Juggling three glasses and a bottle of white wine, Lucy Spencer wove her way through the crowd engulfing the Riverside Tavern on Friday evening. As she tried to push quickly through the throng of obstinate people, she immediately regretted having chosen to wear her bandage dress to the occasion. She hadn’t been out for drinks with her work friends in a long while and had been trying to make an effort with the green figure-hugging number.

When she finally reached their table, Lucy breathed a sigh of relief, free from the lively horde. Then, at the sight before her—heads bowed low over an electronic device—she frowned and quickly noted her mistake. Leaving her mobile phone alone on the table now seemed an obviously poor decision. She had thought it would be safe for a few minutes, but that had proved time enough for her good friends to snoop.

Lucy gently placed the glasses on the tabletop and began to pour the wine, trying desperately to ignore the uneasy feeling filling her stomach. Rosie’s bleached blonde curls and plump cleavage bounced as she glanced up quickly to greet her. With a grin teasing at her rouged lips, Rosie nudged the taller, lankier young woman beside her with an elbow. Steph’s colorful pixie cut was still bowed over Lucy’s phone for a moment longer and then she glanced up to aim a sharp smirk across the table.

With a careful push from her index finger, Steph slid the device closer to Lucy. “Luce,” she said innocently. “What’s a bome?”

A flock of overly energetic butterflies buzzed around in Lucy’s gut. She had hoped to keep at least this secret separate from her working life. Nerves got the better of her and it became difficult to swallow. Making an effort to appear nonchalant, Lucy brushed the straight chocolate strands of her shoulder-length bob free from her neck.

Steph quirked an eyebrow at the action and her expression became playful. “And why does he miss playing ninja on the beach volleyball courts?”

Rosie spat out a laugh and snorted, which only encouraged Steph to release the quiet chuckle she’d been trying to contain.

“Okay. Okay.” Lucy perched her slender figure on an empty barstool and then raised her hands to silence them. “Ha-ha. It’s all very funny, but it’s not what you think.”

She spun her mobile phone around and glanced at the screen. Several messages in a conversation with her best friend Maddy appeared.

Maddy: Your loving bome has called again, begging for your phone number. Apparently, he had a dream about the old days. You two playing ninja on the beach volleyball courts or something. He said he misses it. He misses you. Anyway, call me.

Lucy: Tell him he can take his fond memory and shove it up his womanizing ass!

Maddy: Are you ever going to talk to him again? You know he still doesn’t know why you stopped.

Maddy: Luce? Maybe I should just give him your new number and be done with it.

Lucy swore and her two friends were lost to hysterics once more.

As she madly messaged Maddy back, Lucy noticed Steph move forward, the fabric of her black Ponte jacket creasing as she leaned her elbows on the table. Even though she tried not to be obvious, Lucy was sure Steph had seen the reply “don’t you dare” before it had been sent out into the universe.

“So, are you gonna confess or what, Luce? Who is this guy she’s talking about? And what is a bome?”

Lucy sighed in frustration and placed her mobile phone back on the table. She frowned up at Steph and then rolled her turquoise-blue eyes. “Bane of my existence,” she said.

Steph’s curious expression brightened, and she relaxed her long, wiry frame back into her seat.

“Clever,” cheered Rosie.

“So, out with it? Who is he and what’s the deal?” Steph rubbed her hands together eagerly.

A heavy dread seemed to weigh against Lucy’s insides as she realized she didn’t have much choice in the matter at hand. She could tell the girls now or put up with their constant inquiries every day at work until she caved. Knowing them well meant Lucy knew they wouldn’t give up until they had enough gossip to satisfy them. Releasing an almost never-ending sigh, Lucy resigned herself to the task.

“He—the bane of my existence—is an old former friend of mine. We became friends in middle school. We were best friends until senior year and then I cut off all contact with him when I went to college.”

Shifting her short buxom figure to the edge of her chair, Rosie leaned her elbows on the table and frowned forlornly. “What happened?”

“It must have been something pretty crappy for you to shun him in such a way,” Steph said before taking a sip from her glass of wine.

Lucy looked down at where her hands rested on the table. Unconsciously, she had begun to pick at her fingernails—not ripping, but fiddling. Just thinking about the reason aroused feelings of anger and betrayal. The emotions washed over her, burning through her as if the situation had happened only yesterday, not nearly a decade and a half ago. She took a deep breath and blurted out the transgression.

