by Nancy Warren
“Oh, don’t bring that up. I finally brought him home and he got drunk and spewed all over the bathroom.”
“Right. Who needs two disasters in a row?”
Fiona nodded sagely and took off her glasses to gnaw the earpiece, a habit that should have been revolting, but she somehow managed to make sexy. The slightly out-of-focus expression in her eyes appeared sensual but was really myopic. “Maybe he needs an understanding woman to help him through his bad patch.”
Oh, no. That was exactly what Mark didn’t need. “Sure,” Bron said brightly. “Great idea. And, penis size is vastly overrated, don’t you think?”
The glasses clattered to the reception desk as Fi’s mouth fell open. “He’s only got a little willie?”
“Shhh.” Bron glanced around the busy reception, but fortunately no one appeared to be listening. “Don’t tell anyone. I only wanted to warn you.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Thanks.” Fiona picked up her glasses and put them back on. “No wonder he makes love to his calculator. Those buttons are so nice and tiny.”
“I’ll cook tonight,” Mark said as they headed home.
“Why would you do that?” Bron asked. She was driving him home from the office as she’d been doing most days.
“Because you shouldn’t have to do it every night. Besides, I’m a neater cook. Dishes won’t be such a marathon.”
They stopped to shop and she immediately wandered to the display of fruit, like a magpie to shiny beads.
“Bron, I made a list.”
She turned and laughed. “Mr. Efficient. Of course you did.”
It was efficient to have a list, and they could have been done in no time if she hadn’t insisted on wandering around and making an adventure out of a chore, making him sample some kind of dip she liked enough to buy, and showing him all the kinds of foods he wouldn’t find at home. He had to admit shopping, like everything else, was more fun with Bron around.
When they got home, he reached for the grocery bags and handed her the lightest one, thinking this was a ritual like married people might share, only he suspected rituals would never become dull or routine with Bron.
He was right. As they climbed the outside stairs, it seemed there was someone waiting for them. A man with an official-looking briefcase.
“Bronwyn Spencer?” the man asked in a snotty tone that irked Mark immediately.
“Oh, crikey, not again,” she muttered behind him.
He made a motion to her with his hand, making a grocery sack swing. “Who wants to know?”
“Ms. Spencer is three months overdue paying for her new fridge,” the man said in that same snooty tone. “And she seems to have changed addresses without informing her creditors.”
Irritation surged through Mark. How dare this little pipsqueak talk to and about Bron this way? And how could she put herself in this position?
He put down a grocery bag and reached for his wallet. “I’m Ms. Spencer’s accountant,” he said with impressive terseness. “If there’s been an oversight, we’ll correct it.” He pulled out a business card and his pen and carefully wrote his local number at Crane onto it. “You can reach me at this number, tomorrow.”
The man opened his mouth to protest.
“During business hours,” Mark said, and waited until the toad had scrambled back down the stairs before letting Bron and him into the house.
“Wow, thanks,” Bron said when they were inside with the door shut. “I can’t believe they tracked me down here.”
She kept babbling as she hauled her one bag of groceries to the kitchen, then made a big production out of putting everything away.
“Hold on a minute,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you in trouble?”
She winced. “Not trouble, exactly. I’m not the most organized bookkeeper. I told you I’m hopeless.” She looked hot and embarrassed and uncomfortable. He kissed her nose.
“I’ve saved huge companies from bankruptcy, Bron. I bet I can help you, too.”
“Really?”
“Sure. First we eat, then we do some ‘boring accounting, ’ ” he said, imitating her well enough that she giggled.
While she put the rest of the groceries away, he started cooking. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I forgot to put fresh thyme on the list.”
She opened a cupboard that was stocked with some dried spices. “No thyme. Will oregano do?”
“The recipe doesn’t call for oregano,” he said, wondering if he should run out to the local corner store.
Bron came up behind him and kissed his neck. “Be a devil,” she said.
Okay, so maybe he was a little anal sometimes, he admitted as he tasted the pasta dish and found the oregano had done the job.
After dinner, she was so desperate to escape the accounting ordeal that she even volunteered to do dishes, but he shook his head. “Let’s get you organized.”
She made a revolted face, but she didn’t refuse the help.
“So, where’s this fridge you bought and forgot to pay for?” She didn’t even have a place to live, what did she want with a fridge?
“That was for a girlfriend. She lost her job and then her fridge went. She’ll pay me back when she can.”
“You’re a generous friend, Bron.” She’d been generous with him, too. Giving him tours of the area, her time, and sharing her body with him. He was enjoying this trip more than he’d dreamed possible.
“Yeah, well, I’m not an organized one.” She dragged her toe across the floor like a little kid. “I don’t know how to balance my checkbook. Never can work it out, so then I don’t know how much money I’ve got, see?”
“Do you want me to do that for you? Balance your checkbook and figure out where you stand?”
She thought about it and then nodded.
“You don’t think it’s too personal?”
