by Leah Ashton
And to think some people thought he had a brilliant mind? If they could only see him now.
Steady sheets of water had already soaked through the thin layer of his hoodie and T-shirt, and a sharp, icy breeze whipped through the valley and bit relentlessly into his skin.
For once, his office at Armada—a room of hard edges, show-stopping views of the harbour and unopenable windows that made him feel as if he worked in a Snap Lock bag—was more appealing than this place. These hundred or so acres of total seclusion.
Of total privacy.
Given he was as wet as he was going to get, right down to his thick socks and boots, it seemed almost pointless to rush back to his house. But, his dogs—Pointers with super short coats and rather wussy dispositions—had already made it clear what they wanted by shoving their bodies up hard against his legs. Albert, with his big black patches, to Jake’s left, and Lizzie, with her spots and splashes of orange, to his right.
They wanted to be in front of the pot-belly stove in his lounge room.
Which didn’t sound like such a bad idea at all.
Together they trekked up the gravelly path, ghost and scribbly gums lining the way. Wind gusts dislodged handfuls of fat, glossy green leaves that blew, and flew amongst the rain until they eventually fell at Jake’s feet.
He hadn’t planned to go so far. What had started as a quick walk—to clear his head after his morning in the city—had, step by step, become much longer. Fortunately it had occurred to him to turn around at some point, otherwise his hot shower, and the warmth of the fire for his dogs, would be a heck of a lot further away.
This stupid campaign couldn’t be over soon enough. Normally his hikes were all about his work, as, pretty much by clockwork, his mind would wander and ponder within minutes of leaving his house. Sometimes he had moments of brilliance—the sudden realisation of a solution to some coding problem; or, even better, a totally left-field idea for a new and exciting project. He needed silence and the outdoors to do his best thinking. He always had.
After all, he’d been walking home from school with Eleanor when he’d first stumbled across the idea for the online shopping cart software that launched his career and, later, Armada. She had always seemed to know when the cogs and gears in his brain started whirring at their most furious. She’d let their conversation stall, and wait, patiently, until he returned from his little mental expedition.
Then she’d listen carefully to him rabbit on about his eureka! moment—or, at the very least, she’d feigned interest believably.
After spending another morning with her, he wasn’t any closer to understanding how much she’d changed.
And it wasn’t just her appearance. Jake had checked up on her and her social life was apparently as overflowing as his was barren. Parties, openings, gala dinners—whatever—she was there.
And that was what he’d found himself pondering on his walk. Not something useful, like software-bug fixes or a technical proposal one of his star developers had emailed him that morning. Even memorising the sound bites he’d be required to regurgitate regularly over the next few weeks would’ve been a more effective use of his time.
But no. He’d just spent a good part of two hours thinking about Eleanor.
No, no. Ella. He couldn’t forget that.
The rain had let up, just a little, and Albert and Lizzie had perked up, trotting ahead of him. Another turn and he’d be able to see his house.
Jake was attempting to look at the situation objectively.
He and Ella had been close, once. Close, angst-ridden teenagers, in fact, which had only amplified the sense of connection they’d felt. Two against the world, they’d been. Or rather, two against their school. The seemingly communal dislike of himself hadn’t bothered Jake at all. It had been deliberate, in some ways, on his part. It wasn’t as if he could ever invite a kid over to his place after school.
But he wouldn’t have fitted in, anyway. Even without a mother that landed him at the end of cruel taunts, he’d been unable to comprehend quadrangle politics. He was simply happier on his own with no need to worry about saying or doing the right or cool thing. In his own little world—then as he was now—he was content.
Eleanor had been the exception. She’d been different. She’d flinched at every name she was called. At the whispers and the giggles.
But together they’d been okay. And she’d assured him she’d be fine once he’d left, that she was strong.
* * *
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said as they walked home together for the last time, his final exams only weeks away.
She slanted him a look. ‘I know that,’ she said simply. ‘Stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.’ A casual shrug. ‘It’s only a year. A means to an end. I’ll go to school, learn, come home and then I’ll be at uni before I know it. No more stupid popular groups, there.’
She was so sure.
‘Then maybe one day I’ll move interstate too. You can bore me to death talking about motherboards and Pascal and HTML in Melbourne, or Sydney instead—’
Then she’d shrieked when he’d glared at her, and they’d run, laughing like idiots, all the way home.
* * *
Had she been okay without him?
He’d told himself she had. Of course she had.
An image of Ella now, so perfect—so opposite to who she’d been—popped into his head.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
The weakest rays of sunlight pushed their way through the storm clouds as Jake arrived at the foot of the staircase that led to his home. Tucked into the side of the mountain, it blended almost seamlessly into the surrounding forest. Best of all, if he was to stand on the wide verandah that edged the front of the house, he could see for kilometres. And not see another house, or another soul.
With the confidence of much experience, Lizzie and Albert thundered up the wooden stairs ahead of him. More sedately, Jake followed, each step with its own loud squelching accompaniment provided by his soaked socks and boots.
Would he have let Eleanor come to his house today?
