At four in the morning, Derek quit pretending to sleep. He dug around in his luggage until he found the emergency vape tucked into the side compartment along with a bottle of e-juice. He’d learned the hard way that if he carried cigarettes, he ended up smoking them in the middle of the night. But he could pick up a vape, put it down and not think about it for weeks. Plus, it felt better on his lungs. He headed downstairs, inhaling as he went. Nicotine prickled through him as he sat at Byron’s kitchen counter.
The Perth property was a mini-mansion, as overdone as Byron’s place in Melbourne, but he and his missus didn’t own or even rent. Beth was housesitting through some website, and the place had more than enough rooms for mopey assholes like him to crash in. At least there were no memories of Mara here—except the ones he’d brought with him. He could smell the roast chicken Beth had made for dinner last night and his stomach clenched at the thought of eating. He was due for a skin fold test on Monday, and he was sure Maggie would tell him he was underweight. But that was Monday. He put the vape to his lips and drew. His blood felt thin and fast-flowing. He unlocked his phone and searched ‘Marie Kennedy.’ Mara was still there on the internet, wearing long pink dresses, arm-in-arm with that Italian fuckstick. It had been two weeks since she’d left him in Daylesford. Only a thousand or so more and he could shuffle off the face of the earth and stop thinking about her. If he lived that long. His phone chirped. Another Google alert. Wondering what fresh hell had befallen him, Derek clicked the attached link and was redirected to The Sydney Morning Times.
Shock Surprise—Hardiman dating Influencer
Notoriously private AFL superstar Derek Hardiman is believed to be dating his childhood sweetheart, now multi-millionaire Mara Kennedy. Currently, a not-for-profit executive, Kennedy and Hardiman dated in their late teens when—
“Blah, blah, blah,” Derek muttered. He’d heard it a hundred thousand times by now. Everyone on the team knew not to mention Mara. Not if they wanted to get out of tackle practice alive. Even Coach Murphy had taken him aside to ask if he was alright. He wasn’t, but he felt no guilt lying about it. His fuck-up wasn’t anyone’s business but his. He skimmed the rest of the article, pausing at the end.
There are rumours Hardiman is in talks to join The Rattlers next year. If that’s the case, Mara Kennedy might use her contacts to buy a house in Perth. She could afford it!
“Shit.”
Along with talk of Mara, he’d kept his negotiations with The Rattlers close to his chest, but Howard had warned him there might be a leak. At least he wasn’t in Melbourne where Willow could rock up at the house and confront him. He’d flown to Perth for the Bulldogs’ game on Saturday, staying back to crash with Byron and meet with The Rattlers’ management.
Howard had wanted to come, but Derek refused. He had enough on his mind without having to pretend to be upbeat. He asked Byron to come instead. His mate had a good head on his shoulders and a job in player development—he was as good an ally as any. The meeting had gone pretty well. The Rattlers were promising heaven and earth, but the real appeal for him was leaving Melbourne. Getting a fresh start somewhere else. When they left the clubhouse, he’d asked Byron’s opinion, but in typical Byron fashion, he’d asked for time to think it over. Maybe that was why he had a girlfriend. That, and he hadn’t cocked things up with the only woman he’d ever loved.
Derek drew on his vape, letting his head swirl with the smoke. He pictured Mara looking up at him in English class. Mara on top of him at the Sofitel. Mara on the red carpet looking like a princess. She was missing and no one could find her. Not just him—everyone. Chase had called a few days after he’d left Daylesford to say she and Pan hadn’t been to the HFA offices or her house. She appeared to have pulled the same disappearing act twice. She could be anywhere, with any new name, seeking a new life, and it was all his fault. Well, mostly his fault. Some was Troy Baker’s.
“Yo.” Beth Myers stood at the base of the stairs in a huge t-shirt that clearly belonged to Byron. He looked away. “Hi.”
“You vaping?”
Derek shifted in his chair. “Yeah. I can go outside if you want?”
“Nah, vape wherever.” She wandered closer. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Great. Me neither. And it’s about time we talked, so this is perfect!”
“I… what d’you mean?”
“What I said. It’s time to talk.” She pulled out the seat next to him and clambered on. Derek frowned. He had no idea what she was on about. They’d barely ever said two sentences to each other.
She held out her hand. “Vape please?”
Still confused, he passed her the e-cigarette. She put it to her lips and sucked, blowing out a huge white cloud. “That’s the good stuff. I’ve missed the fuckwit kazoo.”
