by Ally Blake
Adam could not help but smile. ‘Too true.’
Three of Dean’s phone lines lit up almost simultaneously.
Adam stood. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Dean nodded, and his pacing resumed. He gave Adam a brief wave as he left the room.
Cara had her assistant offload the couple of jobs she had pencilled in for the next fortnight. But she called her main client, Maya Rampling, the editor of Fresh magazine, herself.
‘Cara, darling! I hear congratulations are in order!’
‘Maya, you are the darling. I know you’re half the reason I got this job. Even though it means I have had to pass the styling of your lingerie shoot onto a colleague.’
‘I will miss your light touch, Cara, but don’t give it another thought. This job was simply made for you.’
‘Did they call you or did you call them?’
‘Darling, they would be afraid for me to find out anything after everyone else. Just take this one piece of advice. Watch your back. TV jobs are notoriously precarious. Half the crew will be turned around by the end of the shoot. It’s like the big boys are so scared of losing their jobs themselves, they have to keep everyone else on their toes.’
‘OK…’ Cara felt the brick in her chest grow a kilogram heavier.
‘So be good. Keep your head down. Don’t cause trouble. Do your job with a minimum of fuss and you’ll be fine. Above all have fun, and I’ll see you soon.’
Then Maya hung up.
Have fun? Cara thought. With those last pieces of advice hanging over her she would be afraid to smile at the wrong person in case she did the wrong thing. No. She would keep her head down and do her job. She would keep her job and she would pay off her mortgage. Her mantra well and truly re-established, she felt ready again.
She showered, changed into cut-off denim jeans, a white collared T-shirt and white flat Mary-Janes, closed her suitcase, checked all the electrics at home were shut off, and then left.
A big black limousine awaited her at the front door. She wound down the window so she could have a good look at her old red stucco building. A smattering of coloured perennials swayed lightly in the front garden. Lights shone from most of the windows. Music spilled from a second-floor apartment. The next time she would see it, she would own it outright.
The car took off, its engine humming softly. They drove past girls in G-string bikinis parading the beach. Boys lined the walkways, acting as though they were simply pausing to check out the ships in the distance, but the girls in the G-string bikinis knew better.
It drove Cara to wonder about the mysterious Chris Geyer, putting himself on the line for love. She wondered what it would take for someone to go to that sort of length to find themselves a partner.
She, who had never considered going on a dating show, had never looked up an internet dating agency, had only gone to nightclubs for the dancing with her friends, simply could not see herself in his shoes. When it came down to it she knew she was actually spending a good deal of time not looking to find herself a partner.
Still, no matter what Chris’s reasons were, they had afforded her the opportunity of a lifetime and for that she would be for ever indebted to his romantic nature. So long as the anti-romantic nature of his friend did not turn the idea sour.
As the big car turned towards the city, Cara sank back into the soft seat feeling as if the rest of her life were waiting around the next corner.
‘It’s a done deal,’ Adam said as he shook hands with Jeff of the unironed clothes and the too much hair gel. ‘Revolution Wireless will be the main sponsor of this series of The Billionaire Bachelor and as such I will be allowed access to all areas of the set.’
‘So long as you stay at the hotel,’ Jeff qualified, ‘and are bound by the same rules as the rest of us for the next two weeks, that’s fine.’
Adam shot the younger man a wry smile. ‘Of course. That went without saying.’
‘Yet I said it anyway,’ Jeff said, returning the smile. ‘So if you can be at the hotel by eight o’clock tonight we will have a room for you—’
‘On the same floor as Chris.’
‘You will have the suite next door,’ Jeff agreed. ‘So here is a copy of the schedule, a timetable of the events that will occur within the confines of the show.’
Adam flicked through the document, which had no header and no front page. If anyone on the street found it they would think it a terribly dull, unimportant business memo, not the breakdown of the best-kept secret in Australian television.
