by Emma Lea
“If that’s not who he is, then who is he?”
“His real name is Blake Austin and he’s my new boss’s brother,” Zoë mumbled.
“How did you not know this before?” Cassie asked carefully.
Zoë raised her head and looked sadly at her sister. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Hey, you came to me. Now spill.”
Zoë huffed out a sigh and her shoulders slumped. “Blake and I did meet in an elevator and yes we did get stuck when the power went out in the building. He was dressed as an elf and he calmed me down and then when we finally got out, he took me out for coffee to make sure I was okay.”
“I don’t see a problem so far,” Cassie said, settling Kaila back in her arms and offering her the bottle again.
“We talked about Christmas and I was upset because I knew you and mum and the aunties were trying to set me up with every eligible bachelor within cooee distance of Windaroa. He told me about his family and how he would most likely be alone. I invited him to have Christmas with us and proposed that he maybe be a kind of buffer for me.”
“You asked him to be your fake boyfriend?” Cassie asked, her body jerking upright and dislodging the bottle from Kaila’s lips. Kaila protested and Cassie resettled the baby and the bottle before glaring at Zoë.
Zoë tipped her head back and groaned. “I took it back as soon as I said it,” she said. “I knew it was stupid and he looked so shocked that I was convinced he thought I was crazy. Anyway, I left and didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”
“But you obviously did.”
Zoë nodded. “I’d been at Austin Industries to sign my employment contracts. I left the folder we were in at the coffee shop. He called me that night and asked me out to dinner.”
“So you hit it off at dinner…”
“Kind of. Well, yeah, we did. But he told me that his family was abandoning him for the holidays and if the offer was still open, he’d like to take me up on it. It was just supposed to be a platonic thing. I was giving him a family Christmas and he was protecting me from the overly enthusiastic matchmaking attempts by my meddling family.”
“So what happened?”
“He kissed me,” Zoë said with a sigh, remembering that first kiss under the mistletoe.
“And the lying?”
“At dinner he told me his last name was Spencer. I found out this morning that it was a lie. His real name is Austin, as in Austin Industries, as in he’s my new work colleague, as in this is ‘The Tanner Affair’ all over again.”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Dramatic much?”
“You cannot be okay about this,” Zoë said. “He lied to me—”
“And you’ve been lying to all of us,” Cassie said. “If you’d known who he was when you met him, would you have asked him to be your, what did you call it? Your ‘buffer?’”
“Of course not,” Zoë said. “He’s like a billionaire, Cassie. His family owns the company I’m about to start a new job with. This is my career and it’s supposed to be a fresh start for me. Instead I’m in the exact same position that I was with Tanner. We have to work together and what’s the bet that he is going to use me to get ahead just like Tanner did!”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know that. He lied to me! He lulled me into a false sense of security and made me fall in love with him and then he was going to rip everything I’ve worked for out from under me, just like Tanner did.”
“Blake is nothing like your arsehole ex. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to use you like that. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he was really an arsehole.”
“Nobody said anything about love,” Zoë spat.
“Uh, yes they did. You just said you’d fallen in love with him.”
“What? No I didn’t…” Zoë’s brain scrambled over the last words she’d said. She dropped her head to the table and banged it a couple of times. “God,” she moaned. “Fuck,” she whispered. “I’m in love with him. How could I fall in love with him?”
“It happens to the best of us,” Cassie said, patting her back softly. “The first step is acknowledging it.”
“This is not some twelve step program,” Zoë said. “I can’t be in love with him. I have to work with him. This is a disaster. A fucking huge, monumental disaster of epic proportions.”
“It’s really not,” Cassie said. “It might feel like that, but it’s just love. Once you get your head around it you’ll see that this is actually the best thing to have ever happened to you.”
Zoë lifted her head and narrowed her glare at Cassie. “Wash your mouth out. The last thing I need or want is to fall in love. Blake being here was supposed to be my guarantee against falling in love. He was supposed to keep me safe from all that shit. I have a career to worry about and the last thing I need is a man and a relationship to complicate it.”
“You keep telling yourself that, sweetie,” Cassie said.
The bleating of his phone drew him out of the funk he’d fallen into. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there after Zoë left, but the sun was now high in the sky and his stomach grumbled.
Blake hadn’t even looked at his phone since he’d gotten in the car with Zoë in the city and he had to hunt through his gear to find it. There was barely any battery life left in it but when he saw his sister’s name on the display, he answered.
“Rory,” he said in greeting.
“Hey there big brother,” she replied cheerily. “Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, Merry Christmas,” he said tiredly. “What’s wrong? Why are you calling?”
She huffed out a breath. “I’m stuck in New York,” she said. “Freak snow storm. All the flights are grounded indefinitely.”
“And…? What does that have to do with me?”
“I was supposed to be back in time to finalise the details for the New Year’s Eve party,” she said. “I’m not going to make it.”
“Don’t you have a party planner handling that?”