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
She flashed him a big smile. “Totally! If it wasn’t bad for you, I’d do it every day. And vaping. I love vaping. Although yours tastes like shit. What’s the flavour?”
“None.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” She tucked a knee into her chest and hugged it close. “You know… I never said ‘fuck you’ for freaking me out when I was first leaving your house.”
Derek knew the night she meant. He’d spooked her creeping across the hallway to the front door. He’d been twitchier back then. Still under the impression that getting robbed was the worst thing that could happen to him. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You should be. Do you have any idea how scary you come across to the average human? You look like an axe murderer.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Beth sucked on the vape. “On the other hand,” she said in a puff of smoke. “I never thanked you for talking sense into Byron when I first told him I was moving to Perth. So… thank you.”
“Uh, you’re welcome, I guess?”
She beamed at him, bright as a schoolteacher. “So, Byron wants me to mind my own business, but fuck it. What’s the deal with this whole ‘childhood sweetheart influencer’ thing?”
Derek was torn. He was relieved this was what Beth wanted to talk about, and not some weird favour she needed, but he couldn’t just tell her to fuck off like he could with everyone else. Not without Byron taking a swing at him. He held out his hand for the vape. “You read the article.”
“Yeah, I’ve been having a bit of a stalk since Byron told me you were coming around. He thought you were fucked up over a girl.”
Derek recalled the previous day when they’d spent hours alone together. “Nice of him to talk to me about it.”
“Ah well. You know Byron. Still waters and all that.”
“Sure.” He drew on the vape until his head spun.
“It sucks about her parents,” Beth said suddenly. “I can’t imagine having that stuff happen then having it get on the news because you made out with a football player.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked.”
“And all that stuff about your dad being in jail. That’s so unfair!”
“Don’t stress,” Derek said, but he found he didn’t mind her mentioning it. He didn’t want to talk about Mara, but Beth wasn’t so bad. At least she was cheerful, and it appeared she was going to stay whether he wanted her to or not.
“Well as a former journalist, I’m sorry. That was trash reporting. It’s basically ‘hey John Q Driveway, two hot people fucked last night. Guess what their parents did?’”
Derek snorted. “Yeah. But the chick who wrote it got twenty grand.”
“Ah, that explains it. Journalism’s just ‘bottom feeding’ spelled backward.” Beth pulled at her lower lip. “I can’t believe Mara ran BlissAndGlow. I was obsessed with BlissAndGlow.”
He turned to Beth with new eyes. Finally, a person who might help explain. “What the fuck was BlissAndGlow? What was it for?”
Beth clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, it was amazing. It was like… an eclectic photo album put together by your favourite cousin.”
Derek sucked on the vape. “Yeah, this isn’t helping.”
“It was photos of fancy places you’ll probably never get to experience, put together in a really pretty way. Like, do you know Sofia Coppola movies?”
“No.”
Beth sighed. “Fuck you’re useless, Derek. It was just nice pictures! Like, you’d get ten pictures of shoes lined up by a fancy door, or like, a lit cigarette in a silver ashtray beside a swimming pool in Prague. It was classy and a lot of people liked it. Capiche?”
“Sure.”
He was still vague on the details, but he knew how good Mara was at putting pretty things together. He’d seen her butterfly collection, and the collage of old-school movie stars on her bedroom wall. Did she still do stuff like that? Or had she given it up when she’d deleted her Instagram account? She’d lived so many lives without him. A hundred different versions of Mara. Beth pulled the vape from his hands and inhaled. “So, you were together in high school?”
“Yeah.”
“And you broke up when you left to play football?”
“It wasn’t as dramatic as that. It was kind of unspoken.”
Beth wrinkled her nose. “Gross. Unspoken things are always fucked-up things.”
He shot her a look.
“What? I’m not Byron, I give my opinion freely to anyone who wants it.”
“Did I miss the part where I said I wanted it?”
Beth grinned. “You’re not walking away though, are you? I bet you’re dying for someone to talk to.”
He took back his vape, refusing to agree.
Beth tapped the table with her palms. “So… where’s Mara?”
“No idea.”
“Hmm, I kind of guessed that when you showed up looking like Skeletor, but it’s good to have some confirmation. What happened? Where is she?”
He blew out a long cloud of smoke. “That is the question, Bethany.”
