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 you mean...nice?’
‘Nice. Pleasant. Lovely.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘Do you need a dictionary?’
‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’
Cash sighed. ‘Nothing. I said you looked nice. Why do you get so defensive with me, Harris? Why do you argue with everything I say?’
‘I don’t do that.’
‘You’re doing it now.’
Did she do that? She hadn’t noticed. It was just that everything he said was usually wrong.
‘When you said I looked nice I just thought you meant...something else.’
‘What else could I possibly mean?’
‘When you asked me what was I wearing you meant what was I driving.’
‘That was an autocorrect mistake on my phone. You’re just being difficult.’
She wasn’t being difficult; she was trying to be professional. She needed to calm down and start again.
‘I’m sorry, Cash. I just wasn’t expecting you to say something...nice.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you never say anything nice.’
Cash stilled and Faith swore under her breath. Offending him wasn’t professional either. If only she were better at being professional. Faith remembered a report she’d done the other week on getting what you want in the bedroom. Speak softly. Be frank. Look your partner in the eye and ask them their fantasies. If it worked for sex, maybe it would work in this situation. Faith cleared her throat.
‘Cash, I’d like to know what you want. How I can help you understand what it is I do.’
She felt his eyes on her and gripped the steering wheel. She remembered the way he often looked at her. Unblinking. Intent; as if he was reading her mind through her eyes. He had a way of throwing her off balance when he looked at her like that, but she was safe as long as she didn’t look at him. And at the way he cocked his eyebrow at her.
‘What I want?’
‘Yes. I want to know what I can do to change your impression that what I do has no value.’
‘No value?’ He paused and Faith felt a trickle of sweat slide from the back of her neck into her shirt. Red had no air conditioning and it was close to forty degrees outside. ‘I never said your show didn’t have value. Some of the things you report on are obviously stories