Road Trip with the Eligible Bachelor

by Michelle Douglas

  He blinked.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, how outdated are you? That is one message I won’t be passing onto Chase and Robbie. You’re human, right? Men feel just as deeply about things as women. Or are you going to tell me all men are shallow brutes?’

  Nope. They weren’t. Well, not most of them anyway, though he had serious doubts about Phillip.

  ‘Bottling up grief like that makes everything bad. It doesn’t let us keep hold of the stuff that’s good.’

  ‘What’s good to be had from crying like that?’ he muttered.

  Even in the dark he could tell she’d fixed him with a ‘look’. He found himself having to fight a smile.

  She jumped up, refilled their glasses and handed him one. ‘You told me Danny was full of life, the life of the party and all that. Give me a specific example.’

  He blinked. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He took a sip of wine and found it soothed his throat. A sigh sneaked out of him. One example of Danny’s fun-ness, huh?

  The first memory hit him. Then a second. And then they flooded him, one after the other. Nights at the local with their mates. Fishing trips. Surfing. Lots of laughing. Fights that had ended in laughter too. Barbecues. Late night talks sitting over a nice bottle of single malt.

  He glanced at Quinn. She smiled and he found he could smile back without any effort at all. He knew then that he didn’t have to relay a single one of those memories—she knew. How? He thought about all she’d been through and promptly stopped wondering.

  ‘You must be tired.’

  Her words were a caress in the night. ‘You’d think so.’ She’d barely touched her wine. He suspected she wasn’t used to drinking. ‘But I’m not.’ He felt oddly invigorated. Besides, it couldn’t be much more than nine-thirty. ‘Danny and I used to have these late night talks. We’d discuss how we were going to save the world—him the politician and me the human rights lawyer.’

  The human rights lawyer.

  ‘Sounds nice.’

  His chest clenched. So did his hand. ‘You’re right, you know? He wouldn’t want me living his dream.’ Danny had possessed a heart as big as the Great Australian Bight. ‘He’d have wanted me to follow my own dreams.’ Danny had always cheered him from the sidelines.

  ‘I wish I’d known him. He sounds like a great guy.’

  It was the perfect thing to say. They stared at the stars for a while. ‘My parents won’t see it that way, though.’

  ‘No.’

  It was half-question, half-statement.

  She leant against him, shoulder to shoulder. ‘Are you going to try?’

  ‘I think I have to.’ But how? His mother’s pale, haggard face and haunted eyes rose in his mind. Who did he most owe his allegiance to—his parents or Danny?

  ‘You owe it to yourself,’ Quinn said quietly, and he realised he’d spoken his thought out loud.

  He didn’t trust that, though. Following his dream, doing what he wanted seemed wrong and selfish in the circumstances. Yet it was the path Danny would have urged him to take.

  ‘I take it your mother has been depressed, lethargic, hard to rouse?’

  He nodded, his heart heavy again. Helping out on his campaign had certainly roused her, though.

  ‘Have you ever considered the idea that behaving badly might rouse her more effectively than toeing the line?’

  His glass halted halfway to his mouth. He slanted her a sidelong look. ‘What are you talking about?’

  She lifted one shoulder. ‘If your mother thought that in your grief you were going off the rails...’

  ‘It’d only add to her worries.’ Surely?

  ‘Or it might give her something different to worry about—something she could actually act on and make a difference to.’

  She couldn’t do anything about Danny’s death, she couldn’t bring him back, but she could certainly pull Aidan back into line.

  ‘There’s a thread of deviousness in you, isn’t there?’

  ‘I know.’

  She puffed out her chest and it made him laugh. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking that maybe when you reach Adelaide, rather than catch the first available flight back to Sydney, what if you were seen out on the town, gambling and drinking? I’m not saying to actually do those things, but if it appeared as if you were...’

  * * *

  Quinn watched the implication of her idea ripple behind the smooth dark amber of Aidan’s eyes.

  ‘She’d be livid.’

  ‘Livid could be good,’ she offered. ‘It’s better than apathy.’

  ‘If I could somehow help her remember the good stuff too...’

  He turned to her and his face was so vulnerable in the starlight she wanted to hug him. He was such a good man. ‘She won’t forget her grief, Aidan. Just like you won’t forget yours.’ They’d carry it always and there’d still be bad days. She hoped he knew that. ‘But hopefully she’ll learn to live with it.’

  ‘You helped me get rid of something dark and heavy inside me, Quinn, that I didn’t even realise I was carrying around.’

  ‘You’d been pushing your grief back to focus on your parents’ needs instead.’ No wonder he’d been ready to explode. Who’d been looking after his needs?

  ‘And you think if I force my mother to focus on me instead of her grief, that it might help her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know your mother, but I thought it might be worth a try. What do you think?’

  He stared at the fire. ‘I think it might be worth a try too.’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Going off the rails, huh?’

  He grinned. It made her heart chug. She set down her glass. The wine was obviously going to her head.

  ‘You left out one important element in your little “going off the rails” scenario, Quinn.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘An inappropriate woman draped on my arm.’

  His grin deepened and she knew she was in trouble. She did what she could to swallow back a knot of excitement. ‘Do you really think that’s necessary?’

