Australian Bachelors, Sassy Brides

by Margaret Way

  Gideon looked into green eyes shining for him. He ran his hands the length of her arms, down over her elbows, and drew her hands into his own. He made himself warn her, so she could end this now if that was what she needed.

  ‘You know where this is headed, Callie?’

  ‘I know.’ Her lips softened on the acknowledgement. ‘I know where it’s headed, and I know what it will be and what it won’t be. Just this. You and me exploring this, once, so we know—so we can put our past to rest and go on in our futures with all questions answered. For those reasons, I want it—’

  Want was the right word for her to use. Want was the word he needed to hear from her—the only word he could give her in return. She’d made a sensible case of it—put it into words as well as he possibly could have done.

  So why did it leave an ache inside him as though it wasn’t what he needed to hear?

  Gideon pushed the question aside and looked down into Callie’s eyes.

  She squeezed his hands, and the sparkle in those green depths softened to sweet acceptance and desire as she read his acceptance and desire.

  ‘Come to bed, Gideon.’

  Gideon took Callie to bed. In one small part of herself Callie noticed the silence outside, knew she should be worrying about the damage out there, but all she could hear was the beat of her blood in her veins, all she could think about was her sweet need for the man who held her in his arms.

  ‘Let me see your beautiful body.’ Gideon drew the soft T-shirt over her head and tossed it aside, caught his breath as his gaze took in what he had revealed. ‘All the way to your navel…’

  His fingers, the palms of his hands, tracked over her breastbone, down across the cleft between the swell of her breasts in the lacy bra. Lower.

  ‘Freckles? You’re talking about my freckles?’ Her words were choppy, breathless. Her hands were at his shirt, fumbling with buttons until Gideon’s eyes blazed.

  When the shirt was gone, he gripped her hands in his and brought them up. As she touched his chest it expanded on one big, long inhalation.

  ‘Yes, I’m talking about your freckles. I wondered…’ His words trailed off and he gave his attention to exploring instead.

  Her bra disappeared in a soft rustle, and gentle hands worshipped her while those deep blue eyes held her gaze.

  ‘Actually, they go…’ She lost her focus as he unbuttoned her jeans, pushed the zipper down and drew them slowly, slowly down her thighs. His hands followed.

  ‘Yes. They go…’ His finger grazed the top of her panties and he growled low in the back of his throat. ‘Callie, you’re so beautiful. If I’d seen you then—’

  That, too, was clamped back. But she didn’t mind because she could see the rest of his statement in the eyes that burned for her.

  If they’d gone that little bit further than they actually had seven years ago this would have happened then. And she knew now that she wouldn’t have been ready. No matter what she might have thought or believed back then, she would not have been ready for the intensity of being with Gideon this way at that age.

  Maybe you should listen to that warning, Callie. Because how can you be so sure you’re ready even now?

  Maybe she wasn’t. The ache inside her chest told her she wasn’t. But there was no going back now. No matter how she felt when this ended, Callie didn’t want to—could not—go back.

  Resolve it. She had to resolve it. And yet her emotions were not feeling closer to being resolved. Even so, the words poured out. ‘I want this moment with you, Gid. Everything we can have in it.’ And at least she managed to add, with barely a quiver to her voice at all, ‘And no worries about tomorrow.’

  Whether she could believe them herself or not, her words should have reassured him. She’d thought they would. Maybe the clouding of his gaze was in her imagination…

  A moment later he blinked away whatever had been there. He kissed her long and deep, and his hands caressed her until all their clothes were gone and it was just Callie and Gideon on a bed in a room, loving each other, gazes locked. And whatever was there, was there.

  His mouth stole sweet kisses from her lips as he loved her over and over, brought her gently and inexorably to climax. His eyes filled with need and affection for her as he also reached his fulfilment.

