Kitabı oku: «The Shock Engagement», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

TAHLIA’S SUNDAY NIGHT RITUAL: MR DARCY AND A DAIQUIRI

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife? I dare Jane Austen to come over here and say that to my face,’ Tahlia said as she slammed Pride and Prejudice shut and hid it under her sofa cushion.. this time for a full ten seconds.

EMMA left Harry to unpack.

Once she heard the shower running, she changed out of her suit and into cut-off jeans. She sat on the edge of her bed, still topless apart from her bra, staring at some point on her wall as the synapses in her brain buzzed and flickered, trying to assimilate the spate of news that had come her way in the past couple of hours, and trying to conceive of some way to fix all situations for the best.

Harry wanted nothing to do with the Australia’s Hunkiest Bloke competition and for good reason. So how could she help get him out of it? The rules of the competition were pretty easygoing. The editors chose the nominees and the readers chose the winner. The guys in question didn’t have to do anything but exist. They didn’t even have to turn up to the big announcement party on Saturday night, though most of them had already RSVPd. To get her Harry out of the running would be tricky. The only prerequisites were that the guys had to be Australian, hunky and single, and Harry fit into every category perfectly.

Her mobile phone chirped in her handbag. The ring tone, Copacabana, in her opinion the most romantic song ever written, beeped merrily away until she answered it. ‘Aloha?’

‘Aloha yourself,’ Keely said from the other end.

‘Are we disturbing you?’ Tahlia asked, hope lacing her voice. It seemed this was a check-up conference call.

‘Please. What do you think?’ Emma said, slumping back on to her big beautiful unchristened bed. ‘He’s taking a shower and—’

‘Well, now’s your big chance,’ Keely insisted, her voice rising with excitement. ‘Go in there. Join him. Naked and wet there will be nowhere for him to run!’

Tahlia joined Emma in her silent stupor.

‘You have to be kidding me,’ Emma finally managed.

‘Well, you are only madly in love with him. Joining him for a soap and scrub will put him in no doubt.’

‘That’s for sure. Just as surely it will scare him back to the other side of the country before the sun sets.’

‘Fine,’ Keely acquiesced. ‘But just know that we are here for you with advice, hugs, chocolate and constant reminders that you ought to go for it. It will be the best thing you ever did for yourself. Take my word for it.’

Emma’s synapses were making progress. Brainstorming with the girls always helped and, just like that, the way to help Harry opened up before her. It wouldn’t be the easiest path, thus she needed moral support. ‘Guys, I have something important to run by you. We have to find a way out of the Flirt competition for Harry.’ Emma went on to explain why.

Keely sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Jeez, Em! I had no idea. That’s why he had the sudden turn-around about coming to your party. The poor guy was keeping you from the clutches of a crazy stalker. How sweet!’

‘Anyway,’ Emma said, ‘I think I have found a way out, but I’m going to need your help.’

‘Why do I have a bad feeling about this?’ Tahlia asked.

‘Because you don’t want to do anything to jeopardise your precious promotion chances,’ Keely blurted. ‘Come on, T. Sometimes it’s good to be bad. I’m in, Em. What do you want us to do?’

Emma took a deep breath and blurted out her idea. ‘I am going to suggest to Harry that we become engaged.’

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening, from both sources. Emma leapt in to fill the silence. ‘Temporarily,’ she added. ‘Just to make him ineligible. Can I rely on you guys to tell anyone who asks that we have had a long distance relationship for the last few months and are madly in love and you saw this coming from a mile away? Guys?’

‘What do you get out of this?’ Tahlia finally asked.

‘The opportunity to help a friend in need,’ Emma said.

‘A friend for whom you would lay down in traffic if that was what he wanted,’ Keely reminded her. ‘Em, are you sure you aren’t just setting yourself up for heartache here?’

‘Hey, this was my idea, guys. Not his. I’m not even sure if he will go for it, but I don’t see any other way out and he’s been through enough already. So can I count on you to support me?’

‘Of course, sweetheart,’ Tahlia finally acquiesced. ‘So long as you also know that we’ll be there to scrape you off the road and supply you with sickening amounts of conciliating chocolate after this whole charade ends and Harry has gone back into hiding.’

