With a heartfelt sigh, she smacked the file shut. There was a slim chance that Julia's urgency concerned wedding plans. Zane may have made those calls and firmed up a rehearsal time, although she had a bad feeling about that. His side of the wedding party had produced more headaches than Quade's mixed messages and several glasses of merlot combined.
The best man was stranded somewhere up north in his fishing boat, return time indefinite. The grooms-man had chickenpox running rampant through his young family. Mitch had been asked to understudy if one or the other didn't make it, but no one knew when Mitch planned to show up, including their parents who had moved into his Sydney apartment to help care for their grandson.
Chantal buried her aching head in her hands. She needed to ring her sister. Unlike Zane's support team, she had vowed to be there for Julia. It was a sister thing, it was a bridesmaid thing. None of which made it any easier to pick up the phone. She dreaded Julia's inevitable questions, especially since she didn't have any answers.
What did I interrupt when I came out of the bathroom? What did he mean, he doesn't know if he likes you or not?
And wasn't that the million-dollar question! She shouldn't have stood there with her mouth flapping in the breeze while he walked away. She should have been mad as hell. She should have fired right back at him, some really cutting line like … like…
Well, same here, hotshot!
Except Chantal wasn't into self-delusion. In spite of all that had happened and not happened seven years ago, she liked him, she fancied him, she wanted him. Maybe her feelings were intricately linked with that early fascination, that whole first-teenage-crush factor, but there lurked a capacity for something infinitely more complex.
Did she want there to be an us?
Oh, yes. Absolutely. Indisputably. Unquestionably.
But – she drew herself up out of a slouch and lifted her chin – not unless he admitted to liking her. Not unless she believed he really did like her. Her pride demanded that much.
Pleased with such strong resolve, she blew out a breath, but it tickled the back of her throat and turned into a cough. And wasn't that the ultimate irony? After blaming her heated face on a fictional cold – to Quade and then to Julia – it looked as if she really might be coming down with one.
Checking the clock, she realized she had less than an hour until today's golf lesson and, with a gloomy sense of inevitability, she reached for the phone.
* * *
After five minutes of wedding updates and cross-examination – Chantal chose to plead ignorant on all charges – the ever-suspicious Julia caught a hint of the cold in her voice.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "You sound kinda croaky."
Concerned her nurturing sister might hotfoot it out from town bearing chicken soup and tissues, Chantal denied it, even while stymieing a cough. "Really. I'm fine," she lied as brightly as she could. "And I'm on my way out. I'll talk to you later."
"I hope this is leisure…?"
"It's golf."
Julia sighed. "Take it easy, okay? It really is supposed to be a relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon."
Grimacing and trying not to cough, Chantal replaced the receiver, and all the way around the nine holes she played with Craig she really did try to relax. It proved impossible. In fact, the whole golf concept was proving nigh impossible, and that did nothing to improve her mood.
After returning home feeling miserable and sorry for herself, she wallowed in an herbal-scented bath until her skin turned wrinkly. Then she decided to allow herself another rare and luxurious treat … a night off.
Preparations were simple: she donned her comfiest pajamas and fluffy slippers, took the phone off the hook, and selected some soothing R & B for the stereo and something escapist from her bookshelf.
Just before she settled into the nest of pillows she'd created in front of the fire, she considered food.
Ice cream? Popcorn? Chocolate? One by one she rejected the options, and she couldn't lay all the blame on her budding cold. Lately none of her favorite junk food had interested her. As an appetite depressant, Quade was proving remarkably effective. Who knows, if he hung around long enough, she might even lose all the extra pounds she'd managed to accumulate over winter!
* * *
When the doorbell rang she was lost on the Hampshire moors, pursued by a brooding stranger with the cold hard eyes of a hunter. At the first chime, she closed her eyes. As the second chime sliced into her story-world mood of sensual menace, she swore softly but succinctly.
The word wasn't dang.
