Just in Time (Escape to New Zealand Book 8)

by James, Rosalind

  The sigh had been a warm breath against him. “Still no. Because…last week.”

  “Yeh. Right.” He’d forced himself to step back, to say “See you then,” and to walk away. Knowing it was the right thing, even though, as always, it felt so completely wrong.

  Now, he looked at the face in the mirror. In or out? This was the last episode. Time to choose.

  He’d done a shower scene already this week, after all, wearing the tiniest Speedo, with Gretchen in a microscopic flesh-toned thong and nothing more.

  “Of course, we won’t show bare breasts in any of the shots,” Calvin had assured the pair of them, although Gretchen hadn’t seemed fussed. “But we need to see all of her back. Arm bra works, too.”

  Which wasn’t something Will had heard of, but he found out what it was. Hands—Gretchen’s own hands, fortunately. And then an arm, which was Will’s. The tattooed one, of course, his heavy forearm doing a perfectly adequate job of covering both of Gretchen’s pretty little breasts, his bicep flexed to the max as he’d hauled her up against him. He’d been desperately careful all the same not to crush her, after the first time, when she’d winced.

  He’d done all that, so having her over his lap in a pair of pink cotton undies wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

  Yes. It would be just that bad. But he’d agreed to it, mad or not, so he slung the black tie around his neck and began to knot it, although he still thought it was stupid.

  “Who would wear a tie to spank a woman?” he’d objected when Charlotte had handed him his wardrobe.

  “Hemi would.” Faith had answered for her. “He’s very, very rich.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” Will had said. “And I thought nothing was written yet.”

  “Trust me,” Faith had said. “You can bet he’ll be rich. Which is why you’re wearing the tie.”

  It was as if their cozy family time with Solomon and Lelei had never happened, because she’d been all business again ever since. He sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. He got busy tying, and that was when he heard the unmistakable sound of somebody spewing.

  His hands stilled as the retching went on, and then, when silence fell, he finished up, pulled the suit jacket off the hanger and shrugged into it. Maybe he’d be saved by the bug.

  He went on out into the studio and submitted to some readjustment by Charlotte. She clucked over the dog’s breakfast he’d apparently made of the tie, unfastened it and re-did it, and was going over his jacket with a lint roller when the other toilet door opened and Gretchen came out in her robe. Her face was paler than ever, her eyes huge in her little heart-shaped face, and she looked fragile to the point of transparency.

  Will stepped out of Charlotte’s grasp with a “Sorry. One minute,” and went across to Gretchen, putting a hand onto her arm to steady her, because she looked like she was about to pass out. “You OK?” he asked.

  “Shh,” she hissed, casting a wary glance at Calvin, but he was mucking about with his camera setup with Faith at the other end of the extensive room.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Will told her, keeping his voice low. “If you’re ill. We can reschedule for tomorrow, maybe.”

  “It won’t be better tomorrow. I’m fine. Forget it, OK?”

  The idea was dawning in Will’s brain in all its horror, because he had sisters, and he had cousins. “You’re pregnant,” he realized.

  “Shh,” she hissed frantically. “Not even a couple months,” she whispered.

  “What, they don’t know?” Will jerked his head at Calvin and Faith. “They should know. Make sure we’re careful enough not to hurt you.”

  She sighed in obvious exasperation. “You’re not going to hurt me. Calvin doesn’t know, because he wouldn’t have picked me, and who knows what he’d do now? I need this job, and men are so weird about women being…” She looked around again. “That. And I need to save up for me and Quentin, and the…you know. Anyway, Faith knows. And don’t worry,” she added. “I brushed my teeth.”

  Will seized on the one thing he could grab hold of. “Faith knows? She knows?”

  “She heard me being…sick.” Gretchen was whispering again. “Like I guess you did. But she won’t tell. Faith isn’t like that.”

  “I need you over here, Gretchen,” Charlotte called. “Right away, please.”

