“WHOA, HOLD UP, there, cowboy.”
Angus pulled up outside Fitz’s office when Velma positioned herself bodily between him and the glass door.
If she’d been anyone else he’d have feinted left and cut round her, but rumour had it Velma had wrestled in her youth, and even in the heightened state he was in his self-protective instinct kicked in just in time.
“I need to speak to him,” Angus gritted out. “Now.”
“Honey, what you need to do is take a breath. Calm down. And remember that boy in there is family. He loves you. And he only has your best interests at heart.”
All Angus knew right then was that he was wound so tight he could feel his blood stuttering through his veins. “Fine,” he managed. “I’ll give him a head start.”
Velma’s cheek twitched before she knocked on the door and called out, “He’s here.”
“I can see that,” Fitz’s voice called back. “Send him in.”
Velma moved aside and slowly opened the door for Angus, who burst through it like water through a crack in a dam.
Fitz sat behind his desk, feet up on the table, ridiculous red glasses on the end of his nose. “Sit,” he said.
“I’m not going to bloody well sit.”
“Sit. Or I’ll get Velma to escort you from the room.”
“She can try.”
“Whatever.”
Fitz dropped his feet to the floor then came out from behind the desk. The man clearly had a death wish.
“I’m assuming you’re here about the lovely Lucinda,” said Fitz as he sat on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms and glared at Angus.
“She quit.”
“Yes.”
“And you let her.”
“What are you suggesting I should have done? Tied her to the chair? Blackmailed her? Stuck my fingers in my ears and said ‘la-la-la-la-la’ till she gave up and went back to work?”
“You could have called me. Let me know what she was thinking of doing.”
“And what would you have done? Ridden up here on your white steed, thrown her over the saddle and swept her off to the top of a high tower?”
Angus gritted his teeth so hard he swore he heard a crack.
Fitz breathed out, long and slow, then said, “She can’t work for you any more, Angus. Not after what happened. Hell, I should have split the two of you up years ago. My reasons were purely selfish, and for that I apologise. Together you guys make the rest of us a ton of money.”
“Nothing happened. Before last weekend. Nothing had ever happened.”
“Angus, mate, every time the two of you are in the same room something happens. The air crackles and heats up several degrees. A yeti could walk through the middle of the office and you wouldn’t notice. Knowing that, I should have moved her to another department, if only because it would have given you both one less reason not to go for it.”
Angus went to say, “Go for what?” but he knew. It seemed everyone but him had been aware of it for a long time. He slowly lowered himself into Fitz’s spare chair, his head falling into his hands. “Where is she now?”
“My spies told me she left a little while ago.”
“Was she okay? When she left?”
“What do you think?”
Angus didn’t need to think. Not after the way she’d looked at him when he’d told her to go.
She’d looked as if she’d been slapped.
If he’d been attempting to redraw the line between them—after she’d made it clear at the weekend that despite their night together she didn’t see a future between them—he’d gone about it the right way. For he’d turned a fluid line in the sand into the Grand Canyon.
“How about you?” Fitz asked. “Are you okay?”
Angus rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know. I truly don’t. I can’t imagine going back down there and doing what I do without her beside me.”
Neither could he imagine looking up and seeing someone else sitting in her chair. Or going a day without talking to her, hearing her stories about Cat and Sonny. Without watching her work a phone, or seeing her smile.
Life without Lucinda was a life he truly couldn’t fathom.
Angus grabbed hold of his hair and tugged, the pain barely registering.
But life with her, really with her…
Lucinda had told Sonny that he wasn’t ready for fatherhood. That he couldn’t take care of anyone else until he learned how to take care of himself.
But he’d been playing father to Sonny for years.
He’d been ready for Sonny. But the truth was, he hadn’t been ready for her. That was why he’d deferred to her. Why he’d never put his own needs first where they were concerned.
But that didn’t mean Angus didn’t know what he needed.
He needed for his work to be satisfying.
He needed Sonny. For he loved that kid as if he was his own.
And he needed Lucinda. He needed her like he needed air. It wasn’t the dodgy, supernatural teen TV shows on Netflix he loved so much, it was having an excuse to talk to her late into the night. She sustained him. She challenged him. She had taught him how to live, how to laugh and how to love.
And, as if the wheels and cogs of the universe that had ground harshly and noisily around him his entire life were finally slipping into their rightful place, silencing the constant burr in his head and dissolving the shackles around his heart, Angus knew what he had to do.
He stood. The wheels and cogs were now spinning in the opposite direction and spinning fast. “Her letter of resignation. It was addressed to me. Not to Big Picture. Meaning, while she no longer works for me, she could still work for the company.”
Fitz scoffed. “Um, yeah. I might have taken longer than I ought to split the two of you up, but you don’t think I was stupid enough to let her leave altogether? Oh, Angus, you might be the star of this operation—the Dorothy, if you will—but I am the great and powerful Oz.”
