‘That goes without saying.’ Stephen tweaked her nose. He’d gotten to know Amy a couple of years back when he’d started visiting her barber shop, and although he’d never been able to get her past the small-talk stage, he enjoyed her company.
‘Jo’s just enlightened me about a brilliant tradition of hers. She gets completely hammered at least once every time she comes back to town. I gotta say, after today, I’m in the same frame of mind.’ Mike grinned at Jo, who rolled her eyes.
‘You get hammered every time you come back to Perth anyway, you idiot,’ Stephen replied.
‘Yeah. But I’ve never been smart enough to call it a tradition.’ Mike chuckled. ‘Besides, I couldn’t get a look at Scott’s and Myf’s stuff even if I wanted to with the place being this packed. I’ll come back tomorrow.’ He twisted around and waved to Scott, who was in conversation with Myf and a gothic vamp in sprayed-on leather pants. Scott waved back, obviously too occupied to bother with a verbal goodbye.
‘You sure you can’t come?’ Amy asked Stephen, eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘Someone needs to keep Mike in line.’
‘Nah, you’re on your own there for now, but if I can get away later, I’ll give you a call.’ Stephen glanced at Jo again. To his chagrin, she’d become engaged in conversation with the yellow turtleneck over something to do with welding.
‘Take your time, mate, I think I’ll be able to handle the ladies just fine on my own.’ Mike gave Amy a wink, only to earn himself a nudge in the ribs before she went to say goodbye to Scott and Myf.
‘You’re pushing it,’ Stephen said to him in a low voice when he was sure neither woman would hear.
Mike’s expression turned choirboy-innocent. ‘Can’t help it if the ladies love me.’
‘You won’t be able to help it if you can’t breathe later either by the time I’m finished with you.’
‘Well, the sheer intelligence you display often leaves me breathless,’ Mike shot back, then turned to call out to Jo and Amy before Stephen could reply. ‘Hey, you two, ready to go?’
Chapter 3
The Blaine girls knew how to drink, and they’d just well and truly drunk Mike under the table, then into a puddle on the pavement outside Scott’s townhouse.
‘Bl-loody hell. I’m defeated,’ he slurred, slumping against Scott’s front door while Jo went through her key ring, trying to blearily work out which one was Scott’s. She hoped to hell Scott was either still at the gallery or alone in the house. He wouldn’t be too happy with her if he’d managed to hook up with the gothic glass artist he’d been chatting up earlier in the evening.
‘Mike is a bit of a lightweight, isn’t he, Jo?’ Amy chirped as she tottered unsteadily over to Mike, who was now sliding sideways, looking pitiful. She gave him a prod with her shoe, giggling when he yelped.
Jo managed to finally get the door open. It took Mike with it, and he fell backwards, head thumping on the Persian rug in the hallway.
‘Ames, stop that . . . and that . . . and help me with his legs.’ Amy was now belly laughing and crouching down to poke Mike’s exposed washboard stomach where his shirt had ridden up.
‘Ow! Unkind woman,’ Mike groaned, flailing randomly. Jo rolled her eyes, unsteadily kicked off her heels and grabbed his legs. It took some effort, but she managed to manoeuvre all of him into the entryway.
‘Mike? Mike!’ She raised her voice to get his attention. ‘I can’t lift you up the stairs. You’re going to have to get to bed yourself.’
‘It’s okay. Okay, yeah. You girls go. I’ll sleep here,’ Mike mumbled, still clumsily trying to swat away Amy’s poking finger.
Jo grabbed her sister’s arm. ‘Amy, taxi’s waiting. C’mon, we gotta go home.’
‘Really?’ Amy asked, looking distinctly put out. Jo had a feeling that her sister would happily curl up with Mike on the floor.
‘Yes,’ Jo said emphatically, the force of the word causing her to sway. ‘Mike, mate, get yourself to bed. See you later, eh?’
‘Sure. Leave me,’ he slurred, rolling on to his side and into a pitiful big ball, looking for all intents and purposes as if the floor was going to be his bed for the night.
Jo dragged Amy out the door and was just about to close it when Mike’s voice spun her round.
‘Jo?’
‘Yeah?’ she asked, trying to keep her balance.
