by Ally Blake
Things couldn’t get any worse for her reputation. She grabbed Dylan by the hand and snuck him through the crowd as fast as she could until she found a neat spot behind a manicured conifer in the courtyard outside where the decadent light didn’t touch.
‘Are you okay?’ Dylan asked, a hand reaching out to cradle her elbow.
‘I’m fine. But I’m not the one who just got myself into a round of fisticuffs.’
Dylan’s tongue darted out to the now blood-free spot and Wynnie struggled to stop staring. Such beautifully carved lips, so adept at smiling, so built for kissing. Now marred by a swelling bruise created in an effort to protect her, his lips were even more intoxicating.
‘What were you thinking back there?’ she asked, looking back into his eyes, only to find that out there in the darkness they were an even scarier proposition than those lips.
‘Garry Sloane’s a cretin.’
‘That’s not an answer.’ He was far too self-aware to fly off the handle for no good reason.
Though what did she know about him really? He was one of the coolest customers she’d ever known. She wasn’t sure his own mother would even be able to decipher one of his smiles, a cheek twitch or a rare flinch.
Oh, what she would have given for a key to those expressions. To know if the man she thought he was might be even close to the truth. To know if the way she felt about him was founded on anything but imprudent desire.
‘Dylan,’ she begged, instantly regretting the longing twinge in her voice nobody would mistake.
The hand at her elbow moved up her arm, sliding the red silk against her overheated skin. ‘Believe me, whatever Sloane wanted from you, don’t let him have it. I wouldn’t wish the guy on my worst enemy.’
Wynnie planted her backside against the mossy concrete planter box, and Dylan’s hand fell away. The seat was cold through her dress. She snuck her hands down to grip it all the same. ‘Is that how you think of me? As your enemy?’
He kicked the toe of his dress shoe against the concrete, and his lips curved into a sexy half-smile. ‘What makes you think I think of you at all?’
Her heart skittered manically in her chest at the same time that the rest of her grew warm and loose.
She stretched her shoulders back until the muscles in her arms gave her a pleasant kind of hurt. ‘If you didn’t think of me a little bit it would mean that I’m in the wrong job. And my salary, the corporate headhunters who have me on speed dial and my gut tell me I’m exactly where I should be.’
Shreds of moonlight poked through the tree behind her, picking out his sharp white incisors as his smile grew.
He snuck a hand into his trouser pocket and leant down to her. ‘Fine. I think about you plenty. More than I think you’d really like to know. Happy?’
Happy? Not so much happy as tipped upside down and turned inside out.
He grinned, then swore mightily and spun away to press the back of his hand against the split in his lip that he’d just reopened. The split lip he’d endured because of her.
She stood, her silk dress made a horrible sound as it separated from the concrete. It’d be pilled to bits. Thankfully, like every piece of clothing she owned, it was a designer second and had already lived a worthwhile life.
In her high heels her eyes were level with his mouth. His tongue darted out to his lip, and he winced. Again a mix of guilt and desire had her reaching to touch the wound, but this time common sense came to the rescue and her finger stopped short of its mark.
He took her fingers and gently urged her to do as she pleased. Wrapped in his warm grasp, her finger traced the contour of his lip, slowly, carefully, sliding over the bruised bump.
When his hand dropped away, hers continued its path—mapping the indent of his cheek, running over the edge of his sharp jaw, tracing the line where subtle stubble met the smooth skin of his throat, and finishing by sliding into the soft darker hair at the base of his neck.
There she finally came to her senses, her fingers curling into her palm as she pulled it away, but the warmth of his skin and the texture of his wholly masculine roughness were stained onto her tingling fingers for good.
She looked down at her purse as she said, ‘Your lip will feel much better much quicker if you get ice onto it as soon as possible.’
‘I suppose so. Where would you suggest I find some ice at this time of night?’