Angus let Fitz’s waffle slide. He was already too deep inside a plan. A plan to fix things. Fix everything. By pulling off the most important rebranding of his life. His own.
“Where have you put her?” His voice dropped to a growl. “She’s not working for you.”
“You kidding? Velma would curl up and die if she didn’t see my gorgeous face every day. We hadn’t hashed anything out yet. I told her to come back tomorrow and we’d work it out.”
“Good. Because I have an idea.”
“Do I need to write this down? I feel like I need a notebook and a pencil. I know I won’t look nearly as gorgeous as Lucinda in one of those skirts she likes to wear, but I’ll try.”
Angus shot him a glare, but it was barely half-strength. He was too charged to pretend to be offended. In fact, he was done pretending altogether. Any more pretending, he’d get a stomach ulcer.
Holding back his feelings as a kid, when he’d been scared or lonely or worried about his mum, had meant those hurting him had left him alone. It had helped him get through the rough.
But he wasn’t in the rough any more. He was in the prime of his life.
He’d achieved everything he could ever have dreamed of.
Only to realise he’d not been dreaming big enough.
“Get that pencil and notebook,” he commanded. “I’m ready.”
* * *
“You ready?” Fitz asked after rapping noisily on Angus’s glass door.
“Ten seconds,” Angus said, holding up a hand as he went over the plan in his head, double checking he hadn’t missed anything, so used was he to having Lucinda there to fill in the blanks.
It felt like months since he’d seen her, not days. Months in which he’d had to answer his own phone and schmooze his own clients. Call IT for help when he couldn’t open his email.
He would hire another assistant, but right now he needed the clarity of remembering what it was he loved about his work. The rush of being in the trenches.
And now it was Lucinda’s first day back. She’d taken a week off. Time owed, Fitz had said. Time to think about the offer he’d made regarding a new position in the company.
A promotion, actually. A big one. She was taking over Charlie’s job as Manager of Financial Affairs.
Charlie was brilliant, and a big part of their success, but the guy couldn’t lead. When Fitz and Angus had discussed the idea with Charlie, he’d near wept with relief. He and Kumar would continue to pound away at their calculators, making money for their clients and the Big Picture Group, while Lucinda would be the new face of the department. And the boss.
Angus’s gut had hurt when Fitz had told him her first question before accepting had been to make sure Angus would be okay with it. He wished he’d seen her face when Fitz had told her it was all Angus’s idea.
“Now or never,” Fitz said.
Yeah, that was what he feared.
Angus stood, looking around him for what he might need to take to a staff meeting.
“Come on! Hurry up! No resting on your Remède laurels, mate. Boardroom. Now.” With that, Fitz strode away.
Angus left through the small door that took him past Lucinda’s old desk. It looked eerily tidy. There was no paper, no pencils. The back of the chair sat perfectly parallel with the desk.
He opened a drawer and found it empty too. Until, when he closed it, there came a tell-tale sound just before a cheap 2B pencil rolled towards the front.
He picked it up and ran a thumb over the black and red stripes along its length.
A smile stretched across his face. Knowing how much she liked pretty notebooks, one of the first gifts he’d ever bought her was a very expensive pen. It had sat in the back of the same drawer for years while she’d continued to use her discount store pencils instead.
No airs. No graces. She was who she was. Thank the gods for that.
Holding the pencil tight, like some kind of talisman, Angus made his way down the hall towards the boardroom.
When he arrived, Fitz was talking with Velma, who tried to look stern but couldn’t contain the flicker at the corner of her mouth.
Charlie and Kumar sat against the wall, watching a video on Kumar’s phone—no doubt a stock fluctuation. Or a UFO sighting. Hell, maybe it was a kitten lost down a well.
Angus moved to his seat at the far end of the table and sat, feeling as though fireworks were going off in his belly.
“Sorry!”
Angus stilled as Lucinda hustled breathlessly into the room, tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear. The same stray strand that never stayed put.
He sat taller in his seat, his nerves un-pinching, his muscles relaxing, his bones yielding.
It had been a week since he’d seen her. A week more than he ever wanted to go without seeing her again.
“Sorry. I couldn’t find…a thing. Sorry.”
She shot Fitz a chagrined smile. He gave her a big thumbs-up.
Then she moved over to Charlie and tapped him on the knee. She looked nervous, as if he might be upset that she was now his boss. But, Charlie being Charlie, he grinned his sweet grin and gave her a hug.
After which Lucinda looked around before picking out a new chair. Her chair. At the table. Where she deserved to be.
As she fussed, fixing her skirt, cricking her neck, trying to get comfortable in her seat while she chatted with Fitz, Angus sat forward, leaning his chin on his hand.
