‘I’m too tall to be carried.’
‘Lane, I keep telling you, you’re a pygmy. Stop insulting my manhood.’ He brushed a damp strand of hair from her forehead. ‘Please, Lane? You look so tired.’
‘Tired,’ Lane said, and burst into fresh sobs.
Adam waited no more. He got to his feet, pulled her up into his arms and carried her effortlessly up the stairs to his bedroom, where he stripped off her clothes, wrapped her in his dressing robe and laid her on his bed.
He went to fill the bath, and when he came back, she was lying exactly as he’d left her. Scaring the shit out of him! ‘Are you all right, Lane?’
‘Yes. No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say that. I’m glad you’re here. I want you here, with me.’
Adam helped her up off the bed and guided her into the bathroom. But when he was preparing to leave, she grabbed his hand. ‘Don’t leave,’ she said.
‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t leave … but no lessons tonight.’
‘No, Lane, no lessons tonight.’
And so he sat with her in his wet clothes, and when she did nothing but lie there like a rag doll and cried, and cried, he washed her, then dried her, and ached for her to the point where he felt like crying himself.
Not until Lane was tucked into his bed, wearing one of his shirts, did Adam leave her to shower and change into dry clothes. Then he came back to sit on the bed beside her and waited for her to talk to him. The tears, thank God, had finally stopped, but it still took her a while to tell him what had happened. The call from Brad, the nightmare at the hospital, the drive to his house. Adam didn’t know if he’d ever forgive himself for not being home the one time she’d needed him for something other than sex.
‘It’s my fault again, you know,’ she said at the end.
‘That’s bullshit, Lane.’
‘It’s my fault she and Brad were arguing.’
‘Number one—Brad threw in that course of his own accord. Number two—they were arguing because your brother is a lazy sonofabitch who needs to be kicked up the arse, and if your mother decided to do it at last, I respect her.’
‘You don’t understand. She … she changed, when she gave me the abacus. Somehow she knew that I’d seen the divorce papers. I don’t know exactly what I did or said but she could tell. And she said she was tired, but I think … I think it was more that she was giving up on the life she’d had, and because that life included Brad, it was his turn to be a … a disappointment. And he wouldn’t have expected that, not from her, so of course he was going to argue with her.’
‘It’s not his fault she had a stroke, Lane.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then give yourself the same understanding, hmm? Your mother made her own choices.’
‘I would rather have paid for a thousand more courses for Brad than to have that happen to either of them,’ Lane said, and looked set to start crying again.
‘Lane, sweetheart, if arguing with someone really killed them, I’d be a multi-murderer serving fifty concurrent life sentences. Fifty-one, counting the site manager I chewed out earlier today.’
A watery chuckle replaced the tears, to Adam’s relief. He leaned over to kiss her before drawing up the covers, and left her while he went scrounging for something in the kitchen for her to eat. When he brought up some warmed soup out of a can ten minutes later, Lane was fast asleep. One hand was tucked under her pale cheek. Her hair, still damp, was spread over the pillow.
He felt a primitive surge of possessiveness at seeing her like this. His woman, in his clothes, in his bed. He put the tray on the table in the corner of the room and came to the side of the bed to watch her.
‘Oh, Lane,’ he said on a sigh. He bent down to kiss her forehead, and found it impossible to move away. ‘I love you, Lane,’ he breathed against her skin. ‘I love you.’
She whimpered in her sleep, moving in the bed as though reaching for something. For him, Adam decided. For him, please, please, for him.
He stripped off his clothes and climbed into bed beside her, and took her in his arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The pain, when Lane woke the next morning, came in a rush, right along with the memories.
Her mother. The hospital. Doctors. Brad.
She remembered driving through the rain. Knocking on Adam’s door. Collapsing on his doorstep. And then, somehow, she’d been inside his house, in his library, her head on his shoulder. Adam had bathed her, dried her, dressed her, tucked her into bed.
His bed.
She looked at her arms.
His shirt.
She caught a glint of green on the left-hand bedside table—Adam’s side. The jade apple. He’d kept it close by. That comforted her, made her feel like she belonged here.
She breathed out a deep sigh as she looked around the room. She’d only been in it once before but she felt more at home here than in her own bedroom. Something about the scale of it—large enough for two freakishly tall people not to feel like they were taking up too much space. The solidity of the carved bed. The beauty of the Persian rugs, the paintings on the wall, the polished wooden table against the wall with its matching chair.
Uh-oh, she should get her damp handbag off that chair before the wood warped.
Slowly, she got out of bed. And that was when her eyes snagged again on one of the paintings … and this time, held there.
She frowned as she looked at it more intently. It was somehow familiar, but in a way that was new. Hmm. That didn’t make sense. But it was true nevertheless. She’d seen the same painting on the bedroom wall last time she was here and thought it was powerful, but in an abstracted way; she’d been more interested in what the bed had to offer! But now …? She just had a sense she’d seen it somewhere else, somewhere different.
She walked closer, and it hit her almost immediately.
Yesterday!
