A Kiss to Seal the Deal

by Nikki Logan

  ‘I’m glad you told me. Imagine if you hadn’t…’

  Her brows dropped and she thought about that. ‘I just…I would have approached it so much more carefully if I’d known. Obviously,’ she finished flatly and shook her head.

  ‘It hasn’t been the best night for you—assaulted by the local fishing mafia, accosted by me and now digging your way out of the deepest of social faux pas.’

  Kate’s laugh shriveled. ‘Oh no; that’s pretty typical of a Dickson night out. It’s why I prefer to stay in.’

  ‘Well, looks like you’ve got your wish.’

  She hit the indicator and turned off the highway into Tulloquay’s long access-road.

  ‘It feels weird, coming here at night.’

  But also strangely right. Grant had the sudden flash of them driving home from a night out at the community centre, grey and old, chatting about town affairs, about their grandchildren. Their hands old and weathered, tightly entwined. Just like his father must have always wished for with the wife he had lost so young.

  And then to lose a son, too…

  They didn’t speak until Kate pulled up in front of the house. She killed the ignition and then turned to peer at him from the half-shadows. ‘What did he die of, Grant?’

  Damn her intuition and her curiosity. ‘Kate…’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it all the way home. I assumed it was the cancer—but there should have been hospitals, a decline. His lungs weren’t really any worse when I saw him the week before.’ Beautiful brown eyes appealed to him. ‘Please, Grant. I know you must not want to talk about it but the question is going to eat at me.’

  He studied her hard. No matter what he said, she was going to sit on her guilt for not being here. That Leo had died alone. The same guilt he was nursing. ‘It was the cancer, Kate.’

  Tears filled doe eyes. ‘You’re lying—which means it was worse. Was it his heart? Did something happen to him? Was he hurt?’

  Her anxiety was only going to increase if he didn’t put an end to this. He tightened his lips and swore inwardly. ‘Did Leo ever lose stock?’

  Thrown off-balance momentarily, she blinked back at him. ‘Sure. Sometimes. He hated finding them out in the paddock, suffering. He hated shooting them, too, but he did what he had to do.’

  ‘He never could abide anything suffering. Anyone.’

  Kate frowned and waited for him to continue, but in his steady, loaded silence her beautiful face blanched and the liquid wash of her eyes spilled over as she pieced together Leo’s puzzle.

  ‘He did what he felt he had to do, Kate.’

  She fought so hard to keep from losing it in front of him, almost visibly willing those tears back under the privacy of her eyelids. But she couldn’t sustain it; they leaked, unauthorised, down her face. Grant cursed and reached out to gently curl his hand around the back of her neck. She let herself fall into the support of his shoulder. Immediately his nostrils filled with the scent of clean, unadorned woman. Even going into town, Kate hadn’t broken the no-perfume rule. Her hands slipped up to control her descent, one curling around his bicep and the other bracing on his chest. They burned through his wool-blend sweater and branded his skin, setting off a chain reaction of tingles.

  But his hormones weren’t his priority right now.

  He threaded his fingers through the thickness of her hair and pressed her against his shoulder, murmuring comforting sounds. She wasn’t a sobber, but her silent tears were almost worse. They matched her perfectly—stoic and dignified.

  ‘I should be comforting, you,’ she mumbled between tight shudders.

  ‘It is comforting, knowing he had a friend who would cry like this for him. Honour him.’

  She sniffed. ‘I hate that he felt he had to do it, but I understand why.’ Grant stroked her hair. ‘Maybe it was the last thing he could control—how he left us?’

  Us. That sounded way too good on Kate’s tear-puffed lips. His eyes lingered on them—fuller and redder than usual—even in the half-darkness.

  The tears surged back. ‘He was so difficult,’ she squeezed out. ‘But so lovely.’

  ‘I know,’ he murmured against her hair.

  Except he didn’t. ‘Lovely’ was not a word he ever would have associated with his father.

  ‘It’s like losing Dad all over again,’ she croaked.

