by Joss Wood
In case he felt like volunteering any more personal information she kept her eyebrows raised, pushing for more.
‘Stop batting your eyelashes at me, Willa. Won’t work.’
Rob brushed her hair from her face before putting his hand back on the deck. See, he could be all grumpy and grouchy and then he did something tender that blew her away.
She loved his tender...
Well, he didn’t have to talk—but she could. And maybe her opening up would encourage him to do the same. So she sat up and sat cross-legged on the deck, facing his shoulder.
‘My mum died when I was thirteen,’ Willa said, after topping up their wine glasses. ‘Brain aneurysm. One moment I had this perfect life and the next it was shattered. Luke, my brother, was at uni, so it was my dad and I. We lived in a small town, and everyone was so determined to make sure that nothing dreadful happened to me again.’
‘Did that work for you?’ Rob asked, bending one knee and resting his forearm on it.
‘Nope—life doesn’t work like that.’ Willa flashed him a quick smile. ‘I sort of believe that life is a series of lessons you are sent here to learn and no one can stop you learning them—no matter how hard they try.’
Intriguing, Rob thought. ‘And what lessons have you been sent to learn?’
‘Well, I haven’t figured them all out yet, but I think that one of them is that I’m stronger than people thought I was. Stronger than I thought I was.’
‘Explain.’
He sounded bossy, but Willa didn’t mind. Rob wouldn’t use ten words when one would do.
Willa was about to speak when she pulled back and shook her head. No, she didn’t think she would, thank you very much. Talking was a give and take affair, and if he wasn’t prepared to reveal his secrets then neither would she.
‘Another time,’ Willa said, her voice resolute but not bitchy. She knew that he wouldn’t push for more...she wasn’t giving any man anything that she didn’t get in return.
Besides, she reminded herself, this relationship was about fun and sex—not about probing each other’s psyches.
‘This is a beautiful spot, Wills,’ Rob said, looking across the bay and the harbour towards the bridge.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Willa agreed as the setting sun hurled streaks of red and yellow across the sky. ‘I’m not overly fond of the furnishings, but I love the house.’
‘You didn’t bring any stuff from your previous place?’
‘Nothing to bring,’ Willa explained. ‘I have some furniture of my mum’s that’s in storage. Wayne wouldn’t let me put it in our house because it didn’t fit in with the vision of the interior designer.’
Rob muttered an expletive under his breath and Willa grinned.
‘He is exactly that. Anyway, I’ll use my mum’s stuff when I know what I’m doing with this place.’
‘Are you going to sell it?’
‘Dunno. As I said—love the house, hate the furnishings. I don’t need to sell it. Kate’s negotiated me quite a settlement and I could live off that for a long, long time if I’m careful. Selling the house would mean that I could live very comfortably without ever lifting a finger, but I want a job—want to kick-start my career. I’m ten years behind everyone else—which is stupid because I am smart, dammit!’
‘Never said you weren’t,’ Rob said, keeping his voice even. ‘But what you are is inexperienced.’
‘And how am I supposed to get some experience if no one will give me a chance?’ Willa cried. ‘I’m so frustrated I could spit spiders.’
‘You’ve just got to keep knocking on doors.’
‘Easier said than done,’ Willa muttered into her glass.
‘It could be worse. You could be sitting in a crappy apartment, drinking cheap wine and eating a hunk of stale bread,’ Rob pointed out.
‘True. Did I start whining there?’ Willa asked, cocking her head.
‘It was close. And I don’t do whining...it makes me impatient.’
‘I think you’re impatient anyway.’
‘True enough,’ Rob agreed, looking as if he was mulling an idea over in his head. ‘You should sell the contents of the house if you hate them—the art has to be worth something—and keep the house if you like it. I’d be willing to make you an offer on the gym equipment you’re not using.’
Willa frowned. ‘Seriously? Why?’
‘Because it’s never been used and because it’s top of the range—the latest models. You interested in that? I’d leave you with a couple of machines, after showing you how to use them correctly—the basics of what you’d need to train.’
Willa mulled his suggestion over. ‘Let me think about it...talk to Kate. There’s nothing I can do until I sign the papers anyway.’
‘Do that,’ Rob said. ‘I’ll put the offer down on paper in the meantime.’
‘Yeah, okay... Kate would insist on that. She loves paper,’ Willa said. ‘I suppose I should get an art appraiser in.’
‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ Rob replied. ‘Sorry—won’t make you an offer on the art; it’s bloody ugly.’
‘I think so too,’ Willa agreed. ‘And it gives me the creeps.’ She drained her glass and, putting it down, whipped her shirt off, revealing the top of a lime-coloured bikini. ‘I’m going to swim. You coming?’
‘Only if I can feel you up underwater.’
‘I’m sure that that is one offer I can take you up on.’ Willa dropped her shorts and dived off the pier, surfacing a long way away. ‘Come on in—the water is divine!’
Rob pulled off his shirt, dropped his glasses and dived into the bay, and Willa sighed in pleasure as he swam to her, his long length cutting through the water with ease. When he popped up next to her she looped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
Deciding that he was fit enough to tread water for both of them, she brushed her lips against his, then again with more heat as his hand slid beneath her bikini bottom and covered one butt cheek.
