Joss Wood – Her Boss by Day... (страница 2)

Amy looked her up and down. ‘Actually, you are far too skinny—and back up. What about Wayne? You married him, didn’t you?’

Willa lifted her ringless left hand. ‘About to be divorced. That was a … mistake.’

Hmm … a mistake. That was a major understatement, but she’d go with it.

Amy pursed her lips. ‘I’m sorry … God, Willa, so much time has passed. We need to catch up. Now.’

‘What about my date and your friend?’ Willa asked. She had already been in the bathroom for an inexcusably long time—she was being so rude.

So what? Wild Willa rolled her eyes.

‘Pfft … your date sounds like a moron and Jessica was exchanging hot looks with a guy across the room. She won’t miss me.’

Amy stalked to the door, yanked it open and let out one of her high-pitched, loud and distinctive whistles. Willa wasn’t surprised when she soon saw a Saints waiter outside the door.

‘Is the small function room empty?’ Amy asked.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good. Tell Guido that I’m using it for a while, and ask him to please bring me a bottle of that Burnt Tree Chardonnay I like and put it on my tab,’ ordered Amy, and with a luscious smile sent him on his way.

The kid, drooling, whirled away to do the goddess’s bidding. It seemed that Amy, always a good flirt, now had a PhD in getting men to jump through her hoops.

Amy turned back to Willa and shrugged at her astounded expression. ‘I hold a lot of work functions here. Guido owes me.’

Amy led Willa out of the bathroom, down a decorated passage and into a small function room that held a boardroom table at one end and a cluster of chairs at the other. She pulled Willa to the set of wingback chairs and gestured to her to sit.

‘It’s so good to see you, Willa,’ Amy said, taking the seat opposite her. ‘You look so … different. Classy … rich.’

Willa knew what she saw: it was the same face and body she looked at every day. She was still the same height, taller than most woman but skinnier than she’d been at eighteen. Thick, mocha and auburn shoulder-length hair, with a heavy fringe surrounding a pixie face dominated by silver-green eyes.

‘That’s because I am classy … and my husband—ex—whatever—is rich,’ Willa said, making a conscious effort to keep the bitterness from her voice but doubting that she’d succeeded. ‘Gym, designer clothes, best hairdresser in Sydney.’

Amy lightly touched her knee. ‘Was it awful … being married to him?’

Willa considered lying, thought about glossing over the truth, but then she saw the understanding and sympathy in Amy’s eyes and realised that while she wouldn’t tell Amy—tell anyone—the whole truth, she didn’t have to blatantly lie. She and Amy had been through too much for her to lie.

‘Not awful, no. Boring—absolutely. Wayne wanted a young, gorgeous trophy wife, and that’s what I’ve been for the past eight years.’

An eight-year marriage condensed into two sentences …

‘God, a trophy wife.’ Amy winced. ‘But you’re so damn bright … you always wanted to study accountancy, economics, business.’

‘Yeah, well, Wayne wanted beauty and acquiescence, not brains. I kept up with the markets, trends, but he’d didn’t like his wife talking business. I was supposed to be seen and not heard.’

‘I always thought that he was waste of space.’

At the knock on the door Amy got up to accept a bottle and glasses, thanked the waiter profusely and adeptly poured them both a glass.

Amy took a sip of her wine and took her seat again. ‘Why do I get the feeling that I’m getting the sanitised version here?’

Because she wasn’t a fool. ‘My dead marriage is a very boring topic, Amy.’

‘You were never boring, Willa. Quiet, maybe—intense, shy. Not boring. And I know that you probably gave Wayne-the-Pain a hundred and fifty per cent because the Willa I knew bent over backwards to make everyone happy. When you make a promise or a decision it takes a nuclear bomb to dislodge you.’

‘I’m not that bad,’ Willa protested, though she knew she was. She didn’t give up—or in—easily.

‘You hate going against your word.’ Amy sent her a strange, sad smile. ‘You were distraught that you had to ask Luke for help that night in the Whitsundays because I’d begged you not to.’

Willa bit her lip, still seeing Amy, battered and bloody, tears and crimson sand on her face. Her black and blue eye and her split cheek from fighting off Justin’s unwelcome advances on the beach. Sometimes she still saw her face in her dreams and woke up in a cold sweat.

‘I’m sorry, but I needed Luke to help me to help you.’

Amy looked into her wine glass. ‘I know … it’s okay. It was all a long time ago. How is Luke?’

