by Ally Blake
“No? Fine. Ben and Nora, it is.” The phone swung sideways. Lights and music buzzed and blinged all around her head. Then she lifted a handful of popcorn and tossed it piece by piece into her mouth.
Ben found himself leaning in. “Where on earth are you?”
“I’m glad you asked. I am having dinner at the night market down the road from your place. It’s new since you were last here. Super swanky.” She took off her glasses and tossed them into a net bag at her side. “Wanna see?”
Before he had the chance to answer, she switched the phone away from selfie mode and gave him a virtual three-hundred-and-sixty-degree tour of what looked like a 7-Eleven store mixed with an arcade mixed with a cinema candy bar. Swanky? It gave him a sugar headache.
Rubbing his temple, he called, “Nora.” Then louder. “Nora!”
It switched back to selfie mode. And once again he found himself struck, as if he’d been hit in the back of the head. Those eyes. That inner light. That smile.
“Cool, huh?” she asked, before her lips once again puckered around a straw.
“That’s your dinner?” he asked, unable to keep focus. “Popcorn and a shake.”
A grin. A shrug. “Veggies and dairy. Boom.” She turned her head, beamed at someone passing by. “Hey, Ross.”
“Hey, Nora,” said a deep male voice before a face popped into view, bussing a kiss to her cheek.
“Ross,” she said, jabbing a thumb at thin air once the man had moved on. “Owns the local florist. One of the businesses I’d mentioned to you who could really do with your professional heroic eye.”
Ben ran a hand up the back of his neck, gripping it tight, and tried not to wonder what else Ross might mean to Nora. It was none of his business. She was none of his business. In fact, she was a thorn in his side, a pain in his neck, and a dangerously disruptive influence in his heretofore tightly engineered life.
All of which she managed from the other side of the planet.
Imagine what havoc she might cause if he actually went home—
Not home. Melbourne. Home was London and had been for a number of years. In fact, he’d likely spent more hours in this office than he had in Thornfield Hall. He was exactly where he was meant to be.
“Why are you calling, Nora? Is there an issue with the house?” he asked.
He could have sworn her left eyelid flickered, before she said, “Nope! Everything’s perfect.”
“Then what can I do for you?”
Her hair bounced as if she was now kicking the wall of the counter on which she sat. “Do I really need to say it?”
Ben knew what she wanted. She wanted him to get on a plane, grab a cab to Fitzroy, and take the keys from her hand. He shook his head.
“Okay, then. So what do you think of the night market, huh?”
“It’s giving me a tension headache.”
She laughed, and it made her face even lovelier than it already was. “Fair enough. But remember, this city...it offers every kind of fun under the sun. Culture, food, sport, beaches, relaxation, games. Give me a chance and I’ll find that one thing that makes it impossible for you to stay away.”
Ben’s next breath in was deep as he stamped down a ridiculous thought as to one thing that might induce him to pack up and fly halfway across the world. And Nora, she watched him with a sudden woozy fog in her gaze.
She shook it off. And the bright bubbly sunshine girl was back. “Till then, consider this the first of my now daily check-ins!”
I’m about to get this on the daily? he thought, and something fast and furious, something that felt as if it ought to come with a warning, flickered to life inside him.
“Unless,” she said, head cocking to the other side, “you hopped on a plane today. Took the house off my hands. Then you’d never have to hear from me again.”
Her smile stretched slowly this time, giving him a flash of tongue before she once again wrapped her lips around the straw.
“Not happening,” he said.
“Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She appeared to slide off the bench, the phone shaking before the connection was lost.
* * *
The next afternoon, the new short-term rental agreement Nora had asked Damon to put together landed in her inbox. Despite any stipulations Clancy had put in her will, or Ben’s lack of concern about rent, not paying her way just felt wrong.
After their last couple of conversations, it somehow felt even more imperative that when she passed over the keys, it would be a clean break. No ripples, no regrets. Everything on the up and up.
She moved to scrawl her digital signature, before glancing to where Cutie and Pie slept in the corner of her room.
When the Playful Paws crew had suggested Cutie might encourage Pie out of the shadows, she’d thought it was a ploy. But it had totally worked. They were inseparable. She’d let the foster home know, so they could pick up the pair. Soon.
For now, her top teeth snagged on her bottom lip as she looked back at the part of the contract that stipulated no subletting, no smoking, no illegal activities, no pets.
Officially, they were not her pets. She was only fostering them. Loophole? No. She really should call Ben. Tell him about the dogs. And Clancy’s personal patch of happy herbs that still grew in the backyard, which were not illegal so much as they might be a surprise to their new owner.
Tucking her legs up onto her desk chair, Nora grabbed her phone, using the camera as she ran a finger over her teeth, gave her hair a quick fluff. Then she pressed call.
When Ben’s face snapped onto the screen her breath caught in her throat, as it did every single time she saw the guy. Clean-shaven, eyelashes slightly tangled, dark hair swept into a kind of businessman’s quiff—the man really was all kinds of beautiful.
