by Joss Wood
‘Not much—just checking in,’ Gail replied. ‘Whatcha doing?’
‘About to go into a club.’
‘Have you met anyone yet?’ Gail demanded.
‘I haven’t even been here two days!’ he protested.
‘My man-about-town bachelor brother is slacking,’ Gail teased and he rolled his eyes.
‘I won’t have the time in Sydney and I don’t have the inclination,’ Rob retorted.
Gail’s laugh tickled his ear. ‘Did the screaming match with Saskia put you off? Judging by the way she flounced out of here, she obviously didn’t take it well when you told her that she’d hit her expiry date?’
‘Jeez, Gail! Her expiry date?’
‘I call it like I see it. You never go over the three-month-fling mark and she was due.’
Not as obsessed with the time-frames of his dates as his sister, Rob counted back. Yeah, it was nearly dead on three months. He’d started getting twitchy as Saskia started making noises about ‘formalising’ their relationship, dropping comments about needing cupboard space in his bedroom. She had left a box of tampons in his bathroom cabinet and he’d realised that it was time to bail. She wasn’t someone he wanted around long-term...
He’d never met anyone he wanted around long-term.
‘One day you’re going to meet someone who blows your socks off,’ Gail warned him.
He doubted it. Remembering that the best way to get Gail off the subject of his love-life was to comment on hers, he said: ‘Are you still dating the tattoo artist? Does he make enough money to take you to the movies occasionally?’
Gail sighed. ‘Well-played. Deflect and distract.’
‘I try. Don’t do anything stupid with this one, okay, honey?’
After witnessing the best and worst of love, he and Gail approached relationships from opposite directions. She thought that true love and happily-ever-after was just around the corner, and he knew that there was only one person he could ever fully depend on and that was himself.
He and Gail adored each other, but they didn’t understand the other’s choices when it came to the opposite sex.
‘How long are you going to be in Sydney?’ Gail asked. ‘This house is like a morgue without you.’
‘A month...six weeks,’ Rob replied. ‘Do not let Mr Body Art move in while I’m gone.’
Gail laughed again. ‘I’ll just move into his place... Bye—love you!’
Rob looked at his dead phone and shook his head. He was convinced that Gail only called him to wind him up and raise his blood pressure. That, he supposed, was a younger sister’s job.
Rob looked at his watch...ten p.m. here, and that meant it would be around two in the afternoon back home. Snail was home from her morning classes at uni and she was bored—and a great way to relieve that boredom was to take pot-shots at his love-life.
Revenge, Rob decided as he stepped into the heaving club, would be sweet and designed to embarrass her to the max. Because that was what his job as her older brother was.
Slapped in the face with the noise and smell of the club—alcohol and perfume and sweat mixed together in an almost palpable fug—he immediately asked himself what he was doing. Apart from the fact that he was still exhausted from the long flight from Johannesburg the day before yesterday—he really had to learn to sleep on planes—and the fact that he’d been working sixteen-hour days for months, he also hated clubs and clubbing.
Too loud, too packed, girls too obvious and generally far too young and too eager. Call him old-fashioned but he liked to do a little work before a piece of tail fell into his lap. And, really, at thirty-two, dating kids his sister’s age or younger made him feel like a dirty old man.
Rob brushed off a hand on his behind and ignored a proposition from his left as he scanned the bar. He’d find his new firecracker of a PR person, make his excuses and then head back to the flat he’d rented and fall face-down onto the bed.
Rob ran a hand over his short dark brown curls and squinted into the low light of the club. Finding Amy in this madhouse was going to be a nightmare, he thought as his mobile vibrated in his pocket. Or not, he thought, looking at the text message.
At the entrance, hook a left and head towards the back of the club. Table in the back corner.
God bless technology. Rob smiled, shoved his mobile back into the pocket of his jeans and took her directions.
Ah, a table full of women...not too young, thank God, but obviously, judging by the bottles and glasses on the table, well on their way to being cabbaged. Shoot me now, he thought. Half an hour, one beer, and he was out of there.
