Chapter Six

“Beer,” Guy groaned as he swept up the last of the sawdust from the floor of the Resplendent Retransformation Room. It was after six and they could have gone on for hours if Guy hadn’t threatened mutiny.

It had been a long week. Packages going missing. Paint the wrong colour. Hazel sending his assistant so many requests she’d threatened to quit.

“We’re done,” Murdoch countered. “Let’s eat. Red meat fresh off the bone if at all possible” He whistled and by some miracle Dozer avoided the sawdust pile and followed him out the door.

“Are you going to ask her to join us or will I?” Guy asked as they hauled their tool belts into the Ute.

A muscle twitched in Murdoch’s cheek. “Can’t see Hazel eating a pub meal, can you?”

“You know full well I mean the ‘lovely brunette’ you’ve been cocking your...ear towards all week.”

Murdoch scratched fingers up the back of his suddenly itchy neck. “Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Any chance you can leave it be?”

“Not a single one. Come on, man. I’ve never seen you turn your back on a pretty woman before. You flirt, charm, dazzle with the best of them, my friend. And yet mapping the ways you’ve avoided going anywhere near this one’s office the past couple of days has been the best fun I’ve had all week. What’s going on?”

Murdoch frowned at his truck. Or more precisely the logo etched into the door. Carly and Sera. Sera and Carly. As different as chalk and cheese – in looks and in temperament – yet he couldn’t help distorting the two in his head.

“You know what? I’ll take a rain check. Better get Dozer home.”

The men looked down at the puppy who was sitting at Murdoch’s feet. He growled as he shook the life out of one of Murdoch’s work gloves.

“Leave him here for an hour. There’s food and water and a fenced back yard needing fertilising.”

“Guy.”

“Murdoch.”

Murdoch looked back at the house to find Guy had left the front door open. He swore ten ways from Sunday. Whistled. Dozer ignored him. He picked up the dog and headed towards the house to shut the door.

Guy stepped in his way. Murdoch wrong-footed him and kept moving towards the house.

Guy followed without need of a whistle. “The girl needs to eat.”

Murdoch figured ignoring him might work. It didn’t.

“Justin. Murdoch. The. Second.”

Murdoch had always figured there was good to be found in working with people he’d known for a long, long time – a kind of conversational shorthand. No need to blather on, telling all his stories. The bad thing? They knew all his fucking stories.

“You’re really going to make me say it.”

Guy crossed his arms. “I’m really gonna make you say it.”

If he couldn’t go around the lug he’d have to barrel through him. “Because it would be disrespectful.”

Guy blinked. “To who? Serafina the lovely? Not sure she’d see it that way. If I know anything about the fairer sex – and, as it turns out, I do – I reckon she’d be downright chuffed.”

Guy might be tunnel-visioned but he wasn’t stupid.

“I am not about to ask out Hazel’s girl.”

“Mate,” Guy said, incredulous. “It’s been, what, five years since the accident? Back then, I got that you were careful on that score. For a long while there, you were practically a saint. But life goes on. And inside that house is a girl you met at work. A quirky girl to be sure, but she’s bright, with those big wild eyes, and legs up to –”

“Enough,” Murdoch warned.

Guy grinned from ear to ear. “Mate, I’ve never seen you so tense over anything that isn’t made of bricks and mortar. You’re into her. Like, really into her. Well, buddy, if you don’t put a move on, and soon, it’ll be too late. You’ll be shuffled into the friend zone with me.” Guy shivered. “And there’s no coming back from there.”

Footsteps clumped towards the front door.

“Speak of the devil.”

Murdoch hadn’t needed to be told that it was Sera. The hairs on the back of neck had stood on end at the first sound of boot on wood.

Sera started at the sight of them. “Oh. Hi.”

Murdoch’s senses pressed in on him as if his skin had shrunk a size too small.

“Serafina!” Guy gushed, arms wide as if he hadn’t seen her in eons.

“Hey, Guy,” she said, even as her gaze went straight to Murdoch and stuck. She tucked her hair behind her ear. Tugged at her top. Then with obvious effort she dragged her eyes away to glance at her watch. “You off for the night?”

“Like a bride’s nightie,” said Guy.