‘Don’t tell about . . . don’t tell what I said t’night. Okay? I won’t tell about you, and you can’t tell’bout me, right?’ His clear-blue eyes were keen, his expression momentarily lucid and urgent.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Jo answered in a soothing tone of voice. ‘I won’t tell, mate.’
‘Serious?’ he asked, tucking a hand under the side of his cheek for a pillow.
‘Serious,’ Jo reassured him. ‘We’ll talk about this later . . . if we remember.’
‘I’ll remember!’ Amy piped up, holding a finger up in the air and wobbling as she tottered down the path towards the cab.
‘Amy’ll remember,’ Mike mumbled.
‘She better not. Goodnight, Mike. Bye.’ Jo shut the door as he called out.
‘G’night, Jo’n’Amy.’
It was the thump that woke Stephen, followed by a cat’s loud meow, which was followed by a very loud shhhhh and another thump.
He lay on his back feeling disoriented for a few minutes before realising he hadn’t dreamt the noise at all. It was coming from the hall. He got out of bed and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans before opening his door and stubbing his toe on something soft.
‘Ohhhh, not good!’ a low, husky female voice groaned.
‘What?’ Stephen looked down in confusion. All the lights in the apartment were on, and they afforded him a very clear view of Jo stretched out on her stomach like a starfish, just a few feet shy of her bedroom door.
‘Uh. Jo?’
‘Hmph.’
‘Jo? You okay?’
‘Wha . . .? Nooo,’ she groaned. ‘Room spinning. Need. Water.’
‘Ah.’ She’d obviously achieved her objective and gotten herself completely hammered. Stephen stifled a bemused grin, wondering briefly what shape Mike was in and if they’d managed to get up to anything before she got so drunk she couldn’t walk.
How the hell had she made it up the stairs to her apartment in this shape?
‘Want a hand there?’
‘Mph . . . uh . . . water’d be nice an’ a pillow,’ she muttered, lifting her head an inch or so off the floor before letting it drop with a thud. ‘Ow.’
‘Right.’ Stephen made his way to the kitchen and filled up a glass to the sound of another series of thumps. He almost tripped over Boomba twice on the way back. ‘I thought you and I had a peace accord,’ he growled in exasperation and got a decidedly belligerent meow in answer.
His reply to the cat was prevented by the most pitiful sight he’d seen in years. Jo was kneeling next to her bed, upper torso and head resting on the mattress.
Water glass in hand, Stephen debated what to do. Unbelievably, he’d managed to make it to thirty years old without ever dealing with a drunk woman. Lauren hadn’t liked drinking alcohol or caffeine, or anything that would give her a buzz, for that matter.
All of his earlier girlfriends had managed to find someone else to take care of them when they’d overindulged. This was a complete first. Was there a protocol? Usually he’d just left his mates sleeping on the floor next to the toilet bowl, maybe with a glass of water and a few aspirin for later, but the current situation looked like it called for something else.
‘You all right there?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Nooo. Need some sleep. So tiiired,’ Jo mumbled into the mattress and made an effort to haul the rest of her body onto the bed. Her feet scrambled on the floor before she gave up. The sight was so comical, Stephen had to suppress a laugh at her expense.
Deciding on a course of action, he walked into her room and put her water down on the bedside table before moving behind her.
‘Jo? It�
��s Stephen here. Remember from earlier today? Stephen Hardy. I’m going to help you up on to the bed now, so don’t go spare when I touch you, okay?’ His hands hovered just out from her sides as he tried to work out how best to tackle the problem of getting her into bed without being maimed in the process.
‘Stephen? Nooo, you can’t be Steph’n Hardy. No, no. But yeah, water’s good, thanksss.’ She lifted her head off the bed and squinted muzzily at him.
‘Your water’s next to you. You can’t sleep like that, though. I’m going to lift you now.’ Stephen gripped Jo under her arms, braced himself, and went for a straight lift, stumbling backwards when she turned out to be a lot lighter than he expected.
‘Whoooaahh,’ Jo said, opening her eyes, moving her bare feet to find purchase on the floor.