“What, more personal than you sticking your tongue inside my body? I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Sure.” Absurdly, he fought the urge to blush. She was right, they’d been intimate physically, why shouldn’t he see her bank account if she was willing?
It didn’t take him all that long to get her sorted out or to explain to her how to reconcile her account every month. “You’d find life a lot easier with a budget, which I can set up for you.”
She made gagging noises, but, he noticed, she didn’t turn him down. “As for the fridge, when that collector calls me tomorrow, we’ll work out a monthly payment schedule you can live with. All right?”
She breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Yeah. Thanks. Really.”
“You’re welcome. Now, do I get a reward?”
She grinned at him in that way he loved that had his body already tightening in anticipation. “Yeah,” she said. “You get a reward. I’m taking you shopping tomorrow.”
His erection wilted along with his smile. “Shopping?”
“I can’t stand it another minute. You dress like my dad.”
Mark gazed down at his crisp navy Dockers and checked golf shirt. “I’m guessing he’s not a really hip guy.”
“He’s all right for a fifty-five-year-old, but you’re young. You need to start acting like it.”
“I have two words for you,” he said advancing on her.
Her eyes crinkled. “What?”
“No yellow.” And then he scooped her up, giggling, and hauled her up the stairs to bed.
Mark wondered if it was some Australian courting ritual he’d never heard of when he began to notice the women of Crane glancing surreptitiously at his crotch. Even a few of the guys were doing it.
After checking to make sure he was zipped and hadn’t inadvertently dropped something in his lap, he decided it was some kind of cultural thing and filed it away for future reference. He wondered if he was supposed to reciprocate.
He’d always understood Australians to be an earthy people, but he’d never heard of this crotch-checking business before. He’d have to ask Bron.
He’d feel a
little strange telling her about the crotch thing, though, in case she thought he was coming on to other women. Which, surprisingly, he had no interest in doing. He’d gone out with her on the weekend more as a matter of form than that he really cared to meet any women. They’d shopped, and argued like crazy trying to find him clothes they could both live with, then they’d gone to some party or other, but he’d pretty much never left her side all evening.
He’d already worked out that if he was free to date other women then Bron was free to date other men, and as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t going to happen.
After almost two weeks in Sydney, he had to admit he’d struck out spectacularly in the slutting-around department. But, he kept reminding himself, there were no rules. If he wanted to bed the same woman every night—hell, every morning, early evening after they got home from work, and any snatch of time they felt like it, then why shouldn’t he?
He was seeing plenty of Sydney, enjoying the challenge of work, and he’d formed a few friendships of his own. Bill had taken him fishing and they hadn’t caught anything, but they’d drunk some beer and toured the amazing coastline around the city.
He’d gone surfing with Bron and a few of the guys from the office and been amazed at how much he liked the sport. He’d forgotten the thrill of being picked up and carried by a wave, the heart-pounding excitement mixed with fear as the wave curled above you and the world was nothing but a noisy blue tunnel.
And Bron! When he’d jokingly likened her to a mermaid, he hadn’t been far off. Bron perched on a surfboard, her hair and body golden as she rode waves like they were hers to command, was a sight he’d never forget.
And surfing, he discovered, made her horny. Yes, he’d decided he was a big fan of surfing after all.
He was also learning some new customs. How to order a coffee, the correct way to order a beer; he’d even made half a stab at working out the rules of cricket, and tried not to fall asleep when he actually watched a game.
He really ought to ask Bron about this crotch-checking business, though.
But as it turned out, something new and far more unpleasant took its place at the top of his mind.
He’d endured the by-now familiar crotch glance, this time with the addition of a smirk from some young punk with blindingly bright board shorts, a goatee, hair decorated with sand, and a big honking earring. After the crotch-glance/ smirk combo the fellow said, “G’day, ah’m Peet.”
A quick glance at the list of people he’d requested meetings with clued Mark in that Peet must be Peter Moorehead, the company’s in-house accountant, who’d been on holiday for the last couple of weeks.
“Hi, Pete,” he said, shaking hands and coming away with more sand. These people must be hell on computer keyboards. They were certainly hell on the eyes of the unwary. “I need to ask you a few questions about how you do your tax accounting.”
“Righto. Ask away.” And to give the young guy credit, he certainly knew his stuff.
After half an hour, they’d gone from the general to the specific, and Mark asked, “And do you code different colors under the same product code?”
“Dunno, mate. You’d have to ask Cam’s sister about that.”
“Cam’s sister?” His gut bubbled like an underground geyser at the mention of the man. He’d thought he was free of Cameron Freakin’ Crane for the first couple of weeks he was here, and now it turned out he had a sister working here?
Well, whoever she was, he’d avoid her like the man-eating crocodiles he’d read about.
“Yeah. Bronwyn Spencer.”
He felt like someone had just encased him in ice. Mark couldn’t move, not even his lips; he couldn’t so much as blink.
Unconcerned, Pete lifted a sandaled and rather hairy foot to his knee and picked sand out from under a toe ring the size of a plumbing fixture.