Emma heard a funny crackle down the phone line. ‘What’s that noise?’

Keely piped up. ‘Um, it’s some of that chocolate we were talking about. I felt the sudden need to taste test.’

Emma heard a familiar snap.

‘It’s really good,’ Keely promised with a mouthful.

‘Aren’t you guys meant to be working?’ Emma asked.

‘Aren’t you?’ Keely shot back.

‘Okay. Point taken.’

The shower stopped.

‘I’d better go. See you guys tomorrow morning.’

‘Breakfast at Sammy’s?’ Tahlia asked.

‘Sure. Usual time.’

‘Be strong!’ Keely called out.

‘Thanks, guys. Bye.’ Emma hung up.

There was a light knock at Emma’s door. Emma jumped and pulled a white T-shirt over her head. ‘Yeah?’

Harry opened the door and popped his head in. He was naked bar a towel wrapped around his waist. ‘How about a walk on the beach?’ he suggested. ‘I’ve been too far from the coast for too long. I think half the dust from the Northern Territory has just disappeared down your shower drain.’

Emma had no idea what words had come out of his mouth. Her brain was pretty much filled with an expanse of male chest. Why on earth had she asked him to stay with her? She knew he did stuff like this. Even at her folks’ place. The guy was shameless. Did she really think she could manage to spend one week under the same roof with the guy, alone, and not completely collapse into a nervous wreck?

Yes. She did. She had to. The time had come in her life that she had to do something about this crush of hers once and for all. Keely and Tahlia were on the money. This time she would either tell him how she felt, how she had felt for a number of years, or she would make herself finally get over him. She just wasn’t sure yet which way she would go. But if he agreed to her idea, she would go a fair way to finding out.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Get dressed and we’ll head off.’

Harry closed her door with a soft click and Emma finally collapsed under the weight of her own foolishness and slumped, face down and spread-eagled, on to the bed.

When most families were making their way home from work and school, Emma and Harry walked along the path that snaked around St Kilda beach.

Harry had ditched his jacket and jeans for a long-sleeved T-shirt and knee-length shorts. His flip-flops were spattered with the red dirt of the heart of Australia.

Emma picked up a shell from the pathway and played with it as she walked. ‘So you’ve been in Alice Springs all this time?’

‘Most recently.’

‘And where before that?’

‘Around.’

‘Always around. Anywhere more specific? Some town with a name, perhaps?’

Harry shrugged, kicking at a stray tuft of grass growing between a crack in the concrete. ‘Kakadu.’

‘Seriously? I should have known. The new colour scheme for Harold’s House is straight out of that part of the country.’

The heavy burnt umbers and rich forest greens of Kakadu National Park, located in the far north of Australia, held a mystical quality which Emma thought Harry’s web designers had translated beautifully.

‘You go on to the Harold’s House site much?’ he asked. He stepped sideways and gave her a little bump with his hip.

Emma threw the shell back on to the sand and wiped the sand from her fingers. ‘What do you reckon?’ Emma asked, bumping him right back. ‘Of course I do. It’s my home page.’

Harry poked out his bottom lip and nodded. ‘Cool.’

Emma could see it was more than cool. The guy was thrilled. He really had no idea how much of an impact he had on her. ‘Is there much of a market for computer whiz-kids in the Kakadu?’

‘Unfortunately, it seems there is. I was there a week before a local paper found out and by the next day I was inundated with requests for help, with job offers, with promotional opportunities and…other things.’

Unwelcome new acquaintances, Emma thought.

‘I almost said yes to becoming the spokesman for an exciting new real estate opportunity out there.’

‘Seriously?’

Harry stopped walking. ‘Of course not! And if you ask me if I’m serious one more time I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and see if that water is as cold as it looks.’

Emma stared back, the desire to test his threat tickling at her throat. Harry’s eyes narrowed and he shifted his stance as though ready to attack her at a moment’s notice. It was enough for her to back down. She knew from long experience that he didn’t make idle threats.

