The Boyfriend Sessions (4 page)

“For the next six weeks you do. You don’t have to go back to your regular job for another six weeks and in the meantime you’re broke. I’m actually doing you a favor,” she finished, smiling sweetly at me.

She had a point. I hardly had any money hence couldn’t afford to do anything exciting with my free time. “You just want me to come and work for you.”

“We all know it’s always been part of my evil plan,” Maddy admitted. “But face it, Christa, it’s a good deal. You’re sick of your current job and not exactly enthused about going back. This way you get to try out Grounded Marketing for a short time and then, if you decide you like it, we can discuss you staying on or you can choose to go back to your old job. Simple.”

I sighed. Pulling moves like this was why Grounded Marketing was voted one of the fastest growing Australian companies.

“Alright.” I swore she smiled in defeat, but it disappeared quickly. “Anything else?”

Cate’s light voice was quick to respond. “We systematically assess your previous relationships and discuss the lessons from each.”

I turned to Cate. “Are you serious?”

“Of course. You can’t move on to bigger and better things if you keep repeating the mistakes of the past.”

I blinked. It was those damn accounting principles. Everything was so ordered and neat in Cate’s world. There was nothing in life that couldn’t be tackled with a spreadsheet and a thorough analysis of the situation. I resisted suggesting that this was the reason she’d yet to find a long term partner, but bit my tongue, scared at what else they might have planned for me. “So you’re signing me up to a shrink now?”

“Of course not, silly,” Cate admonished. “Girls night, here, every Thursday unless otherwise advised. It will be a group therapy session. With wine and food, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

Perhaps a stronger person would at this point have informed her closest and dearest friends that their concern was very touching and advised them to butt out. Then an image of Ben appeared unbidden in my mind and the past couple of weeks of melancholy slowly came into focus. Taking in my friend’s expectant looks—even Scarlett looked hopeful, which was not an expression I was familiar with—I found myself sighing. Deeply.

They certainly had a point. After all, what did I have to lose?

I raised my glass and downed the rest of my wine in one reaffirming gulp. “Here’s to single life.”

I was going to need all the help I could get.

In just over four months, I’d become particularly adept at avoiding exercise.

That was unlike me. Prior to heading off on my European adventure, I could be found at my local gym at least two nights a week. I wasn’t one for the classes—the gym was my alone time—and opted for a mixture of cardio and weights. I would never have rated myself as a junkie, but because my job required long hours sitting at a computer I’d get irritable and edgy if I didn’t have frequent gym workouts. Right now I was irritable for an entirely different reason.

The banging on my door recommenced. “Come on, Christa, Max will be here in fifteen minutes, don’t make me come in there.”

I had no doubt that one day Cate would be an exceptional mother. She was organised, kind, and right now was doing a perfect recreation of my teenage years, reminding me of my mother’s attempts to get me out of bed in the morning.

I groaned, rolled over, and looked at the clock. Six thirty am. Not fair. I wasn’t a morning person, had never been a morning person, and had no illusions about becoming one now. Cate didn’t seem to care in the slightest. When I still hadn’t responded to her coaxing, the door swung open and Cate switched on the light mercilessly.

“Ow.”

“Up and at ’em, sister.” Cate grinned happily. She was already fully made up, although she had yet to put on her work clothes. She stood in the entrance to my room, a caricature of adult female sweetness with big blue eyes, rosy cheeks and a Snoopy t-shirt and shorts.

“Do I have to?” I pulled the pillow over my head.

“Yes.”

From beneath my safe cocoon of darkness I heard her walk past me and open the blinds. Oh, she was good. That was always the breaking point in any waking resistance. It left the victim powerless, with the only remaining option to get out of bed, switch off the light, and pull the blinds closed.

By the time you were out of bed, the damage was done. You’d never be able to return to that same blissful just-woken-up state, where you could linger in a dreamy semi-sleep provided you could reach out with eyes closed and keep hitting the snooze button on your alarm.

She ripped my pillow from my grasp, adding to my horror, and tossed it onto the floor. “You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be,” she continued cheerily. “You’ll feel great once you’ve had some exercise.”

As Cate left me to lie hapless in my rudely awakened state, squinting at the sunshine flooding into my room, I reflected on this. Endorphins. She was right of course. I hadn’t experienced them for a while, except if you were going to include the French type. That had been quite exhilarating on a fairly regular basis …

I sat up abruptly when I realized I was doing it again. Thinking about Ben. And it had to stop. I forced my unresponsive body to obey me and managed to shuffle around my room and find suitable exercise gear. They were some of the only clean items left in my room.

