A Girl Less Ordinary

A Girl Less Ordinary

Leah Ashton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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PROLOGUE

Fremantle, Western Australia. Thirteen years ago

NOT EVEN AS she stood outside Jake Donner’s bedroom window, watching the flimsy and slightly askew aluminium blinds smack rhythmically against the glass in the gentle breeze, did Eleanor Cartwright—even for a moment—have second thoughts.

Which wasn’t to say she wasn’t nervous. Of course she was. Declarations of love, she imagined, were always at least slightly nerve-racking.

But tonight, nerves didn’t matter.

She had to do this.

You should tell him, honey. Love shouldn’t be kept secret.

She hadn’t paid much attention to her mum when she’d said that a couple of months ago. She thought maybe she’d even laughed?

I don’t love him, Mum, don’t be stupid. We’re just friends.

And her mum had done that annoying thing where she raised her eyebrows as if she were the all-knowing, and gently shook her head. It had made Eleanor feel about twelve, not sixteen.

Whatever, mum. He’s leaving anyway. There’s no point.

And maybe there still wasn’t.

But the pointlessness—or not—didn’t matter any more.

Since exactly twenty-nine days ago, a lot of stuff didn’t matter any more.

Eleanor took a deep breath. She could do this.

Letting Jake leave Fremantle—and her—without knowing how she felt was no longer an option.

A larger pre-dawn gust of air made Eleanor shiver, and it slipped through the opening in Jake’s window to make the blinds rattle loudly.

No sound came from his room. Which wasn’t all that surprising, given it was about three o’clock in the morning. Plus, Jake slept like a log.

She stepped closer, the dew that coated the long, unmown grass around his house damp against her legs. Jake’s bed was right below the window, so, on tiptoe, she slid it open. The window—and the house—were old, and it gave its usual shriek of protest.

‘Jake?’ she said, hoping the sound had woken him.

No such luck.

So she continued with her plan, gripping the edges of the window, and hoisting herself upwards. Then she would perch on the window sill, reach for Jake, and gently shake him awake.

This, however, was not what happened.

Instead, her momentum propelled her upwards—and inwards—not at all in the way she’d imagined. In the cacophony of the blinds, her own surprised yelp, and then Jake’s much louder shout, she found herself bounced from the bed and onto the floor, Jake’s body pressed against hers from chest, to hip, to toes. Her glasses had parted ways with her face, but even so Jake’s confusion was apparent even in the—slightly fuzzy—moonlight.

‘What the hell? Eleanor?’

She nodded, temporarily incapable of speech for two reasons: the impact of hitting the worn carpet, and the realisation that Jake was only wearing boxer shorts.

But then he was up, and away from her, the overhead light coming on a second later. She stared at the naked bulb, doing her best to breathe and think at the same time.

‘Eleanor,’ he said, ‘why are you here?’

He crossed to her, reaching out and pulling her to her feet. He met her gaze with confusion. ‘Why are you still in your uniform?’

She looked down, taking in her crumpled white shirt and knee-length tartan skirt. She’d barely registered what she was wearing. That day, the week—the past month—it had all been a blur.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘So you decided to jump in my window?’

Eleanor just looked at him.

Jake sighed, and he scratched at his belly absently. That belly had changed a lot since their many trips to the beach last summer. Now it was firmer, leaner—she could see the angular jut of his hipbones just above where his boxers hung low on his body.

Following her gaze, he hooked a finger in the waistband and tugged them a little higher. But he didn’t look embarrassed.

He never did.

In contrast, Eleanor usually felt like a walking bundle of self-consciousness.

His dark hair was a mess, but he still looked really, really great.

Eleanor knew she didn’t look great. But at least she’d washed away the evening’s worth of dried tears on her cheeks. Besides, her mum had always told her that it didn’t matter what she looked like. It was what was inside that counted.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she said softly.

Jake’s gaze darted away. ‘About your mum?’

‘No,’ she said. And did he look—relieved?

In the almost month since her mum had forgotten to look before stepping out onto a busy Fremantle street, Eleanor had barely seen Jake.

That had been her choice—hadn’t it? For the first few days she’d left the house for nothing but the funeral—the oblivion of sleep the only relief from the indescribable pain of loss.

And then, finally, when she’d returned to school, it’d been alone. Jake’s final year exams were already over and so, for the first time in four years, she’d walked to and from school without him.

She hadn’t wanted company. Not even Jake.

But now she did. Now she needed him.

And yet he was shifting his weight from foot to foot—like an Olympic runner settling into his starting blocks, mere milliseconds from sprinting away.

