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If she wasn’t a possible love interest for Chris, then who was she? His interest stirred, he did as he was told, sidling over and sitting beside her, one leg hooking up to cross on top of the other and his arms reaching out to lie across the back of the long leather couch.
‘I should have done this better,’ she said, holding out a slim ringless hand. ‘I’m Cara Marlowe.’
He shook her hand, taking a moment to enjoy the crisp, cool contact. But he waited for her to talk. He found that another good tactic. Most people could not leave silence well alone and they were more likely to fill it with interesting information than if they were questioned directly.
‘I am going to be Chris’s stylist for the duration of the shoot. It will be my job to dress him.’
‘Dress him?’
‘Choose his outfits,’ she explained. She then reached out and touched his knee, her voice affecting the tones of a New York gossip show host. ‘Honey, if I had to actually dress the guy, I’d be asking for a lot more money!’
Adam glanced at her slim hand resting on his knee. It felt nice until it recoiled as though scorched, then moved to slap across her unruly mouth.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a tad overexcited right now. First I get the job of a lifetime and then I meet a real live Australian Businessman of the Year. I would love to talk to you about that some time. Sorry. There I go again. Taking liberties with a practical stranger. My tongue tends to have a mind of its own when my adrenalin is off and running.’
He gave her a slight nod, though he was again quietly stunned. She knew about his award too? And she was obviously a heck of a lot more impressed with that than with his bank balance. In Adam’s long experience with women, this one was proving to be more unusual with every word that came from her lovely mouth.
She was an enigma wrapped in a very enticing dress. A girl with a good head on her shoulders, and a seriously charming face to boot. A woman with such a sexy, husky kick to her voice it could lure sailors to dash their ships upon mountains of rock, whose words spoke, not of the expected sly seduction, but of exuberant enthusiasm for her job.
No matter whom Chris was destined to date on the show, it seemed he would have at least one socially aware woman on set with whom to shoot the breeze. Struck curiously dumb by the thought, Adam once more decided it best to let her do the talking.
And she did.
‘So, since they will have your friend Chris tied up for the next couple of hours, let’s get out of here and have a natter.’
Even despite becoming lost in those expressive eyes, he somehow managed to pick out the pertinent information. A couple of hours until he saw Chris again? If he had to sit in the dull room for a second longer he would explode even if he was in the company of such an engaging woman.
Secondly, Adam knew when a golden opportunity landed in his lap. He couldn’t hide the smile that began to warm him from the inside out. She was to be Chris’s stylist. Thoughts of Chris in bizarre golfing outfits or excessive amounts of tartan wove their way through his devious mind. If he couldn’t convince Chris he was doing the wrong thing, here was the perfect opportunity to interrupt the process from an entirely unrelated angle.
‘It seems that you and I are destined to have a lunch date.’
‘Excellent,’ she said.
Adam stood, holding out an elbow in invitation. ‘Well, then, Ms Marlowe, shall we?’
‘Only if you call me Cara,’ she said, standing, placing a hand lightly in the crook of his offered arm. Her beguiling smile giving him a third reason to accept the lunch offer with increasing pleasure.
Cara watched Adam from the corner of her eye as she perused the large menu in the lovely little bistro around the corner.
I am having lunch with Adam Tyler, she thought, knowing she would rather be picking his brains about his business practices than about his friend.
As a connoisseur of stories about locals made good, she knew the highlights of his career as reported inside and outside of the business pages. Inside were tales of a marketing guru, part-owner of the fastest growing company in Australia. Awards and plaudits followed in his wake like tin cans clattering along behind a wedding car. Outside the business pages he was more well known for being a playboy-billionaire type, not quite hip enough to make it onto the cover of any of the supermarket gossip magazines, but certainly fascinating enough to grace their social pages time and again.