For the next six chimes she seriously considered ignoring her visitor. Except her car would be clearly visible in the open-fronted garage. And being – she checked the clock – after eight on a Sunday night, it could only be family. With the rest of them in Sydney, that meant Julia. Who she couldn't leave standing in the chill night air. No, really, she couldn't, although that didn't mean she had to welcome her with open arms. Perhaps if she described a bride whose red nose clashed horribly with her pink bouquet and whose vows came out as a hoarse croak…
Heartened by that plan, she bounded upright too quickly and needed to steady herself with a hand on the mantelpiece. Big-time woozy head, she thought as she tucked her open book under one arm and carefully stepped over the pike of pillows. And this time she couldn't blame Quade for the dizziness. A dozen more careful steps and she reevaluated that call.
The long narrow panels bordering her front door were glazed in an ornate frosty pattern that distorted size and shape, but not enough that she could ever mistake the long-legged, broad-shouldered silhouette as belonging to Julia.
Her most recent breath held in her lungs, expanding them until her chest hurt. She exhaled the backed up air in a long whoosh and realized she had stopped several yards shy of the door. She wasn't exactly dressed for company – had she even brushed her hair after her bath? – but Cameron Quade didn't strike her as the kind of man who would give up easily. As if to punctuate that thought, he leaned on her doorbell again. Hard.
* * *
She was home. If he stopped stamping his feet and leaning on the doorbell and rustling the paper sack in his hand, he would hear the soft strains of music drifting from beyond the very solid, very closed door.
So, why didn't she answer said door?
Scowling felt like a perfect response. Hell, he'd left a toasty warm fire, a Clint Eastwood retrospective, and a half-consumed bottle of his father's finest to venture over here. After Julia's concerned phone call he'd had no choice. Ten years in the cutthroat corporate world and he still had a conscience. His mother would be smiling down on that happenstance.
Beyond the decorative glass panels he detected movement and stopped fidgeting. "About bloody time," he muttered as the door swung open.
First thing he noticed was her put-upon expression. Then her crossed arms. Then her … pink flannel pajamas?
Yep, his eyes didn't deceive him. She wore pink flannel pajamas with some very lucky sheep gamboling across their hills and dales. And he'd been right about the music. It swirled from the living room at her back, as softly romantic as the flickering firelight and her pink cheeks and her ruffled curls. As his gaze climbed back to meet hers, he realized his sour temper had dissipated. Just from looking at her.
"You're alive," he said, purposely and perversely deepening his scowl. He didn't want to be wooed out of his dark mood. It suited him just fine.
"There was a doubt?"
"Your sister rang me. She was concerned about your phone being off the hook."
"That's because I didn't want to be disturbed," she said pointedly.
Quade chose to disregard her point and pushed past her. Ignoring the audible sound of her indrawn breath, he closed the door behind him. "Thanks. If you'd left me out there any longer I'd have frozen my … lemons … off."
Her eyes – which he noticed, belatedly, were glassy as well as bright and annoyed – seemed to finally take in his offerings. "You broug
ht lemons?"
"And rum." He held up the bottle in his other hand. "Oh, and I remembered your CD."
"Thank you." The tight line of her lips softened. "I suppose Julia told you I'm getting a cold."
"Yeah. She wanted to come out here herself to administer TLC, but Zane was called out on a breakdown."
"And she's forbidden from driving alone at night." She sighed. "I guess it's a good thing, him being so protective."
"A very good thing."
She nodded, then lifted her chin. "Okay. You might as well get the I-told-you-so lecture over with."
"For playing golf in the rain?" Hell, he'd practiced that exact speech on his way down here but now she expected it, the idea suddenly lost its appeal. "I told you so," he said mildly, then, "What do you want me to do with these?"
A small smile curved her lips. "You brought them, so I assume you know what to do with them."
"My mother used to make some sort of hot lemon concoction. That's all I know."
Her smiling eyes widened. "Your mother gave you rum?"
"Hell, no. That's my contribution."
"It goes in the hot lemon drink?" She sounded dubious.
