Saskia shook her head at the logic, or lack thereof, then in a kind of daze went to answer the door.
She didn’t even notice Ernest was nowhere to be seen until she swung the door open and found herself face-to-face with—
“Stu?”
“Hey, Sas. How’s it hangin’?”
Chagrin had brought dimples to his cheeks. Add that to the elegant height, the puppy-dog eyes, the Byronesque mien, the guy was better-looking than a man had a right to be. But looking at him now—at the way his eyes darted anywhere but at her, at the defensive slump of his shoulders, the shuffling of his feet—Saskia wondered how she’d ever dated him at all.
“Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”
Her heart beat in her ears and her vision narrowed to about a square metre in front of her eyes as, watching Stu she felt like Alice watching her old life from the other side of the looking glass.
“Why on earth would I do that?”
He blinked.
“What are you doing here, Stu?”
When he didn’t look as if he had plans to go anywhere else, she let him in. Then followed in a kind of haze as he walked into her apartment, making appreciative noises about the work she’d done. He poked his head into her lounge room, glanced at her new TV—not as big as the last, but new all the same—then at Ernest, who was curled up in his cosy bed, pouting. It seemed she wasn’t the only one hanging onto reality by a fingernail.
“Hey, boy,” Stu said, taking a step Ernest’s way.
But Saskia put herself bodily between the man and her dog. “Hands off.”
He backed up in shock. “Steady on.”
“Steady...?” She barked out a laugh, encroaching while he continued to back away. “Stu, you stole from me. And more than just my things. You’re so lucky I felt like so much of a fool after you left that I didn’t press charges.”
His soft brown eyes slanted back to hers before flickering quickly away.
“You know it too. So why on earth have you come back?”
He looked at her, hard, and she saw the cool beneath those warm eyes. The calculation. God, the guy must have seen her coming from a mile away.
“And if you even dare say you missed me—”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She flinched, but she didn’t let him see it. “Spit it out, Stu, and then you can get the hell out of my house.”
He took a breath, his lean chest lifting and falling, his expression more hangdog than puppy dog. “I’d like to repay my debt.”
That time there was no hiding her shock. As long as she’d known him he hadn’t made a cent from anything other than unemployment benefits. “Wow. Did you sell something? Apart from my gear, I mean? Did you sell your book?”
The flicker of surprise in his eyes told her he’d probably not written another word of the mysterious text.
“Then how? Five dollars a fortnight out of your dole payment? It would take you years.”
He lifted his chin as if she’d wounded his pride. “If that’s what it takes.”
The idea of having this man in her life for all that time, of getting fortnightly reminders of the fool she’d been, made her want to rip her new TV off the wall and give it to him if it meant never to having to see him again. And by the look of him he’d have taken it too.
“You should know I am so pissed off right now—even more than when you left if that’s at all possible. So before I tie you to the chair and call the cops, tell me: why are you here? Honestly.”
“It was made clear to me that this was my only option.”
“Clear? By who?”
A flash of malice crossed his face before he reached into the back pocket of his torn jeans and pulled out a business card. A card with “BonAventure Capital” written in a perfect black font on a perfect white card.
“I don’t understand.”
“That guy Mackenzie came and saw me yesterday. We had a conversation about responsibility and recompense.”
If the card hadn’t convinced her Nate was involved in Stu’s reappearance, that did.
“He told me to come here, to pay you back, to...apologise, or else.”
“Nate threatened you?”
“Not in so many words. He made it clear he was a better judge of my priorities than I was.”
The irony was not lost on her. She’d spent the better part of a year believing—erroneously—that she’d convinced Stu she was the better judge of what was good for him, while Nate had actually convinced him with one conversation.
She didn’t realise she was rubbing at her temple until she’d pressed her thumb to the spot hard enough to leave a mark. Why? Why would Nate have done this to her?