No. That couldn’t be right. Jake had always been there for her.

She needed to sit, so she did, perching on the edge of his bed. Amongst the bunched-up fabric she found her glasses, and she put them on with hands that shook just slightly.

He eyed her warily.

This wasn’t at all how she’d expected this would go.

‘I wanted to talk to you before you left.’

‘I don’t fly out until Monday, Eleanor. That’s two perfectly good days you had to come knock on my door at a time I wasn’t—you know—sleeping.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’

But obviously, he did.

Just three weeks ago he’d held her hand at the cemetery, his pockets stuffed full of tissues for her—and now he couldn’t even look at her?

Jake crossed his arms. Not exactly the body language of someone open to a declaration of love.

Not that it was going to stop her. She’d come this far. Jake acting strange didn’t make a difference.

She understood strange, anyway. She could barely remember what it felt to feel normal—to feel like herself. All she had was little pinpricks of the normal and familiar amongst a near blackout of grief.

And this thing with Jake—well, she wasn’t stupid. She’d seen the way he looked at her sometimes. She wasn’t imagining it. Something had changed. She was sure of it.

Maybe she just needed a different plan of attack.

She shot across the room before her nerves got hold of her. Jake’s eyes widened as she came closer, but he didn’t move.

A ruler length away from him, she stopped, and had to tilt her head upwards to meet his eyes.

She considered reaching out to touch him. The popular girls at school made it look so easy—they’d absently hook an arm over their boyfriend-of-the-moment’s shoulder at lunchtime, or wrap themselves around him at the bus stop.

But she wasn’t one of those girls. And she didn’t know what to do.

Frustration made her talk quickly. ‘I love you.’

It ended up being more a mumble, but that Jake heard every word was obvious in the way his body jerked away from her.

Not the reaction she was after. The churning in her stomach stopped dead.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said. As if that were a fact.

‘Yes,’ she said, more clearly this time. ‘I do.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re just confused because …’

‘Of my mum? No. I knew before. It was her idea I tell you.’

Now he walked away, just a few paces. He turned his back to her, resting his hands on a desk covered in keyboards and hard drives and floppy disks—and a lot of stuff Eleanor couldn’t possibly name.

At the back of her mind, she had the feeling she should be crying. But instead, she felt oddly still. Calm.

She needed to walk away, straight across to the fence that separated their houses, then through the three-paling-wide gap they’d used to cross back and forth for years. Back to her room. Tomorrow morning she could come back here, pretend she hadn’t meant it, and things could go back to normal.

But Jake was about to leave. Things were never going to be normal again.

‘I think,’ she said, her heart pounding, ‘that you might love me, too.’

This made him spin around, and suddenly he was right in front of her. Crowding her.

‘You need to go, Eleanor. Your dad will be worried.’

No, he wouldn’t. Her dad wouldn’t notice if she stripped naked and ran laps down at Port Beach.

Jake was so close.

She liked the width of his shoulders, and his chest, too. Some of the pretty girls had noticed, but Jake hadn’t been interested. And she’d been glad—really glad—when he’d shut them down. Actually, he’d laid his geek act on pretty thick—thick enough that, if anything, his weirdo label had been even more firmly reapplied, which was of course exactly what he’d wanted.

The guy standing right in front of her now, in his bedroom, with his shirt off, was definitely not a weirdo in her book.

He was her best friend. The guy who made her laugh, and helped her with maths—which she hated—and that she helped with his English—which he hated. They were a team.

She loved him. And she needed to know if he loved her.

‘Eleanor—please, you need to—’

But before he got the words out, she kissed him.

Or at least, she tried to. But by the time she stood on tiptoes, closed her eyes and leant forward—her lips only collided with his cheek.

His cheek.

And it was this—this—that finally kick-started what should’ve been her immediate reaction. People who loved you did not respond with ‘no, you don’t’.

They definitely didn’t turn away from your kisses.

For a moment, the icy horror of humiliation froze her. Froze her with her lips still whisper close to his skin.

‘No. I can’t do this. I—’

What was he saying? Eleanor could barely hear him, overcome by her own voice in her head.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

How could she have really believed that Jake could love her? Why? Why on earth would he?

She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t super smart like him.

She didn’t wear the right clothes like the popular girls. She didn’t know how to flirt, or to kiss a guy. Obviously.

She had to go. She should never have come.

Without a word she stepped around him, climbed onto his bed and halfway out of the window before she registered he hadn’t said a word.

Wow. She’d actually thought he’d tell her to stop. To stay.