‘The Billionaire Bachelor is going to be huge,’ Jeff promised. ‘You won’t regret this.’
No matter that Adam was now officially one of the gang, all the connotations implied by that title still made him fume. Chris sure needed him if he was going to come through this ordeal unscathed. And if Adam had anything to do with it, his friend would come out of this a billionaire and a bachelor still.
The front doors of the Ivy Hotel were guarded with big burly bouncers and a metal detector. They scanned the bar-code on Cara’s pass and let her through the doors. Once inside, a whole other set of security guards searched her luggage for recording equipment and found only a Polaroid camera, which was listed against her name as an allowable item. The place was really locked down tight. And she was being let through to the inner sanctum. Her whole body hummed with excitement and she hoped it had nothing to do with the metal detectors.
And then her suitcase began to ring.
The security guard, whose nametag read “Joe Buck, licence number 2483”, had been about to pass over her case and let her through. But at the ringing he tightened his grip. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Marlowe, but mobile phones are not allowed as per your contract.’
They had a brief game of tug of war before Cara let go. ‘But I didn’t bring my phone,’ she said, sure she had left it at home on her ironing-board.
Her case stopped ringing.
They looked at each other for a moment, both kind of hoping the other would agree that maybe they had imagined it.
‘OK, then, Ms Marlowe,’ Joe the security guard said. He handed the suitcase over again before the ringing resumed. ‘Ms Marlowe, I’m terribly sorry, but—’
Cara felt herself blushing to her toes. ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. Just give me a second. I really do not remember packing it.’
With Maya’s words—keep your head down, don’t cause trouble, minimum of fuss—ringing in her head, she wanted to get this spectacle over with as quickly as possible. She lobbed her suitcase onto the ground, bent from the waist, unzipped the case, peeked around her neatly folded clothes and found…nothing.
A distinctive murmur invaded her ears. She glanced between her knees and saw a line had formed behind her. What a fantastic first impression she was making on her new colleagues: bum in the air, being searched for contraband.
The ringing stopped. She shook her case and the ringing began all over again. Not having any luck with checking under her clothes with care, she began to scoop them out in a flurry, hanging them messily over her shoulder. Her just-washed hair kept hanging in her eyes and she had to constantly blow it out of her face. Added to that she was getting hot from the unusual lifting movements that felt agonisingly like exercise. She was in first-day-on-the-job hell.
‘Is everything all right here?’
At the sound of the familiar deep voice, Cara stood up so fast the blood took longer than necessary to reach her head. She held out a hand to steady herself as the world turned fuzzy and black. Since Adam Tyler was the closest pillar to hand, he had to do.
Her vision slowly cleared. She looked into her nemesis’s dark blue eyes and bit back a self-effacing groan. He would hardly want to talk seriously about his time as Australian Businessman of the Year with a woman who could barely put one foot in front of the other without something going awry.
It just wasn’t fair that she had to be at her most klutzy around someone so smooth. Her last words to him had been ‘see you ‘round like a riss
ole,’ for goodness’ sake! Who said that bar eight-year-olds and grown-ups with limited sophistication?
It only made him all the more intimidating and she did not stand for feeling that way with anyone. She was talented. She was sought after. She was focussed. She was ambitious. She was self-made. She was leaning against him, her hand splayed across his unexpectedly sculpted chest, with half her clothes strewn over her shoulder and a pair of plain white cotton panties hanging from her finger.
She whipped her hand away and tucked it behind her, shaking madly until the underwear plopped back into her suitcase.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, reaching out to take her by the shoulder as though he was afraid she might collapse atop his shiny shoes.
Finding herself flummoxed, she pulled away, crouched down and began to pile her clothes back into her suitcase.
‘Low blood pressure,’ she said, frantically shoving her entire collection of cotton pants that had managed to make their way out of her suitcase back into her suitcase. ‘Stood up too fast. Should have known better. Gives me blackouts.’
