ANGUS SAT IN the back of the generous yet only half-full auditorium as a speaker talked animatedly about the “curly girl movement”, losing him when the lingo headed down the lines of “squish to condish” and “scrunch out the crunch”.
He turned to his right, ready with a joke for Lucinda, only to still when he remembered she wasn’t there. She’d gone to another talk, one about the science of cruelty-free cosmetics, something he’d have been far more interested in than “deep conditioning”.
It made him wonder if she’d ordered him to sit in on this one as some kind of punishment for making her come at all.
The woman three seats up blushed and gave him an encouraging smile.
He gave one back—though less encouraging—before grabbing his suit jacket from the back of the empty seat beside him and shuffling along the empty row to his left.
“Everything okay?” It was Elena Zager, conference organiser, exit gatekeeper.
“All good. Great speaker. Lots of personality. Your attendees are lapping it up.”
“Curls are a booming industry right now. Hugely energised, grass roots, engaged social media community. Making big waves. So to speak.”
Angus wondered briefly if Remède had any products that might be swept up by a grass-roots campaign but knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Elena motioned to his own head of curls. “Do you oil?”
Angus blinked. “Wash and wear.”
“Mmm…”
Before she began to dole out advice, Angus crossed his arms and leaned against the door, positioning himself as her partner in the line of defence against room-leavers. “How are things going? With the conference.”
“Brilliantly!” Elena looked around. “Though it would have been nice to have a few more attendees. Our speakers are world class. Those who come rave about the events in the feedback sheets. Time was we’d fill a room like this, but our numbers are slipping, especially as we struggle to drum up fresh faces. Present company excluded, of course.”
Angus smiled, his eyes roving over the stage set-up, the banners, the promotional signage. It all looked a little tired, no doubt due to funding restrictions that came from diminishing numbers. A vicious cycle he and Lucinda saw time and again when clients came to him, feeling at the end of their rope.
“Have you ever had professional help, branding-wise?” he asked.
Elena leaned away. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Logo refresh, colour choice, website SEO audit, advertising buy-ins, social media spreads, creating viral headlines…”
When her eyes began to glaze over, Angus swallowed the lingo and thought about how Lucinda might put it. “Uh…how do people know about the conference?”
“My nephew made our website, and this year he started a Facebook page. It’s quite good. We advertise in trade magazines, but that gets more and more cost-prohibitive each year. And we do a mail-out to our list. I think that’s all.”
Before he even felt the words forming, Angus heard himself say, “If you’d like me to put together some ideas, ways to invigorate interest, I’d be happy to offer up some thoughts.”
Elena blinked, splotches of colour rising beneath the thick layer of make-up she wore. Damn it. He’d offended her. When he’d only been trying to help.
This was why he needed Lucinda. She was the one who usually drew the client in, for she was honest and real. You felt it the moment you looked into her eyes.
But she wasn’t around, so he had no choice but to fend for himself.
Angus lowered his voice, found what he hoped was a warm smile and said, “Just between you and me, I’m not actually in the beauty industry.”
“Oh?”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Updating business brands, helping companies connect with the people who need them, is what I do for a crust. And I’m quite a big deal in my field, if I do say so myself.”
“Oh! Well, then, I guess if you have any advice, I’d be amenable to hearing it.”
Angus gave her a smile. A real smile. Clearly, he’d picked up some of Lucinda’s skills after having watched her in action over the years.
Elena patted him on the hand before heading back down into the auditorium.
Angus leaned back against the door, the realisation of what he’d just offered to do slowly sinking in. He didn’t have the time for this. Or the head space. The answer to Remède’s very big, very real problem was the only thing he ought to focus on.
Especially when it felt so close. As if the answer was right under his nose.
Where was Lucinda when he needed her?
With her discount-store pencils and fancy notebooks in hand, she’d have the idea out of his head and into a user-friendly plan in no time at all.
