Madeleine had held his gaze this whole time, watching him while he grappled with how big a mistake he had made when he’d asked her that question. He loved watching her think. Loved watching her grapple with herself, deciding exactly how much of herself she wanted to reveal, how brave she wanted to be. She always took the brave option. He knew that she would.
‘I like you,’ she said.
She shrugged, as if the words were nothing more than a bland observation. They both knew they were so much more than that.
‘Don’t move out.’
Her eyebrows pinched together at his impulsive words, and he couldn’t blame her. Asking her to stay didn’t make any sense. They both knew that the safest thing for them both to do right now was to keep their distance from one another. And yet here they both were. Alone in his house, eyes locked and guards tumbling.
‘Why?’
She was calling his bluff, just as he’d called hers. And she’d already set the bar with her bravery and her honesty. He wasn’t going to let her down by doing anything less.
‘Because I like having you here.’
‘You don’t have me.’
Again, that pinch in her brow. He half smiled at the innuendo, wondering which of them was going to rein this flirting in. Not him. Not this time. Not yet.
‘Maybe I would, if you stayed.’
She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe, her eyes never leaving his.
‘That would be a terrible idea,’ she said. And the words would have felt like a shot of ice water if it hadn’t been for the expression in her eyes. The one that told him she cared about it being a bad idea about as much as he did right now.
That was fire. Not ice. He didn’t want to be smart. He wanted to be stupid, if stupid meant wrapping his arms around Madeleine or rubbing that crease from her forehead with his thumb and making her forget her demons for a while. If stupid meant that his hands got to circle that little bone on her ankle again but explore further this time. Up long calves and soft thighs. If his arms could circle her waist as he pulled her under him.
‘I agree,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a terrible idea. But I can’t stop thinking that I want to do it anyway. And I think you feel the same way.’
‘Just because we’re both thinking the same stupid thing doesn’t mean we should act on it,’ Madeleine observed with a lift of her eyebrow.
He left his stool and walked over to stand in front of her, his hands in his pockets as she looked him up and down. God, he would die happy if she just looked at him like that one more time.
‘Agreed,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Want to do it anyway?’
The moan she let out hit him straight in the gut and he was hard even before she took that step towards him, wrapped her arms around his neck until she was all he could see and hear and smell.
‘A really bad idea,’ she said again, but the smile on her lips—God, her lips...so close...so full...so pink—told him she was past brave. She’d headed straight through courage to reckless and he was right there with her.
There was no hesitation when her mouth finally met his. She pressed firm against him, her lips tasting and exploring, while he was so overwhelmed that this was happening that he barely knew how to respond. It was only when she broke the kiss and looked up at him, that little crease back on her brow, that he snapped back into the present, stopped overthinking and realised that he had everything he had been dreaming about right in front of him. In his next heartbeat his arms were around her waist, he had pulled her into his body and crashed them both back against the doorframe, her body soft in his arms, her breath in his mouth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FINN CREPT BACK into his bedroom after settling Bella back to sleep and paused to take in the sight of Madeleine Everleigh asleep in his bed. The sheets were tucked across her chest, her head turned to one side and her hair messy around her on the pillows. In the half-light, he still couldn’t quite believe what they’d done. That she’d wanted him as much as he realised he’d been yearning for her these past days. But now the spell was broken and he was out of bed—where did they go from here?
Could he just slip back into bed, wrap his arms around her and pretend the spell had never been broken? Or did he accept that his alarm was going off in an hour anyway and he might as well be up for the day? That must be the sensible thing to do. Because when he was too close to her he lost his mind. That was the only explanation for what had happened last night, when they had both jumped headfirst into something that they’d both said—out loud and on numerous occasions—was a very bad idea. And now they both knew exactly what they would be missing out on, he wasn’t sure how they were ever meant to make a sensible decision again.
Nothing had changed for them. The fundamentals of their lives remained the same. He couldn’t start a relationship now, couldn’t add that layer of complication to a life that he had kept on track by the skin of his teeth. But...but last night. He had never felt so connected to another person. Which was a bad thing, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. Because neither he nor Madeleine wanted this to happen. So when the sun came up they would go back to being so very sensible and not letting this happen again. Wouldn’t they?
Suddenly he wasn’t so sure that that was what he wanted—to give up on the idea of ever having a relationship. But there really couldn’t be a worse time. He had dragged himself out of poverty. He had worked every hour for a decade to build this business up. He had made the sort of marriage he had thought that he needed to survive in that world. And he’d tried his hardest to love her.
And all of that had nearly been derailed when his best hadn’t been good enough and he and Caro had had to find a way to unpick their lives and their finances. He had lost his home. He couldn’t face that sort of instability again—not now he had the twins. If the idea of losing everything he had worked for had been frightening before he had become a father, it was unthinkable now.
And yet...it wasn’t quite morning. The babies were asleep and there was still an hour before his alarm would go off. If last night was all they were going to have then he wasn’t going to waste the final hour of it examining his conscience.
