Barbara Hannay - Needed: Her Mr Right

Now, she was frightened. She wished Belle and Claire weren’t so far away. She needed their reassurance that her life wasn’t going to collapse because they knew.

They’d agreed to stay in touch, to share regular emails and to help each other through the weeks ahead. Simone hoped that would be enough. She felt so…so…anxious. And something else. What was it? Not depressed exactly. Deflated? Yeah…definitely. She felt flat. Very flat.

They’d lost sight of the girl’s taxi.

Despite Ryan’s driver’s most valiant attempts, there was simply too much traffic, too much rain and too many taxis zipping back and forth. They’d had to admit defeat.

Now, as his taxi dashed through Sydney’s rain-lashed streets, heading for his flat in Balmain, the diary sat on the seat beside Ryan. The thick leather cover had saved it from a soaking and a few shakes and a wipe on his jeans had rendered it almost as good as new.

But so far Ryan hadn’t been able to identify the book’s owner.

Funny how much that bothered him.

His fingers drummed on the leather cover as he stared ahead at the frantic motion of the windscreen wipers. Under other circumstances he might have tracked back to the terminal and handed the diary in to the airport’s lost property office.

But he was dog-tired, it was lousy weather and they had already been halfway across Sydney before they’d given up the chase and before he’d realised that the pretty blonde had not filled in the personal information page inside the book’s front cover.

Of course he hadn’t rescued her book simply to discover her name, address and telephone number. It was more a sense of fair play that had sent him diving into the gutter. But now he was left in something of a quandary. He had no idea who she was. And he realised, too late, that was the way she wanted it.

Why else would she keep a diary without including any personal contact details?

This diary, with its closely written pages, was nothing like the small, dog-eared notepad filled with scribbled contacts, appointments, story leads and notes that Ryan kept in his inner coat pocket.

He’d thumbed through a few pages and read enough to realise that this was a very personal record, meant for her eyes only—a mixture of internal musings as well as a detailed account of a recent bike ride through the Himalayas.

Himalayas? Wow, no wonder she looked fit.

She’d begun writing in neat black ink, but she must have lost the pen halfway through the trip and the rest of the pages were written in a mixture of red ballpoint and blunt pencil.

Ryan flicked the book’s pages once more and they fell open in the middle, where she’d wedged post-cards—a Buddhist temple, towering snow capped mountains, Chinese villagers in traditional dress, a breathtaking view down a gorge. He checked the back of each postcard to see if any had been addressed, but they were blank.

Frustrated, he closed the book again.

And decided he wouldn’t read it.

OK, so he was a journalist and journalists were noted for sticking their noses into other people’s business. He’d been doing exactly that in the UK for the past eighteen months—until his recent, rather notorious departure.

Now, he’d come home to regroup, to think about new directions. The last thing he needed was a scavenger hunt, digging through an innocent young woman’s personal journal for pay dirt.

Besides, he’d stood in that taxi queue and looked into her eyes.

And somehow that made a difference.

Anyway…a cycling holiday in China was hardly breaking news.

That settled, he slipped the diary into his pocket and turned his attention to familiar Sydney landmarks. He was almost home.

For Simone, the single best thing about coming home was her lovely modern apartment in Newtown.

She’d invested in this soon after she’d landed her plum job as executive editor of City Girl magazine. Spacious and open-plan, great for parties and handy for the City Girl offices, it suited her lifestyle perfectly.

She loved everything about it, from the lively purple feature wall in the living room and the mezzanine level that housed her home office and bedroom, to the funky retro-style stools lined up at the kitchen counter—a favourite gathering spot for her friends.

Today, however, as she set her key in the lock, she didn’t feel quite the sense of welcome that she’d hoped for. Ever since she’d farewelled Belle and Claire at Hong Kong airport, a vague sense of unease seemed to have taken root inside her.

Silly. She wasn’t going to sink into gloom. All she needed was to kick off the designer sandals she’d splurged on in Hong Kong—gorgeous, but still a tad uncomfortable—and she would make a nice hot cup of tea and reread some of the affirmations she’d written in her diary when she’d felt so fantastic up in the mountains.

Barefoot, she padded across the timber floor to her backpack and she looked down at it, rubbing at her forehead as she tried to remember where she’d packed the diary. It was in one of the outside pockets.

She rolled the pack a little, patting the pockets, to feel their contents. Toiletries in this one. Her camera in this other, a small bottle of French perfume from the duty free and—

No!

A jolt ripped through her as she felt the unmistakable flatness of an empty pocket. Her heart began to race. There shouldn’t be any empty pockets in her pack. She’d crammed her possessions into every available space.

This pocket was where she kept—

Frantically, she checked the other pockets, hoping against hope to find a familiar rectangular shape.

It wasn’t there.

“Oh, no!” Her cry was almost a wail. “I don’t believe it!”

