by Penny Jordan
‘But you’ve never owned a dog yourself?’ he asked.
Chelsea shook her head.
‘Yet you run a pet-grooming company?’
She narrowed her eyes and nodded, daring him to make something of it. To overstep the mark even slightly so that she could grab him by the scruff of the neck and shove him back into his car and out of her life, before all this niceness and dog-patting made her love him so much more she’d never ever get over him.
‘When we eventually moved out of the place,’ Kensey added to be that much more helpful, ‘it was like the world had ended. Having to leave the dog behind broke poor Chelsea’s heart. And I don’t think she’s ever found herself a replacement love who measured up with Rover’s level of commitment and adoration.’
‘Fascinating,’ Damien said, slowly easing Slimer to four feet. He stood, blinked at Chelsea and she could see the wheels turning behind his far too intelligent blue eyes. ‘Can we talk?’
Here we go. Without preamble she demanded of Kensey and Greg, ‘You guys. Inside now.’
‘Right,’ Greg said, practically dragging Kensey away. ‘Dinner’s in half an hour.’ Chelsea thanked her lucky stars he was smart enough to know if he’d extended an invitation to Damien she would have killed him.
Feeling far too close to Damien for comfort, Chelsea jogged down the stairs and headed around the side of the house towards the back yard. Damien followed close enough his smooth aftershave curled around her nostrils, blanketing the scent of Italian herbs and lemon cake wafting through the open windows.
‘They seem nice,’ he said.
‘They are. And they mean everything to me. Whatever your reason for coming to find me, choosing to do so while I’m here is playing dirty. So say whatever you’ve come to say and make it quick. You heard Greg—I have less than half an hour before the macaroni and cheese is on.’
He shot her a quick sideways glance, which still told her nothing of his motives. Or of his opinion of macaroni and cheese. He could have been there because she’d left him in such a state the night before he’d come in the hopes for one last booty call, to prove to his ego that he could still have her despite her protestations, or for such fantastical reasons she dared not think for all the damage they could do to her determination to stop loving him.
She led him out to the back deck and folded her arms across the split-wood banister looking out over rolling hills covered in the spoils of other people’s wealth. There were white grapes as far as the eye could see and a lone bright yellow hot-air balloon floated lazily across the sharp blue sky.
About a foot of space lay between her fingers and his. But he might as well have been leaning his might and muscle against her for the way he affected her simply by being near.
‘It is beautiful here,’ Damien said.
‘Too quiet for your tastes, I would have thought.’
‘Not at all.’ A smile curved Damien’s cheek and for a moment Chelsea forgot she was no longer allowed to lean in and kiss the crease at the edge of his mouth. To tuck herself against his side and take his arm and wrap it around her shoulders so that she could lean into all that strength and warmth.
She looked away, and she hoped he had not seen her intimate desires splashed across her face.
‘If I wasn’t here I’d be back in the city at a bar with Caleb.’
‘Very cosmopolitan.’
‘It was,’ he said. ‘A bunch of people I’ve never met and likely will never meet again, a glass of over-iced Scotch at my fingertips, and shouting at Caleb to be heard over the loud music.’
‘Sounds just your kind of place,’ she said.
‘A week ago I would have said the same.’
She felt his eyes on her still, and she did her very best to hide the quickening inside her as she tried to decipher just what he was trying to say.
He turned to rest the backs of his elbows on the railing and crossed his feet at the ankles. Without the distraction of rolling hills of wheat-yellow grape vines laid out before him, his eyes were all for her.
Her eyes hurt from crying, her hair needed a brush, her nose was pink and her lips were raw from biting at them. While the late-afternoon sun lent his skin a glow that made him look so healthy it just wasn’t fair.
But the way he looked at her…it was as if he couldn’t even tell she looked a mess.