“Sure, but you know what Dad and Jack are like. One of the Austins needs to be there to oversee everything.”
“So what are you asking me?”
“I asking you to be that Austin, Blake,” she snapped. “You disappeared for over a year and pretended you weren’t even remotely connected to the family but you’re back now and that all changes. You’re an Austin and it’s about time you started acting like one.”
“Since when have you been drinking the Kool-aid?” he asked, but she was already gone. He looked at his phone. No, she hadn’t hung up on him, his phone was dead.
He tossed the phone on the bed and ran his hands through his hair tugging on the strands in an effort to get his brain firing. He needed to get back to his life. Rory was right. He’d been running; running from who he was and from the life that he’d been born into.
Blake looked around the cabin. This had been the happiest time of his life, but none of it was real. It was time he grew up and faced up to his demons. For better or worse, he was an Austin and the longer he kept running from it, the harder his life was going to be.
With a sigh, he pushed up from the bed and searched through his duffle bag for his charger. He needed to charge his phone and find a way back to the city. Zoë wouldn’t want him hanging around anymore and he knew her family would be happy to see the back of him. They were loyal, her family, and he was just some arsehole who lied to her and ultimately hurt her. This little fantasy was done and the deal he’d made with Zoë was null and void.
He plugged his phone in and while he waited for it to charge he grabbed some clothes and went to have a shower. He saw Zoë’s shower gel and shampoo lined up on the little shelf in the shower and sighed. He rubbed at the pain in his chest and turned the taps on hard and hot. He tried to ignore the pain and the emptiness that hollowed him out. He needed to lock that shit down. He was an Austin and Austin men didn’t break down because of a broken heart…Austin men didn’t hav
e hearts.
He showered, shaved, and dressed, and with each action he felt himself close off to the world around him. He pulled the armour on, armour he thought he’d been free of. Wasn’t that why he’d taken off last year? Wasn’t that why he’d spent twelve months like a nomad trying to find meaning for his life? The reality was, the only meaning his life had was tied to his last name. It was his destiny and he was done running from it.
He hit a seldom used number on his phone and lifted it to his ear.
“I need a ride,” he said when the call was answered. “I’m at a farm called Windaroa just outside Hope Springs.” He waited for the confirmation and then hung up. He gathered up his stuff and took one last look around the cabin. A sad smile tilted one side of his mouth. He’d have the memories at least. It was only in fairy tales that the prince got the girl.
He stepped out of the cabin and slung the bag over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to slink away. He’d say goodbye and then wait for his ride. It wouldn’t take long and then all of this would be behind him. Just another page in the scrapbook of his life. It was a hell of a way to end his gap year.
24
“Zoë? Are you in here?”
Zoë looked at her sister and pleaded with her eyes for Cassie to keep her mouth shut.
“In the kitchen Mum,” Cassie called with a smirk.
Julia stepped into the kitchen with her arms full of grocery bags. Zoë jumped to her feet.
“Do you need help with that?” she asked.
Julia dumped the bags and exhaled, brushing her hair back from her face. “No, that’s the lot. But you have a visitor. Out front.”
Zoë drew her eyebrows together in a frown. “A visitor?”
“I told him to wait for you on the veranda,” she said. “He said it’s urgent that he talk to you.”
Puzzled by her mother’s cryptic answers, Zoë walked through the house to the front door and stepped out not the verandah.
“Tanner,” she said with a rush of anger. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Zoë, beautiful,” he said, stepping toward her with his hands outstretched and a smarmy smile on his face. “I’ve missed you.”
“Cut the bullshit, Tanner,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and dropped his head. He wore buff coloured chinos and a dark blue shirt with a tan belt and matching shoes. Ever the stylish one, he always dressed to impress. His dark hair was neatly styled and recently cut. Aviator sunglasses hung from the open collar of his shirt and he didn’t even have to decency to have sweat patches under his arms despite the heat.
“I really have missed you, Zoë,” he said, his voice miserable. “I know things ended badly between us, but I was hoping maybe we could get past it.” He looked up at her then, his grey eyes wide and imploring her. “I want us to try again.”
Zoë didn’t answer. She took him in. The face she had been so enamoured with. The wide shoulders and trim waist. She remembered thinking he was the best looking guy she had ever been with. She knew under his shirt his body was sculpted to perfection and she knew how well they had fit together all those weeks ago. Before everything turned to shit.
How many nights had she lain awake hoping, wishing, praying for this moment? How many times had she wished that he would realise what he lost when she walked out of his life?
So why wasn’t she falling at his feet and begging him to take her back? Why didn’t that look in his eye and the scent of his cologne weaken her knees like it used to?
It was more than the fact he had used her and then cast her aside when he’d gotten what he wanted. It was more than the fact that he’d broken her heart into what she’d believed to be irreparable pieces. It was a realisation that what she’d had with him paled in comparison to what she’d shared with Blake over the last few days. It had only been just over a week and yet what she’d had with Blake felt like ten times more than what she’d ever had with Tanner.
