Page 74 of Sexy as Sin
“Can you dance?” Brett asked her.
“Yes, though not as well as that. How about you?”
“Not now, unfortunately,” he said.
When the song was over, they left. But it had been a beautiful moment.
Back at home again, after Brett and Azra had climbed back into the car after saying goodnight, Aunt Fiona pulled her away from it, gave her a cuddle, and said, “You smell wonderful, darling, and you look even more beautiful than that. Something about happiness, I’d say. Maybe even something about love.”
“I don’t...” Willow started to say, then stopped. “I don’t know what it is. It’s too soon for that, surely. Definitely too soon to be meeting his mum, all the way in the States. What am I doing?”
“Following your heart. It works sometimes, I hear. And too soon? Brett doesn’t seem to think so. I’ve never seen a man more sure of what he wants, or more at home in his skin. Other than your uncle, that is.” Fiona glanced over at the car, then lowered her voice and went on. “I won’t have a chance to say this over the next week, because you’ll be too stubborn to ring me and share. So I’m going to share myself. He’s a lovely man, Willow.”
“He’s so bloodyrich,though,” Willow tried to explain. When her aunt laughed, she said, “All right, but what if I’m being swept off my feet?”
“I’m sure you are,” her aunt said. “I think I am, and I’m just standing to the side and watching. How sweet is he with darling Azra? That’s down to his character, surely, because he doesn’t have to do that. He walked the golf course on crutches with your uncle today, too. He must have known he’d be put through the mill, but I reckon he wanted to clear that hurdle, because it’ll matter to you that he did. He did clear it, too.”
“Really? What did Uncle Colin say?”
Her aunt laughed. “Said, ‘He’ll do,’ like he was judging the sheepdogs, but I know what he meant. That doesn’t come along every day, and it doesn’t have anything to do with how much money he has. Is Jace a different person than he was at twenty? Is Rafe? If not, why would you imagine Brett is?”
“Heisdifferent, though,” Willow said. “I’m sure of it. He’s—all kinds of things.” She was so very bad at explaining, even to herself. Especially to herself. “He’s complicated. And—all right, yes. He’s bloody wonderful. So wonderful he scares me.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” Fiona said. “Sometimes, life comes along when you least expect it, for better or worse. You’ve had the ‘worse.’ Maybe you could start to believe in the ‘better.’ Sometimes, you just have to go on and surf the wave, even if it’s a big one.Especiallyif it’s a big one. What are you going to do, let it go on without you? But think about this. Just because you’re being swept off your feet, that doesn’t mean your eyes aren’t open. You could trust yourself to ride that wave, and to decide for yourself how it feels, and whether you want to keep on riding it, too. It’s an option.”
Willow was quiet on the hour-long flight to Sydney the next day, and Brett wished he knew how to interpret that. Nervous about this trip, probably, and wondering what it meant.
She was always two steps forward, one step back, and it was driving him crazy. She’d only brought one small suitcase, in the end, which she’d borrowed from her aunt. When she’d wheeled it out to the car last night and he’d said, “That’s not much shopping for an afternoon,” she’d said, “Two pairs of jeans, three jumpers, this sweater thing—coat thing—whatever, and three pairs of shoes? Not to mention those purses. Suitcase full ofmoney,more like. I knew jeans could cost hundreds of dollars. I just didn’t know anybody actually paid it.”
Azra had rolled her eyes at Brett, he’d grinned at her and said, “Baby steps. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart,” and she’d laughed. He could imagine the tug-of-war that had taken place in those dressing rooms, because he’d sneaked a look at his MasterCard status. Azra was tougher than she looked.
She’d done a good job on today’s outfit, too. Willow was wearing a whisper-light, sleeveless, ribbed red sweater that had some silk in it, with a wide neckline that showed off her beautiful skin. It wasn’t anything like winter-ready, but he wasn’t going to be complaining. She’d tucked it into the skinniest of indigo jeans, her boots were low, Western, embroidered all over, and would have inspired lust in his sisters’ hearts, and her hair was down and curly, with a jeweled comb stuck into one side to hold it away from her face. Over her arm, she held the cream-colored “sweater thing. Coat thing. Whatever,” which looked like it had come from an appropriately soft and fleecy animal. That and the shoes, he’d bet, had been Azra’s toughest battles, but she’d won.