Not Ella, but the awkward Eleanor he remembered, who wouldn’t care if she got mud on her shoes or if her hair got wet in the rain?
It wasn’t a sensible scenario. If Ella were still Eleanor she wouldn’t be his image consultant, and she wouldn’t have the urge to stick her nose into his wardrobe.
But hypothetically? Would he have classified Eleanor the same way he classified everyone else and kept her well away from this place? No one came up here any more. He had an apartment in the city he used only on occasion, and he met his few friends anywhere but here.
After Georgina had gone to the gossip magazines at the end of their relationship, he’d drawn a line in the sand.
Georgina had accused him of being closed off. Of letting nobody in.
Frankly, he couldn’t see it. He had nothing inside that was necessary to share. No dark secrets—the media had mined it all. The facts were public. That was more than enough.
But, hey, if Georgina was going to have her opinion of him splashed in tawdry headlines, then he might as well live up to it.
The silence, the space, the isolation—suited him just fine.
At the top of the stairs, he walked to the balcony railing. The dogs sat patiently on the front door mat, although Lizzie gave a plaintive whine.
He looked out across the valley, past the mountains, and beyond to the very edge of the horizon.
No, not even the Eleanor he remembered belonged up here.
No one did.
As he’d decided all those years ago, when he’d watched Eleanor walk across his back yard in the moonlight, her head held high and his throat choked up as he fought to stop himself calling out to her...
He was better off alone.
And Eleanor was certainly better off without him.
CHAPTER SIX
ELLA blinked, then stared at the photo in her hand. She’d torn it out of a magazine—a photo of casual
leather loafers that she thought Jake could wear with jeans, but that were a significant step up from his battered sneakers. She remembered that, at least.
Why it was in her hand now—not so much.
She’d been absolutely positive she’d put the photo in her yes folder—the one on the ground to the left of her cross-legged knee. And yet here it was, back in her hand, the torn edges of the image rough against her fingertips.
This was getting ridiculous.
It had been nearly a week. A week.
At first it had made sense that she’d been a little preoccupied by Jake’s unexpected, if temporary, reappearance in her life. Quite literally, her past and her—hugely improved—present had collided.
Of course she felt a little bit off because of it.
So when she’d stumbled occasionally at her regular salsa class, she’d been cool with it. It’d been very, very understandable.
And if the next evening—after a Jake-free day, no less—she’d found herself surrounded by her book-club girls, all looking at her expectantly and herself with no recollection of what on earth they were talking about... Well. That had been mildly irritating.
But, she’d been sure it would pass.
However by Friday, when she’d managed to forget she was meeting up with Mandy Williamson at King Street Wharf for a drink after work, she’d been seriously annoyed. Worse, Mandy was a past client. Ella never forgot anything to do with her clients.
And so now she sat cross-legged on the floor of her North Shore apartment’s office-cum-spare-room, magazine clippings and images she’d printed from the Internet scattered about her like confetti.
Her iPod boomed out classic—or maybe just tragic—eighties pop music from its dock. She could never work in the total silence of Jake’s building. She needed music, people, or activity, in order to function. All three was even better.
But today, even with her music, she was distracted by Jake. Again.
She had to focus.
What she was supposed to be doing was crystallising in her mind the ‘look’ she was trying to achieve with Jake. Given his dislike of suits, with him she had a bit of a challenge. She needed to create a wardrobe that reflected Jake—and that he would actually wear—but that was also suitable for the varied promotional events he had ahead of him. She even had a system: three manila files labeled—inventively—yes, no and maybe.
The task was taking much longer than it should.
An image of Jake, watching her with that trademark intensity kept popping into her traitorous brain.
What was it about Jake? Why did he suddenly have this power over her, when days ago he’d been little more than a forgotten memory?
Take the whole interview debacle. She was the one who had been so adamant that their past was irrelevant, and yet she’d still let their conversation veer in directions it should never have been allowed to go. She’d dropped her guard. And she’d done it more than once. It had to stop.
Because relaxing around Jake was dangerous. If she wasn’t careful, it would be more than just echoes of their ancient friendship cluttering everything. She didn’t want or need any reminders about their past. Her past.
As in her past she’d been Eleanor and she never wanted to be Eleanor again. To feel that way again.
Did Jake have any idea what had happened after he’d left?
She’d been outwardly so brave, encouraging him to leave, to follow his dreams. She’d seen what his mother was doing to him, the pressure he felt. The responsibility.
His scholarship had been a ticket out of a family history of poverty and underachievement. He’d had to go; she’d known it.
But then—her mum wasn’t supposed to die. Her dad wasn’t supposed to be lost to her in his grief.
She wasn’t supposed to be left so totally and completely alone.
At school, it was as if she’d been thrown to the wolves.
Stupidly she’d reached out. Wanting friendship. Needing it desperately.
But she’d too long been classified as half of the school’s ‘odd couple’—an outcast. So she’d been rejected again, and laughed at, and teased. Maybe her neediness had scared them. Maybe the other girls’ cruelty had stemmed from fear, or an inability to grapple with Ella’s grief.
Maybe.