It was a hell of a thing, the way she did that. Head cocked so her dark hair swung over one shoulder, soft brown eyes narrowed as she pierced him with a laser look. It was as if she could see right inside his head, to his very core.
A place few people had ever seen.
Client relationships never went beyond the professional. Other friendships—neighbours, work acquaintances, old uni friends—were peripheral. The women he dated remained at arm’s length. Allowing them any closer would mean giving them the power to move him. Affect him. It would mean risking loss of control.
Having watched his mother let man after man into her home, into her heart, he’d also had to watch them leave, every one of them taking a piece of her with them until by the end he’d barely been able to recognise the woman who’d promised she’d give him a better life no matter what.
Of all the life lessons she’d tried to impart, the most lasting was one she’d never said out loud. She’d lived her life wide open and it had changed her. So, he lived his as a closed book. Invulnerable.
To everyone…except one.
Pressing himself away from the door, he slipped through. His steps ate up the miles to the small single room Velma had booked to grab a stash of hotel stationery.
Needing to keep his mind busy, to keep his thoughts from straying, he chose the accoutrements necessary to whip this organisation into the best shape of its life.
It would be like sorbet for his creative brain, leaving a clean slate on which a moment of clarity might shine, lighting the way to bring the Remède rebranding together.
* * *
After the Science of Cruelty-Free Cosmetics session, Lucinda had sent Angus a message to say she’d meet up with him later in the afternoon for a debrief.
If he took that to mean she was spending time with Jameson, then surely that was on him?
Instead, she spent an hour wandering the grounds of Hanover House, breathing in the fresh air, literally smelling the roses. Grateful to have some time to herself. Time on her own was at a premium, what with her long work hours and her beautiful boy to take care of.
When she found herself wandering aimlessly in and out of a series of tall conifers, her first thought was that they were the perfect size for a man to tug his woman behind and kiss her till her knees gave out. Taller than a fiddle-leaf fig, in any case. Denser. More private.
Thought what did a fiddle-leaf fig have to do with anything? It was Jameson who should be dragging her behind a bush and kissing her senseless, not…anyone else.
And he would. When they rebooked their weekend away. She’d make sure of it! Though the handful of kisses they’d shared so far hadn’t boded all that well for the promise of swooning and watery knees.
Suddenly, the thought of lining up a weekend when they were both free, booking the time off and getting Sonny used to the idea of another weekend without her felt all too hard.
Her phone vibrated silently in her pocket.
She stopped walking and made a deal with herself. If it was Jameson checking in, calling to whisper sweet nothings and tell her how much he wished he was there with her, alone, she’d make it happen. And soon. But if it was anyone else…
She lifted the phone from her bag, her shoulders slumping. In disappointment? Or relief?
Phone at her ear she said, “Hey, Kitty Cat.”
“Loosey-Lu,” her sister sing-songed. “You free to talk? Not handcuffed to the bed? Swinging from a chandelier?”
“I’m free.”
“How’s the good doctor?”
Okay, so she might not have told her sister her weekend plans had changed either. She’d have to do a lot of nice things for a lot of people to balance out the karma her recent decisions might unleash.
Eyes closed, she tore off the proverbial Band-Aid. “Don’t know. He’s not here.”
Silence.
“Didn’t I mention? Turned out I had to work this weekend. A conference. At Hanover House, of all places. But when I told Jameson that I could do both—weekend with him and work a little—he blew me off.”
“The villain,” was Cat’s flavourless response. Then, “So you’re at the resort. Only not with Jameson. With instead, I’m presuming, your dashing boss?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Speaking of Angus, Lucinda took the phone away from her ear to check the time. Time to head back. She was joining said dashing boss in fifteen minutes in the small meeting room they’d nabbed within the business centre.
“You sound out of breath,” said Cat. “Are you certain you’re alone?”
“I’m walking. Fast.”
“Right. Sure.”
“Okay, I have to go. You know Angus—work, work, work. Remind Sonny when he gets home from school that he can call me any time.”