She laughed – the sound was soft, husky, and sexy as hell – and rolled her eyes. And Murdoch saw what Guy meant about being in the friend zone.

When her eyes moved back to him, her laughter faded. Her breathing changed. And he felt time slow to a crawl.

“Hey, Dozer,” she said, giving the dog a chin rub and a few coo-coo-coos, which he lapped up, wriggling and drooling all over Murdoch’s hand.

Murdoch put Dozer down and wiped his drool-covered hand down the side of his jeans, watching as the pup galumphed into the yard and squatted like a girl to ‘water’ the grass.

When Murdoch looked back at Serafina, she was watching him again. Her eyes hazy, her top teeth worrying her bottom lip. Her long hair flicked gently across her face. Her top falling a little off one shoulder...

She blinked as if coming out of a trance and he knew how she felt.

This was going to get messy. And there were already too many people involved for it not to leave a mark. Hazel with her hopes. Guy in his rare friendship zone.

That’s it, a voice nudged. Ask her out as friends.

Guy would be there. Three work mates having a bite. It wouldn’t mean anything.

Except it would. Because the urge to touch her, right then, to brush that stray strand of hair behind her ear, to stroke his thumb over the sheen her teeth had left on her bottom lip, was so strong he had to press his feet into his boots so as not to take that first step.

“Well,” she said, frown line winking above her nose. “I guess I’ll see you guys next week.”

She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and went to move past. And then he caught her scent; sweet, soft, like summer rain.

“Steak,” Murdoch said.

She stopped and looked up at him. Her gaze so hopeful he felt it as a clench behind his ribs. “Did you say steak?”

“Or salad.” It was as though he’d never done this before. Not that he was exactly sure what this was. Heading out for steak and beer with a work mate was something he could usually wrangle without sounding like a teenage boy whose voice was breaking in. “We’re heading to the pub down the road for a bite. You’re welcome to join us.”

She looked to Guy who quickly covered his surprise with a smile.

“Sure,” she said. “I need to make a call, but, yes. I’d like that.”

“Great.”

“Excellent.”

When nobody looked like moving, Guy herded them bodily down the stairs.

Dozer saw them coming and barked a few times before tripping over his own shadow and landing in a wriggly lump. When it became obvious he couldn’t roll back to his feet without help, Murdoch picked him up again. Took the lick on the face as thanks.

“Will Dozer be okay here?” Serafina asked.

“I know the owner of the pub. We can keep him with us in the beer garden.”

“Can we now?” Guy piped up.

Disregarding Guy, a skill Murdoch had developed years ago, he waited at the gate and held out a hand to let Serafina through first. She smiled her thanks.

Guy followed, batting his eyelashes. He got a thump in the arm for his efforts.

When Murdoch went through the gate, it was to find Serafina leaning into the back seat of the bright purple muscle car that had been parked behind this Ute much of the day. Her top had lifted, her tights pulled across her backside.

“Nice,” Guy said.

“Watch it.” Murdoch growled.

Guy flinched, protecting his arm from another thumping. “I was talking about the car.”

“Sure you were.”

Sera came out of the car, holding her phone to her ear, talking in...Italian by the sounds of it. And fast. She lifted a foot, tossing her hair from her face so that she could fix something with her shoe. Then caught Murdoch watching and held up a finger.

When she smiled Murdoch felt it like a blast of sunshine, right smack bang in the solar plexus.

Friends, he said inside his head. His subconscious laughed till it wheezed.

“This your wheels?” Guy asked as Sera hung up. He moved in to get a closer look.

“Yep,” she said, rocking up onto her toes. “My dad bought her for me when I got my masters. ‘No tin can for my girl’,” she mimicked, complete with accent and hand gestures. “Took six months for us to do her up together.”

“You?” Murdoch asked.

“Yes me. Dad’s a mechanic, a vintage specialist, so I was brought up around cars like this. He used to work at Vinnie’s Vintage in Five Dock.”

He tilted his chin; it was catching. He knew the place. Classic cars and born grease monkeys. A little boy’s dream. And a little girl’s, apparently.

Guy looked pointedly at Murdoch who made himself busy not looking back. Okay, so she was something. With her hair flicking about her face, her cheeks pinked by the wind, the light in her eyes as she talked. More than something...the woman was stunning.

