BY SIX O’CLOCK that evening, Lucinda’s nerves were shot.
Not from the conference, which was fantastic, and they’d really hit their straps. By then most of the attendees knew who they were—who Angus was, at any rate—had heard that he’d volunteered to help them update their brand and someone had researched him enough to know he was doing the same for Remède.
As big fans of the venerable label, so many came forward with thoughts, advice and stories about the times Remède products had marked different periods of their lives.
Angus had insisted they stick together for the day—take the same sessions, sit in on the same conversations, two heads being better than one. Meaning she’d had to cope with his hand at her back as they’d all snuggled into a lift, the brush of his arm as he’d reached for a pen, the constant hum of his body heat simmering away beside her.
Add the fact that Sonny kept messaging from Cat’s phone asking when she’d be done.
She’d originally booked dinner for two: romantic corner booth in the resort’s premier restaurant. The chef was famous. He’d been on TV. Now, with the conference awards dinner later that night, and her little boy to consider, she’d changed to a table for three at six pm, at the family restaurant with the kids’ play room. That phone call to change the booking had physically hurt.
But she’d long since chosen places to eat according to what Sonny might like on the menu. Turned out, that night it didn’t much help. He was not in an amiable mood.
Sonny was tired of wandering around the hotel. Bored. He didn’t want to answer questions about school the day before. Or how his junior AFL team might have gone without him—probably quite well, as he still preferred making shadow puppets to actually getting his hands on the ball.
By the time they finished dinner, Lucinda had bribed him with promises of hide-and-seek. Later, in her hotel suite. And only if he used his real voice, not the one that came with a pouting bottom lip.
No doubt keen on a break herself, Cat had taken off to the powder room about ten minutes before and was taking her time returning.
It was a blessed relief when Angus appeared in the restaurant.
It was short-lived, though, as a dark-haired woman came walking in beside him. Laughing, touching him on the sleeve.
Lucinda readjusted herself on her seat, tugging on the neckline of her spring-green dress, feeling more than a little over-dressed for a date night at a family restaurant with her son, but her suitcase boasted limited options.
Sonny said, “You feel sick, Mum?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re frowning. Is it food poisoning?” Currently, one of his favourite books was about the human digestive system. “Or gastro?”
“What? No. I’m fine,” she lied as her gaze tugged back to the bar.
To Angus. And his mystery companion. Was she someone from the conference? A random hotel guest, perhaps? She’d been with him once when a random gorgeous woman had walked up to him in the middle of the street and given him her card, saying, “Call me.”
No wonder. He was a gorgeous man. All broad shoulders, strong jaw and dark curls. His hand waved elegantly as he spoke and he had one foot hooked on the small ledge beneath the bar, his body turned towards the woman, who looked at him as if her bones were slowly melting in his presence.
“Uncle Angus!” Sonny cried, leaping from the chair and bolting around the tables.
“Sonny!” Lucinda called, but it was too late.
Angus turned, smiling in genuine joy when he saw Sonny rocketing up to him. He caught the kid mid-fly and held him at eye height to ask him a question. Sonny pointed. Angus lowered the boy to the ground, his gaze searching the restaurant.
Lucinda held her breath until his eyes found hers. They were dark in the low light, his face more familiar to her than her own.
Then something in his expression changed, hardened, smouldered. Even from that distance she felt it like a sunburn across her cheeks, her bare shoulders, the backs of her knees.
He said something to his lady friend. She nodded, grabbed their drinks and headed towards the other end of the restaurant, away from the kids’ room. While Angus wound his way through the tables to Lucinda.
She was standing before she even realised she’d moved.
“Sorry,” she called when he was close. “I see you’re busy. I tried to stop him.”
He shrugged, just the one shoulder, until his eyes landed on her dress. After a beat or two he looked away, to anywhere but at her. She felt like jumping to catch his eye.
“Enjoying your dinner?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Lucinda, right as Sonny said, “No.”