The resulting sandhill on the industrial carpet caused Pete to rub the sand into the pile with a crooked and wholly unapologetic grin. “Sorry, mate. The surf was beaut this morning. I didn’t have time to shower before coming to work.”
“Bronwyn Spencer is Cameron Crane’s sister?”
“Yeah.”
“Excellent,” Mark said, pulling himself together with an effort and pulling his notes into a neat right angle with hands that hardly shook at all. “That’s great, Pete. Thanks. I think we’re done here.”
“I thought you also wanted to know about how we file with the government?”
“Maybe later. Thanks.” He rose, and with a shrug, his sandy friend rose also and shuffled out of the temporary office.
If Mark had ever been this angry, he didn’t remember it. He’d been pretty near gutted by Jen’s sorry pal, it’s over long distance phone call, but that had been nothing like the crimson tide of anger that washed over him now.
He stormed out and in the general direction of where he’d last seen Bron. If he were being sensible, he’d go for a walk, calm down, and speak to Bron when he could see straight.
The hell with that. What he had to say couldn’t wait.
Chapter Seven
“No. That’s the wrong pink,” Bron sighed, looking at a trio of samples from a supplier. “I want surfie-chick pink, not the color of something you take when your guts are churning.”
“I’m not sure they understand the sort of color you have in mind,” the hapless sales rep said.
“Well, it’s bright, but not too bright; pink, but not too pink. Wait a sec. I’ve got a lipstick that shade, I think.”
She scrabbled through her shoulder bag, past the extra set of keys to Cam’s car that she thought she’d lost, a few crumpled ticket stubs from the train, a small flashlight she was pretty sure needed new batteries, a couple of squat colorful bottles of nail polish, and, in the bottom, a selection of lipsticks.
“There you are,” she said in triumph. “That’s the color I want. Here, you can take it.”
“I’m not sure we can do this shade, Bron.”
She leaned back and held out her hand. “No worries. Harry Welsdon has been begging for a chance to quote on our jobs. I’ll see if he wants to give it a go.”
When her current sales rep didn’t hand back the lipstick, she knew she had him.
“I’m not saying—”
He never finished whatever it was he wasn’t saying, for the door opened as though a cyclone were on the other side of it and in stormed Mark, looking a little like a natural disaster bent on destruction himself.
“What are you—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” he managed, “but I need to see you right away, Bronwyn.”
Without giving her any time at all to decide whether to ditch her meeting right when she was about to get exactly what she wanted, he walked up to her and took her arm. “It’s really important.”
“Okay.” Mystified at both the heat in his hand and the wild expression in his eyes, she wondered if he suffered from some mental condition no one had bothered to tell her about. A second glance showed that his eyes weren’t wild; they were perfectly sane, just blazingly angry.
Her stomach sank. Oh, she was going to kill Fiona. Her little white lie about his package seemed to have got back to him.
Deciding that the last thing she wanted was an audience when he blew, she said, “Okay, Joe. See what you can do with the color and let me know. Can you find your own way out?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Letting Mark pull her out into the corridor, she tried to think of the closest place she could drag one steamingly irate man where, when he blew, he wouldn’t be overheard by too many people, keeping the embarrassing damage to a minimum.
“Where are we going?” she asked, realizing that he was still dragging her.
“I’m taking you to lunch,” he said from behind clenched teeth.
“It’s ten-thirty in the morning.”
“We won’t be eating.” And with that he dragged her past a startled-looking Fiona. Traitor. Even as she was frog-marched past, she managed a pretty l
ethal glare in blabbermouth’s direction.
The morning sun was bright and merciless, and, naturally, she had no purse or sunglasses with her. It was too hot to walk this fast, but Mark didn’t seem to notice.
Okay, he was angry. He had a right to be, and her justification was weak at best.
They sprinted past a pub, closed at this time of the day, with some tables and chairs set out on a brick patio. She dug her heels into the sidewalk like a stubborn hound and this time she did some dragging, pulling Mark into the relative privacy of the patio area.
She could berate him for no doubt bruising her arm, and she could act innocent of starting such malicious gossip, but she was, at heart, honest. She’d done a stupid thing, been caught out and it was time to apologize.
God, she hated apologizing. “Mark,” she said, drawing the first full breath since he’d grabbed at her in her office, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” he hit a high note that couldn’t be good for him, and startled a lorikeet into squawking and flying out of the tree above them. “You’ve made a complete fool of me. How could you do that?”
She squirmed where she stood. How could she have let the office think those things about him? “I was just trying to protect you from Fiona. She’s a maneater,” she said, feeling how feeble a defense that was for undermining his manhood. Oh, boy, was she in trouble. “I’ll go back in there and tell her that you’ve got a donkey dick.”
Instead of looking appeased he merely looked confused. “Would you please stay with the subject at hand?”
A blush of mortification began at her baby toe and started to work its way up. Was it possible they were talking about two different things?
“Could you tell me specifically why you are so angry with me?”
“You didn’t tell me you were Cameron Crane’s sister!” he thundered.
