‘So?’ he asked, mentally crossing his fingers.
‘Well,’ Sherry pondered, ‘I suppose it would be all right. But, whatever you do, if James asks, you’re paying rent. He throws a wobbly if I let girlfriends have a freebie holiday here. He’d go ballistic if he thought I was letting a man stay here for free. Let alone a man who makes love to me so spectacularly.’ Sherry lowered her eyelashes coyly, now rotating a fingernail around his midriff, as if choosing her spot.
Adam gulped, his mind boggling at what a ballistic husband with a shotgun would do if he did find out he was sleeping with his wife, spectacularly or any other way. He wouldn’t have any trouble choosing his spot. Adam had no doubt about that.
‘You don’t have to pay rent, of course.’ Sherry plumped for his jaw, her nail possibly giving him a closer shave than his razor had. ‘You can pay me in kind. And …’
She grazed the long red-painted nail slowly from his chin to his torso.
‘… as you are here.’
Crap! Adam caught her hand as she hooked the nail over his waistband. ‘Sherry,’ he said, wondering how to tell her he’d rather have a bacon sandwich without hurting her feelings, ‘I, er … It’s a bit early, don’t you think?’
‘What, for Mr Ever-ready?’ She looked at him as if he’d just announced he was celibate, and reached for the button on his jeans.
‘Sherry.’ He caught her hands firmly. ‘I’m really not up to it.’
‘Not up to it?’ She looked at him bemusedly. ‘I thought you were the local Casanova, ready to fulfil a woman’s every desire at the drop of a hat.’
‘I am, usually,’ Adam assured her, though he was definitely beginning to feel a little less ever-ready.
‘But not this morning?’ Sherry huffed up her magnificent breasts. But tempting though they were, Adam really didn’t have the heart. Even though Sienna had ‘hired’ him, and bloody well paid him – a surge of humiliation flashed through him – after making love with her, all this seemed tacky. Soulless, somehow.
Sherry planted her hands on her hips, clearly peeved. ‘So you wouldn’t be interested if I offered you a blowjob then?’
Ouch! That was below the belt.
Adam looked her over, noting that flicker of vulnerability in her eyes he’d seen once before, and felt like a complete heel. ‘I’d be more than interested, Sherry,’ he said softly, ‘normally. You’re amazing, truly. It’s just … I have the mother of all migraines coming on.’
‘Oh, no.’ Sherry knitted her brow sympathetically.
‘Sorry.’ Adam smiled weakly and massaged his temples. ‘I’d much rather take you to bed, but I really do think I need to lie down on my own.’
‘Poor you.’ Sherry brushed his cheek with her hand. ‘You should have said. I wouldn’t have stood here wittering on ten to the dozen, if you had. Go on, you go and tuck yourself up,’ she said, genuinely concerned, which made Adam feel even worse. ‘I’ll bring you some tea.’
‘No,’ Adam said quickly. ‘I, er, don’t think I fancy even that. I’ll just go and …’ He nodded towards the stairs, thinking he really might need to lie down. He’d just been offered a blowjob and he’d said thanks, but no thanks?
Clearly bored with Saturday morning TV, Lauren wandered into the kitchen to peer over Sienna’s shoulder at her PC. ‘He put his warm tongue where?’
‘Stop it,’ Sienna hissed, scrunching her shoulders forward to cover her screen.
‘What’s the matter with you? You’re writing a script,’ Lauren pointed out. ‘You’re not going to sell it if you don’t want people to read it.’
‘It’s not ready to share yet,’ Sienna said, her cheeks burning as she realised Lauren was still helping herself anyway. ‘I’m still trying to work my characters out.’
‘Looks like your characters are having a thorough workout from where I’m standing.’ Lauren leaned closer. ‘Did he really do that?’
Sienna squirmed in her seat, embarrassed. ‘He’s a fictional character, Lauren,’ she informed her, doing her best to look pious.
‘’Course he is.’ Lauren smirked knowingly and read on – out loud, to Sienna’s mortification. ‘Thumb now expertly circling … sucking and tenderly biting. Was he? Tender?’ She glanced sideways at Sienna.
Sienna refused to elucidate, but she couldn’t quite hide her smile.