He slipped back beneath the cool sheets and reached for Madeleine, an arm sliding under her waist, pulling her back towards him until he could feel the heat of her skin from his chest to his toes. She let out a huff of breath and tangled her fingers in his, pulling his arm tighter around her waist.
‘Mmm...’ she said, barely more than a whisper. ‘Don’t tell me it’s morning.’ He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, sweeping her hair out of the way to follow that thought around to her ear, her jaw.
‘We’ve an hour until the alarm,’ he said, fingers now exploring the soft skin of her belly, the dip of her waist, the ample curve of her hip. ‘Want to go back to sleep?’ He could feel her smile, even with her back to him, as she pressed herself just a tiny bit closer.
‘Not even for a second.’
By the time his alarm sounded he was boneless and heavy, his eyes sore from lack of sleep, his body deliciously fatigued. As he reached to silence his phone, Madeleine shifted from where her head had been resting on his chest to look up at him.
‘What are the chances we can ignore that and go back to sleep?’
He smiled at her and kissed her softly on the lips.
‘You know I wish I could, but I have to go into the office. Will you be okay with the twins here for a couple of hours, or we could all go in together?’
‘No, it’s fine, we’ll hang out here. I’m sure you’ve got lots to catch up on,’ Madeleine said, pulling the sheet a little tighter around her. And like that it was over. Neither of them had even left the bed yet, but whatever it was that had allowed them to ignore their better judgement was gone, leaving awkwardness in its wake.
He caught her gaze and looked her in the eye, and was
unreasonably pleased that she cracked him a half-smile. ‘Are we okay?’ he asked.
‘Go to work,’ she said. ‘And stop worrying. We’re fine, and if we need to talk we can do it later.’
* * *
If they needed to talk? On what planet did you sleep with your brother’s best friend—the same person who also happened to be your temporary housemate and whose kids you were babysitting—and not need to talk about it? Maybe Finn would get home from work tonight and Trudy would have left dinner and they could just eat and put the babies to bed and not mention the fact that he’d made her see stars last night. Well, that was a perfectly reasonable plan, wasn’t it?
She rolled her eyes at her own idiocy as she heard the shower in Finn’s bathroom turn on and started to look around her and work out what had happened to her clothes. One minute they had been in the kitchen—all meaningful looks and barely concealed lust—and the next they were done with even barely concealing and they were crashing against doorframes and knocking into bannisters, shedding clothes as they went.
From here she could spot underwear, but she was going to have to grab Finn’s shirt if she was going to make it out of here with any sort of dignity intact. Really, this whole morning-after thing would be so much easier if they had actually talked for even a second about how they were going to handle this today... They should just be going back to normal, right? Pretending that it had meant nothing and that they were little more than acquaintances to one another. Acquaintances who had seen one another naked and done any number of things that were making her blush now that she was thinking of them in the daylight.
But it wasn’t going to go any further than that because...because what? Because this wasn’t her style, getting involved with someone who she actually liked and respected. Because he was someone she could have a proper conversation with, someone she could rely on. Because he wasn’t one of the shallow boys that she normally picked up and put down. Because she knew deep down that he saw her for who she really was. He was someone who supported and respected her.
Yeah, she told herself with a heavy touch of sarcasm. Why would she choose that for herself, when she had her life of meaningless, pointless dating to go back to? It wasn’t as if the guy was a genius in bed or anything...
The shower stopped as she finished buttoning her shirt—his shirt—and for a moment she considered darting back into her own room. But that would be idiotic, she told herself. She’d got herself here—into this room, this situation—and she could get herself out of it with at least a little dignity intact.
‘Hey, you didn’t have to get up,’ Finn said as he walked back into the room and clocked her standing beside the bed in his shirt. ‘Looks good on you,’ he said with a smirk that was one hundred per cent alpha male marking his territory. In a really good way.
On her way back to her own room she could hear Hart stirring in his cot and decided to go in before he could wake up his sister. Carrying him down towards the kitchen, she sniffed the top of his head and asked herself for the thousandth time what she was going to do next. Everything that had happened last night had stemmed from a conversation about making plans for her future—and instead of finding an answer to that conundrum, all she had done was make the status quo even more awkward—had possibly even tipped it over into untenable. As soon as she had had enough coffee—eight or so espressos should probably do the trick—she would fetch her laptop down from her room and resume her search for somewhere to live.
Her employers had promised her pay in lieu of the statutory notice period, as well as the redundancy pay she was legally entitled to, but so far her bank balance wasn’t showing any sign of their making good on this. Great. She could get the money she was legally owed if she pursued it through the courts, of course, but that didn’t help her a whole lot right this minute. And it would also suck up a lot of the time she had earmarked for university research. She didn’t want to give that time to her crappy old company, along with everything else they’d taken from her.
