Hold On to Me (3 page)

Until it had all gone spectacularly wrong.

Mouse meowed and Stella patted the cat again. ‘You really are a big sook, aren't you?'

Stella bit into her cold toast and, as she was chewing, savouring the delicious lemony spread, the phone rang again. She didn't recognise the number, so she let it go through to her message bank, then dialled voicemail and listened to it a few minutes later.

‘Stella.'

Then there was a pause down the line. Just enough time for goose bumps to rise on her arms.

‘This is Luca Morelli. My sister Anna called me. I'm sorry about what's happened to your shop. I might be able to help you out.'

Then the deep, velvety voice mentioned some numbers, perhaps there were ten of them, but Stella had stopped listening. She replayed his message. Listened to it again. That throaty voice, slow and considered, as rich and sweet as a Spanish sherry, was the most soothing thing she'd heard in her morning from hell.

She listened to his message one more time. Closed her eyes and blocked out everything else but his voice.

She didn't delete it, vowing to think about it later.

Stella opened her eyes, straightened her shoulders with a new resolve. She had work to do, and a shop to rebuild—once she got her insurance claims sorted out. And the most important thing she could do right that second, while her coffee cup was still warm in her hands, was to find a way to get the word out to her loyal customers that she wasn't down for the count.

That she wasn't beaten.

She scrolled through her contacts and pressed Joe Blake's number. While she waited for him to pick up the call, she already had her story worked out and the headline went something like this:
I'm back, baby.

‘Hey, Stella.'

‘Hi, Joe.'

‘Shit. You've had a day and a half and it's only ten o'clock. What's happening with your shop? Is it all gone? The cops won't tell me anything at the moment. What did they tell you? Was it deliberately lit? Was anyone hurt? Are you all right?'

‘If you stop with the twenty questions and listen up, I've got a comment for your story about the fire. About Ian and Lee. And about my shop. You ready?'

By early afternoon, Courtney had called and informed Stella that the fire cause investigators had completed their inspection and she could head to her shop and assess the damage. After she changed into work clothes and walked with a heavy heart back around the corner to The Strand, it hadn't taken much more than a glance through the broken glass of the front window for Stella to realise how much work she had to do.

There were still no tears—she was determined there would be no tears—but she felt shattered. The weight that had lodged in her chest that morning was now lead.

Stella pushed the front door. It was half open, smashed and splintered. The little
Open/Closed
sign she'd painted herself four years earlier, and which she'd hung so proudly on her first day of trading, was nowhere to be seen. The large front window, which had once housed stunning window displays to match the seasons, was covered by a sheet of plywood.

When she looked further inside, her gasp echoed in the trashed space. Her first step was right into a puddle of water: soggy plaster squelched under her runners. Another step and there was the crackle of broken glass underfoot; shards from the front window littered the ground. Above her, large sections of the ceiling had collapsed and there was more plaster, soggy clumps of insulation and a fine layer of mud over everything.

She'd had hours and hours to think about the likely damage and she could now see that it was worse than she'd imagined. The fire had been contained to the café next door, which was now unrecognisable—a blackened shell of melted plastic and disaster. She didn't want to think about how devastated her friends Ian and Lee were. They'd lost everything too. They'd kept her in coffee over the years, hand delivering her double espressos, even in the middle of tourist season when they had customers four deep at the counter. She knew they'd been planning to retire and were going to use the proceeds from the sale of the café to buy a four-wheel drive and explore Australia. She hoped that without a business to sell they'd still be able to afford that dream.

‘Four years,' she said quietly into the hand she'd clamped over her mouth.

Four years of work, every day all day. How many days had it been? The answer came to Stella in a millisecond. Nearly fifteen hundred. She'd never been good at numbers before but steep learning curves meant she'd learnt damn fast. You didn't need fancy brain-training apps when you'd faced bankruptcy.