She’d seen a painting like it online yesterday, when she was researching her presentation for Beijing. She’d been looking at the rising interest in art investment in China and she’d seen … not the same painting, but one in the same style. One of the same series, perhaps? The artist was Ding … Yi? Yes, Ding Yi!
Ding Yi. A painting by Ding Yi was hanging on Adam’s bedroom wall!
And according to her research, it was worth in the region of several hundred thousand dollars.
Time for a deep breath. Another. And then she walked on shaky legs over to the other painting.
A different artist, but still Chinese. She thought … perhaps … Liu Wei? Yes, she was almost sure that was the artist’s name. And the truly horrifying thing about that was that it meant, if she had this particular series right, this painting was probably worth even more than the Ding Yi.
She stared from one painting to the other as the truth crystallized.
Paintings worth a fortune were hanging on Adam’s bedroom wall.
Paintings were all over Adam’s house.
And if the paintings in the rest of the house were of this calibre, his collection had to be worth millions of dollars.
Adam was therefore probably …
‘Oh my God,’ she said, as her eyes practically leapt from their sockets.
Adam was therefore probably a millionaire. Maybe a multi-millionaire.
Please God, let him not be a billionaire.
Lane laughed, a little hysterically.
She’d been paying a millionaire for sex.
She could hear his steps outside the room, and turned to face him as he entered, but she had no idea what to say to him.
Adam was bare-chested, in sweatpants, looking nothing like a millionaire. He was carrying a tray piled high with fruit, toast, pastries. There was a cup she assumed contained coffee as well.
‘How are you feeling, sweetheart?’ he asked.
Lane flinched at the endearment before she could control herse
lf. It was a tiny movement, but it must have been enough to signal a problem, because Adam slowed slightly before walking over to the corner table to set down the tray.
The table. The antique table. The antique chair. The antique bed. ‘Antiques,’ she said.
He turned back to her, but said nothing.
She gestured to the bed, the table, the chair. ‘These are antiques.’
‘So what?’
‘I mean real ones. I mean … I mean valuable ones.’
‘So what, Lane?’
‘You let me preach to you about antiques as an investment.’
‘It wasn’t preaching, it was a comment. And you were right. So again I ask, so what?’
Lane licked her lips. ‘You have a lot of money.’
‘You knew I was not … poor.’
‘This is different from not poor. You’re rich.’
‘So what, Lane?’
‘So why aren’t you living in a mansion on Sydney Harbour?’
‘Because I like it here.’
‘Your clothes. The jeep.’
‘My clothes are comfortable. And the jeep is my work vehicle. It’s more versatile so I usually drive that. But I have another car. You’ve seen it.’
Staring. ‘That was your car? The Jaguar? Not a hire car?’
Another frown, a lick of temper in it this time. ‘Just because I don’t drive around every day in a flashy Ferrari convertible like some pretentious corporate banker—’
‘He drives a BMW sedan.’
‘—or wear a designer label suit to work, it doesn’t mean—’ He broke off, took a breath. ‘You knew I wasn’t doing this for the money, Lane; I told you I was doing it because Sarah asked me to, so what’s the big deal?’
‘I didn’t know the … the extent.’ She gestured wildly towards the walls. ‘The paintings.’
‘I like art. It’s not a secret. I took you to art galleries, didn’t I? And I was speaking to your man David Bennett about it for long enough. He likes art too. Is it a problem for you that he likes art? Or is the problem only because it’s me?’
‘I wasn’t listening when you were talking to him. I was too busy trying to— Oh God! God, God, God!’ She whirled away. Whirled back. ‘How could you not realize I didn’t know? Why would I think … the money … I was paying …’
‘I would have done it for free, but you made it clear that paying was important to you. Crystal clear. And I thought you said it was ridiculous to argue over money? So why are we talking about this?’
‘I knew there was something, something more to the issue about money,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘But not this … this imbalance.’
‘I received an inheritance from my grandfather, shared with Sarah. I mentioned that to you too, once. But we don’t go around broadcasting it, just like we don’t go around talking about our parents’ divorces. And I still don’t understand what the problem is.’
‘And I don’t understand why you would give up three months of your life for some chickenfeed loose change.’
‘Jesus, Lane! Isn’t it obvious? Because we didn’t think it would come to that! Because your plan was insane and it scared us all shitless.’
Oooh. No. No, no, no. ‘What does that mean?’
Adam had that watch-and-wait look again. Alert. Figuring out tactics. Wondering how she’d react.
‘Don’t give me that look, Adam. Just tell me what you mean.’
‘All right, Lane, I’ll tell you. It’s best to have it said at last, so we can move on.’
‘Have what said? What, Adam?’
‘That night—the first night—the night I came to your place and you had the canapés and I was being a fuckwit? I was being a fuckwit because that was the job.’
‘The job,’ she repeated faintly.
‘I was supposed to put you off the idea, put you off the contract. If I was unpleasant enough, Sarah thought you’d run a mile rather than go through with it.’
Lane’s stomach pitched; it took every ounce of will in her body to stand there, to not fold. ‘Sarah never really intended to help me.’
‘She thought getting you to not do it was the best help she could give. It didn’t work, though. You were too determined and I— Well, I thought I was a better bet than anyone else would be.’ Short, humourless laugh. ‘I felt protective of you even then, it seems.’