Quade shrugged. "Can't hurt."
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she laughed and the spontaneous sound danced all over his senses. "Oh, I think it would hurt."
"How's that?"
"I'm taking cold tablets which are making me woozy enough." She gestured at the rum. "I don't think that would go with."
She had a point but before he could agree he started thinking about her turning woozy and him having to pick her up and carry her to her bed, and he turned a little woozy himself. Which only annoyed him. Frowning, he shuffled the awkward bag into the crook of his elbow but it started to slip. They both made a grab for the spilling fruit, and their hands became all mixed up in a strange slow-motion juggling affair.
Their bodies bumped and brushed, hard planes against soft curves. Her laughter hitched on a breathless note, and he drew in air filled with a subtle green scent. They were standing close, and he wasn't thinking about germs. He was thinking about the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra under that soft giving fabric. He hadn't missed that not-so-small point.
"Ta-da!" She held the bag aloft triumphantly. "We didn't drop one."
Quade's fingers curled around the lone lemon in his hand. Lucky she'd been concentrating on the job at hand or they'd have been ankle-deep in fruit.
"Thank you for bringing these," she said. "It was really sweet of you."
Sweet? Obviously she didn't know what was going on in his mind. Not to mention his jeans. He shrugged. "I can't take the credit, although I had to improvise. Haven't a clue how to make chicken soup."
"Julia suggested you bring soup?" Her dark eyes narrowed. "She had no right!"
"She's your sister. That gives her the right to worry."
"But not to send you over here."
He shrugged. "You fed me last night."
"Oh boy, we're not back to who-owes-who are we, because I had about enough of that the last time." She huffed out a breath. "Okay, I'll accept your offerings because we are neighbors, after all. But then we call it quits. No more payback, no more mention of beholden. Okay?"
"Fine with me."
Their eyes met and held. And in that second something shifted between them, some tacit agreement made, a new bond formed. Neighbors? Quade rejected the notion out of hand. He didn't yet know what he wanted from Chantal Goodwin but it definitely wasn't neighborly sugar borrowing and back-fence chitchat.
"Good." She took the rum, then turned on her heel and headed toward the kitchen.
It would have been the perfect time for Quade to do something similar – to turn on his heel and get the hell out of there. But instead he found himself watching the sway of her backside inside those soft pink pajama pants and reliving the brush of her unfettered breasts against his arm as they struggled to contain those lemons.
He exhaled a long hot breath. Hell, he was one sick puppy to be turned on by an obviously unwell woman. In flannel pajamas. He forced himself to look away, down, anywhere else, which is when he saw the book lying on the floor.
Hunkering down to pick it up, he couldn't help but notice the title. Chantal Goodwin read romance. Hot, steamy romance by the look of the cover. He pulled her CD from his jacket pocket and shook his head ruefully. Romance novels and boy bands and the body of a centerfold. Talk about contrasts and contradictions – she was one surprise after another and every new disclosure, each newly uncloaked facet, drew him closer to capitulation.
Did he even want to fight it? Honestly?
Hell, if she hadn't looked so bright-eyed and feverish he wouldn't be standing out here with a book and a CD in his hands. Instead his hands would be filled with soft flannel-covered curves, at least for as long as it took to get those curves naked.
Did that mean he liked her? Because he had never, not ever, wanted to get naked with a woman he didn't like. Yes, he liked her. Probably had from the first time she opened her sassy-talking mouth, or at least from the first time she surprised him to laughter. But he hadn't wanted to like her, hadn't wanted to open himself to that possibility. It was so much easier to classify her by stereotype: ambitious lawyer, Kristin-clone, off limits. And until she tossed this cold, she remained off limits. Pink flannel pajamas firmly buttoned. Centerfold curves covered. Which meant he needed to get his sorry one-track mind out the door and down the road. Once he deposited her belongings.