This time her voice shook like crazy as she asked, ‘What are you doing here, Damien?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAMIEN reached out and pushed a lock of hair from Chelsea’s cheek. The gentle touch did such things to her senses she gripped tighter to the railing to stop from trembling all over.
‘I couldn’t handle leaving things as we did,’ he said.
She swallowed. ‘It was pretty awful. But you didn’t have to follow me out here to remind me. I think you know my mobile number.’
He smiled but it didn’t really reach his eyes. ‘Nevertheless I didn’t want to tell you the things I have to say over the phone.’
She wished he had. Because then she could have cried silently while he broke things off in a more civilised way. Now she had to see him, smell him, hold herself together within touching distance of him.
‘There’s nothing more you need to say, Damien. Don’t think walking away from this makes you the bad guy again. I understand where you are coming from. I do. But you meant what you said, and I meant what I said. So that’s that. It was pretty great while it lasted, but now we are done.’
He nodded, though all the while his gaze still roved over her face as if he couldn’t believe she was really there in front of him. And then he had to go and say, ‘Then why did I miss you so terribly when I fell asleep last night? And when I woke up this morning. And as I drove up here breaking the land-speed record.’
No, no, no! the voices of reason inside her head screamed. Don’t do this to me!
‘When two people agree to stop seeing one another that’s one of the down points,’ she said.
‘If you could tell me any up points to us not seeing one another, I’d like to hear them. Because I’ve racked my brain and I can’t think of one.’
She shook her head. Hard enough to make her brain rattle and crash against the sides of her skull in punishment for momentarily agreeing with him. ‘Damien, you were right to put the brakes on, and I was right to end it. Can’t we just leave it at that?’
‘Remind me why.’
She clenched her fists and dug her toes into the flaky mossy tiles beneath her feet and reminded herself he was smooth and gorgeous and always said the right things and that was why she’d fallen in love with him. But that it didn’t mean he would ever love her back.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘ninety per cent of the time you’ll find me with limp hair, wet clothes, and head-to-toe sweat. I don’t own a suit and you live in a world peopled by them. I eat leftovers for breakfast, not eggs hollandaise. My idea of a fabulous Saturday night is hunkered beneath a mohair blanket watching a movie in the park. I don’t know one wine from another, I don’t give a hoot about the FTSE or the yen, or bar openings, and when it comes down to it we don’t have one single thing in common.’
‘I think we’ve verified that we both love dogs,’ he said, his voice so warm, so understanding, so near.
‘Not good enough,’ she said, squeezing her eyes shut.
‘Okay, so I like movies. And mohair. And the idea of you in a wet T-shirt almost short-circuited my brain right now.’
At his words she actually felt her uncooperative breasts straining against the cotton of her long-sleeved T-shirt. ‘I have no boobs. Wetting them is not exciting.’
‘It’s exciting to me.’
Damn him, he knew just how to get beneath her defences. She took a deep breath and mentally brought in reinforcements in the form of her old friends doubt and mistrust.
He reached out again and continued to play with her hair, sliding it over her back, running his fingers along that special place between her neck and shoulder. ‘C
helsea, all I see every day are women in suits. Slick and cunning in head-to-toe Melbourne black. While you have been like a breath of fresh air in my life. Since the first moment I laid eyes on you it was like my world view shifted. No woman had ever sassed me like you did. No woman ever continually confounded me as you have. And no woman ever gave into me with as much delight as you did. And I find I can’t let that go. I want you to come back to me. I want you to give us another chance.’
There. He’d said it. The words she ached for yet had hoped for the sake of her tender heart he hadn’t come here to say.
‘I couldn’t,’ she blurted out before she threw herself into his arms. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why?’ He moved nearer, all but blocking out the setting sun with his broad shoulders.
‘Because you are one of those slick and cunning types in your head-to-toe Melbourne black.’
His languorous, sensual exploration of the skin behind her ear came to an agonising halt. It was obvious that was not the answer Damien had been expecting. ‘Meaning?’
