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Amy looked into her wine glass. ‘I know … it’s okay. It was all a long time ago. How is Luke?’
There was an odd tremor in her voice which Willa instantly picked up. Amy and Luke had always had some sort of love-hate, weird reaction to each other that Willa could never quite put her finger on.
‘He’s fine … still single, still driven. He’s working on a massive hotel development in Singapore—the biggest of his career.’
Amy eventually raised her eyes to meet Willa’s. ‘Are you still in contact with the others from the resort? Brodie, Chantal, Scott?’
Willa shrugged. ‘Loosely, via social media and the very occasional e-mail. Chantal is still dancing, Scott is one of the city’s most brilliant young architects, and Brodie is the heart and soul of a company that runs luxury yacht tours down the Gold Coast. I haven’t seen them or socialised with them…. nothing has been the same since the week you and Brodie left.’
Happy to be off the subject of her dysfunctional marriage, Willa cast her mind back to that summer they’d spent in the Whitsundays, when a group of strangers had arrived at the very fancy Weeping Reef resort, ready and rocking to start a holiday season of working all day and having fun all night.
It still amazed her that the five of them—six if she included Luke—had clicked so well. They were such a mixed bag of personalities.
They’d laughed and loved and drunk and partied, and then laughed and loved and partied some more. They’d been really good at it, and the first two months of their summer holiday had flown past. Then their idyll had been shattered when two dreadful incidents had dumped a bucket of angst and recrimination and guilt over their magical interlude and ripped their clique apart.
And set Willa on a path that she now deeply regretted.
‘To go back a whole bunch of steps—we were talking about you and Wayne and what caused the split,’ Amy said, pulling her back to their conversation. She refilled their glasses and lifted an eyebrow.
‘Oh … that.’
‘Yes, that.’
How strange it was that after so long she and Amy could just fall into conversation as if it was yesterday … how strange and how right.
In the natural order of things they shouldn’t have been friends … Amy was bright and flirty and outgoing, and Willa was quiet and naïve and a lot less boisterous than her friend. She couldn’t just spill all the beans about her less than happy marriage—not even with Amy, so successful, confident, sophisticated. With Amy those qualities went deeper than her looks and clothes right into her psyche. Unlike Willa, whose confidence and sophistication was just a fabric layer deep.
‘I wanted to be something other than his pretty arm decoration. He didn’t see why being that wasn’t enough for me.’
‘It got ugly. I called him a balding, ageing git and he called me a shallow bimbo. The words “separation” and “divorce” emerged and we were both very happy with the idea.’
Amy closed her eyes in sympathy. ‘Sorry, Wills.’
Willa shrugged. ‘Eight months ago he booted me out of our apartment and into a waterfront mansion in Vaucluse—’
Amy whistled at the mention of the very upmarket Sydney suburb. ‘Why didn’t he move into the waterfront property?’
Willa smiled. ‘He hates water and open spaces. Anyway, he moved Young and Dumb into the apartment the afternoon I moved out. Now the divorce just needs its court date and I’ll be free!’
‘What are you going to do then?’
Willa shrugged. ‘Still working that out … I have a degree, but no experience, and—worse—no contacts. Money is not a problem, but time is. I battle to fill my day, and rattling around on my own in that mausoleum doesn’t help.’
She glanced at the Rolex on her wrist, a twenty-first birthday present from Wayne. It was boring enough living her life, she didn’t need to dissect it as well, so she attempted to change the subject.
‘We’ve been in here for about twenty minutes. Do you think my date from hell has got the hint?’
‘I told Guido to tell him that you weren’t interested.’
Amy shrugged at Willa’s quick, questioning look.
‘Hey, you wanted to make his brain explode. I thought I’d save you a prison sentence.’
‘True,’ Willa admitted as she stood up. ‘Okay, well … it was great seeing you but I suppose I should get home.’
‘To do more rattling?’ Amy shook her head. ‘Oh, hell, no. If I ever saw someone in need of a party it’s you. I’ve just signed a huge PR deal—’
‘You’re in PR? You’re far too self-effacing, modest and shy for PR, Ames,’ Willa said, her voice deceptively gentle.
Amy just laughed, and instantly catapulted Willa back the best part of a decade. It was a killer laugh—dirty as mud.
‘There’s that sarcastic mouth I used to love. Anyway, I’ve just signed a huge deal to launch a new franchise of sports shops selling clothes and equipment—my client is also setting up some hardcore men-only gyms—and a couple of my workmates and I are going out to celebrate. We’re taking my new client clubbing. And you are going to join us!’
