Heart Note

by Cassandra O'Leary

  He spoke in a low, syrupy voice. It should’ve been bottled, like an exotic liqueur. “There’s a situation I’m aware of in the store. I could use some help, if you can keep it confidential.”

  I nodded, but I had no idea where this was leading.

  “You probably saw the commotion a while back. I had to chase some young blokes out of the store.”

  I leaned forward and gestured for him to continue. If Christos wanted to tell me the story, I didn’t mind. He could tell me stories all day. Christos had a lovely deep voice. Calm but also commanding. It made me imagine all sorts of bedroom scenarios involving handcuffs and being under arrest... Was it hot? Did someone turn up the heating in the break room?

  Christos stared at my face for a second, then cleared his throat before continuing. “Well, I apprehended them in the car park with the help of the police. We soon realised they had staff security codes and barcodes scanned on their mobile phones. They attempted to get inside the main storeroom on the ground floor. Then I spotted them.”

  I could see where this was headed now. Someone, a staff member, was probably helping these guys. An inside job. This was exciting. Also worrying. But exciting. “Right. Did they manage to get inside?”

  He clamped his mouth shut for a second until a muscle at his jaw ticked. “Not this time. But I don’t know if they’ll be charged. There could be more incidents. I’m concerned there’s someone giving away, or more likely, selling staff data.”

  Got it. Sort of. But I didn’t see how I could help. “What has this got to do with me?”

  He glanced at my face then down to my hands, resting close to his on the table. He sat back in his seat and huffed out a breath. “It’s a big ask, but I was hoping you could keep your eyes open in the cosmetics area. There’s heavy foot traffic through the department, and with staff cutbacks, we don’t have a big enough security team. It can be hard to watch staff, unobtrusively.”

  Oh. Christos was asking me to spy on my colleagues. I’d have to think about it. After all, I’d only just started working in the store. This could potentially ruin my working life, if people got wind of the fact I was watching them or dobbing to security.

  Before I could say anything else, he stood up as if to leave. “I understand if it puts you in a difficult situation. I just thought...I could trust you.”

  My heart thudded under the confines of my blouse, too fast for me to speak immediately. I thought there was something between us. Maybe I hadn’t been imagining things for a change.

  I stood too, straightening my spine. “You can trust me. I’d like to help.”

  I extended my right hand for him to shake, without thinking about it. Christos paused for a couple of beats, then took my hand in his. This time when we touched there wasn’t only pleasant warmth and an impression of strength, there was a full-on bolt of lightning. Okay, maybe not lightning, but megawatts of electricity plus some chemical stuff mixed in. Something to do with animal attraction. It made me want to purr.

  He gripped my hand tight, allowing me the privilege of treating me the same as he would a male colleague. Or not. His eyes met mine and zing! His look was boiling over with heat, like an unwatched pot on the stove.

  With a blink and a stunned expression I’d never seen on his face before, Christos retracted his hand, quickly, as if burned.

  He rubbed his hands down his sides and nodded. “I’ll let you have some lunch.” And without waiting for a reply, he walked out of the room.

  Right. It made me feel about as wanted as the plague and as useful as tits on a bull, as my dad used to say. I admit I stared after the retreating Christos for a moment. Where was his head at? Had I completely misread what I assumed was the simmer of mutual attraction? Did he see me as a convenient nobody he could use for his spy scheme?

  I picked up my bag and strolled back through the break room towards the door just as a bunch of tech blokes from Home Entertainment and Computing strolled in.

  Dressed all in black, sporting bunches of lanyards with special security access cards and passwords, they apparently thought they were it and a bit. Too cool for school. Ironic beards, hipster low-slung jeans and slicked back hair and/or spiked haircuts defined the look. They seemed to do everything together, even take lunch breaks and go to the loo. Too strange for my liking.

  One of them grinned at me. Marco, who I remembered from the same staff training session Petula, Christos and I were indoctrinated in. He’d been smart as a whip in training, answering questions with ease and flirting with the thirty-something female Team Leader, Roberta. Now, he was turning his charm and his unusual caramel-coloured gaze on me.