Lauren read on, ‘I won’t hurt you. If I do, tell me to stop. Okay? Aw, bless.’ She sighed dreamily, and read on, ‘Open your eyes, Melissa. I want to see you.’
Lauren sniffled. ‘I think I may cry. Melissa doesn’t suit you, though, Sienna. You need to change that. Shove over.’
Her bottom perched next to Sienna, Lauren blinked and peered closer. ‘Slowly increasing the pace, his eyes on hers, building the momentum, until he felt so incredibly deep … she whimpered, as he picked up the tempo, thrusting still deeper, and deeper… Bloody hell, Sienna!’ Lauren fanned her face. ‘He really does know what he’s doing, doesn’t he?’
Sienna answered with a long, wistful sigh.
‘Well, okay, I can see what you see in him, I suppose,’ Lauren conceded, then eyes wide, she read on, ‘… undulating … thrust for thrust … wanted him to enjoy it, even if he did get … PAID for it!’
Lauren paused. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at Sienna. Her expression tight, she continued to read instead, ‘pulled away from her, climbed off the bed, discarded the used condom and proceeded to get dressed.’
Lauren stopped, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled so hard her nostrils flared. ‘Bastard,’ she said, standing abruptly.
‘Lauren, it’s fiction,’ Sienna called as her friend stomped out of the kitchen, falling over a disgruntled Tobias in the process.
‘It’s not true, Lauren!’ Sienna tried again. ‘Lauren, where are you going?’
‘Electrodes,’ Lauren supplied. ‘I’m going to ask Nathaniel if I can borrow some from the workshop and then I’m going to find Adam and attach them.’
Adam waited until Sherry had driven off and then went back downstairs, now feeling incredibly guilty. He doubted Sherry would have offered him the use of the cottage if she’d realised he actually wasn’t interested in using it for anything other than sleeping in. He genuinely wasn’t either. He felt about as capable of drumming up the enthusiasm for sex as he could for swimming the channel.
‘Yeah, yeah, you can gloat,’ he addressed his ghost, which now seemed to be doing just that, ghosting his every bloody step. The sadness he usually felt emanating from her wasn’t so overwhelmingly intense, though, he noted. What did she want? Why did she seem to be appearing more and more through this whole mess with Sienna? A mess he’d created, but which, yet again, meant he was losing people he cared for. He sensed she needed something, but he still had no real clue what.
Blimey, he was talking to it now. Adam shook his head, and then addressed the product of his imagination again. ‘You’re not here,’ he told it, walking towards the mist, defiantly through it, and then stopping dead. He could smell her. Emily. He tugged his shirt to his face; breathed the unmistakeable scent of her. The perfume she wore. The same perfume he’d bought for her and which had clung to his clothes for hours after he’d seen her. Nuts. He was going nuts. There was no other explanation. She wasn’t here.
Adam could still feel her, sense her, watching him. He didn’t turn around.
He needed to sleep, he told himself firmly, but headed for the kitchen instead. He needed at least one night’s dream-free, Emily-free, unbroken sleep. Yet he knew he couldn’t sleep here. Taking advantage of Sherry’s hospitality under the circumstances would definitely be taking the proverbial. He’d have to find an excuse and find somewhere else, he realised. He should never have accepted the key, which in itself must have looked like some kind of long-term commitment, however loose a commitment, to Sherry.
So when did he grow a conscience, he pondered as he opened the fridge, retrieving the bacon – and deciding he’d rather have a beer. When he’d made love wit
h Sienna. Slept with, he corrected himself.
He’d thought he’d had everything he wanted, sex in abundance, no complications – though shotgun wielding husbands might come under the heading complication, he supposed. He could come and go as he pleased. Have a drink when he chose to. It suited him. So, why did his life feel so hollow? Adam reached for the beer. He’d stop at two, he promised himself. Why did this all feel so distasteful, and why did he suddenly want to see Lily-Grace, put roots down? Hadn’t his last attempt to do that almost destroyed him?
Wasn’t going to happen, though, was it? Nicole had obviously had second thoughts and women seemed only to want him for his body. Smiling ironically, he knocked back his beer. Must be worth having, after all, he supposed; the only part of him worth having. A conclusion Sienna had quickly come to. She paid him, for pity’s sake!
