It’s gorgeous. Well, Cat says it’s gorgeous. She did an article on it for a travel blog last year. Super-romantic.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed lightly before he said, “Sounds nice.”
Nice. This from a man who put words together that took businesses from the verge of ruin to stratospheric.
From the outside, Lucinda was certain their conversation seemed reasonable. Polite, even. But she felt as if she was watching it unfold from another dimension. The air crackled between them, voices rippling, words they were steadfastly refusing to utter buffeting against them in steadily increasing waves.
“How about the man himself? Don’t you want to ask who he is? What he does for a living? School grades? Parking tickets? How he votes? You’re usually all over that kind of thing. Figuring people out. Putting them into neat boxes so you know how to deal with them.”
A muscle twitched beneath his right eye.
What are you doing? a voice cried in the furthest recesses of her mind. What do you want from him? Are you looking for a reaction? Are you baiting him to tell you, “no, you can’t go”?
Angus lifted a hand and ran it over his chin, then around behind his neck. “Lucinda,” he said, “If you’re thinking ahead to letting Sonny meet him, then he is no doubt the kind of man both Sonny and I should hero worship. Now, are we done?”
He glanced pointedly at the coffee cups on the tray. His eyebrows rose, as if to remind her what she should be doing with her time rather than nattering with him about her private life.
Wow. Harsh.
They clashed all the time. Telling it like it was was their dynamic. And it worked. In fact, they fed off it. She knew if she walked away things could settle. They always did after such electric, static-fuelled dust-ups.
But, rather than feeling invigorated, she felt twitchy, discomfited and strangely hollow.
She turned and walked towards the door, her feet numb, her face burning.
But when she reached the door she stopped, turned and gave Angus one last look. “One more thing,” she said.
Angus breathed out hard. As if he was clinging to control by a fingernail. His voice was deep and tight as he said, “I think we’ve covered everything. You’re going away. HR has signed off on it. It’s done.”
“Not about the weekend,” she managed, even while storm clouds gathered about her head, lightning flashing with the darkness. “It’s about today. When I asked if I might be given the chance to try to convince Louis to talk to Charlie about Remède’s finances...”
She closed her eyes, shook her head and started afresh. “I get that you have the final word, that as your assistant it’s my job to grease the wheels, keep you fed and watered so that you’re able to perform at your best. But Angus?”
She waited, squeezing a breath into her tight lungs, as it took for ever for him to respond.
“Yes, Lucinda?”
“I’m not your girl.”
With that she took his dirty plates and left.
CHAPTER THREE
I’M NOT YOUR GIRL.
Lucinda’s words from earlier that day bounced off the inside of Angus’s skull like echoes inside a bell tower.
He hadn’t meant anything by it. She knew it, too. It wasn’t like her to be so pedantic.
A voice that had emerged from the swampier parts of Angus’s subconscious since he’d sat down at the bar around the corner from work said, It’s also not like her to go on a dirty weekend with some guy you’ve never heard of.
A hand slapped down hard on Angus’s shoulder, followed by Fitz’s voice. “You look like hell.”
Angus grabbed his cousin’s fingers and pried them off his shoulder. “Appreciate it.”
“I, on the other hand, am not sure how anyone survives a single day without getting a load of my handsome mug.”
As he dragged out the stool next to Angus, Fitz caught the eye of the bartender, tapping Angus’s drink and asking for one of the same. “So, what’s the haps?”
“Does a man need a reason to have a drink with his favourite cousin?”
Fitz snorted. “Only cousin. And, yes, I don’t think you’ve wasted a single minute in your entire adult life. Then there’s the dark cloud hovering ominously over your head, and the fact your leg looks ready to take off...”
Angus looked down. His left leg was shaking so hard it all but crackled with excess energy. He stopped, only to find he couldn’t, so gave up and let it jiggle for all it was worth.
“Did someone have a better idea than you at work?” Fitz asked.
