AUBREY TRUSEDALE HAD imagined this very moment—meeting him for the first time—more times than she could count.
She’d known her fingers would tingle as they did now, imagining how he’d feel to touch. Her blood rushing heedlessly around her body. Heart skittering in her chest. Spotting him across the crowded room; his size, his infamy, his sheer masculine beauty taking her breath fair away.
At over five metres tall, all marble, muscle and might, the David did not disappoint.
After around her seventeenth sigh, Aubrey glanced behind her to find the tour group who’d been milling about when she’d arrived had moved on.
Leaving her alone.
With him.
Growing up, her three older brothers had had pictures of cars tacked to their bedroom walls. While she’d had notes, sketches, and printouts depicting paintings by Monet and Waterhouse.
But the poster of the David had had pride of place right over her bed.
Yep. A naked man on her wall. Among her mates, it had been quite the coup.
Now, he was so close. This infamous study of the male form: shadows, indents, veins, muscles, strength, shape… He was honestly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. If she fell down dead, right here, she’d die happy.
Not that she planned to fall down dead. A lot of clever people had spent the past two years of her life making sure that would not happen any time soon. So, she was pretty determined to stick it out.
Aubrey took a step closer. And another. Till she was all but leaning over the surprisingly small barrier. It wouldn’t take much to reach out and touch—
She curled her fingers into her palms.
The number one rule in these places was no touching. Longevity, future generations and all that. But the guy had survived outdoors for nearly four hundred years before he was moved into this space.
Would he feel cold? Rough? Dry? Surely a fingertip couldn’t hurt. Maybe a gentle sweep of her palm over his—
She glanced over her shoulder to see Mario the security guard strolling by. Heat creeping into her cheeks, she gave him a wave.
Mario grinned back. And hid a yawn behind his hand. He’d worked at the Galleria dell’Accademia for nearly seven years. He had four teenaged daughters. All of whom made it difficult for him to get to sleep at night.
She knew because they’d chatted for a bit when she’d first stepped inside the gallery doors. People opened up to her. Always had. Made them happy to do things for her. Go the extra mile.
Like the time at the Ascot Music Festival in Copenhagen when she’d first met her very best friends in the entire world, Daisy and Jessica. After rescuing a cheeky little sausage dog from being trampled by thousands of unknowing feet they’d also taken care of Viv—the dog’s owner—when it turned out she’d twisted her ankle, badly, in trying to chase little Max down.
While everyone else fretted over Viv, off Aubrey went, found a guy with a golf cart who was meant to be ferrying around VIPS, and convinced him to schlep Viv away to the medical tent instead.
Crazy to think they’d only just this summer discovered that their friend Viv was none other than Vivian Ascot, billionaire head of the Ascot Industries and sponsor of the music festival!
Ask questions, and actually listen to the answers and you never know what might happen. Such as two years later waking up to a legal letter telling you that you had been gifted a bottomless, all-expenses-paid, first-class world trip by that very same billionaire, who would not take oh-my-gosh-you-are-so-lovely-but-I-can’t-possibly-accept for an answer.
Something her brothers could learn—the asking, the listening. It was a wonder any woman had married them. Much less had their children. Their gorgeous, roly-poly cherubs. Thinking about how much her beautiful nieces and nephews would grow while she was away had been the one thing that could have stopped her from going.
And yet, some time away from those beautiful babies, all that they represented, all she’d never have, was the very reason she’d had to go.
Realising she was on her tippy toes, Aubrey let herself sway back onto her heels. Consoling herself with the knowledge that the air she breathed had wafted over the David. It was enough. Unless she planned to be arrested for fondling a priceless piece of art before being extradited home on day one of her magical fantasy trip, it had to be.
A couple came into the room, took one look at the David, and kept walking. Philistines.
Knowing her one-on-one time with the love of her life was too good to last, Aubrey plonked herself down on the floor, stretched open her backpack, pulled out a sketch pad and the stub of a fine charcoal pencil, looked back up at the David, and breathed.
