Irrepressible You (26 page)

It was the faint relaxation in his shoulders that gave him away. She realised he hadn’t known how to come to her, but he was doing his best.

‘It works. You do fit.’ He wrapped his arms tightly around, pulling her close and burying his nose in her hair.

‘I do.’ She nuzzled his chest hair. They stood in the middle of the room, holding each other for a long time as the day got brighter and the landscape woke up.

‘Promise me something,’ Ben murmured against her hair.

‘What?’

‘Don’t give a fuck about my feelings. If you’re ever feeling sad or, heaven forbid, in a dangerous situation, think about yourself and for God’s sake tell me.’

‘Ben—’

‘Promise me or I’m never, ever doing what I did to you yesterday morning again.’

Amy nuzzled his chest a little bit more. ‘Oh, well in that case . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘I promise but—’

‘Now this is where
you
shush and I repeat yesterday’s performance. All you have to do is take off that T-shirt and put on those little pink heels you were wearing last night. Some of that pink lipstick would help, too.’

Chapter 13

Ben’s first impression when he opened his front door and immediately switched the lights on was that his house was cold, and the second was that it was empty. It was something he’d never minded before, but now it felt wrong.

The houses he owned had never meant all that much to him. His happiness had always been supplied by his friendships more than material possessions. It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to work out why. His rather abysmal childhood had taught him that a friend at one’s back was worth far more than a comfortable pillow. After all, the dorm bully could try to smother you with the very same.

All he could think of right now was that he could really do with that comfortable pillow after all, and someone to share it with. A specific someone in this instance.

Toeing off his shoes and leaving them by the front door next to his overnight bag, he padded towards the large windows in the living room. The sea was a stormy confusion of dark greys and greens today. Snarling white caps were slamming into the beach and the sky was the darkest and murkiest grey he’d ever seen.

For the first time since he’d begun visiting Australia five years earlier, he believed all the stories of the rips present just off the coast that could drag an unsuspecting swimmer far out to sea, drowning them if they didn’t know how to get away. He’d avoided them so far during his morning swims, but had listened attentively when he’d been told one had to swim sideways to escape a violent current.

The advice was counterintuitive; simple but not the first option someone gasping for breath would consider. So they drowned. Usually they were tourists who didn’t know the rules. Foreigners. He felt like a foreigner in more ways than one at the moment.

This past weekend had taken him far from shore and despite being a bloody good swimmer, he felt like the more effort he made to keep from being pulled under, the more he stayed in the same place. It seemed the little blonde barber had hidden depths. She fooled everyone with that perfect and polished three-dimensional façade she presented–but not him, not now. The clothes, the impeccable make-up, the chirpy personality, were all smooth waters over untold dangers. If you weren’t careful you’d have spent all your time marvelling at the pretty colours on the surface without thinking about what lay below.

The thought, although fanciful, left him with a cold coil of dread in his gut. The last time he’d even vaguely trusted a woman, she’d plastered details both intimate and fabricated across the British tabloids for the titillation of the masses. That had been a mild irritation. He hated to think what Amy Blaine could do to him.

Not that she’d intend on doing anything. No, that was the crush of it right there. He knew if he let her, she’d daze him with her pretty surface, keeping everything even vaguely distasteful to herself, to be dealt with alone. Every now and then he’d have a faint suspicion that her sunny smile was a little forced, but it would pass. He’d never know how she really felt, what was really going on. It’d be like that ocean his parents put between them when he was a small boy, only this time more devastating, because this was one he wanted to dive into.

He snorted. Only a month or so after meeting the woman and he was already forecasting doom and destruction. Not that it was surprising. They were coming up to the two-month mark soon. His past relationships had rarely lasted more than three and he’d ended every one of them. That he didn’t want to lose Amy was giving him the cold shakes.

‘Live in the moment, you stupid bastard,’ he said to himself, imitating Ross’s booming voice, taking one last look at the view before stalking to the kitchen to make some coffee.

‘Live in the moment is all bloody good and fine,’ he muttered moments later while locating some fresh grounds from the freezer, where they kept a solitary bottle of Grey Goose vodka company, ‘but it’s not much of a life preserver when it all goes to shit, is it?’ Oh well, his navel gazing could wait. Thanks to his trip with Amy, his imagination was whirring and he had a script to mail off and a travel book to write.

