LITMIR.BIZ

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late, though. She’d gone.

      Breathing hard, Amber stood under the skylight in her empty sitting room and tried to resuscitate the mood.

      Once more the ethereal chords of ‘Clair de Lune’ drifted on the air. Usually every note was a drop of silver magic on her soul, but though she rose on her toes and held up her arms to the moon filtering through the skylight … arabesque, arabesque, glissé …

      Hopeless. The magic was gone. Murdered.

      She switched off the music. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so annoyed. No use attempting to dance her insomnia away now. She could still hear the appalling racket from next door, even though they’d toned down the volume a notch. The truth was she didn’t want to be aware of them in the slightest. Of him.

      And it had nothing to do with his mouth, or the way he’d looked in those jeans. She was used to well-built guys with chests. She was up to here with them, if the truth be known. And no way was it his eyes. She’d seen plenty of large grey, crinkling-at-the-corners eyes in her twenty-six years.

      No, it had been the mockery in them. That amused, ironic assumption that since he was a man and she was a woman she’d be keen. He was so sure of himself he hadn’t even bothered to finish the conversation.

      How wrong could a man be? The last guy who’d persuaded her to take that plunge had reminded her of all a woman needed to learn about heartbreak.

      She peeled off her slippers and crawled back into her bed. For a while she lay on her side, as tense as a wire. Tried the other side. Still no good. Tossed. Turned. And in no time at all her brain was back to its churning.

      Money. The shop. The renovations. Aloneness. Men who mocked you with smiling eyes.

      Usually by late afternoon, the Fleur Elise end of the Kirribilli Mansions Arcade was quiet. This day, surely one of the longest in Amber’s memory, not a shopper stirred. After three disturbed nights Amber welcomed the possibility of snatching a quick reflective snooze in the room where the bouquets were made up.

      Unfortunately Ivy, the book-keeper she’d inherited along with the shop, had come in to help out.

      ‘… you’re going to have to make cuts. Amber? Are you listening?’

      Amber winced. It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed the penetrating quality of Ivy’s voice. With only the mildest exclamation the woman could break windows.

      Amber laid her aching head on the bunching table. Sleep deprivation had brought her nerves to a desperate state, thanks to that man. For two days now there’d been this throb in her temples. Maybe if she ignored Ivy she’d shut up.

      As far as Amber was concerned this was not the moment to be raking over her failures with the accounts. She was tired. She needed to brood on what was happening in Jean’s flat night after night. The noise. The ructions. That—guy. She clenched her teeth. The sooner Jean and Stuart got back from their honeymoon the better.

      She so resented the way he’d looked at her, with that scorching glance, that lazy smile playing on his cool, very, very sexy mouth.

      Maybe he’d thought she’d be flattered. What men didn’t realise was that women knew when they weren’t looking their best. If a woman was wearing an old sloppy joe over her nightie and a man happened to show a certain kind of interest in her, it wasn’t flattering in the least. It immediately raised the likelihood that he automatically looked at every woman like that. In other words, he was likely to be the sort of chronic womaniser her father had been.

      Oh, yeah. He looked the type, with that lazy grin. Typical narcissistic heartbreaker. If he saw her today, though, even he wouldn’t look twice. She was a train wreck.

      She rested her head on her arms. One of the songs his band had been bashing out was grinding an unwelcome path through her brain. To add to her irritation, when she’d been bathing this morning she’d heard him in his shower, actually whistling the same tune in a slow, sexy, up-beat sort of way.

      Why hadn’t Jean warned her? They were friends, weren’t they? She was the one who was supposed to be looking after Jean’s fish and watering her plants.

      It was so unfair. With all she had on her plate, she shouldn’t have to be so distracted.

      ‘… cut your overheads.’ Ivy’s voice hacked through the fog of Amber’s musings like a saw-toothed laser. ‘That Serena’s a prime example.’

      Shocked into responding, Amber said hoarsely, ‘What? Did you say I should sack Serena?’

      ‘Well, unless you cut your expenditure elsewhere.’

      Amber was flummoxed. ‘Oh, Ivy. Serena’s our only genuine florist. Neither of us has her sort of talent. All right, I know she’s needed a bit of time off since she had the baby. But when she sorts out childcare that’ll get better. She really needs the work. She and the babe depend on her hours here.’

      ‘I’m not running a blessed charity,’ Ivy muttered. ‘Next you’ll be talking again about opening up the side door to the street and spending a fortune on redecorating.’

      Amber felt her muscles clench all over. Ivy wasn’t running anything. Fleur Elise was her shop. Her inheritance from her mother. The words burned on her tongue but with a supreme effort she held them back. That business course she was studying strongly advocated the need to stay calm in times of conflict. Maintain her cool professionalism.

      She drew a long, cooling breath. Several long breaths. She needed to remind herself her mother had had a great deal of faith in Ivy. Ivy’s legendary ability to avoid outlay was an asset, her mother had said. And it almost certainly was. Anywhere but a flower shop.

      Amber’s flower shop, at least. Her shop should be spilling over with blooms. Poppies and tulips, snapdragons and violets, jonquils, forget-me-nots. Masses of everything—and roses, roses, roses. She dreamed of her rich, heady fragrances drawing people in from the street and following them throughout the arcade.

      All right, she was the first to admit she might not be quite up to scratch yet as a businessperson—she was still in the early stages of her course—but instinct told her Ivy’s miserly cheese-paring approach wasn’t the way to go.

      What would attract the customers was a mass of colours, textures and tantalising smells. The sort that would appeal to any sensuous, voluptuous femme like herself.

      The self she could be, that was. On a good day. When she’d had sleep. When her brain hadn’t been tormented by noise. Today her sensuous, voluptuous quotient was at rock-bottom.

      It was never any use arguing with Ivy, anyway. Nothing would shift her from her fixed position on any subject. If Amber hadn’t been so punch-drunk with fatigue she’d have remembered that and kept her mouth shut. As it was …

      ‘I’m thinking of getting a bank loan.’ She yawned.

      Oh, wow. Wrong thing to say. She’d have been better throwing a grenade. Ivy’s short neck could stretch right out and swivel when she was outraged, alarmed and aghast.

      Like now.

      The small woman’s mouth gaped into an incredulous rectangle. ‘Are you out of your mind, girl? How will you pay it back if something goes wrong with the trade?’

      ‘Oh, what trade?’ Amber growled, incensed at being called ‘girl’. For God’s sake, though she might dress like it, Ivy was hardly her grandmother. She was only thirty-eight.

      Amber pressed a couple of cooling roses to her temples. ‘Do we have to talk about it now, Ivy?’ she moaned. ‘I have a headache.’

      And she needed to brood. About men and betrayal. Love and pain. Passion unrequited. She wasn’t sure why these things had to occupy her mind right now, when she was so tired and noise-battered, but for some reason lately they’d been looming large.

      For

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