He couldn’t have recounted afterwards exactly what it was that she was wearing, only that she was put together in a way that was perfectly Lucinda. Professional, yet whimsical. Neat, yet sassy. Elegant, and as sexy as all get-out.
She glowed. Surely everyone else could see that? Her aura must have been made of spun gold. Or perhaps the sun simply hit her at the exact right angle. Whatever it was, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Okay,” said Fitz, clapping his hands. “Charlie. Kumar. Save the soft porn for upstairs. Everyone ready?”
“Sorry,” Lucinda said again. “I was looking for a pencil and couldn’t find the right one… Which sounds ridiculous. Because a pencil is a pencil is a pencil, really. Am I right? It’s not as if there’s only one perfect pencil for me. In fact…anyone got a pen?”
Angus cleared his throat.
He saw her brace herself, as if she recognised the noise as his. Just as he’d recognise her scent in a crowd. Her laugh among a million others. Her sad smile from her tipsy smile from the smile she saved for those for whom she cared most.
As if the world was in slow motion, Lucinda looked his way. Not smiling. Not a bit. Her mouth was pursed. Her cute little frown lines entrenched above her nose.
When her eyes snagged on his—those gorgeous, big, warm, clever, brown doe-eyes—he felt as if he’d been sucker-punched.
In fact, the entire table seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what either one of them might do and say.
Then Angus slowly held up the pencil he’d found in her drawer.
Her old drawer. Her ex-drawer. For she no longer worked there, just outside his office where he could look up and see her all day every day. Where he caught the occasional burst of her laughter through the thick glass, which made the world feel brighter, lighter, no matter how much work was on his plate. Where he saw her head bent over her work and knew she was on his side.
Louis Fournier might have been the first man who’d looked at him as though he wasn’t some punk kid, but Lucinda Starling was the first woman who’d looked at him and seen him for who he was.
Not a meal ticket or a good time. Not a party invite or a business opportunity. Not someone to ignore, or use or degrade. But a man in his own right. Flawed, damaged, stuck back together a little wrong but stronger for it. A man who saw the world not as it was but as it could be.
And she saw him as hers.
For he was her guy. And she was his girl.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Velma cried out, her strong voice booming across the room. “Stop mooning over the man and take the damn pencil so we can get on with this farce. The rest of you may feel as if time is on your side, but I have work to do.”
Angus came to and found Lucinda staring at him, her cheeks pink, her eyes wide, unable to hide the cocktail of feelings he now realised he’d seen there before. Many times. For years, in fact.
He’d ignored them in the past—no, he’d denied them—fearful that if he’d claimed those emotions she’d spook, or deny, or eventually see that he was not worth it and he’d end up losing the most important person in his life.
He placed the pencil on the table and rolled it her way. She watched, a kick catching at the corner of her mouth as the pencil came to a stop right in front of her, before she blinked, caught herself, slowly gathered up the pencil, and looked down at her notebook.
Fitz clapped his hands. “Hear that everyone? My Velma has work to do so let’s get this meeting under way.”
“Meeting,” Velma said, scoffing, before she pressed back her chair and lifted her exuberant frame out of the seat with a grunt. “We all know there’s no meeting. No minutes to take. No decisions to make. Nothing bar the fact we need to settle the Lucinda-Angus issue once and for all.”
“Excuse me?” Lucinda said, perking up. “There is no issue.”
“Pfft. There’s an issue the size of Fitz’s ego.”
“Huge!” said Fitz, holding his arms out wide.
“Enough,” said Angus, silencing the room. Now who’s Dorothy and who’s the great and powerful Oz? he thought. “Velma is right. There is no agenda, bar getting Lucinda in here with me, so the rest of you can vamoose.”
Lucinda’s eyes couldn’t have gone any wider if she’d seen a ghost.
The rest of the team, cool-headed in the face of drama and excitement, happily packed up their stuff and herded chattily from the room.
Once everyone was gone, and it was just the two of them, Lucinda’s shoulders slumped and she looked his way.
“Congratulations,” he said.
She winced. “It’s not why I left—”
“I know. But this is a good thing. The finance team have skated for years. You’ll turn our smallest department into a juggernaut in no time.”
She smiled and it nearly reached her eyes. “I think you’re right. I can’t believe it, but I also can’t wait. So, thank you. Fitz told me it was your idea. Charlie needs me. While you…” She took a breath. “You don’t need anyone, Angus. It’s your defining characteristic. It could be written on your tombstone.”
For a very long time he’d thought so too. Otherwise everything his mother had done, everything she’d sacrificed, the times she’d left him to his own devices, would have been for nothing.
But none of that mattered now.
The only thing that mattered was sitting far too many chairs away.