Which bit to sketch first? That dashing profile? The whorl of his ear? His foot—the one that had lost a toe when some crazy had chopped it off with a hammer?
The hand.
It was his fault she’d always had a thing for hands. Strong hands. With veins and scars and strength and a story.
Aubrey stared at the David’s hand for another few seconds before putting pencil to paper. With a sweep of charcoal across the page, there was no going back.
Drawing had always been her bliss. Sketching with a stick in the dirt in their hot, dry inner Sydney backyard, using her toe to create sand animals on their biannual trips to the beach. It had been a way to escape into her head when she’d needed time out from her boisterous family of six.
First money she’d made had been as a precocious eight-year-old, setting herself up on the sidewalk outside her family’s Sydney auto shop, Prestige Panel and Paint, selling pictures she’d drawn of the vintage cars inside. She’d put the money in a tin she’d marked Plane Ride.
Resolute, even then, to see the world.
Her dream had seemed ill-starred, when, two years earlier, while finally on the trip she’d saved for her entire life, just after the Copenhagen festival, she’d been cut down by a mysterious infection that doctors had told her family would most certainly be the end of her.
Realising her pencil had stopped moving, Aubrey blinked to clear her eyes, then tipped her dad’s old fedora further back on her head and smudged a little graphite shadow into a groove of David’s wrist with her thumb.
It hadn’t been the end of her. She’d pulled through. After two long years of obstinate recuperation, she was back. Only now she carried with her one slightly damaged heart.
She looked up at the David—the David, right there in front of her—and thanked whatever gods out there might have helped pull her through. Asking them if they could stick around, keep an eye on her, make sure nothing happened to force her home too soon this time.
Not that she believed it would. This time things seemed fortuitous, sprinkled as they were with Vivian Ascot’s particular brand of magical fairy dust. The timing could not have been more perfect, coming as it had right on top of the most recent bombshell from Aubrey’s doctors.
When Viv had stated—tongue in cheek, Aubrey was almost sure—that the only provisos were that she was not to deny herself a thing, that she luxuriate and spoil herself rotten, and that she start her trip in Florence, staying in a hotel Viv herself owned, what choice had she had but to accept?
Dante. Machiavelli. Da Vinci. Michelangelo. Galileo. Of the greats, only a small number were born in Florence or spent time there. If this trip was to be Aubrey’s renaissance, her chance to envision her life beyond her condition, and all it had taken from her, this was the city to do it.
“I don’t know about you,” a deep, male voice said from behind her, “but he’s always bigger than I think he’ll be.”
Aubrey flinched and the charcoal slipped, leaving a bold black streak right across the page.
“Well, poo,” she said.
“Whoa, sorry,” the voice said. Australian, she realised. How funny was that?
Aubrey shrugged. Mishaps were a part of the story. They did not define it. “No worries. It’s hardly a Rembrandt.”
Shadow fell over her as the owner of the voice moved in, blocking the light pouring into the room from the huge glass dome above as he looked over her shoulder. “No,” he said. “But it’s damn good.”
Aubrey held onto her hat and turned. Looked up. And…hot damn.
Talk about bigger than you expected! It was difficult not to gawp. For the man was tall. Built. Dark chocolate hair raked into devastatingly sexy spikes. Sunglasses hooked into the collar of his pale grey T-shirt that did little to hide the shape beneath. The man behind the voice was handsome enough to have her blush, just a little, as big, handsome guys always had.
“Thanks,” she said with a quick smile, shoving her stuff back in her vintage backpack, yanking the frayed leather strap around the opening to tighten it up. She slung it over her shoulder and got back to her feet as gracefully as possible, which in short overalls and floppy sandals wasn’t graceful at all.
“You sketch the big guy a lot?” asked Mr Tall Dark and Aussie, his gaze roaming around the big room.
He’d moved away again. Not crowding her. Handsome and thoughtful, she thought. Nice. Nice and big and beautiful, with a nose Michelangelo would have wept over, a hard jawline, and lips she’d kill to sketch.
