Dude. Take a deep breath and a big step back. You had sex with the woman. You didn’t sign a bloody marriage certificate. You didn’t enter into a binding agreement. She hasn’t asked for anything from you, and you haven’t offered it. It was just sex. Great sex, yes, but still just sex. Get. A. Grip.
His rolled his tight shoulders. Maybe he was getting too far ahead of himself. Reading too much into one experience, racing ahead to imagine a disaster that was unlikely to ever occur. Mackenzie hadn’t indicated by word or deed that she wanted anything more from him than a good time. Not that there had been much time for rational discussion after she’d pushed him against the wall and pressed her body against his, but still. She was a smart, sophisticated woman, and she’d come to him knowing that his life, his business, was in Sydney, and that his personal situation was messy and complicated right now. It stood to reason that she wouldn’t be expecting or demanding anything from him.
He waited for the tightness in his chest to ease. In vain. It took him a moment to understand that it wasn’t Mackenzie’s expectations or assumptions he was worried about managing, but his own.
He’d recognized something in her, something fundamental and special. He was drawn to her, in every possible way—and he knew, in his gut, that he was in no fit state to handle the intensity of his own feelings.
They were too overwhelming, too confronting, when he was only now recovering his equilibrium after Edie’s betrayal.
Shit.
He put his head in his hands. He shouldn’t have slept with Mackenzie. Shouldn’t have let the genie out of the bottle.
“Hey.”
He lifted his head. Mackenzie stood in the kitchen doorway. There was enough light for him to see that she was dressed, her shoes dangling from the fingers of one hand.
“I wanted to let you know I was going home. So you didn’t think I was sneaking off or anything.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, more because he felt he should than because it was how he honestly felt.
“Smitty needs his dinner.” She hesitated. “And you look like you could do with some space.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but he didn’t want to lie to her.
“I don’t know that I’m a great bet at the moment,” he said.
He could tell by the look on her face that she understood he was talking generally and not only about tonight.
“I guess that depends on what a person is looking for.”
He stared at her, unable to separate what he wanted from what he needed.
“It’s okay, Oliver. I get it. You live in Sydney, I live in Melbourne. You’re here trying to put your life back together. And so am I, I guess. There are no strings or obligations between us.”
It was exactly what he wanted to hear, but his chest remained tight. She entered the room properly and came to his side. Her hand was warm as it landed on his shoulder. She leaned down and dropped a kiss onto his forehead.
“Thank you for a great time.”
He watched in tense silence as she disappeared through the door.
“Mackenzie. Wait.”
She was waiting for him in the darkness of the hallway. He could smell the vanilla sweetness of her and the urge to pull her into his arms was almost undeniable.
He resisted it, leading her silently to the front door. She rested a hand on the door frame for balance as she slipped on her boots, Strudel sniffing around her ankles with interest.
“Will you be okay getting home?” he asked awkwardly as she straightened.
She laughed. “Yeah, I think so. Good night, Oliver.”
She made her way down the stairs, then she was swallowed by the darkness of the night. He listened to the crunch of gravel beneath her boots and didn’t shut the door until he heard hers close.
Strudel was already waiting on the bed when he returned to the room. He pulled off his jeans and slipped between sheets that smelled of Mackenzie and sex. He rested a hand on Strudel’s soft head and closed his eyes and told himself that everything would look clearer in the morning.
With a bit of luck.
* * *
MR. SMITH WAS WAITING by the door when Mackenzie let herself in. She gave him a small smile and waited patiently while he did his happy dance, giving him a reassuring pat. He trotted after her as she walked to the kitchen to put out some food for him. She propped her hip against the counter as she watched him eat, trying not to think about the scene she’d walked away from next door.
Oliver, sitting in the dark at his kitchen table, head in his hands, shoulders hunched.
It had taken every ounce of pride she possessed to make a gracious exit from his house. And then some.
Thank God he hadn’t been beside her when she woke up. She’d been so warm and sated and pleased with herself, there was no telling what she might have said.
That he was a wonderful lover, powerful and intuitive and generous.
That he made her feel beautiful and sexy and happy and wild.
That his easy, casual acceptance of her flawed body had felt like a benediction and the most precious gift she’d ever received.
Thank God, also, that she’d chosen to dress before she went looking for him. The thought of having to pull on her clothes after that chat in the kitchen made her toes curl in her shoes.
Mr. Smith gave his bowl one last, snuffling lick before sitting on his haunches and looking up at her.
“Outside, little guy?” she asked, crossing to the French doors to let him out.
No lights were on next door and she guessed Oliver had gone to bed. Now that the coast was clear.
Don’t. Don’t do it to yourself. You knew going in what it was. Like you said to him, you knew it wasn’t forever. It was just sex. It doesn’t matter how he reacted afterward. You’re not in a relationship. It’s nothing to do with you.
Except it was. Of course it was. It was everything to do with her. Something had happened when they were skin to skin. Something intense. At least, it had been intense for her. Intense and tender and funny and hot and mind-blowing, all at once.
