Page 62 of The Meaning Of You

“You don’t?—”

“All right. All right. Hang on.”

Footsteps rounded the corner of the kitchen and Nick’s harried expression said it all. “Samuel wants to meet up and talk with me tomorrow.”

I tried to read those grey depths. “And?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

I bit back a smile. “Are you trying to say you want me to be there?”

He shrugged. “Maybe? Yes?”

“Which is it?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

I grinned. “Then tell him to come here.”

Nick’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Are you sure? Won’t that sully your carefully guarded personal space a little too much?”

I set my knife on the benchtop and glared at him. “Now you’re really starting to piss me off.”

Nick’s lips quirked and he lifted his phone back to his ear while I went back to chopping my tomatoes. “Madigan says to come for breakfast... around nine.”

I froze mid-chop and spun wide-eyed to find he’d moved closer somehow, so close that for the first time I could pickout tiny flecks of blue hidden in those grey eyes.What are you doing?I mouthed, horrified.

Nick returned a sunny grin my way, shark teeth gleaming. “Yeah, and grab some of those pastries from French Tart on your way.” He hung up and shot me an innocent look. “What? Too much?”

I lobbed a lettuce core his way and it hit him in the face.

“The guy is a journalist?”I set my knife down and spun the laptop around so I could see for myself.

“Apparently.” Nick swallowed a mouthful of salad and stabbed his fork at the screen. “See the byline. Lachlan King. I found the article bookmarked. It’s got to be the same guy, right? How many guys named Lachlan could he know, especially since as far as I’m concerned, he didn’t know any?”

I loaded a forkful of pie into my mouth and read the first couple of paragraphs. The article was about some Australasian drug lord who’d escaped on bail and been on the run for seven years. The journalist had tracked him to a dairy farm in the Waikato where he was renting a modest cottage under a different name while continuing to run his lucrative business under the very noses of the police. The owners of the farm had no idea who he was, only that he paid his rent on time and was a friendly chap. The journalist apprised the police of his discovery before he published the article, and the man was arrested.

I looked over at Nick. “I vaguely remember the trial, although I wouldn’t have recalled the name of the journalist, but the police were pretty red-faced about the whole thing, right?”

“You might say that.” Nick pushed his empty plate to the side and leaned back in his chair. “And I didn’t remember thejournalist’s name either. He provided the tip-off and probably some useful information that didn’t make it into his exposé, but the police, including the financial crimes unit, still had to build their own case. I was just a lowly contractor at the time, but as I recall, they found the man had close to thirty million dollars stashed away in various accounts.”

I blew a low whistle. “That’s a lot of cash to hide in a small country. How did he get away with it?”

Nick shrugged. “Most people thought he’d skipped the country when he jumped bail. Turned out he was just lying low, changing his look, and setting up a fresh identity. New haircut and dye, coloured contacts, new name, and a weight loss of over thirty kilos does a fair bit to make a person almost unrecognisable. Plus, he was careful not to flash his cash. He had a ton of small businesses set up to launder his money, but only one, a legitimate dry-cleaning franchise, could be traced to his new identity. It was successful enough to justify his frequent travelling and long stints overseas.”

I shook my head. “Still, it can’t have been easy. All that money. The temptation must’ve been huge to spend some of it. Otherwise, why do it?”

“I’m sure,” Nick agreed. “But this was only in his New Zealand life. Overseas was a different story. The investigation uncovered three homes in Europe and another in the Virgin Islands, all under shell companies. Those are the places he lived it up large under a range of guises.” The conversation evaporated, but Nick’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

“To put it mildly.” My gaze raked over his face, lingering on the soft contours of his lips and the tantalising shots of silver threaded through his thick stubble. A glimpse of pink tongue caught my attention, there and gone in a heartbeat. My gaze jerked up to find him still staring at me. Busted. My cheeksburned, but all he did was smile, warm and soft and loaded with questions.

I debated simply ignoring them, then thought, fuck it. I shrugged. “I’m not going to apologise for ogling you. You’re a beautiful man, what can I say?”

Nick’s eyes briefly widened, his mouth opening and closing without a sound. Then a slow tide of pink crept up his neck and an almost-shy smile stole over his face. “A sentiment that goes both ways.”

And there we were again. Another step on that precarious tightrope we balanced atop. Too fast, too slow, or too far either direction and it could all disappear in the snap of a finger. I wasn’t sure what to think about the chances of something so fragile surviving, but there it was. I wasn’t about to run away, either.

And so, we sat, eyes soft on each other, quiet and watchful as a morepork’s call split the silence of the bush outside the window. Shadows painted the dining room floor, leaving one wall lit up in dull orange as the sunset dwindled through the west-facing glass. A branch scraped the kitchen window, a late sea breeze kicking up from the east.

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