It wasn’t merely a spark. Or a passing infatuation. He liked her. A lot. And she liked him right on back. She didn’t seem to have an off switch when it came to hiding it.

Which meant Hazel had to know it too.

“Let’s get going,” he grumbled. “There’s a streak out there with my name on it and the thing’s not about to eat itself.”

The humans took up stools around the small bar in the beer garden out the back of the old pub and Dozer lived up to his name and slept on a patch of daisies.

Fed, content, it was story time. And Guy’s turn to tell.

“And we can’t forget about the ‘fornicator’.”

Sera held up one hand, the other clutching her stomach as if it ached from laughing. “I don’t think I can hear another one without splitting a seam.”

“I think you must,” Guy went on. “Now, the ‘fornicator’ is an important tool in the building trade. So heavy it needs a wheelbarrow to carry it. Unfortunately the one wheelbarrow that’s ever free is the rusty one with the flat tyre and squeaky wheel.” Guy shuffled forward on his seat, the story glinting behind his eyes. “Picture an apprentice, young, skinny, acne burning his chin. Off Murdoch sends him, empty rusty wheelbarrow rocking and squawking, down to the nearby garage as we’d leant them our ‘fornicator’ and need it back right now. Only when the kid gets there, the garage have leant it to the warehouse down the road. So off he goes in search. Alas, they have also leant it on. And so on. We must have lost an hour of daylight leaning on the first floor balcony, watching the kid go despondently from shop to shop.”

“I called in coffee,” said Murdoch, chest tightening as Sera’s warm gaze swung his way.

“That’s right,” said Guy. “Mr. Cool here called in coffee. A dozen tradies, sipping on lattes as the kid bounced that ‘barrow over piles of concrete – and remember the railway tracks – in search of a phantom.”

“You guys are so mean! And hilarious!” She laughed into her hands. “Did you tell him? When he got back?”

Guy slapped the bar. “Never. It’s a rite of passage. The day he realises it was a joke is the day he’s one of us.”

Murdoch added, “The day he’s able to laugh about it –”

Together, the men said, “Is the day the boy becomes a man.”

They clinked glasses, Guy’s empty, Murdoch’s a third of the way through. Seemed he was designated driver. Which was fine. He needed to keep his wits about him.

“Promise me you won’t ever pull anything like that on me,” said Sera, swinging an accusing finger between the two. “I’m way too trusting for my own good. Look at me, agreeing to have dinner with you two louts when I know nothing about you.”

“What do you want to know?” That was Guy. Ever helpful.

She looked to Guy, shrugged as if she had him all worked out. Then her eyes shifted to Murdoch. She shook her head slightly, as if the questions were piling up so fast she didn’t know where to begin.

Murdoch could have kissed her when she lifted her drink rather than ask. Not kiss her kiss her, just... Shut up, man. You’re only digging yourself in deeper.

Sera placed both hands on the counter. “What I’d really like, now I have you both at my mercy, is some advice about Hazel. Don’t get me wrong, the job’s great, and I want to be her when I grow up. But she’s kind of hard to pin down.”

“Murdoch,” said Guy smoothly. “You know her better than I.”

When Sera crossed one leg over the other, her knees angling his way, Murdoch wrapped a hand around his own drink. “Subtlety doesn’t cut it. Barricade the door, get your answers, then set her free.”

“I don’t have a door.”

Murdoch scratched a hand up the back of his hair. “Not from want of trying.”

“So that’s on purpose? I suppose the throne is too.”

“And the fact that with you answering the phones she didn’t see the need to hire someone else to do the job.”

Sera frowned at Murdoch, but her head tipped and her mouth twisted into a smile. “Says the man who had to send Guy shopping rather than start a fight with Hazel he knew he’d lose.”

Guy laughed into his drink. While Murdoch settled back into his stool, removing any chance of his knees bumping into Sera’s.

“Then perhaps we need to work on that first,” said Sera, blithely unaware of the undercurrents. “Helping her find an assistant. Someone to be in charge of the pinning down.”

“They’d have to be tough,” Guy threw in. “Or else she’ll steamroll them and they’ll be no help to us at all. Sparkly, too. To keep her attention. And not allergic to yappy dogs. Though, you realise if we find her someone like that we’ll never see either of them. They’ll be too busy adoring one another to get anything done.”