Lucinda waggled her hand towards Sonny, who was gripping Angus around the middle, trying to drag him away. “Sonny. Sit. Leave Angus be. He has company.”
“Company?” Angus’s gaze narrowed and finally connected with hers, before gliding over her face, no doubt taking in her warm cheeks, her tight jaw, the flicker of a pulse at her throat. “Ah. Griselda is on the conference committee, just arrived this evening. Elena asked if I could catch her up, so I talked her through what we had so far on the way here, as the committee are meeting for drinks.”
“Oh!” Probably best not to sound quite so relieved. “How did she like the sound of it?”
“As expected,” he said with a smile and a quick half-wink to surreptitiously thank her for her help.
“So, they’re talking sainthood?”
He chuckled, the sound low and deep and intimate. She could feel it travel over her bare shoulders before diving into her belly.
Then his gaze dropped back to her dress and a muscle ticked in his jaw. His eyes seemed to darken a few degrees. And then…
“When they say it’s a small world, they really have no idea,” said Cat as she appeared from nowhere, arms crossed, eyes alight with malevolence.
While Angus came over cool as a cucumber.
Chance were, she’d been projecting anyway. With a jaw like that, muscles were sure to tic. And his eyes were always smoky and dark. It was no wonder she felt constant hot flushes.
“Don’t let us keep you, Angus,” said Cat.
Lucinda shot her a telling glare, but Cat just poked out her tongue.
“No!” Sonny said. “He’s playing hide-and-seek.”
Sonny reached out and slid his hand into Angus’s. Without even seeming to realise it, Angus closed his fingers around Sonny’s.
“You promised,” Sonny said, as if knowing a no was on its way. “You’ve finished dinner. It’s nearly bed time. Hide-and-seek.”
Officially out of the energy to deny him, Lucinda lifted her eyes to Angus.
“He’s wilful,” said Angus.
“He’s eight.”
“He’s you.”
If Lucinda hadn’t already had feelings for the man she might have fallen head over heels for him right then and there. As it was, it took every ounce of that wilfulness of hers not to melt into a puddle at the sight of the big man holding her son’s hand. Not to imagine giving in, telling Angus how she felt, him smiling at her and saying he’d been waiting to hear those words since the day they’d met.
But Angus began bouncing on the balls of his feet and stretching his arms over his head. “Haven’t played in years but I was neighbourhood champ when I was the kid’s age. Keen to find out if I’ve still got it.”
And Lucinda breathed again.
“Okay, then,” she said. “The rules. We team up. That way nobody gets lost for good. We’ll have time limits to each ‘hide’. Grown-ups keep phones on. No hiding outside. No getting in people’s way. This floor only. Once you hide, there’s no moving. It’s not a race. Sonny and I can be on one team—”
“No,” said Sonny. “I want Auntie Cat on my team.”
“Oh.”
If Lucinda sounded a little rebuffed, Angus looked it. She caught Sonny’s eye only to find his jaw was set. “Are you sure? You can go with Angus, if you’d like?
“You always tell me what a good team you and Angus make, when we go through that list you have of what makes a good friend.”
Cat laughed, though there was no humour in it. Then she reached out and took Sonny by the shoulders, moving him into her corner. “Well, I give up. Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“Fine,” Lucinda gritted out. She looked at her watch. “So, who’s it?”
Sonny stuck his hand in the air. “Us. We’re counting to one hundred. Go! Mum, hurry, hurry, hurry.”
“Right. Um…okay.” Lucinda grabbed her bag and her phone and checked the table to make sure she’d left nothing behind. She checked her memory to make sure they’d paid.
“Come on, Mum,” said Angus, his voice low, his hand held her way. “Hurry.”
Competitive spirit lit, Lucinda took it and together they fled.
“Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse us.” Lucinda was near breathless with laughter by the time they’d squeezed through the tightly packed tables of the family-friendly restaurant and burst out into the hall.