“First time,” she said, blinking ten to the dozen when his gaze moved back her way. “But it won’t be the last, I hope. He’s magnificent. Bucket-list stuff, right there.”
“Hmm,” the stranger hummed. The deep sound seeming to reverberate through Aubrey’s chest.
“You don’t agree?”
“Me? No. He’s…fine.”
Aubrey tried not to sputter. “Fine? He’s perfection.”
That earned her a raised eyebrow. If anything, it made the stranger even more ridiculously gorgeous. Her toes curled into her sandals.
“Marble’s not my medium,” he said, his gaze on the statue looming anciently over them.
“What is?”
“Wood.”
At that, Aubrey tried not to look at David’s bits. She really did. But with the stranger’s declaration bouncing about inside her head, and David’s bits staring back at her three times normal size… She was only human.
“Intimidated?” she asked, her cheeks tugging into a smile.
There was a moment, a beat that felt like a thud deep inside her chest, before his eyes narrowed. Then he lifted his chin and said, “Nah.”
“Ha!”
At her bark of laughter, he swung his eyes her way. And the last of her breath left her lungs in a whoosh. His eyes were ridiculous. Deep blue, and dark and mysterious, like a river at night. Eyes a girl could drown in.
She’d use a well-sharpened pencil if she sketched him. Or a fine black pen. She’d need to get the sweep of each individual eyelash just right. The defined angle of his jaw. The chiselled curve of that seriously enticing mouth.
And those eyes, the flash of blue that might well turn a piercing aquamarine out in the sunshine, the thought of studying them enough to do them justice, made her feel light in the head.
In accepting Viv’s generous gift, Aubrey had made herself a promise. To use this amazing opportunity to find a new normal, now that the future she’d always believed would be hers could not be.
No time like the present to begin.
She held out a hand to the most beautiful—flesh and blood—man she had ever seen and said, “Aubrey Trusedale. Of Sydney.”
A beat later, he took it. Said, “Malone. Sean Malone.” No qualification as to where he’d hailed from. Melbourne, she thought, taking in the cut of his clothes. The effortless style. Definitely Melbourne.
Taking a pause seemed to be a thing for him. A moment in which to make a decision. Find the most famous statue of a naked man in the world intimidating, or not. Talk to the strange girl, or not.
When the heat from Sean Malone’s hand spread into hers, the unexpected calluses on the pads of his palms rubbing against the matching ones on hers, she smiled. And meant it.
“I’m very glad to have met you, Malone.”
* * *
A half-hour later, Sean found himself unsure as to how he’d ended up in the Piazza Della Signoria having a coffee with a stranger he’d picked up along the way.
Or had she picked him up?
One of them had mentioned being starving, which, on reflection, didn’t sound like him.
So here he was, sweltering beneath a bright yellow sun umbrella, at a rickety wrought-iron table, palming a cooling espresso, and packed in like a sardine with a zillion other sun-baskers doing the same.
While she—the stranger, Aubrey Trusedale of Sydney—was leaning over the back of her chair, chatting with the South African couple at the next table about their travels—and jobs, and families, and favourite books—leaving Sean to wait, and muse, and remember.
None of which he was keen to do.
But first… “Aubrey.”
She held up a staying finger. “Just a sec.”
Sean held out a hand in supplication, but nobody was paying him any heed.
So, he leaned around the table and grabbed the woman’s backpack. It was wide open. Without even trying to see inside he spotted paper, pens, wallet, sunglasses, what looked like spare clothes in a Ziploc bag, and a lacy G-string sitting right on top.
He pulled the strap that scrunched the bag closed—mostly, the thing was built for pilfering—before squeezing the bag between the table leg and his own.
And waited. And mused. And remembered.
Having lived in Florence near on five years now he’d visited the David more than once, but playing tourist had not been how he’d planned to start his day.
The email. The email had knocked him off course.
