Outback Master

by Lexxie Couper

  One day exploring a city he knew better than the back of his hand with Amy had given him the kick in the pants he’d needed, proven to him he still possessed that same sense of wonder. He wasn’t ready to retire yet.

  Andrew glanced at the grandfather clock. It was nearly nine. Damn. Talk about making a day of it. They’d boarded the train, heading into the city at eight this morning. Amy had been tireless, practically bouncing from one landmark to the next. He couldn’t understand it. She had to be suffering from serious jet lag like him.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  She gave him a funny look. “Where did that question come from?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. Just dawned on me that I don’t know.”

  “I’m twenty-five, same as Harper. And you’re thirty-five, ten years older.”

  He grimaced. “You seem to know more about me than I do about you.”

  Amy slipped off her shoes. She’d only been in his childhood home two days, but it already felt like she belonged here. He suspected she was one of those people who were at ease anywhere. “Harper talks about you all the time. Didn’t she ever mention me?”

  Andrew gave her a guilty look. “She talked about you quite a bit. I just wasn’t as good at paying attention as you were. Truth be told, I never anticipated meeting you.”

  Amy laughed. “Typical male. Only listen if it directly pertains to you. Keith and Marc are exactly the same. I swear I have to repeat myself three or four times before anything sinks into their thick skulls.”

  “Keith and Marc?” He’d heard her mention the same men earlier in the day as she’d searched for souvenirs.

  “My mates back home. They’re the ones looking after Harper right now.”

  He scowled.

  “Don’t worry, Shaw. They’ll take really good care of her.” She threw a little too much emphasis into her reassurance. Damn Aussie enjoyed trying to get a rise out of him.

  “Yeah, well, you’d better hope for their sake they take care of her just enough, but not too much.”

  “Actually, I have a little bit of a confession to make.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “About your friends?”

  “No,” she said, giggling. “About you. I used to pump Harper for information about you all the time.”

  “Why?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “At first I wanted to hear about your adventures at work, the places you were going, stuff like that. But she always added in extra details without realizing it, personality things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Like how you’re overprotective of her. How you call her almost every single day to check up on her.”

  He sighed. “I haven’t spoken to my sister in three days.”

  “I know, but I truly believe you need to give Harper this time, this space.”

  “Why?”

  She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know why exactly. I just know that Harper was looking forward to escaping her real life for a little while. It’s not that she doesn’t love you. Honest. She adores you. I don’t have a brother, but I always used to think that if I did, I’d want him to be just like you.”

  “Great.” Andrew winced. “So you see me as a brother figure?”

  Amy laughed. “Bloody hell, no. I may be a country hick from out Whoop Whoop, but we’re not into incest.”

  “Aha. So my sister isn’t in Sydney.”

  Amy didn’t look concerned. “Oh yeah. That really narrows it down for you. All I’m saying is I used to wish I had a brother like you. Then Harper told me some more, um, personal stuff and my brother fantasy morphed into one that was a lot dirtier.”

  “Dirtier than what we’ve been indulging in the past two nights? Details.”

  Her smile remained. Amy was far more forthright than most women he’d been with in the past. She didn’t possess a single ounce of modesty.

  “Harper sort of let it slip that you belong to a sex club.”

  Andrew closed his eyes. “How in the hell did that come up in conversation?”

  “I told her I wanted to visit one when I came to America.”

  He thought he was beyond the point where anything Amy said surprised him. He was wrong. “Why?”

  Her eyes widened with excitement. “Why not?”

  He sighed. Why not indeed?

  Her face was still flushed from the chilly evening air. She looked vibrant, healthy, beautiful. Despite his bone-deep weariness, nothing was going to stop him from taking Amy to bed, stripping off her clothing and losing himself in her body. He’d spent most of the day flying at half-mast thanks to her skin-tight jeans and the game of cleavage peekaboo her blouse had played with him. Hell, she even smelled good. Every time he caught a whiff of her citrus-y perfume, he’d been forced to readjust his pants.

  Amy, the little minx, had known all about his pained condition and went out of her way to make it worse by accidentally brushing against his dick with her ass or her hand no less than a dozen times. She’d treated him to a healthy dose of his own medicine after lunch when he’d suggested they cut the sightseeing short and catch the next train home. She’d given him a wicked grin, pointing out that “anticipation makes the reward sweeter”.

  Even now, she appeared to be in no hurry to move their party to the bedroom. Instead, she walked straight toward the kitchen. He followed, watching as she pulled a couple beers from the fridge.

  “Want one?” she asked, holding them up.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  Uncapping the Bud Lights, she tapped her bottle against his before taking a sip. She winced. “What the hell is this? Tastes like piss.”

  “Harper likes it. I prefer Blue Moon myself. Let’s see. You’re an Aussie girl, so I’m guessing you’d prefer—”

  She held up her hand. “If you say Foster’s, I will grab my suitcase and walk out of this house right now.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I was actually going to guess Carlton Draught or maybe VB.”