“Hey!” she called, unable to control her goofy grin. So much for only pretending she was softening towards the guy. She could barely keep the warmth from her face, much less the rest of her.
“Nora.” A short, sharp, single word of greeting, yet there was a definite smile tilting at his lips. As if maybe Mr McStuffy was softening towards her too.
“Where are you?” she asked, unable to see much behind him bar a grey-tinted window.
“Work.”
“What you doing?”
A beat, then, “Work.”
“What are you wearing?” The second the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. Then, to press her lack of self-control home, she added, “Have you heard the percentages on how many people who have online work meetings rarely wear pants?”
“I have not.”
“Newsreaders do it all the time. Business up top, party on bottom.”
Ben’s blink was slow, and did things to her insides that made her breath hitch.
“Are you asking me if I’m wearing pants, Ms Letterman?”
“Pfft. No,” she scoffed, then ruined the brief moment of cool by saying, “But are you?”
Ben’s eyes darkened, just a fraction. Then with a “you asked for it” lift of an eyebrow, he moved his phone slowly down his body.
Past a snow-white shirt, the buttons straining against the broadness of his chest. A conservative red-and-navy-striped tie that fell rakishly to one side. Once he hit the bottom of his shirt, he paused, and Nora held her breath.
Then he swiped the phone over a belt—black, shiny, the buckle brushed silver—and past a pair of very nice suit pants to socks and shoes, the former covered in Batman symbols.
Nora let out her breath in a huff that was half laugh, half relief. What was she expecting? That he was about to put on a peep show? That his socks might be boring? That he might find her assertiveness affronting? That he’d find her, altogether, too much?
Nora was still riddled in discomfort at that last thought when Ben lifted his phone and there was that face again. All rugge
d angles and dark bedroom eyes. And since her mind’s eye was still dealing with the sculpting of that white shirt, the slightly loosened knot of the tie, all the strength that the suit pants beheld, it was a lot.
“Right,” she managed to say. “All seems in order, then.”
Ben’s mouth kicked up at one corner, as if he was fully aware of how flustered she was. And liked it.
That would all come to an end as she was about to tell him about the dogs. And the weed in the garden. And the strange smell coming from the washing machine since she’d washed the dog’s blankets.
But first...
“The reason I called, apart from asking when you’re coming home...” She waited expectantly.
He gave her a look that made her insides curl and her toes warm.
“Nothing? Okay. Well, I’m about to sign our new rental agreement—”
“Your new what?”
She swung her phone around and showed him the contract on her laptop. “I had Damon draw it up. I insisted. People find me pretty persuasive. Present company excluded.”
When she swung her phone back, he looked pained. No, he looked stormy. His voice was preternaturally calm as he demanded, “Show me that again?”
She did as asked. Heard his voice bark, “Were you Clancy’s only tenant?”
Funny, she thought, Ben never called Clancy his grandmother. Was it because she’d adopted him? And so late in life? Though, vivacious and vibrant as she was, “grandmotherly” wasn’t the first adjective Nora would have used to describe her.
“Nora?”
“Sorry. Yes, I was her only tenant. I rented out the top floor—bed, bath, home office beneath the window. I don’t take up much space.”
“And that’s what you were paying?”
When she swung her phone back around, he looked exactly as she’d imagined he might after his first round of emails. Cold, hard, disapproving. The earlier frisson of discomfort felt like mud settling in a hot, heavy ball in her belly, as she felt a confrontation coming on.
She searched her databanks for sparkles, for sunshine, and so unprepared had she been to need it, she came up blank. “Pretty much. Though I asked Damon to up it a little now that I’m not cleaning the place any more. Which is nice. Though who doesn’t clean a house before the cleaner comes in, am I right?”
“You asked—” Ben looked ready to pounce, but then he blinked. Blink-blink. The earlier disapproval gone, in a flash. “You were cleaning the place for Clancy? As in cleaning cleaning?”
“Is there any other kind?”
When he ran a hand over his mouth, and said nothing, she filled the silence.
“I also did the shopping. Looked after the garden. Cooked dinners. Helped host her various community nights. Clancy had company and help, I had affordable room and board. We had eighteen-odd months like that, and it suited us both beautifully.”
As her discomfort faded, it made room for indignation. “Which you’d have known if you’d talked to your grandmother more.”
“We talked,” Ben gritted out. “She simply never mentioned you.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Nora scoffed, knowing she was pushing things, but just so glad not to be on the receiving end of bad opinions for a bit.
Ben shifted on his chair, the phone swinging to show a little more of his office. Pale cream walls, huge bookshelves, massive windows—definite Master of the Universe stuff.
“How long?” he asked. “How long was she unwell?”
“What do you mean how long? When did you last speak?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Oh.”
Oh, Ben. It had not, not once, occurred to her that he didn’t even know Clancy was sick. However that miscommunication had come about, whatever their relationship had been, this was his family they were talking about. His loss. It was on her to be kind, and gentle, and leave the conversation on even better terms than when she’d started it.
“Not long,” she said, her voice softening. “Not long at all. A few weeks. It was... It was really fast. But when the time came, she was ready.”