She sucked in a deep breath through her nose, ignored the red flag waving madly in the back of her mind and looked him in the eye as she said, ‘How does my place sound?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
WYNNIE opened the small cabinet behind the mirror in her bathroom in the hopes she would find something there which might warrant the fact that, rather than asking Dylan’s driver to take him to the hospital, she’d brought him home.
After madly text-messaging Hannah, explaining she’d found her own way home, she’d left Dylan sitting in her small lounge room, draped over her rented chocolate leather couch with its so-new-it-still-had-a-tag-attached red angora throw rug, his shirt undone at the collar, his bow tie dangling from his neck, holding his Scotch on ice to his lip.
She drew in a shaky breath. Could a guy seriously be any sexier if he tried? Maybe that was why he was so sexy. He didn’t have to try. It just oozed from his very pores. And he was sitting in her lounge room…
Eventually she came out of the closet with make-up-remover wipes, antiseptic cream that had travelled with her over three continents and was probably out of date and Band-Aids with butterfly pictures on them, which she’d been a sucker and spent a third more on than the plain ones when she’d done her first Brisbane grocery shop.
She closed the cupboard door and caught her reflection in the mirror. Hair that earlier had been sleek waves was mussed, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Her hours-old make-up was less than perfect, smudged about her muddy brown eyes making them look huge. And she looked tired. Tired and wired.
Wired because on the interminable town-car ride to her house she’d realised that even though Dylan had arrived at the exact right moment to get her away from Sloane, it wouldn’t be long before he came after her again.
Leaving town was one hell of a strong option. Not facing Sloane meant keeping her anonymity, and protecting Felix—wherever he was. But she’d be letting so many people down. She’d not get the chance to continue rekindling the only real adult friendship she’d ever had or to experience a Brisbane summer after so many winters in Europe. It all felt like a cruel joke.
Not to mention the fact that she’d be walking away from the man currently pacing around her small lounge room. The man who’d leapt to her defence without thought of what it might cost him.
She heard a noise from outside the bathroom, and flinched. Had the noise been a door shutting? Had he gone? No. There was music. He’d found her miserably small CD collection in a drawer of her coffee table. Sting crooned from her rented speakers.
Out there making himself at home was a man brimming with power, self-esteem, brutal sexual energy. She wanted so badly to know what he tasted like, her own lips tasted sweet and salty.
She wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight anyway.
‘What the hell am I thinking?’ she begged of her reflection.
It practically smirked back at her. She’d brought this on herself. She’d flirted, and pushed, and prodded and made herself a part of his world, so that he had no chance but to notice her above and beyond the hundred odd fresh-faced souls who begged him for face time each and every day. And now he’d noticed her, all right. Now she had every chance of getting up close and personal.
But she wouldn’t count her chickens. This might turn out to all be blissfully innocent. She might patch him up, then he might happily go on his way. And a pig might fly into her lounge room and offer to make them both cups of chamomile tea.
‘No time like the present to find out,’ she said. Then ducked her head, grabbed her medicinal paraphernalia, took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.
Dylan sat on Wynnie’s couch, downing the last of his Scotch as he waited for her to return from wherever it was she’d been hiding.
His eyes glanced over blonde-wood floors, windows looking out over a lush backyard, lashings of moonlight spilling inside creating silver swatches on the floor, and fat gold beeswax candles burning discreetly on a bunch of surfaces.
As far as he could tell there was not another light on in the house. If he didn’t know her as well as he already did he might have thought this a scene fit for seduction rather than frugal energy use. As it was, it only made him smile.
The woman might have enough darkness in her past to need to go by an alias, but at least she was no hypocrite.
He stared into the melting ice in his glass and frowned. Why did that suddenly feel like an important discovery considering the mound of concrete, black-and-white evidence he’d collected on her already?
Just as Dylan was about to call in a search party, Wynnie reappeared.
