His Brand of Beautiful

by Lily Malone

  It was like being doused in ice water.

  She re-crossed her legs, smoothed her skirt and willed her melting spine straight, trying to frame an answer. “I came to make things right. For the baby.”

  “Bullshit. You came for the brand.” He twitched the towel on his shoulder. His eyes grazed her legs, settled on the boots. If her ankles could have blushed, they would have.

  “The big question is: what will you do to get it?”

  ****

  God, she smelled sweet, Tate thought, watching her perched on his couch, balancing coffee and a brown paper bag in those sexy-as‐hell boots. He should have made her leave the damn things outside. He had five seconds to get out of the room or he’d be on his knees with his head on her thighs.

  “I think I will get myself that shirt. If you’ll excuse me?”

  There was no energy in her nod. Her eyes looked sad and bruised and he wondered if she’d slept any better than he had last night. His voice softened. “Make yourself at home.

  Maybe find a plate for that,” he nodded at the paper bag. “Put the kettle on. I’ll only be a minute.”

  The staircase ran off the side of the kitchen and his feet made no noise on the steps.

  At the top he waited, listening to the house’s white noise. He heard Christina soft-close a cupboard door below, then another. The kettle was still in a box somewhere and his kitchen wasn’t big on crockery but it had shitloads of cupboards and hunting through all of them would keep her busy for a while.

  Three steps propelled him across the corridor to his study.

  Clothes covered the couch, ironed and folded. Remy probably re-washed it all when she heard he was coming home. His cleaner did things like that, just to freshen stuff up. The navy t-shirt on top of the pile said Adelaide Crows 1996-97 Back to Back.

  The letterhead sat on the out-tray of his printer where he’d left it last night. He studied the type and columns, the extra items, the additional zeros. He didn’t want an envelope for it. There was no point her pocketing it in her handbag unopened, he wanted to see her face when she read it.

  He took the stairs two at a time.

  Christina bent over two white plates, brown paper bag crackling with each increasingly violent shake. She glanced up when he sprang off the bottom step and their eyes clicked like coins in a purse. His pulse bumped.

  Something wobbly and yellow lurched from the bag and she stared at the trembling mass, a crease in her forehead. “It tastes better than it looks.”

  “It looks fine from here.” So do you.

  He slid the letterhead across the granite slab and it slipped under a corner of the brown paper bag. “I reviewed Ruth’s invoices for July. That’s Clay Wines’. I figured seeing you were here, I’d save myself a stamp.”

  “I didn’t know business was that tight,” she muttered, but she glanced at the page.

  The plate clattered from her hand to the granite and his black-handled knife spun a full circle. She snatched the letterhead in one hand and struck it with the other. The sound cracked through the kitchen. “What the hell is this?”

  “My fee for services rendered,” he responded, dead-pan.

  “Oh no you don’t.” Green eyes narrowed to slits. “We had a deal.”

  He shrugged. “So sue me. Perhaps a judge will agree I shouldn’t have to donate my professional expertise along with my sperm.”

  She stepped back, lips compressed in a pale-pink line. A chestnut hair flicked across her cheek. “But you said—”

  “Technically, I said you were in the hands of an expert animator with a permanent hard-on for CC Pot.”

  Her eyes flicked to the knife.

  Lily Malone

  “And I said if you played your cards right, I’d throw in my genius for free.” He reached past her, picked up the knife and cut the vanilla slice in two. Custard cleaved to the blade. “The point we’re debating here, is whether you played your cards right.”

  Her face turned the same shade as the vanilla icing.

  Tate picked up his half of the slice, took three sticky custard bites. Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla. “You’re right. It does taste better than it looks.”

  “If I show Saffah this—” the invoice twitched in Christina’s palm, “—she’ll vote Cracked Pots down before anybody blinks. That kills Michael’s dream too, and Lacy’s. This isn’t just about me.”

  “Don’t start thinking about other people now, Christina. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Why are you being so hard-nosed about it? I’m sorry that I lied to you at Binara—”

  “And since we got back.”