‘Okay,’ she said, ambling away once more, ‘I’m sorry. I’m just as interested as the next guy about what Wonder Boy Buchanan will come up with next.’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ he said, though so quietly she might have been mistaken. ‘Harold’s House is plenty for me to concentrate on. I now have an agent, a business manager and a mishmash of forty-odd staff scattered throughout Victoria. The site is growing exponentially by the day. It’s a monster. It’s bigger than I ever envisioned.’ He shook his head back and forth and Emma knew he had no idea how he had become such a success.

But she knew. All his ventures, all of his crazy stunts, all of his mad, slapdash efforts to forge out a career for himself, had thrived. But this one had gone stratospheric, because it came straight from his heart. The site’s cheeky language, glorious Australian backdrops and ever-evolving layout were all so much a part of the sun-drenched Aussie man that he was.

‘Seriously?’ Emma asked, skewing the mood back towards fun.

Harry’s discomposure was gone in a heartbeat. He turned to her with a toothy grin. ‘That’s it, kiddo. You’ve done it now.’

Emma squealed and leapt on to the sand and took off down the beach at full pelt. Harry caught up with her in no time. He grabbed her around the waist and all her twisting was to no avail. With a quick heave and an overdone grunt, Harry had her over his shoulder. She kicked out, trying her best to get away.

‘Harry, put me down or I will kick you where it’ll hurt you most.’

‘Nup. You had fair warning, princess. You are going for a swim.’

They had reached the edge of the surf; Emma could see it tickling at Harry’s feet. ‘Come on, Harry. I am giving you food and shelter for the week. Is this how you are going to repay me?’

He hovered and she knew she had him.

‘Put me down, Harry, and I will never question your seriousness again.’

‘Fine,’ he said, groaning loudly as he slid her to the ground. ‘I’m going to hold you to that, little one.’

Emma landed on the soft sand to find herself bodily up against him. One hand rested on his shoulder the other around his neck. His hands remained casually around her waist. An ocean breeze played with his hair.

A wondering smile lit Harry’s eyes as he looked down upon her. ‘Though you really aren’t my little one any more, are you?’

Emma’s heart beat so raggedly in her chest she was certain Harry must have felt it too. He leant away and her hands naturally slipped down on to his chest. If they were any other couple in the world it would have been the most perfect moment for a kiss.

Then he glared at her through slitted eyes. ‘You’re bloody heavy, Emma! At the very least you’re a stone heavier than the last time I had you in a fireman’s lift.’ He moved out of her grasp and bent from the waist with his hands massaging his lower back.

It hit Emma with the force of a thunderclap that they weren’t any other couple. They were Harry and Em, the terrible two, a couple of mates who knew each other so well they could finish off one another’s sentences. It would take more than a haircut, a new apartment and an ocean breeze to make Harry see differently.

She sucked up her disappointment and did her best to look as if she was sharing the same joke. ‘I was fourteen years old the last time you had me over your shoulder.’

‘Hmm,’ he said, straightening up, a flirtatious grin knocking the breath from her lungs. ‘It’s obviously been too long between times. I’ll have to rectify that in the future.’

Emma felt as if she was on the pirate ship ride at the fairground—one minute Harry’s little one, the next on the receiving end of one of his killer smiles. He reached out and gave her a jab in the side. He was a natural flirt, she reminded herself. She was just in the line of fire. She flinched away. ‘Stop it!’

‘Just checking where all that extra weight is distributed.’

‘It’s distributed exactly where it should be,’ she shot back, sticking out her chest to prove it.

If she was any other girl his gaze would have warmed before travelling over all the bits of her that should have grown since puberty. But he merely gave her a brief smile before looking decidedly at the bridge of her nose.

Unable to cope with the rising innuendos, Emma grabbed him by the arm and led him over to a patch of flat rocks at the top of the sand. ‘Come on, boyo, I think you need to sit for a bit. All this exercise is making you say things you don’t mean.’

Though the sun was warm, the ground was chilly, which was fine with Emma. She dug her feet into the fine beige sand and let it cool her from the toes up. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the sun set over the flat waters of Port Philip Bay.

‘This is new,’ Harry finally said, reaching and giving the second toe on her right foot a wiggle.

