by Ally Blake
He waited for her to fight him, for she was nothing if not a fighter. He waited for her to deny every word, for denial was a fair part of her repertoire. But she didn’t. She sat there on his couch, hugging his cushion. And for the life of him he couldn’t remember his own name, much less the name of any other girl he’d ever met.
“Here’s something for you to mull over,” he said, sliding his hand deeper into her satiny hair. “I have a crush on you, too.”
Her lips opened on a sigh.
“And if you don’t want me to kiss you till neither one of us remembers how we got here, now’s the time to tell me.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her grip soften on the cushion, before she flung it across the room.
Then she reached up, slid a hand around the back of his neck, and she kissed him. Open-mouthed. Soft, sensual, hot as Hades.
With a growl he took her in his arms, shifting until she lay beneath him on the couch. His thigh between hers. Her leg wrapping around his, trapping him. Claiming him.
Then, like teenagers, they couldn’t get enough of one another. All harsh breath and clashing tongues. Roving hands and raging lust.
Needing to calm things, to centre himself, before he lost himself entirely, Cormac ran a settling hand over her shoulder, down her bare arm, till his hand reached her thigh, her bare thigh. Her satiny dress had ridden up until his thumb brushed the slightest, most delicate hint of lace before it gave way to the curve of backside.
Afraid it might end him, then and there, he kept his hand moving until he found her hand, took it, lifting it to his lips. Placing a kiss on the tip of each finger, before resting his lips on her palm.
She watched him, chest rising and falling, eyes bright. Overly bright, as if she might be about to...
With a shake of her head she broke eye contact, then pushed him to sitting. There she wasted no time before undoing the buttons on his shirt.
“Harper,” he said, lifting a hand to cup her cheek.
“Shut up, Cormac,” she said, shaking his hand away. “Anyone ever told you you talk too much?”
Cormac coughed out a laugh, the sound barely making it past the tightness in his chest. “Not a single living soul.”
When her eyes found his they were full of fire. Desire. And something else. Something deep and raw and old as the cliffs keeping Blue Moon Bay from tumbling into the raging ocean below.
This woman, he thought as he somehow managed to stop himself from tearing the shirt from his back. To let her do the work. Understanding on a cellular level that a semblance of control was necessary to her. Even while handing it over was unnerving to him.
She slid his shirt down his arms, her thumbs scraping against bare skin as she took her time. Eyes roving hungrily over his chest. His bare stomach. The aching bulge in his jeans. Her hands stopping when they reached his wrists. Trapping him with his shirt so that he couldn’t touch her. Like Jimmy Stewart, stuck in his wheelchair, while the most beautiful woman in the world shadowed over him.
“Harper,” he murmured. “You are every fantasy I ever had, all rolled into one.”
Only this was real life. The woman before him all too real. No ice in her eyes, no wall between them, only heat, and desire, for him.
He leaned in, holding her eyes with his, before he kissed her softly. Gently. Tenderly. Meaningfully.
Waiting until she began to sigh, and moan, and melt, before carefully pulling a hand free so that he could touch her, run his fingers down her neck, undoing the ribbon at the back of her dress, until the silken slip of nothing pooled at her waist.
Their eyes caught. Neither of them breathed. As if hovering on the brink of something. This their final chance to pull back. To slink back to the safety of their respective corners.
Then Harper lifted her hand to Cormac’s cheek, her thumb brushing over his bottom lip before she followed up with a kiss. A caress. An admission.
Then she lay back. A vision of loveliness. Of surrender.
To this. To them.
* * *
When Cormac woke it was to a quiet house. The TV was turned off. Novak snored softly on the rug. He didn’t need to call out, to search the house, to know that Harper was long gone.
With a groan he unpeeled his long body from the couch, replacing the cushions that had fallen to the floor, before sitting and resting his face in his hands.
How had she managed that? Uber? The town-car guy from Melbourne who’d been so clearly smitten with her? She might well have walked, for all he knew. If she’d wanted to get out that bad, she’d have found a way.
A thought came to him and he was on his feet, padding barefoot to the garage, only breathing out upon finding his beautiful blue Sunbeam slumbering safely there still.
Closing the door, he looked about his big house. He only lived in three or four of the rooms; the rest had never been touched except by a cleaner once every couple of weeks.
But now it seemed cavernous. Empty. A clock ticking somewhere upstairs marking the long seconds as he tried to measure how he felt.
All too quickly landing on restless. Off kilter. Discontent.
Cormac swore beneath his breath as he picked up the clothes strewn about the lounge before jogging up the stairs to his bedroom. Heading straight into the en suite, he dumped his clothes in the hamper, before turning the spray to full hot.
She needn’t have stayed over if that had been her concern. Hell, he’d have been happy to take her wherever she wanted to go. Well, not happy, but resigned.
At the very least she could have woken him. Said goodbye.
But even as he thought it he knew it wasn’t her way.
She might have been a revelation in the quiet dark of night, offering him a rare glimpse at the tender heart of her.
But in the bright light of day she was a runner. It was in her blood, after all.
CHAPTER TEN
LOLA TURNED HER face to the sharp summer sunshine. “Can you believe this weather? I mean, tell me, have you seen skies like this anywhere else in the world?”