She looked over her shoulder as her legs dangled outside, her skirt all rucked up around her waist—but she didn’t care. As if Jake would even notice.

Jake was watching her. His gaze was full of … what?

Regret?

No. Now she was just being delusional. She knew what it was.

Pity. Definitely.

And she had no interest in staying around for that.

So she jumped to the ground, and walked—even though she badly wanted to run—back to her house. Without a backward glance.

Later, as she stared at her ceiling, incapable of any more tears, she managed to unearth one single positive out of the whole horrible mess.

This was another one of her mum’s ideas—the absolute belief that something good could be found in absolutely anything. She was pretty sure even her mum would’ve been stumped as far as finding a positive in having her ripped away from Eleanor far too soon—but this thing with Jake? Yes—there was a positive.

She’d never have to see him again.

CHAPTER ONE

Sydney, New South Wales Today

IT WAS AN ambush. Plain and simple.

Jake Donner knew it. Every one of the board members who currently watched him with matching unreadable expressions knew it, too.

How long had this been planned? Hours? Days? Weeks?

‘No.’

Jake figured that was pretty much all that needed to be said.

‘There’s no other option, Jake.’ This came from Cynthia George, a silver-haired, retired chief executive of one of Australia’s major banks who now spent her spare time on a handful of corporate boards across Sydney. As she studied him with what could only be described as a steely expression, Jake was reminded why he was so keen to appoint her to this board.

Intimidating just began to cover it. Pretty damn scary was closer.

But still, he shrugged. ‘Find another one.’

Jake forced his body to fall back into the soft leather of his high-backed chair, attempting a fair facsimile of casual nonchalance. But his muscles were tense, and he found himself fighting the instinct to leap up and pace around the edge of the Armada Software boardroom.

This was not representative of his usual board meeting experience. Usually, the time was spent paying careful attention during the topics that interested him, zoning out during those that didn’t, and occasionally congratulating himself on his decision a few years back to extract himself from this excruciatingly boring world of the business he’d founded. Now he had a twenty-eight per cent share of the company, an up-and-coming CEO—also currently studying him across the streaky marri surface of the boardroom table—and a board made up of Sydney’s corporate elite—nearly all financially invested in Armada. All this added up to the perfect excuse to pay as minimal attention as possible to the day-to-day operations of the company and instead let the experts worry about it while he did what he was actually good at: coding software.

Up until about a minute ago, this arrangement had been operating flawlessly.

Across the table, the chief financial officer pushed a paper-clipped sheaf of papers in his direction, the pages fanning out slightly as they slowed to a stop.

‘Here’s an option, Jake. We reduce our FTE by twenty per cent.’

Full-time employees. In an organisation of over two thousand in this skyscraper alone, that was a heck of a lot of people.

‘Cutting staff is a last resort.’

The CFO nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He gestured at the LCD screen at the head of the table and the final presentation slide it still displayed. ‘Hence the board’s proposal.’

Jake didn’t even bother to look at the figures and multicoloured graphs before him. He was familiar with them all. He might slouch about in his chair and say very little at these meetings, but he read every single board document in detail.

Sales were down. Costs were up. Australia might have weathered the Global Financial Crisis better than most of the world, but Armada had not emerged unscathed.

The facts were inarguable.

But the proposed solution?

Definitely worth arguing about.

‘I’m confident that the release of Armada’s first smart phone will significantly increase revenue,’ Jake said, and he was. Just not as confident as he’d been last night when he’d absorbed the surprising financial report. He’d expected the board to have a typically brilliant solution to what he’d been sure was a temporary problem. But their unease was unsettling. Their solution impossible.

Jake Donner—as the new face of Armada? Nope. Wasn’t going to happen.

‘There’s no need for something so drastic,’ he said.

Cynthia smiled without humour. ‘A few TV and radio appearances, a conference keynote address and a couple of interviews is hardly drastic, Jake. Armada needs a public face, and you’re it.’

He shook his head. ‘For a decade the quality of our products has spoken for itself. I seriously doubt wheeling out some computer geek is going to help anything.’

She snorted, an incongruous sound in the perfectly silent room. ‘Computer geek? Try infamous multimillionaire recluse. Number two in Headline magazine’s list of Australia’s most intriguing people. Number one in Lipstick’s most eligible bachelors. The increased publicity for the new phone will be immeasurable should you be the face of the product.’

