her mistake was in hearing what she wanted to hear. And letting her mother’s expectations get to her. Her desperate desire to fill the void in her life with grandchildren. And then she’d awoken to EROS’ promotion and decided it was some kind of sign.
And when she’d been shortlisted and then selected...well...
Clearly it was meant to be.
And exactly none of those was even close to being a good excuse.
‘I accept full responsibility for my mistake, Mr Rush—’
‘Zander.’
‘—and I’ll need to seek some legal advice before answering you about the contract.’
‘Of course.’ He fished a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘You’d be foolish not to.’
Which was a polite, corporate way of suggesting she’d been pretty foolish already.
It was hard to argue.
* * *
‘I think you should do it,’ Kelly said, distracted enough that Georgia could well imagine her stirring a pot full of alphabet spaghetti in one hand, ironing a small school uniform with the other, and with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.
A normal day in her household.
‘I thought for sure you’d tell me where he could stick his offer,’ she said.
Kelly laughed. ‘If not for those magic words...’
Fifty thousand pounds.
‘You say magic words and I hear magic beans. I think this has the potential to grow into something really all-consuming.’
‘So? Did you have any other plans for the next twelve months?’
The fact it was true—and that Kelly didn’t mean to be unkind—didn’t stop it hurting all the same. No, she had no particular plans that twelve months of fully paid stuff would interrupt. Which was a bit sad.
‘George, listen. I don’t want to bore you again with my life-is-for-the-living speech, but I would take this in a heartbeat if someone offered it to me.’
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t need reinvention.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you. This doesn’t have to be about that. This is an opportunity to do all the things you’ve put aside your whole life while you’ve been working and saving so hard. To live a little.’
‘You know why I work as hard as I do.’
‘I know. The whole “as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” thing. But you are not your mother, George. You are more financially secure than most people your age. Isn’t there any room in your grand plan for some fun?’
She blinked, wounded both by Kelly’s too-accurate summation of her entire life’s purpose and by the implication of her words. ‘I’m fun.’
Kelly’s gentle laugh only scored deeper. ‘Oh, love. No, you’re not. You’re amazing and smart and very interesting to be around, but you’re about as much fun as Dan is. That’s what made you two so—’
Kelly sucked her careless words back in. ‘What I’m saying is, you have nothing to lose. Take this man’s fifty grand and spoil yourself. Consider it a consolation prize for not getting to marry my stupid brother.’
‘He’s not stupid, Kel,’ she whispered. ‘He just doesn’t love me.’
In the silence that followed, two little boys shrieked and carried on in the background. ‘Well, I love you, George, and as your friend I’m telling you to take the money and run. You won’t get a chance like this again.’
Kelly dragged her mouth away from the phone but not well enough to save Georgia’s ears as she bellowed at one of her boys. ‘Cal, enough!’ She came back to their conversation. ‘I’m going to have to go. World War Three is erupting. Let me know what you decide.’
Moments later, Georgia thumbed the disconnect button on her mobile and dropped it onto her plump sofa.
No surprises there, really. Of course Kelly would take the money. And the opportunity. She’d come so close to being robbed of life—and her boys of a mother—she was fully in marrow-sucking mode. And she was right—there really was nothing else going on in Georgia’s life that a bunch of new activities would interrupt.
Her objections lay, not with the time commitment, but with the implication that she was broken. Deficient.
About as much fun as Dan. Did Kelly know what an indictment that really was? Mr Serious?
So that was three for three in favour. Kelly and her gran both thought it would be good for her and her mother...well, what else would a woman incapable of managing her money or her impulses say?
Which was part of the problem. Truth be told, Georgia had nothing against the idea of a bit of self-development of the social kind. She wanted to be a well-rounded person and maybe she had gone a bit too hard down the other path these past years. But the pitch of her mother’s excited squeal was directly and strikingly proportional to her level of discomfort at the idea of frittering away fifty thousand perfectly good pounds—no matter how free—on meaningless, fluffy activity.
Her mother would have spent it in a week. Just as she spent every penny they ever had. They’d bounced through seven public houses before her gran called a halt and took a thirteen-year-old Georgia in with her.
And then it would be gone, with nothing to show for it but a fuller wardrobe, a liver in need of detox and a sleep debt the size of Wales.
She stretched out and pulled the well-thumbed EROS contract into her lap. It had her lawyer’s recommendation paper-clipped to the front.
Sign, he said. And attached his invoice.
So that was four for four. Five if you counted the handsome and persuasive Zander Rush.
And only one against.
THREE
March
Zander’s assistant made an appointment right at the end of his day for her to sign the contract and so walking back into EROS was only half as intimidating as it might have been if it were full of staff.
An oblivious night-guard had just sat down at Reception instead of the two gossipy girls she’d met there the first time she visited, and most of the workstations in the communal area were closed down for the evening. Georgia clutched a printout of Zander’s new contract in her hand and quietly trailed his assistant past the handful of people still beavering away at their desks. Most of them didn’t raise their heads.
Maybe she was yesterday’s news already.
Or maybe public interest had just swung around to Dan, instead, now that the calendar had flipped over to March. Drop Dead Dan. Apparently, he was fielding a heap of interest from the
