“No?” Justin said in response to Rick.
“He’s the guy that Quinn hooked up with last night.”
I rubbed my forehead, sore from today’s anxiety. “Thanks, Rick,” I muttered under my breath. Thanks very much for making it known that I took a paddle through the skank pool last night. I checked my watch. Surely we must be hitting the next episode of 24 by now—The hour between seven pm and eight pm—because it felt like a lifetime ago that Lucy had dragged me out to that bloody bar.
***
Chapter Six
I whimpered unhappily when my alarm went off at six the next morning, desperate for another ten minutes before madness descended. My arm reached out and smacked the snooze button before returning to wrap around my pillow.
My front door opened and then slammed shut, madness finding her way into my room in her workout gear. A bright, cheery smile adorned her face that my tired body wanted to stomp all over.
I hadn’t slept well but nightmares weren’t designed to be pleasant; they spun fear dizzily through a painful slideshow of memories. Last night was different though. The usual shadowy images had been replaced by skin the colour of liquid gold and the slide of rough, hot hands on my skin. Apparently visions of Travis could also ensure a sleepless night for me. Not only that, I was usually able to savour my own space, but I’d woken to a bed that felt too big for my small frame and entirely too empty.
I grabbed my pillow in one hand, my blankets in the other, and prepared to burrow deeply into the thick, warm covers, but Lucy snatched the pillow from my grasp.
“No,” I moaned unhappily, making a desperate grab for it.
“Come on, Quinn. It’s exercise time!” Her wide eyes, and her words for that matter, were manic.
My slitted eyes raked her over. “I hate you.”
“And I love your face.” She held the pillow aloft. “Get up.”
“I can’t. My feet fell off last night, and I can’t find them.”
“Har har.” She tossed the pillow on the floor.
“And I start my job today, and I’m not organised. You don’t want me to be late do you?”
My snooze button shrieked wildly and Lucy stalked over to my bedside table and clicked it off. “Rubbish. I’m not blind. I can see your dress hanging on the door.”
“Damn.”
I forgot I left it there. It was my best office style dress. After the way I’d barely pulled myself together yesterday, today was my chance to make a better impression.
“That’s your best dress,” Lucy told me as if I didn’t know already. “I thought you said you’d get to wear mostly jeans and Jamieson band shirts at the office?”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “I did but I need new jeans and there’s a wait on the shirts. And after yesterday, I want to look my best.”
“After yesterday?”
Lucy hadn’t yet heard the full recount of yesterday, including the Travis connection. I sighed, knowing that would come out this morning—best to get it over with.
After dressing reluctantly, Lucy and I were jogging the pavement in the damp, chilly air. I huffed my way through the lowdown and reaching the peak of the story—being the arrival of Travis at my front door—Lucy had to stop mid-jog from a stitch. It was tempting to abandon her to the sidewalk as she gasped for air, but Lucy could move like an Olympic sprinter, so I hovered, hands on my hips, while she wheezed and flexed.
“Maybe it’s fate,” she puffed out as she tilted her torso to the side.
“Screw fate,” I hissed with more force than I intended.
Lucy blinked and slowly righted herself in the face of my outburst.
I rubbed at my brow. Four years had dulled my anger of the past, giving me the impression I was moving on, yet here it was, reasserting itself like a long lost friend.
My eyes narrowed on Lucy. “Are you telling me you believe everything in my life was meant to be?”
Lucy paled. “Quinny, I didn’t—”
“Just—” I halted mid-sentence and stilled, looking sideways as an eerie feeling washed over me. Deep breaths filled my lungs as my eyes did a rapid scan of the suburban street. Nothing seemed odd except the churning in my stomach and tingles of fear tripping down my spine. Cars were parked up and down the avenue, joggers passed by the path we were rudely blocking, aiming dirty looks our way, and a dog across the road was busy peeing on someone’s mailbox. I spun around. The sun was rising brightly, forcing my eyes to squint, and the wind swirled around me, yet something in the air didn’t feel right.
“Quinn?” Lucy scanned the street, picking up on my fear like a bloodhound. “What is it?”
I shoved the anger away and forced a smile to my lips. “Nothing, Lucy. Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”
She fisted her hands on her h*ps and faced me. “Yes. You did. But I don’t blame you. Maybe fate realised it f**ked you over and is trying to fix things.”
Her eyes were wide with hope. I shrugged her statement off, did another scan of the street, and nodded ahead of us. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Back home and showered, I slipped on my dress—deep navy and sleeveless with a matching thin leather belt—and pinned my tousled hair into a knot at the nape of my neck. Adding some light makeup and hot pink lipstick to finish the look, I sighed at my reflection, hoping it was an improvement on yesterday.
Fighting snarls of rush hour traffic, I delivered the paperwork to Jettison Records before heading over to the office at Coogee.