At least they were gorgeous women, admittedly. Amy, confident and glossy, led the pack. There was her colleague—he couldn’t remember her name—and her assistant. Couldn’t remember her name either. The other two women he didn’t recognise at all. He dismissed the tomboy blonde who, he saw when he looked over his shoulder, was swapping some major eye contact with some dude at the bar, and focussed on the woman with mahogany hair tucked into the corner of the table, a cocktail glass in her hand. She had a wide-eyed, Audrey Hepburn waif look to her that instantly made a man regress to being a caveman.
You woman, I protect you. Lie down and I make you happy. Grunt. Grunt.
He’d known a lot of women—sue him...he was in his thirties and had been consistently single all his life—so he was old enough and wise enough to realise that waifs and strays, romantics and women who seemed helpless and hopeless, normally ended up tearing strips off him.
Women, as he’d learnt, were seldom what they portrayed themselves to be. Scrap that. People mostly weren’t who they said they were.
Amy sprang to her feet. ‘Rob—yay, you’re here!’
Yeah. Yay.
‘You know Bella and Kara, my colleagues—’ their names went in one ear and out of the other ‘—the creature ignoring you for the rock star wannabe at the bar is my flatmate Jessica—oi! Jessica! This is Rob.’
The blonde whipped her head around, flashed him a smile. ‘Hey, Rob.’
Quick eye contact and a super-fast scan to determine whether she found him attractive. She hesitated, suggesting that she did, but then her eyes slid back to the bar. Rob smiled inwardly. Someone, if he played his cards right, was getting lucky tonight.
Amy touched his wrist to get his attention. ‘And this is my old, old friend Willa. Willa, this is Rob Hanson.’
‘You make me sound like a crone with all the olds, Ames,’ Willa complained good-naturedly, before lifting amazing silver-shot-with-green eyes to his. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi back.’
Rob took the open seat next to her and eyed the full beer bottle on the table, icy cold. It was his favourite brand.
He cocked an eyebrow at Amy. ‘That for me?’
‘Sure.’ Amy pushed the bottle and glass across the table. Ignoring the glass and picking up the bottle, he lifted it to his lips and allowed the liquid to slide down his throat. One beer, half an hour and he’d leave...
‘Rob owns a chain of sports equipment and clothing stores in South Africa, Willa. And some gyms. He’s looking for franchisees to open branches of the stores everywhere, and the gyms will be here in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne initially.’
‘Brave...’ Willa murmured. ‘Especially the gym part, since the marketplace is dominated by Just Fit. And Just Fit has gone on an acquisition drive to buy up the rats and mice gyms that aren’t allowing them marketplace domination.’
Rob lowered his bottle and sent her a long look. Then he lifted his eyebrows at Amy, who just laughed.
‘She’s not just a pretty face,’ she said.
Intriguing...
And she wasn’t done. ‘It takes a set of brass balls to take on two competitors, firmly established and synonymous with Australian health and fitness, one of which is about to list on
the ASX. I intend to buy some of their shares when they go public in...’ Smarty-Pants squinted at her watch ‘...six weeks’ time.’
Rob just stared at her as she rested her chin in the palm of her hand and gave Amy a puppy-dog look. ‘I want a set of brass balls, Ames. How do I acquire my own?’
Amy threw back her head and laughed. ‘Wills, how many of those Screaming Orgasms have you had?’
Willa slid her eyes to the row of cocktail glasses in front of her and counted them off. ‘Not enough real ones and four fake ones.’
Willa and Amy exchanged a long look before they both bellowed with laughter.
Oh, jeez—drunk girl humour. About orgasms. Shoot him now. But he had to admit it wasn’t fake girl laughter but a real, joyous exchange of humour between two friends who understood each other’s subtext. Their laughter made him smile.
‘So how long have you been friends?’ he asked, picking at the corner of his beer label with a short, blunt fingernail.
He hoped that his question would distract them from further Screaming Orgasm humour—especially since, A. He hadn’t had one recently, and B. He’d just decided to stay for another beer, another half-hour.