  Will had heard enough anyway. He left her there and stalked across the studio, grateful after all that he was wearing the suit. He was meant to be intimidating? It could start right now.

  “I need to talk to you,” he told Faith. “Outside.” He jerked his head towards the carpark.

  She started to say something, but he didn’t wait around to hear what it was. She’d better be following him, or…Well, he didn’t know what “or” was, but she’d better be following him.

  He hit the glass door hard, then turned and held it for her, because, yes, she’d followed him. Wearing jeans and a blue Henley today, most of the tiny buttons undone, and wrapping her arms around herself against the brisk January wind. Even as he fumed, he noticed the way it pushed up her breasts. She was showing a fair bit of cleavage now. Focus, he told himself sternly.

  “What?” she asked. “It’s freezing out here.”

  He slipped impatiently out of the jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and she hugged it around herself, though it didn’t hide the cleavage, and he needed to stop looking.

  “Why the hell,” he said, his voice rising, not that he was trying too hard to keep it under control, “didn’t you tell me Gretchen was bloody pregnant?”

  “Shh,” she said, exactly as Gretchen had. “Because Calvin would have pitched a fit, just like you are, because men are ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous?” he demanded. “Ridiculous? I’ve had my hands all over a pregnant woman. I’ve had her tied to the bed.”

  “Well, you didn’t actually do anything to her,” Faith pointed out. “She’s just fine. And she signed up for this. It isn’t real, Will. You’ve got nothing to be upset about. Nobody will know she was pregnant, and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Do. Not,” Will said, gritting out the words, “give me that bloody soothing thing. I know she’s pregnant. I know what I did. And I cannot—I can not—spank a pregnant woman.”

  “You don’t have to spank her.” Faith was still so maddeningly calm he could—he could hit something. “You just have to pretend that you’re going to spank her. You don’t like soothing? I won’t be soothing. I’ll point out that you’re being patriarchal and patronizing. Gretchen’s perfectly willing to do it. She doesn’t need your protection. She’s waiting in there for you to fulfill your contract. We all are. And don’t tell me you can’t even pretend to think about spanking a woman, because I won’t believe it.”

  “How d’you know what I do or don’t think about?”

  She snorted. “I was born in the dark, but it wasn’t last night. I saw how you looked when we were in that store, and that was just me. Besides, that’s one of the most common male fantasies. I did the research.”

  “Of course you did,” he muttered. What did she mean, “that was just me?” She didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she did. “Google must have a pretty interesting profile on you. I’ve thought about heaps of things I haven’t done. When you’re big and…”

  “Strong,” she guessed. “Powerful.” Which would have been nice to hear, under other circumstances.

  “Well, when you are, you take care that you don’t scare a woman, and you bloody well take care that you don’t hurt her. I don’t have to hurt women. I hurt men. That’s my job. If I’ve got any excess testosterone, I’ve got an outlet for it, haven’t I.”

  “All very reasonable,” she said. “All very noble, but it doesn’t matter, because you won’t be hurting Gretchen. You’ll be doing a little fantasy fulfillment of your own. Here’s your big chance to do something exciting without actually having to worry about scaring a woman, or hurting her. Everybody’s happy, and we’re do
ne.”

  “Let’s make this dead clear,” he told her. “There’s not one bit of fantasy fulfillment in my spanking Gretchen, because there’s nothing I want to do less. I can think of one woman I wouldn’t mind spanking, but that’s not on offer, is it?”

  Her eyes widened, then she seemed to catch herself and laughed, hugging his jacket a little closer. “Well, then, take yourself to your Happy Place. Whatever floats your boat. We done talking?”

  “I’ve got an even better idea,” he said. “If it’s such an insignificant wee thing, how about if you do it? Hemi’s got a threesome going, maybe. That seems like the kind of bloke he is. And I’d be rapt about having you over my knee. I could look dark and dangerous as you like.”

