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Lanie took a good long gulp of her coffee, hoping that the addition of caffeine would help get her brain back to speed.
She fully expected Grayson to flip open his laptop as the car pulled way, or to make another one of his seemingly endless phone calls. But instead he turned towards her.
He cleared his throat, the sound unexpected and awkward in the quiet vehicle.
‘Thank you for the coffee,’ he said gruffly.
Lanie shot a look in his direction, not immediately sure she’d heard him correctly.
But his expression was genuine. Not quite contrite—that wouldn’t be Grayson Manning—but still...
‘Not a problem, Grayson.’
He nodded, then glanced away through his darkly tinted window at the passing traffic.
Without looking at her, he spoke again.
‘You can call me Gray.’
* * *
The beach was near deserted the following morning. Gray’s bare feet smacked rhythmically against the wet sand, his progress only occasionally punctuated with a splash when the waves stretched across his path.
Luther was well ahead of Gray, having abandoned his ball to begin enthusiastically digging a hole to China. Beyond Luther rocky fingers of coastline stretched into the ocean, and distant cranes for hoisting shipping containers formed blurry silhouettes against the sky.
It was cool—it was only July after all—and all but the most dedicated swimmers had abandoned the beach on such a dull and overcast day.
But today Gray needed to run.
Maybe he’d hoped the bite of the frigid air in his lungs would help. Or, more likely, it was that heavy ache in his legs that he craved.
Because out here he was in control. He could run as far as he wanted—further even than his body wanted to go.
And Gray liked being in control. He was used to it. Expected it.
He was in control of everything he did in both his business and his private life. He knew what he was doing and could plan with absolute confidence how things were going to work out.
By Gray’s reckoning, his father’s retirement should be no more than a blip on Manning’s radar—after all, it had been many years since Gordon Manning had spearheaded a project. For the past five years Gray had been Manning’s CEO in all but name. So Gordon’s retirement was nothing more than a formality. Nothing would change except he’d eventually have to repurpose his dad’s offices.
That was how it was supposed to be happening.
It was still how Gray thought it should have happened.
But it hadn’t.
Things had changed.
That irritating e-mail from the suddenly cautious investor was just one example. Not of many—far from it—but enough to frustrate the hell out of Gray.
An extra question here or there shouldn’t bother him. Or decisions taking longer than he felt they should. Or even that subtle, almost but not quite imperceptible shift in the atmosphere at meetings...
Even Gray had to smile at that. Since when had he been so sensitive to a change in feel?
Well, whatever it was that had changed—it had. And it did bother him. Because it wasn’t just an irritation...all these questions and atmosphere-shifts...it had the potential to impact his bottom line.
In fact it already was.
And Gray was not going to tolerate that.
In his peripheral vision, Gray noticed a lone figure walking near the dunes. As he glanced in her direction the woman waved, while her other hand firmly held an oversized floppy hat to her head.
Automatically Gray waved back, then refocussed. Deliberately he crossed from the wet sand to the dry, wanting the extra demand on his muscles the deep, soft sand forced from his body.
It turned out that, despite the many years since his dad had actually led a Manning project, for some of his clients Gordon Manning had been a very real and very important presence—somewhere behind the scenes.
The reality that it had truly been Gray they’d been working with—not Gray as Gordon’s mouthpiece—didn’t matter, and that exasperated Gray.
He deserved the trust he thought he’d already earned. He deserved his stature in Australia’s business community.
A larger wave pushed far up the beach and Gray’s bare feet splashed through foamy puddles as the water slid back into the ocean.
It also annoyed him that he hadn’t realised this reality. That he hadn’t fully understood what it meant to be Gordon Manning’s son, regardless of his own track record and years of success.
So it was frustrating and exasperating and irritating...
But it was also...
Gray’s time.
Now was his time to prove himself.
And nothing could be allowed to stand in his way.
* * *
Lanie dropped her arm as Gray disappeared into the distance. He’d waved each morning since she’d started at Manning, although he’d shown no sign of realising she was the woman he’d been so rude to on the beach that morning of the relay final. Now, knowing Gray, she doubted he ever would.
She’d considered telling him—but what would that achieve?
Lanie knew the answer to that: a blank stare, followed directly by a look that said Why are you wasting my time with this?
That was a look she was quickly becoming familiar with. At least now she didn’t take it personally. Pretty much everything not immediately related to Manning and preferably relevant right at that moment elicited exactly that look.
‘Which hotel would you like me to book for you in Adelaide?’
When he’d discovered he was not, in fact, booked into his favourite hotel, he’d booked himself in, then sent Lanie a helpful e-mail with the name of the ‘correct’ hotel for next time.
‘For that presentation tomorrow, would you like me to include the numbers from the Jameson project?’
Turned out she’d guessed right with that one...
So a returned wave each morning was both unexpected and welcome. Although ignoring the woman he worked with every single day would have been quite a stretch—even for Gray.
With Gray and Luther little more than specks in the distance, Lanie started walking again and allowed her thoughts to circle back to where they’d been before the flash of Luther’s red coat against the sand had distracted her.
