Golden Opportunity

by Virginia Taylor

  She collected Tiggy’s pile of design magazines and began skimming through, but she truly couldn’t imagine living with a red kitchen for longer than a year, despite the eye-catching color. Then again, some people lived whole lifetimes surrounded by appalling colors without making any change.

  She sighed. The kitchen cupboards in her mother’s post-war house, now hers, were crafted from painted wood with cream laminate countertops. The house had been built in the seventies, and the kitchen had never been renewed. Most of the hinges on the cabinets had rusted and almost all hung enough askew, making closing the doors difficult. If she had the money… But she didn’t.

  Instead, she could enjoy renewing the old school with a modern, but not too glamorous kitchen. Built after the Second World War, 1940-ish, the severity of the architecture and the stark lines of the crown molding would be set off nicely by a modern industrial design.

  She left at six and noted Hagen’s car was one of the few left in the lot. Since she was supposed to report any problems to him, she decided to make tentative plans and run them by Calli when she saw her on Friday night.

  * * * *

  Hagen ended his last meeting at seven and drove home to his sterile house. He zapped his meal, wrote up the minutes of the last meeting of the board, and signed a pile of checks. Sandra had noted in his planner that his car was due for a service and that his sister Calli wanted him to come for dinner on Friday night. She could have called him, but he had a habit of ignoring personal phone calls, and so, like many others, she often used Sandra to keep him up to date.

  Finally, he decided that an evening with her and Kell would suit him well enough. He would be sure of not eating another microwave meal, at least. He contacted Calli and accepted the invitation for seven on Friday night. A family meal wouldn’t leave him wondering where the past year had gone.

  * * * *

  He almost forgot about Marigold, and when he saw her in the staff room on Thursday he took a step backward. Today she wore her tailored black pants and a crisp white shirt. Her beautiful hair had been swirled on top of her head.

  “Good morning,” she said with one of her classy smiles.

  He nodded. “Morning. How’s the job going?”

  “The schoolhouse? It’s not as easy to plot what goes where as you might think.”

  As the person who had plotted ‘what goes where’ in his first year with his father’s company, he tried a sympathetic shift of his mouth. “Computer modeling helps.”

  “But first you need to know the size of the loo and the bath, and how much space you need to take a shower.”

  “Surely the sizes would be on the computer program?” He glanced over at the far table where the company’s architect sat with the building foreman, planning to join them.

  Her jaw moved a little to the side as she thought. “I hope not since I spent hours finding the specifications online.”

  “Didn’t Tiggy run through all that with you?” Unlike most redheads he knew, Marigold had dark eyelashes. Her eyes were the color of a fine old brandy—big, candid, beautiful eyes, glossed with health.

  She blinked and a slight crease formed between her delicate eyebrows. “She told me she didn’t use the computer often, but I might find something useful. If so, I don’t know what or where.”

  He edged sideways, wanting his employees to note that he wouldn’t spend too much time in conversation with an attractive woman. A man whose wife had recently died had to mourn: needed to respect her memory. “So, you’re reinventing the wheel.”

  “You could say that.” She lifted her shoulders.

  “You ought to have told me you were having a problem.” He glanced away, frustrated. She shouldn’t be in this position that was clearly out of her depth. Tiggy had insisted that Marigold could handle a job that depended on more than the color of a few tiles, and he didn’t know why Tiggy had chosen her if she couldn’t easily knock off a design for an interior. He hoped she could coordinate events because that would be her main role, in his opinion. The designing was important, but impressing prospective clients was more important. Mercia had had the knack. Marigold was as yet, untried.

  “I probably don’t like showing my ignorance. In my normal line of work, I only use a computer to order or find materials.”

  Although he knew he should sit at one of the tables with her and sort out her problems, he couldn’t handle too much time with Marigold. The sight of her squeezed at his insides and reminded him of that night during his final year at university when he had made an irretrievable mistake. “Sandra will help you,” he said, backing out of the room, coffee in hand, instead of joining the builder and the architect.