There was no point in showering, as I was only going to need another shortly, so I quickly washed my face and applied some tinted moisturiser with sunscreen and a quick swipe of mascara. I might look half-asleep and puffy around the eyes, but there was no reason not to try and at least look a little decent. After all there could be hot guys there. Maybe even a nice boot camp instructor. Except didn’t they yell a lot? That possibly wasn’t the greatest, but hey, it could also be a turn on …

Our intercom buzzer rudely interrupted my thoughts and I realized with a sense of defeat that, while I was no longer thinking about Ben, I was still thinking about men in general, which was pointless really as I had committed to six months man-free.

“Exercise, exercise, exercise,” I muttered to myself, in an attempt to focus on more appropriate things as I marched down the hall to yank open the front door.

“Christa! You haven’t changed a bit.”

I stared blankly at the man standing in my doorway. “Max … ”

I wasn’t convinced I had the right person, although that was who I assumed I was greeting. I’d managed to figure out that it had been about six years since I’d last seen Maddy’s older brother, Max, and my recollections of him bore little resemblance to the man standing in front of me.

This man was tall—okay, everyone in Maddy’s family was tall compared to me—and he had the same awe-inspiring olive skin as his sister. Everything else was all wrong. Terribly wrong.

“Christa! What are you doing? Let the poor guy come in!” Cate said from behind me, now dressed in a navy skirt and matching jacket.

Max looked uncertain as he squeezed his noticeably muscular frame past me so he could walk down the hallway. I watched, in a state of confusion, as he leaned down and gave Cate a quick kiss and hug.

He stepped back at arm’s length and viewed her appreciatively. “You look dressed to kill. Starting the day early too?”

Cate’s expression turned jubilant and she became flustered. “I’ve got a client meeting first up I need to prepare for. That and someone had to encourage my nocturnal flatmate here to get up.”

I still stood near the open front door and let it close as they turned to look at me again.

“Is she okay?” whispered Max to Cate, although still loud enough for me to hear.

Cate rolled her eyes. “She’s not used to getting up this early.”

Max clapped his hands together decisively, making me jump. “Well, that’s about to change. Have you got a bottle of water and a towel? You’ll need them.”

“No, I’ll just grab them.” My thoughts whirled as I finally managed to find my voice and, relieved at having something to do, bustled back into my room to find a gym towel and into the kitchen for water.

What was Maddy thinking? I raged internally. The Max I remembered was skinny, to the point of weedy, with long, shoulder-length hair and thick glasses. In fact, the glasses were such a constant feature, I was hard pressed to remember the color of his eyes, or anything else remarkable for that matter.

Except for those stupid t-shirts. I remembered the faded, stretched t-shirts that used to hang off his lanky frame. They’d always have witty, but sadly nerdy, statements printed on them, or the subject matter had centered around Star Trek or The X-Files, or some computer game I had little knowledge of.

This new version of Max was entirely something else. His wavy, chestnut hair was cropped short and there was strength to his jawline I didn’t remember at all. He wore a t-shirt, but it was fashion-branded and quietly showed off his alarmingly muscular shoulders and chest. His toned arms pointed to a level of fitness I hadn’t thought him capable of, and the red and blue of his t-shirt set off his eyes. They were a rich, dark brown I discovered, as I met his gaze while filling up my water bottle.

“Ready?” A broad grin broke out on his face, reminding me of Maddy’s, but I was unable to recall Maddy’s smile ever having quite that effect on me.

I nodded jerkily and diverted my eyes. Hurriedly I made my way up the hallway to the front door.

There was no question that Maddy’s entire family were disturbingly blessed in the looks department. Spending time at their house during our childhood I’d initially felt like an outsider, like some poor cousin they’d decided to take under their wing. But this feeling soon faded as I’d gotten to know them better.

They were charming and genuine, with a warmth and honesty about them. Also, if it hadn’t been for their caring nature, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have weathered my parent’s divorce nearly so well.

When we were teenagers Maddy had frequently complained about her parent’s upsetting displays of mutual affection. For me, Julia and Will Spencer’s obviously solid and very loving relationship had given me faith that, sometimes, two people could stay together for the long term.

Max had always been the odd one out when it came to appearances. His two sisters were drop dead gorgeous, just like their mother. Her father, Will Spencer, was tall and fit, and had a charisma and confidence about him. Much to Maddy’s horror, at the age of sixteen, a few of her other friends had commented on him being ‘hot’.

Max, on the other hand, had always been shy. I guess now I could reflect on it a little more, I couldn’t exactly recall that he’d been unattractive. He’d just lacked the sparkle that the rest of the family seemed to exude on a constant basis.

He’d made up for it in intelligence though. I recalled he’d always headed to some sort of special, advanced classes. He was a source of pride to his parents in terms of his grades, which was saying something because Maddy and her sister, Louise, weren’t exactly dunces either.