  “Wow. Very good, Mr. Shaw. I’m a Toohey’s fan, but I’m impressed with your knowledge of Australian beer.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said yesterday, I’ve been to your continent three times thanks to work. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. It’s a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  Her hands flew to her hips, defensively, angrily. There was no doubt Amy was proud of her country. Last night he’d been treated to a glimpse of her pajamas, a tank and panty set that sported the Australian flag.

  “What’s wrong with Australia?”

  He raised his hand, counting off on his fingers as he made his list. “It was ungodly hot. Something tells me it would be cooler living on the sun.”

  “It’s not always hot. The winters can get downright cold. Not Australia’s fault you were a bloody dickhead who traveled there in the summer. I think we already determined that your producers are a bunch of tools.”

  “Fine.” He lifted a second finger. “The spiders there are bigger than our goddamn cats.”

  She laughed. “Not a fan of spiders?”

  He faked a shudder. “Not at all.”

  “Good to know my American Superman has a Kryptonite. I’ll have to remember that.” Amy claimed a seat at the kitchen table, so he joined her.

  He took another sip of beer before continuing his list. “The air is filled with the scent of eucalyptus. Reminded me of the nasty stuff my mother used to rub on my chest when I had a head cold.”

  “Are you kidding? If I had to name the number one thing I’m missing about home right now, it’s that smell.”

  “Guess you never have to worry about stuffy noses.”

  “I prefer the fresh, cool honey scent of eucalyptus to your smoggy, sewage-y city smell.”

  “Hey now. Chicago doesn’t stink.”

  She crinkled her nose. “Maybe not to you.”

  “Fair enough,” he conceded. “It sounds like you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree about whose country smell
s the best.”

  She picked at the label on her beer bottle. He noticed she hadn’t taken another sip. He’d probably end up finishing his beer and hers. “You know,” she said at last, “Oz is my home and I love it more than vegemite, but I’d leave it in an instant to do a job like yours.”

  “You’d want to travel for a living?”

  She nodded. “There are so many places I’m dying to see. This will probably sound weird, but when I was eleven, the number one thing on my Christmas list was a subscription to a travel magazine. I started to catalog all the cities and countries I wanted to travel to in year eight of school.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything strange about that. I have a travel list of my own.”

  “At least you’re making progress on yours. This trip is my first and, given my rather limited income, I think it will probably be my last for years.”

  Her comment made him realize how little he actually knew about Amy. “That’s right. You’re a teacher. Like Harper. Guess they’re underpaid all over the world.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then replied with more detail than he’d expected. “I’m a teacher on a cattle station.”

  “That’s like a ranch, right?”

  “Except it’s a station,” she teased. “Full of jackaroos and stockmen. Not a cowboy in sight.”

  “Gotcha.” He took another swig of beer. “Sounds like an interesting place to live. I haven’t seen an Aussie cattle station on my travels. Maybe I need to add that to my list.”

  “If you ever want a tour, just ring me up. I think my bosses would get a kick out of being on American TV.” Amy looked around the kitchen. “Although my little cottage is nowhere near as nice as your house.”

  “It’s more accurate to say this is Harper’s house. I’m not here more than a dozen weeks or so each year. The rest of the time, I’m either on the road or at my own apartment in L.A. Feels sort of odd to be here this week without her. Unlike you, my sister has an aversion to traveling.”

  “I know she hasn’t done a lot of it, but she was super excited about traveling to Oz.”

  “Really?” Andrew frowned, wondering when Harper had started changing. The sister he knew would never drop everything for two weeks to head off for parts unknown alone. He could only assume Amy had been a big influence on her. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He worried about Harper’s introverted ways.

  He and his sister were long overdue for a chat. “Usually she’s a homebody. While she’s done some traveling in the States, she’s never ventured into another country, with the exception of the time our family went to Niagara Falls in Canada. Even then, she was only little. I doubt she even remembers it.”

  Amy noticed his empty beer bottle and handed hers to him with a grin. “Harper loves you, Andrew, but that doesn’t mean she has to tell you everything.”

  Damn. So much for his poker face. Amy must’ve recognized his concern. “I used to think we were really close. This secret trip of hers is throwing me for a loop.”

  “She’s a big girl. Heading out on her own is probably a good thing for both of you.”

  He knew his sister was an adult, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to let go. There was too much history between them, too many painful memories. “Harper’s the most important person in my life. We tend to cling to each other, considering our family fell firmly within the dysfunctional category. Did she tell you she’s actually my half-sister?”

  “No. She didn’t. What do you mean by dysfunctional?”

  He stretched out in the chair, leaning back, grateful for the downtime. He felt like he’d run a marathon today rather than merely going sightseeing with Amy. “My parents were married for several years before they had me, then my mom died when I was eight.”

  “Oh Andrew. I’m sorry.”

  “Cancer.”

  Amy reached over and grasped his hand, squeezing it. “That’s what got my dad too. Just a couple years ago.”