Harper grimaced as she tugged the spike of her left heel out of the lush lawn leading out to the Chadwicks’ extensive rear gardens. “Hmm?”
Lola dropped her hands to her yoga-pants-clad hips. “You’re the one who said you wanted to get some fresh air—now you’re acting like you’re allergic.”
“I know. And I do.” She did want fresh air. Or at least some space to talk to Lola without wondering if someone was about to walk in the room. The nature she could take or leave.
Harper winced as something landed on her shoulder.
Lola leaned forward to flick away the small leaf, then tucked a hand in the crook of her arm. “Come on, Harps, let’s just walk and you can tell me why we’re out here when you’re ready.”
Lola yabbered away about the lemon icing she’d chosen for the wedding cake, and the gorgeous local bubbly they’d chosen over imported champagne.
Harper tried to concentrate, but she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering to Cormac. His couch. To making love to Cormac on his couch.
For that was what it had felt like. Not sex. Not a one-night stand or an itch that had needed scratching. But sweet and gentle. Tender and thorough. It had also been seductive, and hot, and gravely intimate. Consuming. Till every cell in her body, every ounce of her soul had come together to ride the wave of heat and feeling and emotion.
When she’d woken to find herself curled up in Cormac’s arms, she’d felt as if she’d been jolted with an open electrical wire and when she’d come back to earth all of her cells had settled in the wrong place. A place that craved his protection, his warmth, his intimacy.
“Harper, what’s got into you?” Lola asked. “First you disappear on me last night without a word. Then you don’t come home. I knew you were with Cormac and he’s the last person in the world who�
��d let anything bad happen to you, but what the heck is going on?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. Just worried about you.”
Way to deflect.
Though somehow it worked. “Harps, I’m on the countdown to marrying the man of my dreams. What could I possibly have to worry about?”
As openings went, it was too good to pass up.
Harper looked back at the house, looming ominous and regal on its agrestic bluff, and she felt a flicker of guilt. Her mind went to Cormac and his stories of how the Chadwicks had saved his life. To Gray, and the way he looked at Lola, with such tenderness and indulgence.
But then she saw herself as a sixteen-year-old girl, sitting on the floor of the downstairs bathroom, trying to stop her father crying, while he shouted the name Weston Chadwick, crying into his hands as he blamed the man for ruining his life.
She would never forgive herself if she had brought Lola this far only to let her down at such a critical moment.
“Lola, honey, can we talk seriously for a moment?”
Lola’s eyes flickered before she said, “I know what this is about.”
“You do?”
“It’s Cormac. It’s not just a crush for you. You’re smitten with the guy.”
“That’s not it at all—”
“But it’s true.”
“Fine. Yes. I guess. But—”
“You guys totally got it on last night, didn’t you?”
Harper gawped, no longer in control of her faculties.
“Ha! I knew it!” Lola snapped her fingers. “I was totally sure you’d deny it. When I told Gray I reckoned the two of you had left the party to find somewhere a little more private he was all, ‘Nah, they can barely look at one another without biting each other’s heads off.’ While I said, ‘He looks at her like a lion looks at a baby gazelle—like he wants to swallow her whole.’ And I was right!”
Which was when Harper knew her innate ability to hold her emotions in check had been stuttering for some time. Badly.
Lola grabbed her by both hands, forcing Harper to look her in the eye. “Don’t look so stricken! This is the kind of thing we should be able to talk about. Not only your work, and my work, and if I have enough money, and if I’m eating my vegetables. Sisters should dance together, and cry together, and talk about boys. And you need to let me support you as much as you’ve supported me.”
Harper sniffed, gaze flickering between her little sister’s eyes. “When did you suddenly become a grown-up?”
Lola shrugged. “Oh, a little while back now.”
She didn’t say it happened while Harper was on the other side of the world, but the truth of it hovered between them all the same.
Till Lola said, “Enough garden, don’t you think? Shall we head back?”
Harper nodded. And on the amble back to the house they talked about work, and they talked about Gray. But they also talked about some of the fun times they’d had as kids, and some of the hard times too, the subjects shifting and changing with the dappled sunshine lighting the path ahead.
Harper realised she hadn’t managed to tell Lola the truth about the Chadwicks. About their part in her dad’s downfall.
She’d find another moment. Soon.
Right now she just wanted to relish the newness of this feeling. Of this different version of sisterhood. For the relationship she’d been so fearful of losing might not be lost. It would simply change. For the better.
“So how was he?” Lola asked as they neared the back steps leading up into the house.
Harper didn’t need to ask who. A beat went by before she said, “Transcendental.”
“Lucky girl.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Now go rest. We have the pool party this afternoon. And a fun kids-only evening planned for tonight.”
“Will do.” A morning off from the wedding fun, from Cormac, was a huge relief. For Harper needed some time. Space. To sort out her head without him there, messing with her algorithms. “Now, how tight is your wedding dress?”
“Tight enough.”
“Pity. I ordered a pair of punnets of macadamia ice cream to be delivered here from Ice-Ice Baby for just a moment such as this. I guess I can eat yours too. Take one for the team.”