  He shouldn’t have allowed Marigold to interrupt his disciplined routine.

  After super-efficient, slightly motherly Sandra had spoken to Marigold, his PA entered his office, her forehead creased. “She’s right. Tiggy left her out on a limb. She doesn’t have any sort of list of the projects or the specs. I’m going to send her everything. In the meantime, she has done color swatches, etcetera. Nice job, too.”

  He sent a text message to Tiggy. What’s up? Why did you leave Marigold hung out to dry?

  No answer, but he could see she read the message. Perhaps Marigold and Tiggy had had a falling out. Hagen had never known either of his sisters to be spiteful. He still hadn’t heard from Tiggy by the time he pulled up outside Calli’s house on Friday night. Another car sat right outside the front gate of the place Calli and Kell were currently renovating. Marigold’s blue car.

  He gripped his steering wheel. The thought of Kell and Calli having a dinner guest other than him hadn’t entered his head. Finally, he stalked up the garden path, stepped onto the slatted veranda, and rang the doorbell. A couple of light footsteps and Kell, dressed in jeans and a woolly sweater, opened the door.

  “I thought this was a family meal?” Hagen said in an accusing voice. He pushed a bottle of red wine at Kell’s chest.

  “You saw Marigold’s car? She is family, according to Calli.” Kell led the way to the open plan living area.

  Calli had chosen plain white walls for the seventies house. Light, polished hardwood flooring connected the kitchen, the dining room, and the sitting room where a dark blue carpet square complemented the mellow wood. Pops of primary colors had been added in the pictures on the walls and other than that, his youngest sister had furnished in contemporary style.

  “Nice,” he said, glancing around. He hadn’t been in this house before and he knew Kell and Calli would make quite a few dollars when Kell sold the place on, which was his intention. Living off his wife’s money didn’t suit him, being the proud and independent type.

  Hagen understood, although he hadn’t been brought up poor. He had insisted on paying for his own house, too, despite his father’s impatience. “It will be yours anyway, so why not spend some now?” Far had said, but Hagen didn’t want a house he would sell on. He wanted a lifetime house, one in which his children would flourish. But he didn’t have children, and he no longer had a wife.

  He pushed his hands into his pockets and glanced over to the kitchen where Marigold and Calli stood, the latter grinning at him and accepting the bottle of wine from Kell. Calli was tall and elegant with dark hair like their mother. She had the light eyes they had all inherited from Far. The only difference between Calli and Tiggy was their hair color, which changed on a whim. Both had inherited Ma’s cooking skills, but Calli pretended she was a novice, a ploy that had Ma, but no one else, fooled. Ma continued to bury Calli under mountains of food offerings. She had stopped her food parcels to Hagen not long after he married Mercia. No doubt she assumed Mercia had inherited her mother’s cooking skills.

  He smiled at Calli, and flickered his gaze to Marigold. “Nice to see you again, Marigold,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, a challenging stance that appalled him. Gazing at his feet, he switched his
hands back to his pockets, trying to appear casual but in a room with Marigold, he felt anything but casual.

  He had no idea why she always looked right for every occasion without appearing to try, but tonight she wore those plain black pants with a pale blue knitted top. Her beautiful shiny hair had been straightened and fell to her shoulders in a glimmer of gold. Tonight would be unbearable.

  Marigold offered a pasted smile. “After all this time?” Her glance at him expressed the vague amusement of the unreadable younger woman she had been.

  “A whole day.” He could have bitten his tongue. He hadn’t meant to sound as though he noticed. “We’re not going to talk about work, I hope,” he said, clamping his jaw.

  “What if it finds its way into the conversation?”

  He sighed. Irrepressible Marigold. Again, she had left him without a comeback. He glanced at Kell, who said, “Would you like a beer or a glass of your wine?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  Kell gave him beer. The conversation drifted into talk of food while the ladies nursed a glass of wine each. After pulling warm plates from the oven, Calli asked them to sit at the table. Hagen sat opposite Marigold, who spread her table napkin on her lap without glancing at him. He did the same while Calli served apple and pumpkin soup. The delicately sweet flavor caught at his taste buds.