Emma glanced at her gold toe ring. ‘Mmm. It was a birthday present. Do you like it?’ she asked, waving it so close to his nose he had to bat it away.

‘You look like a homing pigeon,’ he finally said, grabbing her by the ankle and dragging her foot on top of his thighs where he gave it a casual massage.

The tingles running unabated through Emma were anything but casual. Feigning the need to stretch, she moved her foot away from his warm hands until it rested innocently next to her other.

‘Who was it from?’ he asked.

‘A friend.’

‘What sort of friend?’ The look Harry shot her was hooded, dark, jealous? Emma’s heart thumped against her ribs.

‘It was a pressie from Tahlia.’

‘Which one was she again?’ he asked, his eyes lighting with mischief. ‘The single one?’

‘Yes,’ Emma agreed through clenched teeth. ‘But don’t get any ideas. I share no secrets from Keely and Tahlia. So they know way too much about you for your comfort.’

He gave an exaggerated shiver and silence reigned once more.

‘So have you thought any more—?’ Harry said.

‘Speaking of Keely and Tahlia—’ Emma said at the same time.

They stopped, and laughed.

‘Ladies first,’ Harry insisted.

Emma turned so that one leg was tucked beneath her. ‘Okay. I think I have come up with a solution for your problem, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it as it’s kind of bizarre. Ready?’

‘Ready and raring,’ Harry insisted, his eyes crinkling down at her so beautifully she found it hard to bring herself to say the words.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, becoming engaged to Harry had been her dream. Since she was a little girl, playing with her Ken and Barbie dolls, listening to her Mum’s Barry Manilow records, she had always dreamed that one day this moment would come. But not quite like this. Never quite like this. She wondered if in proposing this charade to Harry she wasn’t once and for all giving up on her dream. But what could she do? Harry was in dire straits and it seemed she was the only one who could help him. She had no choice.

‘So what can we do to get me out of this thing?’ Harry asked.

‘Harry, you have to get yourself a fiancée.’

She waited for him to laugh, or blanch, or run for his life, but he merely watched her, closely, carefully, as he let the idea sink in. Then, after only a few moments, he began to nod.

‘If I am engaged, I am no longer eligible. Ha! You are brilliant!’ He reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a great smacking kiss on her cheek, but when he pulled away she saw the uncertainty in his eyes.

‘But who could I become engaged to at such short notice? Someone who wouldn’t get any ideas. Someone who could make it believable. At least until the whole shebang is over. At least until Saturday.’

His gaze skittered out into the distance, his hazel eyes lit gold by the sun shining off the ocean. Emma waited patiently for him to make the final leap to the other half of her plan. The scary half.

He still had a hold of her shoulders and finally his gaze swung back to land upon her. She watched as the idea came full circle. His Adam’s apple bounced in his throat and his gaze hungrily devoured her face, as though realising she was really there, sitting so close to him.

‘Em. Princess. I hate to ask, but do you think…?’

She couldn’t bear to see him struggling so. ‘Of course, you great lump, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Keely and Tahlia are prepared to go along with any story we concoct so it should be a breeze.’

‘So, you and me, hey?’

Emma nodded. ‘Until Saturday night, we will be affianced. If you are okay with it.’

Then Harry smiled. One of those radiant, happy ever after, lit from within smiles that turned her bones to butter and returned time and again in her daydreams. He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. ‘Thanks, Em. You have saved me. If there is anything I can ever do to return the favour…’

Enjoying the feel of his warmth wrapping itself about her like a blanket on an autumn night, Emma was loath to pull away. But there was more she had to say, more that she had not shared with her best friends, more that with Harry’s help they would never need to know.

With great effort she extricated herself from his heavenly embrace. ‘Well, now that you mention it…’

Harry’s smile shifted from radiant delight to insightful good spirits. ‘Okay. Here it goes. What’s your fee, princess? Money? Jewels? Foot rubs every day for a year?’

The foot rub idea almost won out! But Emma had to take Harry’s offer while it was on the table.

‘Nothing like that, Buchanan. It is something infinitely more delicate, and more important to me.’

Picking up on her tone, Harry’s business face slipped into place and she had his rapt attention at once.

