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But … ‘Excellent,’ Allie was saying and the pressure on his hand intensified. Strong and warm—and very, very unsettling. ‘Matt is nice and easy to say,’ she decreed. ‘And it makes you sound far less toffy. We can relax around nice, plain Matt.’
‘Nice and plain? Says you who’s about to force me into spangly top hat and tails.’
‘There is that,’ she said and she chuckled. ‘Matt and Maestro seem a fearsome combination. For the next two weeks you’re our hero. We’ll like you in both personas, and we can forget about Mathew the Banker entirely.’
Matt or Maestro? He was thrown off balance by both. He shouldn’t answer to either. He felt … he felt …
Okay, he didn’t know how he felt. He had an almost overwhelming urge to head back to Margot’s, climb into his gorgeous car and go home to Sydney. Taking leave had been a bad idea.
He’d done it to say goodbye to Margot but now Margot had no intention of dying, at least for the next two weeks.
If he left, would she still die?
If he left they’d have no ringmaster. And more. Allie had the weight of this whole organisation on her shoulders. How could he walk away? He couldn’t walk away from Allie, he couldn’t walk away from Margot, but cool, contained Mathew Bond was feeling way out of his comfort zone.
Allie left him to dress herself. He put on his uniform and stared at himself in Henry’s mirror and thought … what was he doing here?
He knew what he was doing here. He had no choice.
A knock on the van door signalled Allie’s return. She’d transformed into Mischka faster than he’d thought possible. How on earth had she applied those eyelashes? They were … extraordinary.
‘I’m glad ringmasters don’t need fake eyelashes,’ he said faintly and she grinned.
‘You’d look awesome. I have spares if you’d like.’
‘Thank you, but no.’
‘No?’ She was teasing again, her sparkle returning with her spangles, and he felt like applauding the courage she was showing.
And the way she looked.
And the way she smiled …
‘I’m ready,’ he said, more roughly than he’d intended, and he stepped down from the van, but she didn’t move back like he’d thought she would.
‘The vet says you gave him your credit card details and all the veterinary costs of the camels are on you,’ she said and she was still far too close.
‘I … yes.’ He hesitated. ‘The circus is in receivership. That’s what receivers do.’
‘What, throw good money after bad? You realise these camels aren’t worth anything? They stand up and get down and kneel, and they don’t bite but there’s not much else I can teach them. Saving them isn’t a financial decision.’
‘No,’ he said and she looked up at him.
He was still too close.
She was still too close.
‘So it’s nothing about receivership and I do need to thank you,’ she said, and suddenly the desire to reach forward and touch her was almost overwhelming.
Almost. They were in full view of the crowd assembling for the performance. Any move he made now would be a public move, and he had no intention of making a public move.
Or any move, he told himself harshly. No move at all.
‘So let’s get this circus moving,’ she said a bit breathlessly, and her breathlessness told him she was as aware of him as he was of her—which was another reason for him to step back. And step back he did.
‘Let’s go show some eyelashes,’ he managed.
‘One set of eyelashes,’ she said and grinned. ‘Coward.’
‘Story of my life,’ he said and turned and headed for the circus.
Despite the chaos of the morning, the circus ran like well oiled clockwork. The ponies and dogs did their stuff without the camels. The act was a bit shorter than usual and not so impressive—but then Mischka moved seamlessly into a performance with just the dogs and he stopped thinking not impressive. He started thinking the opposite. Quite simply, Mischka and her two nondescript dogs left him awed.
One girl in silver sparkles, dancing, turning, tumbling. Two adoring dogs following every move.
They’d do anything for her, he thought, as he watched them from his position ringside. She wasn’t feeding them, bribing them or even talking to them. She moved and they moved, like shadows beside her, in front of her, behind her, depending on her direction. She danced backward, they were up on their hind legs strutting forward. She danced forward, they did the same thing backward. She tumbled, they turned somersaults with her. She spun, they spun.
She stood on her head and they jumped across her spread legs and turned in crazy circles around her head. The crowd went wild.
She stood and bowed and the dogs bowed with her. A camera flashed in the front row and he was momentarily distracted—no cameras were allowed and it was in the list of things he was supposed to watch for as ringmaster—but the guy put the camera away fast as soon as he saw Matt watching him, and Matt thought—why wouldn’t you want to take a picture of this girl and these dogs?
‘Why doesn’t she put this act on all the time?’ he asked Fizz as Allie and her dogs disappeared behind the curtains. Fluffy was out in the centre of the ring, setting up the next joke. Fizz and Mathew had a fraction of time to speak.
