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‘Personal, then?’ Watching Paul’s eyes dart away a fraction too soon, Amelia knew she’d hit the nail on the head. ‘Is he about to get engaged? Has he got some love-child…?’
‘Stop fishing, Amelia. Just do your work and I’ll do mine. I want your copy by two p.m. on Friday and not a second later. We’re going to use it this same weekend. Not,’ he added, with an utterly wasted reassuring smile, ‘that I want you to feel as if you’re under pressure.’
‘Just know that I am,’ Amelia retorted, relishing the task ahead yet terrified all of the same.
And now here she stood, in a boxy little suit, hair slicked back, and looking not too bad given she’d had approximately five minutes’ sleep the entire weekend. Her luggage was checked in, the newspaper was under her arm, her boarding pass was in her hand, and Australia’s most eligible bachelor was at her side.
Life was certainly looking up.
Better still if he whizzed her off to some scrummy first-class lounge for a decent cup of coffee to wake her up while they waited for their flight. But that hope was soon dashed when Vaughan told her that, given how she’d managed to get there on time, he’d checked them onto an earlier flight.
‘I’m going to get something to read. Do you want anything?’
‘No, thanks,’ Amelia answered, tapping the newspaper under her arm.
‘You’re sure?’ Vaughan checked, pulling a suitably bored face at her choice of in-flight entertainment.
‘I like to keep abreast—anyway, you don’t really have time to go to the newsagent’s, Vaughan. The six-thirty’s already boarding.’
‘So?’ he answered with annoying arrogance, striding off towards the newsagent’s.
And because it was all business passengers, because there were no irate toddlers or wheelchairs to board, the line of red-eyed passengers filed in quickly—leaving Amelia standing alone, avoiding the eye of an irritated air stewardess, who was chatting into the wall phone and tapping on the computer, and wondering just what the hell was taking Vaughan so long.
‘Miss Jackson?’ the air stewardess called, replacing the phone’s receiver. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to board now, please. The door’s about to close.’
‘It’s Miss Jacobs,’ Amelia corrected, hoping she sounded assertive. ‘I’m just waiting for my colleague. He shouldn’t be too much longer.’
‘Well, when he returns you can tell your colleague that he’s just missed his flight,’ the stewardess huffed, tapping into the computer with impossibly long nails. ‘The gate has just closed. I’ll see if there are any spaces on the seven a.m. What’s your colleague’s surname?’
‘Mason,’ Amelia answered, scanning the empty corridor, praying for him to appear, terrified the whole week ahead wasn’t even going to get past the first hurdle. ‘Vaughan Mason.’
It was like watching a soluble aspirin drop into a glass.
The pretty face, set in stone, suddenly fizzed into animated life. The impassive stance gave way and the air stewardess positively sparkled at the mere mention of his name. Gone was the bossy harridan tapping into the computer, instead she was actually moving—walking, in fact—over to the seriously camp air steward who was shooting daggers at Amelia as he appeared at the desk.
Make that two soluble aspirin, Amelia thought darkly as the air steward caught sight of his wayward passenger, carrier bag bulging, thumbing through a glossy magazine, not remotely in a hurry.
Vaughan made his way over.
‘Mr Mason!’ Amelia wasn’t sure who said it first, both steward and stewardess were talking in effusive tones, practically carrying him along the carpeted walkway as Amelia padded behind. ‘We didn’t realise you were travelling with us this morning—what a pleasure.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Vaughan asked as Amelia sat, still bristling, in her seat.
The plane taxied along the runway, and the sigh from the passengers was audible when the captain announced that they’d missed their slot and would have to wait another fifteen minutes before take-off.
‘Nothing.’ Amelia sniffed, and waited for him to push, to ask if she were sure, but when Vaughan merely dug into his carrier bag and pulled out another magazine Amelia chose to elaborate. ‘If you’d been anyone else, the flight would have gone.’
‘Probably,’ Vaughan conceded.
‘Yet you expected it to wait,’ Amelia went on, warming to her subject. ‘You kept a whole planeload of people sitting here while you chose a pile of magazines…’ Anger mounting, she watched as he unwrapped a toffee and popped it into his mouth. ‘And a load of sweets. Don’t you think that’s rather arrogant, Vaughan?’