Stuff it. He downed the rest of the can. Who cared? You could love someone with your whole bloody heart and soul. He had. And look where that had got him. Hadn’t he found out the hard way that happy endings don’t exist? No, he’d stay as he was. He’d get enough money together and move on, get laid, not look back, somehow forget about Sienna. Wide open spaces. That’s what he needed, just him, on his own.
‘If you were hoping to pen a happy ending, I think your readers are going to be sadly disappointed, Sienna,’ Lauren said, grabbing up her Doritos big pack and heading off in her bikini to sun herself outside.
How does she do that? Sienna wondered. Eat everything and anything calorific by the big bagful and still fit in her teeny-weeny bikini? Sienna only had to lick the salt off a crisp and she gained ten pounds. Adam hadn’t seemed to mind how her body looked, though. Sienna sighed, a shuddery sigh, right down to her pelvis, which flipped then dipped exquisitely as she thought of his mouth exploring her deepest, most intimate places. Oh God, if only she could stop thinking about him. The panic clouding his beautiful chocolate-brown eyes when he’d thought he’d hurt her. How those eyes had darkened, smouldering with desire, as he’d buried himself deep inside her; his throaty, masculine groan as he came.
Sienna sighed wistfully again. ‘I am planning a happy ending,’ she called after her as Lauren disappeared through the door. ‘I’m thinking of getting my heroine to stowaway in his boat and sail off into the sunset with him.’
‘Being thrown overboard is not a happy ending, Sienna,’ Lauren replied.
Sienna sighed again, mournfully, and stared at her blank screen. She hadn’t got an ending. She hadn’t even got a middle. What she had got was writer’s block when it came to imagining the other women in her hero’s life. What Adam had done with her might not have been driven by passion-fuelled desire, but it wasn’t passionless. Naïve she might be, but she wasn’t wrong about that, Sienna was sure. She was struggling, therefore, to reconcile Adam-the-super-stud with the man who’d made love to her so sensitively. All of which gave her fodder for her script but, when it came to the writing, her mouth went dry, her stomach clenched, and her mind just couldn’t conjure it up. Her characters were copulating camels again. Damn. Sienna jabbed the off button on her PC without even closing her files. She’d take Tobias for a walk before going to work in the pub, she decided.
The man really was an enigma, wasn’t he? She pondered this as she pulled on her trainers. Bedding women all over the show, no doubt breaking hearts in the process, when he’d had his own heart so badly broken. No, she simply couldn’t reconcile the Adam she’d glimpsed in private with the cocky, carefree man he presented in public. She couldn’t save him. With his drinking, his womanising, it would be a hopeless task, but she was positive under there somewhere was a man worth saving, if only he’d realise it himself.
‘Come on, Tobias.’ She picked up her mobile, quickly deleted this morning’s string of upsetting texts from her ex, and reached for the dog’s lead. ‘Let’s go and walk off our frustrations.’ She’d have to walk a blooming long way, though, to walk off hers.
Chapter Eight
As usual, Adam felt like the guy in the black cowboy hat as he walked into the pub, all eyes swivelling in his direction and a distinct lull in the conversation as he made his way to the bar. Ah, well, if he was providing the entertainment, fair enough. It was what he was good at, after all.
Ordering a beer and a whisky chaser from the unimpressed looking landlord, he made his way to a quiet corner seat, avoiding cool glances from some of the blokes and eye contact with any of the female clientele, as he did. He wasn’t really sure why he was here but, now he was, he didn’t want Sienna to see him ogling other women. Which was nuts. She probably wouldn’t give a damn how many women he ogled, expected him to, no doubt. Adam wasn’t going there, though, not tonight. Despite his promises to himself to forget about her and go back to his lifestyle just the way it was, he was tired, and the tiniest bit inebriated. He didn’t want company but, after sitting in the cottage, feeling trapped by the walls and no one to talk to but an uncommunicative waft of mist, he wanted to be in company. Did he really want to be in Sienna’s company, though? The woman who had sent him possibly the most humiliating Dear John letter ever, and who looked anything but thrilled he was here?