‘It takes too much out of her,’ Fizz said. ‘That’s an amazing acrobatic performance and she still has to do the trapeze act. She’s so good we could just about run the circus around her only she’d fall in a heap.’ He frowned then and glowered at Matt and Matt knew he wasn’t Matt in this guy’s eyes. He was the guy who was pulling the rug from under all of them. ‘She’s falling in a heap anyway. She’s not eating. She’s not sleeping. Her van light was on all last night, and when we bullied her to eat breakfast this morning she looked like she was going to throw up. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing any of us can do.’
He didn’t wait for a response—maybe because he knew Matt didn’t have an answer to give.
Instead he pinned on his clown grin, he bounced out to join Fluffy and the circus went on.
They took their bows as usual, they started clearing, ready for the evening performance in four hours, and at some stage Allie realised their ringmaster was no longer among them.
Fair enough, she thought as she worked on. He had his own life. He’d agreed to play ringmaster. That didn’t mean he had to be hands-on, a true member of the circus troupe.
So why did she feel … empty?
No reason at all, she told herself. She had enough to worry about without Mathew … Matt Bond’s continual presence. He sort of … unnerved her.
He’d kissed her.
She’d been kissed before. No big deal.
Yes, but Mathew Bond was a big deal.
‘He’s Matt,’ she told herself and she said it out loud as if the words could somehow make him ordinary.
He wasn’t ordinary.
He’d saved her camel.
He was killing her circus.
No. It wasn’t him, she told herself fairly. She couldn’t hold it against him. Her grandfather had killed the circus the moment he’d taken out that loan, and he’d taken out the loan because of her.
The guilt was killing her.
Everything was killing her. There were so many emotions—and overriding them all was the image of one sexy banker.
But it wasn’t just that he was sexy, she thought. Yes, there was an element—or more than an element—of reaction to the fact that he was drop dead gorgeous and he had a killer smile and when he touched her, her body burned—but there was also the way he swept into the ring as if he owned it. There was the way he’d caught the children’s interest today and turned kids and trainee teachers from antagonistic to gunning for Cleo all the way. There was the way he’d paid the vet’s bills, which would be huge. She knew it was a small amount for him but he hadn’t had to do it, and he’d smiled at her and looked worried about Cleo, and he’d stopped the cop shooting her—and then, when she’d asked about his name and he’d said Matt, he’d looked as if she’d pierced something that hurt. A lot.
There were complexities within the man and she was intrigued as well as attracted, but she’d better not be either she told herself, because being attracted to the banker was just plain dumb. Letting him kiss her had been dumb. It was the way to get her life into an even deeper mess than it already was.
‘Just do what comes next,’ she told herself, so she did. She finished clearing up. She had three hours before the evening performance. She checked her camels again, and then changed into respectable and went to the hospital to see Henry and Bella.
It didn’t help. Her grandmother looked worse than her grandpa. It was as if everything was being taken away from her, and the only thing she had to cling to was Henry.
So what was there for Allie to cling to? she thought bleakly as she left them.
Her grey mood was threatening to overwhelm her. She had to get herself together, she told herself harshly. There was another show to put on tonight.
She was so tired all she wanted to do was crawl under a log somewhere and sleep.
She walked out of the main entrance to the hospital—and a gorgeous British Racing Green Rover was sitting in the car park. And Mathew/Matt/Maestro, or whoever this man was, was leaning against the driver’s door as if he had all the time in the world to wait, and with one look she knew he was waiting for her.
With her dogs?
Tinkerbelle and Fairy were in the car, their little heads hanging out of the window, their tails wagging almost enough to vibrate the car. What on earth were they doing here? They should be ready for the show. She should be ready for the show.
She glanced at her watch. No, she still had two and a half hours. She was so tired she was losing sense of time.
‘Hi,’ he said as she walked—very slowly—down the steps towards him. Her legs didn’t seem like they wanted to carry her.
‘H … hi,’ she ventured back.
‘Fizz tells me you’re not eating,’ he said gently as she reached him. ‘He said you didn’t eat breakfast and you hardly touched lunch. He checked the fridge in your van and he’s horrified. I’ve just bullied Margot into eating dinner and now it’s your turn. Hop in the car, Allie. We’re going to eat.’
What could a girl do except climb into his gorgeous car and hug her ecstatic dogs and wait for him to tell her what he was about to do with her?
How pathetic was that? But in truth Allie had gone past pathetic. She hadn’t slept. She’d spent the morning being terrified for her camels. She’d given a performance which took every ounce of energy she possessed, she’d spent time with an emotional, devastated set of grandparents, and somehow she had to gear up for another performance tonight.
