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‘You heard about that?’ she asked when he got behind the wheel. She shuffled forward to lean on the open partition between them.
‘I know a guy who knows a guy,’ he said, watching her in the rear-view mirror, his beady blue eyes actually almost smiling, but Siena was pretty sure she didn’t want to know about the marginal kinds of guys Rufus knew.
She sat back with a groan. Really this place was just so small town it made her sick.
‘Oh, just shut up and drive, Rufus,’ she said.
He laughed before gunning the engine. ‘Yes, Ms Capuletti.’
The drive up to the beaches of Far North Queensland was glorious. They passed the Skyrail with its tiny round pods taking tourists by the hundreds slowly up the almost vertical cliffs covered in lush green vegetation towering forbiddingly to her left. For that lovely trip alone she knew she would now never regret having come back to Cairns.
With a deep breath she tuned that out and looked deliberately to her right where perfect white sandy beaches blinked between black rocky outcrops and intermittent tracts of sugar cane farms and banana plantations slowly growing anew after the devastation of a tropical cyclone.
They passed Palm Cove, a haven of resorts, lavish gardens and beachside bliss. In an alternate past she would have not called Rick and would have stayed there instead, working on her tan, spending the day at a resort spa or taking a boat out to Green Island for a glorious day snorkelling.
She couldn’t help sitting higher in her leather seat to get a glimpse of the ocean, laid out blue and green and magnificent all the way out to the far horizon. She had to admit that of all the beaches in all the world this area was as beautiful as any she had ever known, and she had known a few. And most people would think themselves blessed to be surrounded by palm trees and year-round sunshine.
A half hour later the car slowed as they reached Port Douglas.
They passed the pristine manicured lawns of the world class golf course, hooked a right towards the beach, then a left through a set of large guarded gates. At the end of a straight white gravel driveway sat the palatial Palazzo Maximillian. It was a grand, symmetrical, three-storeyed, white and gold monstrosity surrounded by ubiquitous Queensland palm trees.
Maximillian, bald and tanned from head to toe, met her at the car door in a smoking jacket and white satin trousers and carrying a martini. Siena wondered if he was in fact waiting for a camera crew rather than just little old her.
As he drew her into his home, she shot one last look to the front driveway to find Rufus and the safety of his limousine heading back out the distant guarded gates.
‘Siena,’ Max drawled, his broad American accent evident even in that one word. ‘Glad you could come.’
‘No worries, Max,’ she said, doing her best to act cooler than she felt.
‘And do call me Max,’ he said.
Siena groaned under her breath, counted to ten in her head in an attempt to control her breathing and yelled at herself mentally to just relax!
He pointed the way through his massive marble-floored foyer to the back of his house where a huge crystal blue pool lay shimmering in the golden afternoon sun.
She had a good look at the man behind the name. He was handsome. Tall, imposing, dripping in money. But, for all that, he had nothing on the understated magnetism of James Dillon.
Focus!
So you like James, she said to herself. So you have a little crush on the guy. Okay, so it’s more than a crush. The way he looks at you makes your poor little heart flutter. You’ve admitted it. Good for you; now shelve it.
Max led the way to a couple of deep-set white cane chairs beneath a wide baby-blue umbrella. The view to one side was all golf course and, to the other, ocean as far as the eye could see.
‘So, Siena,’ he drawled when they sat, ‘I would think that, considering the world class rumour mill working at MaxAir, you have some idea why I have asked you to meet me here today.’
Siena nodded, but she kept her mouth shut. Though rumours did tend to be true, she had no intention of putting her foot in her mouth any more that day than necessary.
Max’s wide mouth broke into a blindingly white smile. ‘Fabulous, so this will be a quick meeting. Siena, I have been more than pleased with the result of our recent teaser campaign featuring your face in billboards across Australia. It seems yours is a face that gives consumers confidence.’
Oh, God here it was—he was about to ask her to stay!
But what would she say if Max offered her the permanent job as face of MaxAir? Would she beg him for Rome? If he said no, would she quit?
She suddenly had no idea.
But she did know that something in her felt changed, and she did know that, no matter what Max offered her, she would not go back to the regular old routes that a few days before had been fine. A few days ago they had been ample. They had been great. They had been enough.
But now she wanted … more.
