by Ally Blake
Angus flinched. As if their bloodline was anything to write home about.
His father had left when he’d been around Sonny’s age. He still remembered the fight. The smash of glass. His mother’s scream. The roar of the car engine and the squeal of tyres. And the relief, short-lived as it was...until the procession of men his mother had let into their lives as she’d searched for a way out of the poverty cycle in which she’d grown up. So she could give her son a different life. In the hope he’d be a better kind of man.
Fitz slid his phone out of the inner pocket of his jacket. “This guy of hers, who is he? Give me a name.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Fitz blinked at Angus. “Your precious assistant told you she has a new man in her life and you didn’t ask who he was? What he did for a living? What he ate for breakfast? How he voted? You, who creates mental portfolios of every person he ever meets in case the day comes you need to beat them in battle.” Fitz clicked his fingers at the bartender. “Excuse me, good sir, did this gentleman ask you a slew of questions the moment he caught your eye?”
The bartender gave Angus a look. “No. I mean, kind of. We talked about uni. And which hospital I was born in. And that time I saw a UFO.”
The bartender looked between them, suddenly rethinking his recent choices. Then he moved stealthily to the other end of the bar.
“What are you doing now?” Angus asked as Fitz continued typing madly into his phone.
“Messaging Cat.”
“Lucinda’s sister?” That was enough to snap Angus out of his funk, his senses coming back online with a crack. “How the hell do you have her number?”
Fitz shrugged. “We met at the work Christmas party we’re not allowed to talk about. You drank your feelings. Lucinda wore that insanely hot green dress. Ring a bell?”
Too many.
Such as the large boardroom emptied of furniture. Cocktail tables laden with buckets of champagne. Walls dripping in sparkling lights and silver stars. Loud chatter and laughter.
In his mind’s eye the crowd parted, which surely had not happened. And there, in the breach, Lucinda. A bare-armed, long-legged vision in a spring-green dress. Dark hair down and curled seductively over one creamy shoulder. Lips a slippery red.
He remembered blinking, as if the view had been too bright to believe. That dress, made from some witch-designed material that shifted and shimmered over her waist, her hips, her...everything as she walked. As she breathed.
Until she’d caught his eye, a smile like no other stretching across her lovely face.
Fitz broke in. “Turns out Cat had just written an article about female Viagra for some women’s magazine. One thing led to another and...we hooked up. Before you go all Hulk on me, it was one time. She decided pretty quickly that, while I’m a tiger in the sack, I’m not nearly good enough for her. We’ve been friendly ever since.”
Angus sank his head into his hand. His scoundrel of a cousin and Lucinda’s terrifying sister had been “friendly” for over a year. Did Lucinda know? Did he want to be the one to tell her?
Fitz clicked his fingers at his phone. “Here we go. Cat said she’s met him and he’s awesome.”
“Met who?”
“Lucinda’s fella,” said Fitz. Slowly. “Jameson BancroftSmythe.”
“That’s his name?”
“Every bit of it. Now, let the cyber-stalking begin. Okay, we have a skateboarder from Sydney. Looks about fourteen. A guy with about a hundred great-grandchildren. And...whoa. You need to see this.”
I really don’t, Angus thought, training his gaze to stare into the melting ice in his glass.
“Man, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the dude looks like Robert Redford.”
“Now?”
“Uh...no. I’m thinking circa The Way We Were. Maybe even Barefoot in the Park.”
Fitz held out his phone and Angus looked. Whoa.
“Dr Jameson Bancroft-Smythe,” Fitz read. “Born in The Netherlands. Educated in London. Worked for Doctors Without Borders. Now head of Paediatric Surgery at Princess Elizabeth Hospital. And...there!”
Fitz held the phone under Angus’s nose so he had no choice but to look.
And there he was—Robert Redford’s doppelganger—decked out in a well-cut tux, surrounded by people in benefit black, including one Lucinda Starling who stood at his side, grinning from ear to ear, champagne flute clutched in both hands, Dr Jameson Bancroft-Smythe’s hand resting possessively on her lower back.
Angus must have made a noise, as Fitz murmured, “Hmm?”
Though Fitz was already distracted by a pretty blonde making eyes at him at the end of the bar. His barstool scraped against the floor as he pushed it away. “Now, I’ve gotta go see a blonde about a phone number. Promise you won’t do anything exciting till I get back?”
“Exciting?” Angus mumbled.
“Change company by-laws to insist upon seven-day working weeks. Dance on the bar. Track the good doctor down and declare pistols at dawn. Call Luc and make up some excuse as to why she has to work this weekend with you instead.”
“Promise.”
Fitz grinned then headed off.
While Angus leant his head into his palms, pressing hard into his eye sockets.
Because this slippery feeling in his belly, this discontent, wasn’t him. Not since he’d been a scared kid who had no idea where he’d be sleeping or who he and his mum might be living with from one week to the next. Controlling his environment, or how he responded to it at the very least, was at the core of how he interacted with the world.
He was so good at it he’d made it his living, controlling how people responded to a brand by how it was packaged.
