grabbed it.
‘Fine. Be ready at six in the morning. I’ll pick you up.’
‘Great. Gives me time for my morning surf.’ He smiled and for once that smile didn’t make her feel like trusting him. This smile looked more like that of a great white shark. All interlocking white teeth, hungry for some flesh. The beating of war drums sounded deep in her gut. This battle would be to the death. The only way to keep her show and her dream alive was to win—and this time she’d have to go all the way.
THREE
Sydney looked different at six a.m. Quiet. Coiled, like a spring waiting to be let go and bounce crazily all over the place. When Faith had moved here two years ago it had seemed so foreign and strange. Everything was bright and sunny and sparkling. The people smiled too much. People in Australia worked to live rather than lived to work. It took a lot of getting used to. Sometimes it irritated her. She sometimes wished people would be a little more serious—a bit more ambitious, more like her. But as the sun bounced from the waves of the water onto the ferries that took people from work to the bars and restaurants and clubs that surrounded the harbour, she could admit that Sydney was growing on her.
What she loved the most was that it was a place where anything went. Where nothing was taboo. Where you could see a man dressed as a woman kissing a man passionately on the street at nine a.m. It was so different from the small country village she grew up in and literally a world away from the stuffy boarding school where she’d lived for ten long years. Here, she seemed to blend in a little bit more. With all the other crazies.
Faith stopped her car. There were no spare spots so she double parked and got out, hitting Send on the text she’d written to Cash.
I’m here.
She could only see the back of his building. Apparently he lived at the very top. His view would be magnificent. It would reach out so far he’d be able to see where the world curved. Of course a man like Cash Anderson would live at the top. He’d probably spent his life looking down at people like her. Small-town nobodies with only a sliver of talent but a truckload of determination. He was one of those people who determined the fate of people like her. And, frankly, she was getting a little sick of being beholden to the whims of people like Cash Anderson.
She’d finally started to feel different. No longer the nobody she’d always been at home. Or worse—the wacko everyone laughed at. Her mother had actually laughed when she’d told her she was going to be a journalist. Her father had given one of his lectures and her brothers had just had another angle from which to make fun of her.
She had always been an outsider—at home, at school, at every job she’d had since leaving college four years ago. But here, in this strange place, her fascination with love and relationships and sex had found a home. She had fans in Australia. Actual fans. And not just weirdo men with worn-out rewind buttons on their remote controls. She’d received letters from women who thanked her for showing them how to revive their marriages. From young girls who said she was the reason they learned to respect their bodies and themselves and from men who were happy she was able to teach them how to please their girlfriends in ways they wouldn’t have thought of themselves. Real people with real problems.
She was helping. She was important. For the first time in her life, she mattered. Which was why this show was so important to her. She needed to make it a success. She had to make sure it stayed on air. With this show—she was somebody and with this show, she’d never have to go back to being nobody.
Her phone beeped.
What are you wearing?
What was she wearing? Faith’s cheeks heated. Perhaps he thought she was someone else. One of his harem of twenty women he’d apparently bedded. Just for sex. She decided Cash Anderson was a pig. A sexy pig, but a pig nonetheless. She texted back.
It’s black and hot and covered in leather straps.
Triumph made her lips curl into a smile. He’d be disappointed when he got down here and it was just her in her T-shirt and jeans.
Your car is covered in leather straps? Who are you—Batman?
Faith paused. What? Her phone rang and she pushed the green button.
‘I asked, “What are you driving?” Are you the yellow bug or the red clunker?’
‘The red clunker. I thought you said what was I wearing...’
As it always did when Cash was involved, her skin turned a bright shade of beetroot. Lately, she’d found herself trying so hard to impress him in order to keep her job—she more often embarrassed herself in front of him.
‘You’re wearing something black, hot and leather? Now who’s doing the harassing?’ She heard his laugh as he approached. His hair was short on the sides but a little longer on top—thick and dark and shining in the sun. And his long legs were striding towards her. The wind blew his white button-up shirt back, emphasising the muscles in his chest. He looked more casual today. His shirt was untucked. He looked suntanned and relaxed and ever so slightly sexy.
Faith pushed her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to think of him as sexy. Not when he was the man intent on destroying any dream she’d ever had. Not when he was her boss. Definitely not when she hadn’t had sex in too many years to remember and was so desperate she was almost considering jumping the homeless man that slept on the beach near her flat.
Sex was something Faith reported on, not something she practised regularly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been intimate with anything that wasn’t metallic or attached to her own hand. Actually—she could. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.
Cash was smiling that annoyingly happy smile again. The one that made him look like an American college boy. All red-cheeked and arrogant and fresh from the football field...and the memories of just how long it had been kept knocking on her brain—like an insistent salesman.
‘That’s not leather,’ he scolded. ‘Or black.’ His eyes travelled from her head to her toes and her body heated from his look. Knock-knock.
‘I thought you sent that text to someone else.’
‘Why would I send a text meant for someone else to your phone number?’ He smiled and chuckled at her before opening the passenger-side door with a creak. ‘Get in, Harris. We have work to do.’
She slid into the driver’s seat, a little mortified that her joke had backfired. This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go. She had a plan. A plan to show him that what she did was important and why sex was about more than just sex. But in order to do that, she was planning on exuding utter professionalism.
‘You look nice.’ His eyes flicked to hers before he looked out of the window. His comment made her eyebrows raise. She gunned the engine of her ‘clunker’, as he’d called it. She’d purchased the red 1975 Kingswood a few weeks after she’d arrived. Everyone in Australia had a car. The general population seemed to all start driving around the age of eight and seemed so familiar with their vehicles they all named their cars. Matty Harbinger’s BMW was named Bruce. Although everyone called it Sebastian behind his back. Her red clunker was called Red. Obviously. She wasn’t great with coming up with witty nicknames.
‘What do