‘Ah, Ms Marlowe,’ Joe the security guard cut in. ‘Your mobile phone?’
She threw the rest of her clothes atop the suitcase and stepped away. ‘You look for it. Please. Be my guest.’
The guard looked to Adam as though hoping perhaps he would prefer to rifle through her intimates instead. Adam backed behind Cara. But then the ringing sound returned and the guard took a deep breath and went searching.
As Cara watched in mortified silence, it finally occurred to her that she was once again in the vicinity of the man she had been looking forward to never seeing again.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked under her breath.
‘You’re the one who needed the leaning post,’ he said from right behind her.
‘Not here. But here, in the hotel.’
At that moment Joe the security guard came up with something jingling in his hand. It was not a mobile phone. It was a card. It had a huge ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’ scrawled across the front. And when the guard opened it the card played a very good imitation of a mobile phone ring tone.
Cara, Adam, and a good number of those in line craned over the guard’s shoulder for a closer look, to find the long gushy note Gracie had written and hidden in her case before Cara had left.
Every one of the big burly men turned to Cara with mushy looks on their faces. Cara just tapped her foot and held out a hand. Blushing, Joe handed over her private mail.
‘I am terribly sorry, Ms Marlowe.’
‘That’s OK, Joe,’ she said, swallowing down her indignation and embarrassment. There was no reason to make him feel bad. He hadn’t done anything wrong, though Gracie would receive a tongue-lashing along with a hug for this particular stunt. Cara gave the guard a pat on the back and smiled until she sensed him relaxing. ‘You were doing your job. And with impressive thoroughness. You are a credit to your post.’
Joe blushed and scuffed his toe on the carpet.
‘Can I have my case now?’ Cara asked.
‘Sure. Of course.’ Joe returned to his packing with extra special care.
Cara cleared her throat. ‘Thanks, Joe, but I can look after it from here.’
Joe stood up, his blush growing by the second. While he went back to checking the bags of the growing line of guests, Cara continued to repack her case. But of course she could no longer get it closed. She looked about her for help. Joe was going through Adam’s bag and naturally everything seemed to be going swimmingly for him.
Adam glanced her way. She bit back her pride and waved him over. ‘If I sit, can you zip?’
A knowing smile lifted his mouth and she wanted nothing more than to slap it away. ‘Of course,’ he said.
She sat, having to lift her legs when he rounded the front, so that he could duck beneath them. Would there never be an end to her humiliation when he was about?
‘Come on, say it,’ she insisted.
‘What?’
‘Whatever it is you’re thinking.’ Some smartypants comment about my backside, or falling into your arms, or about my white cotton underwear.
‘I was thinking you handled Joe’s embarrassment brilliantly. You are one very nice lady, Ms Marlowe.’
‘Oh.’
Adam tugged the zip through the last few centimetres. Taking a hold of her ankles, he pulled her feet back to the ground. ‘There. All done.’
He kept a hold of her bare ankles for several long moments before releasing his grip with a final soft pat. Cara had to swallow to wet her suddenly parched throat.
‘Adam, you never did say what you were doing here?’
‘Not surprisingly, considering the floor show was a heck of a lot more interesting than anything I had to say.’
Cara felt a growl growing in her chest but Adam got there first.
‘Revolution Wireless is sponsoring the show.’
Now that statement deserved a hesitant blink.
‘Wow. That’s some turn-round. At lunch I could have sworn you thought the show the most ludicrous idea you had ever come across.’
‘I did. And I still do. But, nevertheless, people who know more about these sorts of things than I do tell me that it will be the biggest thing on television bar the Aussie Rules Grand Final. So I am here as Revolution Wireless’s representative.’
‘For the whole two weeks?’ Cara asked, trying to rein in her hysterical voice.
He nodded.
‘Mr Tyler,’ the security guard called out. ‘Mobile phone, laptop, printer, all on the list. You’re right to go through.’
Adam watched her for a few moments longer before standing and returning to his bags without another word.
