Page 79 of Crossed Wires: The Complete Series

For a few long moments, Dylan didn’t have a clue how he was going to answer.

Well? Are you?

He stared at Central Park beyond the window. “No.”

So there you go. You’re staying. Until your return flight, at least.

Hunter didn’t answer for a second. “You still missing your luggage?”

Once again, Dylan tried to clear the lump in his throat. “Uh, no. I got it today. Just thinking I might stay here a little longer.”

“You’re going to stay in New York?” He could see his brother’s stunned expression all the way from the other side of the planet. Hear his shock through the scratchy phone connection. “I didn’t think you were interested in sightseeing. Thought you were just going to meet Annie.”

To meet Annie. The words made him squeeze his eyes shut. “Yeah. I was, but I met Annie’s friend, Monet. She’s been putting me up, showing me around. Is, uh, Annie planning on coming back soon?”

Say no. Please, brother, say no.

“Didn’t Mum tell you?” Hunter’s voice again registered shock. And something else. Something Dylan could almost decipher. Tension? “Annie’s staying here for a couple weeks. She’s writing an article about the cattle station for her magazine.”

Opening his eyes, Dylan gazed out the window. Bublé had moved on to singing about kissing a fool. It seemed, for Dylan, an appropriate song, given how stupid he felt. “Oh yeah,” he said to his brother. “Monet said she’d gotten an assignment. Didn’t think she’d still do it with me here.”

“Dylan?” Monet’s voice rose above the music, and for a brief second his heart slammed up into his throat, joining the lump there. “Do you want me to?—”

He turned to look at her and wished like hell he hadn’t. She was too beautiful. Exquisite and elegant and exotic. And he was…

The Down Under Wonder.

“Sorry,” she said, and it was only then Dylan noticed she was holding a potato in one hand and a vegetable peeler in the other. “I didn’t realize you were on the phone.”

He lowered the phone a little. “It’s Hunter.”

She didn’t answer. Her teeth caught her bottom lip and she nodded.

“Where are you?” Hunter’s question floated up from his shoulder.

Dylan returned the phone to his ear. He felt stretched taut, like the barbed wire fencing he’d installed around his mum’s chicken coop to keep the dingoes out. “I’m at Monet’s. We’re about to start making Thanksgiving dinner. We just got home from a parade.”

Home. There was that word again. How many times had he called Monet’s apartment home? And why did it sound so right every time? And so damn wrong?

He gripped the small mobile phone tighter.

You know why, Sullivan. When are you going to admit it?

Drawing a deep breath, he met Monet’s eyes. “Give me a minute, Monnie. I’m going to take this call in the other room.”

Monnie? What the fuck was that? Monnie?

Monet, it seemed, was equally surprised by the nickname. She watched him walk to the bathroom, her eyebrows knotting in a frown he would have chuckled at any other time.

Closing the door behind him, he sat on the lowered toilet seat lid and scrubbed at his face with his free hand. “I’m alone now.”

“Dylan.” His brother’s voice was worried. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just…” He dragged his palm over his jaw and stared at the tiles between his booted feet.

It’s now or never, Sullivan.

“Ah, fuck a bloody duck,” he blurted. “I’m just going to say it. Call me a dickhead all you like, but I think I’ve fallen arse over tit for Monet. I feel like shit, given that Annie flew all the way to?—”