More Than One Night

chapter FOUR



THE NEXT EIGHT weeks flew by. Charlie’s luggage arrived two days later than the airline had promised, but by that time she was so relieved to have her things that she could barely muster the energy to complain. After a week of deliberation and research, she bought a car, a small white SUV that was easy to park and maneuver. It took her longer to find somewhere to live, but she finally found a one-bedroom apartment two streets from Gina’s house. She planned to buy eventually, but she needed to build up her business before a bank would consider her for a loan, and the twelve-month lease she’d secured gave her plenty of time to get to know the city better.

Her second-floor apartment was one of just six and featured high ceilings with decorative plasterwork, a mint-green-and-black bathroom that dated back to the thirties and a small but recently renovated kitchen. Most important, it boasted a neat study area off the bedroom that had become her new home office, a bonus that had sealed the deal for her even though the rent was slightly more than she’d hoped to pay.

With transportation and accommodation settled, she committed herself to the handful of start-up clients she’d generated before leaving the service, while also trying to drum up future business. Thanks to her background, she had in-depth knowledge in certain highly specialized areas and, as she’d hoped, her credentials opened a lot of doors amongst suppliers either already dealing with the military or hoping to.

By the time April rolled into May, she had work booked for the next two months, with prospects for more in the pipeline. She’d made friends with the woman across the hall and Gina’s circle of friends had embraced her. Her initial qualms about civilian life faded as she found her feet and her days took on a rhythm of their own.

She was surviving. No, not simply surviving—she was thriving. She had a home all her own, she had a business that was on the uptick, she was putting down roots and forming new friendships. It was all good.

The only off note, if it could be called that, was the fact that every now and then, when her guard was down, a rogue, rebellious part of her brain wondered what might have happened if she’d hung around and waited for Rhys to wake up all those weeks ago.

Every time she caught her thoughts drifting in that direction she gave herself a mental slap and reminded herself that she was a realist and that she’d played it smart, leaving the way she had—even if it meant there might be a part of her that wondered “what if.”

She was giving herself the Rhys Lecture, as she’d come to think of it, late one Friday afternoon in early May when a knock sounded. She was preparing dinner for herself and Gina and she put down the knife she’d been using before heading for the door.

“I come bearing gifts,” Gina said. She was carrying a bottle of red wine and a white bakery box and looked as though she’d come straight from work.

Charlie made a show of checking her watch. “You’re about two hours early for dinner. You know that, right?”

Gina shrugged. “I got off early. Plus, they’d just finished making these mini quiches for a function tonight—feel the box, they’re still warm from the oven—and I knew you’d be up for some early piggery.”

Charlie smiled wryly as she waved her friend inside. “You know me so well.”

“I know your appetite, that’s for sure.” Gina dumped the bottle of wine on the counter and glanced at the chopping board. “So, what are we having?”

“Potatoes dauphinoise, green beans with garlic and coq au vin.”

“God, I wish you were a man. I would so marry you.”

“What say we hold off on the proposal until after we’ve eaten? This is all a bold experiment at this stage.”

Cooking had never been one of Charlie’s strong suits, but she was determined to improve now that she was personally responsible for all her own meals. The days of making excuses for living off canned and frozen meals were over.

“You want to eat these little puppies now or later?” Gina asked, nudging the bakery box suggestively.

“What do you think?”

“This is why we’re friends,” Gina said with a happy sigh.

Charlie grabbed two wineglasses and the bottle and followed Gina into the living room.

“You make me feel like such a slattern every time I come here.” Gina dropped onto the white couch.

“Why?” Charlie asked, startled.

“Because your place is always so organized and clean and perfect,” Gina said, one hand making a sweeping gesture.

Charlie glanced around at her black leather Eames chair and ottoman, white wool Florence Knoll sofa and midcentury glass-and-wood coffee table. Art books sat in a neat stack beside the open fireplace, arranged so their spines formed blocks of color, and a cluster of thick, creamy pillar candles sat in the empty grate. Apart from a handful of red-and-black throw cushions on the couch and a single white vase on the mantel, the room was bare.