“Which way?” she asked, turning back to Angus. When she realised she was still holding his hand, she let go and made as if she needed that hand to hitch up her bag. “What do you reckon?”
“I’ve got an idea,” he said, taking her by the hand once more.
It would have been impolite to pull away a second time.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her high heels tap-tap-tapping as she jogged to keep up with his long, loping strides.
“Our tree.”
“Our tree?” she asked. Only to pull up short when they rounded a corner to find themselves facing the humungous fiddle-leaf fig behind which she’d dragged him the morning before.
Before she could demur, Angus grabbed her by the hips, spun her about and pressed her behind the big, fat leaves of the fiddle-leaf fig.
She turned at the corner to complain about the manhandling only to have him place a hand flush over her open mouth while he held a finger to his own.
Then she heard it: Sonny barking orders, his voice growing in volume as it neared. “This way!”
“Slow down, mate.”
“Come on!”
When the voices neared, instinct had Lucinda grabbing Angus by the shirtfront to pull him closer, using him and his big, dark form to shield her. She pressed her head into his chest and locked her knees to stop them from jiggling away the excess of adrenaline pouring through her body.
“Run, Auntie Cat!” cried Sonny, close by now. “Angus is really fast.”
“How would you even know that?” That was Cat.
“He told me. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing the wrong bra, you have to run!”
When Sonny’s voice faded into the distance, Lucinda began to laugh.
Angus removed his hand from her mouth and rubbed his thumb against his palm as if rubbing away a tingle. Her head still against his chest, his deep voice rumbled right through her as he said, “That was close.”
Lucinda looked up. The fact that she still had a handful of shirt and was using it to pull him to her was clearly not lost on either of them—Angus’s eyes were pitch-black, his jaw as hard as granite, his heart thunderous beneath her hand.
“Too close,” she said, waggling her eyebrows in an attempt at levity, but the huskiness of her voice gave her away.
Slowly, she unpeeled her fingers, one by one, before leaning back into the corner, as far as she could go, until none of her was touching any of him.
His usually perfect shirt was all squished and messed up, so she gave it a tug, lining up the buttons before ironing the crushed sections with her hand. She could feel the bumps of his chest, his ribs, his abs…
Swallowing hard, she carefully lifted her hand away.
“So,” he said. “What now?”
On any other man that deep, devilish tone would have made her sure it was an invitation. Lucinda looked anywhere but at Angus, lest he see it in her eyes.
“Should we move? It’s pretty tight back here.”
“Can’t. You made the rules. No moving.”
Right. She and her rules had a lot to answer for this weekend. “Then we wait.”
But not like this. Not face to face.
So, she sat, sliding ungracefully down the wall, knees bent up to her chin, dress tucked discreetly behind her thighs.
After a beat, Angus turned his back to the wall and did the same.
“Lift,” he said.
She let out a little whoop when he grabbed her by the ankles. Then, realising what he was trying to do, she held onto the feathery layers of her skirt as he stretched out his long legs beneath hers before gently lowering her legs on top of his. He held her ankles a moment before sliding his hands away.
Then he closed his eyes and let the back of his head hit the wall behind him.
“You okay over there?” she said, her voice sounding strangely intimate in their little tree cave.
“Big day.”
“Was.”
“This is the first time I’ve been able to catch my breath.”
“Comes from being a wanted man.”
Eyes still closed, Angus’s smile grew. Slowly. Enticingly. “It is nice to be wanted.”
“I’m sure.” She’d meant it as a joke, but even she heard the caustic edge.
She regretted it the moment Angus opened his eyes and tilted his head her way. Shadows poured over his strong features, creating hollows beneath his jaw, his bottom lip. Their faces were so close, she breathed in the air that he breathed out.
“Don’t tell me you’re still smarting about Dr Whatsit?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Last night I got to thinking. There’s a pattern. With the men in my life.”