No wonder too. In the flesh he was pretty darned gorgeous. He oozed manliness, from the woodsy scent of his aftershave, to the easy way he wore his suits. From the practised nonchalance of every effortless movement, to the fact that that very nonchalance could not cover up the fact that his mind did not miss a beat behind those fierce, hooded eyes. Beneath the cool exterior beat the pulse of a brilliant, shrewd, powerful man to whom success on every front would have come all too easily.
And all she’d been able to do was go goo-goo and paw him and talk about bikinis and hot tubs. It was not exactly the impression she would have hoped to make on someone whose business acumen she greatly admired.
She found him looking her way, his eyes faintly questioning, and she knew she had been caught staring. She shot him a big cheesy grin, then went back to flicking through the menu.
The last thing she wanted was to be turning all gooey over some guy with money. And a billionaire? That was entirely out of the question. Money meant power. Money meant control. And Cara was not about to give any of her hard-earned power and control away.
Especially to one who, above and beyond the whole gorgeous, blue-eyed, strapping, silent man thing, was so obviously involved in The Billionaire Bachelor project against his will. He was trouble in a three-piece suit. No doubt about it.
‘You made up your mind?’ Adam asked.
‘You bet I have,’ she said, her voice deep with determination.
Then after a few seconds of ensuing silence she looked up to find the waiter smiling blandly at her. She quickly picked the first thing that came into focus to cover up the fact that she’d had no idea Adam had been asking about the meal.
‘So how does this all work?’ Adam asked once they had settled and begun their starters.
Cara opened her mouth to answer but then Jeff’s smiling face popped into her mind. ‘Tell a soul a thing and you will be out on your backside,’ he had said. ‘Great recommendations or not.’
‘Sorry,’ Cara said, ‘I’m not sure what I can really tell you. My contract has confidentiality clauses up the wazoo.’
‘You’ve already given away the title of the show.’
Her hands flew to cover her warming cheeks. ‘Oh, heavens, I have, haven’t I? I’m going to blow this before it even starts. You have permission to stuff a napkin in my mouth if I let it run away from me again.’
‘Thank you,’ Adam said, ‘that’s always worth knowing.’ He eyed her warily over his herb bread. ‘Anyway, I don’t mean about the show itself. I know more than I would like to about all that. I was wondering about specifics. For example, will Chris be at work tomorrow?’
‘Well, I guess I can tell you that it will take about two weeks. By tomorrow morning at the latest, all of those involved will be sequestered in the Ivy Hotel in the city. And nobody will be able to come and go unless authorised by the producers.’
She watched for Adam’s reaction to this news. When Jeff had told her she had all but freaked out, her mind running over with everything she would have to do that night to get her regular life up to date before she disappeared from the face of the earth. But this guy merely nodded and blinked and she had no idea if he was happy or sad or freaking out behind those dark blue eyes.
‘Why will you be sequestered, do you think?’ he asked.
‘To keep any of us from blabbing to the press.’
‘About what?’
‘The juicy details. The name of the show…’
Adam smiled and it was all Cara could do to go on, the charming appeal it brought to his strong face was so unexpected.
‘The star of the show,’ she continued. ‘The fact there even is a show. When word gets out, the producers want to control the spin. I’ve worked in the fashion biz for a number of years now and what it boils down to is the fact that sex sells. Television is sexy. Secrets are sexy. There is nothing sexier to eighteen-to-thirty-five-year-old women than a man so in tune with himself that he is openly looking for love. And the producers of the show want to reap the benefits.’
She finished her statement with a deep intake of breath. Now she was certain of it. The way he was watching her, weighing her words so carefully—this guy had ulterior motive written all over him. He smiled easily enough, and his body language certainly showed that he was open to anything she had to offer. Any conversation topic, she thought, giving herself a mental slap. But if for some reason he wanted this all to go away, she was pretty sure he would have his way. And it made her so nervous her chest hurt.
It sure didn’t help her nerves that he continued to be just as unreservedly attractive as he was when she first laid eyes on him. It would have been more helpful for her jitters if he slouched, or fixed his hair an inordinate number of times, or if he professed a predilection for polka music.