“Is it too sterile?” She loved it like this—calm and clean—but she knew that her minimalist bent gave some people the heebie-jeebies.

“No. It’s soothing, actually. I just don’t know how you maintain it.”

“Magical elves. With tiny hoovers and feather dusters.”

“I knew you’d been holding out on me, bitch,” Gina said amicably. “You need to send some of that elf magic my way.”

Charlie smiled as she opened the wine and poured. “I’ll see what I can do. But even elves have their standards, you know.”

“Careful, or I won’t share,” Gina said, flipping off the lid. The smell of cream and cheese and bacon filled the room.

“Oh, boy, this is going to be good,” Charlie said.

“Word,” Gina agreed.

They dived into the box. They both made appreciative noises as they scoffed their first quiche before going back for seconds.

“So good,” Charlie said around a mouthful of food.

“Tell me about it,” Gina mumbled.

The phone rang, catching Charlie in the act of reaching for her third quiche. Rolling her eyes at Gina over the bad timing, she wiped her buttery fingers on a napkin and went to grab the phone.

A softly spoken woman identified herself as a nurse at the hospice where her father had spent his final days, and Charlie listened in bemusement as she explained that they’d discovered a previously overlooked box of personal belongings with her father’s name on it in their storage room.

“I was under the impression my father had either given everything away or thrown it out,” Charlie said.

“Well, there’s a box that didn’t go either way. What would you like us to do with it?”

Charlie gave the woman her address and credit card details to cover shipping the stuff from Melbourne, then ended the call and returned to Gina.

“What was that all about?” Gina asked as she sipped her wine.

Charlie explained briefly before changing the subject. There wasn’t much to discuss, after all—her father was dead, and the odds were good that the box contained a bunch of meaningless bits and pieces. Keith Anderson Long had been too organized and orderly a man for it to be any other way.

They continued to slurp their wine and made each other laugh with anecdotes from their respective days as they consumed the pastries. Finally the box was empty and Gina pushed herself to her feet.

“Fantastic. I’m now going to loll on your couch and complain about how full I am and how I couldn’t possibly fit another thing in while you finish making dinner,” she said as she headed for the bathroom.

“Or I could put you to work, stringing the beans and whatnot.”

“Hard-hearted wench,” Gina said, her voice echoing down the short hallway.

Charlie smiled as she sat back in her chair, sipping her wine.

“Hey, Charlie—my stupid period has come early. Can I borrow a tampon?” Gina called, her voice muffled by the closed door.

“Sure. In the cupboard behind the mirror.”

There was a short pause then Gina called out again. “There’s nothing here.”

Charlie set down her glass and stood. “Did you have a boy look or a girl look?” she asked as she headed for the bathroom.

“I had a girl look. A really good one. Smarty-pants.”

Charlie paused outside the bathroom. “You decent?”

“Give me five secs. Okay, come in.”

Charlie entered. Gina was standing in front of the open bathroom cabinet, a frown on her face.

“I dare you to find a tampon in there.”

“Watch.” Charlie stepped toward the cabinet, one hand already raised in anticipation of finding what she was looking for. She frowned as her gaze scanned over toiletry and medicinal products and failed to find the familiar pink-and-white box.

“That’s weird,” she said. “They should be in here. I always make sure I restock after my period.”

“Guess you must have forgotten last month, then,” Gina said lightly. “No worries. I’ve probably got one lurking in the bottom of my handbag.”

She slipped past Charlie, who remained staring at the bathroom cabinet, her frown intensifying as she tried to remember when she’d had her last period…and couldn’t.

“Don’t be stupid,” she muttered to herself.

She must be getting mixed up somehow. She could remember having her period in Perth because the cramps had come at exactly the wrong time. Two weeks later, she’d cleared out the flat she’d been sharing with another female officer, packed her bags and flown to Sydney.

And she hadn’t had her period since.

And in the interim, she’d had sex with Rhys-the-unforgettable. Three times in the one night.

Adrenaline fired in her belly, sending a shock wave through her body. She took a step backward, appalled by the thought that had snaked its way into her brain.

“Told you I’d have one,” Gina said as she returned. “Hey. What’s wrong? You’re pale.”