She caught his eye, waited for him to say the word “boundaries”, but he simply waited for her to go on. And, shrouded by the intimacy of their strange, leafy hidey hole, she found herself saying, “I can’t seem to keep them. The men in my life. They seem to find it all too easy to leave.”
A tempestuous expression came over Angus’s face as he imagined the men who might have slighted her. He grew bigger, like a bear about to attack. But he never came close to the brink.
The man pained himself to be civilised, never burdened others with his emotions. But his emotions were big. Deep. Raw. If he ever let them free, boy that would be something to see.
“Luc, come on.”
“I mean it. Look at Joe. I put that down to the fact the man was as deep as a puddle. Cute—sure. Swaggering—you bet. But vapid. I should have seen that coming. I’ve dated since. Chosen better. And still I’m single. Then Dr What’s—Jameson. He had all the hallmarks of the kind of man who’d stick. Yet here I am.”
“Stuck with me instead.”
Lucinda coughed out a laugh, even while her belly flip-flopped at the multi-layered truth behind those words.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked, letting her face fall into her hands with a comic whimper, even while she didn’t feel much like laughing.
“Not a single thing.”
Lucinda stilled. Not only at Angus’s words, but the ragged tone in which they’d been said. Little spot fires burst into life all over her body, making her face burn, and she wondered how hard it might be to live the rest of her life with her face in her hands.
Too hard, she thought, taking a deep breath before lifting her face. Lifting her eyes to his.
Angus’s mouth lifted gently at one corner. Then he said, “You, Lucinda May Starling, are good and clever and brave and adventurous and charming and honest and lovely, and for a man to have had the chance to be with you and not do everything in his power to make it work makes him a schmuck.”
Lucinda wished she’d been recording all that on her phone. It could keep her warm through many a future winter. “Even Dr Whatsit? He once saved several boys who got lost hiking by rappelling down a cliff to pluck them off a ledge.”
“Not even Dr Whatsit. You hold yourself to a higher standard than most. That’s not something to feel ashamed about. It’s admirable. You do it because you know your worth. And you do it for Sonny.”
“I do it for Sonny.”
“He sounded just like you right now,” Angus said, his hand dropping to rest on her knee.
“Hmm?” she said, having forgotten what it was they were talking about as every cell focussed on his hand.
“Sonny.”
“Oh. Right. We do sound a little alike.”
“I meant the fact that he’s a total bossy-boots who has no qualms about telling his betters exactly what to do.”
Lucinda narrowed her eyes. “If the kid knows best, why hide his light behind a bushel?”
“Why indeed?” he said, his voice low in the shadows. “For the world would be a far darker place without the Starlings in it.”
Lucinda swallowed as Angus’s words washed over her like a balm.
He never baulked at showing his appreciation—with thanks, with praise, with the thoughtful gifts he’d given her over the years in their nutty contest to one-up one another.
But this felt different.
This whole week had felt different. From the moment she’d told him she wasn’t “his girl”. As if by looking him in the eye and saying out loud to his face that the flirtation that added sparkle to their work-laden days wasn’t serious—the game-playing and the gift-giving—she’d peeled back one extra layer, pressing one step closer to the heart of him.
And that step closer made her yearn so badly to go one step more. And another and the next. Until she alone was allowed to see all the way to his broken, beating, beautiful core.
“Rest assured, Angus,” she said, her voice soft, light as a cloud, “we Starlings count ourselves ever so lucky to have a Wolfe in our midst too.”
His smile kicked up at one side, his gaze locked on to hers for a few long beats before it dropped slowly, achingly slowly, to her mouth.
What was he thinking when he looked at her that way? Did he have a single clue what that look did to her? Could he hear the revving of her heart? Was it even possible he was imagining stripping her layers back?
She heard the double entendre inside her head and her imagination ran with it. She pictured him shifting his hand, just an inch, until his little finger tucked beneath her skirt. Then a second finger. And a third.
