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“It must feel strange, but exciting too. There must be things you wish you’d been able to do when you were working all those hours.”
There was reading for pleasure, there was the new Pilates class she was considering enrolling in and perhaps the rest would come. Meanwhile she was turning sleeping into an Olympic sport. And that had to stop. That felt like a creeping symptom of depression and she was all too conscious ending up depressed was a real possibility.
They talked about the job Wentworth wanted Mel to do, it wasn’t near as bad as she’d built it up to be.
“I miss you. I guess I panicked a bit. I thought they might’ve tried to get rid of me because they knew I was loyal.”
“If you ever truly believe that I’ll talk to Tom about it.”
Mel nodded. “I guess I have a new boss in the Wentworth mortgages. Oh, while I think of it, I took a call for you from a guy called,” she unfolded a piece of paper, “Mace Lauder.”
“Really, Mace?” She felt a little thrill trick up her spine that had nothing to do with the arrival of the lemon tart they were sharing.
“Yeah.” Mel gave her a wicked grin. “You obviously know him. He was kind of odd on the phone.”
“Odd how?”
“Abrupt, and funny without meaning to be.”
She let the thrill roam free, spreading out from her central nervous system to her fingertips and toes, bubbling inside like laughter. “That sounds like Mace.”
“He said he used to work for Wentworth.”
“He doesn’t still?”
“Told me he quit.”
Interesting. Not speaking with Jay meant she hadn’t caught up on how Mace and Dillon went getting funding, but if he’d quit maybe he’d gotten his first round. She frowned. Or he hadn’t and that’s why he’d made contact.
Mel was giving her big eyes and her eyebrows had disappeared into her fringe.
“He worked in IT,” she said to collect her thinking, as that wave of good feeling went sour.
“That’s right. He tried to pass himself off as an old friend.”
“Did he?”
“For a moment there you didn’t look unhappy about that.” Mel studied her with eight years experience of expression reading at call. “Oh my God, did you have a thing with him? You did, you did have a thing. Oh my God. That’s so exciting.”
“Pipe down. Okay, we had a thing, but it was one night that—”
“Oh my God.”
“It was months ago and really it was—”
“You liked him.”
“It was a one night stand.”
“Oh, so you don’t want his phone number?”
What was she going to do with Mace’s phone number? It was too late to use it now, and if he was only calling because his financing had fallen through and he wanted to get to Jay, it was better to let it go. “No.”
“Really. Wow, I was all excited there. I looked him up on the employee records system. His details were still there. He’s hot! Kind of broody, with those light eyes, the cropped hair, all cheekbone and that—”
“Okay, okay.” Jacinta smiled. Mace was hot enough to have burned through a part of her memory, the part that told her skin cells to goose-bump at the thought of his hands on her. “You don’t think it was wrong of me, a work colleague?”
“Oh my God—you hit on him.”