Charlie took another step backward and sank onto the edge of the tub.

“What’s the failure rate for condoms?” Her voice sounded as though it was coming from a long way away. Cleveland, perhaps. Or maybe Moscow.

“I don’t know. Not high. One or two percent, maybe?” Gina was still frowning, but suddenly her eyes rounded and her eyebrows headed for her hairline. “Oh, my God. Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

Charlie looked at her friend, her mind busy doing the math and getting the same answer over and over.

“I’ve missed two periods. I’ve been so busy getting everything sorted that I didn’t even notice. That’s why there are no tampons in the cupboard.”

Gina swore and sank onto the bathtub beside her. There was a moment of profound silence as they both processed their own thoughts.

“Okay. First things first—before we hit the panic button, we need to know what we’re panicking about.” Gina looked at her watch. “It’s only four-thirty. The pharmacy around the corner should still be open.”

“Good idea,” Charlie said. She pushed herself to her feet. A wave of anxious dizziness hit her and she sat again.

“I’ll go,” Gina said instantly. “You stay here. Don’t start freaking yet, okay? I’ll run all the way.”

“Okay,” Charlie said meekly.

Gina’s hand dropped onto her shoulder, warm and reassuring. “It could just be stress. Changing your life is a big deal.”

Charlie nodded. Gina gave her a quick squeeze before she slipped past. Charlie stared at a cracked floor tile, her mind ricocheting from one thought to the next.

If she was pregnant…

But she couldn’t be. They’d used condoms. A new one each time…

But condoms failed. That’s why they weren’t one hundred percent foolproof. Still, what were the odds of one of them failing and it being the exact right point in her cycle…?

Big. Too big. Way too big. Huge. She couldn’t even calculate the probability it was so large. She probably had a better chance of winning the lottery.

And yet she’d missed two periods.

“Oh, God,” she said, bracing her elbows on her knees, her head dropping into her hands.

She couldn’t be pregnant. She simply couldn’t. She’d just started her own business. She’d barely unpacked from the move. She was single, in a new city, essentially unemployed if anything went wrong with her business.

She moaned, digging her fingers into her skull.

Please let it be stress. Please let it be stress. Please let it be stress.

The front door slammed and when she looked up Gina was standing before her, a bag in hand. “Okay. I have no idea how these things work, but I’m sure we can figure it out.”

She handed over the bag and Charlie pulled out a slickly branded box. Her hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t pull the flap from the slot and Gina took it from her.

“Whatever happens, we’ll work it out, okay, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded, enormously grateful for her friend’s use of the plural even though she knew in her heart of hearts that if she really was pregnant, the responsibility would land squarely on her shoulders, no matter what she decided to do.

“Okay. We have instructions,” Gina said as she pulled a folded sheet from the box.

They pored over the instructions for a few minutes, then Gina handed Charlie a cellophane-wrapped stick.

“Do your thing,” she said.

Charlie managed a small smile, only letting it drop when her friend left the room. Her stomach knotted with dread, she pulled down her jeans and sat on the loo. For a moment she thought she was going to have to try later, but her body finally came to the party. She followed the instructions and then set the stick on the edge of the vanity while she flushed, pulled up her jeans and washed her hands.

“Okay,” she called.

Gina opened the door and passed Charlie her glass, now brimming with red wine. “For courage.”

Charlie stared at it. “I don’t know if I should. If it’s positive…”

She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word pregnant yet. But if she was, then alcohol was on the no-go list. Especially in bucket-like quantities.

“Shit. You’re right. Sorry.”

Gina set down the glass on the vanity and they both sat on the edge of the tub.

“I take it that means you wouldn’t consider a termination, then?” Gina asked.

Charlie frowned. Her brain hadn’t gotten that far yet.

Or maybe it had, since she’d been so quick to reject the wine.

“If it seemed like the best thing to do, I would.”

“But…?”

“I don’t know. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. There was no way I would have been able to cope then. But now…it might not be convenient. It might not be easy or wise or planned or anything. But I could do it now.” She spoke slowly, thinking out loud. “I think I could be an okay mum. And I’ve always imagined that one day I’d have kids.”