‘Eight, nearly nine years—with far too many lost years in between,’ Willa replied.
Seeing the confusion on his face, she placed her hand on his bare forearm and—whoa! What the hell...? Lust and attraction shot up his arm and exploded in his brain. He went stock-still and tried to work through his reaction. He’d never, since the time he’d found out that girls had fun things he liked to play with, had such a rocketing blood from his head reaction to the simple touch of fingers on his skin.
He looked at her again and realised that she wasn’t just pretty—she was damn sexy. High cheekbones, a pouty mouth and those amazing siren eyes. He allowed his own eyes the pleasure of skimming over smooth shoulders, smallish breasts and that too thin but utterly feminine body.
He tipped his head slightly to the side and saw that her sage-green sleeveless dress disappeared under the table. He needed to see more. On the pretext of bending sideways to scratch his foot, he looked under the table. The dress ended mid-thigh and, holy Moses, those legs were long and toned. Since one nude heel had dropped off a slim foot, he saw that her toes were tipped in tropical orange polish.
Hot, hot.
‘...and then Amy left the Whitsundays—’
Rob blinked as he lifted his head and came back to the conversation. He was both amused and irritated with himself. He never went on mental walkabouts—and especially not over women.
‘You’re going to have to back up, Wills. Rob didn’t hear a damn thing,’ Amy drawled, lifting her beer bottle to her lips and raising a knowing eyebrow in his direction.
Rob felt an urge to pull out his tongue at her, which he manfully suppressed. He quickly rewound and took a stab in the dark. ‘So, have you kept in contact with your other mates from those days?’
‘Well, I talk to Luke my brother all the time. He was the resort manager.’
Amy sat up straighter and leaned forward. Hmm, Rob thought, interesting reaction to the mention of his name. Something churning there.
‘We barely talk nowadays, but I have all their e-mail addresses, and I’m friends with them on social media,’ Willa answered, her lips around a purple straw.
Rob, forcing the mental picture of what he’d really like to see those lips wrapped around from his mind, thought that there was no way he could go so long without connecting with his own tight circle of friends.
‘You all should get together some time—catch up.’
Amy clapped her hands together with delight. ‘That’s such a fantastic idea. We should do that, Wills. We can invite them for a barbie...it’ll be a Whitsundays reunion,’ Amy gushed.
‘Let’s do it! When?’ Willa asked, eyes sparkling.
‘The sooner the better... Tomorrow is Sunday! A perfect day for a barbie by the pool...beers, bikinis... We can have a seafood Barbie,’ Amy babbled. ‘Invite them, Willa! Now! I betcha they will all come.’
Willa reached for her bag, her enthusiasm elevated by those Screaming Orgasms. She pulled out the latest smartphone and Rob raised his eyes as her fingers flew over the touchscreen. ‘Okay, I’ve tagged Scott and Brodie and Chantal. Luke is in Singapore, the jerk. Who else?’
‘The bartenders—Matt and Phil. Invite them! They were fun... Tell them to bring booze for cocktails.’ Amy leaned forward. ‘And Jane and Gwen who were part of the entertainment crew.’ Amy looked at Rob. ‘We were quite sure that they provided extra “entertainment” to the guests, but they were such a riot.’
‘And the lifeguards—I hope they’re still hot! Tagged them... Come on, Ames, there were at least twenty of us who ran wild... I’ve tagged the girls who helped me entertain the rug rats.’
‘The rug rats?’ Rob asked.
‘I looked after the kids at the resort... I kept them entertained so that their parents could have a break. And afternoon sex,’ Willa explained without looking up from her smartphone. ‘Come on, Amy—think!’
Amy rattled off a few more names and Willa bobbed her head in excitement. ‘Okay, anyone else?’
‘Nah. I think that’s it.’
Amy leaned back in her chair and looked over to her flatmate. She let out a loud whistle that felt like an ice pick in Rob’s brain, but it had the desired effect and Jessica turned around.
‘Hey, Jess, want to go to a barbie with me and Willa?’