She’d changed from her slinky red dress, half the reason he hadn’t been able to keep his damn eyes and hands and thoughts off her all night, into loose grey track pants and an even more shapeless red sweatshirt. She’d discarded the sexy high heels in lieu of bare feet.
He bit back a grin. She was so obviously trying her dandiest to appear asexual, but it just wasn’t working. Little did she know the pants clung to the curve of her buttocks as she walked, and that the red sweater had slipped off her right shoulder just enough that he could see the edge of a white lace bra strap. The hint of what lay beneath was even sexier than the blatant, smack down, luscious, clingy number that had had him in such a state all night long.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said.
‘It belongs to the CFC—they’re letting me stay here for the meantime. It was built green. Solar panels, shaded windows, double-glazed glass and the like.’
‘Candles included?’
In the silver light of the moon he could still tell her cheeks had pinked. ‘They’re all mine.’
‘Oh, and your phone beeped while you were in there,’ Dylan said as she knelt on the other side of the coffee table.
Her golden eyes shot to his. ‘Did you check it?’
He laughed, then sat forward, cradling his still-throbbing mouth. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’
‘I’m sure I have no idea.’
She laid out a strange collection of wares on the coffee table. His bruise gave a sharp little pulse as he realised she wasn’t as pedantically organised domestically as she was professionally—another insignificant snippet that felt as if it held more weight than it ought to have when compared with Jack’s discoveries.
He poked his finger at a Band-Aid with a pink butterfly upon it. ‘Suddenly I feel a desperate need to know what kind of men you usually bring back to your place to…soothe.’
She afforded him a blank stare. ‘Alas your need will remain unassuaged.’
He could have taken that line so many ways. The minx. He laughed again, his lip hurt more, and this time it was followed by a pretty rambunctious oath. ‘Jeez, woman. Stop making me laugh and heal me.’
He left his now-watery Scotch behind and lay back on the couch, one leg resting on the seat, the other foot still connected to the floor, his far arm tucked behind his head.
She cleared her throat, a small pucker formed between her brows, telling him at least she planned on trying to do a good job of nursemaid.
Her teeth began tugging at her bottom lip leaving in their wake a sheen that turned his whole body to stone.
‘Relax,’ she insisted, her voice anything but. ‘I’ll be with you in just a sec.’
He closed his eyes and tried to do as he was told.
Not as though that was in any way why he was there. Or why she had invited him there. Meaning they were both unhinged.
Now he knew without a doubt that she had agendas above and beyond those she espoused, he ought to have washed his hands of her for good—Wynnie Devereaux, or Guinevere Lambert or whoever she was.
And then bloody Garry Sloane had oozed up from the gutter and pounced.
The second he’d overheard that bastard of all the possible bastards call her by her real name, his instinct had sent him flying in there like a frenzied whirlwind.
True, he’d hired Jack to uncover the skeletons in her closet in case he might one day need to use them to protect his own interests. No altruism at all, pure self-protection. That was why he should have swept her away from Sloane.
But watching her standing there, panic and pain lighting her eyes as her past was about to be spilled on the floor at her feet, he’d imagined how it would feel if someone like Sloane stumbled upon the truth of his father’s failing health, how exposing that news would hurt his family, how it would cut him to the bone…
Blinded by completely soft-headed empathy, he had only been able to think of saving Wynnie from that kind of hurt.
He blamed those eyes, those damned, compassionate, big, liquid-brown eyes. It seemed in searching for her Achilles’ heel, he’d only ended up exposing his own.
A wave of warmth washed over him, followed by the gentle draw of her floral scent. He opened one eye to find her leaning over him.
She squeezed a big gloop of cream onto an oversized cotton swab-like thing, and Dylan wondered if he ought to ask for a spoon to bite down on before she got any closer.
‘So how did you end up working for the CFC?’ he asked.
The swab hovered. She’d refused to answer a similar question before. But something made her change her mind. ‘My friend Hannah, you met her tonight, she works for their legal department. They needed a campaign. A new image. She begged me to head it up. I loved the concept to bits. I couldn’t say no.’