Although the image of herself with a child had always been part of some nebulous future-vision of her life that incorporated a man she loved, the whole notion was so far off and distant in her mind that it was barely in focus.

“I think you’d be a great mum. But it’s hard yards doing it all on your own.”

“I know.” Charlie studied the back of her hands, mulling things over.

“You don’t have to make any decisions right now,” Gina said. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”

Charlie glanced at the white stick on the vanity. “Do you think it’s been five minutes yet?”

Gina checked her watch. “Right on the knocker.”

Charlie continued to stare at the stick without moving. She could feel her heart pounding inside her chest and her palms were suddenly sweaty. Funny that she’d felt almost exactly the same way when she’d been flirting with Rhys all those weeks ago, hoping he felt the same way she did.

Not funny ha-ha, obviously. Funny weird.

Funny scary.

“Want me to…?” Gina offered.

“I’ll do it.” Charlie roused herself and reached for the test. Her fingers closed around the thumb grip and she lifted it. For a moment the light hit the stick so directly that she couldn’t see anything. Then she blinked and she was staring at two pink lines.

All the air left her lungs in a rush.

She was pregnant.

Oh, wow.

She was pregnant.

An elbow dug into her ribs.

“Don’t forget to breathe, okay?” Gina said.

Charlie realized she hadn’t inhaled for a while and she sucked in a big lungful of air.

“You want a glass of water?”

“No. I’m okay. I just… This is surreal. God. Maybe you should pinch me.”

Gina’s arm slid around her shoulders, warm and reassuring. A human anchor tethering her to reality.

“This is the last thing I ever imagined happening to me,” Charlie said. She couldn’t take her eyes off the two lines. “I mean, I could hardly get a guy to look at me in high school. Then I meet Rhys and we have one night together—one measly night—and now I’m pregnant? We had sex three times. We used protection. It just doesn’t seem possible.”

“I know, but the stick says it is.” Gina’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go into the living room. Sitting on the tub like this is making my bum numb.”

Charlie allowed her friend to usher her onto the couch. Charlie tried to pummel her shocked brain into action. She needed to think. She needed to strategize.

“We have a few options before us, Ms. Long,” Gina said as she sat beside Charlie. “We can talk this to death. I can distract you with fripperies and foolishness. Or I can go home and come back tomorrow and we can talk this to death.”

Charlie looked at her friend. She honestly had no idea what to do or say next.

Gina smiled sympathetically. “I’m going to go with option C, because you look as though you’ve been hit by a truck. I’ll go home, but I want you to call me, no matter what time it is, if you need to talk, okay? No matter what. There is no such thing as convention or common courtesy in a crisis.”

“Thank you,” Charlie said simply, because suddenly being alone felt exactly like what she needed.

Gina gave her a big hug. “I’m warning you, if I don’t get a phone call at one in the morning I am going to be so disappointed.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Charlie saw her friend out and found herself in the kitchen looking at the half-prepared meal she’d planned. Without really thinking about it, she picked up the knife and started to slice the tops and tails off the remaining green beans. When she’d finished with the beans she moved on to the garlic and shallots and potatoes. And all the while her brain was whirling away.

The idea that there was a child growing inside her right now made her feel almost giddy with disbelief and anxiety—but underneath the shock and fear, buried deep, there was also the tiniest tickle of something else.

All her life she’d essentially been alone. Her mother had died giving birth to Charlie, and her father had been an undemonstrative man, gruff and withdrawn at the best of times. He’d demanded a lot of her and given little back in terms of affection or approval, a dynamic she’d managed to repeat in the two serious relationships she’d had in her life so far.

But a baby didn’t have its own agenda. All a baby wanted was love and warmth and food and security, and she had all that to give and more. As she’d said to Gina, she thought she had it in her to be a good mother.

But that didn’t stop her from being terrified by the prospect. In a perfect world, the test would have confirmed Gina’s stress diagnosis and she would have been drinking a toast to a close call with her friend.

Charlie stared at the potato peelings and bean ends strewn across the counter. Since when had the world—her world, at least—ever been perfect?

She cleared off the counter and put the prepared vegetables in the fridge. Maybe Gina would be free for dinner tomorrow night.