She shot him a sidelong look. “I know you want to chat about this with Byron, but you should talk to me instead.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m from New Zealand and we don’t give a shit about Aussie Rules, so I won’t be starstruck or factor in football at all. Plus, we don’t have any baggage so I can just listen and give you advice.”
He had to admit that made sense. “How’s your advice-giving?”
“Above average. I have a podcast.”
He pointed the vape at her. “If this ends up on there, I’ll sue you.”
“Um, I know you’re like, a big deal, Derek Hardiman. But as I already told you, I’m a Kiwi. I have better things to discuss on my podcast than some football guy.”
“Fair.”
Beth stretched her arms over her head, as though preparing for a run. “So anyway… We can start with how you and Mara hooked up. Did you find her online?”
“Nah. We ran into each other.”
“Seriously?”
“More or less.” Telling her about the house and Chase and everything would take too fucking long.
“So, once you ran into each other, you started dating?”
“More or less.”
Beth rolled her eyes. “This is all really helpful, Derek.”
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “After I ran into her, we started… y’know.”
“Fucking?”
“Hooking up, but Mara wasn’t… She was into it, but she didn’t want to be into it. If that makes sense?”
“It does.” Beth tapped her chin. “Did you guys talk much after you left your hometown? When you were teenagers, I mean?”
“Not really.”
“And she stayed there?”
“Yeah.”
Beth squinted at him. “Did she ask you to come back, and you fobbed her off?”
He stared, shocked. “How’d you know that?”
“Classic post-high school shit.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“Not for Australians,” Beth clarified. “Because most of you guys live at home while you go to uni. But Kiwis go all over the country or overseas, so this shit happens all the time. You don’t break up, but you’re not together, and then he gets drunk and tells you to come home and you tell him you’re seeing someone else—or you just come home anyway and cheat. All that stuff. It’s just what happens.”
“You’re making it sound inevitable.”
“Because it is.”
“Not the way it happened with me and Mara. That was my fault. I fucked up.”
Beth looked at him like he was a weepy kid who wanted to stay inside at lunchtime. “How old were you?”
“That’s not the point. I should have told Mara I wanted to break up properly. Or I should have had the balls to ask her to move in with me.”
“You were a kid when you left—”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” Beth agreed. “Big deal. You were a kid. You were from a fucked-up home—no judgment, so was I—but who was there to tell you what the right thing to do was?”
Derek considered it. “Shouldn’t I have just known bett—”
“No one,” Beth corrected. “No one was there. So, you choked. That’s not a federal fucking crime.”
“Yeah, what my dad did was a federal fucking crime.”
He and Beth smiled at each other, then Derek pressed his palms into his eyes. “A year after I left, she sent me this picture. Of herself. She wanted me to come back home and be with her.”
“Oh. Did you?”
“What do you think?”
She winced.
“I didn’t answer in time either. I was too busy with footy and when I tried to get in touch, she’d changed her number.”
“Pretty extreme.”
“There were some… extraneous circumstances.”
“Like her winning a hundred-million-dollar Powerball?”
“Yeah. Maybe that.”
“So, when you started fucking this time around, Mara wasn’t really over the past. She didn’t trust you.”
He didn’t like the way Beth was making it sound all neat and woven together but he couldn’t find anything to actually disagree with. “Pretty much.”
“So, what was the problem? Her name coming out in the papers?”
“Yeah.”
Beth squinted at him. “You’re leaving something out, aren’t you?”
He drew on the vape, avoiding her gaze.
Beth gnawed on her lower lip. “It must have been hard seeing Mara again after ten years apart…?”
“Mmm.”
“You must have seemed really different to her.”
“Maybe.”
“She must have changed a lot.”
“She hadn’t changed!” The words exploded out like an atom bomb. “It was everything else that changed!”
Beth grinned. “Excellent. What’s everything else?”
He sucked the vape and found it empty. Ripping open the top, he pulled out the e-juice. The bottle slipped through his fingers and clattered onto the floor. “Fuck!”
Beth ducked down to pick it up. She held it out of reach. “I’ll give it back if you tell me what everything else is?”
Derek groaned. “Fine. She fucked some guy who used to be on my high school footy team. Right after I didn’t come home for her photo. She fucked him, then she disappeared.”
Silently, Beth handed him the bottle. He topped up his pen.
“Derek…?”
“What?” he said, more aggressively than he intended. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, but I mean…what’s that reaction for. You think I shouldn’t be jealous?”