Every single thing in the shop—the beautiful clothes, colourful costume jewellery, stylish shoes, aromatic organic candles, Moroccan leather stools, silk scarves, summer hats—was an unrecognisable, soggy mess on the floor of her boutique. Garments had been blasted off hangers and lay on the ground like the jumble of a teenage boy's bedroom. Jewellery and shoes had been swept from their displays and the shelves themselves lay like scattered cards on the ground. Leather purses and handbags lay misshapen. Everything had been crushed underfoot and drenched.

A couple of sheets of galvanised iron were off the roof, letting the light invade the space through the ruined ceiling. She peered up at the clear blue late-November sky. The iron could be replaced, couldn't it? Some new sheets, nails and a hammer would do the trick, right? She huffed. God, what the hell would she know? She was a businesswoman and a fashionista, not a building inspector. Give her a spreadsheet and she could make the numbers sing, or a look book from her favourite stockist and she could pick in an instant the items that would walk out the door. Give her a window and she could merchandise her stock so that products flew off the shelves as if they'd been caught in the summer breeze.

But what did she know about repairing this kind of damage? She needed advice and she needed it quick. It was less than four weeks away from the busiest trading time of the year. She had to be open to cater to the tourist season, which kicked in just before Christmas and lasted until the very end of January, when school resumed. The turnover from that short period alone would see her through another year. She couldn't afford to be sentimental about it. It was business and she had to get back to it as soon as possible. But how was she going to resurrect her livelihood from this ruined mess?

At the sound of crunching glass, Stella looked back over her shoulder.

Duncan stood just inside her shop, glancing around at the disaster. ‘Hello, Stella.' His tall frame almost filled the doorway.

‘Hi, Duncan.' Stella dug down really hard and found a friendly smile. She'd tried to like this man in the way he'd wanted, but she felt absolutely nothing for him besides a kind of frustrated friendship. Sure, he was tall and he wore a great suit. He had a nice coastal tan and, by any objective measure, he was handsome. But there simply hadn't been any zing between them, something Duncan regretted way more than Stella did.

‘I thought you'd be in here. Surveying the mess.'

‘Yeah, well.' She shrugged. ‘Sitting around moping isn't my style.'

‘I know.' He regarded her with a furrowed brow and adjusted his tie as he walked towards her. ‘Have you called the insurance company to report this? Please tell me you're insured.'

‘Of course I am.' She tried not to snap. Duncan was simply trying to be helpful. ‘Building, contents
and
income protection.'

‘Mmm, glad you thought of that. You'll need every bit of it to get out of this mess. Have you checked with the police? Are you sure it's safe to be in here?' Duncan looked up at the hole in the ceiling and took a cautious step back from it.

Stella crossed her arms. ‘I think all the damage has already been done, don't you?'

She could tell by his serious expression that he was trying to help. Why couldn't she accept his sympathy and advice?

‘Is the power off?'

Stella sucked in a deep breath. ‘Yes, the power's off. Everything's disconnected. It's all safe. A total mess, but safe.'

‘Right.' He propped his hands on his hips. ‘We should do something about getting this cleaned up.'

Stella turned away from him, gritted her teeth and wondered why she had to remind him again. ‘We?' There was no ‘we'. There was her. And there was Duncan. Despite what had happened once—almost twice—during the past year, there was no ‘we'. There would never be. ‘Duncan, that's lovely of you. But I can handle this myself. I've been on the phone all morning to my insurance company. I've already organised a skip and I have a shovel.
I'm
the one who has some work to do.' She hoped he got the message.

‘Right.' Apparently he had, but he rested an arm around her shoulder nevertheless. ‘Stella. I'm here for you. If you need anything—manual labour, help with the clean-up, money to tide you over—I—'

‘Duncan.' She cut him off and took a step back so he was out of her personal space. ‘It's okay, really. I'm insured. I have money.' She knew he was trying to be nice, but really, it was insulting as hell.