  For the past year, he had avoided family meals. He didn’t want the sympathy he didn’t deserve, preferring to wallow in his wretchedness. Tonight, the clear bright colors in the room, the fragrant food, and the sheer pleasure of gazing at calm and careful Marigold relaxed him.

  He savored a lamb roast with crisp roasted vegetables, and a pastry packed with creamy custard drizzled with honey syrup. He rarely ate sweets—the decision of the athlete he no longer was, but tonight he wanted everything he had missed. Yes, even Marigold. Marigold most. She had a swimmer’s body, fit and healthy, that he would appreciate in his bed, and graceful hands that he could easily imagine caressing his needy body.

  At the moment, her hands rested idly on the table. He groaned silently, feeling the rush of blood to his dick. After lighthearted small talk, while he tried to concentrate on the words rather than Marigold, the company relaxed on the L-shaped sofa. Calli curled against Kell. The pretty little cat they had acquired sat along the top of the couch, every now and again batting at Kell’s face to encourage his attention.

  “Remember that summer we spent at Goolwa?” Calli said, idly toying with one of Kell’s fingers.

  Hagen knew which summer she meant because she included Marigold in her gaze. “We spent most summers at Goolwa,” he said, hoping to change the subject. He had enough problems with Marigold sitting only an angle away.

  “I’m talking about the summer before Tiggy and I moved into the senior school. Marigold was with us for Christmas. I love big family Christmases. We haven’t had one for ages. Kell and I are thinking of going to Goolwa with Ma and Far this year.”

  “Do you sail, Kell?”

  Kell shook his head and dragged the cat onto his lap.

  Calli answered for him. “Kell isn’t a beach boy like you.”

  “I’ll bet he plays a mean game of volleyball.”

  Kell grinned. “Mean is the word. I have two brothers. If you come, too, I’ll challenge you to a Dee-style game. We play by rules decided on by what the women are wearing.”

  Hagen scratched the back of his neck. “Whatever floats your boat. Speaking of which, if I come, I’ll take you out sailing.”

  “We blessed your sailing that year. We got rid of handy ol’ Brent for a while.” Marigold gleamed a smile at him. “Handy as in, my god, he was a grabber, wasn’t he Calli?”

  “You got the worst of it. I think he was a bit scared of touching Hagen’s sisters.”

  Hagen glanced at Marigold. His neck tightened. “If he was touching you, you should have said something.”

  “I thought I dealt with him quite well. I touched him back, tweaked him actually, and it hurt. It might have given him the idea that grabbing a girl’s breasts hurt, too. Anyway, he didn’t speak to me again, even at school. I see he married Dina Douglas, aka Dido.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw it in the paper a couple of years ago. It’s a shame you grabbed her back then, because if he could have had her, it would have taken the pressure off the rest of us.” Marigold laughed, and her eyes crinkled with mischief.

  “If only you had asked me back then, I would have thrown her to the wolf,” Hagen answered with intentional sarcasm. He didn’t want to want Marigold. “No sacrifice would have been too great for you.”

  “It’s a shame that’s past tense because in the present I’m tense. I see in the notes Tiggy left for me that I’m supposed to be organizing a dinner for you next Friday. Why do you need me to organize a dinner for you? Surely it’s only a matter of calling a restaurant and if you can’t do that, Sandra could.”

  He glanced at Calli who moistened her lips before she spoke. “Tiggy’s been organizing Hagen’s business dinners since Mercia died. Mercia used to handle the social aspect, and Tiggy managed the organizational part.”

  “What part is the organizational part?” Marigold stared straight at him.

  He shrugged. “Invitations, table decorations.”