Maybe there is something in that, he thought as he lifted his head out of his hands.
In honing, in his own mind, the core promise of the Lucinda Starling brand.
He started at the beginning—the day they’d met.
Several years back she, along with a couple of dozen men and women, had come into the Big Picture Group offices to interview for a spot in the office pool.
The place had smelled like fresh paint. Half the furniture had yet to arrive. He, Fitz and Charlie had been up to their eyeballs in debt and they’d just had their first big win—a client whose rebrand had gone beyond viral. In order to keep the momentum going they’d decided to recruit: hungry, sharp, lateral thinkers who could help them take their business intergalactic.
Fitz had sent his assistant Velma to eyeball the line-up of hopefuls and weed out the chaff. Not that it had stopped Angus and Fitz from taking a peek, putting down bets as to which had faked their résumés, which would keep up with Fitz’s famously twisty interviews, which would flounder and which might become a part of the Big Picture family.
To a one the interviewees had been a study in edgy, sleek, über-cool university graduates in a range of grey, white and black, prepared to claw one another’s eyes out for a place in the booming start-up.
And then there’d been Lucinda.
She’d been wearing a whimsical floral dress, her dark waves of hair tumbling over her shoulders, her big, brown eyes wide with excitement, her toes wriggling in the ends of her summery high heels as she chatted brightly to a severe-looking girl who looked part-Dementor sitting beside her. She’d been like a sunflower among a field of thistles.
“Check out Snow White,” Fitz had said. “A blue bird might land on her finger at any moment, right before she breaks into song.”
Angus had laughed, as he’d been meant to do, but all the while he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. The way she’d charmed the people either side of her, making them relax, sit back in their chairs and laugh—even as they were all going for the same job.
For all that he’d been dubbed a wunderkind, the “people” side of things let Angus down. He struggled with lev
ity. Small talk. Building client relationships. If his job had entailed no human interaction, it would have been perfect.
As such he had little need for someone with an honours degree and a well-curated LinkedIn profile. What he needed was softness. Laughter. Light. Warmth. What he needed was a sidekick who could make the clients loosen up and agree to do as they were told.
Very few times in his life had a clench in his gut meant something good. But this was one of them.
His message to Velma had read: Dibs on Snow White.
They hadn’t had the easiest of starts. He wasn’t proud of the moment he’d found out she was a single mum with a toddler at home. He’d reconsidered. For a week or two. Before giving her something his mother had rarely had—a real chance.
And, without the education or experience to fall back on, she’d made mistakes. Plenty of them. But she’d owned up to them. And had always endeavoured to do better next time. In Angus’s book, when it came to people, that was about as good as it got.
For several years now, in his mind, Lucinda’s “brand” had been his not-so-secret weapon. His counterpoint. The best decision he’d made as far back as he cared to remember.
But she was right. She wasn’t his girl.
She was, by the look of things, someone else’s. Some stranger by the name of Jameson Something-Or-Other-Smythe. The man taking her away to some romantic resort he’d never heard of.
Hand moving of its own accord, it reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. With the barest sense of masochism, Angus said the words Hanover House—the name of the place Lucinda said she’d be staying.
Like a man slowing at the site of a car crash, he squinted as he flicked through the pictures—all misty vistas, glittery cocktails and flickering fireplaces, award-winning spa, business centre...
His thumb hovered over the screen as he processed the information looking back at him.
Then he looked up, into the middle distance, a tingly feeling at the back of his head telling him to swipe the page away and forget about what he’d just seen.
Another feeling—deeper, grittier, louder—told him to follow his gut.
Lucinda was as key to the future growth of the business as she had been to its past. The business that was now so tightly intertwined with Angus’s very identity they could no longer be separated.
If Lucinda was considering introducing this man to Sonny, it had to be serious. Meaning everything was about to change.
And, for Angus, change was a four letter word.
He’d worked too hard, sacrificed too much—time, relationships—to create the life he lived. To ensure the success of the business. To show those who’d told him he’d never amount to anything how wrong they were.
He was about to find out just how far he’d go to protect that.
He glanced back at the phone and drilled in.
A few minutes later, Angus slowly slipped the phone back into his pocket then pushed his stool away from the bar.
He slammed a hand down on Fitz’s shoulder as he passed, smiling for the first time in hours as Fitz flinched. “I’m off.”
Fitz blinked. “And looking far more like yourself, I must say.”
He had an actionable strategy now. So round and whole and complete in his head, he was shocked he hadn’t thought of it sooner.
“Crisis over?” Fitz asked.
“No crisis,” Angus said, offering the blonde a polite smile. “I don’t do crises.”
“He’s kidding,” Fitz demurred. “Crises are his bread and butter. Superhero complex, this one.” Then to Angus he said, “Fun and games aside, if any one of us poor slobs deserves love and valentine hearts and eternal happiness, it’s Lucinda. Am I right?”
“Rarely,” Angus allowed, even as his mind was already ticking away in other directions. Then to the blonde he said, “Be gentle with this one. He’s my favourite cousin.”