“Say something,” he said, shifting nervously.
“Why are you really here?” she asked.
“I just told you—”
“Yeah, but I don’t believe you. You got what you wanted from me. There’s nothing more I can give you. I don’t even work at FMR anymore, so I can’t do anything to further your career. So, I ask again. Why are you really here?”
Tanner exhaled and looked up, his gaze going over her shoulder to the landscape behind her. “Okay, look. I need your help.”
“Of course you do,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. “The answer is no, Tanner.”
“You haven’t even heard the proposal yet,” he said.
“I don’t need to. You stole my work and then my promotion so unless you’re offering me your job and your bonus, then I don’t want to hear it.”
“Well…”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to come back to FMR?”
“We were wrong to accept your resignation,” he said. “Brad—the whole team—want you back.”
“And what about you?”
“They want to move me to another position and give you the promotion you should have gotten in the first place.”
She snorted. “And just where are they moving you to? Siberia?”
His cheeks flushed and he looked down. “It’s more of a sideways move.”
“A sideways move. So you’ll still be part of the executive team?” she asked.
He looked back at her. “Yes, but so will you.”
She stared at him, contemplating his offer. She could go back to FMR—a place where she had already proven herself—and avoid the whole disaster with Blake. They wouldn’t have to work together and she wouldn’t have to start at the bottom of the ladder again and sit by and watch as he got promoted over her.
“What’s the salary?” she asked.
“It’s a twenty percent raise with a five percent bonus for coming back.”
She whistled softly. That was a big jump on her previous salary and more than she would be getting paid at Austin Industries. But she would still be working with Tanner and he had already proven himself to be a snake in the grass.
“I need to think about it,” she said.
“Brad wants an answer by the new year,” Tanner said.
She nodded and stuck out her hand to shake. Tanner closed his hand around hers and she felt none of the usual thrill that normally raced over her skin with his touch. He tugged her closer and she stumbled into his chest.
“I really have missed you,” he said moments before crashing his mouth down on hers.
She froze for a moment and there was a loud rushing in her ears. She pushed herself away from him and swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away his taste that was foreign and unwelcome on her lips.
A hot wind whipped around her and the roaring in her ears wasn’t from the kiss but from a helicopter landing on the driveway. She looked out to see Blake and their eyes met for a moment before he climbed on board and closed the door. The helicopter lifted from the ground and she watched it fly away, taking what was left of her heart with it.
Blake watched the ground fall away through the window of the helicopter. He’d said goodbye to everyone he could find on Windaroa. No one knew about his and Zoë’s fight—no one except Cassie who’d hugged him tight and asked him not to give up on Zoë. He couldn’t find the words to tell her that Zoë was the one who’d given up on him.
He hadn’t wanted to leave without saying goodbye to Zoë. Even if she told him she never wanted to see him again, he couldn’t just leave. That was until he’d seen her talking to the guy on the verandah. He’d held back, not wanting to interrupt what looked like a serious discussion and then when she’d kissed him, Blake knew whatever they’d had was nothing more than dust in the wind. Thank god the helicopter he’d been waiting on chose that moment to land. He wouldn’t have to look at her. He wouldn’t have to face her and know tha
t everything that had happened between them was nothing but a lie. He may have lied about his surname, but everything else had been true—at least from his side of things. He really had fallen in love with her, but it appeared it was all one-sided.
Torturing himself, he assumed the guy on the verandah was Ryan, the high school boyfriend. Blake hadn't gotten a really good look at him, but who else could it be? The height and weight were right, as was the dark hair. Ryan must have finally screwed up the nerve to bare his heart to Zoë and she must have realised that she had never stopped loving him despite the years. Blake wondered if perhaps she hadn’t needed him as a buffer after all.
Blake folded up everything he was feeling into a nice, small package and pushed it into the over-flowing closet in the back of his mind to be dealt with another day. It’s how he had survived his childhood and how he’d managed to live this long without going completely insane. It was a little ritual he had, one he’d thought he was done with for good. The entire point of taking a gap year was to get a handle on his family and the fucked up way he’d been raised. No parent was perfect and he hadn’t expected perfect, but he had craved love and attention. Two things that were only doled out to him under certain strict conditions.
He’d been raised to believe that being an Austin was the be all and end all of his value. Everything he was and everything he did either added to or detracted from his last name. Like a fucking points system. Negative impact—in the eyes of his father—meant a withdrawal of love. Positive impact had the opposite effect. It was a form of brain washing and it wasn’t until a year ago that he figured out why his life was such a fucking mess. Hitting that hard place where he took a good, long look at himself and not liking what he saw sent him on a trip of self discovery. He’d only come back because he thought he’d finally found himself. But as he once again pulled on the cloak of being an Austin, he realised that he was still lost. He was going back to a company and a job he despised. He’d lied to protect himself from a woman who could have been an ally instead of an enemy. And he’d just dropped everything because the great and powerful Austin name had called to him.