She squirmed, shifting so that the back of her knees rubbed against the pants of his suit. Nerves now on high alert, the friction sent a shiver through her from tip to toe.
“Need me to move?” he asked.
She shook her head. The only thing that could fix how she felt in that moment was for him not to exist.
“Then what now?”
“Shall we talk about work?”
Angus shook his head. “Worked enough today.”
“Okay. Then shall we talk about why you feel like you’re struggling with Remède?”
A grimace came over Angus’s face before his expression cleared, as if the grimace had never been. “I think you’ll find that’s work.”
Lucinda shifted and turned, her knees brushing higher against Angus’s thighs. But, now she had something concrete to focus on, she was sticking with it. “I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I’ve never seen you like this. Erratic. Doubting. It’s as if your very foundations have been given a good shake. This isn’t just about work. So what’s wrong?”
Angus breathed in deeply, breathed out hard, his face a study in broody suspense. Then he said, “You know that Louis is more to me than a client.”
“Of course. He’s the one who convinced you to leave your marketing job and go out on your own.”
“He was also the first person who looked at me and didn’t see a punk kid.”
“Angus,” she chided. “I don’t believe that.”
The first time Lucinda ever set eyes on Angus had been only a few months after his infamous meeting with Monsieur Fournier. She’d been sitting in Reception on the top floor, waiting to be interviewed by the head of HR, one Fitzgerald Beckett. The business was so new, the place had smelled of fresh paint.
She’d been surrounded by smart-looking people, most of them younger than her and far more savvy, many of them tapping away on their phones as if they were already running the world. The only reason she’d been given a shot at an interview at all was because Sonny and Fitz had the same dentist. Fitz had mentioned to his dentist they were hiring the same week she’d joked that she needed a better job to pay her dental bill.
Fitz had made an entrance as Fitz was wont to do—welcoming them all and warning them the process was about to be brutal and only the toughest among them dared stay. Angus had slipped quietly into the room, leaning unobtrusively against a wall near the door.
He’d been no “punk kid” even back then. He’d seemed nerveless, riveting, hungry, his laser focus taking them in one by one, as if weeding them out before any of them had uttered a word.
“You might have been a little incorrigible back then, but only because you had ambitions. You were hungry. But you were never a ‘punk kid’. I know. I was married to one.”
Angus’s gaze landed back on hers. “Then you were one of the only ones to see that. Not that you’d have ever had the chance to come to that conclusion without Louis Fournier’s interference. If not for him, I’d have likely been a marketing cowboy at some slick, soulless firm. And I’d be going home at the end of the day feeling…empty. Whereas now…” He sighed. “This isn’t a game to me. Or a puzzle to figure out. We change people’s lives. I am so very grateful to be able to do what we do, Luc. Right, deep down inside.”
Lucinda smiled and nodded, struggling not to burst into tears. For she felt moved. Moved that this man could admit such things to her.
To think of all the things that had to align to get her to that moment. To get them both to that moment. Joe and Sonny. Fitz and his dentist. Angus and Louis. Without every piece of that puzzle she’d not be sitting on the floor behind a humongous plant, her legs draped over Angus’s while his finger traced gentle circles over her knee.
“Have you heard of a thing called kintsukuroi?” she asked.
Angus shook his head.
“It’s a Japanese art of repairing broken bowls, plates, vases, whereby they use lacquer mixed with powdered gold so that when the pottery is fixed the repairs are obvious, like veins of gold. The breakage is seen as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide.”
Angus watched her, saying nothing.
“That’s what Louis saw in you, Angus,” she said, her voice husky. “Not just your potential, but the breaks along the way, and the determination to get back up, to repair.”
Angus sat forward and lifted his hand from her knee to rub both hands over his face before letting out a primal growl. “A man like that should not have to step over the crumbled remains of his once great company on his way to forced retirement.”