If a tsunami swept inland now, she thought, she didn’t have the energy to run.
She didn’t want to run. She wanted to sink back into the gorgeous leather seats of Matt’s fabulous car and simply stop.
He seemed to sense it. He didn’t speak, just quietly climbed into the driver’s seat and set the big motor purring towards the sea.
He paused at the strip of shops on the esplanade and disappeared into the fish shop. She could climb out and go home, she thought as she waited, but it’d seem ungrateful. The dogs were on her knees, and they were heavy. She didn’t have the energy to push them off and, quite simply, she was past making such a decision.
Passive R Us, she thought mutely, but she didn’t even begin to smile.
Mathew returned, booted the dogs into the back seat and handed her the parcel of fish and chips—a big, fat bundle of warmth. He glanced at her sharply and then nosed the car away from the shops, around the headland, away from the town.
He pulled into a reserve on the far side of the headland, by a table and benches overlooking the sea.
‘Is it okay to let the dogs loose?’ he asked, and she had enough energy to think thank heaven the dogs weren’t white and fluffy; they were plain, scruffy brown. They could tear in crazy circles on the sand and still look presentable for the show. So that was what they did while Matt produced a tablecloth from the back of the car—linen?—plates, cutlery, napkins, glassware—and then he fetched the parcel from her knees and placed it reverently in the middle of his beautifully laid table.
‘Dinner, my lady,’ he intoned in the voice of Very Serious Butler, ‘is served.’
The ridiculousness of the whole tableau was enough to shake her lethargy. Haziness receded. She climbed from the car and looked at the table in astonishment. The council picnic table was transformed into an elegant dining setting. Gum trees were hanging overhead, filled with corellas, vivid green and red parrots coming to perch for the night. Behind them were miles of glorious beach, no vestige of wind, the only sound being the soft hush of the surf and the calls of the sandpipers darting back and forth on the wet sand. Down on the beach Fairy and Tinkerbelle were digging their way to China in a setting that was so picturesque it took her breath away.
This was Fish and Chips with Style.
‘Margot and I had a discussion,’ Matt said, leading her to the table simply by taking her hand and tugging. ‘Margot thought I should take you out to dinner, somewhere fancy. I thought you might like to sit on the beach. We’ve compromised. This is Margot’s idea of picnic requirements. She can be quite insistent for someone who’s almost dead.’
‘She’s very much alive,’ Allie managed. ‘Mathew, I should go back …’
‘Did we agree it was Matt?’
‘Nobody calls you Matt.’
‘No,’ he said and she couldn’t figure whether there was regret there or not. No matter, he was moving on. ‘But you do. Please.’ He unwrapped the paper to expose slivers of golden crumbed fish fillets and gorgeous crunchy chips. He poured lemonade into the crystal glasswear.
‘I know wine matches the setting,’ he said. ‘But you have to hang upside down tonight and I don’t want you sleeping on the job.’
‘No, Maestro,’ she said and he chuckled.
‘Excellent. Maybe I need to be Maestro tonight. The boss.’ He saw her hesitation and he placed his hand on her shoulder in a fleeting gesture of reassurance. ‘Allie, the circus crew knows where you are—they concur with my plan to give you a couple of hours off. They’re doing everything needed so you can walk back in the gates at twenty past seven, don your false eyelashes and go straight to the ring. So you have two full hours to eat and to sleep.’
‘I could go back to the circus and sleep.’
‘Would you sleep?’ He headed to the back of the car and hauled out a massive picnic rug and a load of cushions. ‘You might nap,’ he conceded, ‘but you can nap here. Herewith a beach bed, my lady, for when you’ve polished off enough fish and chips to keep me happy.’
And then he sat beside her and ate fish and chips and looked out at the sea and he didn’t say a word—and she could eat fish and chips or not—no pressure—but the pressure was insidious. The late afternoon sun was gorgeous. The dogs were deliriously happy. She was suddenly … almost happy.
It was the setting, she told herself, feeling totally disoriented. The beach was gorgeous. The fish and chips were gorgeous.
Matt was gorgeous.
Whoa … Concentrate on fish and chips, she told herself fiercely, and don’t think any further.
For gorgeous was scary.
Once Allie had disposed of enough food to satisfy him—which was a lot—Matt once again refused her a choice. He pointed to the rug and the pillows and he gave his orders.
‘Lie. Sleep.’
‘I can’t just lie out here in public …’
‘Why not? The sun’s great. No one’s around. I’m not asking you to sunbathe naked.’