  Nothing she said could have cut him more deeply. Here was a woman who would give anything to have her father back, to have a farm to call her own, to have sheep and alpacas and…bloody seals. And he’d thrown it all away decades before, as though it had no value.

  To him, it hadn’t.

  ‘I was born into the wrong family,’ he murmured, not really expecting her to hear. She curled her fingers tighter in his sweater and it was strangely reassuring. ‘I bet you would have traded with me in a heartbeat.’

  She nodded silently against his chest. His next words crawled out of his deepest subconscious. ‘I might have stayed if you’d been here.’ Tear-streaked eyes raised to his, but she didn’t speak. She just studied him in that all-seeing way of hers. His explanation was more for his own benefit than hers. She wasn’t asking anything of him, not tonight. ‘Having someone who I could connect with—identify with—it would have helped.’

  ‘Helped how?’ It was more hiccup than anything else.

  ‘Made me feel less alien.’

  Her sympathetic hand slid up to his shoulder. ‘You didn’t feel like you belonged here?’

  Not until this month. ‘Never.’

  Kate sighed, long and deep. ‘So sad. We’ve both lost so much of our lives.’

  Somewhere deep in his brain he knew what she meant—that they’d both suffered loss. But the words echoed around the car, blew a trail through her loose hair, mingled with the wholesome scent of Kate, and all he could think about was not wasting one second more…

  His left hand cupped the back of her head more comfortably and his right pressed against her cheek and tipped her face up towards his. He knew then that he’d been thinking about this for days—specifically not thinking about this for days. About how she would feel. How she would taste.

  How she would react.

  But she surprised him. Although her body stiffened against his initially, she didn’t pull back as he lowered his mouth gently onto hers. It was soft and salty from her tears, but full, honest and courageous like the woman it belonged to.

  Kate’s head spun a lurching figure of eight at his closeness. His strong, distinctive cologne seemed to shimmy around her like scent released from the heat of a candle. She held herself suspended, lips gently parted against his first touch, assessing, and then leaned infinitesimally towards him, gently increasing the pressure of their kiss. Heat burst through her and crackled out to lick at the place their lips joined. Her mouth slid across his, tasting, breathing his air, melding perfectly.

  He nipped and nibbled, sucking her bottom lip between his, then releasing it to slide across the neglected top lip. His big hands forked up through the waves of her hair, messing it around her face until it hung, wild and natural, like it sometimes did at the end of a long day on the rock-shelf.

  She pulled back to gaze into eyes darkened with green heat. His thumbs learned the delicate line of her cheekbones and rubbed the last of the tears from her damp lashes.

  She sucked in a breath to speak, but he slid one thumb down to silence her lips, closing the gap between them and taking her mouth with his again. It blazed against hers, his tongue hot, confident and branding its possession. Her skin burned wherever it rubbed against his which, squeezed as they were in the front of his car, was just about everywhere.

  Her breath grew thin and desperate deep in her chest, but freeing herself for air was the last thing on her mind. Grant’s hands slid down over her shoulders and found their way to the sides of her ribs and under her arms. Then he pulled her more comfortably against him, sliding himself sideways to give her more room, freeing her to climb that masculine chest and latch o
n more firmly to his talented lips.

  Heavy eyes simmered into hers and Kate suddenly grew shy, uncertain. His large, work-roughed hand stroked up her throat to rest under her chin and encourage her gaze back to his.

  ‘You will always look like this to me,’ he murmured thickly, kissing her brow, her jaw, her lips. Making her lashes fall to her cheeks. ‘Wild. Hot.’

  Kate let her head fall back and Grant mouthed his way up her throat. Just as well she was lying half-across him, because there was no way she could have kept standing. Feelings she’d begun to think she’d forfeited for life came surging forth in sharp, exquisite lances deep in her body. Her fists clenched high on his open-necked sweater, giving her strength but letting her fingers spread to tangle in the scattered hair there, against the furnace that was his flesh. The forbidden feeling of the skin she’d tried not to ogle that first day made her smile and Grant’s lips moved instantly to the deep dimple that formed on her left cheek.