Once his team had arrived at the workshop he’d built beneath his place in the hills overlooking the city, the sounds of saws and music spilling through the open windows, he’d walked out of the front door. Leaving his dog at the villa, for the day was far too hot to lug Elwood down the hill.
The height of summer had descended over Florence, bringing with it the usual humidity and plague of tourists, so by the time he’d hit the city his head was no clearer. The answer to the email still unformed.
So he’d kept walking. Meandering the back streets; lean, shadowed caverns between the old stone buildings it was easy to get lost in. It was what he’d loved most about the city. He’d lost himself there years ago.
And he’d found himself outside the Galleria dell’Accademia—its unassuming wooden door tucked into the side of an unending row of beige buildings—as the sun had truly begun to burn.
Taking a break from the heat, he’d gone in. Made his way to the most famous artefact in the place, and found her sitting there—Aubrey Trusedale of Sydney—cross-legged, in the middle of the gallery floor.
Short overalls over a white T-shirt covered in faces of black cats, one strap half falling off her shoulder. Sandals only just clinging to her feet. Her back to the room. Her backpack on the floor beside her, wide open.
He could have moved on. Kept walking. Made his way back to the air-conditioned bliss of his city showroom. Answered the email and moved on with his life.
But something about the way her shoe had been half falling off, and her hat was too big for her head, had made him stop.
Florence was a great city, but like any city—any place—bad things could happen. And something about her screamed trouble magnet.
Not that he had a knight-in-shining-armour complex. He intentionally kept out of other people’s business and appreciated them doing the same for him. But the bag—he had to say something. Only when he’d moved in did he notice she was sketching.
Her fingers had gripped so tight to a charcoal pencil her knuckles had gone white, and yet the sweep of movement over the paper—it had been arresting. Her style loose and easy. The lines bold yet graceful.
She was very good.
He’d have recognised the subject anywhere. The David’s right hand. Famously larger than it ought to have been. Supposedly a nod to the man’s inner strength. Though it messed with Sean’s architectural brain.
A bespoke furniture designer by trade, he sketched all the time. Mostly on grid paper—straight lines and precise curves. Shapes he could build. Shapes that were comfortable to the eye. And the backside. Shapes that had people on wait lists for his designs.
Yet he had none of her light hand. None of her sense of freedom. Her effortless speed. And he’d found himself entranced.
He’d watched her pencil fly over the page for a full minute before he’d heard a voice. Surprised to find it was his own.
Then she’d looked up at him. All big brown Bambi eyes. Eyes full of spark. Eyes that had taken one look at him and warmed all over. Clear that she’d liked what she’d seen, and that she’d had no ability—or, perhaps, intention—of hiding it.
Only then had come the accent. Australian.
Of all the days…
For the email that had sent him walking had been from back home. Hidden, innocently, between the usual—invitations to gallery openings, to guest lecture at tech schools and museums, to present a TED talk, even a nudge to see if he might be keen to co-host a renovation show on British TV.
The email was a commission enquiry for a custom memorabilia shelving unit for a pre-eminent Australian Rules Football club.
It wasn’t his usual thing. His custom pieces tended to be more specialised. Twelve-foot doors. Monolithic tables. In the past year he’d been called on to build a throne. His sister used to call this sideline of his vocation Shock and Awe.
Sean blinked at the vision of his sister’s face, blaming the damn email anew. Then downed the last of his coffee, holding onto the bitter aftertaste.
The email had been sent by a friend of his father.
His father whom he hadn’t seen in half a decade. Hadn’t spoken to in, what, a year? More? Was it a coincidence? Or could it be his old man’s way of reaching out?
Laughter brought him back to the now.
A waiter had joined in the conversation on the other side of the table. Telling a story, in broken English, that had Aubrey and her new friends in stitches. The young man held a menu in what looked to be a most uncomfortable position, high above his head so that it stopped a shard of sunlight between the umbrella edges from hitting Aubrey in the face.
Mid smile, she reached for her bag. Found it missing. She spun on her chair, Bambi eyes wide.
