Sunshine thought back to last night. The way ‘no-touch’ Leo had gathered her in when she’d given him that one hug. How she’d melted just from the feel of his fingers in her hair. The way the kiss had spiralled...
‘Apparently not, Jonathan.’
‘This is bad, Sunny.’
‘I promise not to let it interfere with the wedding.’
‘You can’t promise that. There are two of you.’
‘I’m not going to start asking your permission before sleeping with someone,’ she said, exasperated.
Pause. Silence. Jon looked morose.
‘Jon?’
More silence.
‘Jon—where does that leave us?’
‘It leaves us, very unsatisfactorily, at loggerheads,’ he said. ‘And while we’re there I’m going to raise the other subject you hate. Where are Moonbeam’s ashes, Sunshine?’
Sunshine stiffened. ‘They are in the urn, here in my office, where they’ve always been. Want to see them?’
‘Don’t be flippant. Not about this. She’d hate it, Sunny. You know she would. When are you going to do it?’
Sunshine managed a, ‘Soon.’ But it wasn’t easy getting the word out of a suddenly clogged throat.
‘You’ve been saying that for two years.’
‘Soon,’ she repeated. ‘But now I have to go. I have to finish the new handbag designs.’
‘I’ll keep asking.’
‘I will do it. Just...not yet.’
‘I love you, Sunny,’ Jon said, looking so sad it tore at Sunshine’s heart. ‘But this isn’t fair. Not on Moon. Not on your parents. Not on you. You’ve got to let yourself get over her death.’
‘I...can’t. I can’t, Jon.’
‘You have to.’ Another sigh. ‘We’ll speak soon.’
Sunshine signed off.
Work. She would work for a while.
But half an hour later she was still sitting there, staring at the urn that held Moonbeam’s ashes. The urn was centred very precisely on top of the bureau Sunshine had painted in her sister’s favourite colour—‘cobalt dazzle’, Moon had called it.
Sunny tapped at the computer, found her list of Moonbeam’s favourite beaches. The options she’d chosen for scattering the ashes.
But not one of the options felt right. Not one!
She put her head on the desk and cried.
* * *
When Leo left the restaurant, a little after midnight, he intended to ride home, throw down a large brandy, think about life, and go to sleep.
What a night. Sunshine. Natalie. And the Heimlich manoeuvre.
The bloody Heimlich manoeuvre.
Just when he needed so badly to think of Sunshine as frippery and irresponsible she had to go and save someone’s life—and then look surprised when people applauded her for it. The difference between Sunshine’s calm, embarrassed heroism and Natalie’s ineffectual hysterics had been an eye-opener of epic proportions.
And it had come after the Moonbeam story, which had already had his heart lurching around in his chest like a drunk.
So he needed home. Brandy. Thinking time. Bed.
He wasn’t sure, then, why he left his motorbike where it was and walked to Sunshine’s apartment block.
She would be asleep, he told himself as he reached the glass doors of the entrance. But his finger was on the apartment’s intercom anyway.
‘Hello?’
Her voice was not sleepy. And he remembered, then, that she worked mostly at night.
‘It’s Leo.’
Pause. Then buzz, click, open.
She was waiting at her door. Barefoot. In a kimono. Seriously, did this woman not own a pair of jeans or some track pants? Who slummed around alone in their own home after midnight looking like an advertisement for Vogue magazine in a purple kimono complete with a bloody obi?
Her hair was loose, her face pale, her eyes strained.
He was going to thank her for saving Rob’s life.
He was going to ask her why she knew how to do the Heimlich manoeuvre.
He was going to tell her that he’d found out exactly what had happened and that he was an idiot for thinking, when he’d seen her near Natalie, that—
She cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t talk to Natalie except to tell her to move out of the way.’
‘I don’t care about Natalie,’ he said—and realised that he really, really didn’t.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I’m claiming assignation number two,’ he said, and kissed her.
Sunshine drew him backwards into the apartment. Kiss unbroken.
Leo slammed the door with his heel. Kiss unbroken.
Sex—just sex, Sunshine said to herself.
Leo pulled back as though she’d voiced the thought, looking at her with eyes smouldering like a hungry lion’s.
Sunshine grabbed his hand and dragged him to the bedroom. Kissed him again as she flipped the light switch and the fairy’s lair lights she’d had embedded in the ceiling winked to life.
He angled her so he could kiss her harder, harder. He started to shake—she could feel it—and he broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. He rested his cheek on the top of her head as he held her in his arms, his freight train heartbeat beneath her ear.
She heard him laugh softly and pulled back, watching as he took in the room.
It was pink. Every shade of pink from pale petal, to vibrant sari, to raspberry. The walls were the colour of cherry blossoms, stencilled in white in a riot of floral shapes and curlicues—like an extended henna tattoo. There was a chaise-longue, footstools, a window seat curtained off with diaphanous drapes. At one end of the room was a half-wall that divided the bedroom from the dressing room, with its orderly arrangement of garments, shoes, and bags, which in turn led through to her bathroom.
A