  She wasn’t looking one bit comfortable now. He should care about that, but he didn’t.

  “Trust me,” she said, “nobody’s going to pay to look at naked pictures of me, especially not of my butt. And that isn’t the kind of threesome that sells stories to women.”

  “No?” He took a step towards her, and she backed up, then seemed to catch herself. “I’d pay for that. And I’d do that shoot for free.”

  “You hold that thought.” She was the one struggling for composure now, and he was enjoying watching it. “You’re looking just exactly right.”

  “Dark and dangerous?” he asked softly, closing the distance, putting his hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him, and he took the jacket from around her shoulders and put it on again. “Then let’s go.” He saw her looking off-balance, and smiled. “You just keep looking at me while I’m doing it. You can know what I’m really thinking about. That way, we both get at least a taste of what we want.”

  Over You

  For all his protesting, Will looked as cool and remote as an iceberg during the shoot that followed. He certainly didn’t seem to mind having Gretchen stretched across his lap.

  “All right there?” he asked her when they first got into position in the black leather chair. “You get the blood rushing to your head, you need a break, you just say the word, and I’ll help you up.”

  “Not your job,” Calvin growled. “I say when she gets a break.”

  “No,” Will said, his expression hard for once. “You don’t. She does. And if you’ll get on with it, she won’t have to be down there so long. Let’s go.”

  Calvin looked like he wanted to explode, but the pictures were gold, and he knew it, and for once, he held himself back. “I’m not the one sitting around here yapping. All right. Arm in the air. Other hand on her back.”

  Will raised his arm, elbow high, and looked straight at Faith as Charlotte got in there, pinning his jacket back so it fell perfectly, then tweaking his tie.

  “How am I doing?” he asked Faith softly. “This what you want?”

  She stared back at him in shock. At what he’d said, at the fact that he’d said it here, in front of everyone. And he didn’t smile.

  “Hold that expression,” Calvin said. “But look at Gretchen. You’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and she’s just about to find that out. More shadow on that arm,” he snapped at Faith. “Quick.”

  Faith adjusted the light, calming her racing heart, until Calvin said, “Good. There.”

  She watched the shoot, moved, followed orders, but her mind wasn’t on it. Nowhere close to on it.

  He looked down at me, his expression impossible to read. “You’re a pretty demanding girl. That’s not what our arrangement is, is it? Didn’t I tell you that the spider decides?”

  “Not if you’re never going to do it,” I muttered. “And I told you. I don’t do arrangements.”

  He tried to hide it, but I saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Something else you said as well,” he mused. “What was that? Hmm. I thought there was something wrong with it at the time. Can’t think what now, though.”

  “What?” I asked. Something wrong?

  We’d made it back to the hotel at last, and he didn’t answer until we were in the elevator again, and he’d pushed the button for the fourth floor. I reached over to punch 3, but he shot a hand out and grabbed my wrist.

  “Oh, yeh,” he said. “I remember now. You wanted a lesson, thought you might go get it from somebody else. And that’s not part of our arrange— er, relationship. Think I may have to remind you of that. And to give you that lesson, too.”

  My legs wanted to get a little wobbly at that, but the doors had opened, and he stood back and let me walk out first, then walked by my side to the end of the corridor, pulled out his keycard, and held the door for me.

  Another suite, in rich blues this time, but I wasn’t looking at the décor.

  Hemi set the bag containing my lingerie down on the table near the door, took my purse off my shoulder, and added it as well.

  “Take off your coat,” he told me, and when I did, he took it from me and hung it in the closet together with his own suit coat while I tried not to shift from foot to foot.

  He looked at me and sighed, unbuttoned his shirt cuffs, and began to roll up his sleeves a few turns. “Rough, eh.”

  “Rough?” I asked, startled. He’d seemed to understand that I didn’t want pain. Now he was talking about it being rough? No.