She’d put her diary in this pocket. And it was gone. Stooping closer, she saw that the zip was broken. Her heart jerked erratically as she traced it with her fingers and found an irregular gap in the metal teeth. Fighting a growing sense of panic, she tried to remember when it could have happened. She could distinctly remember seeing the reassuring book-shaped bulge of her diary in this pocket when she’d gone through Customs.

Groaning, she thought of everything she’d written—her faithful descriptions of every point of the journey through China, the scenery, the cycling, the aches and pains, triumphs and fears…

The secrets!

Oh, cringe. What if someone read them?

She hadn’t merely written the outpourings of her own heart, she’d included the secrets that Belle and Claire had shared too. And she’d written down details of the private pact they’d made.

She covered her face with her hands. Panic threatened.

Fighting it, she forced herself to remember everything she’d done at the airport, retraced her steps in her mind…getting through Security, pushing her pack on a trolley through the Arrivals hall, waiting outside, locking eyes with the hot guy in the taxi queue. The tall, smiling guy with the stubble and the amazing dark brown eyes that—

Oh, give it a miss, Simone. As if he’s relevant!

She gave an impatient cry of self-recrimination.

She couldn’t lose her diary. She just couldn’t! Apart from the dire possibility that she was scattering her new friends’ secrets to the four winds, she was writing an article for City Girl about the trip and she needed the notes she’d made.

Thank heavens she’d emailed a fairly comprehensive coverage of her journey through from Hong Kong to her office yesterday, which meant she’d still be able to write the article, even without her diary. It was the personal stuff in there that sent her stomach churning.

And now some stranger might—

She jumped to her feet as she remembered the awful thump when the taxi driver had dumped the pack into the boot of the car. The whole vehicle had rocked with the force of it. Maybe it had fallen out into the boot.

Perhaps her driver had already turned it in to the taxi company’s lost property. She could phone them, ask all their drivers to check their vehicles…offer a reward.

Excited by fresh hope, she rushed to her telephone.

Ryan piled his suitcases, snowboard and laptop in the middle of his living room and looked about him. It felt strange to come home to his flat after so long away.

Professional cleaners had been in and left the place super-tidy and smelling of artificial room freshener and disinfectant. Devoid of character.

Sad truth was, his home didn’t really feel like home without a fine layer of dust over the furniture and a scattering of newspapers, books and at least three dirty coffee mugs.

He yawned again—a jet lag induced yawn so huge he almost cracked his jaw.

He needed a coffee.

Damn. With a groan, he realised that his cupboards were bare. The tenants hadn’t left anything—even the sugar bowl was empty.

To add to his annoyance, his mobile phone rang.

Ryan almost ignored it but, a split-second before it rang out, he relented and answered.

“Hello?”

“So you’re home son.”

“Hi, Dad.” Ryan’s stomach sank. An interrogation from JD the minute he arrived home was the last thing he needed. “I’ve just walked in the door.”

“So, what are your plans now? Now that the London venture’s fallen through.”

Fallen through? The old man had such a sweet turn of phrase—and an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts. As if JD didn’t know that it was his insensitive interference from the other side of the world that had forced Ryan’s resignation.

“Uh—I haven’t made any definite plans yet, Dad. I’m going to take a little time out. To regroup.”

“Regroup? What kind of rubbish is that? You need a plan, Ryan. A business plan. That’s your problem, you know.”

You’re my problem, Ryan almost snapped. His father couldn’t leave him alone. But if he told JD that, he’d leave himself wide open for a tirade.

He got one anyway.

“It’s high time you did something about your lifestyle, Ryan. You’re still drifting aimlessly. No focus. No goal. You’re past thirty, son, and still a hack journalist.”

For crying out loud.

“You know you should be in management by now. Running budgets, hiring and firing.”

Ryan held the receiver away from his ear as his father rattled on.

“I’ve had an idea that might suit you,” JD said. “It’s time you used the money in the trust fund your mother left you. Use it to buy up a little country newspaper. You would get one for a song. Get it up and running and then knock off the other papers in the region. Build quite a good business.”

Ryan groaned softly. “Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve no intention of burying myself in some sleepy country town.”

“But for—”

“Dad, I’m taking a short break and then I’m going to concentrate on specialist writing. Features. Human interest. I’ll look up some of my old contacts at The Sydney Chronicle.”

“Surely you’re not going to crawl back to the rag where you started?”

“I can and I shall. I’m very happy with my life.” Ryan’s voice rose several decibels. “OK?”

He disconnected, felt drained. In recent years, hanging up in mid-conversation had been the only way to avoid an almighty argument with his father.

I’m very happy with my life.

It was almost true.

And that was more than JD could claim. His father might be an Australian success story, but he was into his third marriage and was still obsessed with wiping out his business opponents. Ryan couldn’t imagine ever finding pleasure from that.

JD owned a string of iron ore and gold mines and several cattle stations, a mansion in Perth, an apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour, an island in the Great Barrier Reef and a villa on the Côte d’Azur, but his billions had never bought him the kind of contentment that Ryan longed for.