A single question spun around her mind as she worked.

What do I want? What do I want?

She wasn’t naive enough to assume that a termination would be the easy option. She knew herself well enough to know that the decision would be one that stayed with her for some time, should she choose that route. She didn’t believe it was a decision that any woman made with blithe, carefree indifference. But definitely her dilemma would end with a visit to a family planning clinic. If she chose to keep the baby, the challenges would only become more and more profound.

What do I want? I want for this not to have happened. For me not to be in this horrible situation, between a rock and a hard place. I want to hit the reverse button and go back in time and erase the moment when being pregnant was even a possibility.

She ate toast for dinner, sitting on the couch staring at the TV. She had no idea what she watched. Afterward she went to bed and stared at the ceiling. Finally she fell asleep.

She woke in the small hours, her heart pounding. She sat up in bed and reached blindly for the phone. Gina had said to call. She was going to take her friend at her word.

“Charlie. You okay?” Gina asked the second she answered the phone.

Charlie didn’t need to ask how Gina knew it was her.

“I’m going to keep the baby.”

The decision had been there in her mind the moment she’d surfaced from sleep. Maybe it had always been there, she simply hadn’t been ready to acknowledge it.

“Okay. Good. Congratulations, C. You want me to come over?”

Charlie looked at the clock. It was five in the morning. Her natural inclination was to lie and deny herself, as she always did, but she needed her friend right now.

“Would you mind?”

“Be there in five.”

Gina arrived in her pajamas, a sweater and running shoes, her hair pulled into two fluffy pigtails. Charlie handed her a cup of coffee and a plate of toast and they made themselves comfortable on the couch.

“It took me a while, but I realized that deep down inside, there was a part of me that didn’t think this was the worst thing that could happen. Not perfect, you know, but not the worst. I think I can do this.”

“Of course you can. You can do anything you set your mind to,” Gina said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m not pumping you up, C. You’re one of the smartest, most resourceful and determined people I know. I know you can do this. If you want to.”

“I do. It’s not what I would have planned, but…”

Gina nodded, taking a big bite of toast. “So…what about Rhys?” she asked around her mouthful.

Charlie blinked, dragging her mind away from thoughts of child care and medical bills. “Sorry?”

“Rhys. What about him?”

Charlie stared at her friend, the meaning behind her words slowly sinking in. Because she hadn’t made this baby on her own. It was Rhys’s child, as well as her own.

“Oh, God,” she said. Bizarre as it seemed, she hadn’t thought about him once.

“Are you going to tell him?” Gina asked.

Charlie’s response was utterly instinctive and out her mouth before she could even think it over. “Yes. Absolutely.”

She said it fiercely, almost angrily, and Gina held up a hand.

“Just asking the question,” she said soothingly.

“Sorry.” Charlie rubbed her forehead. “My mum died when I was born. If it’s at all possible, I want this baby to have two parents.” There was a lump in her throat merely saying it out loud. Ridiculous after all these years, but in many ways, her mother’s absence had defined her life. Certainly it had defined her childhood. It wasn’t something she talked about a lot, and it wasn’t something she’d ever shared with Gina before.

“I didn’t know that. You never talk about her.”

“I didn’t know her.”

Gina hesitated a beat. “Look, I hate to be the voice of doom here, but you realize that Rhys might not be thrilled to hear from you, right? Setting aside the fact that we have to work out how to find the guy in the first place, this is going to be a huge bolt from the blue for him.”

“It’s not something I was expecting myself, you know.”

“Sure. I’m simply flagging it in case he’s an a*shole about it, so you can be prepared. Legally, he has to support the baby, of course. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be sneaky.”

“He didn’t seem like an a*shole.”

Charlie shook her head as soon as she heard her own words. She didn’t know anything about Rhys, not really. She knew he worked in I.T. and that he had a low, mellow voice and that when he looked at her he made her feel as though she was the center of the universe. But she didn’t know his last name, and she didn’t know what his childhood had been like, if he had siblings, what his politics were, if he was religious, if he was good or bad with money, if he was loyal or kind or generous…

She felt sick as the full import of her own thoughts struck home. She’d made a baby with a stranger. For the rest of her life, her world and his were going to be inextricably entwined. And she knew nothing about him.

