by Ally Blake
She shook her head.
‘Well, then, it seems we both have a lot to learn about one another.’
She coughed out a laugh. ‘You have no idea!’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, no. I think I’ve put you through quite enough excitement for one night.’
He rubbed the sole of her foot distractedly. She was right. The last hour they’d gone off track, off planet even, but now they needed to move on. And he knew just how.
He asked, ‘Free this weekend?’
She tapped her lip, pretending to think. ‘Well, I had planned to alphabetise my DVDs...’
He slowly slid his hand up her trouser leg ‘til it found thigh. Hip. The edge of a ridiculously diaphanous pair of underpants. His pulse was now bucking like an unbroken horse in a corral.
‘Unless I had a better offer,’ she said, her voice breathless.
‘How does a dirty weekend sound?’
He hadn’t realised how dark the room had become until he wanted to see into her eyes. To see what she was thinking. Instead pools of dark honey reflected his own stern face back at him.
‘How dirty?’ she asked, the timbre of her voice telling him all he needed to know.
Through a smile, he said, ‘The family has a place in the Yarra Valley. It’s empty, though I can’t promise we won’t run into a gardener or two.’
‘Well, now,’ she said, her voice as dark and warm as her eyes. ‘If I have the chance at running into a shirt-free, hunky, sweaty gardener—or two—it seems my DVDs will have to wait.’
He nodded. Good. Done. Back on track. The past hour a blip. Forgotten.
‘Then as I see it we only have one problem,’ he said. ‘The weekend is a long long way away.’
His eyes now used to the dark, he caught her smile, and it might as well have been the middle of a sultry summer day for the heat that arced between them. The urge to get her naked found him momentarily stuck deciding which piece of clothing to rid her of first.
And in that pause, a shaft of moonlight found a way between her curtains and landed on her face, and he saw, behind the seductive smile, the merest trace of sadness lingering in her eyes.
Then, abandoning his search for a zip, he gently wiped the smudge of tears from beneath her eyes.
She cupped his cheek, tugged him down and pressed her lips to his. She tasted of warm salty tears, and something unmistakeably her.
Dax closed his eyes, unfit to keep up with the bombardment of sensation that longed-for kiss brought on. All he could do was go with it.
It took for ever until he felt her skin beneath his. The last possible moment before he slid inside her. They made love achingly slowly. Eyes open. Drinking one another in.
There was no denying the new layers of history and understanding and trust brought a whole other level of intensity to their connection. No regretting it either. It was done. It was astounding.
Her hands clutched his back, her gaze boring into his, her need and desire so vivid in her eyes it took his breath away. Then he felt her clench and shudder and he was gripped with a rush of heat and pleasure and release the likes of which he’d never felt. It rocked him deep, ravaging his self-control until he knew if he fought it, he’d be pummelled by it.
As they lay tangled on the couch, limbs entwined, breaths puffing deep, sweat prickling their skin, Dax thought, Last blip. Last aberration. Now everything would be back on track.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A DOZEN outfits lay strewn on Caitlyn’s bed; sweet summery dresses, sexy skirts and tops, tracksuits with risqué suggestions embroidered across the backside. She stared at them as though she couldn’t remember what each one was for. Because suddenly she wasn’t sure how she’d got there.
She’d been so angry the day of her dad’s anniversary. With herself. With her mum. With her own fixation on Dax. And then he’d turned up, all gorgeous and imposing and overwhelming, and she’d realised that in letting go of control, in living in the moment, she’d undoubtedly allowed herself to become swept up in him in such a way that had made a deeper impact on her life than she’d ever intended.
In the face of all that mixed emotion, she’d felt so distressed, so confused, so trapped, she’d pushed him away. Or at least she’d tried. And when he’d refused to budge...
She groaned in mortification as she put cold hands to her hot cheeks.
