Hired By The Mysterious Millionaire. Ally Blake
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Evie mouthed.
“It’s you!” Zoe cried. “You are the Bewitching Brunette!”
The schoolboys looked up again, their eyes unglazing this time, enough to give Evie a second glance.
“Well, isn’t she?” Zoe asked the boys, waving her hands up and down as if Evie were the prize in a game show. “If this poem wasn’t written for you I’ll eat your beanie.”
Evie tugged off her beanie and shoved it under her butt cheek. Only to have to deal with long strands of dark hair now crackling with static as they stuck to her face.
So, she did have a thing for beanies. She ran naturally cold. Her mum had been the same, needing blankets all through summer. Calling Evie Froglet because of her constantly chilly feet. But it was her granddad who’d taught her how to knit. He’d also taught her how to tie her laces, fix a tractor, cook a perfect steak. To follow her curiosity wherever it might lead her.
Zoe went on. “Lance, for all his good points, is not a romantic man. Telling me my backside looks hot in certain dresses is about as schmaltzy as he gets, bless him. Keeping in mind Lance is a pretty good marker for the average guy, can you see any man on this train who does look capable of writing poetry?”
Together they looked. At the scruffy schoolboys now poking wet fingers into one another’s ears. The dour gang of goths hanging morosely near the door. The harried working dads with their crooked ties and tired eyes.
As one they turned to the dashing, Byronesque gentleman in the impeccable suit lounging in his seat, reading a book.
Evie swept a hand self-consciously over her hair. It crackled so loudly she quickly put her beanie back on. “Poetry or not, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why on earth not?”
Evie took her wallet out of her backpack, found a small, crinkled bit of paper and handed it over to Zoe.
“A fortune cookie fortune?” Zoe deadpanned. “From your birthday dinner last week?”
Evie nodded.
“And what does this have to do with Hot Stuff and his undying love for you?”
“Read it.”
Zoe did. “‘Bad luck comes in threes. Monkeys, though, they come in trees.”’ After which she burst out laughing. “I...can’t...even...”
Evie plucked the piece of paper out of Zoe’s shaking fingers and shoved it into the coin compartment of her wallet. “Ever since I read that stupid fortune things have been weird.”
“Weird how?” Zoe asked, wiping her eyes.
“Think.”
“Your job!”
“And the sudden losing thereof. The very next day.”
“The day after your birthday? You didn’t tell me for a week!”
“Because as I stood in the office watching the police take away the computers, you rang to tell me Lance was coming home. You were happy. And rightly so.”
Evie knew it was nonsensical, but it felt good to finally be talking about it. Hopefully it would relieve the persistent pressure that had been sitting on her chest since the night of her birthday.
“‘Bad luck comes in threes,”’ Zoe said, scratching her chin. “Losing your job was number one.”
“Having to move out is number two.”
“I told you, you don’t have to—”
Evie flapped a shut up hand at her friend.
Zoe buttoned her lips. Then promptly unbuttoned them. “There are rules to fortunes, you know. You have to have eaten the entire cookie, I think. You can’t tear the paper. And once you tell someone it no longer comes true!”
“Zoe, it can’t ‘come true’ because it’s a computer-generated missive stuck in a random dry cookie.” Evie slowly shook her head. “And yet, I feel like it would be remiss of me not to keep an eye out for falling pianos.”
Zoe nodded sagely.
Not that Evie was taking it lying down. No, sir. There was the Game Plan interview. One she would never have had the nerve to go for if she hadn’t been desperate for work. She was too young, too inexperienced, her only long-term tech job having been for a company who were under investigation for embezzlement and fraud.
Or more specifically Eric—the son of the managing director and her ex-boyfriend—who had pilfered her every last dollar before attempting to flee the country.
Zoe coughed. Then burst into laughter again.
The schoolboys squirmed and sank deeper into their seats, no doubt embarrassed by the loud twenty-somethings in their midst. One perked up enough to realise they were at their stop, and in a rush and flurry they gathered their huge, dirty, dishevelled bags and snaked their way to the doors right as the train lumbered to a halt.
While the carriage emptied and filled, the crowd a seething mass of elbows and wet shoes, of jostling and repositioning, a microcosm of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, Evie snuck a glance at Hot Stuff.
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