She momentarily blinked into his eyes before looking back to the ramshackle house with its broken roof tiles and faded floral curtains. The real home and family her sister had built for herself from the ashes of a debilitating childhood. A youth peppered by parasitic—
‘Men in suits,’ she said aloud, ‘from my experience, may never think to steal your wallet but would con the contents of your bank account out from under you as soon as look at you if it might make them an extra buck.’
‘Is that really who you think I am?’ he asked.
No, she thought instantly. But instead out of her mouth came the words, ‘I don’t know who you are.’
A lock of hair fell across her face. She knew he’d noticed but he didn’t make a move to tuck it anywhere, so she was forced to do so herself. But that was nothing compared with the ache that slammed her body when she felt the palpable wall of cool coming from Damien’s end of the railing.
His face turned red with rage. Disappointment. Shock. ‘No wonder you’re hiding me out the back of the house where I can’t infect your family with my pestilence. Why did you even bother to go out with me at all if I am just one more example of the kind of filth you wouldn’t deign to scrape off your shoe?’
A ray of sunlight suddenly shone from beneath a cloud bringing with it clarity, and renewed optimism. Or at least that was how Chelsea felt.
His words were harsh. The harshest she’d ever heard him utter. But hearing the hurt in his voice only made her realise that he cared more than he’d ever let on.
And to find out just how much he really did care, she was going to have to give up a part of herself without any kind of surety she would ever get it back. She was going to have to gamble more than she could afford to lose.
‘Damien, I need you to really hear me. Okay?’
He didn’t nod, but at least he didn’t turn his back.
‘This has all happened so quickly between us. I feel like I’ve been swept well and truly off my feet. And that could never have happened with someone I didn’t trust. Someone I didn’t truly believe was different from all the other guys who made me doubt your gender was worth the effort. Why is this so hard?’
She ran a hand over her eyes, trying to subdue the rising panic that it was already too late. And then she found deep within herself a way to make him understand. She lifted her eyes from the relative safety of the ground to his haunting eyes as she said, ‘I’ve always thought that if people were only forced to wear T-shirts with signs on them the world would be a better place. Signs that said who they really were.’
A muscle continued to flicker in his jaw, but his teeth seemed to unclench. The hard line of his mouth softened. He was at least listening.
‘Signs like Verbal Abuser with Mother Issues. Self-Obsessive Narcissist. Sweet as Honey All the Way to the Bone. Shark in Goldfish Skin.’
She shook her hair off her face again before asking, ‘I’d love to know what your T-shirt would say.’
He blinked slowly. ‘I think it’s more important right now for you to tell me what you think my T-shirt would say.’
The first word that came to mind was Dreamy. From the beginning he’d been a six-foot-something, broad-shouldered, delicious dream of a man. But had he, at some stage over the past week, while she had been fluttering and floundering, and finding reasons to keep him at arm’s length, actually become real? Was he right alongside her struggling with the enormity of what had actually happened between them?
She felt like a butterfly under a magnifying glass as he pierced her with his unrelenting gaze. And her mouth was so dry she couldn’t hope to speak.
‘Or do you want to know what I think your T-shirt should say?’ he asked.
Yes, she thought. Desperately. But no. Not while you’re looking at me like that. All wounded and gorgeous. Not while our worlds are balancing on a knife’s edge.
She flapped a hand between them as though it didn’t matter. He caught it and pulled it to his chest and she stumbled after it until she was bodily against him. Again. Exactly the same way as they had been when they first met. At his nearness, her breath whooshed from her lungs and a pulse began to beat erratically in her throat.
Only this time he wasn’t a beautiful stranger; this time he was a man with whom she had shared far more of herself, of her thoughts, her dreams, her past, her body, and her innermost self than she had with any man.
She tried to pull away, but he only tugged her back, sliding one hand around her waist, stopping where the small of her back met the top of her jeans, pressing her against the full length of him while with the other hand he turned her hand in his until he held it over his heart. She could feel the pulse beat strong and fast behind his ribs. And hers soon altered to match his beat for beat.