“Are you sure? I know you no longer have hanky-panky as your primary mission this weekend, but you don’t want a blackout period? A metaphorical tie hanging from the hotel door? Just in case?”
“He can call me any time.”
“Okay, then. Bye.”
Lucinda hung up without saying goodbye, threw her phone into her hand bag with a little more force than necessary and grumbled and muttered all the way back to the hotel.
She was getting a little sick of her sister’s passive-aggressive commentary on her relationship with Angus.
Though for a moment or ten, behind the fiddle-leaf fig, it had felt…new. Hot. Breathless. The way he’d looked at her. Holy-moly. His body had vibrated with a level of tension that was quite something, even for him. As if it was taking Angus as much effort not to touch her as it was for her not to touch him.
To run a hand up the back of his neck and another up the front of his business shirt, sliding a finger beneath a button until it popped free of the hole. To press herself against him until she felt the hard press of his…
“Argh!” she cried when she realised where her mind was going, scaring a pair of topknot pigeons who leapt squawking from the lawn into the air.
She pressed her hands against her eyes as if that might wipe away the vision now burned into her retinas. “Okay. Pull yourself together. You just need to get through this weekend, do all you can for Remède and, come Monday, everything will be back to normal.”
As pep talks went it was a bit of a fizzer. For the first time “normal” didn’t sound like everything she’d ever wanted.
But it got her feet moving again. So, by the time she found her way back to the meeting room she was ready to work. Or ready to fake it, at the very least.
She lifted a hand to knock, then shook her head and opened the door. Angus was already there, sitting at a small round table which was covered in pens and paper.
His curls showed signs of having been raked with frustrated fingers. His left cheek was a little pink, as if he’d been leaning on his fist. His tie was missing, as was his jacket. His shirt was wrinkled and rolled up to the elbows. His right leg jiggled like crazy under the table. He looked raw, ravaged. Like a boardroom warrior.
When he realised he was no longer alone and looked up at her, his eyes a little wild, intense, glinting behind his reading glasses, Lucinda had to shake her head in order to stop staring.
“Hey,” she said, moving to dump her bag and jacket on a spare chair before grabbing a notebook and pencil and carefully shoving papers aside to claim a small corner of the table.
He blinked, a small measure of the heat in his eyes dimming as he said, “Where’s Dr Whatsit?”
She waved a hand in the direction of the door. Or Melbourne. “Probably on a call.”
There was a good chance. When they were together he was always on the phone. Which, come to think of it, was actually pretty frustrating.
She’d brushed it off, putting it down to the fact he was an important man who did important work. But would she be happy to be second fiddle to a man’s work all the time? If she ever opened her heart truly, all the way open, it would be because she trusted the man in her life would be there for ever. For her. For Sonny. For them.
Angus cleared his throat again. Probably because she was staring at him. Again.
She shook her head. “Sorry. A million miles away.”
Angus did not look impressed. In fact, he looked mighty uncomfortable. As if he imagined she’d been daydreaming about Dr Whatsit and what they might have been up to together behind the conifers.
Finding herself rather enjoying seeing Angus flummoxed, Lucinda opened her mouth to fan the flames with some carefully chosen words then snapped it shut.
Enough. Really, enough.
She brought her notebook onto her lap. “Before we get to work, I have a confession.”
He frowned. “I prefer the ‘get to work’ part of that sentence.”
“And yet I’m telling you anyway. It’s about Jameson.”
Angus sat back and held up a hand, the column of his throat turning patchy. “Lucinda—”
“He’s not here. In the hotel. He was never here.”
He stilled, his hand still hovering in mid-air. “I don’t understand.”
“He was meant to be here. This weekend was a real thing for us. A big thing, or so I thought. But, when I rang and told him I had to work a little while we were here, he bailed.”