“Only cousin,” Fitz called as Angus strode purposefully out of the bar.
* * *
That Thursday, Lucinda wriggled her toes in her shoes as she stood waiting for the lift to take her back up to the office, the final minutes of her long-overdue lunch break ticking down.
It had been a huge working week.
The day after Lucinda had told Angus about her upcoming weekend, he’d come into work like a man possessed: snapping up three huge new clients and committing to insane deadlines on top of the Remède rebrand, which was due to be pitched to Louis Fournier and his board early the next week.
Lucinda felt breathless and stretched, like she couldn’t stop, even for a second, or it would all collapse on top of her. It was the best natural high she knew.
The lift doors opened and she slipped inside.
Work had been great, but things between her and Angus? They’d been...odd.
Fitz often lamented she and Angus were like four-year-olds on the playground the way they kissed and made up after their feisty skirmishes as if nothing had happened.
Not that they kissed. Ever. Not even close. Well, there was that one time something might have happened. But it hadn’t.
Lucinda shook her head. Hard. The point was, Angus had been weirdly polite. She’d even caught him whistling.
“What did you expect?” she muttered to her wavering reflection in the lift doors.
Well, her subconscious muttered back, you expected him to be grumpy. Like a bear with a sore tooth. As if the fact that you were heading off on a weekend away with another man might matter. Might burn.
The lift binged and she pressed the button for the Big Picture Group offices, waving to the receptionists, who happily waved back.
She took a left and strode down the long hall to her desk, which sat like a castle keep protecting Angus’s office which took up the entire far corner of the second-to-top floor of the city building.
Once there, she tucked her shopping bag under her desk so that no one could see the distinctive label before she sat in her chair. Then she gave the bag an extra little shove with her toe.
She’d hadn’t gone out with the express decision to shop, but when she’d walked past the slinky, black negligée in the store window a little voice in the back of her mind had told her that perhaps she ought to be making a bit more of an effort for bedtime than packing an old T-shirt, stretched-out yoga tights and her ancient tasselled pashmina.
A surreptitious glance through the smoky glass into Angus’s office found him in the exact same position in which she’d left him—sitting back in his big, cushy office chair, easy smile on his face, hands moving elegantly through the air as he wooed some client on the phone.
Lucinda shifted on her seat as she felt the low-level hum that came to life inside her whenever she focussed on Angus for too long.
Her phone rang and she reached for it gladly, answering, “Jameson. Hi.”
“Hey.”
A busy man, he wasn’t one to bother with endless small talk. It was one of the things she liked about him. His directness. The way he said what he meant and meant what he said. Not the fact that he was busy. Though, as a working mum, the fact that he didn’t put much of a claim on her time was a bonus.
“All good to go?” she asked. As one of the top doctors in the city he was constantly on call. They’d barely made it through a whole date without him having to dash off to save an organ. Or a village.
“Good to go. You? Packed and ready?”
“Not even close! But I will be by seven tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll pick you up then.” A pause, then, “I’m glad the fates have aligned and we are finally able to do this, Cindy.”
Her nose twitched at the nickname. Not a favourite. Which was why Angus had told Louis Fournier to use it. The cad. She’d tell Jameson another time, when they knew one another a little better. And how they’d laugh!
She meant
it when she said, “Me too.”
“Until tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow.”
When he hung up, Lucinda slid her phone back onto her desk with a sigh.
Jameson Bancroft-Smythe really was one of the good ones. He was kind, considerate, attentive—when he wasn’t rushing off to tend to some major medical emergency or another.
He’d never once pushed her to go any faster than she was ready for, which she appreciated. Most of the time. Other times she wished he’d look at her in a way that told her he’d like to tear her clothes off and have his way with her then and there.
It had been a long time since a man had looked at her that way. In fact, she could count back to the actual day. It had happened at a certain Christmas party a year and a bit ago.
Lucinda closed her eyes tight, shoving the memory deep down into her memory banks.
Her smart watch buzzed against her wrist. Another gift from Angus—for her birthday this time. The leather band was her exact favourite tone of spring-green.
It was an hour till she was clocking off. A rare early mark on a Thursday afternoon. Her desk was tidy. Angus’s calendar was up to date. Every one of her favourite 2B pencils was sharpened to a weapon-grade point.
“Lucinda.”
Lucinda all but leapt out of her skin at the sound of Angus’s voice. She was usually far more attuned to his movements. Not hard when the air all but shifted to make way for him as he moved.
When she turned to him, she found him staring under her desk, his gaze caught on the shopping bag.
Turned out, in attempting to poke it deeper under her desk, she’d knocked it over. The Foxy Lady logo was all too obvious on the sparkly hot-pink bag, its slippery black contents having spilled out of the tissue wrap and onto the floor.
“Oh, good Thor,” Lucinda muttered, leaning down to shove the lot back in the bag.
When she looked up, she expected to see Angus smiling beatifically as he had been all week. But his jaw was tight, his eyes unusually dark. When his gaze lifted to hers, her heart knocked about behind her ribs.