  And Callie realised in that moment when Gideon found his release, and she found her own release, that she loved him. Really loved him. That her whole heart and all of what was inside her loved Gideon Deveraux. Not with the childish love of an eighteen-year-old, untried and uncertain of her ground, but with a mature love that sliced right through all her objections and concerns and simply yielded to what, to her heart, appeared to be completely inevitable.

  She was deeply in love with Gideon. Oh, why hadn’t she seen that coming in the way she’d felt when he’d called her name on the island two days ago? Why hadn’t she understood it when it had felt so right to be kissed by him in the abandoned cottage, and again, last night on the beach?

  If she’d understood, maybe she could have protected herself.

  And maybe you couldn’t have done a thing. You love him. You loved him seven years ago. That love stayed with you and grew up with you. How could you have hoped to stop yourself from feeling that way?

  ‘Callie?’ Gideon’s hands rubbed up and down over her arms. ‘Are you all right? I wasn’t…I’m not usually…I don’t—’ He broke off, didn’t seem to know how to articulate his thoughts.

  That made two of them, because Callie didn’t know what to say either. She had to take a great deal of care not to blurt out what was inside her. Those feelings were too intense, too strong. If she gave them to him he wouldn’t be able to receive them. She had to find a way to make them go away.

  Because this hadn’t been about that. This had been about resolving, not beginning. About closing, not opening.

  Callie shook her head and smiled as best she could through the knot of emotion and uncertainty and deep internal fear of what she had unleashed and now didn’t know how to leash again.

  ‘I’m fine. I hope you’re not going to ask me to regret what just happened, though, because I won’t do that.’

  Later, by herself, when she faced all that this had brought about in her, then, maybe she would have to regret it. If she could bring herself to do so.

  ‘How did you—?’ He closed his eyes in a long, slow blink. When they opened again, his hands were closed around the balls of her shoulders in a tender grip. ‘Come closer, Callie. Cuddle with me a while. I…I need to hold you.’

  Those words, that need, cut through her defences as nothing else could have. And for now at least Callie had lost any ability to distance herself, to start rebuilding her walls or shoring up her defences.

  She had burrowed deep into his arms before she’d realised she’d moved. He wrapped those strong arms hard around her, stroked his fingers through the tangle of her hair, and a deep sigh came from his chest.

  Gideon made love to Callie twice more before they finally slept. Slow, gentle loving that seemed right for her and felt right to him. He didn’t know why he needed that with her. He simply sensed it was something he must take care to give her.

  They drifted into sleep in each other’s arms and he felt…blessed. And more content and happy than he could remember feeling. He had never felt that way with Dianna.

  All Gideon knew was that his arms didn’t want to unlock from around her. That it wasn’t a case of being so content he didn’t want to let go. He couldn’t make himself let go. Possessiveness, yes, there was that inside him—a great deal more of it than he had any right to feel. Caveman instincts, maybe? He’d claimed her. He wanted the world to know she was his and he was…keeping her.

  But that was the thing.

  He wasn’t keeping her.

  They had this night and nothing more. Callie herself had made it clear that was all she expected or wanted. She’d made it clear this wasn’t about her heart.

  She’d made it clear this had
been a goodbye for her, a way of moving on, to lay the past to rest, their questions to rest, and go forward. Maybe into a relationship with a great guy who would be everything she needed.

  A chill started somewhere deep in Gideon. He drew the comforter over them and hugged Callie closer. He drifted to sleep with a thousand questions and no answers twisting through his insides, playing through the recesses of his mind.

  When Gideon woke, it was to shards of sunlight streaming into the room, emptiness beside him, and none of his questions resolved. His arms felt too light, as though they weren’t right because there wasn’t the weight of Callie within them.

  Instinct drove him out of the bed—drove him to search her out and not waste time doing it. He didn’t know what he would say when he found her, only that he had to find her.

  But he forced himself to take a quick shower, and then he yielded—to the instinct he understood, and the one he didn’t. He sought Callie out. He wished she had stayed all night in the haven of his arms.