Angus slowly sat forward and ran a hand over his chin. After a few long beats, in which the only sound was the ticking of a clock on the wall overhead, he said, “Luc, I’m sorry. Truly. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Didn’t you? a small voice piped up in the back of her head. Thankfully she stopped it from escaping through her lips.
“You led me to believe he was here.”
Lucinda held up a finger. “If you think back, you’ll find I never once said he was here, I simply didn’t let on that he was elsewhere.”
Don’t ask why. Don’t ask why. Don’t ask…
“Why?”
Ah, the eternal question. There were many reasons. She chose one. “I was embarrassed. After making such a big deal about this weekend and the thing that spilled out of the shopping bag. The ease with which he took the news was less than flattering.”
The look in Angus’s eyes was telling. But telling of what? There was a quiet intensity about him, a sense that all kinds of big emotions rippled beneath the surface.
His voice was so quiet when he said, “He’s a surgeon,” that Lucinda jumped.
“Yes.”
“Meaning he is on call a fair bit.”
“Yes. Often.”
“Having your time together cut short is one of the joys of dating a doctor.”
Snort. “Like you’d know.”
“I did, in point of fact, date a doctor once.”
“A doctor of what? Astrology?”
The intensity in Angus’s eyes changed. Shifted. Warmed. “No,” he said, his voice dropping to a purr. “Vivian was an actual medical doctor.”
Lucinda opened her mouth with a qualifier, but Angus got there first, “Who doctored on humans. From memory, I quite liked the fact she was constantly on call. It meant she had so little claim on my time. I wonder what happened to her?”
“I bet you do.”
His smile was wide. With teeth. And, oh, the things it did to her insides. And outsides. All over.
Lucinda frowned down at her notebook to find she hadn’t made a single note.
Then Angus asked, “Do you want to talk about it? About him?”
“With you?”
He looked over his shoulder as if checking to see who might be lined up behind him.
“Funny,” she deadpanned. “We don’t do this. You and I. We don’t talk about the people we…date.” She might as well have used a number of other terms, given how the temperature in the room seemed to rise.
“We don’t, do we?”
She shook her head. Slowly. Feeling more than a little mesmerised by the look in his eyes. “Best we keep it that way, don’t you think? I know we don’t have much in the way of boundaries but the people we date…maybe that should be one of them.”
“Maybe. But, while we’re considering that, tell me this: is there anything I can do to make it up to you both, if you imagine you’ll be…dating him again any time soon?”
A second or three went by before Lucinda realised she was still shaking her head.
“No, I can’t help, or no, you’re done with him?”
Her voice cracked a very little as she said, “Both.” And she meant it. For, if he’d let her go all too easily, the truth was she was glad he wasn’t there.
“Good,” Angus said, the edge of his mouth kicking into a slow-burn kind of smile that made Lucinda’s insides melt.
“Good?”
“You deserve the kind of man who’d stand up and tell you no.”
“Ah, what now?”
“Along the lines of no, you can’t work this weekend, as I have plans. Plans that won’t work if I don’t have you all to myself. All weekend long.”
Lucinda tried not to swallow. She really did. But if she wanted to get the words out she had no choice.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, what’s going on here?” She flapped a hand at the table to distract him. “Did a stationery shop crash-land on your table?”
She was gifted a slight tilt of the head—the equivalent of giving her a C+ for her distraction efforts—before he nudged his glasses higher on his nose and his attention slid back to his work.
“I’m helping the committee rebrand before their next event.”
“What committee?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “The, ah, committee who organised the conference. That we are attending.”
“Elena and her lot? They hired you?”
“I volunteered.”
“You volunteered. To help them. For nothing.”
This from a man who let his underlings deal with small-fry accounts such as cinema chains and TV stations as he was too busy catering to airlines and media conglomerates. This man who equated success with the number of multinational clients on his waiting list.
She popped out of her chair and placed the back of her hand on his forehead. “Are you okay?”