But that was then. And now they were heading off for a dirty weekend. And as weekends went a dirty one was surely the best way to negate the other evening—and the tears, and confessions, and unanticipated tenderness that had come with it. Such tenderness—
Franny bumped the door open with her backside, both hands filled with steaming mugs of coffee. She came to a screeching halt when she got a load of what Caitlyn was wearing.
‘Ah, Cait?’
Caitlyn nodded absent-mindedly, trying desperately to hold onto the image of the skinny jeans and frill-necked top combo she’d just spied in amongst the mess.
Franny’s eyes boggled as she stared at Caitlyn and said, said, ‘Now that’s what I call a wardrobe malfunction.’
Caitlyn looked down at the Daisy Duke cut-offs she’d tried on after finding them on the floor in the back of her cupboard. At some point she’d added fringed cowboy boots and a now skin-tight Little Mermaid T-shirt she’d owned in middle school.
‘Don’t panic,’ Caitlyn said. ‘I’m not wearing this today. I don’t think.’
Franny glanced at Caitlyn’s bedside clock and winced. ‘Twenty minutes from now Dax will be here to pick you up for a weekend of hot sex and goodness knows what else, so why are you tripping down nostalgia lane now?’
Caitlyn slumped backwards onto the only spare corner of her bed and flopped her arms over her eyes. ‘I panicked.’
‘Why? You’ve dressed yourself ably for a number of years now.’
‘Not for a weekend at Dax Bainbridge’s hundred-year-old winery-enveloped, triple-winged, heritage-listed family retreat, I haven’t.’
‘You’ve been Googling, haven’t you?’
‘Like a maniac.’
‘Will his family be there?’
‘God, no! Are you crazy? This is a dirty weekend, remember. Sorbet sex squared.’
‘Pity. That’s like your thing. Mums love you. I’m certain it’s one of the reasons why guys find it so easy to propose to you.’
‘Not all mums,’ Caitlyn muttered, shaking her head to clear away that ominous little thought. ‘And besides, Dax doesn’t have a mum.’
‘Poor Dax. Well, I’m sure whatever family he has will love you instead.’
‘They well might, in the alternate universe in which I ever got to meet them!’
‘Right. Right. Forgot. No family at the family estate. A saucy, sexy, dirty weekend where the two of you can sorbet one another’s brains out.’
Caitlyn gave a deep breath and, with renewed vigour, her eyes zeroed in on the pile, cataloguing in an instant what she saw before her, like the Terminator of fashion. She picked out a handful of options, all house-in-the-country sexy as opposed to nightclub sexy, all easily removed.
For the trip down she went with a casually crumpled semi-sheer blue button-down shirt over a beautiful emerald-green camisole. Pale, wide-leg designer jeans. Bronze bejewelled slides and delicate hoop earrings trimmed with sporadic brown beads. Comfortable. Casual. Which was how she’d almost convinced herself she felt until Franny had to pipe up and ask, ‘So speaking of proposals, does he know about George, and the rest?’
Caitlyn’s fingers flinched so hard her suitcase lid popped open and almost clunked her on the chin.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked, hoping Franny would take the hint and change the subject.
‘One minute ’til touchdown. Have you told Dax about George?’
Caitlyn closed her suitcase, and dragged it to her bedroom door before admitting, ‘No. Not in so many words.’
Not in any words, in fact.
‘Caitlyn—’ Franny’s voice was
tinged with a kind of concern that made Caitlyn’s belly ache for some strange reason.
She flapped a hand at her friend. ‘All that’s irrelevant to what we have going on. It is. Truly.’
Franny opened her mouth, clearly about to disagree, but the apartment intercom buzzed alerting them to Dax’s arrival, and Caitlyn was saved from having to talk any more about it.
And in the delicious thrill of seeing Dax, who looked as if he’d stepped out of a magazine ad for country living in his duck-egg blue sweater and chinos, Caitlyn was able to put it out of her mind.
Nearly.
* * *
As Dax drove them out of Melbourne and into the countryside towards the Yarra Valley, Franny’s question played on her mind.