Angus shot him a look.
“You’re right. What was I thinking? So what? Designers no longer making suits? The cobblers of Spain all out of shoes? Lucinda mad at you?”
Before he could stop it, Angus felt a tightening around his left eye.
Fitz let go a long, high whistle between his teeth. “So, it’s the lovely Lucinda who has you hunched melancholically over your scotch. Interesting. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Fitz snorted. “So what didn’t you do? I know you didn’t miss her birthday, what with the charming gift-a-palooza thing you have going between you. So what?” Fitz slammed a hand against his chest. “Was there another...event? Dare I say, Christmas party?”
A muscle flickered in Angus’s jaw, while every other muscle in his body clenched. Hard. His glass paused before it hit his lips. When the liquid finally spilled down his throat, he relished the burn. “Nothing happened at that damn Christmas party, as I’ve told you a thousand times.”
Yet, every time that night came up, something slippery and uncontrolled uncoiled within him.
“I could say the suspense is killing me, but the truth is I’m actually beginning to bore of—”
“Lucinda’s gone and got herself a new man and they are going away together this weekend.”
Fitz stilled, then burst into laughter. “That’s it? That’s why you look like your doctor just gave you bad news? Because Lucinda has a boyfriend?”
Angus shook his head. He had no better answer.
“Come on, mate. She’s bright, bold and knows more dirty jokes than any man I know. It’s more of a mystery why she hasn’t been snapped up already.”
Angus gripped more tightly to his glass.
He’d thought about this—about why he was reacting the way he was. It wasn’t the fact that she was seeing someone. Or even that she hadn’t told him about it till now. He felt as if his tendons had frozen solid because she had never come close to introducing any man in her life to her son.
Well, his subconscious perked up and responded, apart from you.
That was different, he shot back.
The day he’d met Sonny he’d felt as if he’d been hit with a lightning bolt: this was his opportunity to be, for another kid, the kind of man he’d desperately needed in his own life at the same age. A man to encourage his curiosity, to welcome his boisterous side, teach him how to stand up for himself in the playground and to appreciate his mother.
When the day came that Lucinda introduced Sonny to a man in her life, the kid would be smart enough to understand what that meant. And, once that door was opened for Sonny, it could never fully be closed again.
It was his duty to make sure she realised how formative such a moment would be. To make sure, before she did anything she couldn’t take back, that she was sure.
“The real question is,” Fitz intoned, “why hasn’t she nabbed herself a long-term fella? All she’d have to do is snap her fingers. The woman is smoking hot. Hair like a dark-chocolate waterfall. Skin like Italian marble. Those big, brown cow eyes that can see right into the depths of your deeply charred soul.”
“You might want to tone it down.”
“What? The smoking hot thing?” Fitz was clearly on a roll. “I’m not trying it on. It’s an empirical fact. You must be aware that your assistant is as good as it gets. Say it out loud so I know you are a human man: Lucinda Starling is a glorious, gumptious, gorgeous specimen of womanhood.”
Angus took a long, slow sip of his drink, only to find he could no longer taste it.
Fitz tapped a finger against his lips. “No? Too busy drinking? Well, I’ll say it—for a woman like that, every weekend ought to be a dirty weekend.”
Angus turned to Fitz. Everything in him clenched, as if readying to take a swing.
By the glint in Fitz’s eye, he knew it. Hell, he’d have welcomed it. As if it would prove a point. A point Angus had no intention of helping him make.
“Enough,” Angus managed through gritted teeth. “You’re talking about someone’s mother.”
At that, Fitz burst out laughing. He laughed until he had to grip the bar so as not to fall off his stool. “Man, you kill me. I gifted you so many other ways to defend her and that’s where your mind went? I guess if a guy is in need of a bucket of iced water to toss over himself, that’ll do it. Though, if the first thing you think of when you look at Lucinda is ‘mother’, then I worry for you and the future of our bloodline.”