Not what she’d expected, by a long shot. Not what she’d been looking for, either. But it had happened. For her, anyway.
Oliver, apparently, had had a very different experience. The kind that induced a man to retreat to the coldest, darkest room in the house and put his head in his hands.
Mr. Smith bounded up the deck steps and trotted into the house. She locked up and made her way to her bedroom. She stared at her bed, thinking of that other bed next door, the one where Oliver had made her come twice and then held her so lovingly afterward. He’d even kissed the nape of her neck before she’d drifted into sleep. She hadn’t imagined that.
I don’t know that I’m a great bet at the moment.
Oliver’s words came to her, along with the troubled, guilty, confused expression in his eyes. Some of her regret and hurt drained away as she saw past her own feelings and put herself in his shoes. Oliver was such a good guy, so rational and laid-back, it was easy to forget that a mere handful of months ago his life had been turned inside out by the one person he should have been able to trust above all others.
He might put on a good show, but he wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t raw and hurting and confused right now. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she was the first woman he’d slept with since the breakup with Edie. Was it any wonder, really, that he’d retreated to a quiet space to try to get his head together? If his experience of their time together had come even close to being as intense as hers, Mackenzie could forgive him for feeling overwhelmed. Hell, she felt overwhelmed. She’d isolated herself here on the coast in an attempt to win her life back. She hadn’t expected to find Oliver. She absolutely hadn’t expected it to feel so...right when she’d given in to their mutual attraction.
So. Maybe she wouldn’t make an excuse to avoid helping him tomorrow, as she’d half planned on the walk home. Instead of avoiding him and protecting herself, maybe she would take a c
hance—another chance!—and show Oliver that while last night had changed some things, it hadn’t changed everything. They still liked each other, after all. It was possible that the sex, as spectacular as it had been, had been a mistake, but she refused to write off their burgeoning friendship because they’d made the mistake of falling into bed at a shitty time in both their lives.
She liked him that much. She really did.
It had been a night for revelations, apparently.
Feeling infinitely better, she began her preparations for bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE WOKE FROM A DEEP SLEEP with a single, vivid image in her mind’s eye—two women standing side by side, one dressed in the sober, neck-to-ankle garb of a hundred years ago, the other in the clothes of today. The first woman was Dr. Mary Clementina De Garis, the second more amorphous and ill defined. It took Mackenzie a moment to understand she was simply a placeholder, a representative of the young women who aspired to be doctors today.
A buzz of excitement fizzed in her belly as she pieced together the fragments her subconscious had revealed overnight.
The old and the new. The trailblazer and the women who followed in her footsteps. An engaging, challenging examination of past and present culture.
She would find a young female medical student. Maybe even more than one. And she would follow them as they completed their training. She would contrast their experiences with those of Mary De Garis, who had had to fight every step of the way for acceptance and credibility. Mackenzie would look at the milestones for women in medicine. She would examine female medical achievements.
Her gut told her it was a good idea. It made her old project less of a dry examination of a woman’s life and more an exploration of women’s roles in Australian society over the span of a century. It gave Mary De Garis’s life context, shining a light on her achievements by showing how much things had changed.
Perhaps most importantly, it made Mackenzie’s passion project commercially viable because suddenly she had a hook. She threw the covers back and almost bounded out of bed, she was so energized by her re-visioning of her old project. Shoving her feet into slippers, she made her way to the study, stopping only to let Smitty out for his morning ablutions.
She dragged open the filing cabinet, searching through the neatly labeled files there for the backup she’d made of her old computer hard drive several years ago. The De Garis project had been with her so long it had been stored on floppy discs before she’d converted it to CD a few years ago. At the time, she’d felt foolish, preserving old research and ideas that she’d long since given up on. Now she blew a kiss to Past Mackenzie. She’d had good instincts, it turned out.
The file wasn’t there, and she turned to the cupboard and considered the half-a-dozen file boxes stacked in there. She’d brought all this stuff to the beach house when the storage locker in the underground garage beneath her apartment had reached the overflowing stage. There were many more boxes like this in Melbourne, and it was only when she’d rifled through those stacked in the cupboard that she accepted that the De Garis file must be among them. Damn.
She would have to make a trip up to Melbourne to retrieve them. Not the end of the world, but she dearly wanted to look over what she had in order to start planning her first steps forward with this new project, and she wanted to do it now. She grinned, wiping her dusty hands on her pajama pants. It had been a long time since she’d felt this stimulated and excited about a creative project. Wait until she told Oliver that his back-to-basics songwriting technique had borne fruit.
The thought gave her pause, but only for a second. Last night had been awesome and awkward in equal measures but she’d already decided she could live with that. She was standing by the decision she’d made in the small hours: Oliver was a friend worth having, even without benefits.
She fed Smitty and herself and dressed in cleaning-out-the-shed clothes—yoga pants, a sweater and sneakers—and headed next door, Smitty leading the way double-time. If she was going to be spending hours in Oliver’s yard, there was no reason Smitty should miss out on some quality time with his favorite girl.