“Harps, there is no dress in the world tight enough to stop me eating Ice-Ice Baby’s macadamia ice cream.”
Arm in arm, they jogged up the back stairs of the palatial home and made a left towards the kitchens.
* * *
By that afternoon the Chadwicks’ back yard had been turned out in a French Riviera meets Beach Blanket Bingo theme for Lola and Gray’s pre-wedding pool party.
Rows of jauntily angled striped umbrellas threw patches of shade over the bright green grass. While waiters all in white delivered trays of cocktails and nibbles to the guests clad in everything from Alain Delon open-necked shirts to Sandra Dee pedal-pushers.
“Just a few hundred of your closest friends?” Harper asked.
“Business associates, mostly,” said Lola, waving madly as she spotted Gray weaving his way through the crowd, looking dapper in tight board shorts and yellow shirt to match Lola’s yellow mini-dress, passing out cigars to anyone who’d take one. “Local community members. The Chadwicks’ reach is vast. We wanted the wedding to be intimate. So, this is the compromise.”
“Does it worry you that the wedding can’t possibly compare to all the pre-wedding parties?”
Lola laughed as she jogged down the stairs, turning to say, “Not a single bit. Now, come on! Let’s party!” before she leapt into Gray’s arms.
He caught her, twirling her around. Those nearby clapped and laughed. While Lola smiled up at her man as if she was the happiest person on earth.
Seeing Lola happy had been her life’s mission for as long as she could remember, and yet Harper found herself having to look away as a strange pain bit behind her ribs. Harper smoothed her hands over her floaty, one-shouldered white dress, before taking the plunge and joining the party.
Dee-Dee Chadwick caught her eye, giving her a big smile and a wave. Weston Chadwick was surrounded with men in linen suits, all laughing at some joke he’d made. When her stomach clenched at the sight of him, Harper looked away.
Gaze dancing over the crowd, Harper searched for a familiar head of preppy chestnut hair. It had been several hours since she’d last seen Cormac. He hadn’t called. Then again, neither had she.
Then, weaving her way around the deckchairs by the pool, she found him standing over a BBQ, flipping steaks.
It was so distinctly Australian, so familiar and reassuring, it snagged on something primal inside of her. Then he lifted a beer to his mouth and drank, his lashes batting his cheeks and his throat working against the bubbles. And she had to swallow lest the saliva pooling under her tongue ooze out the corner of her mouth.
As if he’d felt her staring, Cormac turned his head and looked straight at her. And she felt stripped bare. Then steam sizzled between them, obscuring her view of him as if he were a mirage.
With a quick word to one of the others, Cormac handed over the tongs, put down his beer and came to her, every step matching the beat of her heart.
“Harper, you look...stunning.”
“Thanks. You too.”
And he did. She couldn’t have told a soul what he’d been wearing that day but the warmth in his eyes, the intimacy in his smile, made her heart go kersplat.
What had she been thinking, sleeping with this man?
Adoring him from afar was one thing. It was safe, harmless. A little heartbreak the worst thing that could come of it.
But, having been with him, having felt his heart beat beneath her hand, having seen the heat in his eyes as he was inside her—she feared for how it would feel to see this end.
With a hand at her elbow he moved her a li
ttle further from the barbecue and prying ears. “I wish you’d woken me before you left last night.”
“You were out for the count. I thought it best to let you sleep.”
“No, you didn’t,” he murmured, stepping a little closer. Close enough she could see the shadows in his eyes. The sexy stubble shading his jaw. “You turned tail and ran. And there I’d been thinking we’d both had a good time.”
“We did. I did. I just...” Her words petered out, as she had no excuse apart from pure and unadulterated panic about feeling too much.
“It’s okay.” He lifted a hand, brushed his knuckles over her cheek.
It sent a sharp tingle sweeping through her body, wild and wanton and needy. She took a step back. Only she’d misjudged, her foot reaching out and finding...nothing.
Her heart leapt into her throat. Her hips shot back, her hands scrambling for something, anything to grab onto. Finding Cormac’s shirt.
Instinct had her gripping on tight. His eyes widened. He stepped into her. Her balance gave way and together they tumbled into the pool.
Cool water rushed into her nostrils, into her mouth. Until a pair of strong hands gripped her under the arms and dragged her to the surface.
Harper came up spluttering, her hair all over her face, her hands busy keeping her dress from floating up to her neck. Especially now the entire party had moved to the edge of the pool. Some faces wide with surprise. With embarrassment. Others laughing.
And there, front and centre, Weston Chadwick.
His voice—big and booming—carried across the yard as he said, “In case you haven’t met them yet, I give you Harper and Cormac—our maid of honour and best man. And apparently contenders for the family synchronised swimming team. Anyone else want a dip, feel free.”
Barely a beat went by before a few men took off shirts, and women slipped dresses over their heads—thankfully revealing swimwear beneath.
Smart move, Harper thought, knowing her bikini was still inside.
Then hands were pressing the swathes of lank wet hair from her face. Cormac’s hands. His touch gentle but sure. The pads of his palms deliciously rough. The goosebumps trailing in their wake making her shiver.