‘You clearly do!’
‘Yes,’ Amelia replied hotly, ‘I really do. Now, I know I’m here merely to observe, but, given that you’ve involved me, I think I have a right to say something here!’
‘Go ahead,’ Vaughan offered, but he sounded so bored Amelia half expected him to put on the eyepads located in the little goody bag they had been handed.
‘You change our flights because we’re early, and then, instead of boarding at the correct time, instead of being pleased we’d been accommodated earlier, you head off to the newsagent, leaving me standing like an idiot to make excuses for your thoughtless behaviour.’
‘Thoughtless?’
‘Yes, thoughtless.’ Her hand flailed, gesturing to the window, to the grey of the airport buildings as the plane taxied slowly along. ‘Just so that you had something to read, you’ve ensured that two hundred people’s schedules are put out for the day. I’d say that’s pretty thoughtless Vaughan.’
‘I guess it is,’ Vaughan sighed. ‘I just felt sorry for her.’
‘For who?’ Amelia frowned.
‘The girl at the newsagent. It was only her second day, and she’d run out of till paper. I said I didn’t want a receipt, but she insisted—said that she’d get into trouble if she didn’t give me one.’
‘Oh!’ Blinking back at him, Amelia almost apologised, even opened her mouth to do so. But the ghost of a smile twitching at the edge of his lips gave him away, and her mouth snapped closed as she almost swallowed his bare-faced lie.
‘Guess I’m just an arrogant bastard!’ He winked, with no trace of an apology, and turned back to his magazine, laughing out loud at the problem page and then wincing loudly, not even bothering to flick over the page, from a before and after shot of breast enlargement surgery.
The air steward hovered to double check that his seatbelt was done up, and Amelia struggled through the business section of her paper, reading the most boring article about gender balance in the workplace and longing to bury herself in one of Vaughan’s glossies.
But she’d die before asking.
‘Help yourself,’ Vaughan offered, as Amelia’s eyes wandered for the third time in two minutes to the magazine he was holding. He held it out to her. ‘I’m keeping abreast myself—though I have to admit it looks like bloody agony. Why do women do it?’
‘That’s a rather in-depth topic for six forty-five in the morning,’ Amelia bristled, and Vaughan rolled his eyes.
‘Just making small talk. Look…’ his voice lowered ‘…this could end up being a very long week if we don’t set a few ground rules: you want to see me warts and all; I want an honest piece written.’
‘Yes,’ Amelia agreed.
‘So get your own back at the end of the week. Toss in a spiteful, cutting line about how thoughtless I am, if it makes you feel better, but please, don’t sit next to me smarting. File it and save it for later.’
The rest of the flight was spent in rather more companionable silence. Amelia nibbled on a warm chocolate muffin, leafing through one of Vaughan’s magazines, as he in turn drank three impossibly strong coffees and read, with markedly more interest than Amelia, the business section of her newspaper, barely even glancing up as the plane made its descent.
The hotel was as impossibly decadent. Vaughan glided through check-in as silent bellboys whizzed away their luggage, and with one glimpse of the massive bed as she stepped into her king-size suite, Amelia wanted to peel off her stilettos there and then and climb right in.
‘All right?’ Vaughan checked, knocking sharply on her door and not even waiting for a reply before he let himself in. ‘I asked for adjoining rooms. I figured it would be easier to meet up that way.’
‘It’s fine,’ Amelia replied nonchalantly, while privately imagining Paul’s reaction when she put in her expense-claim form. ‘Oh, look!’ Peeling back the sheer curtains, she stared at the magnificent view below—there was not a glint of summer sky in sight; the entire complex faced in on itself, and the courtyard below was filled with early-morning Melburnians, pulling apart croissants and reading newspapers.
‘That’s a nice place to eat,’ Vaughan said, nodding downwards to where a massive grand piano was the focal point of the dining area. ‘Though I normally choose to eat on the balcony.’ He gestured to the four square feet of space adjoining hers.