A shriek of laughter spilled from somewhere inside the cottage. A crash of saucepans was followed by Kensey’s raised voice scolding someone. But after about ten words the admonishment turned to laughter too.
‘Come on,’ Damien said. He held her hand and drew her down the rambling, weed-encrusted back steps to the messy yard below. Feeling like an emotionally overwrought rag doll, she gave in and let him lead her where he may.
When they reached the shade of an old oak tree, Damien edged her around the side so that they were shielded from prying eyes by the shade of the large trunk and a curtain of drooping branches that almost touched the ground.
She leaned back against the tree, the bark digging into her back in twenty different places. He leant a hand beside her head, so close all she’d have to do was look left and she could nuzzle against his warm skin.
‘I hurt you, didn’t I? Trying to squeeze you to fit you into a compartment in my life like I do my job, my friends, my family?’
Okay, now this was getting really real. There was no artifice between them. No flirtation. No mobile phones to keep them at a comfortable distance.
‘I’ll live,’ she said.
‘I know you will. And I know I will too. But what I don’t see is why either of us should just live. I want more than that. And I know you do too. I think…I believe that we owe it to ourselves to see if we might just be able to do it together. What can I do to make you trust me again?’
She shrugged. Tempted by the almost promise behind his words, but completely unsure it would be possible for her to trust anyone again, least of all herself.
‘Your father really did a number on you, didn’t he?’
She blinked up at him, sideswiped by the change of tack. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m not like him. Or the people who let him down. I’m here,’ he said, ‘even after you brushed me off. And I can tell you that took some kind of leap of faith on my part. Now it’s your turn. Chelsea. Tell me about your father. What did he do to make you so unwilling to take a chance on us?’
The thread of apprehension for ever wrapped around Chelsea’s heart tightened, strangling her ability to do as he asked. But the thought of feeling th
at way, trapped between her desires and her fears for ever, suddenly felt too much. And just not fair.
She breathed in as deeply as she could until she felt the thread snap and her breath shuddered as it released. And she watched the pulse beating in the base of his neck as she said, ‘He used to use us in his scams.’
Damien swore beneath his breath. ‘Were you ever in any danger?’
‘Not in the line of fire as far as I can remember. He was smart enough to move us onto a new place whenever he got close.’
‘And when your family stayed out this way with the guy who could cook? The man with the dog?’
‘I never knew how they knew one another. But I’ve always wondered if he was my uncle. My mum’s brother. Whoever he was he made us go to school, and kept Dad on the straight and narrow for a full six months before we upped and moved in the middle of the night.’
‘And your uncle loved dogs.’
‘With all his heart.’
The questions dried up. She wondered if he’d found out what he wanted to know. If he had enough information to slap himself over the back of his head and tell himself to give up on her for good. The backs of her eyes burnt anew as she began to feel the pain that losing him now would cause.
‘So you could really steal my wallet easy as you please,’ he said. ‘No joke.’
A shift in his voice made her look up. There was a glimmer in his eye. The tiniest glimmer, but enough that she knew that he was turned on. By her ability to hoodwink him. Hope sprang through her veins like the elixir of life.
‘I might have done it a half dozen times already, and put it back, and you’d never have known.’
He leaned in towards her. If he kissed her now she wouldn’t be able to stop him. But at the last second he pulled back. The hand beside her head moved to hover at her cheek, then clenched and tucked into the pocket of his trousers.
He looked past her into the distance. ‘I don’t chase women, Chelsea. Maybe because I’ve never had to. It may seem arrogant but it’s the truth. I’ve never begged a woman to be with me. Then when I drove away, believing I might never see you again…’ His eyes blazed and when he looked at her it was as if now he wasn’t sure whether to kiss her senseless or wring her neck.