‘Just . . . wait . . . I’ll put . . . you down . . . There you go.’ Stephen manhandled Jo onto the bed until she was flat on her stomach. Well, that should do it, right? Oh yeah, breathing. He gently moved her head so her face was clear of the pillow, pulled a crocheted blanket off a chair by the window and threw it over the top of her.
‘That’ll do it,’ he murmured to himself, trying not to smile at how helpless she looked. Never in his wildest or most disturbing dreams would he have imagined being in a situation where he would be putting a drunken Jo Blaine to bed. Or that he’d end up kind of enjoying it.
Go figure.
He left her room and walked back through the apartment, flicking off lights, deliberately leaving the bedroom doors open just in case Jo needed anything.
He was almost back to sleep when he heard a quiet ‘Thank you, Steph’n Hardy’ in a husky little-girl voice coming from the bedroom next door. Smiling unaccountably, he fell asleep again.
Jo woke up feeling as if she’d been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. This was not good. Normally, she would have forced down a litre or so of water before going to bed, but it had taken so long to get Mike and then Amy settled. By the time she’d gotten home, she’d been not only drunk but so completely exhausted, she couldn’t even remember if she’d paid the taxi driver before stumbling up the stairs to her apartment. For some reason she vaguely recalled being lifted into bed at some stage, but nah, that couldn’t be right.
The last time she’d been picked up was when she’d been stretchered off a rig in the South China Sea years before when she’d broken her leg. That hadn’t been fun. Although, the way her head felt now, she wished she had some of the marvellously strong drugs they’d given her for the pain.
Heaving herself upright and stumbling to the bathroom, she spent the next hour hunched in the shower, sipping water from a glass she’d found on her bedside table. The boiling hot then freezing spray washed over her until she felt a little more like a homo sapien and less like a puddle of primordial goo.
She wondered vaguely how her partners in crime from the night before had fared, then she scowled. Amy, the little cow, had never had a hangover in her life. Jo didn’t know how she managed it, given her size. Mike hadn’t looked too good when they’d left him, but he’d be lucky enough to be the recipient of Scott’s very own hangover cure, which had been proven to work time and time again. It consisted of a McDonald’s bacon-and-egg McMuffin followed by a shot of Jagermeister. If Jo wasn’t feeling so disoriented, she’d head out and do the same. She was sure she’d left a bottle of the liqueur under the sink the last time she’d been in town. Or at least she hoped she had.
She vaguely remembered hearing Stephen’s voice the night before, too. She hoped it had just been her imagination. She might have told Mike she got drunk at least once every rotation back to Australia, but not that drunk. Usually, she had about one and a half pints of beer, and that was enough to send her head spinning after two months of being completely dry at work.
Groaning, she dunked her head under the water for the last time before deciding to get on with her day, which looked as if it would involve a couch, definitely the soccer channel and maybe, just maybe, some intensive recreational snoozing.
Boomba chose that moment to howl, no doubt deciding he’d been ignored long enough.
‘Bugger off, you fiend!’ Jo yelled and then regretted it when her head started pounding again. The scratching at the door didn’t help. Neither did the sight that greeted her in the kitchen. Boomba had obviously decided not to wait for breakfast. An empty, mutilated packet that had formerly held bacon lay on the floor with the remains of three eggs splattered next to it. On the bench was a note written in the same messy scrawl that had accompanied her roses.
Hope you’re feeling all right this morning. Thought you might appreciate some breakfast.
Stephen
So she must have run into Stephen the night before. Damn. She got a little teary at his considerate gesture, then swiftly wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, telling herself it was just the missed chance of having bacon and eggs that made her emotional. Then she got teary all over again at the realisation he’d been the one to give her the flowers but hadn’t taken the credit.
She covered up the moment of sentimentality by glaring at her cat. ‘Hoped you enjoyed depriving me of all that wonderful grease and cholesterol.’
Ignoring her, he waddled over to a puddle of egg yolk, giant fluffy silver tail up in the air, and started licking it up. Remembering what eggs had done to Boomba and the litter tray the last time he’d indulged, Jo thought about chasing him off and cleaning up the mess. By the looks of it, he’d already eaten two of them. Bugger. It was only something she’d be able to face after a bacon-and-egg McMuffin and maybe a small hair of the dog . . . or cat . . . that bit her. Making up her mind, she grabbed her wallet, keys and helmet and walked out the door.