“I’d thought we were friends. Great friends. Then he started to make his way through my girlfriends, dating one by one as if it were a sexy schoolgirl smorgasbord. He would never date any one in particular for a long period of time, but almost always left a broken heart in his wake and a crying mess that I had to clean up.”

“What a bastard,” spat Rosie.

Steph narrowed her gaze. “And never once did that include you?”

Lucy frowned. “We were just friends.”

Glancing from Steph to Lucy, Rosie shrugged. “Friends date.”

Rolling her eyes, Lucy looked away and over the crowd around them before taking a sip of her white wine in an effort to quell her annoyance at them forcing her to both remember the painful situation and then explain it. After many months of refusing and being too preoccupied with work, she had finally agreed to go out for drinks with them, taking the tram from their offices in Elizabeth Street to Melbourne’s lively Southbank precinct. Yet, never had it crossed her mind that their enjoyable outing might have become an inquisition.

When she glanced again at Rosie and Steph, they were still staring at her intently, obviously waiting for further explanation.

“What?” Lucy growled, irritated at how quickly the conversation had switched from the girls being indignant on her behalf to her past affair intriguing them.

“Out with it,” demanded Steph as she tapped her index finger on the table to illustrate her impatience.

“No. We never dated.”

Rosie eyed Lucy carefully. “But you would’ve liked to?”

Lucy glared at them angrily. “I would’ve liked for him to have kept it in his pants where my friends were concerned or at least to have had the decency to date one seriously and respect our friendship. But clearly that was too much to ask.”

“Sour grapes, much?” Rosie teased her.

Finding courage in alcohol, Lucy gulped the rest of her wine before giving them both a fierce death stare, but Steph and Rosie were unfazed. They seemed to be enjoying themselves greatly at her expense.

“In case you’ve lost the plot a bit, you’re both women and my friends, therefore you should be on my side not his.”

“Oh, we are, Luce,” Steph said with a grin. “It’s just that this is the first time in the five long years I’ve known you that I’ve seen you get hot under the collar about some guy.”

“So true,” Rosie agreed. “I’m not even sure you’ve had a date in the three years I’ve worked with you.”

“Thanks, guys.” Lucy scoffed at them. “You make me sound like a cold, sexless spinster. And what about Trent or have you both just conveniently forgotten about him?”

“Trent doesn’t count,” said Steph.

“Yeah,” Rosie agreed. “You met up for coffee like twice and made dinner reservations that you never kept.”

“You were too busy with work,” Steph interjected. “You’re always too busy with work.”

With a wave of her hand, Lucy dismissed them and their unhelpful criticisms. She loved being an executive at Insight Marketing and had worked very hard to get to that position. Just because her colleagues didn’t appreciate her passion and couldn’t understand why she thought working was more important than dating, didn’t mean she was about to waste any energy trying to convince them otherwise.

“Whatever, ladies. Thanks for the lack of solidarity.”

“Don’t be like that, Lucy-cakes.” Steph reached out and covered Lucy’s hand with her own. “We really do love you, babe, and of course, we hate that douchebag who screwed all your friends and hurt you.”

“Really, we do,” Rosie concurred, her cheeky smile becoming sincere. “It’s just, we don’t often see you so passionate about something other than work. Guess it just took us by surprise.”

Lucy considered their expressions carefully, seeing the earnestness in their eyes and then shrugged. “I understand. Unfortunately, the mere subject of him sets me on edge. I can’t believe he still infuriates me so much after all these years.”

Steph quirked an eyebrow at Lucy, but then nodded thoughtfully.

Rosie took a sip from her glass of wine, swallowed and then let out a sigh. “So, he really was a right bastard then?”

Lucy nodded. “A real piece of work. He still doesn’t understand what he did or why we stopped talking. I guess being God’s gift to women and all means he just doesn’t have to feel responsible for that kind of thing.”

“What a jerk,” said Steph as she finished the last of her wine. Standing up, she wiggled her empty glass in front of the others. “Who’s ready for another?”

***

Although he tried, Callum Hawthorne just couldn’t seem to give his woman-of-the-week, Natalie—or was it Naomi?—his full attention. One moment, he was glancing outside at the people wandering along the Southbank Promenade beside the Yarra River and the next, he was looking back inside, watching the other patrons at the swanky Melbourne restaurant. If he wasn’t people watching, then he was glancing at his mobile phone, which sat on the table beside him. Though no new messages had announced themselves with the familiar buzzing of vibration, Cal couldn’t help but check just in case. As he pressed a button, the smartphone’s screen lit up revealing the text of his most recently received message.