  What kind of haven are you to her, Deveraux? You have nothing to offer her that she would need.

  He didn’t. Couldn’t.

  Could he?

  No. Last night the feelings that had washed through him as he’d held her in his arms must have simply been some random kind of overload. Maybe because he’d known her so long and they had almost made love once before.

  Well, he had to see Callie now. Talk to her. To say…Gideon didn’t know what.

  He slung a shirt over his trousers and made his way outside still buttoning it, because there was this sense of urgency that he couldn’t explain, could only act on.

  ‘The guest house survived with nothing worse than a couple of broken windows and some rain damage through the breaks. The gazebo is wrecked, but it’s insured.’

  Callie was in the garden. The area was flattened—covered in debris. She was dragging branches into a pile and focusing on it very thoroughly, so she didn’t have to focus on him.

  ‘I’ll get an assessor here as quickly as I can to deal with that.’

  ‘Those are too heavy for you.’ He stepped towards her. Wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, kiss her, take her back to bed or at least for starters tell her that one night together couldn’t possibly be enough.

  And where had that thought come from? More importantly, where did he go with it? They had agreed on one encounter, and even that had perhaps not been a particularly smart idea.

  He shouldn’t want more. Yet he did.

  Gideon reached out to help her with her burden. ‘Let me—’

  A crack sounded overhead and Callie gasped and leapt forward, shoved at him. And because it was so unexpected she actually managed to push him several feet. Her momentum sent her back with him.

  The tree limb that smashed to the ground behind them was twice the thickness of a human torso and about twelve feet in length.

  She turned her head from the sight and her arms clamped around Gideon’s middle. His arms came around her while they both drew a collective breath.

  ‘You could have been killed—’

  ‘You just saved my life—’

  They both stopped, and Callie truly realised the grip she had on him. A wash of memories from last night poured through her, and she dropped her arms and almost stumbled back as she put distance between them.

  Because that distance had to be there. She had to protect herself—her feelings. She’d decided that when she’d woken cuddled in his arms, when her heart had been first-thing-in-the-morning vulnerable and she’d wanted so much for him to love her and want her as she loved and wanted him.

  Because she did.

  Making love with him had only confirmed that fact for her, even though it was completely wrong and totally unhelpful to feel that way.

  So Callie had got up. She’d told herself she had to toughen up. As much as she could. To save herself. She had to let him go graciously or, at worst, without him seeing her feelings for him.

  ‘Callie—?’ Gideon’s voice was deep, his gaze on her intent.

  She wanted to read so much into his expression, but she couldn’t go there. Not when she knew she loved him, and knew equally that he didn’t share those feelings towards her. She’d looked into his eyes last night and wanted to see all sorts of things, but affection was exactly that—nothing more. Callie steeled her expression to guard her thoughts.

  Gideon searched Callie’s face, watched the emotions chase each other across her features until she became quite guarded.

  His chest ached as he acknowledged he was the reason for that guardedness. ‘I shouldn’t have made love—’

  ‘I did just save your life.’ Callie said it with a determination that seemed to come from deep inside her, as though she couldn’t bear to hear what he had been about to say.

  ‘Yes, you did save my life.’ He hadn’t been conscious of their surroundings, only of her. Now he realised that for him they had made love last night—not simply gone to bed together. His emotions—well, he wasn’t sure what had happened there. He knew only that protectiveness had once again risen in him as he thought how close Callie had just come to being harmed. ‘You put yourself in the path of danger in the process.’

  ‘I acted on instinct.’ Her face firmed into some kind of resolution. ‘Just as you must have the day you saved my uncle, when that tractor rolled and you leapt in to get him free so it didn’t roll on him.’

  That was true, he supposed. But…‘I don’t see the significance. I simply did what I had to do.’

  ‘You saved his life.’ Callie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, I just saved yours. By Reid’s code, that means we’re even. You’re free of any lingering sense of responsibility you might have felt for me. I’m setting you free, Gideon. We can end the chapter now. It’s—we can be finished now.’

