she joked. ‘And go out onto the street to welcome the mums.’
Even white, teeth sparkled. ‘You’re evil.’
‘I’m a student of human nature. Isn’t that what you once said?’
‘Luc’s right; I need to cover up.’ He pushed to his feet and peered down at her. She lifted her hand to screen the bright sun. He was gloriously broad in silhouette but it meant she couldn’t see his face.
‘And he’s right about why you need to cover up, too.’
‘So what’s her story?’ Luc said from behind him as Shirley’s purple monstrosity drove away. With a still dripping Boudicca in it.
‘No idea,’ he murmured, still following her departure until she turned the corner. Then he dragged his eyes back to his friend. ‘She’s just a girl. The daughter of one of my lecturers.’
Luc laughed. ‘She’s not just an anything.’
He turned back to the empty road where her car had just been. No. Not even close.
‘I assume you know what you’re doing?’ Luc went on as he thrust two party bags in the hands of the last departing nine-year-olds.
Hayden looked up. ‘Meaning?’
‘First the symphony, now Tim’s party? That’s not your usual playbook. And she’s a total deviation from your usual type. I assume you’re working an angle?’
Really? That was Luc’s first assumption when his mate brought a nice girl over. Not that he didn’t deserve the suspicion. ‘No angle. I’m helping her with something.’
‘Yeah, you’re a regular Sir Galahad,’ Luc snorted. ‘You’re hot for her. It’s obvious.’
‘That’s not why I’m helping her …’ Not that there wasn’t a lot to be hot about. ‘It’s just a chance to get to know her.’ That generated a modicum of stunned silence from his usually unflappable mate. Hayden turned. ‘What?’
Luc masked his surprise. ‘Nothing. Just never thought we’d have this moment.’
‘Me standing in a skirt on your sister’s verge?’ No doubt.
Luc wasn’t deterred. ‘You admitting to interest in a woman.’
‘I’ve had a lot of female interests. Far more than you, mate.’
Luc wasn’t biting, either. ‘Not like this, Hayds. Not someone normal.’
A laugh shot out of him. ‘Shirley is far from normal.’
‘You’re doing stuff together, getting to know her, flirting …’
He turned for the house. ‘That wasn’t flirting. I was just entertaining myself.’
‘Please. It was practically foreplay. If you’re just amusing yourself then you might want to think about what that will do to her. She’s not in the same league as the other women you’ve dated.’
Luc’s words produced a fiery, blazing desire to be sure Shirley wasn’t tarred by the brush of the many women he’d been with. Which in turn produced the confusing question—why? So of course he said the exact opposite of what he thought. ‘She seemed up for it. She’s stronger than she looks.’
‘Steel’s strong, too, until the moment it’s not.’
Time for a new conversation. He swished back towards the house, Luc in tow. ‘It’s not going to be an issue. She’s far too switched on to have a bar of me.’
‘You might surprise yourself, Hayden. If you let someone in, they might want to stay.’
A dark, thick pool deep inside burped up a puff of uneasiness like a boiling tar pit. ‘Maybe I should leave you my skirt, mate. If you’re going to get all huggy on me.’ He snagged up his sports bag full of street clothes. ‘I do this for a living, Luc. For entire corporations. I think I can read one twenty-four-year-old woman, don’t you?’
‘I’m not worried about whether you can read her, Hayds,’ he said. ‘I’m worried that you don’t read you all that well sometimes.’
Yeah, he did; better than his friend thought. Well enough to recognise when he had no idea what he was doing. Yet. But being in the dark wasn’t the same thing as being oblivious. Leonidas would have agreed. Even if you didn’t know exactly how many were in the opposing force or what weapons they were carrying, just knowing they were over the horizon was a huge advantage.
Forewarned was forearmed.
‘YOU realise the next time you say “Trust me, Hayden” I’ll just laugh and remind you of this moment.’
They stood, suitcases in hand, on the dock of the port. The wrong side of the dock. The bright white, multi-storey cruise liners all lined up on the far side. On this side the dirty barnacleencrusted freight liners slummed it.
Hayden stared at the hulking great vessel in front of them, with its towering patchwork of sea-containers. ‘When you said pack for a sea voyage I had something very different in mind.’
Beside him, Shirley smiled. ‘What did you expect for a hundred bucks each way?’
He sighed and closed his eyes. What had he expected? He’d had vague dreams of crewing on a maxi-yacht, or working for their passage on one of the leisure behemoths on the far side of the port. ‘Not this.’
‘I have a friend at the port authority. She gave me the tip about this vessel. It comes in fully laden and then offloads half its cargo and crew for shore leave before heading on to New Zealand to drop the rest and return half-full. Then they pick up their shore-rested crew and new cargo.’
She was staring at him with such enthusiastic expectation. He just kept staring at the vessel.
‘So they have room for passengers there and back,’ she went on. ‘The catch is that you only get one day in New Zealand. But that’s all we’ll need.’
He nodded slowly. How else were they going to get to New Zealand for the bungee jumping or Venice for the gondola ride, or the base camp of Everest? The list wouldn’t have been easily achievable even for her mother. Some parts of it they had no hope of delivering.
This was pretty clever. But he wasn’t about to give her that just yet.
‘I hope they’re not expecting me to haul containers?’
She nudged him bodily. ‘Come on, Leonidas, I’ve seen your muscles.’
And that was all it took. An unexpected bit of full body contact and he was totally on board with this crazy plan. He stared at the Delphi Paxos and worked hard to ignore the tingling place in his arm where the curve of her breast had just brushed. ‘As long as I can get a satellite signal then I can keep the shareholders happy for the week I’ll be away.’
She glanced up at him. ‘I know it’s not the Ritz—’
Oh, honey, it’s not even The Ritz’s off-site warehouse.
‘—but it’s a virtually free ride to New Zealand and it puts two ticks in boxes.’
Ticks in boxes. Right. Everything was about the boxes with her. How had he forgotten?
She set off across the dock tarmac, pausing to let a kamikaze forklift whizz by. They reached the bottom of a long skinny gangplank. Shirley ground to a halt just in front of him. He peered around her to check her expression.
‘I just … urn …’ she muttered.
He stepped around her and looked at her fronton. ‘You okay?’
She