Watching her carefully, jealousy slicing through him every time she smiled that radiant smile at a customer, chatted with someone, Adam noted how she was pointedly not looking at him. What did he expect? That she was going to wave and beam a smile at the local Casanova … sad bastard, he corrected himself. Not likely, was it?
Adam swallowed and glanced away noticing, as he did, Sherry sitting across the room, her husband at her side. She wasn’t about to wave cheerily either, by the expression on her face. She was staring at him as if she was trying to bore holes in his skull; glancing from him to Sienna and back.
Adam looked away, definitely feeling guilty now as it occurred to him she might have cottoned on to something between Sienna and him, albeit something of little consequence, apparently. But then, Sherry knew the score. She was married, and he was what he was. They were ‘friends with benefits,’ that was all. They’d both known it was never going to be anything more.
Uh oh, the killer looks were obviously catching. Adam smiled sardonically to himself as Nathaniel walked in with Lauren, both of them pausing only to give him a derisory glance, before walking away to find a table in a more desirable location. He really had got everyone’s back up, hadn’t he? He supposed he probably would, eventually. It had happened before. He was a bit gutted about Nate, though. Nate was a good mate. He’d been there for him, no matter what. Yes, and Adam had taken it for granted he would always be, no matter what.
Great. Here he was, sitting in a crowded pub, and he felt lonelier right then than he ever had. He should go he supposed. Get out of everyone’s hair. One more for the road and he would. He waited a while, choosing his moment to go to the bar when Sienna was busy, for the sake of her embarrassment, as well as his own. How he’d feel if she snubbed him completely, he wasn’t sure. Like getting drunk, he supposed. Or rather, even more drunk than he already was, drowning his sorrows, yet again.
Adam noted again Sherry’s none-too-friendly gaze on him as he made his way across the lounge. The husband, he also noted, was intently watching her watching him. Realising the situation might get a little awkward, Adam decided leaving sooner rather than later might be wise, and detoured to the exit instead, only to meet one of the gang of thugs who seemed to have it in for him coming in. Unable to avoid him in the small foyer, Adam met his decidedly unfriendly gaze briefly and then reeled inside as he noted the woman at the man’s side.
Crap. The penny dropped, resoundingly. Rebekah, the woman the landlord had caught him red-handed with in the car park.
The youth took a swift step towards him as Adam considered whether speaking to her would be prudent. ‘If you ever so much as glance in my sister’s direction again, you’re dead, mate. Got it?’ the guy snarled in his face.
Definitely not prudent. Adam answered with a short nod, his eyes gliding towards Rebekah neverthel
ess, which earned him a sharp shove in the shoulder.
‘Waster,’ the guy said, his gaze definitely malevolent as he backed off to hitch hold of his sister’s arm and lead her on into the pub.
Yep, that pretty much summed him up. Offering Rebekah a small smile anyway as she smiled at him over her shoulder, Adam headed on out, almost missed the step down, and then stopped, and sighed.
‘Great,’ he muttered despondently, and extracted his feet from a very large and very wet puddle. Hunching his shoulders against the lashing rain, Adam felt for the car keys in his pocket, glanced at the car, took a step towards it, then … Uh-uh, he pulled himself up sharp. He really didn’t think he’d bother to swim right now if he took a wrong turn at the river. He wasn’t about to ruin anyone else’s life, though. Be responsible for someone else’s death.
History. Forget it, Adam reminded himself, sucking in a deep breath and turning for the road. It would probably take him fifteen minutes, or … ‘Oops.’ He reeled to one side … forever. He’d be soaking wet as well as legless when he did get there, but at least his conscience would be clear. God, how he wished that could be so.
‘Adam!’ He heard behind him as he trudged roughly in the right direction. ‘Adam!’
He turned back, squinting through the rain to see someone hurrying towards him. Sienna?
‘Are you all right?’ she asked when she reached him, her coat over her head, mud and water splashed up her gorgeous bare legs.
‘Fine.’ He smiled, surprised. ‘Great, in fact,’ he assured her, dragging a hand through his hair.
She looked him over, looking not very convinced.
‘Well, not great, but …’ Adam shrugged, ‘… you know, okay. You?’
‘Good,’ she said, holding his gaze with those mesmerising green eyes.
‘Right. Good,’ he parroted, like an idiot.
The Rest of My Life Page 10
