Just My Luck by Rosalind James Page B

the key and starting the car, heading down the hill to the CBD. “I want to be with you because I like you. I like how hard you’re trying even though you’re scared. I like the way you love your family and your friends, how sweet you are with Jack. But I’ll admit, the way you look is a pretty good bonus.”
     
    At the gym, he waited without complaint for her to change, then took turns climbing and belaying her, and Kristen found herself gradually relaxing.
    “You know what the bonus of you is?” she asked him as he stepped down, lightly as always for such a big man, from one of the intermediate climbs.
    “Nah, what? That you know you’d have a big target to land on, even if I let you fall?”
    She laughed, saw a man belaying nearby turn to check her out at the sound. A man who’d been eyeing her for the last five minutes. Until right now, when he caught Liam’s eye and turned hastily away again.
    “That,” she said. “That exact thing.”
    “What?”
    “That nobody bothers me,” she said simply. “At least not when you get back down to the bottom again and they see you, they don’t.”
    He laughed himself, a low rumble that seemed to slide right inside her, come to rest there. “Good to know my face has its uses.”
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s just your face,” she said. “I think the rest of you has a little bit to do with it too. Not to mention that they all know who you are.”
    “Some advantages to bashing other blokes for a living,” he agreed. “Let’s get you up on this one, then. I can’t promise that I’ll be the only one who looks at you up there, but I’ll be the only one talking to you down here, if that’s what you want.”
    “That’s what I want,” she said. “Exactly.”
     
    Afterwards, he waited again while she changed out of her climbing gear, then took her to a nearby waterfront café where he insisted on paying for lunch.
    “If it’s friends,” she argued, “I should pay my own way.”
    “I said you could be taller,” he said, sliding his EFTPOS card through the reader. “I never said you could pay.”
     “You’re such a great climbing partner,” she said impulsively after their meals had arrived. “I love climbing with Ally, but she’s so good.”
    She stopped, appalled by what she’d said. “I don’t mean you’re not good,” she stammered. “Just . . .”
    He just smiled. “No worries. I don’t have to be taller than you, or older than you, or a better climber than you. If I have to be better than you at everything, I’m not much of a man. Long as you let me pay, I’m happy. That one’s non-negotiable.”
    She looked down at her plate, poked at a lettuce leaf with her fork. “I wasn’t just trying to let you down easy, you know. I’m really not ready for dating yet. I’m not sure I’m even ready to be friends, if I even knew how to be friends with a man. Climbing was nice, but trying to talk feels hard. Lunch probably wasn’t a good idea. I’m not good at this anymore. I’m just this . . . pulpy mess inside. Everything’s all so raw. And I can’t be . . .” She looked up at him, felt the tears in her eyes, threatening to fall. “I can’t be charming,” she said, hearing her voice break a little, and hating it. “I can’t be fun. I used to be fun.”
    He laid a big brown hand over her own where it lay clenched on the tabletop. “I don’t need you to be charming,” he promised. “I just need you to be you. Not to try to hide how you’re feeling from me. Can’t you tell that I want to get to know you?”
    “I don’t see why,” she said with the honesty he’d asked for. “When what you’ve seen so far has been so unimpressive.”
    “D’you want to know what I see?”
    “Do I?”
    He laughed gently. “It’s all good, no worries. I see a woman who’s had some hard knocks, had her faith in herself shaken, who’s determined to start over and do things differently. You could’ve gone to live near Hannah, couldn’t