Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (8 page)

No response.

He scratched his head. She was so walled off and he couldn’t work out whether he’d offended beyond repair with that kiss to her hand, or she simply didn’t like him. Had that happened before? Probably, inevitably, but it wasn’t something he was aware of. Most people were better fakers than Georgia. And given who he was, the way he was, the tendency to overplay polite was high. Everyone was frightened of giving offence and surprised he had a sense of humour.

But not Georgia. Not that she was offensive exactly, she didn’t tiptoe around him, but she was terminally terrible at polite social discourse. She was easier with Trent and the other Avocado people he’d met, but she was still oddly self-contained. Either Lauren was right, and Georgia was a gold class snob, in which case his developing obsession with her was a hopeless thing and he’d tire of it, or there was a thread he could pull to unwind her. He wanted to find that end, untwist it from its spool and unwrap Georgia so he could see the real her.

Or go blind trying.

“Georgia, have you ever owned a dog?”

“No. Damon, can you keep talking for a moment, please?”

“Talking, my specialty. I’m not sure how it would work for travelling, but yes, apparently I’m thinking about a dog. They’re incredibly helpful, but not right for everyone. We had them on the farm where I grew up of course, working dogs. You know, they’ve developed a washing machine that dogs can load and start with a bark. Amazing, right. I need to do my homework before it’s anything more than an idea.”

“Ready now, Damon.”

“It’s your turn.” He waited. She’d answer because it was her job to get along with him, not because she wanted to play.

“I never had pets.”

“Not even a goldfish?”

“No.”

“As a kid did you want one? Most kids want pets. Were you most kids?”

“I wanted a kitten.”

He shuddered, then laughed. That was almost witty, given he’d told her he didn’t like cats, did she realise? “Ah, kittens, they have a habit of growing into cats. Cats are creepy, slink around, minds of their own. Trip you over one minute, want your lap the next. No cat will ever sort the whites from the colours for me.”

Did she smile at that? Did he add enough fabric softener to the wash of this uneasy truce with her?

“I’m ready when you are, Damon.”

Not
. Stiff towels, scratchy sheets.

He gave her an hour of straight narration. Another good hour of experimentation with his new approach. It had potential. He’d dumped the headphones. Listening to himself as he laid a track was more about security anyway, and he’d long ago refined his awareness of mouth clicks, breaths, the sound of other subtle movement like the fabric of his clothing or the movement of his hands or feet. In that aspect he was a grandmaster. The earpiece and the audio text reader gave him the next grab of copy to memorise and as long as it was phrased correctly, he didn’t need to work off print or screen text. If it wasn’t, he was learning to adapt on the run.

Twenty or more hours of narrating like this and he’d have the confidence to take his new method into his regular bookings. This job had come up at just the right time to try out a new way of working before he went back to his regular gigs, where his reputation was on the line.

What wasn’t working was his attempt to defrost Georgia. “How was that?”

“All good.”

“Not too breathy.”

“Not that I can’t easily clean up.”

“It’s fine to ask me to re-read. It’s fine to ask me anything.”

“Would you like a coffee break now?”

He dropped his head into his hands. That was it, she hated him.

“I don’t like seafood.”

He looked towards the window and grinned. She had to be looking back. “Good to know.” Not necessarily progress but a step in that direction.

After the break, when they were back on either side of the glass, he tried again. “My favourite colour is blue.”

“Mine is green.”

They were a recipe for colour blindness, but at least he got an instant answer.

She prompted him to start up where he’d left off. An hour later he needed a water jug refill. Lauren brought it in for him, and the way she was in no hurry to leave told him Georgia had left the control room.

He sat on the stool they’d provided. “How old are you?” He put a hand up to forestall her protest. He’d have to start there and work quickly to get what he really wanted from Lauren. “A range will do. Age isn’t necessarily something you can tell from someone’s voice or vocabulary. I’m guessing you’re in your twenties.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

He grinned, he’d have picked her as younger. He dug Lauren. She’d gotten over her fan girl moment. “What do you look like?”