Sera’s eyes turned dark as she pinned Guy with a glare. “Hazel needs someone tenacious, strong, and kind. Like her. Since you’ve known her longest, Murdoch, what do you think?”

Murdoch held up his hands. “I have my own business to run. Last thing I’m about to do is get caught up in Hazel’s.”

“Really?” Sera deadpanned. She cocked a thumb in his direction while saying to Guy, “Does he really believe the stuff he sprouting?”

Guy beamed at her like she’d grown a mermaid tail and turned siren. “Oh, I like you, Serafina the lovely. Can you work with us forever?”

She gaped like a fish. Her cheeks pinked and she shook her head. “This... It’s temporary.”

Her fluttering gaze snuck to Murdoch. Warmed. Flushed. Made it real hard for him to sit still. Then she breathed out hard and sat taller.

And changed the subject.

“So how did you guys first meet Hazel? I get the feeling there’s some deep history there. I mean for her to get away with calling this one ‘tiger’...”

Guy held up a hand. “I’ll let Tiger field that one.”

Murdoch gripped his beer tighter, so tight he would have sworn he felt the glass crack. Then he slowly let it go. “Once upon a time I dated her granddaughter.”

“Oh.” Sera’s mouth twisted as if she was fighting against whatever words wanted to come out. The words won. “Recently?”

“Several years ago.”

She nodded. Her voice a sigh as she said, “Carly. The one who designed your logo.”

Beside him, Guy coughed on his beer, catching most of it in his sleeve.

“you said dated. Past tense.”

He nodded, and found himself the target of a ruckus of emotions; relief, heat, hunger.

“And you’ve remained friends since?” Sera asked.

“With Hazel. Yes.”

She blinked at the qualification. “I like that. I’ve stayed friends with most of my exes. Never much saw the point in letting things turn sour when you liked the person enough to, well, you know.”

Oh, he knew. He’d barely gone a minute without thinking about ‘you know’ since this woman had fallen into his life.

She leaned forward, propped her elbow on the bar and her chin on her hand and said, “But staying friends with an ex’s grandmother? Murdoch, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but that’s...sweet.”

Guy made a strangled noise, but it was lost in roar of blood howling through Murdoch’s head as what had started out as a ‘friendly’ conversation spun further out of his control.

Murdoch had never been called sweet in his life. Fractious, bull-headed, blinkered, cool, driven to a fault; those he got a lot. And that was only what people called him to his face. But sweet?

He ran both hands over his face. Fuck it. Fuck friendship.

He caught Guy’s eye and gave him the international wingman signal for rack off.

Guy wiggled his eyebrows back at Murdoch.

“You got something in your eye, mate?” Murdoch asked darkly. “Might want to go check that out.”

Guy laughed, then edged off the seat. “My eyes are fine. Though it is time I check the weather.” He waved his phone and sauntered off.

Sera sat up and watched him go, giving Murdoch a moment to get a grip on himself. To ask himself a couple of hard questions.

“You working on something outside tomorrow?” Sera asked, the sparkle in her eyes now that it was just the two of them giving him his answers.

“It’s Guy code for checking his stocks. It’s a mild obsession. His retirement plans run to retiring to an island somewhere. An island he owns.”

Sera laughed. “He’s a keeper.”

Murdoch’s voice was cavernously deep as he said, “He’s a likable guy.”

Sera’s eyes rocked to his. “I didn’t mean it that way. He’s like a puppy dog. Like Dozer. Kind of helpless, really. Not my type at all.”

His pulse now beating hard in his temples, Murdoch managed, “Which is?”

“You want to know what my type is?”

He nodded once. His senses heightened, his synapses on high alert. If her answer was ‘sweet’ he’d have her in his arms before she even finished the word.

She looked at him. Right at him. Her throat working. Her chest rising and falling. And then she turned all the way to face him, a knee sliding against his. He felt the shock of it all the way to his groin.

In order to keep his head on straight, he made space for her. She took it. Crossing her legs the other way until they settled between his.

And here it begins.

Having made the decision, having let go of the fight, everything settled inside of him like the eye of a storm.