  He looked me up and down in an appreciative way, but it struck me as slimy. “Hi, Lily, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. How are you, Marco?”

  His grin widened and I caught a glimpse of gold. A sparkly tooth on the right-hand side of his smile. “Oh, can’t complain. Sold a massive surround sound system to an old dude this morning. Cha-ching! Nice little commission coming my way.”

  “Good work.”

  It seemed the right thing to say, though I couldn’t pretend to be genuinely impressed. Show-off boys weren’t my type. It would have been nice to have commissions in the range of thousands though. Selling perfume wasn’t so lucrative for sales staff.

  I made to walk off, slinging my bag over my arm. “See you later.”

  He tipped his head to one side and winked. “You can count on it.”

  With a polite smile I turned away. I pushed through the double doors. I needed to get out of there, away from all the chatty men behaving strangely. I’d get some lunch somewhere quiet and mull over my conversation with Christos.

  He’d probably want me to chat to Marco and guys like him to see if anything strange cropped up. The thought was unsettling. I wasn’t sure why.

  Lunch beckoned. My belly growled like an angry bear as I marched through the store. I couldn’t do any decent thinking on an empty stomach.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS FRIDAY, one of our biggest days of the week. Lots of women got paid on Thursdays and the money hit their bank accounts the next day. Therefore it was shopping day.

  By ten o’clock the perfume counter was pumping. About eight people had been through already, purchasing bottles of scent and even one top-quality eau de parfum from the special backlit display case holding the prestigious products.

  The store had purposefully upbeat dance music playing through the department’s sound system, designed to put shoppers in the mood to spend, spend, spend.

  I was stationed at the counter’s gift wrapping table, perfecting the art of wrapping with no visible tape. I glanced up at the customer Giselle was handling. A gorgeous woman with legs like a gazelle, wrapped in a barely-there mini skirt, was chatting to Giselle. She’d been browsing when Giselle reeled her in with talk of the latest sensation from France.

  “Oui, it is an elegant infusion of peony and honeysuckle. Sweet, but not overpowering. Subtle and distinctive. Yes?”

  The customer nodded, inhaling the spritz of perfume Giselle had applied to her inner wrist. The pulse point there warmed the oils in the perfume, releasing the fragrance. It would develop on the skin, changing with the individual’s chemistry.

  Giselle rubbed the matching perfumed body lotion into the customer’s hands, pausing to compliment her, like the pro saleswoman she was. “You have beautiful hands. Oh, and I love this nail colour!”

  “It’s Chanel,” the customer confided.

  “Of course! It is stunning.” Giselle continued to give a complimentary hand massage, and the woman at the receiving end sighed. She was bound to buy all the things now. She was putty in Giselle’s hands.

  I turned to where Penny, one of our new casual spritzer chicks, was standing, in the middle of the main aisle through the cosmetics department. She wore a little black dress, her hair piled high on her head with a black velvet bow on top like a pair of kitten ears. She was glamorous, sexy even, but scowled like she’d just stepped in so
mething gross on the pavement.

  My heart sank. She’d got her first whiff of Heart-mas the Hideous. It was hard to sell with a smile on your face when it was really rank. She sneezed, loudly.

  She must have felt my eyes on her, because she looked across and caught my eye, raising one arched eyebrow in an eloquent expression. No words required. The message was along the lines of: WTF is this?

  Just then, I yelped. “Ouch!”

  Shit! I hadn’t been paying attention. Blood dripped from my thumb, so I reached across to the bench near the register and grabbed a tissue. Mopping up blood was not my favourite occupation. I couldn’t stand the stuff.

  Giselle and Penny dashed over to me, checking I was okay. I shook my hand in the air, trying to make the dull throb go away. Like an idiot, I’d managed to slice my thumb on the edge of the guillotine—a paper cutting machine with a sharp edge meant for rolls of wrapping paper, not fingers.

  “Show me. Oh, it’s a deep cut. We must find the first-aid person.” Penny turned to Giselle.