“I need to work out how to contact him,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the practicalities of the situation.

“Do you remember his address?”

Charlie thought for a moment, but her mind was blank. She’d been so focused on getting inside Rhys’s apartment that night that she hadn’t paid much attention to anything else.

“No. But I think if I went over there and walked around I could probably find the apartment block again.”

“Okay. Then I guess it’s a matter of hanging around till he comes home,” Gina suggested.

The idea of lurking in the street to confront the father of her child felt incredibly sordid and sad to Charlie, but she was well aware that she didn’t have the luxury of being proud at this point. Not if she wanted her child to know his or her father.

And she did.

“I don’t suppose you remember the name of his company at all?” Gina asked.

Charlie frowned. “It was something to do with an animal. Right?”

Gina shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I remember him mentioning it once or twice, but the details didn’t stick.”

Charlie’s frown deepened as a memory tickled at the back of her mind. It was something to do with his apartment. Something she’d seen there. A business card? Something to do with a logo or writing or something…

She shot to her feet suddenly. “My bag. I need my bag.” She glanced left and right but couldn’t see it.

“Where do you usually leave it, creature of habit?” Gina asked.

Charlie turned on her heel and almost ran into the bedroom. Her bag hung by its strap from the inside door handle. She grabbed it and returned to the living room. Without looking at Gina, she emptied the contents onto the coffee table. A handful of spare change rattled onto the glass, a couple of sticks of chewing gum, three pens, a small memo pad, her wallet, a pair of sunglasses, a couple of hair ties…and a small, crumpled ball of paper.

She snatched it up.

“Share, please. What is it you’re looking so excited about?” Gina asked.

“I wrote him a note before I left. But the first one was no good, so I threw it into my bag and wrote another.”

“Only you could write two drafts of a morning-after note,” Gina said fondly.

Charlie found an opening in the ball and used her thumb to tease it wider. Gina leaned forward as Charlie smoothed the piece of paper flat on the table.

Charlie closed her eyes with relief when she saw the graphic in the top right corner—a soaring falcon, with the name Falcon I.T. and two phone numbers printed beneath it, as well as a street address.

“That’s the easy part sorted, then. Now you just have to ring him and tell him the big news.”

Charlie’s stomach tensed. Whether she liked it or not—whether Rhys liked it or not—they’d made a baby that night eight weeks ago. He needed to know he was going to be a father, and she needed to know what kind of man he was.

“Couple more hours and he should be at his desk,” Gina said.

“I don’t think it’s the kind of conversation you have over the phone. I can’t call out of the blue and tell him something this big.”

“What are you going to do, then? Go over to his office and tell him in person?”

Charlie thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, yeah. I guess I am.”

“Man. You have balls of steel, my friend. I would totally make a phone call. Better yet, I’d send an email.”

“I want to start things on the right foot. If there is a right foot in this situation.”

“I’m not sure there is. But I’ll come with you if you like.”

Charlie felt a rush of affection for her friend. From the moment they’d met in recruit training, Gina had been a rock, funny and loyal and always on Charlie’s side.

“Thank you,” she said, her chest tight with emotion. “You’re the best.”

“So are you. And we’ll get through this, don’t worry. I’m a pretty good auntie, if I do say so myself. I bet my sister’s got a bunch of old baby stuff you could have, too. And there are heaps of parent groups around here.”

Charlie nodded, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. She was having a baby. Unplanned, unexpected—but not unwanted, surprising as that was to realize.

How…extraordinary.





RHYS WALKED to the terrace railing and looked out over the bright blue waters of Sydney Harbour. Behind him, the Finger Wharf stretched toward the shore. He could hear the real estate agent talking on his phone on the other side of the terrace, but he tuned out the man’s voice as he gazed across the water. It was a clear day and the wind was brisk, the force of it making his suit jacket billow behind him. He focused on a luxury yacht cutting its way across the harbor, the Manly ferry laboring in the distance behind it.