‘You know, my professional advice is that we force the issue. I like Lauren, but the situation she’s put you in is untenable and she’s treated you so shabbily I feel like driving over there and taking care of things myself. That apartment was valued at over one point three million dollars, Stephen. Half of that money is yours and you’re letting her sit on it. Why can’t you see that you’re the one in the right here?’
Stephen helped himself to one of the Krispy Kreme donuts in Scott’s fridge and did his best to tune out his aunt, Corinne. God, he loved her to pieces, would throw himself in front of a speeding bus for her, but right now . . . he’d throw himself under a speeding bus just to avoid the broken-record lecture he’d been getting for the past six months.
He closed the fridge door and picked up one of the identical black coffees he’d just made for the two of them while they waited for Scott to finish up with whatever he was doing upstairs.
‘Are you gonna drink this coffee I made you or are you just going to lecture me?’ he asked, handing Corinne the coffee and kissing her on the forehead to soften his words. She was a short woman, uncharacteristically short given the fact that the next shortest person in the Hardy clan was Rachael at five-foot-ten. Corinne made up for her lack of height with a bullish kind of stubbornness that had made her notoriously successful in Western Australia’s divorce courts as one of the most sought-after lawyers in town. Rumour had it that she’d been a housewife for the years she’d been married to Scott’s dad, living in Tokyo. Stephen always got a picture of the other mothers at Scott’s kindergarten quailing in fear at the sound of her footsteps.
Corinne pursed her lips and smoothed a non-existent loose strand of gold-blonde hair behind her ear. ‘You didn’t put sugar in this, did you?’
‘I’d kill myself first before poisoning you like that,’ Stephen said with false sincerity, his mouth twitching.
‘Cretin.’ She took a sip of her coffee, looking at him over the black frames of her glasses.
‘You love me.’ Stephen waggled his brows and picked up his own cup, gulping down half the contents in one go.
‘I’d love you more if you let me help you take care of this issue with Lauren. I don’t know where you got this pacifist streak from. No one else in our family has it. It has to come f
rom your mum. If she was alive today—’
‘She’d be telling me I’m doing the right thing.’ Stephen internally fought to keep his patience, maintaining an easygoing smile. He’d only dropped by Scott’s Subiaco townhouse to suggest going surfing since the swell was good. He’d just gotten Bridgett to officially sign off their deal on the dotted line and he’d wanted to celebrate. Now he was kind of wishing he’d gone for a dive into a piranha tank instead. ‘I’m doing fine for now and like I said before, we’re still working it out. I don’t see how getting all litigious is gonna help the situation. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be making grown men cry or something?’ He raised his brows. ‘Or better yet, saying, “Thank you, Stephen, my favourite nephew, for hooking me up with that case of cabernet I wanted to impress my wanky lawyer friends with?”’
Corrine huffed. ‘It wasn’t that impressive. And I still think—’
‘For Christ’s sake, Mum! You still going on about this? Give him a rest, okay, or we’ll have to take you outside and bury you in the backyard where we put all the other lawyers.’ Scott strode into the room, dressed in a pair of board shorts and holding a couple of beach towels. He set them down on the bench and pulled his mother into a hug, pressing a kiss on the centre part of her immaculate blonde ponytail.
Corinne tried to say something more but her words were muffled against her son’s chest as Scott winked over her head at Stephen.
Stephen grinned back, forcing himself to relax. He didn’t like getting worked up over this and there was no way he was going to explain to his aunt that the reason he wasn’t getting all legal on Lauren’s arse was that . . . well, the last time he’d gotten worked up over a woman, really worked up, he’d messed up her life in a big way.
His mind raced back to the night he’d seen Scott mucking around in secret in the middle of the night with a tall, leggy girl at a dam on Evangeline’s Rest. Watching them play-fight and swim in the midnight-dark water, Stephen had felt so jealous it was a wonder he hadn’t glowed green in the dark. All his sixteen-year-old mind could process was that Scott was two years younger than him and had a girlfriend. A hot girlfriend who had to be around Stephen’s age.
Unforgettable You: Destiny Romance Page 5