Letting myself in with the key that had been in the envelope, I called out hello. My feet echoed along the timber flooring as I headed towards the back office, not hearing a response.
Already the business line was ringing, so I answered it, sinking into the chair as someone spoke to me about the proofs for Jamieson’s album artwork. Of course I had no idea, so I switched on the computer and promised to return the call. From then on the phone didn’t stop, and it wasn’t until I heard a tap on the open door that I realised two hours had passed.
Returning from the printer behind me, I was just sitting in my chair and glanced up. For a split second I thought it was Travis and completely missed the seat, falling to the floor with a hard jolt.
“Oh shit.” Laughter bubbled out of him, and he quickly subdued it, taking in the wild flush to my cheeks. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
He strode over and held out a hand to help me up.
“That’s okay. Seems I startle easily,” I replied, taking his hand and stumbling awkwardly to my feet.
“I’m Jared,” he told me. “You must be Quinn? Evie said you were starting today.”
The third brother, I realised. Did the Valentine men have all women falling to their feet or was it just me? My backside was still a little bruised from meeting Mitch yesterday.
Jared perched on the edge of the desk as I made a second, more cautious attempt at sitting down, taking in his subtle differences to Travis. Jared’s hair was golden brown and not as long, he was a little leaner, and a cheeky glint hovered in his green eyes.
“How’s your first day going?”
“Good.”
“You worked at Jettison Records before here?”
“Uh huh.”
“Did Mac show you where everything—”
His phone rang, interrupting the rapid fire questions, so I focused on the computer screen while he took the call.
“Travis. How’d the AFP meeting go this morning?”
Just hearing his name was a rush of pleasure that had my mind losing its train of thought.
Jared’s eyes widened as he listened. “What?”
I glanced at him when his eyes slid my way with a frown. Silently, he mouthed he’d come back, and with the phone glued to his ear, he strode from the room.
After about twenty minutes, Jared poked his head in the door. “Lunch?”
I hadn’t had time to think about food, but my stomach gave an angry growl at the mention.
“Okay. Thanks,” I said with a smile, thinking that was really nice of him to offer.
My mistake.
He came back in with a tuna and mung bean salad and a small dark brown roll that was riddled with what looked like bird seed. I didn’t want to offend him after the effort, but tuna was something that had my stomach churning. I picked at it carefully, pushing the food around a little as he told me about the house he’d recently bought in Bondi with Evie.
“So you’re staying here until the renovations are done?” I asked.
He swallowed a mouthful. “No. We’ll be here for just a couple of weeks. I wanna do most of it while we live there.”
I put my fork down gratefully when Mac sent through a message with their location, telling me to head over when I was able. With Jared finished, I cleaned up and grabbed my bag. When my stomach gave another angry growl, I soothed it with promises of a drive through burger on the way.
We both left the house at the same time. Jared told me he wanted to check in with Evie before heading to his own office. Striding out the door, his eyes raked over Suzi-Q parked kerbside and offered me a lift.
Fully prepared to say no—there was burger out there with my name on it—the beep of a car unlocking drew my attention to a sexy, vintage black Porsche currently dominating the driveway. So I arrived on set in style, albeit hungry, just in time to see everyone break for lunch.
Mac waltzed over to greet me, taking in my appearance with a crisp nod. “Look at you, Quinn! That hot pink lipstick looks fantastic, you lucky bitch. I try to wear shades like that and it washes me out,” she moaned.
“Wow, look at the colour of your hair,” Evie muttered, reaching out to finger a rogue wave that had escaped my knot. “It was all tucked under a hat yesterday, but that’s your real colour!”
Fidgeting under the scrutiny, I snatched up the phone with relief when it rang. Jared came up behind Evie, sliding his arms around her waist and they chattered for a moment while I spoke into the phone and made notes in the schedule. The call took a little while to deal with, and Jared strode off to talk to Henry as Mac and Evie waited for me to finish.
“Have you had lunch yet?” Mac asked when I hung up. She nodded in the direction of a buffet style table of food currently surrounded by guys. They were all talking and laughing loudly, confident and cavalier, and my inner social douche shrivelled with anxiety.
Mac grabbed my arm, oblivious to my freak out, and started to drag me towards them. “Let’s go push all those wankers out of the way and grab something before there’s nothing left but shitty salad. I’m bloody starving.”
I stopped, halting Mac mid-drag. “Um…actually Jared made me lunch back at the house, so uh…” I trailed off because my stomach was still feeling slighted.
Mac let out a shout of laughter.
“Jesus,” Evie muttered. “You didn’t actually eat it, did you?”
My cheeks heated. The man was Evie’s boyfriend. Offending her on my first day of work was not on my to-do list.
Mac slapped me on the back, and I stumbled forward. “Come on. Let’s get our girl a burger. God knows you must be starving. We can put it on my plate so Jared doesn’t see.” She winked conspiratorially.