She wondered if maybe she should tell him about George et al. Perhaps she would, if the right moment presented itself that weekend. They’d be lying naked by a roaring fire, or sipping Long Island Iced Teas on the grand back veranda, or he’d be rowing them across the private lake while she lay back under a parasol reading Tolstoy, and she’d laughingly tell him she had yet another confession to make.
He’d be surprised, naturally. But then he’d roll his eyes and come up with some gorgeous reason why he didn’t blame them all for wanting to marry her, all the while making it perfectly clear that marriage wasn’t in their future and their non-relationship would go on as blissfully as it had before.
‘A penny for your thoughts.’
Caitlyn came to with a start to find the tightly packed houses of outer suburbia had become rolling hills covered in waves of yellow grape vines.
She looked across to find Dax smiling at her before his eyes returned to the road, his dark hair lifting and falling with the pleasant spring breeze streaming thorough the open window, sunlight dappling across his superbly cut jaw.
She thought about telling him then. Really she did. But then the belly ache she’d felt at home came back stronger, deeper, and she swallowed it down like a lump of unchewed gristle.
Caitlyn leant back on the leather headrest, tilted her head his way and in her best impression of a six-year-old’s whine said, ‘Are we there yet?’
He surprised her by slowing down and saying, ‘That we are.’
Caitlyn had expected something imposing and grand, like out of an eighteen hundreds English miniseries, all ivy covered stone, animal-shaped topiaries, grandiose French windows, and soot-stained chimney spikes.
Instead what she found was a home.
Nestled amongst well-established trees with branches so wide they met over the middle of the paved driveway, the house itself was two storeys of whitewashed brick and pale grey shutters, beneath a darling slate-grey gabled roof.
On the lower level a wraparound porch skirted the entire house boasting a wooden love seat covered in floral scatter cushions, hanging plants luscious with dark pink bougainvillea, and even a couple of pairs of haphazardly discarded gumboots.
It wasn’t until they pulled up to the side of the house that Caitlyn noticed the other dozen cars already lined up in a neat row. European family sedans, luxury four-wheel drives, a couple of imported sports cars, nothing worth under a hundred grand.
Any other time she’d be salivating for the chance to have a closer look. But that day she felt her cheeks burning in panic even as she said, ‘Your gardeners sure drive nice cars.’
‘Lauren,’ Dax said through gritted teeth. Dax’s sister’s name snapped Caitlyn from her fuzzy panic and fully into the real world.
‘She’s here?’
‘They all are.’
‘All who?’
‘Cousins. An aunt or two. The whole extended Bainbridge clan by the looks of it. I’m going to kill her.’
Caitlyn swallowed hard.
Dax shot her a flat smile. ‘I told Lauren I wanted the house for the weekend with the express request that she and Rob wouldn’t be here. Instead she’s ambushed me.’
You? she thought. Oh ho, no. I’m the one in the net here, buddy!
‘Can we turn around?’ she asked, glancing back as if she might be able to turn the car around by her very will. ‘Go somewhere else? There was that little motel next to the abandoned petrol station a half an hour back. It looked...like it had vacancies.’
It wasn’t until Dax cut the engine that she realised that wasn’t going to happen. The head of the Bainbridge family was not the kind of man to cut and run. He took his responsibilities seriously.
‘I’m truly sorry,’ he said, sliding a hand over her knee, which only added to the scrambling of her brain. ‘And I will make sure Lauren is as well, even if I have to hang her out her old bedroom window by the ankles to make sure of it. We’ll make an appearance, and then make other plans. Okay?’
The dark gleam in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, told her how acutely disappointed he was. She could practically see the plans he’d mapped out disappearing before his eyes. Naked, sexy plans.
As if he could read her thoughts, with a groan he leaned in, sliding a hand behind her neck, her hair slipping through his fingers as he pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was firm. If the windows didn’t fog it was only due to supreme Swedish engineering of his hulking four-wheel drive.
When he pulled away he shook his head and muttered something about wishing himself an only child. The intensity of his frustration was all that saved her from jumping from the car and making a dash for the road.
