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 the words on the page blurred back at him he gave up. Rubbed his eyes. Looked up.
People watching, he had told Jonathon when his oldest friend had asked, expression pained, why he insisted on taking public transport instead of the car and driver he could well afford. A childhood hobby, it had been a useful survival skill once he was an adult.
Armand glanced around the cabin as it rocked gently along the tracks.
There was the Schoolgirl Who Sniffs. Behind her the Man Who Has Not Heard of Deodorant. The Women Who Talked About Everyone They’d Ever Met. The Man Who Carried an Umbrella Even When It Had Not Been Raining.
Now he could add the Boy Who Could Not Sit Still.
A glance out the window showed Armand he was nearing town. Frustrated with his lack of progress, he picked up the book again, opening it just as a shadow poured over the pages.
Armand glanced up, past black jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. Black-painted fingernails on a hand gripping the handle of the backpack slung over a shoulder. Long dark hair pouring over the shoulders of a jacket. Wind-pinked cheeks. And a heavy silver knitted cap with a huge rainbow pom-pom atop, bobbing in time with the swaying of the train.
Fingers lifted off the strap of the bag in a quick wave as the owner of the hat said, “Hi.”
“Bonjour.”
“You’re French?” She glanced sideways, and out of the side of her mouth said, “Of course he’s French.”
Armand looked past her, but no. She was talking to herself.
When he looked back, she tugged the knitted hat further back on her head and he recognised her as the Girl Who Sang to Herself.
A regular, she often sat deeper back in the carriage with her loud, fair-haired friend. On the days she rode alone she wore big white headphones, mouth moving as she hummed, even giving in to the occasional shoulder wiggle or hand movement.
With her wide, dark eyes and uptilted mouth, she had one of those faces that always smiled, even in repose. Add the headphones and she was practically asking to have her bag stolen. No wonder he’d felt the need to keep an eye on her. He’d seen all too often misfortune descending on those who deserved it least.
When his gaze once more connected with hers it was to find she was watching him still.
“You like to read?” she asked.
Armand blinked. He’d been riding the train for a little over two weeks and it was the first time anyone had tried to strike up a conversation with him. Another reason he’d enjoyed the ride.
“I do.”
Her dark gaze slid over his hair, down the arm of his jacket, towards the cover of his book. He turned it over and covered the spine. One didn’t become head of an international security firm for nothing.
Armand checked the sign above. With relief he saw his stop was next. She followed his gaze, her mouth twitching before her eyes darted back to his. “How about writing?” she asked, the pace of her words speeding up. “Do you like to write?”
When he didn’t leap in with an instant answer, she nibbled on her lip a moment before saying, “I guess there is writing and then there is writing. Texting is wildly different from a thousand-page novel. Or to-do lists compared with...”
As she continued to list the multiple kinds of writing the train slowed and the screech of metal on metal filled his ears, cutting out every other word. The sound dissipating into a hiss as she said, “Or, of course, poetry.”
“Poetry?”