She picked up items of discarded clothing, glad that Finn was still upstairs and therefore unable to see the fierce pink staining her cheeks. It was only when he appeared in the doorway, reversing their positions from the night before, that she remembered that she was still wearing his shirt—and very little else. Well, it was a bit late to be coy. There was no part of her—literally, she thought, not a single part of her—that he hadn’t seen last night. Surely that should make her less embarrassed rather than more. But her cheeks were still glowing and there was no point trying to pretend that Finn couldn’t see it. She handed him one of the coffees she’d made and started prepping bottles for Bella and Hart, anything to avoid eye contact or awkward conversation.
‘That was great,’ Finn said after hastily downing his coffee. ‘You have my mobile and my office number, so if you’re at all worried about the twins then give me a call, yes? I’ll jump straight in the car if you need me back.’
She gave what she hoped was a neutral smile. ‘We’ll be absolutely fine. Now go to work.’
Finn paused before walking past her, and she knew he was making the same calculation as she was. Did they kiss on the cheek? On the lips? After all the places he’d kissed her just hours ago it seemed ridiculous that they could be paralysed by such a question now. But here they both were, with their rictus grins stretching wide, quite incapable of passing one another in the kitchen like normal adults.
Eventually Finn broke—he was the one who had to leave the house after all—and gave her a hasty peck on the cheek as he passed her on the way to the door. Fine—no eye contact, don’t turn back. Determined not to lift her fingers to the spot where the impression of his lips was still burning her already pink cheeks.
It was only when she heard the front door close that she allowed herself to unstick her feet from the floor and resume normal movement, moving around the kitchen until she had a plate of toast in front of her and Hart was drinking enthusiastically from a bottle. And then somehow it was nearly lunchtime, and the morning had disappeared in another round of milk-feeding and nappy-changing and pram-rocking.
Finally, in an attempt to buy herself enough time to sit down with a hot drink, she loaded both babies—sleepy and well-fed and clean and dry—into the double pushchair and determined just to keep walking until they both gave in and had a nap.
The leafy streets and quiet gardens around Finn’s townhouse were hardly a trial to kill an hour in, and she had an entertaining time trying to peer into expensively shuttered and curtained bay windows, spotting grand pianos and silk chaises longues, sleek kitchens and surprised-looking neighbours. By the time that she had done her third lap around the block with the delicious-looking patisserie on the corner, both Hart and Bella had succumbed to the motion of the pram and were peacefully asleep.
Sighing with relief at the sight of a free outdoor table, Madeleine parked the twins in the shade and pulled out her phone. She could have a coffee and get a spot of research done, and all before lunch. Really, she was better at this babysitting lark than she had thought. It was hard to consider this as anything other than gloriously successful.
She pulled up her online banking app and tapped in her passcode. She had been avoiding looking at it for the past few days, not keen on having a concrete reminder of exactly how dire things really were. But if she was going to find somewhere to stay, she couldn’t hide from the ugly truth for ever.
She squinted as the balance loaded, trying to brace herself against the flash of panic that was her norm in this situation. But the number on the screen was so far from what she was expecting that her eyes widened involuntarily. Had her former employers actually come good on their promise of redundancy pay, and pay in lieu of notice and—what?—a year’s back pay that she had somehow not realised she was owed?
She clicked through to her recent transactions, to find the unfeasibly large deposit in her current account. This just didn’t make se
nse. How had they even found the cash to pay her this much? And then she saw the name associated with the deposit.
He hadn’t...
Oh, my God.
If he had done this, she was never going to talk to him again. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill him and then never talk to him again, which would be considerably easier once he was six feet under.
And then through her anger came a crashing wave of shame. Heat that started in her cheeks before spreading to her chest, down her arms, until it felt as if her whole body was burning with it. Was that what he thought of her? That she would accept money from him after last night? Had he thought that she was expecting it? Had she done something to make him think that that was who she was—so mercenary? So grasping.
She picked up her phone to give him an earful but stopped herself before she dialled. She didn’t want to do this in a rage, so emotional. She wanted him to see her ice cool and totally in control. By the time he got back that night she could be packed. Jake would put her up for a night or shout her a stay in a cheap hotel. She didn’t have it all worked out yet, but she was absolutely certain that she wasn’t spending another night under Finn’s roof, and she wasn’t touching a penny of that money. As the flush began to fade, her skin began to crawl as every moment from the night before was cast in a new light—one where Finn was planning on paying for the pleasure.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FINN HESITATED AT the door as he dug out his keys, wondering what he was going to find inside. His texts to Madeleine had garnered We’re all fine as a response. Which was...fine. But at the same time the brusqueness of those three words made him nervous. If he had thought that finally sleeping with Madeleine would make it easier to concentrate on his work, then he couldn’t have been more wrong. He’d thought about nothing but her all day. Through various meetings that really should have had his full attention. During the lunch that he’d grabbed at his desk. In the car on the way home.
Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins Page 12
