He’d glanced up, not at her but at the crowd. He did this every time there was a big shift in people, offering up his seat if he had the chance. Because he was beautiful, well-read and a gentleman.
Was it possible—even remotely—he had written her a lonely-hearts poem on an app?
The timing fit—morning and evening. The train line too. And there were other hints, clues she couldn’t ignore.
“New to your orbit.” They’d been catching the same train a couple of weeks at most.
“I find myself struck.” Was that a nod towards the time she’d winded him?
“Starlit eyes.” She did have an impressive collection of Star Wars, Star Trek, even Starman T-shirts.
She usually went for nice-looking men, with easy smiles and busy mid-level jobs. Men who had no hope of spinning her off course as her mother had been spun. She was only just finding her feet in this town after all. Quietly following her curiosity as her granddad had encouraged her to do.
Hot Stuff was fun to moon over because he was out of her league. The thought of him reciprocating—heck, the thought of him even knowing who she was—made her belly turn warm and wobbly.
“Now, hang on a second,” said Zoe. “What does this have to do with Hot Stuff and the poem? Ah, I get it. After home and work going up the spout, you don’t really think a falling piano is in your future. You believe the logical third spate of bad luck involves your love life. But that’s a good thing!”
“In what universe?”
“You can cross messed-up love life off the list. You’ve already had the worst luck there. Eric was a douche. Dumping you. Using you. Framing you—”
“Yep, okay. I hereby concede that point to the prosecution.” Evie shook her head. “It doesn’t count. He doesn’t count. We’ve been kaput for months. ‘Bad luck comes in threes’ means it has to happen after I opened the cookie.”
“You’ve arbitrarily decided a man who looks like Byron’s hotter descendant is off-limits because a fortune cookie says it will turn to crap.”
Evie looked over at Bryon’s hotter descendant. She couldn’t help it. Heck, at that very moment the train rounded a bend and a slash of sunlight lit him up like something out of an old film.
“He’s dreamy, Evie,” said Zoe, though Evie hadn’t said a word. “And he wrote you a lonely heart.”
Evie blinked, only to find she’d been staring too long as a pair of stormy blue eyes caught on hers. Her breath lodged in her throat. Her cheeks burned as her very blood went haywire.
Look away, her subconscious begged. Look. Away. Now!
Instead habit overcame instinct, and she smiled.
Growing up in a country town, she’d been smiling at strangers since she’d learned how. Saying hello to anyone who made eye contact. Waving in thanks to cars that stopped to let her cross the street. It was simple good manners.
Now, on a packed train hurtling towards the big city, she felt like an utter fool, her smile frozen into place as those fiercely blue eyes stuck on hers and didn’t let up.
Then a small miracle happened. The man blinked, as if coming to from a faraway place. The corner of his mouth kicking north into what could only be a return smile. And then he nodded. Nodded! Sending her a private hello from across the way.
She felt the train concertina as everything beyond the tunnel between their gazes turned fuzzy and out of focus. And then those eyes slid north, pausing at the top of her head. Catching on her beanie, the wool suddenly itching like crazy against her scalp, the bob of the pom-pom like a pulse at the top of her head.
He blinked again, then those stormy eyes slid away.
“Oh, my ever-loving gods,” Zoe said. “Did you see that?”
Hell, yeah, she had.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you. Proof he’s your Appreciative Admirer!”
Heart kicking against her ribs, Evie let herself follow the possibility of Hot Stuff in the Swanky Suit having a secret crush on her to its logical conclusion.
By the look of him he’d eat in fine restaurants, read and understand prize-winning literature, know the actual difference between bottles of wine. From the feel of him when she’d elbowed him then checked him for injury he also wrestled crocodiles, chopped wood for fun and rescued newborn puppies from warehouse fires.
While she lived on cheap cold pizza, spending all weekend in the same holey PJs obliterating strangers gaming online, and she currently slept on an ancient lumpy futon in her best friend’s lounge room.
She didn’t need a fortune cookie to tell her it would all end in tears.
She looked down at the phone she was spinning over and over in her cold hands.
Her granddad had always insisted her flair for coding was a result of her mum’s creative mind. But she’d inherited his practicality too.
Working for Game Plan would be a dream job. Even getting an interview was akin to finding a unicorn in your cornflakes. Especially when no one else would even take her call. She might have been cleared by the feds, but her connection to the embarrassment at her last job made her untouchable.
She couldn’t go into that room with thoughts of Hot Stuff filling her head with cotton wool.
Evie glanced up at the electronic readout denoting which stop was next. Real or imagined, the fortune was messing with her head and she had two more stops to put an end to it once and for all.
“You know what I think?” said Evie.
“Rarely.”
“If there is even the slightest chance the fortune is real, and I am to be hit with a third blast of bad luck, and it is linked to my love life, wouldn’t the smart thing be to get it over and done with?”
Zoe grinned. “Only one way to find out.”
Which was why, before she had even hatched any kind of plan, Evie pressed herself to her feet and excused herself as she squeezed past the others in her row. Buoyed by Zoe’s, “Atta girl!” as she made her way down the carriage.
* * *
Armand breathed in deep.
He’d been trying to read a tome on Australian patent law all morning, knowing there was something—some key, some clue—that would unlock the problem he’d been hired to unearth, but the tattooed youth to his left bumped him yet again. He couldn’t care less about the piercings and symbols carved into the kid’s hair, if only he’d damn well sit still.
Armand willed himself to focus. It was why he’d agreed to uproot himself after all. A challenge, a mystery to sink his teeth into, to deflect his thoughts from hurtling down darker, more twisty paths until it became harder and harder to find his way back.
When