With a new determination, he strode across the living room but pulled up short. Last night's straitjacket furniture had been shoved aside in a higgledy-piggledy fashion; a golf putter and several balls lay discarded in the middle of the floor; newspaper sections littered the coffee table. Hallelujah. He scanned further, to the fire crackling in the stone hearth, to the pillows spread before it. And it took less than a second for his imagination to paint a picture of her reclining there, sans pajamas, hair wildly mussed and creamy curves warmed by the dancing firelight. Desire, as quick and hot as those flames, licked through his body. He wanted his hands in her fire-bright hair. He wanted to spread her body before the flames. He wanted to make her burn.
"There you are."
Quade shook his head firmly to clear the unruly heat, then turned slowly to find her in the kitchen doorway.
As her gaze swept the scene before her, her expression turned to dismay. "You'll have to excuse the mess. I wasn't expecting anyone."
"Why would I excuse it? I prefer it this way."
"Oh."
Obviously not the answer she'd expected. Now she looked nonplussed, more so when she noticed the book in his hand. Flushing prettily, she shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other. Quade felt the banked heat within shift from lust to something softer, warmer. More dangerous. Damn. He should have left when he had the chance.
"I was reading," she explained, as if the book needed an explanation. "When you arrived."
He tossed book and CD on top of the mess. "Not working?"
Her chin came up a notch. "It's Sunday."
"Last Sunday you were working on your golf."
"Not after dark."
After dark. Two simple words that conjured up all sorts of images, most of them cast in red-gold firelight. Down puppy, he scolded himself.
"I've put the kettle on. Would you like tea? Or coffee?"
"I should be going. Don't want to miss Dirty Harry."
She looked interested. "Is it on TV tonight?"
"Yeah." He paused, not sure if he really wanted to know. "Don't tell me you're a Dirty Harry fan."
"Go ahead, punk. Make my day."
He didn't know if his overimaginative libido was playing tricks, but she didn't sound like she was quoting a movie line. She sounded … suggestive. The heat in his belly shifted again but he ignored it. He was leaving. Before he did something regrettable. Like making his day.
"Normally I'd say it's a classic and not to be missed." He tossed the lemon s
till in his hand and caught it. "But you need to be squeezing these into mother's magic remedy."
"You're not going to do that for me? What kind of neighbor are you?"
For an unseemly length of time, he lost himself in her smiling eyes. Then he saw the amusement dim, saw her nostrils flare slightly and, God help him, she moistened her lips with the tip of her very pink tongue. But the glassy brightness remained in her eyes and one corner of his mouth kicked up in a wry half smile. "I'm thinking, a pretty sick one."
"Oh my God." Eyes widening with concern, she slapped a hand over her lips but kept on talking through the splayed fingers. "Did I give you this bug? The other night…"
"When I kissed you?"
"Yes."
"Not that kind of sick." He shook his head. "I meant sick as in I'm looking at you in those pajamas and imagining taking them off you."
She must have inhaled sharply because her breasts rose, stretching the material of her pajama top…
He didn't mean to, he tried not to, but his gaze dropped to the top button. When had pink flannel turned into the world's most erotic material? No, no, no. Hands curled into fists, he started backing away. Toward the door. He was not thinking naked thoughts again, not even in terms of rubbing her chest with VapoRub. He didn't stop backing up until he reached the door.
Just to be extra sure he wrapped his hand around the doorknob before forcing his gaze back to hers. She was looking at him like he was the cot case. She had a point. For that reason alone he made damned sure his voice came out a lot stronger than his watery willpower. "Make yourself the hot drink, dose yourself up on those tablets, and take yourself off to bed. And don't get out again until you're better."
"But I have to—"
"Go to work? Really?" Dark eyes flashed and he knew he'd called it right. The thought ticked him off just enough to keep the words rolling. "Your idea of commitment to work got you sick in the first place, don't let it put you in hospital."
"I'm not that sick. In fact I'm hardly—"
"What about next Saturday? Are you going to be fit for the wedding? Or do you want to give Julia something else to worry about?"
QUADE: THE IRRESISTIBLE ONE Page 7