  “He thinks it’s that easy,” Calli said, shaking her head. “For an intimate dinner, you need to know the invitees nationalities and their dietary requirements. You might want place cards, name cards. For a larger dinner, you might want a speaker, an order of speaking, sponsors, entertainment. The list goes on. Sometimes you might want a red carpet or photographers, or even the media.”

  “Not for this dinner,” Hagen said, alarmed. “I’ll be hosting it at home.”

  “In your house?”

  “Home is what I call my house.”

  “So, I’m organizing a dinner in your home?”

  “Imagine it’s a restaurant.”

  “Dinner for how many?”

  Hagen frowned, again puzzled. “Tiggy must have left you instructions.”

  “It said in the notebook, and I quote, ‘Organize Hagen’s dinner.’”

  “Perhaps Sandra knows the details.”

  “If it’s in your house, you’ll need what? A caterer and staff?”

  “You can get the caterer to supply staff.” Calli glanced at Hagen. “Hagen, stop being unhelpful. All of this must have been booked weeks ago.”

  “Yes. I’m sure it was. I recall Tiggy saying everyone accepted.”

  Marigold breathed out. “Good. So, everyone will arrive, and presumably to have accepted, they’ll know where to go. At worst, I’ll only need to run around like a headless chicken trying to organize a caterer for X number of people with various food intolerances. At best, that’s done, and Sandra knows the arrangement.”

  “And the hours you spend at my house will be paid at double time, if that makes this more palatable.” He glanced at Marigold’s expression, which he couldn’t read, had never been able to read, and he wondered if that was her attraction. Mercia’s face had always warned him about what she was about to say or do, but he had never fathomed Marigold.

  “I’ll be at your house?”

  He spread his hands. “You’re Tiggy’s stand-in. For the past year, she has been my hostess. That’s why she wanted you for this job—you’re not a stranger to me.”

  She sat with her hands in her lap, the irises in her big brandy-colored eyes huge. “That does it. I’ll have to buy a new dress.”

  She smiled at him, and old memories of her smart, wryly funny words flooded his mind. He concentrated on the coffee table in front of him, anything but think about her.

  A man would be a fool to want a woman he couldn’t have. Aside from that, he didn’t deserve another chance.

  Chapter 3

  Marigold dealt with her usua
l Saturday morning chores—a load of washing, vacuuming the house, and driving off for her week’s food supply. At the shopping center, she filled her car with her normal boring staples. Then, resigned to her least favorite task, she took the escalator from the car park back into the mall.

  Now spring had begun to warm into summer, the new summer fashions crowded the shops. The older spring fashions were being price-dumped. At a discount of at least fifty percent, she could buy a new dress to wear to Hagen’s dinner. Since she would mainly be background noise, black would be her choice. To find the best bargain, she started at the supermarket end of the mall and skimmed the discounted racks in each boutique along the strip. Apparently black was passé this year, but farther down the mall, she found a straight gray-and-black dress with three-quarter sleeves. She took that for fifty dollars, reduced from two hundred and thirty.

  As she triumphantly swung her designer-labeled package to the escalator, she spotted Hagen standing near the flower shop. Her heartbeat skittered. She wore jeans, a sweater, and flat-heeled boat shoes and with her hair flying around her face, she looked like a housewife who was returning home to unpack her groceries. He wore jeans and a cream knit. He looked tall, blond, and tanned, like a fairytale prince slumming.

  As if he sensed her desperation not to be seen, he turned his head. His hesitant smile showed a glimpse of his perfect white teeth. With no obvious choice, she continued walking toward him, her breath regrettably short. His height and his coloring separated him from the crowd of busy shoppers. She hoped he saw her polite smile and not the smile of a star-struck minion. Last night, she’d had a normal conversation with him, one that hadn’t left him tight-lipped.

  Stopping in front of him, she clutched her bag to her chest her, trying desperately to meet his careful gaze. “I’ve shopped in the same place for most of my life, and I have seen most of the people I know in this particular mall at some time, but this is weird so soon after last night.” She moved into an awkward hip-shot stance.