Three Words: A Novella Collection (20 page)

“
I kinda figured that. What’s the deal?”

“
It’s embarrassing. Well, for me anyway.”

“
I’m into embarrassing. I’ve got tonnes of embarrassing
stories. We could swap embarrassing stories if that’d make you more
comfortable?”

Oooohhh
. How cute, he was willing to share his drunken
exploits with her in the name of compassion.

“
Well, I’d love to,” Lily said, glancing at her watch and
seeing that she only had two minutes left to hike it back to the
office before Jordy Brown-nose dobbed on her for being late. “But
if I don’t get back to work in the next five nano-seconds I’m going
to get fired.”

She stood
up.

The man stood
up. “You sure you’re okay?”

“
Positive.” She attempted to convince him with a rather
pathetic, weak smile. She did feel quite woozy. “I think I just
need to stand for a second.”

The man
stepped a little closer. His hand reached out to steady her and
before she could say ‘shoe polish’ they were closer than two people
ought to be in a retail-type situation without being accused of
invading the other’s personal space. Lily could smell the breath
mint he’d recently eaten; see the smattering of manly hairs poking
from the top of his shirt. She could feel that electric vibration
again, this time like a bolt up her arm shooting straight for her
chest. This was chemistry at its most powerful. Or maybe, she was
having a heart attack?

“
I can call someone, if you like. Boyfriend?
Husband?”

She swallowed,
looking straight into his eyes. “No. Need. I’m. Good. Besides, I
have neither of the above.”

Was that the
hint of a smile on his lips?

“
I really do need to go,” Lily muttered, wishing it wasn’t
true. She could easily have stood there all afternoon just staring
into those twinkling dark eyes, imagining what was under that pink
shirt and how she could get to it but the man was blocking her way.
He looked like he wanted to say something.

“
Oh. Okay.” His step aside was slow, to say the least and not
at all enthusiastic.

“
So I guess that’s what I’ll do then,” Lily nodded,
shouldering her handbag.

“
Sure. See ya ‘round.”

“
You too.”

As Lily ran
for her life back to the office, it occurred to her that she’d
forgotten to collect her shoes.

Chapter 3

Lily made it
to her desk by the skin of her teeth. She’d barely pushed her bag
underneath with her foot, applied fresh lipgloss and checked her
Facebook before Jordy Brown-nose came strolling past, looking as
smug and sucky-uppish as ever in his blue striped business shirt
and grey slacks. Jordy’s real name was actually Jordan Browning but
the girls had dubbed him Jordy Brown-nose because he was forever
sucking up to their boss, trying to score Brownie points for a
promotion. He started early and worked late, which was fine, but he
also had the most annoying habit of being everywhere. You could
never have a private moment in the work place without Jordy butting
in, giving his opinion ~ he had an opinion about everything ~ and
if Lily so much as used one extra sheet of photocopy paper he was
straight to the boss, telling on her for wasting resources. It was
as if he was hoping that by making her look bad he would in turn
look good.

“
You’re late,” he remarked, making her jump in her chair. Her
fingers accidentally pressed send on her comment.

Like a five
year old that stretched out the putting away of toys because she’d
been told to hurry and didn’t want to, Lily slipped her phone into
the top drawer of her desk and did a double check of the clock on
her computer screen. A knowing smile crossed her face as she
swivelled to Jordy, looking up into his watery green eyes and pink
blotched face covered in razor rash. She had him this time.

“
Uh no, actually. I’m not. It’s one-thirty-one. I’ve been
sitting here for a good three minutes. Enough time, in fact for me
to check up on you on Facebook and see those photos you were tagged
in at
Mint Bar
last Saturday. Why were you wearing an entire
outfit made of those
Glo
necklaces? Were you off your nut
again?”

“
It wasn’t an entire outfit. It was a joke.”

Lily smirked.
“Didn’t look like one. Looked like your ‘how-hot-am-I’ pose to me.”
She stood up and mimicked his stance from the photo.

Jordy went a
funny shade of pinkish-grey, sort of like bubblegum that had been
stuck under a table for a month or so. “You shouldn’t be
Facebooking on company time.”

“
It was my lunch break. And now my break is over so it’s back
to work, if you’ll excuse me.”

“
Be careful, Lily,” Jordy said, sliding his hand along the top
of her office partition as he left. “It’d be easy for Magnus to
slip the coordination of the Wedding Expo to Marisa.”

“
Yes. Thanks so much for reminding me.”

Lily plastered
a smile on her face and opened the notebook she kept to remind her
of tasks she needed to complete. God, if only she could say what
she really thought at that moment, but she’d been Wedding Expo
Coordinator since its inception. It was her baby. And for the
amount of stress it had caused her over the years sometimes, she
felt like she’d given birth to it. She didn’t even know why Jordy
got her so riled up. Maybe it was his superior attitude? It made
her want to stir him, bring him down a notch or two. It wasn’t as
if he was her boss. He just acted like it.

After Jordy
had disappeared, Lily did a quick scan of her email. There were two
new messages but she wasn’t interested in those at the moment. She
wanted to talk to Rebecca about the incident in
The Cobbler
Shop
.

Lily’s fingers
flew fast across the keys.

To:
[email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Top Secret!!!!!

Just met gorg-a-licious guy in Cobbler’s Shop. So cute forgot
to collect shoes.


Rebecca’s
reply was quicker. Clearly, she’d not been as engrossed in
organising the life-sized models of Captain Kirk for the main
marquee at the Sci-Fi Festival as she ought to be.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Top Secret!!!!!

Details please!!!!!

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Top Secret!!!!!

Good looking, tall, dark brown hair, great fashion sense,
cheeky smile. Seems intelligent.