Beth stayed silent. She reminded him of Mara. She’d never been afraid of him either. He forced the plastic cap back on the vape, feeling pissy. She’d asked for information and now she had nothing to say.
“Derek? Did you actually end it because Mara was with someone else while you were gone?”
Bile rose in his stomach. “I don’t know.”
“Really? Because it kind of sounds like—”
“It wasn’t just Baker!” he burst out. “The whole time we were hooking up, I was getting hit with these bombshells— she’s changed her name, she fucked Baker, she owns a business, she’s a millionaire, she used to be huge on Instagram, she fucked some Italian supermodel.” He scrubbed a hand across his head. “It’s too much, and now it doesn’t matter because she’s gone.”
“Because she wasn’t allowed to change,” Beth muttered, turning her face away.
His heart stopped. “What did you just say?”
Beth’s brown eyes widened. “Forget it. We should stop—”
“Hey, you two.”
They both jumped. Byron was walking toward them, shirtless, his sandy hair ruffled. “Five a.m. vape party, is it?”
Derek winced. He and Beth hadn’t been doing anything suss, but it felt like a violation all the same. “Sorry if we woke you Bloke.”
Beth raised her arms toward her boyfriend. “Derek and I are having a heart-to-heart.”
“Hmm.” Byron shot him a warning look as he hugged her. “He’s not being a dick, is he?”
“I am,” Derek said before Beth could lie for him. “I should go.”
“Don’t,” they both said at once.
“Stay.” Byron headed for the kettle. “I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you, and sleep seems pretty pointless. Coffee?”
“If you’re making one, then yeah. Thanks, bloke.”
Beth smiled at her boyfriend. “Me too please, babe. We’re discussing Derek’s girl problems.”
“I figured.”
Derek sucked his vape. “Weigh in if you want, bloke. From where I’m sitting, everything’s pretty fucked.”
“It’s not,” Beth said. “You’re making it fucked.”
Derek choked on his vape.
“Beth!” Byron warned.
“What?! He is! And no one will say it but me!”
He shot her a warning look.
“Whatever. I know you agree with me.”
Derek looked from her to Byron and back again. “Byron agrees with you about what?”
“That you’re stubborn and you’re wallowing in your own feelings and you’re going to join The Rattlers instead of solving your girl problems,” Beth said quickly. “And Byron doesn’t even know you’re only upset with Mara because she had sex with some guy from your high school, like ten years ago.”
Byron turned to face the kettle. Derek suspected he was trying not to laugh.
“Am I wrong?” Beth asked. “Or is there a second, better reason why you’re staying here with us?”
“Well, I was here for football. But also, my girlfriend’s gone on the run?”
“Yeah, because you probably freaked her out.”
Derek had to admire her courage. No one talked to him like this but Mara. He shook his head. “Say you’re right and I made Mara leave because I was jealous. What am I supposed to do about that now?”
Beth looked at him like he was crazy. “Pull your head in and apologise.”
Derek said the same thing to Beth that he’d said to Mara. “No.”
She raised red brows. “Well, that’s your loss then.”
Byron made a little warning noise and Beth held up her hands in surrender. “I’m done, that’s all I have to say.”
But he wasn’t done. “It shouldn’t have happened. Mara and him. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah, well, it did. Shit happens, brah. People leave. People fuck other people. Do you want to lose the woman you love because you can’t handle the fact you don’t have the biggest dick in the world?”
“Bethany!”
Beth jumped like she’d been poked with a needle. “Sorry. Too far.”
But Derek wasn’t offended. He felt like he’d been struck by lightning. “What do you mean, the biggest dick in the world?”
“Weeeeeellll…” Beth glanced at Byron’s back.
“Don’t look at that cunt, look at me! Tell me!”
Beth looked torn. “You really want my opinion?”
“Yes. Hit me.”
“Well, reading between the lines, you were always the big man in the relationship. You were the football guy, and she was, like, this shy girl that no one expected you to want. At least that’s how they made it sound in that incredibly bitchy article.”
“Yeah. What’s your point?”
“That you got to be the star and she was your little supporting actress! And you left and you thought she’d hold down the fort. You were counting on it. But the opposite happened.” Beth raised her arms like an opponent blocking a goal. “Not only did Mara not stay small—she got so big it blew your mind. And you have no idea how to handle it, so you went all apeshit about this one guy she had sex with.”