  ‘Absolutely! Drinking, gambling and carousing with wild women won’t do my campaign any good.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘What?’ he eventually said.

  ‘You seem to think your mother will only be worried about your campaign and the damage you might do to it.’

  He glanced away.

  Didn’t he think his mother would be worried about him on a personal level? She understood that some people found it hard to separate the personal and professional, but what did a job matter when it came to a loved one’s mental and emotional health and their—?

  She broke off, remembering the world he came from—a world where duty and position and prominence were more important than loving your family.

  ‘If I’m going to do this, Quinn, I mean to do it big.’

  So he couldn’t turn back? She understood that—way down deep inside her in a place she didn’t want to look at too closely. He wanted to give his mother an almighty jolt and he wanted to sabotage his campaign at the same time. Two birds. One stone. She felt suddenly uneasy, though she couldn’t explain why.

  ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘You want me to be that wild woman on your arm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She wasn’t opposed to helping him. She and the boys had plenty of time to dilly-dally. ‘Tell me what it would entail.’

  He drummed his fingers against his thigh. ‘It’d mean spending a couple of nights carousing on the town. So...three nights all up in Adelaide.’

  ‘Okay.’ That was manageable. ‘What about the boys? I don’t want them in the papers.’ She and Aidan wouldn’t make front-page headlines, but they’d make the social pages.

  ‘We can shield them. And we can do fun stuff with them through the day too,’ he added, unprompted. It turned her heart to jelly. ‘There’s a zoo. And I bet they’d love the Adelaide Gaol Museum, not to mention the Haigh’s Chocolate
visitor centre. And there’s this fabulous aquatic centre with slides and caves and all sorts of things.’

  He cared about making her boys happy. She knew then that she wouldn’t be able to refuse him.

  Not that you ever intended to.

  ‘We’ll stay somewhere upmarket that has a babysitting service.’ He straightened and pinned her with his gaze. ‘And I’ll be covering all the expenses in Adelaide. That’s non-negotiable.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not exactly penniless, you know? I have enough to cover it.’

  ‘You might not be penniless, but you’re understandably careful with your money. Besides, given the choice, you wouldn’t stay in an upmarket motel. Also, you’re doing this as a favour to me so I’m paying.’

  She planted her hands on her hips. ‘On one condition.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘That you don’t pay for my car rental.’ He’d paid for all of their fuel so far and she’d figured that was a good enough deal.

  He’d started to turn away but he swung back. ‘How’d you know I was going to do that?’

  ‘Oh, Aidan Fairhall, you are as see-through as glass.’

  He thrust his jaw out. ‘I am not!’

  She just laughed.

  His jaw lowered. ‘All right then, you might see through me but most people don’t.’

  She’d give him that. Most people, she suspected, only saw what they wanted where Aidan was concerned.

  ‘Okay,’ he grumbled. ‘You have yourself a deal.’

  He held out his hand. She placed hers in it and they shook on it. He didn’t release her. ‘Thank you, Quinn. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.’

  She opened her mouth to tell him to try, but realised that might be construed as flirting. Her reckless self lifted its head and stretched. She cleared her throat. ‘You’re welcome.’

  One side of his mouth hooked up in a slow, slightly wicked smile. He still held her hand. ‘I’m looking forward to hitting the town with you.’

  She should pull her hand free. ‘Why?’

  He tugged her a little closer and her reckless side shimmied. ‘Do you dance?’

  Her breath caught in her chest, making her heart thud. ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘I’m better,’ he promised.

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘What’s your favourite cocktail?’

  ‘A Margarita. Yours?’

  ‘A whiskey sour.’

  His thumb caressed the soft skin at her wrist. ‘Can you play blackjack?’

  ‘With the best of them.’ The nearest she’d come to gambling was the odd flutter on the Melbourne Cup. ‘Although I prefer roulette.’

  ‘I’m going to take you out dancing and gambling and drinking.’

  ‘And I’m going to hang off your arm and gaze up at you adoringly. And I’m going to laugh and tease you and be every kind of a temptress I can think of.’ His mother would have a fit.

  ‘And I’m going to kiss you.’

  And then his mouth came down on hers in the dark of the night, hot and demanding, and it stole her breath. His kiss wasn’t polite or quiet. It was dark and thrilling and she threw all sense of caution to the wind, winding her arms about his neck and kissing him back.

  He pulled her in closer, trapping her between lean, powerful thighs, and deepened the kiss. She didn’t resist. His hands curved about her hips and explored them completely, boldly and oh-so-impolitely. She moved against him restlessly as the thrill became a dark throb in her blood. Thrusting her hands into his hair, she held him still to thoroughly explore a mouth that set her on fire, inciting him to further bold explorations of her body with hands that seemed to know exactly what she craved.

  Aidan’s kiss made her feel impulsive and young.

  It made her feel beautiful.

  It made her feel like a woman.

  She wanted him, fiercely and deeply, as if his lovemaking would be an antidote to some secret hidden pain she carried inside her.