‘I had a really odd conversation with my boss this morning,’ Emma began, ‘and I think that WWW Designs might be in trouble.’

‘Did she say as much?’

‘Not really, but Raquel is usually rather…abrupt and this morning she was almost giving me a kindly warning. It freaked me out more than her yelling ever would. Then I found some concrete evidence in the form of a legal letter. Raquel has brought some heavy problems down upon the business.’

‘Have you talked to the girls about it?’

Emma’s hand flew to her chest. ‘No. I wouldn’t want to worry them.’

Harry nodded. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t want to worry anybody.’ Then, ‘So what can I do to help?’

‘I was thinking, the only way out, the only thing I could do to help, the only extra big, huge difference I could make at such short notice to bring WWW Designs a boost, would be to bring on board the biggest thing in web design right now.’

Harry stopped nodding. He knew exactly who she meant. It was all he ever heard. He wasn’t just Harry Buchanan any more. He was Harry Buchanan, wunderkind creator of Harold’s House. But he didn’t say so. Emma leapt into the silence before he had the chance.

‘I was thinking that WWW could help run Harold’s House for you. You said it had become too big for your small team to handle. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. The whole top floor of our lease is empty right now. We could clean it out. Do it up. You would have the privacy of rooms to yourselves with the backing of a superb team of designers behind you. So why don’t you guys come on over to us? It’s win win.’

‘I’ll do it,’ he said instantly.

‘Really?’ Emma squealed, grabbing him by the upper arms.

‘Sure,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Why not? We’ve never had a proper base before, with everyone working from all over the place. Southbank is as good a place as any. Close to food, close to the city, close to the football stadium at the Docklands.’ Besides which, he thought, the thing is under such momentum I don’t think it would matter where we were based.

Emma suddenly threw herself bodily against him. He was rocked back by the force. His arms came about her naturally, as they had a million times before, but again it felt different. Her hair smelled like peaches and the smooth skin of her face felt too damn nice against his stubble-roughened cheek. So he pulled away.

His reasons for not wanting to be nominated were complicated, more complicated than simply not wanting to attract unwanted attention. He’d had enough of the dog and pony show his fame had created as he knew he didn’t deserve a lick of the success that had fallen his way. He would do whatever it took to keep a low profile.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s shake hands on the deal. Be my fiancée and I will bring my business to WWW Designs. That seems a fair exchange of labour to me, and timely that we both need each other right now. Written in the stars, I’d say.’

I’ve always thought so, Emma thought. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘Of course. No worries.’

No worries? Who was she kidding? She had just agreed to be Harry’s pretend fiancée. In order to pull the wool over her boss’s eyes. Her boss who could make it very hard for her, Tahlia and Keely if she so chose.

She felt like one of those circus performers who spin plates atop a bunch of pointy sticks. She had to keep her plates spinning just right or else the whole lot could crash to the ground and she would be left with nothing but broken crockery.

So far the spinning plates were spinning in the right direction. Bringing Harold’s House on board would surely help save WWW Designs. It was all good. Everything was fine. Everybody would come out okay in the end.

A couple came into her line of sight. Emma could not help but turn to see where Harry was looking, and was not surprised to find him watching the curvy brunette female half of the couple with an appreciative smile on his face. If that wasn’t enough, he let out a smooth whistle, only loud enough for Emma to hear.

She was irked to see he was acting his usual self; he was not in the least affected by their recent conversation. She turned back to the front and concentrated on the man at the brunette’s side. He was all dark good looks and bulging muscles. He was empirically hot, but not to her taste at all.

‘I agree,’ Emma said, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead. ‘That is one gorgeous hunk of man flesh.’

The comment had done its job. Harry’s attention shot to her.

‘So you like a bit of muscle on your men, do you, little one?’

‘You bet.’

Harry went quiet and Emma bit back a triumphant grin.

They watched in silence as the girl, with her upturned nose high in the air, stalked ahead of her beau with as much dignity as one could muster whilst walking through soft dry sand. The man was gesticulating madly, obviously apologising for something that had upset his lady.

Emma sighed as the quarrelling lovers passed from view. ‘They are just as I imagine Lola and Tony must have looked.’