She was right. He could feel she was right. He inhaled, blood and nicotine pumping through him. The jealousy when he’d seen her Porsche—he’d wanted to buy her a fancy car. The pictures of her on the red carpet—he wanted to take her to fancy events on his arm. Sleeping with Troy—it fucking sucked, but the worst part wasn’t Baker taking her virginity. It was that even when Mara was broke and stuck in Albury, she’d moved on. She hadn’t waited for him and—
“Arrrrghhhh.” He pressed his fingertips into his forehead. “Fucking hell! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Here we go,” Beth said gleefully. “Now we’re getting to it!”
Byron brought them both a coffee. “Sorry about her.”
“It’s okay. I just can’t believe I didn’t apologise to Mara.”
“Yeah…” Byron took a sip of his coffee. “Call her?”
“She doesn’t pick up.”
“Visit her?”
“I have no idea where she is. She might have left the country and changed her name.”
“Right. That complicates things.”
Beth ran her fingers through her hair. “You didn’t say anything too stupid before she left, did you? Like you didn’t completely fuck things up?”
“I told her she should have stayed a virgin for me.”
Byron turned away, his shoulders shaking.
“You didn’t!?” Beth gasped.
“It was a… heat of the moment thing.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t dealing with me, man. I’d have sent every journo in Melbourne your nudes.”
“She did spit on the floor at me.”
Byron’s laughter became audible. Derek glared at his mate’s back. “Shut the fuck up, you.”
He raised a hand. “Sorry. Just, you know…”
While her boyfriend continued to laugh, Beth stared at him like he had two heads. “You’re gonna have to do something mega impressive to get her back.”
“If I can,” Derek said gloomily. “And even if I do see her again, there’s something I keep thinking about…”
“What?”
If I’m not Mara’s Daddy, who the fuck am I to her? But he couldn’t ask that. He cleared his throat. “We might not be compatible. If she’s big and I’m big, what if we don’t have enough in common to make a proper go of things?”
Beth nodded slowly. “I’m not sure. I think that comes down to you and her giving it a proper try and seeing what happens.”
He stared into his coffee. “Right.”
“But she came home. She deleted her Instagram and opened her not-for-profit. Maybe she likes being small and private and doing her own thing. She’s probably happy to play the smaller fiddle to you—if you can just not be a cunt about the time she spent figuring herself out.”
Byron stopped laughing. “Beth!”
“No apologies.” She tossed her red hair over her shoulder. “Derek, do you think Mara wanted a relationship with you?”
“I think so?” He remembered the night she’d come to his house in the rain. “Yeah.”
“And does it seem like she wants to date anyone else?”
He stared at Beth, pieces falling together like a jigsaw. “Before we hooked up, she hadn’t dated anyone for years.”
Beth laughed. “Fuck, dude, you had it all. You had the best possible hand, and you threw it away because one card had peanut butter on it.”
“Bethany!”
She waved a hand at Byron. “Sorry, babe. That was too harsh.” She gave him a look that said, ‘but true.’
Derek smiled. “You are good at this.”
She took a seated bow. “So, what are you gonna do now?”
“No idea. She seriously has vanished. Her business partner and I are in touch and he’s freaking out about it.”
“She’ll show up,” Beth said confidently. “In the meantime, I have this amazing book about resolving jealousy. Want me to get it? Do you read?”
Only fantasy novels, but Derek figured he owed her one. “Sure.”
She dashed away, her red hair fluttering behind her, and Byron took her seat.
“Sorry,” he said, swigging his coffee. “Beth goes into things a hundred percent. You don’t have to read the book.”
“It’s okay. She helped me out.”
Byron smiled. There was a quiet pride in his friend’s face. Contentment, too. The months he’d spent in Perth had changed him. He was still annoyingly quiet, but he was happier. Lighter. Derek remembered the afternoon they’d drunk port in his living room, and he’d told Byron to go for it with Beth. At least he’d managed to give some good advice then. Shame he couldn’t give it to himself.
Byron patted his shoulder. “She’ll turn up, Bloke. It’s not over.”
“Maybe.” Derek glanced across at him. “Should I join The Rattlers?”
“Honestly? Right now?”
“Yep. Do it like your girlfriend, hard and fast.”
Byron put down his mug with a grin. “Okay. Don’t go with The Rattlers.”
Derek frowned. Byron Thomas wasn’t known for his conversational skills, but he’d still been expecting a bit more than that. “Anything else?”
Byron shrugged.
Derek shoved him in the shoulder. “Come on, bloke. I need some assistance here.”