“I don’t know if I have a type, exactly,” she said. “I’ve dated tall guys, short guys. Blue collar, white collar. Blondes, brunettes. Actually, I’ve never dated a guy with ginger hair before.” Her eyes glanced in the direction in which Guy had disappeared.

Murdoch growled and her returning smile was way too ready. As if she was well aware that the game had changed.

“None have stuck?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Why’s that?”

She breathed in. Breathed out. “I’m not exactly sure. I was brought up by a single dad with a lot of friends, so I can change a tyre, I can fix a leaky tap, I can catch and gut a fish. I don’t need a man to do those things for me.”

“What do you need?”

She swallowed, but kept eye contact. “Not all that much as it turns out. I have a my health, a warm home, loving family, skills.”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth and his subconscious went a little haywire, imagining the kinds of skills she had in mind.

Then she glanced over his shoulder, a smile kicking at the corner of her lovely mouth. “Maybe all I need is a dog.”

Murdoch turned. Dozer was dreaming; wuffling in his sleep. “Maybe.” He turned back to face her, this woman who could gut a fish. “What else did your dad teach you?”

She brought her drink to her lips, rested it against her mouth a moment before her words echoed into the bottle. “That Elvis is the greatest singer in the history of the world.”

“He’s a fan, then.”

Her mouth made a soft suction noise as it slipped off the bottle and it was all Murdoch could do not to howl.

“My middle name is Aaron, same as Elvis.”

“That’s commitment.”

“It is that.”

“Where’s he?”

“Elvis? Alive and well, running a gas station in Montana.”

Murdoch laughed despite himself.

“Haberfield,” she said, shuffling on her stool and leaning a little closer. “In the same house he bought before I was born. He has everything he needs within walking distance; handmade pasta shops, a traditional Italian bakery, delis, butchers, a gelataria or two. Which is a good thing as he can’t drive right now.”

“What happened?”

“Injury.” Sera rubbed a thumb over her opposite wrist. “Sooner he’s back under the hood of a car the better.”

Murdoch heard that. Even though construction hadn’t been his life’s dream, now he couldn’t imagine his life without it.

“And your mother?”

“Is the reason I never had a dog. She promised we could adopt a puppy for my fifth birthday. Instead I got a note written on a torn off sheet of paper saying, ‘I did my best’. From then it was my dad and me.”

“Harsh,” he said.

“It was that.”

“Is she still in your life?”

“I tracked her down a few years ago, all prepared to tell her what for, but she never even showed to our meeting. Taught me that sometimes it’s okay to cut your losses and move on.” Sera leant her chin on the mouth of her drink. “Dad and I tried a goldfish once, but we both forgot to feed it and you can imagine how that ended up. Maybe a dog wasn’t for us after all. You always had dogs?”

“One other. But I don’t remember Rowdy ever being like this before this muppet.”

“I’m sure he took some training as a puppy, too.”

“I seem to have blocked that part out.”

“It’s a biological imperative.”

“How’s that?”

“Experience. We block out the bad or else we’d never go back for more. Had a bad hangover? Bet it didn’t stop you from having a big night out again. Without that ability to block out the hard stuff we’d all still be living in caves, hiding from the big bad. Instead we try, try again, in the hope of it all turning out better this time.” She caught his eye, chagrined. “I’ve taken a lot of psychology classes in my time.”

“You don’t say.”

She laughed; her smile easy, her eyes bright, her hair falling like a curtain of silk over one shoulder.

Murdoch had never thought of himself having a type. He’d liked all kinds of women in his time. But watching this one, so comfortable in her skin, he couldn’t imagine there were other kinds. Just this one, casually slipping under his skin.

He reached out brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

She stilled. Held her breath. Then leaned into his touch as if that’s all she’d been waiting for.

When his thumb traced her cheekbone her mouth parted. A sigh escaped.

He tucked an invisible hair behind her ear and left his hand there, watching the slide of her hair fall over his fingers.

He told himself she felt no softer than any other woman. No warmer. He lied.

Longing was written all over her gorgeous face. It trembled in every breath she took. She was so lovely it was disorienting. And she wanted him, pure and simple. Fuck if it wasn’t the most intoxicating thing he’d felt in his entire life.

Out of nowhere her eyes grew wide, she swallowed, her cheeks pinked, and she said, “Oh no.”

Then she hiccupped.