Jake sank even further into his chair, stretching his long jean-clad legs out beneath the table. He didn’t ask to be featured in those stupid glossy magazines. Didn’t ask to forever be annoying his long-suffering local constabulary in order to despatch the more than occasional misguided journalist or photographer who trespassed onto his Blue Mountains acreage home.

It was all nonsense. Absolute rubbish. There was no story to be found. No scoop.

Was it really that unusual to despise Sydney’s concrete jungle? To equate wearing a suit, unending meetings and patently false schmoozing to something only a few degrees south of selling his soul?

Apparently so.

Who cared that he’d rather work remotely from the comfy couch in his lounge room? Who cared that he’d rather stick pins in his eyes than attend some society function chock-full of Sydney’s self-satisfied, Botoxed elite? Who cared that he truly believed his private life was private and that a flat no-interview policy made his life significantly easier?

Well, according to the ten sets of eyes focused on him right this second, and the substantial business acumen behind them—a lot of people cared. A hell of a lot of people.

Jake gave up pretending to be all casual and dispassionate. He flattened his sneakers to the parquet floor and shoved his chair backwards, leaping to his feet in a sharp movement. The chair continued its journey until it thumped gently against the wall, but by then Jake had already completed half a lap of the room’s wall of windows.

‘In a saturated marketplace, Jake, just having a great product isn’t enough.’ This came from the Vice President, Marketing & Communications, an elegant, spindly woman with jet-black hair. ‘Unfortunately, early indications from our market research are that the Armada phone is generating little interest from consumers. Our US and Japanese competitors have the market cornered—people want the familiar brand, regardless of our superior phone.’

Jake paused. ‘And what, exactly, do you think I could do about that? How is my mug on a magazine cover going to sell phones?’

The VP smiled. ‘The results of our copy-testing focus groups are compelling. An advertisement including your name and photo scored significantly higher in brand linkage and consumer motivation. We’re talking quadrupling of interest in the product.’

Jake didn’t even bother being surprised that focus groups had been run. Of course they had. He was the only one late to this party.

He rubbed his forehead, a futile effort to erase the newly created furrows. His jaw was clamped shut and his teeth ground together.

‘The board’s recommendation is that we proceed with the Jake Donner campaign.’ It was Cynthia again.

‘If you decline, we’ll be forced to reconvene to begin implementation of the company restructure,’ added the CFO. Restructure, of course, being code for mass redundancies.

Now the VP chimed in. ‘We’re planning a short campaign, Jake. One month of inconvenience to you for tens of millions in potential increased revenue.’

The whole board murmured in enthusiastic agreement. Yes, this was definitely an ambush. He half expected them all to start lobbing their pens at him next—in a perfectly coordinated fashion, of course.

One month of inconvenience.

Could he do it? One month of shoehorning himself into whatever shiny package Marketing chose to squish him into? One month of posing and saying all the right things in aid of dragging Armada out of this financial hole?

One month for thousands of saved jobs and millions of dollars?

It didn’t sound like much of a sacrifice when put like that. He might be far from the sole owner any more, but deep down inside he still considered Armada his. His responsibility. His employees.

Really, the decision was a no brainer.

Reluctantly, Jake grunted something that Cynthia correctly interpreted as acquiescence.

Well, he wasn’t about to jump up and down in excitement, was he?

Something totally random occurred to him: Lord. He’d better not have to wear a suit.

Ella Cartwright waited patiently outside the boardroom’s double doors, seated neatly on a low leather couch. Her black patent heels did not click nervously on the floorboards. Her fingers did not twist and tie themselves in knots on her lap. And she certainly didn’t ask the CEO’s personal assistant, who’d escorted her all the way to the twenty-sixth floor, any of the myriad questions about Jake Donner that sat on the tip of her tongue.

Not doing all those things was possible, of course, because those things she could control.

The butterflies currently tap-dancing in her tummy? Well, not so much.

But that was okay.

No one needed to know about them.

Finally, the doors were pushed open, and a parade of exquisitely suited executives slowly made their way out. Ella was on her feet well before she caught a flash of Cynthia George’s distinctive red blazer amongst the mass of wintry black, grey and navy.

Ella allowed herself a fleeting moment of pride as she recognised the jacket she’d personally selected for Cynthia’s revamped wardrobe. With her sharp haircut, flawlessly applied make-up and flattering outfit, Cynthia was a walking advertisement for Picture Perfect, Ella’s five-year-old image consultancy firm.

But, while Cynthia’s ‘look’ had needed a review, her communication—and negotiation—skills definitely hadn’t. This had been demonstrated most effectively to Ella when she’d attempted to say no when she’d received Cynthia’s most unexpected request.