Lane whirled away, went to the French doors, looked blindly out.
‘Lane, don’t you realize what could have happened to you if you got the wrong guy?’
‘Yes, I see,’ she said, her voice dead.
He reached her in three strides. Turned her. ‘Do you, Lane? Do you see everything?’ he asked, and his temper was clearly building now. ‘Do you see how I feel about you? And will that change anything?’
‘What do you mean, change anything?’
‘Will you still go to David?’
She wanted to lie, tell him yes, she was going to David immediately, that very moment. But the words wouldn’t come out. She wrenched herself out of his hold and backed away from him. ‘I can’t— I— I have to call the office and tell them I’ll be late.’
Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘You won’t be in at all.’
‘You were hired for sex, Adam, not to be my nursemaid.’
His eyes blazed at her now. ‘Then why did you come to me last night?’
She didn’t answer. Didn’t want to face the weakness, the vulnerability, the need that had sent her to him.
‘You needed me, that’s why,’ he told her, as though he’d read her mind. ‘And at last you came to me.’
‘God, how you must have hated that.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘You never wanted me here. You only brought me here once. You kept your space to yourself and me as far out of it as you could get me.’
‘Because that was what you put in the goddamn contract, Lane, and I was tired of having clauses thrown at me.’
Lane drew herself up. ‘Then how fortunate I won’t be hanging around your neck like a millstone any more, spitting terms and conditions at you.’
‘Maybe I like millstones.’
Millstone. She was a millstone. A weight that had been dragging him down. ‘Nobody likes millstones,’ she said, and dashed a hand across her eyes.
‘I didn’t mean— Dammit, Lane, just … just forget I said that. Just wait while I call your office, then I’ll come back and we’ll get this thing sorted out.’
‘This … thing.’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
Did she? No, she really felt she did not. Not any more. But she’d agree to anything to get Adam out of the room. ‘All right. Yes, please call my office,’ she said. ‘But I—I think I’ll go back to bed, and we can talk later.’
‘I think we should talk now.’
‘No!’ she cried, and then, more steadily, ‘No. I … I just need … time. A little bit of time. Please, Adam.’
He looked as though he’d argue, but at last he nodded. ‘All right, I’m sorry, I know you’ve been through hell and I … My temper …’ He ran a hand through his hair. Sighed. ‘Okay, I can wait. Whenever you’re ready. But I’ll come back to check on you soon, in case you need anything. And I’ll leave the tray. You need to eat something, Lane.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll eat.’ Go, please go, please, please, go.
He hovered, looking troubled. ‘Lane …?’
The scream was building inside her again. Get out, get out, get out! ‘Thank you, I’m fine, but I can’t talk now. I really, really can’t.’
He still wasn’t leaving, so Lane walked to the bed and slid under the covers, hoping to convince him she needed to rest.
After another long moment of hesitation, Adam finally left.
Lane stared at the ceiling, trying to think past the great wave of despair that washed over her. It seemed she’d never been in control. She’d neve
r been anything but a charity case. A laughing-stock. What had Sarah said to him to get him to do her bidding? Poor, pathetic, clueless Lane Davis needs a man to teach her about sex. God knows she needs it—she’s only a one point five!—but talk her out of it anyway, will you, Adam?
They must have been chortling behind her back ever since that first night. Sniggering at her naïveté, laughing at how proud she was of the way she was improving with those lessons. The lessons Adam had tried so hard, for so long, not to give her.
It finally made sense, the way he’d delayed, and excused, and dodged, and tried not to touch her. Oh God, the humiliation. It was on par with what DeWayne had done to her—no, it was worse, because she loved Adam. Loved him so much it was like a living thing, stabbing her through the heart.
She covered her face with her hands, absorbing the hurt as best she could. Knowing she couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t see him again. She had to go. Now. Straight away.
She scrambled out of bed, scanning the room for her clothes, of which there was no sign. She glanced down at the shirt she wore. Adam’s shirt. Her hands trembled over the fabric. So soft, well-worn, well-washed. She could smell him in the fabric. Such a beautiful, clean smell …
Lane caught herself up. What was she doing? The only important thing about the shirt was that it came to mid-thigh. Modest enough to allow her to leave the house without having to waste time searching for her clothes, without having to ask Adam for her clothes. She never wanted to ask Adam for anything ever again.
If she were Erica, she’d stay, demand he fetch her clothes, then storm out in front of him, tossing her hair defiantly.
But of course, if she were Erica, she wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place! Erica was a strong, confident, desirable woman—not a pathetic charity case.
And pathetic charity cases slunk away—they didn’t storm.
Heart racing at the prospect of Adam catching her, she grabbed her bag, left the room, edged cautiously down the stairs, let herself out of the house and hurried to her car. A quick twist of the key, and she was driving home. So easy, in the end, to get away. So … easy.
She pictured Adam going into the room, finding her gone. Would he be frantic, or relieved? Oh, what did it matter? His responsibility was at an end, his duty to her done. He could go back to the women he chose for himself, the women he really wanted, and forget the poor needy hopeless case foisted on him by his sister against his will.
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