He pushed his own chair back and strolled towards her. He wondered if she even realised that she turned her chair to face him, a north to his south.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re wrong about what I need.” He stopped a couple of metres away. If he came any closer he’d not be able to resist touching her. And first there were things to say. “I have something for you, Lucinda. A gift.”
She sucked in a breath, her hand going to her neck. And then he saw it: the ladybird necklace he’d bought her all those years ago. And any concern that he was going too fast, that he might be over-reaching, disappeared.
“But it’s not my birthday. Or St Patrick’s Day. Or Sunday Funday.”
“And yet…” Angus glanced through the glass walls of the boardroom and nodded.
Having been given the signal, Louis Fournier entered the room.
Lucinda stood. “Monsieur Fournier. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is wonderful,” he said, giving Angus a smile before turning to Lucinda and handing her a small spring-green bag with a white satin ribbon.
She reached out and took it, glancing at Angus.
“Open it,” he said, his voice rough.
He saw her hands were shaking, as she did just that, pulling out a small bottle of perfume.
A very special bottle of perfume. For Angus had had Remède’s Someday perfume—the perfume her father had bought for her mother every year for her birthday—rebranded as a special edition. It had been a rush job, using glass makers in Venice, printing out of Sydney. It had cost him a personal fortune. And Louis Fournier had been behind him all the way.
The shape of the bottle was the same—a smooth, curving twist. Though the new label was shaped like the leaf of a fiddle-leaf fig, the colour the same spring-green as his favourite dress.
“Someday” was written in the same sweeping script font, only the words “Every Day” were now written beneath in neat, clean silver.
Lucinda’s hand fluttered to her mouth as she sat back in her chair with a thud. When she looked up at Angus, her eyes filled with tears. Then she looked to Louis who was watching her with pure adoration in his eyes. “Monsieur Fournier?”
“Don’t look at me, this is all Angus. The design, the colour, the shape, the name. It took some doing, but he can be a very convincing man when he’s on a mission. Especially when his mission, dear girl, is you.”
Her eyes swung back to Angus’s.
No longer able to stay away, he moved in beside her and dropped into a crouch.
“What is it? What’s in the bag?” Kumar whispered from the doorway.
It seemed the gang hadn’t blithely gone back to work after all.
“Shh!” Velma. “Don’t distract him. Kid’s finally stepping up.”
Angus ignored them. It was easy when Lucinda was looking right into his eyes. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She sniffed.
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t…” She gulped. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Usually I can’t get you to shut up.”
She laughed, then hiccupped. And this time the smile came from her eyes before it lit up the rest of her lovely face. “You really had this made. For me?”
Angus nodded.
“But you told me to go. When I tried to resign. You didn’t give me the chance to say why.”
“You told Sonny I had no desire to be his father, without giving me the chance to answer that question for myself.”
Her mouth dropped open. It would have been funny if Angus wasn’t already on emotional overload.
She swallowed, licked her lips then said, “I did do that. And what would your answer have been?”
“That having the both of you in my life is the best part of my life. And that, if you didn’t know that already, then I have been remiss. And I will make sure, from this day forward, that not a minute goes by that you don’t know how important you are to me. How necessary. How much I love you. And how much I will love you. Every day.”
“You do?” she asked, her voice like a breeze. Then she hit him. A slap to the chest. After which she gripped her hand into his shirt. “So why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you haul me up, tell me off? Tell the truth?”
“I deferred to you. Sweetheart, I’ve always deferred to you. But I’m not going to do so any more. Now it’s my turn to take what I want.”
With that he reached out, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” said Velma from the doorway.
“She doesn’t work for him any more,” said Fitz, waggling his eyebrows.
Velma scowled. “I meant to be kissing in front of a client.”
The CEO of Remède waved an elegant hand in their direction. “I am French. Let them kiss.”
And kiss they did. Until Lucinda dropped from the chair onto her knees so that she was flush against him. He tasted her heat, her desire. When he tasted her tears, he moved to kiss them away, each and every one.
She pulled away suddenly and blurted, “I love you too. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“You said it, and I said nothing when I should have said—I love you, Angus. I’ve loved you for years. For ever. I was happy loving you in silence. But I can already tell I’m going to be a whole lot happier loving you out loud. You’re my pencil,” she said on a burst of laughter. “The one and only pencil for me.”
“What did she say?” Fitz asked.
Louis shook his head. “Something about a pencil?”
“Staff meetings here sure aren’t like staff meetings at my old job,” said Kumar. “They had donuts, for one.”
“Enough,” said Fitz, reaching round them to take hold of the door. “Get back to work, the lot of you.”
When the door shut with a snick, Angus breathed out.
Finally. Finally, it was just Lucinda and him.
He disentangled himself from the delicious warmth of her arms, stood and held out a hand.
“You ready for this?” he said when she stood by him, toe to toe.
She grinned. “I was born ready. You?”
“You’d better believe it.”