‘Sure,’ Jessica replied, turning to Willa. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. What time?’ Willa asked Amy.
‘Eleven. Bring your own bottle,’ Amy replied, and Rob watched, amused, as their impromptu party started to take shape.
Whether their guests would appreciate—or accept—an invitation at half-ten at night for a party the next day was another story, but it was fun watching their cocktail-induced excitement. That being said, he knew that they were so going to regret their impulsiveness in the morning, when their heads woke them up, screaming that they had had brain surgery without anaesthetic.
‘Okay, eleven...bring my own bottle...where?’ Jessica asked.
‘Yeah, where? Maybe I should add that.’ Willa squinted at her phone.
‘That would be helpful,’ Rob murmured, but no one heard him.
Amy pretended to think, her eyes dancing. ‘Oh, I don’t know...who do we know who has an empty Sydney waterfront property with a pool?’
Willa shrugged. ‘Who?’
Then the penny dropped with a clang and Willa bounced up and down in her chair like a first-grader.
‘Oooh, I do! Me! Me, me, me, me...me!’
‘Attagirl.’ Amy lifted her bottle in her direction.
Even Rob, stranger that he was to the city, knew that waterfront property in Sydney meant big bucks. Who was this waif? An heiress? A celebrity?
‘Hey, if I’m finally going to host a party of my own then I’m going to invite who I want to invite,’ Willa stated emphatically. ‘Like Kate!’
‘Who’s Kate?’ Amy asked.
Yeah, who is Kate, gorgeous?
‘My lawyer.’
Why would a woman in her mid to late twenties have her own lawyer? Interesting... Then again, the whole package was fascinating... Brains and beauty and those brilliant legs that were made to wrap around a man’s hips...
Okay, slow down there, Hanson.
Willa’s phone beeped and her face fell. ‘Poop. Kate can’t come. Oh, well.’ She looked around for a waiter. ‘I need another drink.’
Some liver pills, a litre of water and a few painkillers wouldn’t hurt either, Rob told her silently.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE WASN’T DRUNK, Willa told herself. Happy, relaxed...slightly buzzed, maybe, but not drunk. And she was havin
g fun, she realised on a happy sigh. Fun... She rolled the word around her tongue. Well...hello, there, stranger.
She was twenty-six years old—jeez, nearly twenty-seven—and she’d played the part of young, gorgeous, thick trophy wife all her adult life because Wayne and what he’d wanted had been important...her, not so much.
She was a great example of why you shouldn’t be in charge of your own destiny when you were too young and too dumb to be making decisions more complicated than how to operate a teaspoon.
Willa pushed her heavy hair back from her face. She’d stopped loving Wayne years and years ago, and now she just wished she could finally be free of him—legally, mentally, comprehensively. And when she was she could fully enjoy men like...Rob.
Willa sneaked a look at that face and swallowed her lusty sigh. He was scruffy in all the right places, she thought. Sable-coloured curls that she longed to touch to see if they felt as soft as they looked, a four-day-old beard, a shirt that skimmed long muscles and tanned skin, giving hints of well-defined pecs, and an impressive six-pack.
Those grey piercing eyes seemed to be shockingly observant and yet basically unreadable.
Rough, rugged, and completely at ease in his skin. She couldn’t help but to compare him to the only other man she’d ever slept with—she was biggest of big girl’s blouses!—and it was like comparing instant coffee to Mountain Blue. Simply an exercise in stupidity.
Wayne was smart Italian suits and hair gel to cover the bald patch on the crown of his head. Cologne, cufflinks and designer labels. Rob was...not. He didn’t need to accessorise—he was excellent just as he was.
Sexy. Masculine. Nuclear-hot.
‘Honey, you keep looking at me like that and I’m going to have to do something about it.’
Willa blinked as his drawling voice pulled her back into the moment and she noticed Amy leaving the table with a tall blond guy. They were heading towards the dance floor in the centre of the club. When had that happened? Maybe while she’d been spending the last five minutes drooling over Nuclear-Hot across the table.
