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I grimace and detour to my office, pull my fierce-red coat off its stand and shrug it on, belt it tight and move before anyone else can try to talk to me.
How could they? How could Alan? And of all the people to get in...this man who looks so much like the one I saw four weeks ago.
Looks like? It is him and you know it.
My gut knows it. My wounded ego knows it.
My hypersensitive, pebble-like nipples know it!
Fuck.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Jennings, our doorman-cum-security guard, frowns at me and I plaster on a smile. ‘Sorry, thinking aloud.’
His frown deepens, his eyes not missing a trick. ‘You okay, Ms Carmel?’
He’s always addressed me as Ms so it doesn’t sting with my widow status, but my smile still feels shaky.
‘Absolutely. Fine and dandy. Just need to get out and stretch my legs.’
He reaches behind him and pulls a guest umbrella from the pot by the door. ‘In that case, you best take this.’
‘Thank you, Jennings.’ My smile eases with his thoughtful gesture and a part of me feels desperate to spill all. I’ve known him for as long as we’ve owned the building, Nathan and I, and that’s too many years to count.
And the truth is, I don’t have a confidant that I can offload on. I won’t even spill all to my sister, Fee. Nathan was my ear and he was enough. But I don’t have him any more...
And that’ll teach me for making my husband and our business my all.
Now that he’s gone, there are a lot of things I don’t have and many that I do. Money is the biggest thing. I have more money than I know what to do with. His life insurance, our company, our success, it’s given me plenty.
But there’s a huge gaping hole that I just can’t fill. And each time I seek to, I end up in trouble. The Bugatti and the crash. The free-climbing incident last month where I narrowly escaped being impaled on a rock. The product launch party where my loose tongue lost us an important investor. The charity ball fiasco in which my dazzling red dress left a little too much exposed.
Is it any wonder the board want to fix me? I shake my head, my ponytail flicking with it.
Screw it, screw it all!
Life’s too short. Every one of those incidents was about living by that motto and making the most of life. I won’t go back to how things were.
I stride outside, the umbrella tight in my grip as I remember the one scenario the board doesn’t know about... Valentine Boretti, on the other hand...he was there, until he ran.
And his swift departure brought a premature end to the entire experience. Not that he could know that...
Is it really him?
He didn’t look as young in the club. But then it was dark and, if I’m honest, I wasn’t exactly in tune with much else that night. I was set on letting go, losing my inhibitions. Going wild.
I feel my pulse pick up as I remember it all too vividly. Replay it in quick succession and then remember him not twenty minutes ago as he took my hand in his.
The carefully groomed hair with its definite curl, the square cut to his jaw, his clean-shaven skin, full lips, chiselled cheekbones and his eyes...they were so dark that night, dark and intense. This afternoon I could take in their vivid blue, but it wasn’t just the colour on display, it was the past too, the memory of what he witnessed as they seemed to project that wild heat back at me, right there in the boardroom.
And he’s aman-child.
A man-child with an ego the size of Narcissus, quite clearly.
He’s young, he’s in PR, and he doesn’t just walk the talk, he struts it. Slick and confident in his vibrant blue suit, his perfect hair that took time to sculpt, those eyes so sharp and astute and in command. There’s a slash through one brow that tells of some misadventure long ago and instead of damaging his flawless exterior, it adds to it. Making him roguish and charming and disarming in one.
And his voice...even now it shivers through me. Deep, raspy, practically hoarse. Who eventalkslike that but an aged smoker? Which really should make it a turn-off, not an almighty, knicker-wetting turn-on!