Sean lifted the bag and passed it over the table.
And her eyes met his. Direct. Warm. Zesty. Filled with laughter and suggestion and temptation. Heat swept over him—inevitable and true. Heat that had nothing to do with the bite of the summer’s day.
She fixed the strap of her overalls that had slipped off one shoulder. Mouthed, Thank you. Then ferreted around inside the bag till she grabbed what looked like a mint and tossed it back with the last of her coffee.
She paused mid swallow as she caught his eye again; this time her expression was far more guarded. She ran a finger over her lips and said, “Special vitamins.”
He nodded. Waited for her to turn back to her new friends. And breathed out.
That was how he’d ended up here.
Back in the gallery, her eyes on his, head cocked, her hat slipping off her head to reveal short, shaggy auburn waves. Freckles on a fine nose. Dark smudges beneath those warm, inviting eyes. Lips that might seem too wide for such a delicate face, unless a person had seen them smile.
The squeeze of her hand reminding him he hadn’t let her go.
“Is it just me,” she’d said, “or do you also feel the urge to jump over that little fence and touch the big guy?”
After a moment Sean had shaken his head.
“It’s like a current running under my skin. You really don’t feel it too?”
He’d felt something. Concern, he’d told himself, at the fact her backpack now slowly eased open as she jumped from foot to foot, energised by that current under her skin.
“Maybe I’m just hungry. Do you know a place?”
And here they were.
Across the table Aubrey said goodbye to her new friends and turned to him, her expression chagrined. “Sorry, they were about to leave for Rome this afternoon and hadn’t seen the David. I felt like it was my mission to convince them they must.”
“Success?” he asked.
“Success,” she said, those wide lips stretching into a huge smile. Then she dropped her hands to the table, leaned forward and said, “So, now what?”
Her focus was sharp. Her smile encouraging. And for a second Sean felt as if the current she’d spoken about flickered deep inside him.
He lifted his hands deliberately from the table and pushed back his chair. “Now I have work to do. What are your plans?”
The edge of her smile dropped, but she rallied quickly. “You know what, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll head back to my hotel, get a good night’s sleep and start anew tomorrow.”
“Lead the way.”
“It wasn’t an invitation for you to join me there,” she said over her shoulder as they threaded their way through the tightly packed tables, the glint in her eyes making it clear she was joking.
“I’m aware.”
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“My feelings are just fine.”
“I mean, we’ve only just met. And you aren’t a fan of the David. And this is my first day in town so I really should keep my options open.”
Hands in pockets, Sean followed. “Sounds like a good plan.”
Sean would escort her back to whatever backpacker place she was booked into and on the way he’d give her some sage advice on the areas to avoid. Recommend she ditch the backpack and simplify what she needed to take out with her into the streets.
And feel safe in the knowledge he’d done all he could to make sure a stranger he’d once met lived through the day.
* * *
Aubrey fell back on the lush king-sized bed in her opulent suite.
Viv had made it very clear that she was not allowed to take a single cent back to Australia with her. That it all had to be spent. On luxury accommodation and gastronomical feasts, on gondola rides and hot-air balloons and helicopter flights and every sensory experience a person could possibly imagine.
Aubrey closed her eyes, breathing in the singular scent—like snow and freesias and spun gold—and replayed every second of her first day in Florence.
Firenze. The city of flowers. Of Machiavelli and the Medicis. Of Michelangelo and Rembrandt. The freaking David!
And Sean Malone.
She wriggled on the bed, the current she’d felt under her skin in the gallery back with a vengeance. She’d assumed it was due to the man on the stand. Maybe it had more than a little to do with the real live one instead.
She bit her lip to stop from grinning.
Who’d have thought? First day and she’d already met some tall, dark handsome stranger, had a coffee with the guy, while a statue of a Medici on horseback looked over them, and a fountain depicting Neptune and a bunch of seahorses bubbled ostentatiously in the background.
