Dylan was right about the view. Their table, perched on a private balcony, provided a spectacular ocean vista. The candles were already flickering, and this coupled with the descent of the sun gave Sydney a magical quality. But still Michaela shivered.
“You’re cold. I’m sorry. I thought it would be a warmer evening. Would you prefer an indoor table?” Dylan asked.
“No, this is fine.”
“Well, take my jacket then.” He shucked off his beautifully tailored suit jacket.
“No, thank you. I’m fine,” she said firmly and sat down so he couldn’t drape his jacket over her.
After a moment’s silence, he sat down, too, putting his jacket over the back of his chair. He opened the wine menu with a flourish.
A waiter appeared from nowhere, and Dylan ordered an outdoor heater and a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. The heater appeared and was lit before Michaela had a chance to protest, but she was ready when the waiter reappeared with the bottle of wine.
“No, thank you, not for me.” She didn’t want to blur her reason with wine…or let the alcohol go to work on her lust. Why did Dylan Johns have to be so sexy?
Dylan gave her a strange look but said nothing until the waiter had retreated. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Here, have a tiny taste.” He poured a generous measure into her glass before she could get her hand across the top. As he did so, Michaela saw the label and remembered she’d had it at a wedding once. The vintage was expensive and—when she let her resolve down and tasted it—delicious. Just a few sips wouldn’t hurt.
“The Australians can pride themselves for their reds all they like,” Dylan said, his eyes following her as she took one more sip of the crisp wine, “but nothing beats a New Zealand sav.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to verbally agree with him on anything yet. Another silence descended over the table. She was sure he’d be able to hear her heart racing in the midst of the quiet. “So you’re just a glorified money man?” Not exactly polite table talk—and was he blushing?
Dylan simply nodded and pointed to the waiter behind her. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the chef’s special menu for both of us.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Trust me, you’ll be pleased I did when it arrives. The woman is a magician.”
“Woman?”
“Yes, the chef here trained in Paris, but she’s Australian born and bred. And she definitely knows what to do with the local produce.”
“You know her very well, then, do you?”
Dylan paused, regarding her calmly. “She did some catering work for the firm when my mother was alive.”
“Your mother died?” Michaela had to force her hands to stay still as she watched Dylan’s face crease.
The sigh seemed to spread throughout his entire body. “Her illness was the reason I had to leave. Brian was using her absence from the office as an excuse to do some risky deals. I couldn’t let that happen—it was adding extra stress my mother didn’t need. I thought I’d be able to take some weight off her shoulders, help her get better, but I was too late. It happened too fast.”
His mother had been sick—and died! Why hadn’t he just said so? All pretense of holding him at arm’s length left Michaela’s head, and her hand reached to cover his before she realized what she was doing. The flare of contact was immediate.
“I’m sorry to have left you like that,” he said, “but I was going anyway and…”
“If you’d just said your mother was ill—you didn’t need to explain that. Of course you had to go.”
Dylan put his other hand over hers. “Yes, but then you might still have had questions about us. I was always going to be stuck here, and you were going to be travelling the world, following your career. It was only ever going to be short-term. I should have told you more about my family from the beginning, but to tell you the truth, I wanted to walk away from it. The office, my brother and his wife, all of it… I should have realized I couldn’t do that. I have responsibilities. What I did wasn’t fair to anyone.”
No, it certainly hadn’t been fair. But she could understand it.
She understood him far better than she wanted to. Understood that he felt trapped, and that this Dylan—this man with the tension in his shoulders and the harried look in his eyes—was living the wrong life. But knowing that didn’t mean she needed to fall over herself trying to change it.
“What now?” she asked.
Shrugging, Dylan looked down at their hands. “I’m back at the firm, and I’ll be there for years. It turns out Brian doesn’t really care about family at all. Thank God Lily’s kicked him out once and for all. He’s been seeing his mistress for years. Apparently, he just came back because she convinced him to. They were after the money. I’ve never been so angry in my life. And to think what he did to Lily and the children.”
His face showed the strain that the last few months must have put him under. His brother sounded like a complete ass. Damn it, her heart was going to melt before they even got to dessert. “Why don’t you just hire a manager?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
Michaela bristled slightly. Nothing was ever simple. But usually nothing was ever as complicated as people made it, either—a lesson she didn’t take enough heed of herself.
He must have noticed her stiff posture. “Sorry. You’re a smart woman, Michaela. I’m sure if someone could work out a way to get my firm going, it would be you. But without Mom here, and with Brian out of the picture, it’s pretty hard to find time to concentrate on anything but problem solving. I can’t let the firm dissolve. Mom would have hated that. She wanted me happy, but she spent decades building the business, and I can’t walk away. You have to understand that?”
Did she?
She let the question pass her by. “So you are based here in Sydney?” she asked, changing tack.
“Our head office is here, yes, but we have operations all over the world.”
So polite. Was that what they were going to be left with? Polite conversation?
“It all started in New Zealand,” he continued, “with my father and then my mother. I was supposed to study dance in Wellington but had to switch to business when Brian disappeared the first time. Mom built up the international part of the business, and then I took over the Sydney office. She was a smart woman, my mother, and she got a bunch of very lucky breaks early on. There aren’t many firms that can boast what McCray’s have done. In fact, there aren’t any in the Australasian finance world that come even close to our size and success. And it was all due to her.”