  “Did you think I was trying to use a baby to trap you into marrying me? Did you think I wanted money?”

  “The way you nearly fell off the couch when I mentioned marriage kinda put paid to that.”

  Her hands slapped his kitchen bench, knuckles white. “What then?”

  “I won’t be a weekend dad.” He tugged the invoice from her grip. Paper fizzed through his fingers as he ripped the top fifth of the page. He tore three centimetres more in front of her face. “Shasta can count the times he’s seen his son on his fingers and toes. Ben is sixteen. That’s not happening to me.”

  “Do you really think I’d stop you seeing the baby? You know me better than that.”

  Her hand snuck to her cheek, tucked hair back behind her ear, felt for the shiny vinyl hat.

  “I don’t think I know you at all.”

  For the first time that morning, the sun cut through the mist. It speared into the room like sunbeams through a church and made wet-looking pools across the couch and white reflections on the fake floor.

  “Move in here with me and I’ll make this go away.” He tore another section of the invoice, the rip buzzed across the room.

  Her chin jerked. “What?”

  “Move in with me. Live here.”

  “Here?”

  He repeated it like she was five years old. “Give us twelve months to make a go of it, Christina. Rent out your cottage, or not, I don’t care. But redirect your mail. I want to be here for you. For the baby,” his voice softened further. “I want to show you we can be a family.”

  He thought about what Shasta had said when he’d rung Binara late last night: “Live together and be able to prove it. Get utility bills in joint names. Have her redirect her mail.

  Then if she leaves it proves you weren’t the one to walk away. Courts like to see the father made an effort.”

  And Bree’s tired-sounding mumble before Shasta covered the phone: “Christina’s nothing like Alicia, Shas.”

  Christina shifted her weight, one red boot slightly forward of the other. “Let me get this straight, Tate. I move in here for a year, and you’ll tear up that invoice and Cracked Pots gets finished exactly as we agreed?”

  For answer, he tore the paper through, collated the pieces and ripped again, lengthwise, then held out his hand.

  “You’ve got a deal,” she said, slipping her palm snugly into his.

  “I can help you pack today. You’ll need the Jeep.”

  She dropped his palm and her eyes slid away. “I can’t tonight. I have plans. I can’t move until after next Saturday, that’s the City to Bay.”

  “That won’t be a problem. You won’t be running in it.”

  She spat at him like a hissing cat. “That’s why I won’t get married. I’m pregnant not dead. I can make my own decisions.”

  “Running ten kilometres pregnant, after a miscarriage, is a dumb decision.” He had to stop himself shouting.

  “It was four years ago, Tate.” Christina pivoted on the heel of her boot, spun away.

  “I’m not running in the City to Bay anyway, okay? I’m walking in it. It’s for—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s for a good cause.”

  “It’s for the exercise and it’s for Lacy because she’s been so good training with me and so patient when all I’ve done is slow her down for two months. My doctor said gentle exercise is fi
ne and I am the best judge of how I feel.”

  He heard the waver in her voice, the tremble she tried to hide, and he felt like he’d spent an hour kicking a kitten. A stride closed the space between them. He put his hands on her shoulders. It took a while before her icy pose thawed.

  “What makes you so busy tonight?”

  “It’s the opening of Saffah’s new exhibition,” she murmured to the glass wall, voice pitched so low he could hardly hear.

  “Do you need a date?”

  She turned then, slipped a wedge between them with her small step back. “Abraham Lewis already asked me.”

  The new softness inside him cracked. “Doesn’t his wife like art?”

  “Let’s just say, I owe him and he’s called in the favour.” She stepped around him. Her keys scratched granite as she scooped them up and clutched her purse to her chest. “He does that.”

  “One week, Christina, then I want you here. Otherwise I print a new invoice,” Tate said.

  She gave him a smart-arse salute without looking back and he listened to her boots slap down the hall.