Seeing her chance to retire as gracefully as possible, Cara stood, and dragged her suitcase to the lift as quickly as she could.
Adam watched her walk away.
The woman was good entertainment value if nothing else. He watched her shuffle from one foot to the other as though the floor were covered in hot coals, and then as the lift doors slowly opened she bolted like a cat with her tail on fire.
Joe the security guard cleared Adam to go on through into the hotel proper. Adam sauntered to the lift recalling what a cute tail it was, squeezed into pale denim cut-offs that had been washed so many times they fit her like second skin. Though she was a slim woman, she certainly curved just where she ought. He had been well aware of that when walking up to the front door of the hotel and seeing those very curves wiggling so engagingly at him.
The moment he had realised just whose curves they were, he had instantly jumped in to help. Or, if he was honest with himself, he had instantly leapt to shield her considerable temptations from appreciative eyes other than his own.
Who needs security guards in this place? he joked to himself. Adam Tyler is on the scene and he’s ready and willing to protect everybody from themselves.
CHAPTER FOUR
CARA was up early the next morning. She hustled downstairs to the buffet for some peace and quiet as she had the distinct feeling that it would be the last she would get for a good two weeks. It had nothing to do with avoiding one particular member of the crew, of course. She was happy to avoid all of them after her grand entrance the night before.
On her way back to her room, Cara passed by a young woman in sweaty gym gear who could not for the life of her get her door unlocked.
‘Do you need a hand?’ Cara asked.
The woman looked up, her pale blue eyes flashing. ‘I can’t seem to work this stupid card thing. I only arrived this morning and the guy who carried my bags let me in the first time.’
Cara held out her hand. ‘May I?’
The woman gave it over as though it were a hot potato. ‘Please. Otherwise I may be going about my day looking like this.’ She pulled out a hunk of lanky hair, damp from an obvious session at the gym downstairs.
‘Well, I wouldn’t wish that on any of my fellow women,’ Cara said, sliding the card through the
slot. The door opened without a problem.
‘You can’t hardly tell I’m a country girl, can you?’ the woman said with a self-deprecating smile, and her best hick accent. ‘How’s a gal like me meant to figure out one of these fandangled big city doohickies? Back home we don’t even have front doors!’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Cara said with a smile. ‘I’ve been here since last night so I’ve had time to master all the fandangled doohickies.’
‘Practice makes perfect, then?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Well, thanks…’ The woman smiled at Cara with her head cocked to one side.
‘Cara,’ Cara said.
‘Thanks, Cara. I’m Maggie. Anyway, I’d better get on in there and get my fire started so I can cook me some tucker.’
Cara could not help but laugh. The young woman was such a sweetheart. ‘Put on a sausage for me.’
‘Shall do. See ya!’
Cara didn’t even make it to her room before Jeff was on the scene. She had already swiped her card so Jeff just bundled in after her, chattering away about the plans for the day.
‘Do you mind if I go to the bathroom by myself?’ she asked, half joking but half making sure he wasn’t about to follow her in there.
‘Go for it,’ he said. ‘Just listen up as you go.’
‘OK, then.’
He sat on her bed and she was glad she was a naturally tidy person. The idea of this guy having to move last night’s underwear from her bed didn’t appeal. Especially since half the crew had already had a good gander the night before.
Cara did her make-up and cleaned her teeth as Jeff happily yabbered away. ‘So today you get to meet Chris. Outfit him. Make him as hunky as you can. And tonight he meets the girls.’
She popped her head around the door to find him reading the last page of the book by her bed.
‘Any good?’ he asked.
She shook her head to try to keep up with him. ‘Did you say we start shooting tonight?’
‘Yep. So you’d better get cracking. Collect Chris upstairs in Suite 44, then straight downstairs to collect your credit card and limo. Shop, shop, shop. And I’ll see you back by midday so we can dress him, mike him, and paint him.’