Byron sighed. “It’s a good deal, but you don’t need the money and if you take it, everyone’s gonna think you’re a whore.”
“What?”
“They’ll think you’re a whore.”
“A whore? For securing my future?”
Byron scoffed. “Your future is secure.”
“How? I’m not coaching. I’m gonna have to live off my footy money forever.”
Byron shook his head. “You can keep doing sponsorships after you’ve retired. You’re the player of the century. Your name’s gonna sell for a long, long time.”
Derek clenched his jaw. “What the fuck do I focus on for the next five years, if not money?”
“Legacy. Your name. What people think about when they think about you. You’ve outgrown the need for money, now you can just focus on what makes you happy.”
He sounded insane. Worse than insane. Like a hippy.
“He’s just saying that because he’s rich.” Beth hopped down the stairs, now in jeans, a yellow book in her hands. “He’s not wrong, but rich people are way better at accepting that they’ll always have money and focusing on other things.”
“We are not,” Byron protested. “And I’m not—”
“That rich,” Beth finished. She smiled at Derek. “Did you have to wear one pair of school shoes all year?”
“My brother’s, usually.”
“I had to buy all my clothes from op shops.” Beth handed him the book ‘Do The Work’ by Dr Nicole La Pera.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll read it on the plane.”
“I hope you do. I’ll head back upstairs and let you finish. Don’t let Byron’s rich boy vibes throw you off. He generally knows what he’s talking about.”
“You’ll pay for that,” Byron called after her.
She pouted at him. “I hope so.”
Byron smirked.
“Should I leave you kids alone?”
His mate ignored him. “I wasn’t trying to lecture you about money, bloke. Sorry if I sounded up myself.”
“It’s okay. I know you can’t help it.”
They grinned at each other, then Derek sighed. “Bloke, I know everyone at the Hammers’ll go spare if I leave. I thought at least you’d be happy for me because I’d be moving over here. Or is it better if we’re in separate states?”
“Not at all, but last year you told me not to play scared. Now I’m telling you.”
Derek sat back in his seat. “Howard’s gonna blow a gasket when I turn down The Rattlers.”
“Probably.” Byron made a face. “I don’t rate him.”
“He’s done me a lot of favours.”
“He dug you out of a hole and you paid him well for it. You don’t owe him anything.”
“So, I should sack him? Hire someone else?”
Byron shrugged. “I’m just saying you have a choice.”
Derek’s stomach hardened. He was right. This was like the afternoon they’d sat drinking port, only he’d been where Byron was now. Don’t play scared, he’d told his friend. But what had he done since he’d seen Mara? He’d hedged his bets, held back, and waited for her to tell him everything was okay again. He’d let his fear twist him up inside. Mara needed someone strong and gentle, someone she could trust to keep her safe. He looked down at his vape, then pushed it across the counter. “I think I’ve been an absolute cockhead.”
“Maybe.” Byron nudged his shoulder. “But today’s a new day, bloke.”
“Thanks, bloke.”
His phone buzzed and he groaned. “That’s gotta be Howard telling me to sign with The Rattlers or he’ll blow dart me and ship me off to North Korea.”
“Seize the day. Sack him.”
Smiling, Derek pulled out his phone. To his surprise, Chase’s name flashed up on the screen. He answered. “Hey, have you found Mara?”
“No.” Chase drew in a long, shaky breath. “This is uncomfortable for me, but I need to ask you… a favour.”
Derek wouldn’t have been more surprised if Chase asked for free Hammers tickets. “What’s up?”
“HFA is on the brink of collapse. The Minister for Housing is holding a press conference on Monday, and I’ve had it confirmed he’s going to publicly torpedo the company.”
“You’ll be shut down?”
“No. It’ll be a death by a thousand cuts. But there’s a chance we could still head this off at the pass. Some of my employees think that possibly, perhaps, you could help us?”
“Yeah, but how?”
Derek heard a girl shout something in the background.
“Back off,” Chase hissed. “Sorry. That was one of my—Himeko!”
A new voice came over the phone. “Derek Hardiman?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“If you love Mara and hate property developers, come do a press conference for us right now.”
It was the closest thing to ‘come with me if you want to live’ Derek had ever heard. And like Sarah Connor, he was more confused than relieved. He hated press conferences. And he never got political in interviews. But he did love Mara. And he did hate property developers. And he was in the market for a legacy.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll fly home this morning. Where should I meet you guys?”