Madison: I tried, Cal. You know I’d love for you two to speak again. But I can’t force her. I guess she still needs some time.

It felt like the thousandth time he’d read over those words and each read had only aggravated him further. How could she possibly need more time? It had been fourteen long years, but it had felt like eons and he’d never once heard a word. Not one reply to a text message, an email or even a handwritten letter. In the beginning, he’d tried calling her old cell phone, then her parents’ house, their high school friends, and even the university she’d left him to attend. But none of his efforts received any form of reply from her.

He’d even considered hiring a private investigator to track her down but hadn’t, partly because his only connection to her—their mutual friend Madison—would never forgive him for it and, if for some crazy reason she did, he was certain that the-one-that-got-away wouldn’t either. At any rate, he was lucky he still had Madison to turn to and that at least gave him some reassurance that the love of his life had actually existed and still lived somewhere out there in the world—waiting for him to find her.

“So, what do you think, Cal?” Natalie—no, Nadine—no, it was Natasha—gave him a wide grin. “Doesn’t it sound incredible?”

Cal smiled half-heartedly and ran a hand through his shaggy, sandy blond hair. Though he didn’t want to be rude and hated the fact that he might sound like an idiot if he said the wrong thing, he was also well aware that it was Friday and that the chances of his current woman-of-the-week making it beyond the weekend were slim to none.

“It sure does, Nat,” he told her cheerfully. Surely, he would be safe with that moniker. Nat could pass for two of the potentials and if it really was Nadine, he’d just lie and say he’d known it all along.

“I know! Can you believe it?” his date asked him with a smirk. “Me on the cover of a magazine!”

He offered her a wide, toothy grin. As he glanced over her, trying to reacquaint himself with the near stranger sitting before him, she covered his hand with hers.

It wasn’t a surprise to hear her good news considering her appearance. She was a stunning blonde with a trim figure in a fitted gold mini-dress and had legs that any giraffe would be proud of. Her features were angular and exotic, perfect model material. But so were all his dates—his weekly flings as his favorite cousin Toby called them. She was only one in a sea of similarly beautiful creatures, but was still absolutely nothing in comparison to the-one-who-got-away.

“Where’ve you gone to?” The willowy being in front of him waved the fingers of her free hand beneath his nose.

“Um, sorry,” Cal said, shaking himself free of his thoughts. “It’s been a long week at work.”

Nat smiled reassuringly and took both his hands in hers, clutching them affectionately on top of the table. “Don’t worry, babe. I know a trick or two that might help relax you, but you’ll have to wait until we get home.”

As she winked at him, he forced a small smile in return. He’d clearly stayed with this one for too long. The use of home as a general term relating easily to each of their respective homes or any location where they both may reside at any one time terrified him almost as much as having his hands trapped within hers, forbidding him from checking his phone. Just the thought of it made him glance down once more.

“Are you waiting for a call?” Nat asked him, her expression becoming concerned.

He looked up at her and then slid his hands slowly free of hers, careful not to offend her. “No. It’s probably just habit.” Instinctively, his right hand reached for his smartphone and as if on cue, the screen lit up and the device began to vibrate with an incoming call.

Cal had a moment of elation at the thought that perhaps this was the call he’d been waiting for, for over a decade. Maybe she had finally decided to contact him.

Yet, as he looked closer, the name “Jack” appeared and it became obvious that this was nothing more than a work call.

Cal glanced up at his date. Her happy expression had become perplexed.

“Sorry, but I’ve got to take this. It’s work. It shouldn’t take long.”

Though her brows furrowed in disappointment, the corners of her mouth quirked upward as though in acknowledgement.

Content to escape her, even for a second, he nodded, put the cell phone to his ear and headed for the restaurant’s reception area.

“What’s happened?” he said once he’d pressed a button to answer the call.

“It’s decided, Cal.” Jack’s deep voice sounded partially tinny. “The last of the board’s anonymous votes have been counted. It seems they have voted against keeping the Gold Coast property.”

Cal swore under his breath before realizing that the restaurant’s hostess was watching him closely from the counter. Caught in her stare, she smirked at him flirtatiously. In an effort to hide his anger, Cal relaxed his firm expression and nodded kindly at her.

It was obvious that he had a natural charm with women. Besides the handsome features he’d received genetically and the brawny frame created after years of playing football, he also seemed to exude a certain magnetism. Tonight, even with his current date and in the creased grey business suit he’d worn all day, he’d still received numerous suggestive glances and one sneaky phone number. While it was mostly to his benefit, especially in obtaining his weekly flings, the extra attention could also be trying, especially when it occurred at the wrong time. This was definitely one of those times.