  His tongue dipped in and out, his smooth teeth sliding against her cheek as he matched her smile. ‘I’ve wanted to touch those since I first saw you.’

  Not that she wasn’t unexpectedly thrilled to hear such sentiments but, while she was busy making sense of words, she wasn’t drowning in the pleasure sensations of his body moving against hers. His mouth feasting on hers. She speared her fingers up into his short hair and forced his head back so she could glare into his eyes meaningfully. ‘That’s lovely, but you want to talk or you want to kiss?’

  His answer was practically a growl.

  And then it was on—both of them clamouring for the best position, the most access, surging, devouring and consuming each other. Grant reached down to the side of his seat and activated the recliner and both of them mechanically lowered until they stretched almost into the back seat. Kate lay across Grant’s chest, along his straining body; his hands had free access, at last, to the rest of her. They slid up and down her length, from shoulder to hip, rib to thigh, learning her contours. Blood rushed, thick and molten, through her arteries keeping her hyper-sensitive cells acute and full of oxygen, and keeping her grey matter thoroughly distracted about what the rest of her was doing.

  And with whom.

  Then suddenly, with no warning, the vehicle shot forward with a lurch.

  Kate managed to suck in a breath and expel a scream at the same time. Grant yanked on the handbrake, crunching into Kate’s hip painfully, and then jammed the automatic gearstick into park position. Dimly, between the heaving breaths she drew in, she realised she’d pushed the automatic vehicle into gear with her hip as she crawled more fully onto Grant’s prone body.

  Oh my God…

  Heat surged into her cheeks as the full picture they presented finally dawned on her: sprawled out in his Jeep like a pair of sexed-up teenagers, her dress hiked up, shoes kicked off. She reached blindly for the steering wheel, anchored herself to it to haul herself back into the driver’s seat and then sat, puffing, as Grant moved his seat back up into the upright position.

  Reality ran in rivulets down the car’s windows where they’d seriously fogged them up in the hot, sultry minutes that had just passed. Kate cracked her door open and sucked in the cold night air. There were two ways out of this and neither of them offered much in the way of a dignified exit. She could cry foul and leap from the car with indignation or she could be flippant about what had just happened and try to extract herself with as much dignity as possible, as though she did this kind of thing every day.

  Or she could just be honest.

  ‘Holy cow.’

  Grant’s lifted eyebrows and equally stunned expression told her she’d spoken for them both. He blew out a long, controlled breath. Kate fumbled for the door handle then paused when she found it.

  ‘Will you walk me to the door?’ Assuming I can walk at all…

  His sexy smile made her want to fling his seat back again, but she contained herself.

  ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘It’s my door too.’

  Kate frowned. ‘Can we… Could you give me a few minutes’ head start? Let me maintain the illusion?’

  His smile was pure indulgence. ‘Sure. I could use a few minutes in the dark anyway.’

  Everything in her wanted to look down, but she hadn’t made it to the top of her field without having some self-discipline—even if it seemed to be largely AWOL tonight. She kept her eyes locked on the front door where the little welcome-home light glowed.

  ‘We never had dinner,’ she said simply, running shaking hands through her hair to tame it.

  His smile twisted up on one side. ‘We can eat tomorrow.’

  She turned her eyes to his, certain they’d be as wide and dazed as she felt. ‘Are you going to want to talk about this?’

  His face grew serious. ‘Not tonight. Let me maintain the illusion.’

  Kate’s smile was half-hearted as she pushed open the car door. A wall of frigid air rushed in, dousing the last of the latent flames. Grant climbed out behind her and caught her up near the steps to the house. He followed her up onto the verandah and paused with her under the light. His hand came up to stroke a lock of hair back from her flushed face.

  ‘Well, goodnight, Kate. I can’t say the first part of the evening had much to recommend it, but the last part certainly surpassed all my expectations.’

  The blush returned furiously. But he wasn’t making fun of her. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Can I kiss you goodnight?’