The next thing
Lily knew, Rebecca was standing beside her, a devilish grin on her
face and an expectant glint in her large blue eyes. She was holding
a manila folder marked CATERING ~ which they both knew had nothing
to do with catering because it was stuffed full of old photocopies
and reject letters. Rebecca promptly dumped the file on the desk
beside her friend before pulling the spare chair over from the
corner. As if by remote, Lily pulled up the list of caterers she
kept on file and handed Rebecca a pen. She assumed her most serious
work-like face.

“
I’m supposed to be ringing the wax model guy, you know.
You’re interrupting me.”

“
Ah, you’re the one interrupting me.”

Rebecca held
the pen as if poised to write. “Who gives a crap about gigantic
Star Trek figures? Tell me more about the shoe man.”

Lily looked
around the office. Jordy was nowhere in sight but still it paid to
keep up the ruse. She pointed to the computer screen.

“
This company does a spectacular
hot
food buffet if
you’re after that sort of thing or if you want to go down the
sweet
route, I can recommend this lot. They make these fruit
buns TO DIE FOR
.”

“
Ah,” Rebecca whispered, “I see.”

She pretended
to scribble a phone number on a scrap of paper.

“
And their coffee is really
strong and full-bodied,
slightly sharp
.”

“
Sounds irresistible.” Rebecca lowered her voice, as Jordy
appeared two desks down. He’d stopped to give Marisa a piece of
paper and was staring at them in suspicion. “Give me a movie star
comparison. Quick.”

“
Um, um. I think
Jake Gyllenhaal’s
PR people might have used that one for the press
day when he was in Sydney or was it Channing
Tatum?”

“
What are you two up to?” Jordy had reached Lily’s
cubicle.

“
Finalising catering details for the ‘meet and greet’, Jordy,”
Rebecca replied, calm-as-you-please. “Which is more than I can say
for you. I’m sure Magnus would love to hear that the only thing
you’ve done since lunch is stalk the female employees. Don’t you
have some work you could be doing?”

Lily stifled a
giggle.

“
I came by to ask Lily something but seeing as you’re busy
I’ll stop by later,” he said, looking pointedly at Lily.

“
Look forward to it,” Lily grimaced.

About as much
as a bad bout of gastro.

“
What’s your plan, then?” Rebecca asked after Jordy had
left.

“
I don’t have one.”

“
Why don’t you go back to the shop and ‘collect your shoes.’
While you’re there you could ask him out. I still have a spare seat
on our table tomorrow night.”

Lily sat for a
minute. Was she ready to jump back into the dating pool? Was it too
soon after Travis? And what if this guy turned out to be a
womaniser, only after one thing? Maybe he chatted up all the girls
who went into the shop.

“
I don’t know.”

“
If I were you, I’d get thinking then. Some other girl could
have snapped him up by now.”

“
He
was
cute and he didn’t have a ring on.” That was
one of the things she’d noticed while his hand had been on her
knee.

“
That’s a start.”

Rebecca
shuffled the useless papers in the CATERING file and flipped it
closed. Wrapping it to her chest, she stood up. “And after you’ve
done the deed, text me. I want a blow by blow.”

“
I’m going to collect a pair of shoes, not sleep with the
guy.”

“
Hey! Good things can come of this. You didn’t hear Cinderella
complaining about her shoe being returned.”

Chapter 4

Her desk tidy,
the pile in the To Do tray a little thinner than earlier in the day
and three reminders scheduled by way of sticky notes stuck to her
desktop screen, Lily felt ready to leave for the day. Despite the
fact that she’d spent most of the afternoon mulling over whether it
was a good idea to go back to
The Cobbler Shop
or not ~ she
didn’t want to appear to eager or desperate under the guise of
retrieving her shoes ~ she’d managed a productive afternoon. She’d
even locked down the last of the booth holders for the market day
at the festival. In Sci-Fi terms, securing the
Star Wars
impersonators who did a full on light-sabre show had been the real
coup though. She could imagine those Sci-Fi geeks wetting
themselves at the prospect of seeing Luke Skywalker single-handedly
taking on the storm troopers. In 3D. That wasn’t on a movie screen.
It meant absolutely nothing to her but to them, it’d be gold.

It was just as
she was reaching under her desk to get her handbag that her office
phone rang. She contemplated not answering it. The workday was over
and it had taken all afternoon to psych herself into going back to
the shop. If she stopped to answer the phone she’d lose her
momentum. The phone kept on ringing.

Lily watched
it for a couple more rings. Bugger. If she didn’t answer it she’d
feel guilty until tomorrow. Or spend the night wracking her brain
wondering who it was.

“
Hello?”

“
Is this Lily Appleby?”

The voice,
deep and husky, sounded vaguely familiar. Suddenly, Lily was more
alert than she’d been in months. “
Yeeessss
.”

“
This is Damon Sullivan, ah, from
The Cobbler Shop
?” He
sounded rather uncertain about whether he worked there or not.
“It’s about your shoes, the red ones.”

He’d found her
shoes. And he was ringing her to let her know. How genuinely nice.
“Did you find them?”

“
No.”

If she hadn’t
been so pumped by that fact that he was calling her, Lily would
have felt like a deflated air mattress right about then. “But you
have to find them. They’re my lucky shoes.”

“
Your lucky shoes,” he repeated with slow articulation. “I’m
curious, what exactly does a pair of shoes have to do to be given
the dubious honour of being termed ‘lucky’?”

“
Long story but suffice to say I can’t live without
them.”

“
As I said before, I don’t mind listening to your stories. I
think I’d quite like it. Which brings me to the reason for my
call.”

Lily waited.
He wasn’t going to…
no
… he couldn’t be.

“
I was wondering if you’d like to catch up for a drink. If
you’re not busy.”