It had been an overload of sensation. The warmth on her skin. The effusive banter in Italian, flowing and tripping all around her. The smooth dark flavour of the coffee.
She might have pinched herself. Twice.
Despite the jet lag and her usual fatigue tugging at the corners of her subconscious, she sat up, bounced her way to the end of the huge bed, and grabbed her phone. Hoping somewhere in the world one of her friends would be awake.
The first to answer the video chat was Jessica. Diligent to the last.
“Aubrey!” she said, rubbing her eyes and yawning.
“Oh, no. Did I wake you?”
“Hmm? No, it’s fine. I must have fallen asleep on the couch. We were watching When Harry Met Sally. Jamie and I are on week two of a New York rom-com binge.”
Aubrey’s eyebrows lifted. “He agreed to that? Jeez. He really must be love struck.”
Jessica attempted to glare but she was way too sweet, and way too in lurve to pull it off. “Tell me, what’s happening in Aubrey land?”
Aubrey lifted the phone, twirled it slowly about the insanely glamorous suite Viv had put her up in, then carried the phone to the window, pulling back the floaty curtains to show off her view. The Arno river. The Ponte Vecchio. The buttery sunshine pouring over the ancient architecture.
“Oh, my gosh!” Jess’s voice came through the speaker. Then a little muffled, as she turned away, to talk over her shoulder. “It’s Aubrey. She’s in Florence.”
“Hey, Aubs.” That was Jamie. Jessica’s wonderful new suit-and-tie guy.
Aubrey had spoken to him a handful of times since he and Jessica had fallen for one another and she loved him already. For Jessica. He wasn’t her type. Too straight up and down. Too smitten.
Aubrey wouldn’t turn down the chance for a little romance while on her trip, a fast and fiery meeting of the souls—but until she figured out what the next phase of her life would look like she wasn’t dragging some poor love-struck guy into the picture.
“Hey, Jamie!” she said, moving to sit on the floor, leaning against the velvet banquette at the end of her bed. “How’s it hanging? Or should I ask Jessica when you’re out of the room?”
The wide-eyed look he gave her matched Jessica’s to a T. Made for one another, those two.
“Have fun, Aubs,” he said before heading out of shot.
“Planning on it!” Aubrey called, her voice echoing in her massive suite.
Jessica’s face returned; she was biting her bottom lip to stop from laughing. “So tell me. What have you been up to so far? Eaten your weight in pasta? Accidentally touched any great works of art? Fallen in lust with the man of your dreams?”
Sean Malone’s handsome face slid into her subconscious, and Aubrey’s heart shifted. Or squeezed. It moved in a way she was not used to, and wasn’t looking for. She had a love-hate relationship with the reliability of that particular organ. She gave her chest a bump with her fist, told it to settle down.
The shock must have shown in her face, as Jessica’s brow knitted a moment before she rolled her eyes. “I meant the David! Did you get to see the David?”
“Oh! Right.” Aubrey laughed, letting her hand fall away from her chest. “And yes. Yes!”
She crawled over to her backpack—a gorgeous, deep, soft, vintage-green suede thing she’d bought online that looked as well travelled as she one day wished she would be. Sure, it didn’t close all that well, which Mr Malone had mentioned more than once as he’d walked her home, but it had the perfect inner pockets for wallet, phone, wipes, spare clothes, passport and, most importantly, her meds.
She scrounged around till she found her sketchbook, turned to the page where she’d sketched the David’s hand, with its raw, angled knuckles and beautiful roping veins. She held the picture up to the phone.
“Wow, Aubrey,” Jessica breathed. “Just…wow. Jamie! Come see what our girl drew!”
As she flipped through the pages for her captive audience, she found herself imagining the hand turned to flesh. Tanned, male, brute strength evident in the curl of the fingers as they rested loosely around an espresso glass. Short square nails, dark stains in the creases of his knuckles. Not dirt. Oil? Varnish? And scars. Several scars.
She remembered the feel of that hand wrapped around hers. The heat humming beneath the surface. The rough calluses creating an echo, a scraping sensation, in her belly.