Willa nipped his bottom lip and then soothed the bite of pain away with her warm tongue. He immediately shot up—zero to let’s-get-naked in three seconds—and from the glint in his eyes she knew that he wanted to haul her back to shore and get her to a place where he could bury himself, long and deep, inside her.
This was crazy, she thought, and wild. And because it was so crazy, and so wild, it couldn’t last.
Willa felt a pang somewhere in the region where her heart resided and scoffed at herself.
You don’t need it to last, Moore-Fisher, you just need to enjoy it.
Enjoy him.
And that, she admitted as his mouth settled over hers and he whirled her into another soul-scorching kiss, she had no difficulty doing.
* * *
Rob and Patrick left the building housing Amy’s marketing company and stepped into the late-afternoon, still furnace-hot sunshine. Yanking their sunglasses from their jacket pockets, they slipped them over their eyes and immediately shrugged out of their suit jackets. Walking down the pavement to their rented SUV, which they’d miraculously found parking for two blocks down, they rolled up their shirt sleeves and yanked down their ties.
Rob was checking his mobile messages when his cousin’s fist ploughed into his bicep.
‘What the hell...?’ Rob snapped his head up and glared at Patrick, who was pretending that he hadn’t just sucker-punched him. ‘What was that for?’
‘That was for you wandering off into Never-Never Land and letting me answer all those marketing questions!’ Patrick lifted his hand and pointed his thumb at his own chest. ‘Me accounting—you marketing and sales and blowing smoke up people’s butts.’
‘I was there,’ Rob protested, but without conviction.
He hadn’t been, really. He’d spent most of the meeting staring at
a picture on Amy’s office wall. It had been of Willa and Amy, younger, plumper and a great deal happier, mugging it up for the camera. Willa’s face radiated happiness and joy and a love of life. That’s how she should look all the time, he’d thought.
Patrick’s fist made him take a step sideways again, and he felt pins and needles rocket up his arm. He cursed Patrick roundly. ‘What did I do now?’ he demanded.
‘Who are you? Freaking Peter Pan? You keep wafting away—dreaming of Tinkerbell, probably!’ Patrick stopped as they approached the SUV and put his hands on his hips. ‘Is this about the girl? The one you and Amy talked about before we started the meeting?’
‘What girl?’
‘Now he’s going to be coy. The girl you’ve been sneaking out to see. The one whose bed you frequently sleep in. That girl, moron.’
Rob opened the car doors and they climbed inside. Rob immediately started the engine to get the air-con going.
‘Willa—her name is Willa,’ he finally admitted. He took a deep breath and jumped. ‘Want to meet her?’
If he hadn’t been so surprised at the words that had come out of his mouth he would have laughed at Patrick’s bugged-out expression. Then his smart-ass cousin recovered and put a hand behind his ear.
‘Sorry, run that by me again. Did you invite me to meet her?’
‘More fool me,’ Rob muttered.
‘You never introduce me to your women. What’s different about this one?’
There was a question he couldn’t answer.
‘I’m going to dinner and you’re going back to the flat. I thought you might like to get out instead,’ Rob stated as he adjusted the vents to get cold air blowing at his face.
Patrick called BS, as he’d known he would. Then he reached for his mobile and grinned gleefully. ‘I’ve got to tell Heather about this.’
‘You are such a girl,’ Rob grumbled as he pulled out into the traffic. ‘Willa is a woman I met. There’s no need to get excited. It’s food, some beers—that’s it.’
‘Followed by hot sex for you and for me Mrs Hand—’
Rob rocketed a fist into Patrick’s shoulder. ‘Blergh. Thanks for the visual. Now I need to bleach my brain. Look, about Willa—we’re just having a...a thing while I’m here.’
‘A thing, huh? Well, that’s got to be an improvement on one-night stands.’
‘Don’t get excited. She’s not a keeper.’
‘Is she hot?’ Patrick demanded, before banging the side of his head with the flat of his hand. ‘Sorry—stupid question. They are always hot.’
‘Do you want to meet her or not?’ Rob demanded, irritated.
‘Hell, yeah.’
‘Then shut the hell up and do not embarrass me at dinner. No stories about high school or university or anything else,’ Rob threatened.
Although this conversation was very high school, he admitted.
Patrick grinned. ‘You, the king of I-don’t-care-what-anyone-thinks, wanting to make a good impression?’ He lifted his mobile again, waving it around. ‘Heather, baby, get your ice skates on—because hell just froze over!’
‘I really don’t know why Heather married you and not me. One of these days she’s going to realise that you’re a pain in the ass and she’ll dump you for me,’ Rob grumbled.
‘You wish,’ Patrick snapped back, but his face softened at the thought of his wife and four-year-old daughter.
Rob softened too; little Kiley was his goddaughter and the unofficial love of his life.
‘Can I at least tell Willa about the time you streaked across that polo field at James Golding’s wedding?’
Rob’s look threatened to cut him off at the knees.
‘Or the time you drank that red wine and spewed all over your girlfriend’s mother’s priceless Persian rug?’