Feeling warmth, feeling her skin tingling where it had met his, she curled her fingers away and sat back down. “Do they have something on you? Please tell me you won a free makeover and there are photos to prove it!”
Angus slowly leant back in his chair, long legs sliding deeper under the table until one of his feet brushed against hers. She quickly crossed her ankles and tucked her feet back as far as they would go.
“Can’t a guy just do something nice for a bunch of beauticians with it not having to mean something?”
“Not you.”
Something flashed behind his eyes.
“Angus, I didn’t mean…” Lucinda leant forward. “Remède, Angus. You’re here, rather than having a much-deserved weekend off, because of Remède. Right?”
It took a few beats longer than it should have for him to nod.
“Then do you even have time for this?”
“Probably not. But I was looking for a win.”
Oh? Oh.
Lucinda’s heart gave a little kick.
The guy was the most winning person she’d ever met. Some campaigns were more successful than others, but they were always baseline successful. For him to be that worried about Remède’s account? For him not to have complete faith in himself? Boy, that must be messing with his head.
And she felt more than a little silly for harbouring a teeny, tiny thread of hope in the back of her head that the reason he was here was for her.
Agreeing to a quickie pro bono for a non-profit, that was way out there for him. And it was her job to go there with him, to make sure he made it back to safe ground. Meaning it was time to go to work.
“Okay. Let’s do this. A genius fix, but on a low budget. Feels like how it used to be back in the beginning. Remember?”
The moment she said okay, Angus looked slightly less haunted. “It was the Wild West—scrounging for time, pulling in favours, like digging for diamonds in the back yard. Bloody hard work, but fun, right?”
She couldn’t help but grin. “The funnest. Now, while it’s terribly cute that you tried to do this without me, let me sort out the crazy you have going on here.”
It took Lucinda about a minute and a half to have Angus’s scattered notes in neat piles. Another ten—during which she kept shushing him when he tried to interject—to read through the piles, pick out the thread tying it all together and annotate.
Once done, she sat back with a happy sigh, flush with the sense of accomplishment.
When she caught Angus’s eye, she found him watching her with a darkly indulgent smile.
She glowered. “Now what?”
“You made the noise.”
“What noise?”
“The happy ‘humph’ you make whenever you’re feeling particularly pleased with yourself. You make it a lot.”
“I do?” She licked her lips which suddenly felt preternaturally dry.
He nodded, his gaze dropping to her mouth. And suddenly it felt as if they were back behind the fiddle-leaf fig again. As if there wasn’t enough air. As if they were saying more without words than with.
“Then I must be pleased with myself a lot. Which makes sense. Because I’m awesome.”
Angus’s smile stretched. “And no matter how busy we are, how tight the deadlines, how much work I pile on your plate, that noise always tells me you’re happy where you are.”
“Where I am?” she said, her voice light.
“Working with me.”
Her chest tightened pleasurably.
With him, he’d said. Not for him. Whenever she found herself particularly frustrated, when he was grumpy or stubborn or locked away in the impenetrable mental cave in which he lived much of the time, it was moments like this, when he treated her not just as another employee but as his partner, that turned it all around.
That made her tingle. And sparkle. And wonder. And hope.
And yearn.
Look away! her subconscious cried, and for once she did as she was told, picking up a piece of paper from the table and staring at it as if it was the most interesting thing she’d seen in a long time.
“‘South Victorian Regional Beauticians’ Organisation’,” she said, reading the conference package he’d scribbled all over. “That has to go.”
“Right there with you.” Angus pulled out a sheet of paper he had tucked up inside the conference folder, on which he’d sketched out a new business name and logo.
“When did you come up with this?” she asked.
“Five minutes before you stormed in and I let you pretend you’d taken over.”
She shot him a look before her gaze was pulled back to his sketch.
It was simple, elegant, aspirational, feminine, strong and dead on target. The colour was not the usual cosmetic pink, but a sweet, wistful spring-green. Extremely close, in fact, to the colour of her watch band. Her reusable takeaway coffee mug. Her favourite dress.