“Aubrey?” Jessica’s voice drifted into her subconscious. “Aubs?”
Daisy’s voice joined in. “Is she okay? She looks flushed. Why are you flushed? Are you okay?”
Aubrey dropped the sketchbook and her hands flew to her cheeks to find them warm. Dammit. The last thing she needed was the girls worrying about her. On day one!
“Daisy!” she said, leaning forward and flapping her hands at the small camera. Distraction was one of her better skills. “Oh, my gosh, is that rock star Daisy Mulligan?”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Fabulous. It’s just a zillion degrees here. I’ve been out, absorbing fresh air and sunshine.”
“How was the flight?” Daisy asked, eyes narrowed.
“The flight. Was that today?” Jessica asked. “Must be an awfully long flight from Australia. Make sure you rest.”
“Any time you can,” Daisy added.
“Mum. Dad,” Aubrey said. “You can stop fussing now.”
Both of her friends cringed.
“Sorry,” said Daisy, resting her chin on her hand till her lovely face was squashed. “Tell us about the hot city-boy Italians. I missed that being out in the country. Do they ooze sex appeal? Can you walk straight what with your trembling loins?”
Aubrey glanced to Jessica’s face on the other half of the screen and pointed her thumb at Daisy. “You’d never believe she writes hit lyrics for a living.”
Jessica laughed. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Okay, fine! The guard watching over the David’s name is Mario. He has four daughters and occasional gout.”
“She’s trying to distract us,” Daisy muttered to Jessica.
“I concur,” Jessica said. “Meaning she’s holding something back.”
Aubrey loved her friends dearly. Even though they lived in different parts of the world, they were so close. They could open up about things, fears, failings, in ways they couldn’t to those closest by. Or maybe that was why. But sometimes she kind of wished they didn’t know her so well.
“Okay, fine. But I’ll need vocal lubrication for this.” Aubrey took her phone to the tiny pod-coffee machine by the window and made herself an espresso. Over the whir she told them about Sean Malone.
When she finished she waited for the good-natured ribbing. But while Jessica looked doe-eyed, Daisy appeared furious.
“We said she should have done a tour,” said Daisy. “Stayed with a group. Had a buddy. Been on a list that had to be checked off hourly. She’s too trusting.”
“Far too trusting,” Jessica conceded, blinking away the romance in her eyes.
“Is that what you were wearing?” Daisy asked.
Aubrey glanced down at the white T-shirt covered in black cats she wore under her shortie denim overalls. “Jessica gave it to me last Christmas.”
“Exactly!” sad Daisy, as if that proved the fact that Aubrey should not be let out of the house alone. “What if he’s some kind of weirdo? A stalker? A…predator?”
“You think?” said Jessica. “He did take her out for coffee.”
“Hello!” Aubrey called, drawing focus. “I’m right here. Sean Malone did not take me out for coffee. I drank coffee. He drank coffee. We sat on opposite sides of the same table. And he pretty much spent every spare moment telling me how to stay safe.”
That was right. The conversation hadn’t been at all romantic, come to think of it. He’d given her the rundown on tourism safety while she’d nattered on about all the things she planned to do on this trip.
But not the why. People always turned weird when they found out she’d been so sick. Her body so scourged she’d had to relearn how to walk. Her joints sore. Her muscles weakened. Much of her long curly auburn hair had fallen out. Her mother had cried when, a year ago, she’d shaved it off.
Another reason she loved her girls so much. They thought she was just as fierce and fabulous now as in the Before. Which was why they wanted her to pace herself. They knew it wasn’t her nature.
“He told me how to hide my money and papers under my clothes.”
“He did what?” Daisy shot back.
“Told me. Not showed me. Jeez.” Though the thought of those hands sliding up under her shirt, or tugging at the beltline of her shorts, was not a terrible one.
“Well, that sounds nice,” said Jessica aka Miss Always Look on the Bright Side. “Not stalkerish at all.”