Of course, when Willow had climbed the steps to the jet, the pilot had stared, forcing Brett to give him a hard look, so there was that.
She’d dressed, in fact, like a woman who believed at last that her body was beautiful, and if that made his life a little less comfortable, that was how it was going to have to be.
She must have noticed that he’d stopped making notes on the yellow legal pad beside his laptop, because she asked, “What? Did you find something?”
“Not yet.” He’d decided that this trip was the time to go through Nourish’s numbers. So far, the amounts paid to vendors matched the invoices, right enough, and the receipts matched the invoices to the clients. He didn’t know enough about caterers’ pricing structures, though, to tell if something was off. His nose was twitching, that was all he could say at this point. “What I need,” he told her, “is something else. There must be a database that includes the info for each event. The client, the menu, the event location, the breakdown of the outlays, and preferably photos. That’s how I’d do it if it were me, at least. A database, so I could sort it different ways. I’d want to have a sort of...” He made a gesture.
“Look book,” she said. “That’s what Azra would call it. You’re right, though I haven’t seen it done with photos. Good idea. I’m visual. It would help me.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m guessing there’s something like that. The menus for each event, at least, in a digital file, even if they aren’t matched to the outlays in the way I’d do. I’d like to get an idea of how much a certain type of menu should cost and what extras you might or might not have, more of a macro picture. If the database doesn’t exist, I’ll match things up the old-fashioned way, but I need the menus, at least, and the numbers served. Where’s that file?”
“I don’t know.” She was looking worried again. He’d rather not have brought it up at all, but problems didn’t go away because you shut your eyes. “I’d have to ask Amanda, and I don’t know how she’ll take it.”
“You don’t need to worry about what she thinks,” he tried to explain.“Sheneeds to worry about whatyouthink, and I’ll bet she’s doing it. She had a good thing going, and she messed it up. Send her a text and ask her for the other documents, the ones that detail the bookings and the associated menus. Don’t ask if there is such a thing,” he added before she could say it. “Ask like you already know there is, and she’d better hand it over. It’s a power struggle, and if you haven’t come out ahead so far, it’s because you haven’t called her on the fact that she needs you more than you need her. Time to do it.”
“Not so much,” Willow said. “You forget that I’m the one with the eighty thousand sunk, and whoisn’tholding the checkbook. I’m not feeling like the winner in any power struggle just now, especially with Azra possibly leaving. More like a woman who just cut her own brake cables. If it weren’t for that job of yours—which I no longer have, I’ll point out, and a week before I was expecting it to end—even next month’s rent would be looking dicey.”
“The company’s fixed assets have to be worth at least a hundred thousand.” Brett hung onto his patience, because that was what he did. “The kitchen equipment, and the vans? Worst-case scenario, you have the entire value reassessed—and if it hasn’t increased since you bought in, I’m very surprised, because it’ll be based on net profit—and you get out with roughly what you put in.” He held up the document he’d printed this morning, before he’d left to visit the surgeon. Willow’s partnership agreement, which, fortunately, she’d had on her laptop. “Six weeks’ notice required to dissolve the partnership at any time, and no notice required in cases of fraud or malfeasance. You’re not locked into anything.”
“What about lawyers’ fees to make it happen?” she asked.
“Ah.” He smiled. “Now, there you have me. Always the sticky part. That’s why you keep that threat alive in the back of her mind rather than actually jumping in to do it. You don’t want to give her too much time to think that through herself. If this thing is going to work for you, though, it seems to me that it has to work differently. Now’s the time to ask for what you need.”
She took a breath, nodded, and started to text, and he thought,You’d better be right, Hunter.He also thought,This firm of hers that you’re trying to save? It’s in Australia, genius.