It would be odd, she’d just decided, if she wasn’t jealous of her sister.
Wouldn’t it?
She didn’t know. It was what had got her out of the house so ridiculously early on a work day. She needed the beach. The space, the salt and the sound of the waves... It was all as familiar to her as breathing.
Water had always helped her. Whether chlorinated or not, it was where she gravitated at times of stress. When her dad had left it had seemed natural. He was, after all, the reason she loved water. With an offshore mining job he’d rarely been home—but when he had he’d spent all his time at the beach.
As an adult, she looked back and wondered whether he’d simply tolerated the fact she’d clung to him like a limpet when he was home—rather than her more romanticised version in which she’d told herself she’d been his swimming buddy.
Because surely if he’d really wanted her there he would have bothered to stay in touch after he’d left. Or not left at all.
But if nothing else he’d given Lanie her love of water and the genes that helped her swim very quickly through it.
It had been a mistake to skip the beach earlier in the week. She needed to rectify it. Even today, with the wind whipping off the waves and gluing her long cargo trousers and thin woollen jumper to her skin, it was the right place for her to attempt to organise her thoughts and her reactions.
Sienna had e-mailed her overnight, full of post-championships euphoria. From the magnificence of the closing ceremony to how much fun she was having, through to how she was dealing with the rabid tabloid press after being seen out on a date with a British rower.
Lanie had seen the photos—and the headlines—as they’d made it to Australia too. ‘Golden couple’. ‘Winners in love’.
Jealousy? Whatever it was she was feeling, she hadn’t defined it.
Until Sienna’s e-mail.
It hadn’t been until right at the end, amongst all the glitz and excitement, that her sister had acknowledged how Lanie might be feeling. Her sister wasn’t stupid, or heartless. A bit oblivious at times—but then, that was Sienna.
Somehow, though, Sienna’s awkward attempts at making the contrast in their situations seem somehow okay had hit home harder than anything else.
How are you doing? It wasn’t the same without you. You should be so proud of your personal best, though. Any other year you definitely would’ve made the team.
And so here she was, at the beach.
Walking today, not swimming—but the scale and scope of the ocean helped, just as she’d known it would.
She envied Sienna. She was jealous.
Today she allowed herself to be.
FOUR
The unexpected sensation of warmth against his chest snatched Gray’s attention from the report he’d been reading. He glanced downwards, to discover a trail of pale brown liquid trickling in multiple rivulets down his front.
A brief perusal of the obvious culprit—the takeaway coffee cup in his hand—revealed a leak beneath the lid.
He swore. Loudly. He had a meeting right in this office in less than twenty minutes.
Tossing the defective lid into the bin beneath his desk, Gray downed the rest of his coffee as he tapped a short message into Manning’s internal instant messaging system.
Moments later his office door swung open, although Lanie paused before walking in. ‘You said you had a problem?’ she asked.
He stood, his gaze moving downwards as he surveyed the damage to his shirt and pulled the damp fabric away from his skin. With the other hand he gestured for Lanie to come closer.
Moments later her long, efficient stride had her by his side. ‘Nice one,’ she said, a hint of a smile in her tone. ‘I don’t suppose you have a spare shirt?’
‘If I did,’ he said, for the first time transferring his attention from the shirt to Lanie, ‘would I—?’
His eyes met hers and he momentarily had absolutely no idea what he’d been about to say.
She stood closer than he’d expected. Or maybe it was just her height. When she was in her heels they were very nearly eye to eye, and he still wasn’t quite used to that sensation.
Plus today she looked...different.
Her hair, he realised. It was tied back. It highlighted the striking structure of her face—the defined cheekbones, the firm chin—and her skin’s perfect golden glow.
He’d thought her pretty when he’d first met her, but right now she looked...
As he watched she raised an eyebrow.
Gray blinked. ‘If I had a spare shirt...’ he tried again ‘...would I need you?’
He looked down at his ruined clothing again, yanking his mind back on track. So what if he’d noticed Lanie looked nice today?
Lanie crossed her arms in front of herself. ‘What size are you?’ she asked.
Not for the first time she’d pre-empted his next question.
‘I have no idea.’
She didn’t bother to hide her sigh. ‘How can you not know that?’
Gray shrugged. ‘I shop in bulk. Those couple of times a year I shop, I figure out what size I am then.’
He reached for his shirt, automatically sliding button after button undone. He’d tugged it off his shoulders and gathered the fabric in his hands before he noticed Lanie had backed off a few steps and was currently staring out the window.
‘This is how I normally work out my size,’ he explained, finding the tag beneath the collar. ‘There you go. Turns out I wear a forty-two-inch shirt.’
‘And you’d like me to go buy you a replacement?’
‘Exactly.’
Not meeting his eyes, Lanie turned away from the window and took a step back towards the door. ‘You know, I could’ve just checked the tag for you. No need to...’ a pause ‘...undress.’
For the first time Gray noticed the tinge of pink to her cheekbones. He suspected the right thing to do would be to apologise. But with the words right on the tip of his tongue he paused.