  Lily Malone

  Chapter 20

  The air was at least warm, if cloying, as Christina ducked inside the open door of The Fuschia Skirt art gallery later that night to find Merry Norris’s favourite mood enhancer heavy in the air: essence of clove and orange oil, burning on the window sills in delicate glass tea-cups.

  A three-quarter height wall draped with a Saffah Clay original silk painting—an orange-scaled griffin with a royal blue lotus flower growing from its back—hid the gallery from the foyer. The foyer door was wedged wide by an elaborate floral arrangement in an over-sized blue pot.

  Merry Norris, the gallery’s owner, billowed from behind a desk laden with name tags and catalogues and brightly coloured pens sheathed in hibiscus flower skirts.

  “CC darling, you look divine.” Merry air-kissed Christina on both cheeks. “You haven’t been to one of my little shows in forever. I want your hat.” She pinned a nametag to the breast of Christina’s white swing coat.

  Christina touched her fingers to the black rain-hat and smiled. “Beats carrying an umbrella, Merry, you know me. Is it a good turn-out?”

  From street-level, bells tingled and a draft of frigid air careened up the stairs. It rustled Merry’s gilt-edged kaftan.

  “Darling, it’s ballistic. Everyone will tell you we’re in a financial meltdown and people aren’t buying luxuries. Not at The Fuschia Skirt, sweetie. Saff’s sold six pieces already and we don’t officially open till eight.”

  Merry turned her attention to a man skittering crab-like past the floral arrangement, wearing navy cords and tan shoes, one of which had a scuff the size of a tencent‐piece on the toe.

  “So glad you could come out tonight, honey,” Merry said to the new patron. “What’s your name, can you see it here? Did you pre-register? No? Isn’t the weather dreadful? Do you need a catalogue?” She handed him one anyway, fingernails out-purpling the glitzy print on the cover.

  He told Merry his name was Henry Rhys.

  “That’s a lovely quick one to write, Henry,” Merry cooed, scribbling on, then handing him, his tag. “Part proceeds from the Saffah Clay exhibition help Haitian earthquake victims reclaim their lives. You can read about Saffah’s work in Haiti on the back page of the catalogue. It’s such a truly great cause.”

  Christina glanced around Henry Rhys’s shoulder as he mumbled to Merry he’d take a look.

  Abraham Lewis MP was among the nametags not yet claimed.

  She gave Merry a wave and kept moving. Skirting the partition, Christina entered the first of three showrooms where decorative cornices, archways, window sills and trims were all highlighted in a sumptuous fuschia pink so deep it was almost purple. Plinths and pillars draped in the same coloured silk formed pedestals for Saffah’s platters and pots, all lit by purpose-built lights.

  The paintings in the first gallery were conservative pieces for Saffah, the colours bold rather than scorching. Purples with gold, lime-greens with purple, orange with the brightest of electric blues.

  Christina slipped through the gallery, the faux-fur trim of her coat bouncing on her calves. She’d worn heels tonight, not boots, and her legs were bare.

  Saffah was signing catalogues in the second showroom amid a nest of customers and friends while Richard did his best to be invisible in the same suit he’d dragged out for Michael’s wedding. He had his elbow propped between his beer and a bowl of peanuts on the mantelpiece. A fire glowed in the hearth.

  When Christina kissed his shaven cheek, she got a faint whiff of mothballs.

  “You make such a sexy groupie,” she teased, picking a speck of lint from his shoulder.

  He huffed once and inspected the froth on his beer, took a gulp, and covered his mouth with his hand to hide the waft of a beer burp. “I haven’t been to one of these things in years but I got roped into this somehow.”

  Join the club. She turned her back to the fire.

  A man about her father’s age picked up the price tag of a deep square-edged fruit bowl decorated around the rim with fat purple grapes. He dropped the tag like it burned and whispered something to his wife—probably don’t knock anything off, love. The woman tucked her handbag more securely to her side.

  Christina smiled.

  “So where were you this morning, early?” Richard asked. “Saff rang to see if you were coming tonight. She’ll be happy you made it. Michael’s not coming.”

  Christina tapped the hearth with her heel and rotated to hold her hands to the fire.