This was a great view. One of the best in Sydney. It had a price tag to match, too—but Rhys’s gut told him there was a deal to be done here. The agent had called him this morning with the news that an apartment had come up in the Finger Wharf complex. The vendor wanted a quick sale—something to do with a divorce settlement—and Rhys had shuffled his appointments in order to make time for a viewing.

He’d known from the moment he walked in the door that this was exactly the kind of place he’d been looking for, but he’d kept his poker face on as he toured the three bedrooms and open-plan living area. Now he did some rapid mental calculations. He’d need to talk to the bank to confirm their willingness to extend his credit, but he was pretty sure he could stretch to within ninety percent of the price tag on this place. And if he couldn’t negotiate the agent down ten percent, he had no business being in business, full stop.

“So, what do you think?” the agent asked.

Rhys turned to face him. “Yeah, it’s nice.” He deliberately kept his voice uninflected, his face expressionless.

“Pretty amazing view.”

“Sure.” Rhys turned and gazed at the neighboring properties. Then he shrugged, doing his damnedest to appear nonchalant. “What’s the vendor looking for again?”

The real estate agent named a figure in the high one millions.

Rhys nodded. “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”

“Don’t want to leave it too long—this one’s going to go fast,” the agent said with a toothy smile.

Rhys didn’t bother responding. He wasn’t about to be pressured into anything, certainly not a decision as big as this one.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said as he walked to the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The agent hurried to catch up with him. “So we’ll speak tonight, yeah? What time would you prefer?”

“I’ll call you,” Rhys said.

He stepped out of the apartment and onto the plush carpet of the suspended walkway that led to the elevators. He waited until he was safely in the elevator car before allowing himself to grin.

With a bit of luck, he could be calling this place home in a few weeks’ time. If the bank was willing to play ball.

He was pretty sure they would be. The Gainsborough contract was about to kick in, and Greg was in the process of wooing another big hotel chain. Their existing clients were all ticking over…

It was all coming together. Which meant he was perfectly positioned to swoop down on this place, after years of making do in a too-small apartment full of hand-me-down furniture. The elevator chimed to announce his arrival on the ground floor. Hands in his pockets, he walked slowly toward the shoreline, past bobbing yachts and wheeling seagulls and glinting water. His phone chirruped as he reached the commercial portion of the complex where restaurants and cafés spilled out on to the wharf. He pulled his phone from his pocket. The text was from Greg, checking a figure with him. He punched in the numbers his partner was seeking, then increased his pace to a brisk walk. Time to get back to work.

It took him fifteen minutes to make his way to Falcon’s offices at Bondi Junction. He made a call to the bank as he drove, leaving a message for his business banker, Peter. Sometime between now and this evening he needed to decide whether he was going to put an offer in for the wharf apartment, and he couldn’t do that without Peter’s imprimatur.

He parked in the garage beneath the building and made his way up to the fourth floor. He could see their receptionist, Julie, talking on her headset as he approached the double glass doors to reception. There were a couple of people in the waiting area and he checked his watch. He didn’t have any appointments until midday and it was only ten-thirty, so they were probably for Greg.

“Yo, Julie,” he said as he pushed through the glass doors.

“Rhys. You’re back.” Julie shot a glance toward the waiting area, her brow furrowed.

“I am. Like I said I would be.” He reached for the handful of phone messages with his name scrawled across the top.

“I’m expecting some people at midday, okay?” He headed for his office.

“Wait,” Julie said, stopping him in his tracks. She lowered her voice. “There’s someone here to see you. I told her that you were busy and to leave her name so you could set up an appointment, but she insisted on waiting.”

He was aware of movement in the waiting area. He glanced over and saw a tall, slender woman rising to her feet. She was dressed conservatively in tailored navy trousers and a navy dress shirt, her hair pulled into a neat ponytail. Her features were small and nondescript and his gaze slid off her face and back to Julie’s.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said anxiously.

“It’s fine,” Rhys reassured her.

The woman walked toward him and he put on his best professional smile and turned to deal with what was almost certainly an unsolicited pitch for the business’s telephone contract or office supplies.

He went very still as he found himself staring into warm, cinnamon-brown eyes.

“Charlie.”