She was approaching Oliver’s porch when she heard the mellow tones of an acoustic guitar. Oliver, of course, playing a lovely, rolling melody that made her want to hum along. Her steps slowed as he began to sing in a pleasing, slightly raspy baritone.
“Left town ’cause of her, couldn’t leave me behind. Drove through the country, regret on my tail. Looking for a place to work out why we failed...”
The song washed over her, sad and hopeful in equal measures. She knew, absolutely, that this was an original composition, something he was still creating. She had to blink away tears when he reached the chorus.
“I thought she was the best of me, now I know she set me free. I’d rather look life in the eye than live a quiet suburban lie. It’s true what the wise men say, tomorrow is another day. Another day, yeah...another day...”
She waited until the guitar fell silent before climbing the steps. She knocked, and a few seconds later the door swung open. Oliver stood there in his jeans and sweater, his face bristly with stubble, his hair bed-messy, his guitar in one hand.
“Morning,” she said.
She knew from the expression on his face that he’d guessed she’d heard him playing. She smiled.
“I like it, for what it’s worth. Reminds me of Ben Harper.”
His eyes were very steady on hers. “I didn’t think I’d see you today. You’re a brave woman.”
“Not that brave, really. Are Smitty and I too early? We can go for a walk and come back.”
“I just need to grab a shower. If you don’t mind waiting...”
She had a flash of him standing naked beneath the shower spray and had to blink a couple times to get rid of it. That kind of thing wasn’t going to help anyone with anything.
“Sure. I can wait. No big deal.”
He stood aside to allow her to enter before leading her into the living room. The fire glowed in the grate, a fine layer of ash on the logs, and a crumb-strewn plate and coffee mug rested on the small side table.
“Been up for a while,” Oliver said, obviously interpreting her expression.
A laptop was open on the sofa, a complicated-looking software program filling the screen. She knew enough from sitting in on sound mixes that she was looking at a recording program.
“Oh, good, you got it down,” she said without thinking.
His smile was endearingly shy. “Yeah. Very roughly.” He shrugged.
“I mentioned it was good, right? Thoughtful and a bit sad but mostly optimistic.”
He stared at her for a long beat, a muscle in his jaw flickering as though he was working to contain strong emotion.
“Last night meant something to me, Mackenzie. I want you to know that.” His voice was all gravel and bass.
Any lingering misgivings she’d been hanging on to dissolved. How could she regret having been naked with this man?
“Me, too.”
His smile broadened. Maybe it was her imagination—her ego—but he looked relieved.
“I’ll go grab that shower.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Help yourself to toast or coffee. Sorry, tea.” He started toward the kitchen, as though he was going to make her a cup himself.
“Shoo. I can make myself tea. You go make yourself presentable, you reprobate.”
He glanced down at himself, one hand rubbing his bristly jaw.
“Fair enough.”
He left the room, Strudel following him into the hall but stopping short of trailing him to the bathroom. Clearly the poor girl was torn between two loyalties—the man who fed her and the boy dog who captured her attention.
“I know which way I’d be leaning, Strudel,” Mackenzie said as she wandered into the kitchen and made herself tea. She looked out over the lawn as she drank it, pretending that her mind was not alive with images of Oliver naked in the shower.
Water cascading down the strong column of his spine. Bouncing off his firm, muscular ass. Sleeking down his flat belly.
She tipped the dregs of her tea down the drain. There was no point getting herself all worked up over something that wouldn’t happen again. Because that was what the little conversation in the living room had been about—Oliver drawing a line under what had happened politely but firmly, and her agreeing.
Her newly reawakened libido might regret the decision, but her head and heart didn’t. Who in their right mind set themselves up for almost certain disaster? Not her. She had enough good sense to dodge that bullet.
The shower stopped with a groan of the pipes. Oliver would be out any minute now. Composing herself, she went into the living room to wait for him.
* * *
OLIVER SHRUGGED INTO a T-shirt and topped it with a sweater before pulling on jeans, very aware that Mackenzie was waiting for him. He hadn’t expected to see her today. Not after last night. He wouldn’t have blamed her for giving him a wide berth, either. Yet she’d still turned up, ready to fulfill her part of their bargain.
If he didn’t like her a hell of a lot already, her classy, honest actions this morning would have sealed the deal.
He took his boots into the living room to put them on and found Mackenzie ministering to both dogs, who were offering her their bellies for rubbing.
“Got you hard at work, I see,” he said as he donned the boots.
“No rest for the wicked. Hadn’t you heard that?”
“I’d heard a rumor.” He stood and gave her an assessing look. “Do you feel okay after yesterday’s workout? Because we don’t have to do this today if you’re not up to it.”
She blinked a couple of times and it hit him suddenly how he must have sounded—as though he was checking if she was able to function normally after a few hours in his bed.
The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance) Page 16