  “Deciding which to do first,” he said, and I relaxed a tiny bit. “So many lessons you need today. But you’re still sore, I know, which makes it a bit fraught. I think I’m getting an idea, though.” He walked to the couch that sat against one wall, pulled the coffee table out a couple of feet, then sat down while I stood and watched him. “I think you’d better come over here.”

  I swallowed hard, the nerves and the arousal fluttering low in my belly, and moved toward him, but when I got there, he didn’t let me sit. Instead, he said, “Saucy girls who tease and don’t do what they’re told? Girls who go out without their undies? What do you think happens to them?”

  Surely there wasn’t enough air in here. “Um…” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you lie down across my lap,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

  She’d been writing more of the story down every night, just for herself, just for fun. And just because she couldn’t help it. This last week, though, as she’d been working with the designer on the website, had been going through the images with Calvin, choosing the best ones, she’d been toying with the idea of submitting her own story to the site. The same way the images were going up, one episode at a time, starting with Hope and Hemi’s meeting.

  If none of the viewers knew it was her, it might be all right. And having an example chapter up there could set the tone for the entire site, couldn’t it? That and the title, because she’d already convinced Calvin that His Every Desire had the erotic romance ring to it that would bring women to the site, that and the marketing campaign she’d already kicked off. Women would come to look at Will, and they’d come back for more of him. Gretchen was good. She was pretty, and she looked sweet. She worked, but Will killed.

  It wouldn’t be wrong, surely, to put her own submissions up there with the others. She wouldn’t be manipulating their rank, after all. Even if she’d known how to add votes for her chapters behind the scenes, the web developer would know she’d done it. Anyway, she wouldn’t, because that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to see if anybody wanted to read her story. She wanted to know what happened, how Hope and Hemi could ever find happiness. And she wanted to know if anybody else would want to know, too.

  Will had apparently decided to forgive her for the pregnancy thing, because he approached her again while she was cleaning up after the shoot. Gretchen had already left, getting a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Will that were nothing but brotherly, Charlotte had taken herself off as well, and their three weeks of shooting were over.

  “Bit of a celebration tonight?” he asked her.

  She looked up from the fridge, where she was dumping leftovers into the trash. “Finished with this?” he asked, and at her nod, began to pull the bag out and knot it as he’d done ever
y week since the first one. This was the last time Will would take out her trash.

  “Sorry?” She realized he’d spoken to her.

  “I was thinking that you might want to go for dinner.” He hefted the bag out of the can, and she couldn’t help watching the bulge of triceps as he did it.

  He glanced down at himself. “You’re right, I’m not dressed for it. How about if we both glammed up, pretended we were Hope and Hemi?” He grinned. “So to speak. Minus any scenes you didn’t care to reenact.”

  “Oh.” She was blushing again, she could tell, because for one horrible, heart-stopping moment, she’d thought he knew. But he couldn’t know. “Sorry. No, I can’t. I have plans.”

  “Dinner with your mum again? You’re right, she probably doesn’t want me. Maybe a drink first?”

  Did he really think her only possible evening entertainment was with her mother? “No.” She didn’t try to disguise the edge to her voice, “I actually have a date.”

  She hadn’t been wrong, because he looked startled. She was steaming up a little now, and not from his tattoo. “With a fella, you mean.”

  “Yes, this would be with an actual man.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he stopped himself. “I’ll dump this and let you get to it, then.”

  “I’ll come talk to you tomorrow, about keys and all.”

  “Course,” he said. “Text me.”

  She wondered all the same, while she was dressing to go out, what it would have been like if she’d said yes.

  A mistake, that was what. She was getting on with her life, pursuing a relationship that might actually have a chance, because Will was leaving in two days. He was leaving forever, and New Zealand was six thousand miles across the Pacific. She’d done the research.

  The Moon Upside Down

  Will set his duffel and suitcase by the front door for the morning. For when he’d leave the apartment, and leave Vegas.