God, what he wouldn’t do to be able to kick Patrick out of the vehicle. Had he always been this much of a pain and he just hadn’t noticed?
Patrick’s mobile rang in his pocket.
‘Saved by the bell... Hey—hi, Dad. I’m having a freaky moment because your favourite nephew is taking me to meet a girl!’
Patrick listened for a moment, and then Rob sucked in his breath when all the colour drained from his cousin’s face.
‘What?’ Rob demanded. ‘What is it?’
‘You need to get me to the airport. Now.’
* * *
After she’d received a text from Rob saying that he couldn’t make dinner at Saints, Willa spent the evening trawling the net, looking for job opportunities in accounting and business and wishing plagues of blood-sucking locusts on every advertiser who used the words ‘experienced’ or ‘proven track record’. And there were a lot.
Willa banged her head against the sleek desk in the study-cum-library, empty of books but full of light, and cursed the prickling in her eyes that suggested tears were a hair’s breadth away.
She was starting to get desperate, and was actually thinking that she should call the one person who could land her a job with just a call or two. Wayne-the-Pain had connections on Mars, and any of the many accountancy firms he’d had dealings with over the years would find a position for anyone he suggested.
There was just a tiny problem with that scenario—actually, two problems. The first was that she’d rather boil her head in tar than ask him for anything, and the second was that he thought she had the intelligence of a tree stump.
Oh, and there was also a number three problem. The Pain thought that she had bought her degree with his money.
So, to summarise, calling her ex was not an option.
Willa banged her forehead on the desk again and just stayed there, her cheek lying on the cool surface.
‘You look like I feel,’ Rob said.
Willa lifted her head and looked at him, tall and strong, standing in the doorway to her study, hands gripping the doorframe above his head, biceps bulging. He often stood like that, and Willa knew that he had no idea how sexy he looked.
‘Your front door was unlocked again.’
She had to start being more conscientious about that. She was no longer living in an apartment with a private lift and a twenty-four-seven doorman.
Rob walked over to her, briefly covered her lips in a kiss hello, and perched his butt on the edge of the desk. He ran his hand through his hair and looked out of the window. He looked tired again, she thought, and worried. The fine lines around his eyes were deeper and his lips were compressed in a tight line.
Willa placed her feet on the desk and nudged his thigh with her big toe. ‘Are you okay? You look played out.’
Rob picked up a glass paperweight and tossed it from hand to hand. ‘I just had to take my cousin to the airport. His wife and little girl—my goddaughter—have had a car accident and both are in hospital.’
Willa dropped her feet with a bang. ‘Oh, no! Are they okay?’
‘Kiley, their baby girl, is in for observation, and Heather has a broken collarbone and a couple of broken ribs. Lacerations. Obviously Patrick needs to be with them, so we raced to the airport and got him on the first flight out. I thought about going with him but he said that it’s not necessary; we have lots of family in Jo’burg to help out and there’s so much to do here.’
‘I’m sorry, Rob. I’m sure they’ll both be fine.’
A muscle ticked in Rob’s jaw as he stared out of the huge windows that overlooked the pool.
‘I know...and I really feel crap and selfish for thinking this...but...’ he dropped an F-bomb ‘...this couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I need Patrick here. He was wading through and more importantly understanding the minefield we’re negotiating to get these companies set up. I thought that the officials back home liked red tape, but your government is giving them a damn good run for their money. It s
hould be simple. I want to open a business, pay your exorbitant taxes, employ some of your people and make some money. Why does it have to be so frigging difficult?’
‘It’s not—’
Rob spoke over her. ‘Patrick won’t be back for weeks, and now I have to find someone I can work with in a city where I know no one. I suppose asking for someone I can trust would be like asking for moon dust.’
‘You know me. And you can trust me.’
‘I don’t trust anyone—and, sorry, but I don’t think you can help me out with this particular problem,’ Rob muttered, jumping off the desk to pace the area in front of the windows.
Willa glared at his back. ‘And what does that mean?’
Rob ignored her question, his mind millions of miles away. ‘Didn’t you say that your ex is a hotshot businessman? Who does he use?’
‘Excuse me?’ Willa managed to get the words out as a fine red mist descended in front of her eyes.
‘Who are his accountants? Come on—surely you know that much?’ Rob retorted, impatient.
Willa climbed to her feet, pulling in deep breaths as she struggled to hold on to her bubbling temper. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she gasped, feeling side-winded by his lack of sensitivity. And, worse, hurt. Dammit, she’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to allow men to hurt her any more! ‘You son of a bitch!’
‘What?’ Rob frowned. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘You! You’re my friggin’ problem! Asking me about Wayne’s connections! In between shagging me, did you even hear anything I said about what I studied? What I’d like to do?’ Willa shouted. Oh, wow, another part of her wondered, when had she last shouted? Lost her temper?
That would be, like, never.
‘You studied accounting... What’s that got to do with me?’ Rob asked.
Willa felt like launching the glass paperweight at his head. She waited until he’d connected the dots and then he looked puzzled.
‘Oh, come on, Willa—you don’t really think that you can take Patrick’s place?’