If Amy thought going away for the weekend would bring any form of clarity to her home situation, she was gravely disappointed. In fact, she returned more confused than ever and pitifully thankful for the immediate mundane tasks pressing for her attention.

The minute Ben had dropped her back at home, she drove to Myf’s place to pick up Gerald, only getting the chance to give her friend a quick hug before Myf ran off to teach her weekly community yoga class.

‘Did you miss me, boy?’ Amy asked Gerald as he settled in the passenger seat.

Large red-rimmed eyes looked at her disapprovingly.

‘Myf put you on vegan doggie biscuits, didn’t she?’ She gave him a conciliatory pat on the head. She could have sworn he nodded. He certainly gave a doggie sigh.

‘I’m pretty sure we can stop off at Costa’s Deli and get you something better.’

She ended up treating Gerald and herself to a large round of steak and Sara Lee cheesecake, which they ate while curled up on the couch watching
The Maltese Falcon
. Amy had contemplated turning off her brain with some trashy reality TV instead, but just couldn’t do it. There was something about Bogart’s cool in a crisis that always left her feeling like nothing was too hard. If he could do it, so could she. She looked at her phone sitting on the coffee table. Jo was only a short call away. Bogart would call Jo and have things out. He wouldn’t let things lie.

‘Maybe after I’ve had another slice of cheesecake,’ she said to both Gerald and the TV.

The next day she woke up from a deep dreamless sleep with a faint headache and an overdramatic sense of impending disaster. The feeling didn’t get any better as she made the short trip to work, narrowly avoiding an accident with a cyclist and being honked by a line of cars when she missed a set of traffic lights going green.

Then an unexpected sight intensified Amy’s sense of foreboding. Standing in front of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and peering through the windows was Jody Greaves. Jody, who only made appointments when Mel and Kate were fighting.

‘No, no,
no
.’ Amy pulled into the disturbingly empty parking lot behind her salon and wrenched her car door open. Mel, who was supposed to be opening for the morning, hadn’t arrived yet and Amy hoped to hell she’d imagined spotting Jody out front, because there was no way in heaven she wanted the reality.

She ran to the front of the salon as fast as her three-inch black pumps and Gerald’s lagging pace would let her.

Jody greeted her with a wide smile. ‘Hi, Amy.’

‘
Fuck
,’ Amy whispered, startling all three of them. Jody, Gerald and Amy herself. She never swore. That was her sister’s job. And she
never
,
ever
insulted customers, which is what she’d potentially just done. Damn, bugger and blast.

‘You right there, Amy?’ Jody stepped back, her brow wrinkling in concern. She was wearing her usual navy-blue hoodie and baggy jeans and gave the impression of a big hug waiting to happen. Amy needed one if her hunch was right.

She went for a plastic smile, trying to cover up her slip. ‘Jody, m’love, I wasn’t expecting you. Are you just here for a visit?’ She couldn’t keep the plea out of her voice as she scrambled through her purse for her keys. It was two minutes before opening time and the sleep-in that morning meant she was running late. Mel was supposed to be here, dammit.

Jody blinked. ‘Ah, no. I’m here for an appointment.’

The bottom dropped out of Amy’s stomach as her worst suspicion was confirmed. ‘Appointment?’

‘Yeah. With Kate. I made it Saturday.’ Jody’s face transformed with a shy smile.

‘Saturday?’ Amy repeated, unlocking the door. ‘Who did you talk to?’ Remembering her manners, she ushered Jody in first, followed by a long-suffering Gerald.

‘Kate.’ Jody hesitated at the entrance. ‘Look, uh, if this isn’t a good time, I can go.’

‘
No!
’ Amy drew a deep breath, counted backwards from ten to one in her head and refreshed her smile. ‘No, sweetie. It’s fine. Sorry. It’s me. I’m running late today and not my best. It’s wonderful to see you.’ She patted Jody’s shoulder. ‘Do you want some coffee? I’m sorry but I don’t have cake for you. I was away this weekend, but we’ve probably still got some giant chocolate-chip bikkies if you want one.’