Another woman might have imagined that was because he’d been thinking about her as he’d worked. Lucinda steadfastly refused to imagine any such thing.
“Are you sure you’re not a woman?” she asked.
The curl of his smile, the gleam in his eye, the roll of his shoulder, were all so very male that Lucinda’s ovaries hiccupped.
“So, what about…? Where’s that bit with the membership restructuring…?”
They both leaned forward to reach for a piece of paper at the same time. Lucinda grabbed it, Angus’s hand closing over hers.
She glanced up, finding herself close enough to see all the colours in his magnetic eyes. To see stubble darkening the edges of his hard jaw. To watch him attempt to control the measure of his next breath.
She ought to have pulled some ninja move and unglued her hand from his before he even knew she was on the move.
But, while she was considering, he lifted her hand to have a closer look. Sonny had drawn on the back of her hand before she’d left, so she’d “remember him” while she was away. It was a now faded lopsided heart.
Angus sniffed out a breath, his eyes creasing into a smile as he ran this thumb over the drawing. Then, as if he was in some kind of trance, he turned her hand over, distractedly watching his thumb as it traced her lifeline. Or was it her heartline?
Lucinda could not breathe. She could barely think. Every nerve, cell and emotion centred on the gentle swipe of Angus’s grazing touch.
When he reached the tender underside of her wrist, it became too much and she jerked her hand away.
Hope, confusion and years of pressing her feelings deep down inside mixed into a tempest inside her, pushing her to her feet so fast her chair scraped sharply against the floor before teetering and tipping over.
She spun and crouched to pick it up, right at the same moment that Angus came round the table to do the same. Her eyes snapped to his to find them dark and bottomless.
Lucinda slowly pulled herself to her feet, her legs shaking with the adrenaline coursing through her body.
Angus stood by her, the chair in one hand. He gently placed it back down. And stayed where he was, breathing hard enough that she could see the shape of him beneath the constraint of his shirt.
“The next session starts soon,” Lucinda somehow managed to croak out.
“Right.”
“I think I’ll go freshen up before heading to…whatever it is I’m heading to.”
“Okay. I need to track down some coffee and then I’ll come back here. Keep working on this. Can I grab you a cup? To take with you?”
Now he was asking if he could get her a coffee? Lucinda really needed him to say something smug. Or arrogant. To restore balance to the galaxy.
She shook her head then leaned around him to reach her bag, holding her breath so as not to swoon as she brushed so close to him she could feel his body heat.
Somehow her feet remembered how to walk, admirably carrying her to the door. Where she stopped. Turned. She couldn’t leave with that kind of tension pulling between them or she’d not hear a word of the next session.
“Will you be okay? Doing this on your own? Because I can stick around…”
“I’m fine. This feels…good.” The warmth that lit the edges of his smile made her wonder if he was fully aware of the butterflies smacking into her ribcage. Then he said, “I’m sorry about Dr Whatsit. Truly.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.” For she was. It should have been so easy to fall for him. To fit him into their lives. Then, “And, should you have a Dr Whatsit in your life one day, you can talk to me about it, you know. Any time. Boundaries, schmoundaries.”
Something dark swirled behind his eyes. “There’ll be no Dr Whatsits for me, Luc. You know better than anyone that my mother taught me the benefits of a life of solitude. Which either makes me a very lucky man, or it’s the great tragedy of my life.”
Lucinda gave him a smile, as was expected.
All the while, as she headed back out into the hotel and walked unseeingly towards the conference rooms, her heart twisted so hard it hurt.
She’d lost loving parents while still relatively young. Her husband had left her when they’d had a beautiful thirteen-month-old boy.
And yet, Lucinda thought with a heaviness settling over her like a rain cloud, the fact that this man flat out refused to move beyond the ghosts of his boyhood might yet turn out to be the great tragedy of her life as well.