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‘Absolutely not. Right you are, boss. Mum’s the word.’
‘Good girl,’ he said, before heading back into his office.
Harriet almost laughed. Because all of a sudden she didn’t want to be a good girl. She wanted to be a very bad girl. With Alex.
She was in the process of making the bookings when a courier walked in, holding a huge bouquet of assorted flowers.
‘Someone’s a lucky girl,’ he said, smiling a goofy smile. ‘The lady on reception said they were for you.’
Harriet’s first hideous thought was that they were from Dwayne, in some vain attempt to get her back. But when she opened the card which accompanied the flowers, the words written there brought tears to her eyes for the second time that day.
Hope you’re feeling better soon.
Love from Audrey.
PS The bum wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.
The PS made her laugh, which came as a relief to the courier, who was looking worried.
‘Everything’s fine,’ she said to him, waiting till he left before going out to reception and thanking Audrey profusely.
‘Flowers always make me feel better,’ Audrey said. ‘So does a glass of wine or two. Want to come have a drink with me after work?’
‘Love to,’ Harriet said. She’d missed her girls’ nights out with Emily since she’d gone away.
‘Great,’ Audrey said. ‘You should join the rest of us on Friday nights as well.’
‘I will in future,’ Harriet said. ‘But I can’t this Friday night. Have to go north with the boss to inspect his new golf resort. He has to go away overseas again soon and he wants me to keep a personal eye on things up there,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘So I need to see the lie of the land and meet the foreman.’
‘That’s a long drive. You’ll have to stay somewhere overnight.’
‘Probably. Still, there are plenty of motels up that way.’
‘True.’
‘I’d better get back to work or the slave driver might come looking for me.’
‘He can be like that, can’t he?’
‘He’s a workaholic, that’s for sure.’
‘I wouldn’t like to do your job.’
‘I don’t mind. I like it.’ An understatement. She loved her job.
‘Don’t you get fed up with being at his beck and call all the time? I mean, the things he asks you to do sometimes.’ Audrey rolled her eyes.
Harriet just laughed. Alex had been very up-front at her interview over the menial tasks he might ask her to do. She honestly didn’t mind getting his bagels, buying presents for members of his family or even organising his dry-cleaning. Better than sitting at her desk all the time.
It wasn’t till Harriet was sitting back down at that same desk that she realised she would enjoy the drive up to the golf estate this weekend very much if she wasn’t starting to have these awkward feelings for Alex. Still, at least these days she was capable of resisting such self-destructive desires, having become wise to her own weaknesses where the opposite sex—and sex—was concerned. In time, these feelings would pass and she would meet someone else, someone who could satisfy her in bed and tick at least some of the boxes in her checklist, someone more in her league than the boss of Ark Properties.
The man himself suddenly materialised by her desk.
‘So what’s with the flowers?’ he demanded, his face decidedly grim. ‘I hope they’re not from your idiot of an ex, trying to get back into your good books.’
‘Hardly. They’re from Audrey. Wasn’t that sweet of her?’
‘Very sweet. Look, I have to go out. Family emergency. Hold the fort till I get back.’
Harriet frowned at his swiftly departing back as well as his brusque manner. She wondered what kind of family emergency. He never talked about his family. Yet she knew he had a father still living, and a married older sister who had two children, a boy aged ten and a girl aged eight. She knew because she’d bought Christmas and birthday presents for them.
Maybe she would ask him about his family during the long drive north on Friday. And maybe not.
Friday now loomed in Harriet’s mind as a day fraught with unspoken tension. Life, she decided, wasn’t being very kind to her at the moment.
But then she looked at Audrey’s flowers and smiled.
Chapter Six
IT TOOK ALMOST an hour for Alex to drive from the inner city out to Sarah’s home in North Rocks. Sydney’s traffic situation was getting worse with each passing year. No matter how many motorways they built, nothing seemed to ease the congestion, or the delays. But the level of his frustration when he finally pulled up outside the house he’d bought his sister some years back was not due to road rage but rage of a different kind.