I grabbed my keys from the hall table and glanced up at him, offering him a quick smile to indicate that I was ready to go.

He flashed another of those heart-stopping smiles and I found myself wondering why laughter lines were considered a bonus on guys, but on women they were a no-no.

“See you later, Cate. Have a great day,” he called.

Cate’s head popped around the corner. “You too. Go gentle on her,” she advised, nodding in my direction. “She’s a bit out of shape.”

I narrowed my eyes at her and stuck out my tongue from behind Max’s back, but stopped when he turned to face me.

His warm eyes scanned me from head to toe and I couldn’t believe that Max, this Max, had the confidence to appraise a woman so casually. I’d be lucky if he’d met my eyes a handful of times over the years.

“She looks pretty good to me,” he said softly, his eyes suddenly a shade darker.

Stunned, I almost ran out the front door and down the hallway to the lift. I jabbed the down button a little too frantically and noticed a look of confusion crossing Max’s face and looked away.

Maddy and I were going to have a serious talk.

The first thing I did when I arrived at the Grounded Marketing offices two hours later was head directly to Madeleine’s office.

I found her talking to a client on the phone, but she gave me a quick smile when she saw me and waved me in. I took a seat on the black leather two-seater lounge and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows to the view of Darling Harbour. It was an unusually warm day for late October and the sun glistened so brightly off the water, I felt the need for sunglasses.

Maddy finished her call and came around to sit in the chair closest to me. “How was it?”

“Painful,” I admitted. “I’m more out of shape than I realized.”

“Max seemed to think you did pretty well for your first class.”

“You’ve been checking up on me!” Despite my surprise, I basked in the compliment. The session had only lasted forty-five minutes, but it was high intensity—running and climbing, and resistance training with weights. I’d barely managed to keep up, and the first fifteen minutes had proven hard as I convinced my body to work through the pain of months of inactivity. “That’s nice to hear. When did you speak to him?”

“Just then … and yes, I’m checking up on you.”

“He’s different from how I remember.”

Maddy raised an eyebrow at the change in subject. “How so?”

We’d known each other long enough that I wasn’t going to sugar coat it. “When did he get so good looking?”

“
God
, Christa, he’s my brother!”

“Yes, but last time I saw him he looked nothing like that, is all I’m saying. And even though he’s your brother you must realize he’s nice to look at.”

Maddy sighed deeply. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“No! Of course not. It just came as a shock when he turned up at my door this morning. I barely recognized him.”

“I asked him to go with you because the rest of us are already committed to gym memberships or other classes, and I figured he’d be safe,” she continued, unconvinced.

I mulled over the word ‘safe’ for a moment before my curiosity got the better of me. “So, what changed?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s undergone quite a transformation in the last six years, and not just his presentation. He’s so much more confident, I wasn’t even sure it was him at first.”

It was true. He’d chatted to me comfortably during the ten minute walk down to Milsons Point where the boot camp class was held. Once we arrived, he appeared to be on a first name basis with the instructor whereas a lot of the other students in the class still seemed wary of the beefy forty-something man with the shaved head and rough English accent, including myself.

Maddy shrugged. “I guess it happened gradually. Moving overseas and then being promoted to senior management in his company matured him a lot. It helped that Lou’s living in London. He got to know her circle of friends.” Their sister, Louise, had settled in London at least a decade ago and had built a career over there as a respected and well-known PR executive.

Maddy frowned slightly, as if weighing up her next words. “Plus he met his fiancée over there, so he finally got over his fear of talking to girls.”

“He’s engaged?” I was shocked Maddy hadn’t told me anything about it. I remembered hearing something about a girlfriend, but it was news to me they’d been serious enough for an engagement.

Maddy’s frown deepened. “Not anymore. It’s over. It was ‘blink and you miss it’. We only found out they’d been engaged when he told us he was coming back to Australia.”

“They were going out for a while, weren’t they?”

“Six years or so. Two months after they got engaged his company asked him to return to Australia indefinitely to set up a new division, so here he is. That was when it all fell apart apparently. If he wants to tell you more, that’s his business.”

I was a little shocked at Maddy’s guardedness. Ordinarily we’d discuss everything. In this case, I guessed there was more to the story than she was telling me, especially if she’d chosen not to tell me about it in the first place. Something told me now wasn’t the time to push. She could be very protective and had that look on her face that I recognized well. The conversation was over.

“Can I trust you?” she asked warily.

I had the grace to look insulted. “Just because I comment on the fact that he’s a nice-looking guy, does not mean I’m going to jump him. For God’s sake, he’s your
brother
.”

“And you’ve committed to being a single woman for six months.”