There was an odd tremor in her voice which Willa instantly picked up. Amy and Luke had always had some sort of love-hate, weird reaction to each other that Willa could never quite put her finger on.

‘He’s fine … still single, still driven. He’s working on a massive hotel development in Singapore—the biggest of his career.’

Amy eventually raised her eyes to meet Willa’s. ‘Are you still in contact with the others from the resort? Brodie, Chantal, Scott?’

Willa shrugged. ‘Loosely, via social media and the very occasional e-mail. Chantal is still dancing, Scott is one of the city’s most brilliant young architects, and Brodie is the heart and soul of a company that runs luxury yacht tours down the Gold Coast. I haven’t seen them or socialised with them…. nothing has been the same since the week you and Brodie left.’

Happy to be off the subject of her dysfunctional marriage, Willa cast her mind back to that summer they’d spent in the Whitsundays, when a group of strangers had arrived at the very fancy Weeping Reef resort, ready and rocking to start a holiday season of working all day and having fun all night.

It still amazed her that the five of them—six if she included Luke—had clicked so well. They were such a mixed bag of personalities.

They’d laughed and loved and drunk and partied, and then laughed and loved and partied some more. They’d been really good at it, and the first two months of their summer holiday had flown past. Then their idyll had been shattered when two dreadful incidents had dumped a bucket of angst and recrimination and guilt over their magical interlude and ripped their clique apart.

And set Willa on a path that she now deeply regretted.

‘To go back a whole bunch of steps—we were talking about you and Wayne and what caused the split,’ Amy said, pulling her back to their conversation. She refilled their glasses and lifted an eyebrow.

‘Oh … that.’

‘Yes, that.’

How strange it was that after so long she and Amy could just fall into conversation as if it was yesterday … how strange and how right.

In the natural order of things they shouldn’t have been friends … Amy was bright and flirty and outgoing, and Willa was quiet and naïve and a lot less boisterous than her friend. She couldn’t just spill all the beans about her less than happy marriage—not even with Amy, so successful, confident, sophisticated. With Amy those qualities went deeper than her looks and clothes right into her psyche. Unlike Willa, whose confidence and sophistication was just a fabric layer deep.

‘I wanted to be something other than his pretty arm decoration. He didn’t see why being that wasn’t enough for me.’

‘It got ugly. I called him a balding, ageing git and he called me a shallow bimbo. The words “separation” and “divorce” emerged and we were both very happy with the idea.’

Amy closed her eyes in sympathy. ‘Sorry, Wills.’

Willa shrugged. ‘Eight months ago he booted me out of our apartment and into a waterfront mansion in Vaucluse—’

Amy whistled at the mention of the very upmarket Sydney suburb. ‘Why didn’t he move into the waterfront property?’

Willa smiled. ‘He hates water and open spaces. Anyway, he moved Young and Dumb into the apartment the afternoon I moved out. Now the divorce just needs its court date and I’ll be free!’

‘What are you going to do then?’

Willa shrugged. ‘Still working that out … I have a degree, but no experience, and—worse—no contacts. Money is not a problem, but time is. I battle to fill my day, and rattling around on my own in that mausoleum doesn’t help.’

She glanced at the Rolex on her wrist, a twenty-first birthday present from Wayne. It was boring enough living her life, she didn’t need to dissect it as well, so she attempted to change the subject.

‘We’ve been in here for about twenty minutes. Do you think my date from hell has got the hint?’

‘I told Guido to tell him that you weren’t interested.’

Amy shrugged at Willa’s quick, questioning look.

‘Hey, you wanted to make his brain explode. I thought I’d save you a prison sentence.’

‘True,’ Willa admitted as she stood up. ‘Okay, well … it was great seeing you but I suppose I should get home.’

‘To do more rattling?’ Amy shook her head. ‘Oh, hell, no. If I ever saw someone in need of a party it’s you. I’ve just signed a huge PR deal—’

‘You’re in PR? You’re far too self-effacing, modest and shy for PR, Ames,’ Willa said, her voice deceptively gentle.

Amy just laughed, and instantly catapulted Willa back the best part of a decade. It was a killer laugh—dirty as mud.

‘There’s that sarcastic mouth I used to love. Anyway, I’ve just signed a huge deal to launch a new franchise of sports shops selling clothes and equipment—my client is also setting up some hardcore men-only gyms—and a couple of my workmates and I are going out to celebrate. We’re taking my new client clubbing. And you are going to join us!’