Anything for You

218 Pages·2016·0.83 MB·English

by  Mayberry Sarah

ANYTHING FOR YOU
Sarah Mayberry
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
This one is especially for Chris. Thanks for
filling my life with love and laughter.
As usual, big thanks also to my reading buddies—
La La, Emms, Hanky Panky, Kirst, Caz and Satan.
And, of course, Wanda—
the best editor a girl could have.
Merci beaucoup!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Coming Next Month
1
SAM KIRK SAT BACK on his haunches and surveyed his handiwork. Not bad, even
if he did say so himself. Smiling, he pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his
hands on his jeans to clean the chalk dust off his fingers. The smile turned into
an out-and-out grin as he admired the full result of his labors from a bird’s-eye
viewpoint.
Outlined on the navy industrial carpet in front of him was a classic crime-
scene body outline depicting a form sprawled halfway across his business-
partner-cum-best-friend’s office. To add to the CSI look, he’d rifled through her
filing cabinet, pulled a few books off her bookshelf and left all her desk drawers
open. Highly satisfied with himself, he retreated to the doorway and began
unrolling the police tape he’d wheedled from his mate in the force. Fixing one
end to the doorframe, he stretched the tape to the opposite side and stuck it in
place.
“Delaney is going to flip when she sees this,” their receptionist, Debbie, said
from behind him.
“I know. It’s going to be great,” Sam said with relish.
Debbie shot him a look designed to let him know she thought he was weird.
She’d only been with their extreme sports magazine, X-Pro, for a month, so she
wasn’t up to speed yet on the office dynamic. When she’d been around a little
longer, she’d understand that playing practical jokes on each other was just how
he and Delaney operated. Every year when she went on holidays, he came up
with some outrageous stunt to surprise her when she returned.
One year, it had been cajoling their printer to bind a single copy of the latest
edition of the magazine inside out, then just casually leaving it on Delaney’s
desk on her first day back. She’d gone ballistic when she found it, and it had
taken him twenty minutes to convince her that the full 60,000 editions of the
magazine hadn’t been mailed out to their subscribers in the same condition.
Then there was the time he’d glued all her stationary accessories to her desk.
Stapler, hole punch, computer mouse. Hell, he’d even stuck her wheelie chair to
the carpet. Remembering the bewildered look on her face still brought a smile to
his lips.
Stuffing the debris from his scene-setting into a carrier bag, Sam eyed his
gathered staff of five.
“Remember, serious faces. She’ll only buy this if no one laughs,” he warned
them.
“Sam, man, you’re so deluded. She’s going to know it was you the moment
she sees it,” their layout artist, Rudy, said.
“But she can’t be sure. All I’m looking for is a moment of doubt,” Sam said.
Checking his watch, he crossed to his office and looked out the window to
see if Delaney had arrived yet. Her parking space was still empty, and he
frowned. She lived in the apartment beneath him, and he hadn’t heard her come
home last night. But, he reminded himself, he didn’t always hear her door open
and close, and her car had definitely been in the space allocated to her apartment
when he left early this morning, keen to get in and prepare his little surprise.
It wasn’t like her to be late, especially on the first day back after two weeks
off. Normally she was champing at the bit to get back in to it. That was one of
the great things about owning their own business. Work wasn’t a burden or a
drag—it was something they enjoyed, even if sometimes it could be stressful or
boring.
He was about to call her on her cell phone when he caught himself. Feeling a
little foolish, he dropped into the chair behind his desk. He was carrying on like
a dog who’d been locked inside all day, waiting for his master to come home.
Delaney had only been away two weeks, but the truth was, he’d missed her like
crazy.
His gaze fell on the photo occupying the one clear space on his desk. Two
teenagers filled the frame—one a tall, chestnut-haired lout, the other a slim,
brown-haired girl who was sporting a shiny black eye. Both wore Lycra rash
vests and baggy board shorts, and their faces were tanned from long days at the
beach. The boy was grinning hugely, his arm slung around the girl’s shoulders,
and the girl was looking furious and grumpy and determined. The picture had
been taken when they were both sixteen, the summer he’d taught Delaney how
to surf. She’d scored the black eye on the first day when her board flipped and
clocked her in the face. She hadn’t even cried, he remembered—just took a
moment to get her breath before she started paddling again.
That was the thing with Delaney—when she wanted something, she bloody
well went for it, both barrels blazing. Perhaps it was why they’d hit it off the
moment her family moved onto his street when he was just twelve years old. The
moving vans had barely started disgorging their contents before a scrappy,
skinny girl had gravitated to the game of cricket he and his buddies had been
playing in the street. She’d waited until the ball came her way before catching it
deftly and asking if she could join in. The other neighborhood kids hadn’t
wanted to let her play, but she’d offered them a deal—if she could bowl them
out, she was in. If not, she’d walk away without another word. She’d bowled a
blindingly fast bouncer that almost took one kid’s arm off before it hit the
wicket, and all the others had hastily passed on their turns to bat, readily
conceding that she could play.
It had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that had survived
every test thrown at it, from his insanely jealous girlfriend when he was in his
early twenties, to the stress of starting a fledgling magazine on the smell of an
oily rag. Delaney was the one constant in his life, the only person who got him—
his jokes, his silences, his need to sometimes just get away and surf or skate or
travel. Hell, she even shared the same address, since they’d bought warehouse
apartments in the same building. She didn’t constantly ask him what he was
thinking or how he was feeling. She didn’t need reassurance twenty times a day
that she was an important part of his life. And she didn’t play games and sulk if
she didn’t get her own way.
As though some all-knowing feminist deity had read his thoughts and
decided to punish him, the phone on his desk buzzed.
“Sam, there’s a Coco here to see you,” Debbie said.
Sam groaned. “Could you tell her that—” he began to cajole, but Debbie cut
him off.
“No, I couldn’t. Delaney said when she hired me that under no
circumstances was I to ever make excuses for you to one of your girlfriends. It’s
in my contract,” Debbie said brightly.
Before he could counter this argument, the line went dead. A moment later, a
wave of cloying floral scent preceded Coco as she minced her way to his office
doorway.
“Hiya, bub,” she said in her signature baby voice.
Sam barely controlled a cringe. How had he ever found that voice sexy? His
eyes dropped to Coco’s two best assets, clearly defined by the skin-tight white
tank top she was wearing.
Right. Now he remembered.
Sadly, however, the sight of her generous D cups no longer sparked an
ounce of interest from Little Sam, the man in charge of social activities. Perhaps
it was the squeaky voice. Or the fact that Coco had a highly manicured white
poodle that he’d caught her kissing on the mouth recently. Or the way she had of
calling him bub. Or maybe it was all of the above, combined with the fact that
he’d yet to have a single conversation with her that hadn’t included the words
“When I do a photo spread for your magazine.” She seemed to think he was the
man who was going to launch her modeling career, despite the fact that he’d told
her over and over again that X-Pro wasn’t that kind of publication. He’d been
trying to ease his way out of their casual three-week relationship for the past few
days, only returning every second call and manufacturing overtime at work to
keep his nights unavailable. So far, so good—until now.
“Hey,” he said, trying to inject a note of welcome into his voice. He might
be a feckless love rat—as Delaney had told him many a time—but he wasn’t a
cruel, feckless love rat.
“Hey, yourself. I was just in the neighborhood, and I thought I would drop in
and see if you were free for lunch.” Coco pouted.
Sam frowned and flicked a glance at his watch. “Um, it’s ten in the morning,
Coco,” he said.
“So? You’re the boss, aren’t you?” she said, eyes busy scanning the front
covers of X-Pro that covered one of his office walls. Her wide blue eyes darted
from image to image with increasing rapidity, taking in the skate boarders, snow
boarders, BMX bike riders and surfers who had graced the magazine’s cover
over the past year.
“Is this the only magazine you publish?” she asked incredulously, the baby
voice miraculously disappearing.
“Yep. Extreme sports, like I said,” Sam said.
“Triple X, you said,” Coco corrected him, eyes narrowing sharply.
Sam snorted his amusement. “X-Pro, Coco. I’m no Hugh Hefner. Although I
wouldn’t mind a visit to the Bunny Palace.”
“But I thought…” Coco said, clearly disappointed.
“Like I said the other night—” the night he’d picked her up and she’d
practically tongue-kissed her dog goodbye “—I’m more than happy to hook you
up with a photographer friend of mine. I’m sure he could help you with your,
um, ambitions.”
Sam held his breath as Coco frowned, obviously thinking things over.
Slowly.
“Can you call him now?” she asked after a looooonnng pause.
Sam smiled. “Sure I can. Hell, he might even be free for lunch,” he added.
Without wasting another precious second of Coco’s time, he reached for the
phone. That was the thing Delaney didn’t understand about his love life, Sam
mused as he dialed. She thought he left a trail of brokenhearted women in his
wake, but all the women he went out with were tailor-made for the kind of no-
strings fun he specialized in.
As he waited for his photographer buddy to pick up, he registered that
Delaney still hadn’t shown up for work. Where the hell was she, anyway?