  Her kindness touched him, made him want to open up to her. Typically his past was one of those books that remained firmly closed. He hadn’t spoken about his parents in years. “My dad waited all of four months after burying my mother before he married his secretary. Dad and the secretary had Harper, which is why I’m ten years older than her. She’s the product of a second marriage.”

  “The secretary? She doesn’t have a name?”

  Andrew hadn’t called the woman by her given name in years, and he was using the term secretary to keep things clean for Amy. Truth was nowadays he usually thought of his stepmother as that whore or the bitch. It was one of the reasons he never talked about family matters, especially with Harper. He never wanted his sister to know how much he despised her mother, even though he suspected the feeling was somewhat mutual.

  “Her name’s Sarah.” He swallowed heavily, the word leaving a dirty taste in his mouth.

  “You hate her.”

  He didn’t bother to deny it. “Yeah. I do.”

  “Why?”

  He wasn’t going down that road. Ever again, if he could help it. “She wasn’t a very nice person. She cheated on my dad, then left him and married an asshole.”

  “Harper stayed with you and your dad?”

  He shook his head. She should have. His father should have moved heaven and earth to get custody of Harper. If he had…

  Andrew shut the thought down before it could form.

  “She lived with her mom for almost a year, but it didn’t work out.” That’s the understatement of the century. “That’s when she came to stay with me and our dad. Then Dad had a heart attack when Harper was fourteen. I was in my early twenties, out of school and working, so she just stayed with me.”

  “Wow. Sounds like you were her brother, mother and father rolled into one.”

  Andrew picked up Amy’s beer and drained it in one long swig. Her concerned gaze made him uncomfortable and he was worried she’d keep asking questions, continue picking at things better left alone.

  Thankfully, she let it go. “I’m afraid my family story will seem boring in comparison. My parents were married until my dad passed away, at which point, my mum moved to Sydney to be closer to my older sisters and their families. I was the baby, which means at heart, I’m terribly spoiled and used to getting my own way.”

  Andrew pretended to be shocked. “You? Spoiled?”

  She lightly punched his arm and they fell into a companionable silence. Andrew relaxed, content to merely sit and talk to her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation with a woman other than his sister. Mike was right. He’d been stuck in a rut of work and sex club affairs. He hadn’t realized what he was missing until Amy climbed into his bed.

  “So where’s that sightseeing list of yours? I want to know how much other shit I’m going to have to endure this week.” While Amy had consulted it regularly, he hadn’t seen it himself.

  She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled it out. “You loved every minute and you know it. But don’t worry. We made progress today.”

  He took it from her and unfolded the sheet of paper. She’d drawn lines through Skydeck and the aquarium, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art. He couldn’t believe how much they’d managed to squeeze into one day. She still wanted to go to the Navy Pier. The other places on her list were typical tourist attractions. There were a couple he’d try to talk her out of because they just weren’t worth the time. Finally his gaze landed on the last item on the list.

  She wanted to go to Velvet Chains.

  “No,” he muttered. He should have known he’d find it on the list. After all, she’d already confessed her interest in going to a sex club and that Harper had told her about his membership.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’ll take you to every single one of these places if you’ll mark Velvet Chains off your list.”

  “Why?”

  He knew why, but he wasn’t willing to tell her. “I’m sure Harper’s built it up
as this really cool place, but I don’t think you’d like it there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just mark it off your list.”

  She shook her head. “No. I want to go there.”

  Shit. This was going to turn into an argument if he didn’t take a giant step back. He’d simply have to keep her so busy doing other things that she wouldn’t have time for Velvet Chains.

  Of course, that solution would only work until he left town and she was on her own next week.

  “You don’t have to take me there if you don’t want to. I never intended to have a tour guide for any of this stuff. I’m fine going on my own.”

  Did she really think that would make him feel better? “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Amy looked determined to finish the conversation now. “Andrew—”

  “Stand up.” He’d waited all day to take her. His patience had officially run out.

  Amy glanced around the room and graced him with a mischievous grin. “Kitchen again?”

  The idea of stretching her out over the table once more had its merits.

  “No.” He preferred taking her in the comfort of his own bed, seeing her displayed, naked on his silk sheets. The sheets were an indulgence, one that Harper gave him shit for. She’d called him a player when he’d first brought them home, despite the fact he hadn’t invited a woman back to their house in years. Amy was the first to sleep between those sheets with him.

  Together they stood and Andrew grasped her hand. As they walked through the foyer, he picked up his single bag of purchases. He’d insisted on only one stop as they’d toured the city. A sex shop. They’d spent nearly an hour picking out the bagful of toys.

  She laughed when he grabbed the bag and started up the stairs. “I think it’s going to be a very good night.”

  “Strip,” he commanded when they entered his room.

  Amy unfastened her jeans, shimmying them off. “What about you?” she asked, as he watched her without removing any clothing.

  “I’ll get there. Eventually. Continue.”

  Amy wasted no time removing the rest of her clothes. He loved her lack of reserve, her seductive poise. Confidence radiated from her. Andrew had never realized how sexy that trait was.