“Yep. Just a nice Australian guy, helping another Australian.” So why did that make Aubrey suddenly feel as if she’d run over a nail with fresh new tyres?
“What was his name again?” Daisy asked.
“Malone,” Aubrey said distractedly. “Sean Malone.”
“And he’s Australian. Why is that name familiar?” Daisy brought up her phone, thumbs flying over the screen. “I’ve been reading a lot of true crime of late.”
When Daisy’s eyes went wide, Aubrey had a pretty good idea she’d found him. Daisy held up her phone. “This him?”
One look at the swish of dark hair, the chiselled jaw, the lovingly carved lips, the deeply romantic blue eyes burning into the camera and Aubrey felt her cheeks go hot once more. “Mm hmm.”
“Whoa,” said Daisy. “He’s—”
“I know, right?” Aubrey breathed.
“I mean he’s really really…”
“Gorgeous,” they said in tandem.
Then they laughed, and any tension that had been there as a result of her favourite girls looking out for her just a little too much dissipated.
“Says here he’s a well-respected furniture maker. Born in Melbourne. Based in Florence.”
“So he lives here.”
“Has for several years, it seems. He’s kind of famous, actually. His stuff has ended up in houses of movie stars, presidential meeting rooms, a palace or three. His medium is wood—tables, chairs, fancy architectural stuff—oh, my God! That’s where I know him from! My Jay has a couple of his chairs, big manly beastly things, all square arms and leather seats, he wanted to bring to the cottage till we realised they wouldn’t fit through the doors. Well, there you go!”
Jessica and Aubrey let Daisy’s super-sweet “my Jay” comment go. For all that she was super well-known now, she was deeply private and had a tendency to go underground if she felt cornered.
“Wood,” said Aubrey suddenly, as Sean’s comment from earlier suddenly made sense. She laughed out loud. Laughed until she felt breathless.
“Okay,” said Jessica, “I don’t care if I sound like your mother, I think it’s time we let you get some rest.”
Daisy glared into the camera. “Check in whenever you can so we know you’re making good choices.”
“Not a chance! Love you guys!”
“Love you too, you terror,” said Daisy before signing off.
“Enjoy yourself,” said Jessica. “Soak up every second. Just… Take it from me, and I’m sure Daisy would say the same, while Viv’s gifts have been life-altering, they can come with a sting in the tail. And after all you’ve been through, the last thing we want is for you to find yourself stung. Again. So, take care, okay?”
Aubrey nodded. “Promise.”
When they both signed off Aubrey let go of a long slow breath.
And the exhaustion she’d been holding at bay came over her in a wave so strong she had to sit. The travel, the heat, the sensory overload, the David, and the guy. It was a lot for one day. A lot for a girl from the suburbs whose highlights from the past two years had been getting the doctor’s permission to have butter on her movie popcorn and being given the green light to drive again.
While meeting the likes of Sean Malone had been unexpected, to all intents and purposes, he was as real to her as a marble statue.
And that was okay.
Aubrey crept back onto the bed, the hotel room such a perfect temperature she didn’t need to crawl beneath the blankets. She simply curled up in a ball, her head sinking onto the downy pillow.
While her eyes began to flutter, she scrolled through old folders on her phone till she found the last photo taken of her before she’d fallen ill.
She was holding her phone at the end of her outstretched arm, auburn curls tumbling over her shoulders, cheeks fuller than they were now, a huge grin on her face. Behind her, on the hospital bed, sat one Vivian Ascot. Beside Viv, Jessica and Daisy. Max the dog’s little face peeked out from inside Aubrey’s jacket.
On a whim she texted the photo to the girls. And then also to Vivian Ascot.
Then she sent a few quick Proof of Life pics to her family. A selfie with the David. The view from her room. The table at the café, with its glossy cappuccinos and red checked tablecloth, one Sean Malone cropped out of shot. A photo of one of her sketches.
She let her phone drop to the bed and closed her eyes.
Seconds later she was out like a light.