DELANEY MICHAELS sat in her parked car, staring blankly out the windshield. If
she drove around the corner, she’d see the bright aqua street sign that announced
the offices of Mirk Publications in the inner-city Melbourne district of Fitzroy.
She’d find her reserved parking spot, along with an office full of people waiting
for her return from holidays.
And, of course, Sam.
The thought of facing Sam was what had made her pull over nearly half an
hour ago. She’d been doing really well until then, staying focused on her end
goal, reminding herself over and over that she’d made the right decision—the
only decision. And then she had flashed forward to how his face would look
when she told him, the confused, hurt, baffled expression he would get in his
eyes. That was when she’d had to swerve to the curb and take half a dozen deep,
calming breaths to stop the panic tightening her chest.
She didn’t think she could do this.
She had to do this.
Or she might as well sign up for the old spinsters club now and avoid the
rush when she was sixty and grey and still ridiculously, besottedly, pathetically
in love with Sam Kirk.
Gritting her teeth, Delaney scrunched her eyes shut and made an angry,
frustrated growling sound in the back of her throat. She had been over and over
and over this decision. The better part of the last week of her holiday had been
spent facing the sad truth of her life and formulating a plan to change things. She
wasn’t a coward. She had never backed away from a challenge in her life. And
she wouldn’t back away from this. It was just…hard.
When a woman had been in love with the same handsome, ne’er-do-well,
charming, funny, sensitive, generous, incorrigible rogue for the better part of her
life, it was probably only natural for her to feel a little…shaky about how she
was going to cope once she’d pruned him out of her world. But that was all it
was—stage fright, pre-match jitters. Nothing would stop her from going through
with her plan, because there was too much at stake.
If she hadn’t decided to go on vacation with her sister’s family, she might
have let a few more years slip away before she made the vital break. Watching
her sister’s life from a prime, courtside seat, she’d had a cosmic revelation. She
wanted a family. She wanted a husband and kids. She wanted snotty noses and