‘Uh, I don’t think so …’
‘I do! My client’s name is Rob, he’s gorgeous and gruff—but not my type, unfortunately.’ Amy led her out of the pretty function room and back towards the main dining area. ‘He might be yours.’
Willa scoffed. ‘If he’s like any of the men I’ve recently come into contact with he’ll need a hug … around the neck … with a rope.’
‘Am really loving this whole bloodthirsty serial killer vibe you’ve got going.’ Amy shot her a grin. ‘I sense sexual frustration.’
Willa grinned at her. ‘I sense that I am going to kick you soon.’
Amy tucked her arm into Willa’s as they walked towards the exit. ‘Oh, yeah … the girls are back in town. And it seems like I am going to have to teach you how to party … to cut loose.’
‘Again.’
Rob Hanson looked at the sharply dressed partygoers dutifully lining up outside Fox, waiting in anxious anticipation to get into the popular club, and shook his head. Pulling on a pair of Levi’s and a button-down white shirt with its sleeves rolled up was about as dressed up as he got … besides, it wasn’t what you looked like that got you into a club—unless you were female and had a great cleavage, blonde hair down to your waist and legs up to your neck—it was attitude …
And he had lots of it.
Rob caught the eye of a bouncer, jerked his head and received a quick nod to go in, bypassing the queue. He slipped a bill into the guy’s hand in a slick movement as the rope was lifted and cursed when his mobile vibrated in his pocket. Stepping back from the door, he shoved his finger in his ear and answered the call.
‘Rob, it’s Gail.’
‘Hey, Snail.’ At twenty-two, his sister was ten years younger than him and the best thing in his life. ‘What’s up?’
‘Not much—just checking in,’ Gail replied. ‘Whatcha doing?’
‘About to go into a club.’
‘Have you met anyone yet?’ Gail demanded.
‘I haven’t even been here two days!’ he protested.
‘My man-about-town bachelor brother is slacking,’ Gail teased and he rolled his eyes.
‘I won’t have the time in Sydney and I don’t have the inclination,’ Rob retorted.
Gail’s laugh tickled his ear. ‘Did the screaming match with Saskia put you off? Judging by the way she flounced out of here, she obviously didn’t take it well when you told her that she’d hit her expiry date?’
‘Jeez, Gail! Her expiry date?’
‘I call it like I see it. You never go over the three-month-fling mark and she was due.’
Not as obsessed with the time-frames of his dates as his sister, Rob counted back. Yeah, it was nearly dead on three months. He’d started getting twitchy as Saskia started making noises about ‘formalising’ their relationship, dropping comments about needing cupboard space in his bedroom. She had left a box of tampons in his bathroom cabinet and he’d realised that it was time to bail. She wasn’t someone he wanted around long-term …
He’d never met anyone he wanted around long-term.
‘One day you’re going to meet someone who blows your socks off,’ Gail warned him.
He doubted it. Remembering that the best way to get Gail off the subject of his love-life was to comment on hers, he said: ‘Are you still dating the tattoo artist? Does he make enough money to take you to the movies occasionally?’
Gail sighed. ‘Well-played. Deflect and distract.’
‘I try. Don’t do anything stupid with this one, okay, honey?’
After witnessing the best and worst of love, he and Gail approached relationships from opposite directions. She thought that true love and happily-ever-after was just around the corner, and he knew that there was only one person he could ever fully depend on and that was himself.
He and Gail adored each other, but they didn’t understand the other’s choices when it came to the opposite sex.
‘How long are you going to be in Sydney?’ Gail asked. ‘This house is like a morgue without you.’
‘A month … six weeks,’ Rob replied. ‘Do not let Mr Body Art move in while I’m gone.’
Gail laughed again. ‘I’ll just move into his place … Bye—love you!’
Rob looked at his dead phone and shook his head. He was convinced that Gail only called him to wind him up and raise his blood pressure. That, he supposed, was a younger sister’s job.
Rob looked at his watch … ten p.m. here, and that meant it would be around two in the afternoon back home. Snail was home from her morning classes at uni and she was bored—and a great way to relieve that boredom was to take pot-shots at his love-life.
Revenge, Rob decided as he stepped into the heaving club, would be sweet and designed to embarrass her to the max. Because that was what his job as her older brother was.
Slapped in the face with the noise and smell of the club—alcohol and perfume and sweat mixed together in an almost palpable fug—he immediately asked himself what he was doing. Apart from the fact that he was still exhausted from the long flight from Johannesburg the day before yesterday—he really had to learn to sleep on planes—and the fact that he’d been working sixteen-hour days for months, he also hated clubs and clubbing.
Too loud, too packed, girls too obvious and generally far too young and too eager. Call him old-fashioned but he liked to do a little work before a piece of tail fell into his lap. And, really, at thirty-two, dating kids his sister’s age or younger made him feel like a dirty old man.
