CHAPTER TWO
‘Accessorise wisely. Choose a man with as much care as you would a handbag to go with those divine shoes.’
Tahlia Moran, long-time friend and expert on men.
‘WHAT happened then?’ Emma leaned forward, hanging on every word.
Keely took a sip of her sparkling mineral water and shrugged. ‘Nothing. Lucy came barging into my office and we sprang apart like we’d been doing something wrong.’ She stabbed the last piece of lettuce from her Caesar salad and forked it into her mouth.
Tahlia swivelled her head between the two of them as if watching a Wimbledon Final. ‘So you think he was implying you’re his perfect woman?’
Emma frowned and answered before Keely had a chance. ‘Of course. What else could he mean? Besides, she said he was flirting with her before then anyway.’
Tahlia ignored Emma’s response. ‘Em, you’d see the romantic side of two ants meeting on a crack in a footpath.’
Keely grinned as her two best friends discussed her love life—or lack of one, more like it—as if she wasn’t even there.
‘Romance makes the world go round.’ Emma pronounced it as a fact rather than one of her favourite theories.
‘I think you mean money,’ Tahlia said dryly, beckoning the waiter over to take their coffee order before they rushed back to the office.
Emma shook her head. ‘Not everyone’s as money-oriented as you, Miss Director of Sales.’
‘I’m goal-oriented, not money-oriented. There’s a difference. Nothing wrong with wanting to make it to the top.’
‘What about the glass ceiling?’ Keely teased, knowing her response was guaranteed to get a reaction out of Tahlia every time and thankful that the focus of the conversation had turned away from her encounter with Lachlan Brant.
Tahlia’s green eyes flashed as she waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘No such thing, honey. I’m going places in this company, just watch me. All the way to the top.’
‘Won’t the Rottie have something to say about that?’
Personally, Keely had every confidence that Tahlia would make it to CEO of WWW Designs, and she couldn’t wait for the day when Raquel was ousted from the top job. In fact, every employee would throw the party of the decade when that day came.
Tahlia tucked a strand of chestnut hair into her signature topknot and made an unladylike noise akin to a snort. ‘She won’t have a chance to say anything. I’ll muzzle her before keeping her on a short leash and locked away in her kennel.’
‘Meow!’ Emma made a clawing action with her perfectly manicured fingernails.
‘Hey, I wouldn’t be making cat noises around the Rottie. She’d eat you alive and spit out the bones for breakfast.’ Tahlia wiggled her fingers in a saucy wave at Andy, their usual waiter at Sammy’s, as he handed them the bill.
‘I can handle Ratchet Raquel,’ Emma said as all three of them leaned back in their chairs and watched Andy walk away, admiring the fit of snug denim to his butt.
‘Grrr…’ Tahlia growled.
‘Aah…’ Emma sighed.
‘Mmm…’ Keely allowed herself to be distracted for a moment—after all, she could appreciate a fine piece of anatomy like the next girl—before her dilemma niggled its way back into her mind.
‘So what do you think I should do?’ she asked, slipping her money into the folded bill without looking.
She had the same lunch at Sammy’s, the hippest café-cum-bar at Southbank—Melbourne’s hot spot for all things trendy—almost on a daily basis: sparkling mineral water with a twist of lemon, Caesar salad with low-fat dressing—hold the anchovies—followed by a fruit platter for one, capped off with a skinny latte.
Though she’d come to terms with her past, the feelings associated with spending years as an overweight, lonely teenager continued to dog her and she had no intention of ever feeling like that again. The trauma of what she’d gone through when she’d finally lost weight had left a lasting impression, one that she constantly strove to ignore.
So now she had to work hard to stay in shape, unlike Emma and Tahlia who seemed to devour calories without gaining an ounce. They actually joined her in weekly Pilates classes for fun! If they weren’t her best friends, she could easily hate their well-toned, under-exercised behinds.
‘I think you should weigh up the pros and cons before you jump into anything.’ Tahlia delved into her handbag, pulled out a newspaper and quickly flipped to the zodiac page.
‘Oh, no,’ Emma groaned. ‘Put that away.’
Tahlia raised an eyebrow and sent Emma her best ‘don’t mess with me’ look. ‘Keeping an eye on what fate may have planned for you isn’t a bad thing.’ She smoothed out the paper and ran a finger down the column. “‘Work brings challenges but your focus will shift to other things. Try to go with the flow.’”
Emma sighed heavily.
Keely stepped in before things turned ugly, as they inevitably did when Emma questioned Tahlia’s daily reading of the horoscopes. ‘Your zodiac stuff seems to have helped in your professional life, but what about in the men stakes?’
Tahlia shrugged, pulling a magazine clipping, featuring monthly predictions this time, from her bag. ‘Hasn’t steered me wrong in the guy department so far.’
‘But you haven’t got a man,’ Emma pointed out.
Keely had to agree, but didn’t want to gang up on Tahlia. Her tall, slim friend, who never had a hair out of place, might have it together in the career department but she wasn’t exactly ‘out there’ when it came to dating.
Tahlia sent them both a scathing look. ‘That’s from choice, not from lack of prospects.’ She turned to Keely. ‘Now, do you want to hear what you should do about the sexy psychologist or not?’
What did she have to lose? Keely hadn’t had so many sparks with a guy since…well, since…ever. And, if her intuition was correct, Lachlan had been striking a few matches of his own in her office this morning.
But what if he finds out you’re the one who gave him grief on national radio?
It wouldn’t be so bad. He struck her as a guy with a sense of humour. Maybe she should come clean and tell him the truth?
Yeah, right.
Would he still be interested in her if she revealed her identity as the woman who’d called him a Freudian fraud, a babbling psycho and a hack who dished out advice like a near-sighted agony aunt?
Somehow, in the cold light of day, she didn’t think so.
Whatever Madame Tahlia and her crystal ball had to say couldn’t be any worse than telling the truth.
‘Okay, let me have it. What should I do?’
Tahlia pursed her lips and nodded like an all-seeing sage. ‘“A study or work contact could end up being someone you want to do more than just have lunch with. Embrace the goddess within you and watch them fall: your man won’t be able to keep his hands off you.’”
She shrugged and stuffed the cutting back in her handbag. ‘So there you are.’
‘But what does it mean I should do?’
‘I don’t know, but now you’re fully informed.’
‘Give me a break,’ Emma muttered under her breath.
Tahlia ignored her. ‘You’re a Scorpio, right?’
Keely rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘Libran.’
‘Just