“I’m blonde and gorgeous.”

He slapped his thigh. “Of course you are.”

“Okay, I’m a little overweight, but I am blonde and blue-eyed. I did some modelling before I took this job, catalogue stuff, not catwalk.”

“And you’re lying to me, right?”

“No.” Very definite. Slightly outraged. “Ask Georgia when she gets here.”

Oh thank you for that segue, girlfriend
. “All right, I will. How old is Georgia? What does she look like?”

“Why’d you want to know what she looks like?”

He put a hand over his eyes. “Why do you think?”

She groaned. “Okay, it’s the blind thing.”

She was a trip. She wasn’t the least bit awed or anxious now. He laughed. “Yeah, it’s the blind thing.”

“She’s older than me. I’ve got the staff birthday list. She’s twenty-nine. She’s got brown hair, it’s shoulder length, curly, lots of it. She’s shorter than me.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Brown eyes.”

“And.”

“Fair skin, like she’s never ever been in the sun.”

“And.”

“I don’t know. She’d kind of ordinary. Not ugly, but nothing special. She could do so much with herself if she put a bit of effort into it.”

He rubbed his face. “Women are so cruel.”

“That’s not cruel, that’s how it is. You can’t expect men to look at you if you don’t put the effort into it.” He shook his head and Lauren said, “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Whatever happened to liking a person for who they are?”

“You would say that, it’s not like you have a choice, but for the rest of us it doesn’t work that way. It’s all about how you look. If you’re fugly you don’t stand a chance.”

He stood. “God, Lauren, you really think that’s how it works?”

“I don’t think it, babe. I know it. Sure, after you’ve hooked up, it’s about the person, if they’re, like, nice to you or a psycho, but you’re not going to get that far if you don’t look right.”

The click of the intercom and Georgia’s voice. “I’m ready to get started again.”

He held a hand up. “One minute, Georgia.” He looked towards Lauren. “It has to be about more than that, you know that don’t you?”

The door swooshed as she opened it. “I only know what I see, and I see if I put on weight, even a little, I get less attention, which means fewer men want to talk to me, which means less dates, less chance to find my Mr Right. I guess if everyone was blind it would be different.” She sighed. “Lunch will be in the lounge.” The door shut and he was alone with the echo of Lauren’s definition of sexual politics.

“Jesus, Georgia, you heard all that?”

“I did.”

There was a pause. He imagined Lauren crossing the control booth and going to reception.

“Lauren is very beautiful. She has a heart-shaped face, flawless skin, great figure. All the men here are in love with her, half the clients.”

He gave the lectern a shake. “But she thinks that’s all she’s worth. That’s just wrong. Goddamn, maybe more people should be blind.”

There was nothing from the control room and he felt around for his earpiece in frustration.

“Can you still see the colour blue?”

He looked up and out towards Georgia. Her first question that wasn’t about work or forced out by his plucking at her. “Not anymore. But I’m lucky I know what blue is, what it feels like.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like the freedom of a summer sky, wide open and full of endless possibilities. Like the drama of midnight; that blue when the stars come out, before night completely falls. It’s the understated glamour of a magnificent car or an extraordinary woman’s dress. Blue is depth and strength. It’s sturdy and reliable without being boring.”

“You don’t associate it with being down, depressed?”

“The blues.” Were they actually having a conversation? What could he say to prolong it? “Not at all.”

“We should get started.”

At the end of that block, she asked him to re-read a few passages and then he let himself out of the booth to have lunch. She didn’t come to the lounge to eat with him. Trent and a couple of the other engineers did. He ended up doing their favourite lines from movies, though he absolutely refused to do Vox, and for his pain he was treated to the worst impressions.

“Spew spawn and raging blue thunder,” said Trent. “You can shred me, but I plan to be alive when the darkness comes.”

“Annoyingly alive,” Naveen corrected Trent, laughing, and Trent did the line again. He sounded about as much like Vox as a packet of corn flakes.

“Watch me go intergalactic on your ass.”

“More testosterone, Franca,” he coached.