But she’d learnt. At university she hadn’t bothered to try. She’d followed Jake’s lead, needing no one.
As her dad’s health had deteriorated she’d told herself she’d lost him years ago, when her mum had died. But she’d been unconvinced by her own reassurances and the depth of her pain when he was finally gone reflected the true situation.
Without him, she was left adrift. There’d been nobody and nothing in Fremantle to hold her.
So it had been absolutely the right time to reinvent herself—and she’d never, ever regretted her decision. Her life had flourished inversely proportional to how little of her old self she’d allowed to remain. It hadn’t taken her long to discover that more Ella and a lot less Eleanor equalled a pretty much perfect life.
She had everything she’d always wanted.
Which was why distractions like Jake were unacceptable.
Accordingly, ten minutes wasted staring into space, and, it turned out, unconsciously tearing a poor innocent photo of dress shoes into hundreds of tiny pieces, was totally unacceptable.
Ella leapt to her feet, scattering photos, shreds of papers, folders and Post-it notes in her wake. She slammed the door to her study, charged across her living room and burst out onto her balcony, the tiny space dappled with eucalypt-filtered light.
In the crisp winter morning’s chilly freshness, she took great big swallows of air, welcoming the burn and sting to her lungs. Barefoot, she curled her toes on the freezing cement, willing the cold and the air’s sharpness to knock some sense into her.
Jake was her client—nothing more.
And as he was her client, she had no place daydreaming about his gaze, intense or otherwise. Remnants of her schoolgirl crush on Jake Donner—next-door neighbour—had no place in her working relationship with Jake Donner—multimillionaire founder of Armada Software. This contract with Armada was the opportunity of her career and her past with Jake would not, and could not, stuff that up for her.
All she needed to do was pull herself the hell together.
Five minutes later, her mind was more appropriately—if a little forcibly—occupied with thoughts of her other clients. Sixteen-year-old Sarah who desperately need a huge dose of self-confidence leading up to her school ball. Retired teacher Joan, who was terrified she was turning into an old lady well before her time, and was desperate for an image shake-up.
Refocused, and determinedly calm, she stepped back inside.
There. It was done.
Jake equalled client.
Life equalled back to normal.
* * *
‘So I was wondering,’ Ella asked, standing a respectable distance from Jake’s changing room, ‘what’s the story behind you and your suit allergy? Bad experience? Unfortunate situation involving a tie?’
Jake laughed, but otherwise provided no further explanation.
She stepped a little closer towards him. The menswear store’s changing room had a pitifully inadequate door, so Ella could quite clearly see Jake’s head and shoulders above it.
Not that she was looking or anything.
‘You know, if I understand your suit prejudice, I’m in a better position to style you.’
At this, Jake stepped right up to the changing room door and shot her a bemused look. ‘Right. This has nothing to do with you just being plain nosy.’
Ella shook her head primly. ‘Of course not.’
He grinned, and the next thing she knew his face was obscured by his charcoal-coloured T-shirt as he whipped it over his head.
Ella took this as her cue to take a couple of big steps backwards. She didn’t want to accidentally—of course—ogle a client.
‘You know I’ve never give
n a stuff about what I wear,’ Jake said, his voice a little muffled as he—it sounded like—bent over to pull on the trousers she’d picked out for him to try on.
Ella tensed at the casual reference to their once friendship. She thought she’d made herself clear in her email. Maybe he hadn’t yet read it?
Although, alone in the otherwise empty change room, they were unlikely to be overheard anyway. She could relax for now.
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ she said. ‘It took me a long time to understand the power of the right outfit. And look at me now.’
That this was a poor choice of words was immediately apparent. Jake came closer to the door again, his head tilted slightly as he made a big show of studying her. He’d shrugged on a shirt, thankfully, but he hadn’t quite got around to buttoning it up. Over the door she could see a lot more bare skin than she felt was advisable.
‘Hmm,’ he said, just as Ella began to think that resisting the urge to fidget beneath his gaze was an impossible task. She wore a delicate cream-coloured blouse tucked into chocolate wide-leg trousers that fell perfectly over her nude patent wedges. Ella knew exactly how she looked: chic. Sophisticated. And yet the cute bow at her collar felt—suddenly—a little restrictive. She swallowed.
‘Yes,’ Jake finally continued, ‘you obviously do give a stuff about what you wear.’
He didn’t make it sound like a good thing. Or a bad thing, really.
Actually, he sounded exactly like someone who, when it came to clothes, was completely ambivalent.
Ella decided to ignore the fact that his gaze had been more appreciative than his words.
‘It isn’t really about a nice shirt or a cool pair of shoes, you know,’ she said, firmly in image consultant mode. ‘A person’s image, and by that I mean their clothing, their grooming and their body language, has a massive impact on their lives. My clients have demonstrated that to me again and again. It’s about improving self-esteem and self-confidence—and even perceptions of capability or credibility. Re-evaluating your image can be life changing.’
She definitely knew that was true.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Jake said. Behind the door it looked as if he’d finally finished buttoning his shirt. ‘I got all that this morning.’