‘That’d be great.’ Jody took a seat and looked around the salon with open curiosity.

It was no wonder. To Amy’s recollection, this was the first time a customer had ever seen the place without it being in perfect order. She’d only left it for two and a half days, but a lot had obviously happened in that time, none of it cleaning.

Magazines were piled haphazardly, hair dryers and trolleys weren’t stowed where they should be and a coffee cup sat unwashed in front of the station Amy used when she was in the ladies’ side of her business. Even worse, the record player was silent, leaving the place eerily quiet. In short, nothing was right and it rattled her to her bones.

‘Great, a bikkie it is,’ she echoed. ‘Just make yourself comfortable and I’ll be right with you.’ She flashed Jody another plastic smile, then escaped behind the screen at the back of the store.

As expected, there was a note waiting for her by the microwave. True to form, the messy scrawl was blurred in places as if splashed with water or tears. Probably tears.

Amy didn’t need to read the words to know what the note said.

It seemed that Mel and Kate’s newly minted reconciliation had run its course in record time and she was now short staffed. Again.

She’d had enough. This was the fourth time, the last time. Every other time she’d been so
nice
about things. So pathetically sweet and understanding and look where that got her–let down by someone she cared for, who’d made her a promise,
again
. Myf had been right; no matter how much she expected people to treat her the way she treated them, sometimes they didn’t and never would. Enough was enough.

Screwing up the paper, she threw it as hard as she could against the wall where it connected with a completely unsatisfying
thak.
Self-righteous anger became a bolt of electricity zinging up and down her spine with nothing to earth itself on. Opening her mouth wide, she balled her hands into tight fists and allowed herself a silent five-second scream of frustration before drawing in a deep breath and repeating her count from ten.

‘Black or white coffee this morning, m’love?’ she called to Jody in a perfectly calm tone.

‘Black, please,’ Jody replied from the other side of the screen. ‘What’s your dog called?’

‘Gerald.’

‘He new?’

‘Yeah, I got him as a guard dog.’ She managed to keep up the small talk through gritted teeth as she went through the ritual of grinding fresh coffee beans and setting up the machine.

When she could finally trust herself to keep smiling for Jody’s benefit, she made up a tray with coffee and two biscuits and purposefully strode to the front of the store, stopping briefly on the way to start up the record player. There was a record ready to go, and within a few seconds, ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’ by Doris Day filled the room, suiting her mood perfectly. If she could just hold it together, perhaps she would get through this week without committing murder, and perhaps she’d work up to firing a staff member and
perhaps
she’d finally have some peace. This was the last time, absolutely the last time.

‘Are you sure I’m not too early?’ Jody asked as she accepted the coffee.

‘No, love. Of course not.’ She softened her tone. It wasn’t Jody’s fault her presence indicated Amy’s business had taken a wrong turn down a dark alley in the middle of the night. She ran her hand gently over Jody’s short-cropped hair with a professional eye. It had grown half an inch since she’d last come. That half-inch represented a small oasis of calm, now unfortunately over. ‘What can I do for you this morning?’

To her surprise, Jody blushed. ‘I was wondering if you could colour it red.’

‘Red?’ Amy took in Jody’s broad, florid features, her own worries momentarily forgotten. ‘Are you sure, m’love? The blonde streaks look really nice. They make you look sexy,’ she said with all honesty. Blonde suited Jody’s short hairstyle and fair colouring beautifully.

‘Well, uh . . .’ Jody shyly looked down at her coffee. ‘When I talked to Kate on Friday night she said I needed a change, so I called and made the appointment first thing Saturday.’

‘Oh?’ Amy asked, a sharp edge entering her tone, her lips thinning.

‘Yeah.’

Amy drew a deep breath and placed her hands on Jody’s shoulders. ‘Do you
want
to go red, sweetie? I mean, seriously, the blonde is lovely.’

‘I’m sure,’ Jody said earnestly. ‘Kate said—’

Amy’s words were interrupted by the door of the salon opening as Kate breezed in, platinum hair whipping around a sleek black shift dress. Kate spared a venomous glare for Gerald, who had formed his dozing loaf shape by the window, before directing a wary glance at Amy.