I sighed loudly. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“You’re welcome. Now how about you get your lazy ass to your desk and keep going on the concepts for the Oz Guardians pitch?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I’d worked at Grounded Marketing for less than two days and Maddy already had me creating concepts, but I was relieved. While my personal life was something of a shambles, my years of experience as a graphic designer had allowed me to hit the ground running and I was glad Maddy hadn’t expected anything less.

I headed out the door, already mentally working through three or four logo designs I’d come up with the previous day that needed further refinement before I could show them to anyone.

“How was boot camp?”

“Huh?” I stopped and turned to see Julia’s warm, brown eyes twinkling expectantly. “Oh hi … Julia.” Despite the years of hanging around Maddy’s house as a teenager, I still felt awkward referring to Mrs Spencer by her first name.

“You didn’t overdo it, I hope?”

I grinned. I loved how motherly she was, something my own mother had never seemed to master. “Painful, but good pain,” I assured her.

“Mmm.” Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Don’t let that boy of mine boss you around either, you hear? He’s been overdoing the exercise in my opinion.”

I swallowed and attempted to push away the vision of Max’s broad shoulders and torso from earlier that morning. “He seems like he can handle it.”

“Oh, he can handle it, but he’d do better to have a bit more balance in his life.”

I was confused. “Isn’t the exercise a good break from work?”

“Ordinarily, yes.” She dropped some papers into her desk drawer and slammed it abruptly, making me jump. “In this case he’s using it to distract himself. He’s a very stubborn man, Christa. At this rate, he’ll exercise himself to death.”

“Maddy said he’d recently broken up with his fiancée. I’m very sorry to hear it,” I replied quietly.

I watched as a flood of conflicting emotions filled her eyes. First sadness, then something akin to anger, and even bitterness, but she quickly got hold of herself. “It’s better this way, trust me.”

I was shocked. Julia Spencer was one of the warmest, most likeable and accepting human beings I’d come across. For her to suggest, even without saying as much, that she was glad Max was no longer engaged, spoke volumes.

At my perplexed expression, she smiled wryly. “He needs more in his life than work and working out. I’m glad Maddy suggested you go along, even if it is all part of her Christa reform program.”

I felt my face turn an unnatural shade of pink. Damn Maddy.

“I didn’t mean that literally, hon.” Julia’s eyes were sympathetic. “She’s just worried about you.”

“I know.” I sighed. “Don’t tell her I said this, but I do appreciate it. It’s actually a nice change to do some work here and it’s stopped me moping around the apartment.”

“I was sorry to hear about your French beau.”

So Maddy had told her that too. It didn’t really surprise me—Julia probably knew me better than my own mother. I waved a hand in the air. “Ah, it was only a holiday romance.”

“Sometimes they’re the hardest to forget,” Julia replied wistfully.

My eyebrows rose involuntarily. “Speaking from experience?”

She laughed: a warm, hearty laugh. “It was a long time ago and I don’t regret a thing.”

“Does Will know?” Will Spencer was the love of her life, to my knowledge.

“Does Will know what?” Maddy stood at the door to her office, eyeing us both suspiciously.

Julia’s smile faded and she gave me a quick wink. “Nothing, dear. You’re due at Kent Street in fifteen, aren’t you?”

Maddy nodded. “I am. Now please let Christa go and get some work done, won’t you?”

“Sorry, we were just catching up.” Julia gave us both a bright smile and turned back to her computer.

Maddy eyed me suspiciously again and I grinned, then turned to walk toward my desk, stifling a laugh.

At my workstation, I waited while my Mac logged on then pulled up the designs for the Oz Guardians pitch Maddy had assigned to me. This potential client was big news for the company. After only three years Grounded Marketing had achieved a good reputation in the business-to-business space. Working with clients involved in endeavors such as wind farms, water systems, and IT companies dedicated to creating paperless offices wasn’t all that glamorous admittedly, but it was our target market.

Oz Guardians was different. They were a not-for-profit wildlife conservation organization founded off the back of one of Australia’s most successful, world-recognized private zoos: Oz Zoo. Adding a client of this caliber to their list would be a huge asset to the company and would create much more awareness of Grounded Marketing in the marketplace. The fact that Maddy trusted me to help deliver the pitch spoke volumes about her respect for me.

I located my concepts file and opened up my initial designs. Maybe it was the long-needed exercise endorphins currently flowing through my body or just the simple fact that I was out of the apartment and doing something productive with my time, but I was suddenly grateful to Maddy. I was glad I had close friends like her, Cate, and Scarlett to look out for me.

I accessed a layer in one of the logos and played around with the coloring. As I did, I admitted to myself that Maddy wouldn’t have suggested I come to work for her if it wasn’t in my best interests. Sure, she was getting an experienced designer she knew she could trust out of the deal, but she’d never take advantage of me just to further her business.

Painful as it was to admit, after close to five months off, it was good to be back at work.