by Ally Blake
“I think Nate has a crush on his pretend girlfriend.”
Nate shook his head. “What Nate has is a contract to read for the third time.”
Gabe winked at Nate’s assistant, who giggled like a schoolgirl, then stopped in the office doorway, grinning. Nate pointed a sharp finger at his business partner. “You’re going to Vegas.”
“I am?” Gabe asked, standing straighter, his dark eyes shining with thoughts of treasure.
“With Bamford Smythe.”
“The hell I am.”
“He likes M&M’S. You’re taking him to Vegas and getting him a private tour of M&M’S World. And when he’s nice and high on chocolate fumes we’re getting the nitty-gritty of this damn deal locked in.”
Nate could feel Gabe reacting to being told what to do. They were equal partners, after all. Had been since day dot. But after Gabe had disappeared all those years before, leaving Nate to pick up the slack, Nate had never used the “You Owe Me” card. Not once.
Even while he couldn’t believe it himself, Nate felt it shimmer on the air between them now. Over Bamford Smythe.
For reasons of his own Gabe took it on the chin, striding off towards his own office to make it so.
Nate thumbed his temple and stalked behind his desk. When he realised what he was doing he pulled his thumb away. If even Saskia, whom he’d met twice, had noticed his stress, he needed to take a break. And soon.
Or he was seriously going to crack.
FOUR
Saskia stood leaning against
Nate’s car—a glam silver sporty number that would have gone down well in a Bond movie—on the street outside a massive Stonnington Drive home. Its three clear
storeys of gabled roofs and picture windows gave its imposing façade familial warmth, even while the shade of a hundred-year-old oak in the front yard added to the late winter chill.
No wonder Nate had looked so relieved when he’d picked her up at her door a half-hour before. The poor love had probably expected her to turn up in hemp and a hat. Instead she’d gone for a little lipgloss, a little more mascara, fitted jeans, layered tops, a tailored jacket and ballet flats. He didn’t need to know the frilly scarf that hung to her knees was a million years old, second-hand and homemade.
“What a beautiful home,” said Saskia, having a Molly-Ringwald-in-a-John-Hughes-movie moment.
“Mmm.”
His tight response was so chilly she literally shivered. She gave herself a good mental shake. Then a physical one—stomping her feet and shaking the blood back into her hands.
“What are you doing?” Nate asked, his voice tight, his whole body stiff as a board.
“Trying to relax.”
“Try harder.”
He was serious. Which only made her laugh. Hard. Giving the butterflies in her belly a good workout.
“Enough already! How do you expect me to act? Faking it in front of a guy’s family is hardly a common occurrence in my life. How about yours?”
His sensuous mouth grew flat, his stare much the same.
“Didn’t think so. Because you’re not doing such a bang-up job of looking like a guy who likes a girl enough to bring her home.”
His jaw clenched so hard he was in danger of breaking a tooth.
“Here.” She reached for the top button of his shirt, and stopped when he flinched.
Jeez, the guy was so wound up that if she flicked lint off his jacket he’d probably self-combust. She spared a glance at the door of the beautiful-looking home perched at the end of the perfect white gravel drive and wondered for a second what she’d let herself in for.
But it was too late for all that now.
She’d promised to help, so she’d help. She’d be such a great amount of help he’d never forget it. Maybe he’d be so touched he’d open up a little, give her fodder for her study.
“May I?” she asked, hand hovering an inch from his chest.
“May you what?”
“Ruffle you up a little.”
“For what purpose?”
“For the purpose of making you look like a man on a date, not like an undertaker.”
He breathed deep, his chest lifting till the weave of his luxurious woollen jacket brushed the hairs of her arms, creating skitters of...something all the way to her elbows.
His gaze finally left the house to connect with hers. The tangle of blue was enough to take her breath clean away.
“Ruffle away.”
She purposely lowered her gaze from his eyes, not quite sure what to do with the warmth that seemed to have seeped in there from one second to the next.
Instead she focused on the top button of his shirt and slid the button through the hole. When she saw he wore a crisp white T-shirt underneath—heck, even that had been ironed—she undid another button, and another. Her fingers slid beneath the collar as she softened out the starch. The backs of her knuckles brushed against the warm cotton of his T, and the beat of his heart didn’t feel so steady.
Because of what he was about to try to pull on his family, she told herself. For the less than steady beat of hers her excuse was less clear.
“You have a good reason for doing this, right?” she asked, flicking her gaze to his to find him watching her fingers. Intently. She pulled them away, tucked them into the back pockets of her jeans. “For lying to them. For their own good? For yours? For world peace?”
He sniffed out a laugh and looked up at her from beneath his unfairly long lashes. “What if I told you the reason was less altruistic?”
What if? she thought. But she didn’t have any qualms. She trusted his heart was in the right place. Or right enough. Her allegiance was with him.
She slid her hand into the crook of his arm, her hip bumping his companionably. “Come on, lover. Let’s go make them believe.”
