A Secret Worth Keeping?: Living the Charade / Her Shameful Secret / Island of Secrets. Robyn Donald
post-work crowd, and Miller thought about the sales report she still had to get through before bed that night; she was still unable to completely fathom the predicament she was in.
‘Bird flu?’ she suggested, smoothing her eyebrows into place as she racked her brain for a solution.
‘No one will believe he has bird flu.’
‘I meant me.’ She sighed.
‘Wait. What about him?’
‘Who?’ Miller glanced at her phone and saw only a blank screen.
‘Cute guy at the bar. Three o’clock.’
Miller rolled her eyes. ‘Five years of university, six years in a professional career and we’re still using hushed military terms when stalking guys.’
Ruby laughed. ‘It’s been ages since we stalked a guy.’
‘And, please God, let it be ages again,’ Miller pleaded, glancing ever so casually in the direction Ruby indicated.
She got an impression of a tall man leaning against the edge of the curved wooden bar, one foot raised on the polished foot pole, his knee protruding from the hole in his torn jeans. Her eyes travelled upwards over long, lean legs and an even leaner waist to a broad chest covered by a worn T-shirt with a provocative slogan plastered on the front in red block letters. Her lips curled in distaste at its message and she moved on to wide shoulders, a jaw that looked as if it could have used a shave three days ago, a strong blade of a nose, mussed over long chocolate-brown hair and—oh, Lord—deep-set light-coloured eyes that were staring right back at her.
His gaze was sleepy, almost indolent, and Miller’s heart took off. Her breath stalled in her lungs and her face felt bitingly hot. Flustered by her physical reaction, she instantly dropped her eyes as if she was a small child who had just been caught stealing a cookie. Her senses felt muddled and off-centre—and she’d only been looking at the man for five seconds. Maybe ten.
Ignoring the fact that she felt as if he was still watching her, she turned to Ruby. ‘He’s got holes in his jeans and a T-shirt that says “My pace or yours?” How many glasses of this crap wine have you had?’
Ruby paused, glancing briefly back at the bar. ‘Not him—although he does fill that T-shirt out like a god. I’m talking about the suit he’s talking to.’
Miller turned her gaze to the suit she hadn’t noticed. Similar-coloured hair, square, clean-shaven jaw, nice nose, great suit. Yes, thankfully he did look more her type.
‘Oh, I think I know him!’ Ruby exclaimed.
‘You know Ripped Jeans?’
‘No.’ Ruby shook her head, openly smiling in the direction Miller dared not turn back to. ‘The hotshot in the suit beside him. Sam someone. I’m pretty sure he’s a lawyer out of our L.A. office. And he’s just the type you need.’
Miller glanced back and noticed that tall, dark and dishevelled was no longer watching her, but still some inner instinct told her to run. Fast.
‘No!’ She dismissed the idea outright. ‘I draw the line at picking up a stranger in a bar—even if you do think you know him. Let me just go to the bathroom and then we can share a taxi home. And stop looking at those guys. They’ll think we want to be picked up.’
‘We do!’
Miller scowled. ‘Believe me, by the look of the one who needs to become reacquainted with a razor all it would take is a look and he’d have you horizontal in seconds.’
Ruby eyed her curiously. ‘That’s exactly what makes him so delicious.’
‘Not to me.’ Miller headed for the bathroom, feeling slightly better now that she had decided to call it a night. Her problem still hovered over her like a dark cloud, but she was too tired to give it any more brainpower tonight.
* * *
‘Would you stop looking at those women? We are not here to pick up,’ Tino Ventura growled at his brother.
‘Seems to me it might solve your problem about what to do with yourself this weekend.’
Tino snorted. ‘The day I need my baby brother to sort entertainment for me is the day you can put me in a body bag.’
Sam didn’t laugh, and Tino silently berated his choice of words.
‘So how’s the car shaping up?’ Sam asked.
Tino grunted. ‘The chassis still needs work and the balancing sucks.’
‘Will it be ready by Sunday?’
The concern in his brother’s voice set Tino’s teeth on edge. He was so over everyone worrying about this next race as if it was to be his last—and okay, there were a couple of nasty coincidences that made for entertaining journalism, but they weren’t signs, for God’s sake.
‘It’ll be ready.’
‘And the knee?’
Coming off the back of a long day studying engine data and time trials in his new car, Tino was too tired to humour his brother with shop-talk.
‘This catch-up drink was going a lot better before you started peppering me with work questions.’
He could do without the reminder of how his stellar racing year had started to fall apart lately. All he needed was to win this next race and he’d have the naysayers who politely suggested that he would never be as good as his father off his back.
Not that he dwelt on their opinion.
He didn’t.
But he’d still be happy to prove them wrong once and for all, and equalling his father’s number of championship titles in the very race that had taken his life seventeen years earlier ought to do just that.
‘If it were me I’d be nervous, that’s all,’ Sam persisted.
Maybe Tino would be too, if he stopped to think about how he felt. But emotions got you killed in his business, and he’d locked his away a long time ago. ‘Which is why you’re a cottonwool lawyer in a four-thousand-dollar suit.’
‘Five.’
Tino tilted his beer bottle to his lips. ‘You need to get your money back, junior.’
Sam snorted. ‘You ought to talk. I think you bought that T-shirt in high school.’
‘Hey, don’t knock the lucky shirt.’ Tino chuckled, much happier to be sparring with his little brother than dissecting his current career issues.
He knew his younger brother was spooked about all the problems he’d been having that so eerily echoed his father’s lead-up to a date with eternity. Everyone in his family was. Which was why he was staying the hell away from Melbourne until Monday, when the countdown towards race day began.
‘Excuse me, but do I know you?’
Tino glanced at the blonde who had been eyeballing them for the last ten minutes, pleasantly surprised to find her focus on his little brother instead of himself.
Well, hell, that was a first. He knew Sam would get mileage out of it for the next decade if he could.
He turned to see where her cute friend was but she seemed to have disappeared.
‘Not that I know of,’ Sam replied to the stunner beside him, barely managing to keep his tongue in his mouth. ‘I’m Sam Ventura and this is my brother Valentino.’
Tino stared at his brother. No one called him Valentino except their mother.
Switch your brain on, Samuel.
‘I do know you!’ she declared confidently. ‘You’re at Clayton Smythe—corporate litigation, L.A. office. Am I right?’
‘You are at that.’ Sam smiled.
‘Ruby