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‘Let me guess. You’re trying to impress me by remembering my favourites after all these years?’
‘Not really.’ He pushed around the sugar sachets in the stainless steel container with his fingertip. ‘Hard for a guy to forget when you had the same boring order every time we studied for those stupid Biology spot tests.’
She ignored his ‘boring’ barb. Pity.
‘Remember the plant collection assignment?’ She winced. ‘Just thinking about poison ivy makes me itchy.’
‘Though it wasn’t all bad.’ He edged closer and lowered his voice. ‘As I recall, the human body component in last semester proved highly entertaining.’
Her withering glare radiated disapproval. The arrival of her coffee and macaron saved her from responding.
He let her off the hook. Plenty of time to stroll down memory lane if she wowed him with her presentation, as he expected, and they ended up working together.
It would be interesting, seeing if the old bait and switch that had underpinned their relationship in high school would apply now. If her responses to him so far were any indication, not much had changed. He relished the challenge of making her loosen up. She thrived on proving that anything he said annoyed the crap out of her.
She’d change her attitude if Fourde Fashion brought Sea-borns on board for this campaign. And if that happened he should change his attitude too.
He needed this business venture to thrive, and he needed to be on top of his game to do it. Invincible. And he knew Sapphire could help him do it.
There might not have been so much at stake in high school, bar a pass or fail grade, but he hadn’t forgotten her ability to command and conquer. If she brought half that chutzpah to her presentation tomorrow he had a feeling Fourde Fashion working with Seaborns for Fashion Week couldn’t fail.
And that, in turn, would launch his plans—the ones ensuring the entire fashion world, including his folks, would finally forgive the mistakes of his past and recognise there was more to him than his family name.
‘Fill me in on what you’ve been up to.’
An eyebrow inverted as she stared at him over the rim of her cappuccino glass. ‘In the last decade?’
‘Give me the abbreviated version.’
‘The usual. Taking over the business. Working my butt off to make it thrive.’ Shadows darkened her blue eyes to midnight before she glanced away.
Damn. How dumb could he be? He’d forgotten all about passing on his condolences. ‘Sorry about your mum.’
‘I am too.’ She cradled her coffee glass, determinedly staring into its contents.
‘You must miss her?’
‘Every day.’
With a suddenness that surprised him she placed her glass on the table and jabbed a finger in his direction. ‘Her drive and vivacity and tenaciousness were legendary. And that’s exactly what you’ll get a taste of in my presentation tomorrow.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
He was surprised by her mood swings: pensive one moment, wary the next. The old Sapphire would never let anyone get under her guard—least of all him.
Which begged the question: what had happened to make her so…edgy?
‘No significant others?’
A faint pink stained her cheeks again, highlighting the incredible blueness of her eyes—the same shade as the precious stone she was named after.
‘Haven’t had time.’ She picked up her glass again, using it as a security measure. ‘Work keeps me busy.’
‘Will you fling that macaron at me if I quote you the old “all work and no play” angle?’
‘No, because I’ve heard it all before.’ Her fingers clutched the glass so tightly her knuckles stood out. ‘Besides, I play.’
Defensive and nervous. Yep, definitely not the woman he remembered.
‘How?’
She frowned. ‘How what?’
‘How do you play? What do you do for kicks?’
The fact that she screwed up her nose to think and took for ever to answer spoke volumes.
‘You’re a workaholic.’
She puffed up with indignation. ‘I do other stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘Yoga. Pilates. Meditation.’
He laughed, unable to mesh a vision of the long-striding, book-wielding girl going places with an image of Sapphire sitting still long enough to contemplate anything beyond Sea-borns’ profit margins.
‘What’s so funny?’
He shrugged and stirred his espresso. ‘You’re different than how I remember.’
Tension pinched the corners of her mouth. ‘I was a kid back then.’
‘No, you were a young woman on the verge of greatness. And I’m having a hard time reconciling my memory of you then with who you are now.’
He willed her to look at him, and when she did the fear in her gaze made him want to bundle her into his arms.
Closely followed by a mental what the hell? He’d learned the last time that Sapphire didn’t value his comfort and he’d be an idiot to be taken in by her vulnerability again. For all he knew she could be using it as a ploy to soften him up before the presentation tomorrow.
‘I’m still the same person in here,’ she murmured, pressing her hand to her chest. But the slight wobble of her bottom lip told him otherwise.
She wasn’t the same, not by a long shot, and it irked that deep down, in a metrosexual place he rarely acknowledged, he actually cared. Crazy when he didn’t really know her, had never known her beyond being someone to tease unmercifully for the simple fact she’d made it easy.
He could have probed and prodded and grilled her some more, but she seemed so defenceless, so broken, he didn’t have the heart to do it.
So he reverted to type.
‘Maybe it’s the casual exercise gear that threw me?’ He winked. ‘I much prefer you in a school uniform.’
‘You’re a sick man,’ she said, the glint of amusement in her eyes vindication that he’d done the right thing in not pushing her.