She pushed away from the car and escorted him up the path, the scent of roses clear and lush on the crisp air. He unhooked his arm and slid it around her waist. She did the same to him, his body heat pressing in on her.
They walked side by side up the steps. Eyes on the big white double doors with a great lion’s head knocker snarling back at them.
Saskia looked at Nate, waited till he looked back at her and made sure he was listening. “This thing between us is new, so if I don’t know something I’ll say so. All you have to do is throw me a hot glance every now and then. Undress me with your eyes a little. They’ll eat it up.”
He stared at her for longer than was comfortable.
“What?”
“Hell, Saskia,” he said, his voice a growl as he ran a hand up the back of his hair—a move she was already familiar with.
She slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze.
Then when he looked down at her in question she lifted onto her toes and kissed his cheek. The rasp of his stubble tickled her lips. The scent of him slipped down the back of her throat.
Which was when she might have hummed.
The flicker of heat that sparked to life in Nate’s eyes made her sure of it.
He lifted a hand to her cheek, his thumb running slowly across her cheekbone before his fingers disappeared into her hair. Brow furrowing, his eyes roved over her face, leaving her eyes to rove over his. And what a face. Noble nose, thunderbolt eyes, lips just made for kissing. She’d tried not to remember just how good they were at that particular job, but it was an impossibility.
So much so that, when his tongue darted out to wet his lips and he bent towards her Saskia was so filled with anticipation she began to tremble.
Which was when the front door swung open, letting out a shaft of golden lamplight and noisy chatter.
Nate blinked as if coming to from a spell, then as one they looked up as a gorgeous blonde rolled her eyes at them.
“Faith,” Nate growled, taking Saskia’s hand and holding it tight behind his back as if he was her human shield.
“Nate,” said Faith. “And you must be this new girl we’ve heard about. Glad to meet you.”
“Saskia Bloom,” said Saskia, but Nate had her in such a tight grip she was forced to hold out her left hand.
Faith took it, laughed, shook her head, then waved a hand to usher them in.
She bounded off, her long blonde hair swinging, but Nate kept Saskia back a moment.
“Thank you,” he said, his breath brushing her ear as he leaned in close.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Yes,” he said, waiting till her eyes found his. “You have.”
Then he stepped back so that his eyes could slide down her form, touching on her neck, her wrist, her thighs, before slowly meandering back to her eyes.
“Now, let’s do this,” he said, then winked—quick, brief, but potent—before he led her into his family home.
And while Saskia tried to get over the fact that gorgeous Nate Mackenzie had just well and truly undressed her with his eyes, for a brief moment she imagined running. Far, far away.
But Saskia was a stayer. Through thick and thin. You could take her stuff, call her names, ignore her through an entire childhood and still she’d never leave you. It was her defining quality. And, no matter that Nate Mackenzie was proving to be a trickier proposition than she had at first realised, she wouldn’t let him down.
In fact he’d be so impressed with her awesome girlfriendness he’d open up and give her all the research material she’d need to do her piece. To write her love formula. To understand why some people found love every day of the week and others didn’t no matter how hard they tried and how much they wanted it.
She just had to keep one step ahead of him or she’d turn into a puddle of lust on his mother’s floor.
* * *
Saskia’s coping mechanism was sophisticated, but surrounded by the females of the Mackenzie clan, her nerves were just about shot after less than an hour.
They were all gorgeous, like Nate. His mother effortlessly charming, like Nate. So it should have occurred sooner that Nate’s family would be as sharp as he too. As dogged. As tricky.
Interweaving questions about her, and Nate, and her and Nate, with talk of current affairs, reality TV, school friends she’d never heard of, keeping her spinning in circles till her inner ear was on its last legs.
“You’re not his usual type,” the one with the silver earrings—Faith—threw into the middle of an argument about the men in True Blood.
Nate’s older sister, Jasmine, pinched Faith till she cried out, and then looked sweetly at Saskia. “What she meant was you’re a real woman.”
Hope rolled her eyes and stuck a rum ball in her mouth.
Saskia said, “As opposed to an imaginary one?”
Faith stopped rubbing at the pink mark on her arm, her eyes cutting to Saskia before she barked out a round of raucous laughter. “You know something we don’t?”
Sure do, Saskia thought. But she just shrugged, looked Faith right in her big blue eyes, and said, “Nothing I’d share even upon threat of torture.”
Faith grinned. “I like you. Stick around, if you can manage it.”
They liked her, Saskia thought, making her wonder how they treated those they were less than keen on.
Later, cradling a much-needed coffee, she found a quiet corner, slowly sweeping her eyes over the great room at the rear of the house. The women were chatting, gossiping, sharing their favourite books. Saskia felt herself watching them as if they were the subject of a nature documentary: Women of the Mackenziegeti...
