LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

before encountered.

      He was passionate about music, rock especially, and animals, and could be so enchanted by the beauty of a wren or a honey-eater he would make her stand still for minutes so as not to scare it.

      She could still hear his voice, urging her to take her time. ‘Look,’ he’d say. ‘Look properly.’ Joe’s mother was a painter, he’d once told her, and had taught him how to really look at birds and natural things from when he was a tiny little boy. And he was an artist himself of a sort. Once in the flat she stumbled on some poems he’d composed. Vivid little pictures painted in just a few bright words.

      She was supposed to be enrolling in uni, but how could she concentrate on such mundane stuff as her future when she was intoxicated with love? So she deferred her enrolment, and told Auntie Mim and her father she needed a gap year to experience life.

      Mim was unimpressed. ‘He’ll never amount to anything. He’s nothing but trouble, that lad. Why can’t you find some nice, steady boy from the church?’ She’d have been surprised to learn he could find beauty in simple things. That often when Mirandi was in danger of pushing the limits of recklessness too far, it was Joe’s steadying hand that restrained her.

      When he wasn’t fixing up motors he took Mirandi fishing in his father’s old dinghy in the little estuary at the head of the bay. How she remembered those lazy afternoons, drifting in the boat, dreaming about the future. Joe in his ancient blue tee shirt that reeked faintly of machine oil no matter how often it was washed.

      And she’d loved him. Oh, how she’d loved him.

      Shame it had all had to end so miserably. But she’d learned from it. As the song said, life was a bittersweet symphony. And after she’d lost him, once she was over the heartbreak, she’d come to the realisation her happiness depended on herself and not another person. Every woman was a goddess in her own right and was honour bound to walk like one.

      She cast a wry glance around at the glossy apartment. Did that mocking, irreverent, irreligious Joe Sinclair still exist somewhere, deep down under the layers of his Italian suits and the corporate skin he now inhabited? Or was this new sophisticated Joe the animal he’d truly been all along?

      She paused at an antique sideboard, where a crystal decanter stood among a selection of lethal-looking bottles. A few familiar labels. Whisky, gin, and there was the vodka, her old favourite and first acquaintance with the evil stuff. She could have laughed to think of herself then. How easily she’d succumbed in the name of sophistication. Anything to impress her lover, who’d been so worldly-wise in her naive eyes. Older by a whole six years, though way older in the hard lessons of grief and loss.

      She could imagine what her father would think of it all. After a lifetime of caring for the homeless and manning the city soup kitchens, he wouldn’t be any more impressed than he’d been ten years ago when he’d scraped Joe’s father off the pavement and driven him home because he’d gambled his last dollar and couldn’t afford the bus.

      It popped into her head that if Joe knew she was here now, invading his private domain, he’d have every right to be furious.

      She was conscious then of a vague sensation she hadn’t experienced since a time in her childhood when her father had inadvertently left her alone in the house while he rushed to tend some distressed person. A reckless, almost irresistible desire to make the most of her freedom and do something wicked, like raid the freezer for ice cream.

      Not, of course, that she’d do anything like that now.

      However, with Joe ensconced in meetings with the board for the rest of the afternoon, along with Stella, his EA, surely there was time for a little tour of appreciation?

      CHAPTER TWO

      JOE SINCLAIR directed his long stride back towards his chief executive office, then on an impulse made a left swerve and took the lift down, loosening his tie. Would the day never end?

      Something was wrong with him.

      If it wasn’t weird enough to have been tossing and turning in his sleep these past weeks like a criminal with a conscience, now he had developed the disease most fatal to bankers.

      Astonishing this could happen to him, a guy with a gift for finance, but in the last couple of months—ever since the casino development had been floated, in fact—board meetings had become excruciating. When had the musical chink of money flowing into the coffers of Martin Place Investment started to fall so flat?

      He nearly had to pinch himself. Wasn’t he the guy who’d pursued his career with such single-minded zeal his colleagues called him the Money Machine? Nothing ever interfered with his core business. No distraction, no interest, no woman. All of his passions lived in their separate compartments and life was a velvet ride. No collisions, no dramas.

      Down in the street, he breathed the open air and lifted his face to the afternoon sun. His first time AWOL in years, he considered how best to make the most of his stolen afternoon. In the absence of a helicopter to lift him out of the business world and drop him somewhere clean and pure, like Antarctica—or what remained of it—he tossed up between a gym and a bar, and the bar won.

      Not for the alcohol, per se, so much as the possibility of finding some luscious lovely decorating the venue with a view to entertainment.

      One who didn’t want to buy him. He tried not to think of Kirsty, his sometime lover. Way back then those first few weeks had been amusing, but now.

      Now, a familiar feeling of ennui lurked around the edges of her carefully groomed image. He could tell, the signs had been there for weeks, an unpleasant crunch was looming. Her father’s offer of the house in Vaucluse and an honorary directorship had been the clincher. Every one of his instincts was shouting at him to run like hell before the prison gates clanged shut.

      Ironic, wasn’t it, that these days society guys wanted to buy him for their daughters? Him. Jake Sinclair’s son. One-time rebel and seducer of innocent virgins. Did he really come across now as the sort of guy who would trade his soul for connections?

      Between them they’d tried every trick in the book. Kirsty had even attempted to make him jealous, flaunting some silver-tailed Romeo in front of his eyes to make him care. What she didn’t know—what each of his women had to learn—was that Joe Sinclair didn’t have a jealous bone in his body.

      He paused at the entrance to the Bamboo Bar, then strolled into its dim, cool refuge and ordered a Scotch. The lunch crowd had diminished. A couple of leggy women perched on barstools glanced his way, but instead of welcoming the signals he was swept with a wave of weariness.

      Suddenly it all seemed so predictable, the conquest dance. He’d advance, they’d retreat. He’d advance a little further, they’d take a flirty step in his direction. He’d play it cool, they’d come on strong. It was all too easy.

      But, God, he loved meeting women. What was wrong with him? He must be sick.

      He should be feeling upbeat. Here he was at the top of his game, the world his own personal pomegranate. Tomorrow he’d be flying to the south of France. A change of scene, the possibility of picking up some new contacts, useful information from some of the masters of the game before he decided whether or not the firm should risk its shirt on the Darling Point casino project.

      So why should his heart sink at the prospect? Good old reliable Stella would be along to smooth the way and attend to all the little details of his comfort. Well, most of them. And Stella was—well, she was risk free.

      Unlike some.

      An apparition reared in his mind, one that burned in his thoughts a time too often, in fact, for a highly disciplined CEO with responsibilities.

      Was it a whole five weeks since HR had floated her name before him as the potential candidate for the new Market Analyst position the firm was creating? His first reaction had been incredulity. A more unlikely MA he couldn’t imagine. Why had she applied? Was she hoping to glean some advantage from their past acquaintance? Had she forgotten how

Скачать книгу