‘Well, then, maybe you should don a nurse’s uniform instead and—’
‘Unbelievable.’ She pursed lips in disapproval and his chest tightened inexplicably. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘You have.’ On impulse he touched the back of her hand and she eased it away, grabbing a teaspoon to scoop milk froth off the top of her cappuccino.
‘Ten years is a long time—what did you expect? To find me dissecting frogs and acing element quizzes?’
He couldn’t figure why she vacillated all over the place but there was something wrong here, some part of the bigger picture he wasn’t seeing, and if he were relying on her to help push Fourde Fashion into the stratosphere he needed to know what he was dealing with.
It was good business sense. It was an excuse for his concern and he was sticking to it.
‘Did you stop to consider my kiss may have ruined you for other men?’
Her eyes widened in shock at his deliberately outrageous taunt a second before she picked up several sugar sachets and flung them. He caught the lot in one hand.
He’d wanted a reaction and he’d got it. It was a start.
‘Newsflash: that kiss meant nothing. You caught me at a bad time and it ended up being two hormonal teens making out in a moment of madness.’ She crossed her arms and glared, outraged and defiant. ‘And I think it’s poor form, you bringing it up a decade later when we’re potentially on the verge of working together.’
‘Another thing that’s changed. You used to be brutally honest. Saying that kiss meant nothing?’ He tsk-tsked. ‘Never thought I’d see the day when you told a fib.’
He baited her again, wondering how far she’d go before he got a glimpse at the truth. He moved the sugar out of her reach just in case.
‘I’m not playing this game with you.’ She slammed her palms on the table and leaned forward, blue eyes flashing fire. ‘No reminiscing or teasing. No pretending to be buddies. And definitely no talk of kissing.’
She waved a hand between them.
‘You and me? Potential work colleagues. Our aim? To make our businesses a lot of money. So quit pretending to be my best buddy, because I don’t need a friend—I need a guarantee.’
Ouch. This brutal honesty he remembered.
‘Of what?’
‘That you’ll give me a fair hearing tomorrow and you’ll judge my presentation on merit and not on our past rel—friendship.’
‘You can say it, you know.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his exaggerated whisper. ‘Rel-a-tion-ship.’
When she swore, he almost fist-pumped the air. This was more like it. Sapphire riled and feisty. He could handle her this way, firing quips and barbs to get a rise. The withdrawn, almost melancholic woman she’d been a few minutes ago confused the hell out of him.
‘This is important to me,’ she said, her tone low and ominous. ‘You may have it easy, being given a subsidiary of your folks’ company to play with while you’re in Melbourne for however long you care to stick around. Me? Seaborns is everything, and I’ll do whatever it takes, including aligning our jewellery with your fashion, to ensure my company is never threatened again.’
Not much made Patrick quick to anger—bar anyone casting aspersions on how hard he worked.
He’d had a gutful of people doubting him. Doubting his capabilities, doubting his creativity, doubting his business brain.
It was why he’d leapt at the chance to head up this new branch. It was why his main goal was to show the world what he was made of. He intended to prove all the doubters wrong—including his parents.
Patrick Fourde had left the mistakes of his past behind and he had what it took to be a success beyond the family name and all it stood for.
‘Are you done?’
Something in his tone must have alerted her to his inner frustration, for she slumped back into her chair and held up her hands in surrender.
‘Sorry.’
‘No, you’re not. You believe all that crap.’
Just as his folks believed Jacques had single-handedly come up with the concept for the spring collection that had set the couture gowns sales in Paris soaring.
It had been the first time in ten years they’d given him another chance to work on a primary showing, collaborating on the spring collection alongside Jacques. Maybe they expected him to be eternally grateful, maybe they expected him to stuff up again, but never had they considered for one second he’d been the creative genius behind it.
He’d waited for their acknowledgment that he’d made amends for his monumental stuff-up when he’d first started with the company, waited for an encouraging word.
All he’d got was begrudging thanks for being part of a successful team.
Pride had kept him from confessing his true role and he’d realised something. Until he proved he’d put the past behind him on his own no one would believe him.
Least of all himself.
And it was at that moment he’d made his decision.
Making a success of the Australian branch of Fourde Fashion wasn’t debatable. It was imperative.
He needed to do this.
For him.
He’d accept nothing less than being the highest-grossing branch in the company—and that included topping their long-established French connection. Closely followed by putting his secret plan into action.
And he was looking at the one woman who could help make that happen.
‘You think I’m some lazy, indulged, rich playboy who gets by on his charm and little else.’
She couldn’t look him in the eye—vindication that he was spot-on in her assessment of him.
‘You never did give me any credit.’
Her mouth opened and closed, as if she’d wanted to respond and thought better of it. But her eyes didn’t lie, and their shameful regret made him want to thump something at the injustice of being judged so harshly.
‘Irrelevant, because my work will speak for itself.’
He expected to see scepticism.
He saw admiration and it went some way to soothing his inner wildness.
‘Okay, then, I guess we both have something to prove.’ She nodded, tapped her bottom lip, pondered. ‘From here on in a clean slate.’