  She was releasing him. Not only from that old feeling of obligation, but totally setting him free.

  So she could move on?

  Gideon’s chest felt odd, and he suddenly wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be released. ‘Callie—?’

  The phone in his pocket rang and he drew it out to shut it off. Later. The world could intrude later. Right now he needed to get to the bottom of this with Callie.

  ‘It’s Mary,’ he murmured, and reached to silence the ring tone.

  ‘She’s probably heard about the storm. She’ll be worried about the state of things here—and about me, I guess.’ Callie waited expectantly for him to answer the call.

  Gideon gave in to the inevitable. ‘Deveraux.’

  In fact it wasn’t Mary on the phone but MacKay Jones, and the news he had to impart was serious enough and concerning enough that Gideon had Callie’s arm in his grip and was moving her towards the guest house’s storm shelter before the call had ended.

  He barked questions into the phone, his gaze shifting left and right as he moved them, and he had Callie at the entry door to the storm cellar by the time he finally closed the phone with a snap and met her gaze.

  ‘Inside, Callie. I’m going to get some more food and rejoin you. Lock the door until I get back, and don’t open it without hearing my voice.’

  Three minutes later he closed himself inside the shelter with her, drew her away from the door area and into the kitchen, put the supplies into the fridge and met her gaze.

  ‘That’s only in case we’re here a long time. I doubt that will be the case. You understood most of that conversation I had with MacKay Jones?’

  ‘Someone took photos of the wedding and leaked them to the press, and that’s led to this man phoning Mac and making a threat against my life.’ Callie’s mouth pinched tight. ‘Who is it and what kind of—?’

  ‘It’s one man with a vendetta against the Joneses.’ Gideon explained what MacKay had told him. Andrew had made an enemy during his incarceration—an unstable man the police had been trying to track down for months now, for a list of recent crimes that would put him away for the rest of his life if they caught him. ‘Although the
media coverage of the wedding was respectful and positive. That’s one good thing to have come out of this.’

  ‘But the bad thing is this man is coming to the island?’ Callie suppressed a shiver.

  ‘Yes, but the authorities are also on their way. It’s proof of his instability that he phoned MacKay to state his intentions. Maybe a part of him is ready to be caught.’ Gideon closed his hands over her arms. ‘You’re safe here. All you need to do is stay here—wait it out.’

  ‘With you. I’m staying here with you.’ Callie sought his eyes with hers and her worried green gaze clung to them. ‘You mustn’t go out there or get involved. What I don’t understand is who leaked the photos in the first place. There’s no way any of Mac’s family would have done it. And we took such care.’

  Gideon lowered his hand until his fingers were wrapped around her wrist. ‘I may know. I have my suspicions, anyway.’

  Her brows drew down. ‘Who?’

  ‘Heather Stiller. She was angry at having her opportunity here taken away. I didn’t like the look in her eyes at the time, but I was distracted. I didn’t think about it as much as I should have, and I didn’t reassure her very well either.’

  ‘I didn’t actually see her leave.’ Callie drew a sharp breath. ‘Did you?’

  He shook his head. ‘She could have stayed back, or even made her way to the guest house to discuss the matter more—caught sight of Mac Kay, or other family members, recognised them, and realised she had a chance to be a bit spiteful by getting their photos to the press.’

  ‘That bounced back on her, then, if the coverage was positive.’

  ‘If it was her, she won’t be employed by any of my companies again after this.’ His thumb stroked over the skin of her inner wrist.

  ‘First the storm threat, and now this.’ Callie turned her head and soft curls brushed his face and neck.

  Gideon wanted to take her in his arms and bury his face and hands in that riot of colour, inhale the scent of her as he remembered…

  No. No remembering. No thinking about something that had happened that shouldn’t ever have happened. No longing to go there again.