‘Okay,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
* * *
Dax stood in the shade of a weeping willow, watching Caitlyn let his cousin’s kids teach her how to perform the latest dance craze.
Her pale jeans had grass stains from an earlier game of touch footy. Her hair was cascading out of the makeshift knot she’d tucked it into an hour earlier. Her cheeks were flushed. Her forehead creased into a serious frown while she wiggled and twisted and flapped her arms about.
Damn woman, he thought. Didn’t she realise what that kind of wriggling did to his self-control? His pulse leapt so hard in his left wrist he had to rub at it with his thumb so that it wouldn’t spread. All fine and dandy if it was just the two of them, then she could wriggle to her heart’s content. But with his family all lurking about, looking as if they had no plan on leaving any time soon, it was just plain cruel.
He felt someone slink up behind him. The only person who had reason to slink was his sister. ‘Lauren,’ he said.
She planted herself next to him and followed his line of sight. ‘So that’s what’s been keeping you so busy of late. You’ve been so quiet about this one I was beginning to think she had two heads. Or an IQ so small I’d have enough jokes to keep you on your toes ’til Christmas. Or was a man.’
‘It has nothing to do with her. I’m a busy man.’
‘Never this busy.’
He refused to look at her. ‘You know you didn’t need to throw this ridiculous shindig in order to get a look at her. You could have gone through my phone and found her name and number and secretly stalked her.’
‘Meow. I didn’t realise she was such a big secret.’
Through gritted teeth, he said, ‘She’s not. It’s just...not what you think it is. It’s a casual thing.’
Then turned to glare at his sister only to find her smiling beatifically back.
She said, ‘Right. So if it’s so casual you didn’t think it necessary for us to meet her, why didn’t you just turn around and go home when you realised I’d pulled a swifty. Off the top of my head I can name a half-dozen inns nearby.’
He opened his mouth to explain that wasn’t how he rolled. That he believed keeping things hidden only led to more trouble when they eventually revealed themselves. And today was proof again that secrets always came out.
In the end he thought it best to ignore his sister completely. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible.
Lauren tapped a finger on her lip. ‘Were you keeping her under wraps because she’s not your usual type? Not a cool sophisticate with rep
tile blood running through her veins. Were you afraid that puppy-dog enthusiasm would cramp your style?’
Dax turned to his sister. ‘That’s catty, Lauren. Even for you.’
The thunder in his tone didn’t make an impact. Not the kind he’d imagined it would. She reared back slightly, but only so that she could get a better look at his face. And then she smiled. Grinned, in fact.
‘I stand corrected. Don’t get me wrong. I dig that she’s everything you’re not. Rob’s the same for me. He keeps me grounded. While you could do with some lightening up. I like to think of Rob as my counter balance. I wonder if Caitlyn could be yours.’
Dax turned away from Lauren and her searching, smiling eyes. A muscle clenched in his jaw as in silence he watched Caitlyn feign an injury and point to a lounge chair beneath an umbrella. The kids grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to their game, and with an exaggerated sigh she gave up and gave in.
There was no denying she was different. She was light, bright, and breezy, which was part of what had so attracted him to her in the first place. Though now he also knew that beneath it all she cradled a bruised heart and hid a core of steel. That their similarities ran deeper than their differences.
There was no denying being near all that vitality the past several weeks, work issues hadn’t weighed on him nearly as heavily as usual. His constant concern for Lauren had faded to background hum. In fact his life had been looser, simpler, shinier than it had been in years.
He leant against the trunk of the tree, feigning nonchalance while his whole body felt as if it were suffering from the after effects of a Taser attack. It was the strangest sensation. Unnerving. He didn’t want to talk about it. He really didn’t. But if there was one person in the world who had a chance of understanding...
His voice was low as he said, ‘She is different.’
Lauren blinked.
‘When people I meet realise who I am I see the moment their brains begin to tick over as they think, What can he do for me?’
Lauren leant her head on his shoulder. ‘Been there, brother.’
