For the heart

The beginning

Seven Months Earlier

“Kate, that guy to your left is staring at you!” Amelia, my Sydney side best friend, whispered. In a not so whisper decibel, may I add, induced by the margaritas we’d be drinking since happy hour started.

“To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left…” my other Sydney side best friend sang. Oakley’s bob bounced around her shoulders, as she swayed along to her rendition of a retro Beyoncé hit. Yes, she was also drunk.

I swear I don’t just hang out with Alcoholics.

In fact, nine till five, five days a week, these women are very classy intellectuals. Amelia works as a PA to my boss at the firm I’m at, and Oakley is a freelance interior designer who does our office suites for us.

Amelia has burnt red hair, and an athletic figure that looks slim and boyish (in a Kate moss way), no matter what she wears. Pre-pubescent 12 year old boy figures are so in right now. Oakley is short and pear-shaped, one of those artistic types that can pull off purple, florals, and leather all in one outfit.

Me? I’m a little too tall, my arse is a little too round, and my blonde hair is a little too curly.

I twisted on my bar stool, channelling my best nonchalant stretch, as I scanned the vicinity for my prey. I stretched a little further, dropping my guise, as I squinted and searched, rather obviously, for the man Amelia had mentioned.

There were clads of pencil-skirt wearing 20-somethings everywhere, I guess we were included in that ‘clad’, with the rare slim-suited corporate male weaved in amongst them. I scanned over the groups, glazing over a tall, blonde headed …. God, leaning on the bar.

I knew it wasn’t him that Amelia was talking about because I just didn’t attract that sort of guy.

On second look, because who can’t enjoy a sneaky perve once in a while, he did appear to be smirking, at me.

But no. He would not be my type, or rather I wouldn’t be his. He was one of those guys who you just knew only wore designer suits, but always had a sexy five o’clock shadow. The sort that has a name like Charles, but his buddies call him Charlie. He has a cabin in the snow that he visits every year, and can easily get time off work to do so because he’s an executive at his Daddy’s’ firm, with a nice little trust fund behind him for when we want to build a two-story in the suburbs.

HE. Repeat, He wants to build a two story in the suburbs. Not we.

But most importantly, he would date girls with the names like Vanessa, or Clare. Ivy League Barbie dolls with equally large trust funds and size zero waists.

On third appraisal of the impressively physiqued creature, he not only appeared to be smirking in my direction, but he was also walking towards me.

“Kate Blair?” Hercules said, half question, half statement, “if I could be so presumptuous, my name’s Harry Witthouse, I don’t believe we’ve ever been introduced in person.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I heard Amelia say behind me, before I gave her a glare and she turned away like she wasn’t listening.

My back straightened, and my lips pursed, “Harrison Witthouse?”

Harrison Witthouse, otherwise known as Harry, was an economist at Witthouse and Barnett. We’d be emailing for the last month over exchange of an ex-client’s credit card statements. I’d been a real snarky, pest about the whole thing and held up the exchange for weeks, simply because I was pissed that they were stealing our client.

I thought my narrative picture might have been a bit ott for John Doe, but no, Harrison Witthouse fit what I had described to the dot. He was one of those preppy rich boys who worked for their fathers, and probably had a trust fund, and also a girlfriend called Vanessa.

“How do you know what I look like?” I interrogated.

“I’ve had a Private Investigator on your tail for the last fortnight,” he informed.

That sneaky bastard.

His pearly whites dazzled me as he cracked a grin, “I’m kidding Blair, I watched you in the Hillary hearing last week,” he said, “your closing statement was powerful, the dramatics were a bit….”

“Diabolical?” I provided. One of my proudest performances yet.

“I was going to go with haunting, but diabolical also fits,” he smirked, as I sipped from my cocktail hiding my own grin.

“So,” he said, leaning just close enough that I got a powerful hit of his intoxicating cologne, “how would you feel about dinner tomorrow night?”

Shocked, surprised, suspicious? I hadn’t reapplied any form of makeup since 2pm, was wearing a dreary black on black ensemble, and was four margaritas down. What he saw worth wining and dining was beyond me.

“Harrison, I really don’t feel it would be in the best interest of our professional relationship to be doing dinner.”

“Blair, in the last month you’ve called me a chauvinistic pig, at least three times, you started addressing me as Prick in the heading of your emails, and then there were some more obscene terms that I wouldn’t use in public. So, really, can dinner make this relationship any worse?”

“I just don’t mix business and romance,” I shrugged.

Very intelligent, pro women’s-lib of me, given this was the first attractive male that had given me a second look in months.

“Oh God,” he winced, “did you think when I said dinner, I meant it as say, a date?”

Shit. I had a moment of panic, trying to connive a way of turning this situation around so I didn’t look like snob with a disproportionate high opinion of herself.

“I mean you’re a very attractive girl, of course, but can’t a man and women share a meal on purely platonic, professional terms?”

Then I realised he was pulling my leg.

He did have really nice eyes.

And I was a sucker for a well-tailored suit.

 “Well, if it is purely platonic, then I don’t suppose there would be much harm in it.”

Oh, what the hell. Self-deprecating, professionally-undermining date here I come.

“Platonic dinner it is,” he smiled, blonde curls, blue eyes, dimples and all.