Harry deigned to drag his gaze away from the haughty retreating figure. ‘Who on earth are Lola and Tony?’

‘From Copacabana.’

‘The Barry Manilow song that you used to play over and over on your Walkman as a kid?’

‘The very one. They had such a passionate relationship he was shot defending her.’ Emma sighed again and lay back against the flat rocks and stared at the darkening sky. ‘It’s just too, too romantic.’

‘I don’t think getting shot and killed is terribly romantic.’

‘Dying for the one you love is about as romantic as it gets.’

Harry lay down beside her, propping himself up on his elbow as he looked down at her. ‘As far as I remember that song, she spent the rest of her life boozing it up and living in the past.’

‘I know. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ If only Harry knew that was what she was doing for him—laying her breaking heart on the line to help him out of a fix. ‘That’s what one does for the man one loves.’

‘I think it’s pretty stupid, actually.’

Emma glared at him from one squinted eye. If only he didn’t look so unbearably handsome, with the last of the afternoon sun warming his smiling face, she might very well have reneged on the whole deal then and there. Ungrateful sod! ‘You would,’ she said.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘Harry, you don’t have one romantic bone in your body.’

He puffed out his chest. ‘I would have you know that a high percentage of the women I have dated would consider me highly romantic.’

Emma scoffed. ‘The fact that you would bring up the high percentage of women you have dated in front of another woman shows how clueless you are.’

‘But you’re not another woman,’ Harry said, his eyes a mixture of hurt innocence.

Charming, she thought as he reiterated exactly what she feared he thought about her. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I am your fiancée. What was I thinking, Harry? Nobody in their right mind is going to believe you and I are engaged. This whole thing is going to fall in a big heap as soon as you have to tell another soul.’

‘Em, don’t say that.’

She opened her eyes and squinted up at him. He was watching the couple walk away but not with the same wolfish expression. Something deep and dark was going on behind his gorgeous hazel eyes.

‘I’m only telling it like it is, Harry. Maybe we should find another way to get out of our respective situations before we make them sticky rather than just tricky.’

Harry shot to his feet. ‘Nope. It will work and I am going to prove it to you.’

That got Emma’s attention. She dragged herself up into a sitting position. ‘How?’

‘Be ready by seven tonight.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘Just wear something dressy and prepare to be proven wrong.’

With that he was gone. Ten feet in the wrong direction before he realised then turned and headed back towards her apartment.

Emma was a tad concerned about what he had in mind, but only a tad. The rest of her was intrigued and more than a little excited at the thought of her Harry going out of his way to prove to her how romantic he could be.

One second he was buddy-buddy, the next she caught him watching her with such awareness in his gaze. Which was the real Harry?

She was so confused.

He was so confused.

Harry walked back to Emma’s apartment block with his hands deep in his shorts pockets and his head aching from too much brow furrowing.

What on earth was he doing, setting about proving to his little Emma what sort of fiancé he would make? The words had shot from him in a he-man display, the likes of which he had not encountered since his late teens. Odd. Very odd. He had been back for a couple of hours and already he felt as if the whole visit was turning out to be odd.

Sure his life had changed since the last time he had seen Emma, just under a year before. He had been sued, stalked and achieved business success beyond his wildest dreams. But if his life had changed, Emma was a revelation. Then again, maybe she wasn’t. She was still the same spitfire, the same girl he had adored and protected as if she was his own sister for going on thirteen years.

He stopped walking. Thirteen years. More than half her life. Had it been that long since he had taken on the big brother role that he still prided himself on today?

He turned and saw Emma strolling behind him about a block away. She held up a hand and gave him a flirty little finger wave. Or maybe it wasn’t flirty. Maybe it was just sarcastic, which would be understandable as he was acting odd.

He shook out his tightening shoulders. ‘Come on, buddy,’ he said aloud. ‘Relax. Saturday is looming and you have to be strong for her, to make the next week as easy for her as possible. Don’t go creating more difficulties for her than you already have. Help save her job. Give her a good time, and if that means taking her out for a night on the town, Harry-style, so be it. That’s the least you can do.’

Even though he knew people were looking at him sideways for talking to himself, he headed back to the apartment feeling a little less odd.