Her fiercely independent streak, which was rising faster to the surface with every word from Duncan, was born of necessity, not genetics. Every time she'd been let down by people, she'd got tougher, and her heart had hardened a little bit more. She couldn't help but bristle at his concern. She'd heard variations on his evident doubt in her abilities a million times before. Usually it came from other women, who thought someone working in a ‘little shop' must be a doctor or a lawyer's wife who'd been given some play money to fill in her days. That her business must be a hobby or a whim for a bored wife. And that she lacked the wit to hear them say so through the heavy canvas dressing-room curtains. Screw them. This was her business and it was her career, something she'd rebuilt once before and would again. All by herself.

‘C'mon, Stella. You don't have to do this by yourself.'

She stepped over a pile of soggy fabric and shuddered when she realised it had been a stunning long-sleeved black silk shirt. She fought the urge to pick it up but then realised there was no point. It was hand-wash only and she figured that being blasted by a fire-hose was probably not the rinse cycle the designer had in mind.

‘Oh, yes I do.' She found a smile and drew strength from her own words. ‘I know what to do. I'm going to be completely fine. And anyway,' she waved a hand to brush off his concern, ‘you look like you're about to go to work. Surely there's a client with a human resources issue that needs mediating. Though, why are you working on a Sunday?'

Duncan straightened his shoulders and his lips formed a thin line. ‘You have no idea what I do, do you?'

‘No.' She shrugged. ‘Still don't.'

He shook his head, turned to go. ‘Okay. You'll let me know if there's anything I can do?'

She ignored the frustration in his voice. ‘Of course I will.'

‘I'll see you later.' He sounded hurt and Stella had a rush of the guilts. All he'd been trying to do was help, even if it was a little cloying. ‘Hey, Duncan.' She walked to him and rested a hand on his forearm. He looked down at her fingers and then she wished she hadn't done it. She whisked her hand away.

‘I'm just a little … I don't know … all over the place like a dropped pie.'

When he looked at her, she could still see it in his eyes. The way he felt about her. She wished he would stop.

‘If you need to debrief over a glass of wine, you know where I live.'

Stella forced a laugh. Of course she knew where he lived. Right next door to her. ‘Thanks. That's very kind. I'll see.' She couldn't bat away the feeling of relief when he left.

Luca Morelli veered his HiLux out of the three lanes of bustling Monday-morning traffic that were negotiating their way around one of Adelaide's city squares and parked in front of the house with the
For Sale
sign out the front. He looked again at the big red
Sold
sticker plastered across it and grinned from ear to ear.

He turned the key and the engine powered off. It was a busy part of the city but that was exactly why he'd bought the property. Cyclists rode by on the footpath and a business couple strode past in their power suits and runners, earphones firmly wedged in their ears. A woman in fluoro fitness gear waggled her hands ferociously as she jogged. Two young blokes with beards sauntered past, looking to be on their way to the vegetarian café across the square. This was life's rich tapestry and he was smack bang in the middle of it in his new house.

His first house. He was the owner of a house. The words sounded good in his head. He'd lived in a variety of rentals up until then but was so ready to put down roots of his own. And he liked the idea that the fashionable café, with tables and chairs on the footpath and, he hoped, decent coffee, would be his local now.

Four weeks before, he'd turned up at the auction and won the place against two other bidders in a fierce competition. Half his family thought he was crazy to buy a historic two-storey bluestone terrace that could only be described as a renovator's delight. Or, as Anna had wittily described it when she'd accompanied him to one of the open inspections, a renovator's nightmare. (Luca hadn't been crazy enough to imagine he could buy a piece of real estate without his big sister's inspection and imprimatur.)

‘This place is a wreck, little brother,' she'd said as her stiletto heels clickety-clicked across the pitted wooden floorboards in the dusty hallway. Then she'd slapped him on the shoulder and smiled. ‘Buy it. You've got the skills and what you can't manage yourself we'll get the relatives to do. Buy it and do it up and make money on it. It'll be fantastic when you finish.'