  She broke off to gulp air into starved lungs. His lips found her throat—no butterfly whispers here, just hot, wet grazes and suckles that built the inferno growing inside her. His hands were beneath her dress. They were beneath her panties, cupping her bare buttocks, kneading and pleasing and building that inferno. Her hands went to the waistband of his shorts—

  Wait.

  No, no, she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to lose herself in sheer sensation. She wanted to forget her troubles and soar away in mindless and delirious pleasure. Oh, please let her...

  Ask the question.

  She froze. Aidan’s clever, heat-inducing, pleasure-seeking fingers started to move and she knew that in a moment she would be lost. Totally and completely.

  With a groan of pure frustration, she slapped her hands over the top of his, the fabric of her dress between them.

  He stared up at her. ‘Oh, God, Quinn. Please don’t pull back now.’

  ‘I have to ask a question.’

  ‘Ask away.’ His breathing was as ragged and uneven as hers.

  ‘Not of you, of me.’

  She pulled his hands out from beneath her dress. She stumbled back over to the blanket and lowered herself to it, drawing up her knees and wrapping her arms around them. Aidan didn’t move. She could still taste him on her tongue. She needed a drink of water, but she didn’t want to wash the taste of him away.

  ‘What’s the question, Quinn?’

  The question scared the beejeebies out of her. ‘Would I be prepared to fall pregnant to you?’

  Although the fire was now completely out, she saw the way he rocked back at her words. She didn’t blame him.

  ‘You see, twice now I’ve fallen pregnant without meaning to. When precautions had been taken. So I’ve had to make this my default position.’ It played havoc with her sex life.

  Her non-existent sex life.

  He came to sit on the blanket too. But not too close. ‘Wow.’

  ‘You should ask it of yourself too—would you be prepared to make love with me if it would result in me getting pregnant?’

  She couldn’t read his eyes. She suddenly laughed. ‘Boy, wouldn’t that throw a spanner in your campaign?’

  He didn’t laugh.

  ‘But I don’t think we want to scare your mother that much.’

  ‘Quinn...’

  When he didn’t go on she pulled in a breath. ‘I like babies and I like you, Aidan, but I’m not prepared to get pregnant to you.’ She would never again give a man the chance to accuse her of ruining his life.

  He moved in closer. ‘We wouldn’t have to...you know. We could improvise, set boundaries and rules.’

  She edged back. ‘No, we couldn’t. That kind of passion—’ she gestured over towards the boulder ‘—is dangerous. Boundaries get crossed and rules get broken. And in the heat of the moment neither one of us would care.’

  And she’d woken up before to the cold, hard light of day.

  ‘Maybe I’d risk it if I’d been on the Pill for three months and had a diaphragm and spermicide cream with me and you used a condom, but...’

  ‘I don’t even have a condom!’ He sat back with a curse. She didn’t blame him.

  ‘Aidan, if you want me to play the role of wild woman in Adelaide then you have to promise me that won’t happen again.’

  Even in the darkness she could see the way his eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’

  She could almost see his mind ticking over—there were condoms and diaphragms and spermicide creams and any number of things available in the city.

  ‘Because we’re from different worlds, that’s why not. We—us—are not going to happen. It can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re all corporate meetings and flash hotel suites. I’m P & C committees and bedtime stories.’

  ‘Lawyers and politicians have kids.’

  ‘Not with me, they don’t.’ Not when they worked eighty-hour weeks.
‘What would your parents say?’

  That shut him up. She twisted her hands together. ‘I mean after Adelaide we won’t even see each other again.’

  ‘So we’re not even friends?’

  Friends? She swallowed. ‘We’re just ships in the night.’

  ‘Without the benefits,’ he bit out and she had to close her eyes and give her reckless self a stern talking to.

  ‘Adelaide,’ she croaked. ‘Are we on the same page?’

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally he nodded. ‘Publicly affectionate but hands off in private.’

  A quick kiss dropped to the lips or pressed to the cheek was very different to—

  Don’t think about it!

  ‘I’m glad that’s settled.’ But she had to force the words out from between gritted teeth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TWO DAYS LATER, Quinn stretched out on the five-star comfort of a queen bed and let out a low satisfied groan. She, the boys and Aidan had spent the majority of the day at the aquatic park. The boys had had a blast on the water slides. So had Aidan.

  And so had she, though she didn’t doubt for a single moment that she deserved a mid-afternoon rest. Somehow she’d managed to keep her hands to herself and her mind mostly on the boys rather than with fantasies filled with Aidan, which was no small feat considering he’d been parading around in his board shorts for most of the day.

  Robbie abandoned his Gameboy to climb up onto the bed beside her. The door to the boys’ adjoining twin room stood wide open. Rather than watch television in their own room, however, they’d chosen to settle in her room to play their Gameboys.

  ‘It’s been the funnest day,’ he said, nestling in beside her.

  ‘It has, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Is there a water park in Pokolbin?’

  She shook her head and watched carefully to see if his face fell. It did a bit.

  Chase climbed up onto the bed too. ‘I love holidays! What are we going to do tomorrow?’

  She opened her free arm so he could snuggle in against her too. ‘Well, now, if you two let me have a sleep-in, maybe we could see our way to visiting the zoo.’