Lucinda reached out, peeled his hand from his face and held it in both of hers, battling to hold in her feelings as she sat witness to a rare tumult of emotions Angus could no longer hold in.
“And that’s why,” she said, “He came to you.”
Angus’s gaze cleared. Slowly. Until he was more like the man she was used to. But the shadow of his shaken confidence remained.
“You don’t need to do that, you know,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Be my cheerleader. I’m a big boy. I can take a hit.”
“Yeah, you are,” she said. “Such a big boy.”
A slow smile spread across his face, even as his eyes narrowed. Even though he’d known more success than most men saw in a lifetime, that hunger still remained. It was a part of him. And when he switched it on it always made Lucinda burn.
Then his gaze began to roam. Over her hair, snagging on the swathe that never stayed put. Over her cheeks, her jaw, pausing once more on her mouth, before travelling down the twist of a spaghetti strap, over the criss-cross at her décolletage, her bare shoulders.
Lucinda’s heart picked up pace and the hairs at the back of her neck prickled. She’d seen the same predatory gleam light his eyes as clients had signed contracts. Well, not exactly the same look. For there was heat here, ferocious and deep, that would send most clients running for the hills.
He shouldn’t be looking at her that way.
And she shouldn’t be relishing the fact that he was.
“Were you really going to introduce Dr Whatsit to Sonny after this weekend?”
The change of subject nearly gave her whiplash. “Yes. But what does that have to do with—?”
“I didn’t only sign up to the conference for Remède. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being here, with him.”
Oh, help. “Angus…”
She didn’t even realise she still had hold of his hand until he used it to pull her closer, wrapping his other hand over hers. Enveloping her in his warmth. His strength. His fingers sliding over hers, making her belly quiver. Her heart squeeze. Her lips part.
“When you told me you were hoping to introduce him to Sonny, I saw red.”
Lucinda blinked.
What the…? Was he really looking at her like that, her hands in his, telling her his only concern was for her son?
Anger, mortification and heartache—deep, haunting heartache—rose in a maelstrom inside her. Her voice rose with it, getting louder and higher with each word as she nearly shouted, “Are you flipping kidding me?”
“Luc, you know my background. I can’t say strongly enough what a game changer that will be for the kid.”
Lucinda yanked her hands away from his so fast he nearly fell on top of her. Scrambling to her feet was no mean feat, with the tangling of limbs, the shortness of her dress and the fact she felt so close to tears she could taste them.
“Why am I so surprised? For such a smart guy, you really are the dumbest man I know. Seriously. Of all the conceited, idiotic, selfish—”
Then, close enough to have Lucinda flinch, Sonny’s voice split the silence. “I’m gonna check the café! Mum’s always saying she needs a coffee, they’re totally in there!”
“Sure thing, bud,” Cat’s voice followed. Then, “I’ll wait right here so don’t go where I can’t see you.” Then, to empty air, “Jeez that kid can run.”
“I’m calling time,” Lucinda said, just above a whisper. “This game has gone on long enough.”
Angus pulled himself to standing far more gracefully than she had.
When Sonny’s voice called, “Auntie Cat,” Lucinda grabbed the trunk of the plant and shook it for all she was worth.
“Wait a second,” said Sonny, before he peered through the leaves, then, “Found them!”
Lucinda reached through the leaves and roared. Sonny jumped out of his skin before bursting into tears. And Lucinda’s shoulders slumped.
Seemed she couldn’t do anything right tonight.
“Lucinda…” Angus said, tracing a hand down her arm.
“Goodnight, Angus. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“But the awards dinner…”
“No one will miss me. You’ll do just fine without me. I’ll be there tomorrow, for the keynote at nine.”
He stood back, an inch at most, and waved his hand for her to go first. She slid past him, brushing against his side, feeling too big a fool to get any kind of kick out of it at all.
Then she wrapped Sonny up tightly in her arms, holding him close, wiping his tears as she walked Cat and her boy back to their room without once looking back.