The guys were watching footy—black and white versus blue. Jasmine’s twin boys had turned the dining table into a fort. Nate, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.
The whole afternoon he’d kept himself apart, just beyond the edges of conversations, hiding behind a coffee, or a beer, or a nephew. While she’d watched them all in open-mouthed awe.
Growing up, she’d wondered what it might be like to have a big family, and watching the shifting dynamic of this group of people, the vibrant debate beneath the warm glow of the beautiful home, she felt a twinge of envy. A kick of regret. And her first pang of guilt.
She was on Nate’s team. No matter what. But she wasn’t sure Nate’s team was doing the right thing. Whatever it was that kept him at arm’s length from his family, that made him think he had to lie to them rather than have it out with them, he certainly didn’t seem willing, or able, to fix it himself. The only outcome she could see was that one day he’d be so far removed he’d be the one feeling he was on the outside looking in.
She found him in the kitchen, which was surprisingly devoid of action. He was swishing his thumb over his phone, brow furrowed. His other thumb was pressed into his temple, and not for the first time that day.
Her fingers itched to rub it for him. To make everything all better.
Instead she leant in the doorway and said, “Howdy, stranger.”
Nate looked up from his phone, expecting his mother, or one of his sisters. He could never seem to go five minutes without one of them tracking him down, making sure he was happy, that he hadn’t disappeared.
When he saw it was Saskia, her soft mouth smiling indulgently, the clench in his stomach unwound and he put his phone away. “Howdy yourself.”
“I wasn’t sure if you trusted me to hold my own or if you’d just gone into hiding.”
“We can go any time you please.”
“I’m fine. Honestly. They worship you.”
“Hmm.”
She leant a hip against the sink. “Poor Nate. To be so adored.”
He turned to face her. “Want to swap?”
She glanced back to the swing door, where noise poured through the fretwork above. All too late he remembered she had no-one.
“Saskia—” he said.
But Faith bustled into the kitchen before he had the chance to take it back.
“Nate? Oh, there you are,” said Faith. “Half-time. Game-time.”
“No.”
“What’s game-time?” Saskia asked.
Nate held out a hand to shield Saskia, but it was too late. Faith took her by the hand and dragged her through the door. “You’re going to love this.”
Faith shot him one last look before the door swung closed—and a grin that left him worried for Saskia’s safety.
Knowing he’d left her alone too long already, he followed, leaning quietly in the doorway of the lounge, arms crossed, nursing a beer as his family went about their loud business around him.
Usually he took these moments to think about work, to disappear inside his head and pull himself away from all that energy. And history. And emotion so thick it clogged his throat.
This time they seemed to have forgotten to try to include him, now that they had a new victim to bat about, so he let his eyes rove over the scene, taking it in.
Hope was midargument with her girlfriend Tanya—a wholefoods wholesaler—about which kinds of flour were gluten-free and which weren’t. Poor Tanya, so earnest, while Hope’s eyes were gleaming, her Mackenzie genes loving every second of the battle.
Faith pinched her fiancée on the backside on her way to the kitchen with an empty salad bowl.
Jasmine was washing down the face of a toddler with a baby wipe, calling him back when he tried to leave before he was picture-perfect. Nate found himself wincing in sympathy.
The Mackenzie women were tough, uncompromising. He felt a small, swift kick of pride at the fact, considering where they’d all been twenty years before—the way it might have all turned out so differently if he hadn’t done everything
to make sure they felt safe, secure, loved, protected. If he hadn’t given every ounce of his heart and soul, and then a little more, to give them the safety net from which to leap out into the world.
He breathed into the void it had left inside him, the vacuum where empathy and love had resided once upon a time.
“Look what you did.”
Nate turned to find his mother behind him, her eyes taking in the same picture as his. He stood straighter. “I think you’ll find they’re all yours.”
“We’re all ours,” she corrected, leaning her head on his shoulder as she gave him a squeeze. Then she lifted her head to look him in the eye as she said, “I like your girl.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say, She’s not mine, but he caught himself in time, offering a small smile before he brought his beer to his mouth for a swig.
“You know what I like most?”
“What’s that?” he asked, pretty sure it wouldn’t be the same thing he liked best.
“She makes you laugh.”
“I laugh plenty.”
She laughed at his frown. “You smile plenty. A mere glint in those eyes of yours and you can get away with anything. But it’s always taken a lot to make you laugh. And today you seem more...relaxed.” She tugged at the open collar of his shirt. “It suits you.” Then, after a long, slow breath in and out, she said, “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“Okay, then.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek before heading into the fray with a tray of cookies.
Leaving Nate with the same sense of ruefulness he always felt when they looked him in the eye and said, Well done, you. As if it was as important to them as it was to him that he’d made something of himself. And just like that he felt a pressure headache building behind his left eye.
It was why he gravitated to women whose appeal was surface-deep. Who wanted him for surface reasons. His money, his touch, his charm. Replenishable resources all.