Franca tried again, lowering her voice and got back slapped, for her efforts.

Then it was Trent. “Pull up or prepare for pain to sizzle your gizzards.”

He laughed. He’d had trouble with that line, the sibilance of the esses and zeds. He’d had to run it over and over to get it right. At least these guys weren’t doing the love scene lines. There was only so much public humiliation a bloke could take.

Lauren looking for Naveen, who couldn’t do a passable Indian accent to save himself, another cause for hysterics, broke the group up. Damon sat on waiting for Georgia, thinking about the set list for Saturday night’s show.

“Is it true you gave them the spew spawn line for
Dystopian Conflict
?”

He could hear Georgia, but not see her. It was true the movie’s most quoted line came from his mouth and not the scriptwriter’s page. Wasn’t so unusual, it was collaborative process. “If I say yes, will you think better or worse of me?”

There was a general hubbub of agreement and disagreement, people moving about, leaving, and Georgia came into sight, a blurred shape with a dark halo of hair sitting opposite him. “Can I talk to you for a minute before we start again?”

He sat forward. “I’d like that.” He knew this wasn’t going to be about spew spawn or the work.

“You’re, um.” A deep drawn breath.

“Go on.”

“You’re um. I think, um. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to focus on the work. I’m new here and jobs like this are hard to find.”

“I understand, but are we not working well together?” He could’ve had any engineer, Avocado employee, freelance, or flown in specially that he liked on this job, but he’d wanted to work with Georgia.

“I just.”

He scooted forward on the lounge. “I wish I could see your face, because what I hear in your voice concerns me.”

“That’s just it. I don’t want you to waste time worrying about me. You don’t have to be nice to me, or win me over, or be interested in me.”

That’d come out in a hot rush. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not interested in you.”

And that was ice-truck killer cold. He sat back. That told him. He could play this off as a misunderstanding but that tasted like too much effort. “Right. I wish that was different.”

“Why?”

Now she wanted to play twenty questions. “Because I’m not seeing anyone and I find you interesting.”

“I’m not.”

“Everyone is interesting.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You have a head full of corkscrew curls and they’re brown like your eyes. You smell of vanilla strawberries, like those wild freesias that sprout up every spring in yellows and purples. I don’t know if it’s your shampoo, the soap you use, or perfume, but I don’t think it’s any of those things. I think it’s you.” He paused; she could quite easily walk away and he’d be talking to himself.

“You never got to have a kitten and I wonder why you missed out. You lost your parents while you were still young. You’re still young. You’ve lived in England long enough to pick up the trace of an accent but not entirely lose your natural one. Your favourite colour is green.” He heard a noisy inhale. Yes, she was still there, still listening.

“Green is all about the outdoors for me, and about renewal. I don’t know if that’s what you’re doing by moving home, but I’d like to. You have this hesitancy about you. I hear it in your voice. I think you’re sad about something. I wonder why you feel like you have to hide who you are. You’re a good engineer and a nice person, Georgia. I move around a lot for work. The women I don’t scare away mostly want to mother me or take advantage of me. You haven’t tried to do either and I like that. I’m sorry about kissing your hand, I came on too strong. I was trying to get to know you, but if that’s too much for you, then I won’t bother you again.”

He took a breath. Her shadow grew length as she stood up. “I think that would be best.”

Fuck
. He stood up too, but misjudged the placement of the table, getting his foot caught in its leg. He lurched forwards, his shin hit the glass edge, their lunch stuff bounced, slopping and sliding, and his hands shot out in front. They met hers. She steadied him, one hand under his forearm. “Thank you.”

“Please don’t thank me.”

He gripped the hand he still had in his. “Please don’t shut me out.”

But she was going to. She removed her hand from his grasp and moved away and the only conversation they had the rest of the session might’ve been scripted by machines and spoken by robots, for all the warmth it had.

8: Go Fish

Day three of the project sent to send her spare and Georgia asked Lauren to show Damon into Studio B when he arrived. When she knew he was settled in the iso booth and she could legitimately hide behind the job and not have to deal with the man, she went to the control room.