Faking It to Making It

“Say ‘hi’ to Gabe from me.”

Then, “Tell him if it doesn’t work out with Paige, he can always—”

Nate hung up before any more of that image made its way into his subconscious.

“The girls on the warpath?” said Gabe, as Nate once again rubbed his thumbs across both temples.

“This time, it’s your fault.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“If you weren’t with Paige, you’d never have met Mae and Clint, who’d never have invited me to their wedding. And Macbeth’s witches wouldn’t have made it their life’s mission to find me a woman.”

Gabe’s dark stare flattened. “Are you wishing away my woman?”

“Not,” said Nate, settling back in his chair. “For years you walked around like a bear with a sore tooth. Now you’re practically cuddly.”

Gabe’s lip curled as he as good as snarled. But then the big guy seemed to soften, sweeten, and the smile that slipped through confirmed cuddly was fine, if it meant he had her.

Hell.

Thankfully Nate was spared, as Gabe’s mobile rang and he answered with a gruff, “Hamilton.”

To think, Nate mused, it felt like only yesterday that together he and the big guy had sketched out their radical dream of a maverick venture capital business on the back of a beer coaster in a pub near uni. And now that crazy dream was a shining beacon of trust, fiscal responsibility and innovation within the morass of world-wide financial tremblings.

Nate had reached the heights he’d envisioned that long ago night, and had soared higher still. He had property all over the world, a stake in some of the most successful businesses in the country, and more money than he could count. And yet the heart of that dream, the pinnacle he’d aspired to, the moment when the pendulum of success had hit its peak and he could ease back, content with his success and enjoy the spoils, had never eventuated.

Every decision, every purchase, every paperclip was still under his tight control—as though if in letting go he’d lose it all. And it wasn’t lost to him that he was nearing the age when his own hard-working father had gone to work one day and never come home.

Gabe hung up and said, “You free for lunch? The gaming guy I was telling you about is meeting me at Zuma at one, and I’m sure having us both there’ll put the requisite sparkle in his eyes to get his scrawl on the dotted line.”

Nate ran his hands over his face, pushing the mounting signs of frustration down deep. “I can swing by at quarter past.”

“Better. Keep ’em keen.” Gabe pressed himself from the chair and only when he reached the door did he look back.

“So, have you got a date for Mae and Clint’s wedding, or what?” Gabe asked.

Nate lugged his stapler all the way across the room. It bounced off the wall a foot from Gabe’s shoulder.

“I take it that’s a no?”

Then Gabe was out through the door, leaving Nate to deal with the onset of a new range of throbs in his temples.

It was a no. And yet he’d told Faith and Hope he was seeing someone. When the actual truth was somewhere in between.

He’d get a damn date, if only to get them off his back for the next few weeks till the big day. But it wouldn’t be anyone they knew. Or even anyone he knew for that matter.

Asking a woman on a date was one thing. Asking a woman to a wedding was akin to smothering himself in catnip and taking a swan dive into a pride of lionesses. There wasn’t a kind way to tell someone with confetti stuck to her eyelashes that it was never going to happen.

But it was never going to happen.

For the six years between the day of his father’s heart attack and the day his trust fund had been opened to him he’d devoted himself to being the man in his young sisters’ lives. They’d repaid the favour by using his toothbrush, and wearing his shirts to bed. He’d asked them to stop and they’d acted out by dating his friends. And no matter how he’d managed to swallow it down, to let them do what they had to do, they’d cried themselves to sleep. He’d heard them, night after night, the sound tearing away at his insides. Until he’d become impervious to tears, to mood swings, to raging hormones and wily feminine ways. It was the only way he’d lived to fight another day.

Two hours after Mae had told him to “save the date,” he’d tagged a research team to find him a dating website. All he’d told them was that it had to boast discretion and success; they didn’t need to know why.

Since then he’d met six perfectly nice, attractive, elegant, smart women, every single one of whom had taken one look at him and sized him up for a tux, a four-bed house and a Range Rover with a reversing camera.

But time had run out.

He checked his email to find another of his “Maybes” had come back with a “Why not?”

More determined than ever, he opened the email. Her tag was Bloomin.

Favourite Pizza Topping: ham & red peppers

Favourite Music: retro grunge

If I Could Be Anywhere in the World I’d Be: right where

I am

Looking for: someone to talk to

Retro grunge? What the hell was retro grunge? Sounded dire. And yet he opened her picture for a second look. And then he remembered.

After an hour of trawling the site that first night he’d hit a point where the string of women in bikinis grinning suggestively at the camera had become a blur. He’d rather have tugged out his own eyelashes than read another thing but the very next picture that had appeared on the screen had been so unexpected it had stopped him short.

A woman in her late twenties sitting in a café, with a shaggy scarf-thing around her neck, dark hair in a messy twist that just reached one shoulder, and an old felt fedora perched on top of her head.

Nate leaned his elbow on the desk and rested his chin between thumb and forefinger. With the other hand he zoomed in till her eyes filled the screen. She was attractive, in an off-beat kind of way, with her fine chin, fine nose and soft pink lips curved into an easy smile. But those eyes of hers were something else. Wide-set, the colour hovering on the edge of brown, the long dark lashes creating sultry shadows below.

But within them was the most captivating thing about her, that one thing that had eluded him for so long…Contentment.

He wasn’t sure he even knew what that felt like any more. And here, at his fingertips, was a woman who claimed to be happy being right where she was.

Without another thought he hit “Reply,” picked a time, asked her to pick the place. Even if he’d built a client base on becoming on a first-name basis with some of the best chefs in town, in this case it was far better to go somewhere atypical or it would get back to his sisters.

It always did.

And a man had to have his priorities straight.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR ALL ITS family name, Mamma Rita’s Italian restaurant in Fitzroy was dark, sensual and bohemian, a hotspot for artists and hipsters. If conversation was your bag the beer garden at the back rarely saw beer and reeked of the sweet smoke of the philosophical thinker. Saskia, though, loved it for the great food, and for a girl on a budget one decadent meal filled you up enough not to have to eat for another twenty-four hours.

Dolled up in her favourite batik pants, sandals made in Nepal and an upcycled scarf she’d made herself from an old T-shirt, Saskia sat fiddling with the piece of string she’d tied around her wrist to remind her of…something as, with scientific appreciation, she watched the man who’d just walked through the front door.

The photo of NJM hadn’t lied, though it could be accused of under-representation. He looked immaculate; his dark suit crisp, the knot of his deep red tie tight, his shoulders broad and proud. And as a waitress approached the naturally provocative curve of his mouth hooked slowly into a nearly-smile. Even from across the restaurant Saskia saw the poor girl’s knees buckle.