She took a sip of water to stem the urge to babble and her mind whizzed back, hoping desperately she had not said anything idiotic or anything she shouldn’t have. She was pretty sure she had done well. ‘That’s all I’m prepared to tell,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
He shrugged. A movement so slight she didn’t know if he’d really shrugged at all or if she’d just caught his essential indifference.
‘OK, then, back to the reason why we’re here,’ Cara said, deciding it was about time she took control of the conversation if she was to get anything useful out of him. ‘Tell me about Chris.’
‘What would you like to know?’ Adam asked.
‘What does he look like, for starters?’ Though Adam was recognisable to her, she could not have picked the other owners of Revolution Wireless out of a line-up if her job depended on it.
Adam blinked. She had already pegged the fact that he did that when he was biding his time. Cara bit her bottom lip. Time-biding was not on her list of most favourite things.
‘Does he look anything like you, for instance?’
‘In some ways, yes. In other ways not at all.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And what does he do for fun?’
This time the blink was different. It was loaded with thought. But she knew not what about.
‘He creates telecommunications innovations,’ Adam finally said.
Her lip-biting increased to a calorie-burning rate.
‘OK. So how do you two know each other? Just from work? What rings his bells? What sort of woman do you think he is trying to land?’
Give me anything, please!
‘We know each other from school.’
She waited for more but…nothing came.
‘Fantastic,’ she said, her patience finally running down. Sure, she had the job, but the last thing she needed was for it to work out so badly that she never worked again. Even with a mortgage paid off, a girl had city council rates and amenities to keep her working ad infinitum. And this guy had nothing to offer her but a bit of a crush.
‘Well, that’s all I needed,’ she said, refolding her napkin and making ready to leave. ‘Now I know he looks exactly yet nothing like you, he invents stuff for a living and he once went to school, I’m all set. With those specifics in mind I can now make sure he doesn’t look like a complete dud for the millions of people who will watch him eagle-eyed every week.’
‘Wait,’ Adam said, his hand landing atop hers.
Cara let out a nervous breath, seriously glad her bluff had worked. She sat down slowly and shot him her best blasé expression, but she knew already she was up against a professional in that department.
This time she waited for him to talk. If she was sitting with the best she might as well learn from him. And after a few seconds of duelling silence she realised that his hand was still atop hers.
Her gaze flittered down. His hand captured her attention once again. It was big and broad and tanned, especially lying on top of her own, which was small and pale. As she stared the silence changed. It became thick and noisy with unuttered complications.
Slowly she slipped her hand away and he didn’t stop her. She bit her lip to bring herself back to the present, then looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Adam, please tell me about your friend so I can make this as easy for him as I can.’
Adam had been ready to convince the girl to have Chris decked out with spats and a walking stick if that was what it would take to have his friend give up the game. But with her looking at him like that, beseeching, pleading, he found himself wilting. He told himself it was only because she made a good point.
It was in her power to make Chris look like an idiot. And when she had asked what Chris did for fun, Adam had baulked because he knew that Chris did nothing. Chris had worked tirelessly for years to achieve their joint goal, and now he was simply asking for some ‘him’ time. Didn’t he deserve at least that much?
‘So you really don’t know what he looks like?’ Adam asked.
She shook her head, slowly, as though if she went any faster he would not be able to keep up. ‘Nope. Not a bit. I have no idea if he’s old, young, thin, fat, balding or has a glorious head of hair.’
It was fair enough that she didn’t. Come to think of it, he was the only one who seemed to end up in any of those other types of magazines, the ones that the guys at work liked to snip out and stick on the corkboard in the kitchenette.
Cara blinked at him, her lashes sweeping down onto her cheeks in a look that spoke of pure and simple time-biding. And it took him a second to recover. He had to remind himself of the good-head-behind-the-pretty-face theory he had stumbled onto earlier.