Rob brushed off a hand on his behind and ignored a proposition from his left as he scanned the bar. He’d find his new firecracker of a PR person, make his excuses and then head back to the flat he’d rented and fall face-down onto the bed.
Rob ran a hand over his short dark brown curls and squinted into the low light of the club. Finding Amy in this madhouse was going to be a nightmare, he thought as his mobile vibrated in his pocket. Or not, he thought, looking at the text message.
At the entrance, hook a left and head towards the back of the club. Table in the back corner.
God bless technology. Rob smiled, shoved his mobile back into the pocket of his jeans and took her directions.
Ah, a table full of women … not too young, thank God, but obviously, judging by the bottles and glasses on the table, well on their way to being cabbaged. Shoot me now, he thought. Half an hour, one beer, and he was out of there.
At least they were gorgeous women, admittedly. Amy, confident and glossy, led the pack. There was her colleague—he couldn’t remember her name—and her assistant. Couldn’t remember her name either. The other two women he didn’t recognise at all. He dismissed the tomboy blonde who, he saw when he looked over his shoulder, was swapping some major eye contact with some dude at the bar, and focussed on the woman with mahogany hair tucked into the corner of the table, a cocktail glass in her hand. She had a wide-eyed, Audrey Hepburn waif look to her that instantly made a man regress to being a caveman.
You woman, I protect you. Lie down and I make you happy. Grunt. Grunt.
He’d known a lot of women—sue him … he was in his thirties and had been consistently single all his life—so he was old enough and wise enough to realise that waifs and strays, romantics and women who seemed helpless and hopeless, normally ended up tearing strips off him.
Women, as he’d learnt, were seldom what they portrayed themselves to be. Scrap that. People mostly weren’t who they said they were.
Amy sprang to her feet. ‘Rob—yay, you’re here!’
Yeah. Yay.
‘You know Bella and Kara, my colleagues—’ their names went in one ear and out of the other ‘—the creature ignoring you for the rock star wannabe at the bar is my flatmate Jessica—oi! Jessica! This is Rob.’
The blonde whipped her head around, flashed him a smile. ‘Hey, Rob.’
Quick eye contact and a super-fast scan to determine whether she found him attractive. She hesitated, suggesting that she did, but then her eyes slid back to the bar. Rob smiled inwardly. Someone, if he played his cards right, was getting lucky tonight.
Amy touched his wrist to get his attention. ‘And this is my old, old friend Willa. Willa, this is Rob Hanson.’
‘You make me sound like a crone with all the olds, Ames,’ Willa complained good-naturedly, before lifting amazing silver-shot-with-green eyes to his. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi back.’
Rob took the open seat next to her and eyed the full beer bottle on the table, icy cold. It was his favourite brand.
He cocked an eyebrow at Amy. ‘That for me?’
‘Sure.’ Amy pushed the bottle and glass across the table. Ignoring the glass and picking up the bottle, he lifted it to his lips and allowed the liquid to slide down his throat. One beer, half an hour and he’d leave …
‘Rob owns a chain of sports equipment and clothing stores in South Africa, Willa. And some gyms. He’s looking for franchisees to open branches of the stores everywhere, and the gyms will be here in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne initially.’
‘Brave …’ Willa murmured. ‘Especially the gym part, since the marketplace is dominated by Just Fit. And Just Fit has gone on an acquisition drive to buy up the rats and mice gyms that aren’t allowing them marketplace domination.’
Rob lowered his bottle and sent her a long look. Then he lifted his eyebrows at Amy, who just laughed.
‘She’s not just a pretty face,’ she said.
Intriguing …
And she wasn’t done. ‘It takes a set of brass balls to take on two competitors, firmly established and synonymous with Australian health and fitness, one of which is about to list on the ASX. I intend to buy some of their shares when they go public in …’ Smarty-Pants squinted at her watch ‘… six weeks’ time.’
Rob just stared at her as she rested her chin in the palm of her hand and gave Amy a puppy-dog look. ‘I want a set of brass balls, Ames. How do I acquire my own?’
Amy threw back her head and laughed. ‘Wills, how many of those Screaming Orgasms have you had?’
Willa slid her eyes to the row of cocktail glasses in front of her and counted them off. ‘Not enough real ones and four fake ones.’
Willa and Amy exchanged a long look before they both bellowed with laughter.
Oh, jeez—drunk girl humour. About orgasms. Shoot him now. But he had to admit it wasn’t fake girl laughter but a real, joyous exchange of humour between two friends who understood each other’s subtext. Their laughter made him smile.
