while she never for one second regretted spending as much time as possible with her mum, she hated the inevitability of this horrid disease.
Artie patted her hand. ‘Give her my best next time you see her.’
‘Shall do.’
That was another thing that bugged her about this Torquay trip. She’d have to give all her attention to the account in the early set-up—and to the account’s aggravating owner—which meant missing out on seeing her mum for the week before Christmas or long drives to and from the beachside town. Which would lead to Archer poking his nose into her business, asking why she had to visit her mum so often, and she didn’t want to divulge her private life to him.
Not now, when things were strictly business.
‘If this account has alleviated some of your financial worries, why do you look like this?’ Artie’s exaggerated frown made her smile.
‘Because simple solutions often mask convoluted complications.’
‘Cryptic.’
‘Not really.’ She huffed out a long breath. ‘The owner of the company behind this new account is an old friend.’
‘Ah...so that’s it.’
She didn’t like the crafty glint in Artie’s eyes much—his knowing smile less.
‘This...friend...is he a past amor?’
Had she loved Archer? After the awful break-up, and in the following months when she’d returned to Melbourne and preferred reading to dating, she’d wondered if the hollowness in her heart, the constant gripe in her belly and the annoying wanderlust to jump back on a plane and follow him around the world’s surfing hotspots was love.
She’d almost done it once, after seeing a snippet of him at the Pipeline in Hawaii three months after she’d returned from Europe. She’d gone as far as logging on, choosing flights, but when it had come to paying the arrow had hovered over ‘confirm’ for an agonising minute before the memory of their parting had resurfaced and she’d shut the whole thing down.
That moment had been her wake-up call, and she’d deliberately worked like a maniac so she could fall into bed at the end of a day exhausted and hopefully dream-free.
Her mum had been diagnosed four weeks later, and as a distraction from Archer it had been a doozy.
Now here he was, strutting into her life, as confident and charming and gorgeous as ever. And as dangerously seductive as all those years ago. For, no matter how many times she rationalised that their week together would be strictly business, the fact remained that they’d once shared a helluva spark. She’d better pack her fire extinguisher just in case.
Artie held up his hands. ‘You don’t have to answer. I can see your feelings for this old amor written all over your face.’
‘I don’t love him.’
Artie merely smiled and moved down the bar towards an edgy customer brandishing an empty sangria jug, leaving her to ponder the conviction behind her words.
* * *
While Callie would have loved to linger over a sangria or two when the Spanish Flamenco band fired up, she had more important things to do.
Like visiting her mum.
Nora hated it when she fussed, so these days she kept her visits to twice weekly—an arrangement they were both happy with.
The doctors had given her three years. The doctors didn’t know what a fighter Nora Umberto was. She’d lasted seven, and while her tremors seemed to increase every time Callie visited the spark of determination in her mum’s eyes hadn’t waned.
After the life she’d led, no way would Nora go out without a bang. She continued to read to the other residents and direct the kitchen hands to prepare exotic dishes—dishes she’d tried first-hand during her travels around the world, during which she’d met Bruno Umberto.
Callie’s dad might not have stuck around long in his first marriage—or any of his subsequent three marriages, for that matter—but thankfully Nora’s love of cosmopolitan cuisine had stuck. Callie had grown up on fajitas, ratatouille, korma and Szechuan—a melting pot of tastes to accompany her mum’s adventurous stories.
She’d never really known her dad, but Nora had been enough parent and then some. Dedicated to raising her daughter, Nora hadn’t dated until after she’d graduated high school and moved out. Even then her relationships had lasted only a scant few months. Callie had always wondered if her mum’s exuberance had been too much for middle-aged guys who’d expected Martha Stewart and ended up with Lara Croft.
As she entered the shaded forecourt of Colldon Special Accommodation Home she knew that made it all the harder to accept—the fact her go-get-’em mother had been cut down in her prime by a devastating illness no amount of fighting could conquer.
She signed in, slipped a visitor’s lanyard over her neck and headed towards the rear of the sandstone building. As she strolled down the pastel-carpeted corridor she let the peace of the place infuse her: the piped rainforest sounds, the subtle scent of lemon and ginger essential oils being diffused from air vents, the colours on the walls transitioning from muted mauve to sunny daffodil.
Colldon felt more like an upmarket boutique hotel than a special home and Callie would do whatever it took to ensure her mum remained here.
Including shacking up with Archer Flett for a week to work on his precious campaign.
She shook her head, hoping that would dispel the image of her agreeing to his demands. It didn’t, and all she could see was his startling aquamarine eyes lighting with a fire she remembered all too well when she’d said yes.
She’d been a fool thinking she had the upper hand: she’d known his identity; he hadn’t known the woman behind CJU Designs. However, the element of surprise meant little when he’d been the one who ended up ousting her from her smug comfort zone.
Her neck muscle spasmed and she rubbed it as she entered Nora’s room. She didn’t knock. No one knocked. Her mum’s door was perpetually open to whoever wanted to pop in for a chat.
Vibrant, sassy, alive: three words that summed up Nora Umberto.
But as she caught sight of her mum struggling to zip up her cardigan that last word taunted her.
Alive. For how much longer?
She swallowed the lump of sadness welling in her throat, pasted a smile on her face and strode into the room.
‘Hey, Mum, how you doing?’
Nora’s brilliant blue eyes narrowed as she gestured at the zip with a shaky hand. ‘Great—until some bright spark dressed me in this today.’
Her defiant smile made Callie’s heart ache.
‘Buttons are a pain, but these plastic zips aren’t a whole lot better.’
Need a hand? The words hovered on Callie’s lips but she clamped them shut. Nora didn’t like being treated like an invalid. She liked accepting help less.
Instead,