Adam shifted in his seat, unused to being on the receiving end of his own tricks. This woman was a quick learner and he knew then and there he would have to stay on his toes. If this was to go smoothly for Chris, and thus work out to Revolution Wireless’s best advantage, he would have to keep a close eye on this one.
‘OK, then,’ Adam began, ‘first things first, Chris ain’t anywhere near brazen, so wipe that idea out right now. Picture a man…’
Cara leant forward, resting her chin on the heel of her palms as the guy across the table gave a rundown of the life and times of Chris Geyer. Stories of childhood antics, of bad dates, of a love of education, of a twenty-year friendship ran thick and fast. Cara listened with half an ear, smiling in all the right places, building up the idea of a friendly teddy-bear type whom she was more and more looking forward to meeting.
But the other half of her mind was focussed on the man telling the story. All efforts at nonchalance put aside, he became a charismatic, vibrant story-teller. Her nerves dissolved with every captivating word and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
She could tell that he usually hid behind his laconic attitude so that he could measure the world without it measuring him. But behind the attitude lurked the guy who ran one of the most successful marketing campaigns the country had ever seen. This was the guy who could sell cookies to Girl Guides, he was just that compelling.
As she often did when she met new people, Cara pictured how she would light him. If ever, one day, she had the chance to do so, it would be all about shadows, taking advantage of those fantastic cheekbones and that straight nose. She would brush his hair back a tad further, knowing that he would only curl up more inside himself and make himself that much more intriguing. The carefully constructed remoteness, the seriously attractive mystery, the gorgeous depths of those navy-blue eyes…
‘Don’t you need to take any notes?’ Adam asked, his hands stopping mid-demonstration of how a mobile phone was built.
Cara snapped back to the present with such a jolt, her elbow slipped off the table and she had to catch herself before her chin followed in its wake.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, lifting from his seat, reaching for her, his expression bright with surprise.
Bad. Bad Cara. What on earth had she been doing, daydreaming like that? Her attention had become wrapped in the words of some strapping stranger when her focus for the next two weeks should be blissfully caught up in the ins and outs of the most challenging and significant job of her life.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And no as well. I don’t need to take notes. Really.’ She jabbed furiously at her temple. ‘All stored up here.’
‘So are you a Cary Grant fan?’ he asked as he poured her a glass of wine.
Cara fought to remember a single word of his conversation and came up blank. ‘A who…what?’
Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘Cary Grant. Chris’s favourite actor? He’s in The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday…’
Cara shook her head hard to clear out the soft and fuzzies that had gathered therein. ‘Sure. Of course. I love Cary Grant. I think he’s marvellous. I can even do an impression if you’d like.’
‘No need. Really.’
She fully deserved Adam’s bemused smile.
‘So to recap, Chris is a great guy who loves Cary Grant, collects bells—’
‘Shells,’ Adam corrected, pouring himself a glass of wine.
‘Shells,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘And shells…sells telephones for a living.’
Adam nodded slowly. ‘In a nutshell, yes. And he deserves a toast, don’t you think, for being the one to bring us together for this lovely lunch?’
‘Who?’ Cara asked, the soft and fuzzies winning hands down. ‘Cary Grant?’
Adam laughed, his head shaking, his eyes bright with amused confusion. ‘Why the heck not?’ He lifted his glass. ‘To Cary Grant.’
Cara had had enough. Another second of this conversation and she would probably forget her own name. She stood, dropped her napkin to the arm of her chair and then didn’t know where to put her hands. ‘You’ve been a fantastic help, but it’s time for me to be…elsewhere. Thanks for lunch. And I guess I’ll…see you ’round like a rissole!’
Before she could plant her foot deeper in her mouth Cara took off. She weaved through the tightly packed restaurant tables with her mind on the task ahead. Get to the television station. Meet Chris. Do the best job she could. Keep said job. Take home pay. Own St Kilda Storeys. So long as she kept that mantra going through her head, she was unstoppable. Surely?