  The gentle request touched her deep down inside where no-one went. After everything they’d just done… Still, she nodded.

  In slow motion, his hands came up to softly frame her face. He shifted closer; the warmth from his body hadn’t diminished at all since getting out of the warm car and she leaned into the heat. His lips, when they finally lowered to hers, were chaste and respectful but trembled with barely repressed passion.

  If it had been their first kiss, she might have passed out. But, despite the fact she’d just been crawling across his lap, giving him a manual tonsillectomy, his simple kiss still made every cell in her body sing out.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered as he finally lifted his head. Her tongue slipped out to taste the last moment.

  Grant groaned. ‘Go now or I’m coming in with you.’

  That got her feet moving. She opened the house door and slipped quietly in. Behind her, Grant moved to the balustrade of the verandah. He was seriously letting her go inside alone. He turned just as she swung the door closed and she captured the look like a photograph in her memory.

  Hot. Bothered. Confused.

  But mostly hot.

  And that bothered her very much.

  It took her just minutes to strip out of her dress and into her warm pyjamas. She didn’t dare go out into the bathroom to brush her teeth or her tingly body would keep walking and end up in his room—and that was not a good idea. But sliding straight into warm sheets with un-brushed teeth meant that she could fall asleep with the taste of Grant still on her lips. Could enjoy the kiss—and him—just a little longer. That would guarantee they’d both populate her dreams.

  Which was pretty much where she should quarantine any further contact between the two of them.

  If someone had told her heading into town tonight that she’d wind up wrapped around Grant McMurtrie with her dress hiked high, she’d have laughed— Possibly fantasised about it for a week, but still laughed. They just didn’t have that kind of relationship. Even if, for a few precious minutes tonight, they’d offered a cracking impersonation of it.

  She let her breath out in a carefully controlled sigh.

  It was just sex. They’d both been overwhelmed with emotion tonight after she’d so horribly blabbed about Leo’s cancer. And when emotions got bubbling, so did tension, and it had found a natural physical outlet in the front seat of his car. The man was sex on a stick, and he had a dangerous effect on her good judgement even during the day when he wasn’t even standing particularly close. Tonight, she’d had no chan
ce.

  She touched her still-tingling lips.

  Staying put was more than just a good idea—it was vital. Grant was actively trying to hamper her project. Trying to keep Tulloquay intact and sell it to someone who would farm it, as Leo had before he’d got sick. Trying to keep it a working farm. Which wasn’t in the seals’ best interests.

  Kate punched her down-pillow to make it more comfortable and burrowed into it. On the other hand, he’d given her lab space and a room, and had followed her to the pub to make sure she didn’t get into any trouble.

  She frowned into the darkness.

  Those weren’t the actions of a man who was entirely indifferent to her.

  She heard the click of the front door, exaggerated in the night silence, and realised he’d been as good as his word, giving her a head start so they could both pretend their night had ended more like a traditional date.

  And less like a steamy, irrevocable mistake.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THIS had seemed easier when he was nine.

  Grant shoved hard at the bracken and thick scrub that barred his way and used his shoulder to bully his way through the tangle of branches. Sure, there’d been over twenty-five years for the coastal scrub to grow thicker, but…

  Come on…. He shoved again. Harder.

  A branch struck back, whipping high across his cheekbone and making him glad for the thick sunglasses he hadn’t removed. Another snared his T-shirt, grabbing hard and tearing a small hole.

  Of course, it probably would have helped if he’d had some decent shut-eye last night. Even plant life seemed too complicated this morning, after the revelations of yesterday. After hitting on Kate…

  He paused midway through the bracken and asked himself for the third time if this was worth it. But, yeah, he needed to know if his suspicions were correct.

  It would change everything.

  He pushed onwards. His foot felt the change of land but—just in case he missed the signs—gravity sent him on a slow, gravelly slip for a few feet; those thick bushes gave him something to grab onto. They slowed his slide and let him gently lower himself to a more familiar feature.