‘Why would you have wanted to?’
She sat back on her haunches and her eyes shot to his. Now he knew where her vulnerability and motivation both sprang from, the caution that masked every word out of her mouth was as clear as day.
‘I enjoy living abroad.’ She reached out to him, dabbing at his lip, and the cold of the cream actually felt nice.
‘Verona, right?’ he said between dabs.
She tensed, and pressed slightly too hard against his lip. He flinched and so did she. ‘You’ve asked around about me?’
He bit his tongue. ‘Someone mentioned it in passing. Something to do with encouraging the good folk thereabouts to give generously to help renovate the Arena. Wasn’t it once a colosseum? All lions and gladiators battling to the death? Not the kind of place I would imagine a big softie like you getting all het up about.’
‘Every inch of this planet has at one time or another been a place of bloodshed and bad decisions. The nice part about being enlightened is that we can hopefully learn from our mistakes and aim to do better.’
His chest rumbled with laughter. ‘Now if that isn’t a stump speech you’ve said a hundred times before, I don’t know what is. I can’t believe you’re trying to sell your proposal to me now, while I’m lying here bleeding.’
‘You’re not bleeding,’ she scoffed, not denying his accusation. ‘I’m actually beginning to wonder if he hit you at all or if you just got a fright and bit your lip.’
He laughed all the harder and his lip stung so much he licked it to taste blood. He glared at her, to find her biting her own lip to stop from laughing.
‘Anyway, you brought it up,’ she said, ‘and it’s not like your every waking minute isn’t taken up with finding ways to make people believe that putting their faith in KInG is all they’ll ever need.’
He licked his lip again and realised her gauze was just waving in the breeze as her eyes were locked on his lip, his tongue. He gave his lip one last swipe, her eyes following it precisely, before putting it away. He wondered if she had any clue how many waking minutes over the past days had been dedicated entirely to her.
He pushed himself up on his elbow. ‘So if you don’t own this place, where do you have your money investe
d?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said waggling a finger at him. ‘You are not going to sell me on investing with KInG.’
‘There are no rules with what you and I are doing, Wynnie. That’s the fun part—we get to make it up as we go along.’
She blinked, weighing his words. ‘Fine. My money’s in the bank.’
‘Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a smart thing to do. To protect yourself, you need to hedge your investments. Diversify.’
She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and grew very still. He searched her eyes, looking for clues as to what she was thinking now that he had more pieces of the puzzle.
But all he got was the distinct feeling that she had already figured him out long before he came close to figuring her out. That she might actually be wondering how soon he might need to ‘diversify’ if anything actually happened between the two of them.
‘Stop talking and lie down or we’ll never get you out of here,’ she said, pressing his chest until he did as he was told.
But as he gazed into her hot honey eyes he knew, once and for all, that there was no ‘if’ about it. The only question was when.
She tucked a swathe of her mussed dark hair behind her ear, and her brow tightened in concentration as she sat up on her knees and gingerly angled some kind of cold, wet bandage over his lip, her stomach pressing into his free arm as she twisted, the lower part of her breasts sliding over his ribcage as she twisted again.
Seriously, how was a man to bear it?
Wynnie patted Dylan’s lip as gingerly as she could. It wasn’t as though she had a single clue if what she was doing was really helping, but he wasn’t complaining, or telling her she was doing it wrong, so she must have been doing something right.
The wound wasn’t as bad as it had first seemed. Some swelling, which the iced drink had taken down. And she was fairly sure a bruise would arrive through the night. But it, thankfully, didn’t require a butterfly Band-Aid.
Tending it, on the other hand, was sweet agony.
His clean scent, his hard body reposed beneath her, and those lips tugging beneath her gentle fingers. If she ever truly required punishment for mistakes of her past, then this was it—the impossibility of wanting Dylan Kelly and the enduring ache it left in the region of her heart.