  Giselle bit her lip, then burst out with a flurry of words. “Christos from security. He can help. He’ll fix you.”

  I had no doubt he could fix me, but he’d also make me swoon.

  Chapter Five

  “Ow. Ow!” I pressed my lips together and tried to retain some dignity.

  I was little better than a child with a scraped knee when Christos, with his large, yet surprisingly gentle hands, swabbed my cut with sterile alcohol wipes.

  “Shhh, you’ll be okay.” He grumbled low under his breath, as he reached for a butterfly bandage. The first-aid kit was open on the bed beside me.

  Yes, bed.

  Christos and I were sitting close together on a bed, but this wasn’t quite how I’d imagined things. He was fully clothed, for one thing. Me too, but it wasn’t my main preoccupation at the moment. The quiet first-aid room was small, stuffy and claustrophobic. The room reeked of antiseptic and all the vaguely threatening aromas I associated with hospitals. And blood. Not my favourites. Nope.

  He applied the butterfly bandage to my poor sore thumb, and fresh scarlet oozed from the wound. Oozed. The cut was deep.

  My airway closed up. I reached for my throat and undid the top two blouse buttons, taking long, slow breaths. A paper bag was thrust in front of my face and I snatched it greedily, breathing into it. Concentrating on my breath.

  In, out. In, out.

  Better.

  My mind wandered to happier things. Puppies. Sunflowers. White chocolate and macadamia-nut cookies. Then my eyes caught Christos’s steady gaze.

  He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “You nearly passed out. Are you back in the land of the living?”

  I winced. “Yes. It was just the...”

  “Blood?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I breathed deeply. Christos didn’t ask any more questions or tease me. He was just there, solid and silent, holding my hand. Wait, holding my hand? Yes, he was. To be precise, he stroked his thumb over the back of my injured hand, careful not to touch the area of the cut, now covered by the expertly applied dressing.

  Christos met my gaze again and dropped my hand. He stood and glanced around the room as if searching for something. “If you’re all right, I need to fill-in some paperwork. Incident report, first-aid notes.”

  I nodded and he crossed to the filing cabinets against the wall. I watched him and couldn’t help but notice the tightness pulling at the corners of his eyes. The soft expression from a moment ago was now completely missing.

  Oh well. I couldn’t expect him to sit around all day playing paramedic. I shuffled forward on the bed, then lifted myself halfway to standing. My head was so woozy I plopped right back down. My vision went fuzzy, grey at the edges, so I went ahead and lay down flat on my back.

  The next thing I knew Christos was at my side again. He tucked a blanket over me and passed me a glass of water. I managed to sit up enough to take a sip, then closed my eyes again. “I feel like a complete idiot.”

  “Why? Because you hurt yourself? You’re in shock. Give yourself a break.”

  I opened my eyes. “Yes, boss.”

  He sighed and shook his head so a lock of coal black hair fell over his brows. “What am I going to do with you?”

  The question raised so many possibilities in my imagination, I didn’t dare speak. Luckily he did the talking.

  “I’ll let you rest a few more minutes, then we’ll call a taxi to take you home.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I need to work...” I nearly told him. I only had forty dollars to my name for the rest of the week and no sick leave yet. They’d dock my pay for the hours I was on leave, reducing my income for the next week. I couldn’t afford it.

  Christos let out a noise of frustration from low in his throat. “Stop arguing. I’ll call Hyacinth and see what she says.” He unclipped his phone from his belt, punched in a number and then pressed the phone to his ear.

  I groaned. Hyacinth was the floor manager, my superior in the ranking order of management at the store. In terms of actual scariness, she ranked right above Lynda. They were great mates of course, going out for drinks together after work. Probably planning new and inventive ways of torturing the staff.

  Before I could panic about an imminent Hyacinth crisis, I tried to sit, leaning on my elbows. The resulting head spin wasn’t a good sign.

  Christos had opened the door of the small room, which suddenly seemed much smaller, like the walls were closing in on me. I didn’t like the spots at the corners of my vision either.