  “Tate came home yesterday. I was at his place.”

  “Ah. Say no more. I saw on the news they’d lifted the cattle ban. It’s good that he’s back. He’s not planning any more outback camping trips is he?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Good.”

  A waiter passed with a plate of canapés—any mixture of prawns, asparagus, prosciutto and brie on cut rounds of baguette. Merry’s daughter followed him, carrying champagne flutes filled with fizzing liquid the colour of lightly-toasted oats.

  “Is Tate coming tonight?”

  Her fingers popped the gold-plated button at the top of her coat. Fur parted at her collar. “No. It’s a little complicated.”

  Richard showed no surprise. “Ain’t love always.”

  Then the hum in the room was split by a baritone laugh and her father almost cheered. “Ah. Here’s the guest of honour. Sooner we get this show on the road, sooner I get outta here.” He reached for a peanut.

  It was like watching a movie star stroll down the red carpet. Bram’s eyes worked left and right, his smile on full beam.

  A tree-trunk of a man with a head of thick dark hair cut too close to curl followed the politician across the gallery floor. When Bram stopped to admire a painting of a green-scaled dragon with a butterfly on its snout, tree-trunk guy stopped too, massive arms crossed over his chest. One of the patrons—Henry in the navy cords—had to sidestep the hired hulk to get a better view.

  “Good of Bram to open the show,” Richard said as they watched Saffah excuse herself from her circle of well-wishers to intercept the guest of honour.

  “He’s cranking up the favours today.”

  Her father looked sideways at her. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Whatever happened between you two it was a long time ago,” her father said. “You should give him a break.”

  Lily Malone

  “I am giving Abraham a break,” it slipped out before she could stop it. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “What? You’re here with him?” Richard almost choked on his nut.

  Merry’s daughter rolled by with a fresh tray of champagne flutes and a teenage attitude that said: next year I’ll be too old to have to help my mother with this hospitality shit.

  Christina accepted a glass and pressed her lips to the cold rim, sniffed the nutty aroma and took the teeniest sip. Guilt r
aced the alcohol to the pit of her stomach and she put the glass on the mantelpiece alongside Richard’s beer.

  “CC?” Her father shuffled his weight to the other foot. “If there was something…

  going on between you and Bram. I’d be really disappointed. He’s a father now.”

  “There’s nothing going on with Bram.” It sounded curt and she tried to soften it.

  “Relax. I was talking with Bram this morning, that’s all, and he reminded me about tonight and that it would be special for Saffah if I came.”

  At that, Richard looked as if a boulder had been lifted from his shoulders.

  She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  Only Bram had made it clear he wouldn’t share any information from his private investigator’s report on Tate, not home address nor shoe size, unless she agreed to come to the exhibition tonight. “I never see you any more, CC,” he’d said. “I go to the opening of an envelope these days. At least you being there will make this one more interesting.”

  Saffah turned to the fireplace and beckoned and Richard levered his weight from the mantelpiece.

  “Don’t move too fast around the security guy,” Christina said.

  “You don’t think I could take him?”

  “He’d break you in six. The man has no neck.”

  Tree-trunk guy raised his chin as her father approached—so slowly Christina almost laughed out loud. Bram shook hands with Richard, clapped his shoulder once, then excused himself and started toward the fireplace. The hunk of oak on legs came too, three steps behind, as if tied to the politician’s belt by a thread.

  Bram brushed his lips to her cheek. This close to the fire the smell of Old Spice was cloaked by smoke and woodchips. His goon blockaded the other end of the hearth as effectively as a bus.

  “I didn’t think The Fuschia Skirt was that much of a security risk,” Christina said.

  “Since that crackpot attacked the Premier out at dinner last month, all the ministers and shadow ministers have to have a security presence, you never know when the next nut-job will crawl out of the woodwork.” He indicated the huge man by the fire with his thumb.

  “My guy’s an ex-cop.”

  “Your guy?” Christina said, amused. “You sound like it’s the mafia.”