Struggling to maintain his composure at Jack’s news, Cal watched carefully as the busty hostess returned his nod and forced her gaze back to the reservations diary on the countertop. Content that she was focused back on her duties, Cal turned away and headed closer to the far wall.

“Are you serious, Jack? Do they even care that it was my father’s first property? Or that without that first success there would be no Hawthorne empire?”

Cal could hear Jack sigh through the phone.

“Cal, I know it meant a lot to you and your father, that you have many fond memories there, but it’s been running at a loss for years now, eating through funds. The company would do much better to sell it, making a profit from the property location at the very least.”

It was Cal’s turn to sigh. He understood Jack was only trying to help. He had been his company’s financial advisor—and his good friend—since before Cal’s father had passed away four years ago and willed that Cal take over as CEO. Even the board of directors were only trying to do right by the company, right by him and his father’s well-respected name. Although knowing they meant well afforded him some satisfaction, he didn’t want to give up something so important to him without a solid fight. He had already lost the person with whom he’d imagined spending his entire future, so there was no way that he would easily lose the place that held the fondest memories of his past.

“When do they plan to sell?” Cal had to ask.

“Though it’s not exactly a priority at the moment, it has been proposed that the property be put on the market in May.”

“That’s just over a month away,” Cal spat. “That’s too soon.”

There was silence on the other end of the line before Jack spoke up once again. “It has to be done, Cal.”

“What if—” Cal began, starting to pace along the wall. “What if they gave me the month? Let me do my best to resurrect the business, pique client interest and save the property. If I can turn things around and make the same weekly profit as our luxury resort in Sydney in the final week of the deal, then the property will stay in the company’s portfolio? If not, it can go on the market the following week.”

“Cal.” Jack’s tone was almost chiding.

“Come on, Jack,” Cal said boldly. “Give me a chance. What would the company lose? I can use my own personal accounts to fund my pursuit and ask Liam to cover some of my prior commitments. Let me at least try.”

Again, there was silence while Cal felt his palms grow sweaty. Besides getting in contact with his true love again, he’d never wanted anything more. He was certain that Liam—his amazing Chief Operating Officer—would be able to handle any important meetings that he may have to miss given the circumstances. Being a wealthy property tycoon in his own right also meant that his contributions to his beloved Gold Coast property wouldn’t even come close to denting his extensive personal wealth. It was the perfect plan, if only he could secure the opportunity.

“It’s a big ask,” Jack said carefully. “Do you really think it’s wise to aim for such a considerable profit?”

“I can do it, Jack.”

There was a deep sigh through the electronic device.

“Very well, Cal. I’ll run it by the board, but I believe there shouldn’t be much opposition. As long as you pursue this yourself, using your own wealth and business smarts, I can see no problem. Just…,” Jack paused warily.

“Yes?” Cal asked.

“Just don’t be too disappointed if things don’t go your way. You can’t have everything you want, mate. Take solace in knowing that you gave your best effort to keep something you love.”

Cal nodded automatically. His heart felt suddenly heavier, but he understood Jack’s point. He stopped his pacing and his stare hardened. “Just as everyone should be innocent until proven guilty,” he told him resolutely, “so shall I be optimistic about this task until it is proved impossible.”

At Jack’s kind farewell, Cal touched a button as he lowered the phone from his ear, ending the call.

He had one month to save the building in which he had spent the happiest days of his childhood. One month to prove to the board that it was worth the expense and that it could return a profit worthy of any of the businesses in the Hawthorne Incorporated’s portfolio. He knew he could do it. He just needed some help.

After a few seconds of consideration, he walked over to the female receptionist behind the counter. As he approached, she glanced up and met his friendly gaze with a smile of her own.

“Can I help you?” Her voice was sweet, nearly flirtatious as she leaned toward him.

Cal exuded charm as his white smile widened. “Do you think you could do me a favor?”

He knew that what he had to ask wasn’t entirely acceptable, but it was necessary. Natasha-Nadine-Natalie had overstayed her welcome in his life and it was time to cut her free. Besides, he had much more important things to do right now than return to the boredom of their so-called date. He just hoped she wouldn’t make too much of a scene when the receptionist passed on the message that he had left without her. No, either way it would be fine. He would just leave a substantial tip in case she broke something valuable.