  Hyacinth poked her head through the door, scrunched up her nose at the sight of me and bustled her way inside. “She looks fine to me.” She said these words with a dismissive tip of her head towards me, and directed her attention straight back to Christos.

  “Lily needs to rest. She’s in shock. She needs a ride home too.” Christos stared her down, crossing his arms.

  I was proud of him, although maybe it wasn’t appropriate to be proud of a grown man I hardly knew for standing his ground. It’s just, Hyacinth was a bully and I’d never had time for bullies. Not since high school. Those days were behind me. Now I was even content with my weight. Mostly. No grown-up version of a Mean Girl was going to treat me like nothing. Even if she was technically my boss.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, willing myself to sink through the floor or become invisible. No such luck.

  Hyacinth piped up before I could change the laws of physics. “Christos, you’re due to finish your shift. Why don’t you escort Lily home?” This was said with a snide smile, which spelt trouble.

  Why was my snarky wench of a manager trying to get Christos to ‘escort’ me? What was she playing at? She was probably only trying to make me uncomfortable.

  With a gracious nod and hardly a complaint, in fact I detected a faint smile playing over Christos’s tempting mouth, he gestured for me to take his outstretched hand.

  Willing and eager, I forgot myself and got up too quickly, the rush of blood from my top half to my bottom half making my knees shake, not in a good way. Except Christos rushed to catch me (again) before I fell at his feet (again-again).

  Only this time my cheek was smooshed up to his chest, not to mention other areas pressing against the long hard length of him. The side of his body, not other regions. His arms wrapped around my waist, literally holding me up.

  While he was built like a tree trunk, I was not. Curvy bits aside, I was more breakable than people imagined. But he was gentle. Even the arm gripping my waist, the hand clutching my hip. Not too hard, not too soft. Just right. Goldilocks, I was not. No way was I afraid of this big bear of a man.

  I may have swooned more than necessary. I never claimed to be an uber-feminist. There was nothing wrong with a bit of flirting, in my humble opinion.

  He squeezed my waist, my heart skittered, and he mumbled under his breath, “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

  Did he ever!

  Chapter Six

/>   “Let me, please.”

  Christos opened the staff door for me, holding it while I gingerly walked out into the glaring mid-afternoon sunlight.

  I glanced up at him and tried not to swallow my tongue. The sunlight dappling his olive-brown skin and the stubble shading his jaw made him almost irresistible. I resisted just going for it and smooching him, for now. “Thank you.”

  I swayed past him, not taking it too fast. I’d forgotten it was daytime. The department store building was bunker-like and I could have been in an underground cave, apart from the ever-blinding flouro lighting. I’d become accustomed. Normal light seemed alien to me now. Perhaps I was becoming a pod person. I shook my head, wishing the cobwebs away.

  Christos took my arm, like a proper old-fashioned gentleman. It was rather swoon-inducing too. It was tricky getting Christos to let me walk on my own two feet. I guessed he wanted to pick me up and haul me over his shoulder like a fireman. Part of me wanted to let him. But the rest of me, especially the part above my shoulders, noticed the small group of staff hanging around the nearby smokers’ area, watching us.

  Marco and crew from Home Entertainment were gathered around a high wooden table against the outside wall of my favourite café. All of them dressed in black as per usual, all of them puffing on cigarettes.

  Smoking. Urgh. Not my chosen bad habit. I’d much prefer to kiss a man who’d been drinking coffee or even eating liquorice. Anything other than smoking. My gaze travelled straight to Christos, who closed the door and ushered me towards the car park. He wasn’t a smoker.

  “Lily, hey! Are you leaving so soon?” Marco’s voice carried on a gust of wind that whipped the loose ends of my ponytail into my face. He sounded put out somehow.

  I tilted my chin in his direction. “I’m not feeling well. Bye,” I said with a tight smile, non-committal as always. I didn’t want to say I’d see him tomorrow. Something about him didn’t appeal to me. A frisson of warning went off in the back of my mind every time he looked me up and down. Like right now.