Nora’s words drifted between them, like a cloud of smoke after a fireworks display, till Ben broke the silence. “That must have been hard. For you.”
His eyes caught on hers, so dark, so deep. It took every bit of willpower she had not to look away. “It was hard. But it was also...a gift. To be there. To the last.”
Ben breathed out, his gaze drifting off to the side.
She wondered what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what she might do to make him feel better. But she didn’t know him nearly well enough to ask.
“It seems I need to apologise to you, yet again.”
“Nah,” said Nora, the queen of conciliation. “This is all weird. For both of us.”
“Weird is no excuse. I was on the verge of raking you over the coals for taking advantage of an old woman.”
“I would never!” Nora spluttered. “I... That’s not how I roll.”
“I know,” he said, his voice a murmur. Then, again, “I know. And I’m sorry.”
Nora absorbed those words, that tenuous, unanticipated thread of trust, in that deep rumbling voice; tucking them away in the most special secret memory box she had.
“Clancy, on the other hand—”
He stopped, ran a hand over his whole face, then shifted so that his phone was leaning on something on his desk. On anyone else the angle would give a double chin but Ben just appeared big, and strong, and as if his cape might start fluttering behind him at any moment.
Nora leant elbow on desk and chin on palm and all but sighed.
“I’m not taking any money from you, Nora. If you send the contract back, I’m telling Damon to tear it up.”
“It’s digital.”
Ben breathed out slowly, his expression long-suffering but in a way that didn’t set Nora’s alarm bells ringing. Instead it felt sort of...intimate. Special.
“Then he will do the digital version of tearing it up.”
Nora opened her mouth to reason with him—she really was very good at it.
But then Ben ran a hand through his hair and it reminded her of the times—the many times—people looked pained when she expressed her opinion, or told her she really was too much, and could she just tone the excitement levels down. So she bit her lip and let him be.
“Will you do this for me?” he said.
“Fine,” she agreed. “But I will not live here indefinitely. I have plans too, you know!”
“What plans?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.
“Well, not so much plans as plans to have plans. But I will not overstay my welcome. So you need to get off that pert tushy of yours and get yourself the heck down here!”
Ben’s expression stilled, his eyes gazing into hers. “What makes you think my tushy is pert?”
Oops. Um... “I looked you up?”
“Did you?” he drawled. “Chat tomorrow?”
What could she say but, “Count on it!” before quickly hanging up the phone.
Feeling like an emotional taco—tough-looking on the outside, but one bite and her insides would spill out everywhere—Nora let her head fall to the desk.
And promised herself the next time they talked she’d not mention his backside, or his pants.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHERE ARE YOU?” Nora asked Ben, without preamble, when he answered the phone a few days and a couple of calls later.
“Work,” he said, his phone on speaker.
“Work, work, always work. Why no video?” Nora asked. “Does my expression of disillusionment at the fact that I am still here make you feel guilty that you are not here?”
Ben, who had been reading a scathing email his legal team had drafted to the mediators stalling on one small contract negotiation t
hat might tip a fifty-year-old airline into insolvency if it wasn’t sorted in the next twenty-four hours, clicked on the camera, and angled the phone against the stapler on his desk.
The screen flickered a moment before Nora’s face beamed at him.
Her hair was back off her face, only a couple of loose blonde curls skirting her cheeks. Long, lean golden-brown arms poked out of a white sleeveless T-shirt knotted above her belly button. His next breath in tasted like springtime.
“There you are,” she said, with such delight in her voice, in her eyes, he felt it as an ache behind the ribs. Another reason he’d chosen not to use the video.
For things were getting rambunctious between them. Double entendres running thick and fast. And he was getting far too used to looking forward to seeing her face. Hearing her voice. Tangling with her wit.
Nora added, “I figured maybe you were, I don’t know, getting changed. Or in the shower. Or doing your daily calisthenics and didn’t want me to see you in your unitard.”
Ben shot her a look, saved the email to draft—he’d finish it later—then grabbed the phone and held it at arm’s length, giving her a view of his regular Tuesday suit.
“Ooh,” she said, eyebrows waggling. “The money shot.”
Ben’s laughter was loud enough he looked to the door, to make sure Damon didn’t burst in to check he was okay. The kid had been all over him of late. Making sure he was eating. And going home at a reasonable hour. Ben had wondered out loud when he and Damon had married, because he couldn’t remember the ceremony, which Damon had thought was the best thing he’d heard all week.
“Where are you?” Ben asked.
Nora turned the phone, showing off big silver washing machines and a clean-looking blue-and-white checked floor. “Laundromat.”
“Does Clancy not have a washing machine?”
“Did you see the ambience of this place? It’s hopping!” she said, glancing away and biting at her bottom lip, a move Ben had come to know was her tell when she was prevaricating.
Ever since Clancy, and the great lie of his life was uncovered, his number one rule in all of his dealings—with employees, clients, friendships—had been honesty. Nora’s unpredictability should have provoked him more. But she was just so blatant, his shackles barely quivered.
