He didn’t say any of that, either. “There’s room for more than one kind of bird in the world,” he said instead. “And I like this one. All round and cuddly and all.”
Another woman came into the room on the words. Short, dark, and, yes, round and cuddly. She looked startled, and Brett said, “The bird, I mean,” and had to smile.
“I like him, too,” the redhead said. “I know birds aren’t actually happy. That’s anthropomorphizing them, but that’s how that one looks to me anything. Sabaḥul khayr, Azra. I brought a guest home for breakfast. We had an adventure.”
“Good morning,” the darker girl—woman—said. Her accent was cut-glass British English, which made Brett blink. Nothing about this morning had been what he’d expected. “I covered your dish and left it in the oven to keep warm when you hadn’t returned, Willow. I’m afraid I ate more than I should have first, though. What was the adventure?”
“Wait,” Brett said. “You’re Willow? The photographer? I thought you were a chef, but these look professional.”
“I am,” the redhead said. “A professional chef. And I need to take a shower. Fairly desperately.” She looked him over and added, “Come on back. We’ll find you something dry to put on. After that, you could fry up some turkey bacon for us, make yourself even more useful.”
“I’m off,” the other woman, Azra, said.
The redhead—Willow—turned around on her way out the door. “You can’t stay for second breakfast? I’m doing caramelized bananas. You love those.”
“I can’t stay and keep my job,” Azra said with a laugh. “We wouldn’t want my father to be right. Just as well. You don’t do my diet any good at all. Ma’a salama. Good luck on feeding the horribles.” She gave Brett a cheery wave. “Lovely to meet you.”
Brett ended up in Willow’s bedroom. Not in the way he’d have preferred. In the sense that he was following that black bikini into a back room, its single window opening onto nothing, and watching her rifle her way through dresser drawers until she came out with a T-shirt and pair of shorts, which she tossed to him. “Those should fit, more or less,” she said. “The owner isn’t quite your size, but not too far off. You can change in here while I’m in the bath.”
He looked at the shirt, a lime-green tee that said Chill the Fuck Out, and the shorts, which looked . . . well, short, and were splattered with a black-and-white pattern like jagged teeth. Board shorts, he guessed, but not the kind he was used to. Sized for a fourteen-year-old, maybe. “Uh . . .” he said.
More of that mischievous smile, cute all the way to the freckles on her straight nose despite the finely-cut features, and she said, “Come on, mate. This is our new beginning. I stared into the jaws of death today and came out alive, right? And you helped me do it. A message from the universe to take a chance and step into the unknown. Who knows? There could be unicorns and rainbows out there. Have you ever worn a shirt with the word ‘Fuck’ on it? Signs point to ‘no.’”
“No,” he said. “I can definitely say that I have not.” It was so hard not to smile back. She radiated warmth and light like she had a lightbulb inside her, and she was switched all the way on. Her voice was rainbows and unicorns itself, as if she were singing the words. “Although I’d like to know whose clothes these are.”
“No, you probably wouldn’t.” That wasn’t anything close to the answer he wanted. He’d been going for something along the lines of “brother.” She added, “And my new beginning already seems to have started, doesn’t it? I invited a stranger home to breakfast, some weird fella who wears a suit to the beach, and I’m not even worried about it. I’m off to take a shower. You could fry that bacon once you’ve changed. Sorry it’s not pork. Azra’s Muslim, and I never did get used to eating pork anyway. Not halal.” She pulled something purple from her closet, said, “If you don’t get your skates on and make up your mind, I could be back in here again while you’re still changing. Bloody nightmare.” And walked out.
Willow showered fast, but she still felt all the tingles. Too close a brush with Death, as she’d told—him? She’d never even asked his name, she realized with another of those shocks she’d been getting all morning. The kind that didn’t feel scary, or only half scary. They felt exciting instead. Forbidden.
Face it. It wasn’t just the brush with death.
She didn’t dry her hair. It took too long. She’d used body conditioner in the shower, a tub of goopy marvelousness that had been part of her Christmas present from her cousin Rafe and his new wife, Lily. Now, her skin felt luxuriously soft, and she smelled like all the good things. Almond, vanilla, and a hint of rose.
She had a feeling her new friend was a secret dessert lover, although he’d keep that sinful desire firmly tamped down in the interest of self-discipline. Disciplined people could still fall victim to temptation, though.
Bloody hell. Was it just being alive when you’d thought you were dead? Or was it really him? She couldn’t tell, but she did know that her insides were fluttering.
Steady on, girl. You don’t know him. It’s breakfast. He could be married. She wasn’t taking another woman’s man, no matter how strong his arms felt when he held her. She brushed on a little mascara, then pulled on her new sundress, a violet mini with a double-ruffled skirt, a wrap waistband that emphasized what curves she did have, and a deep neckline, low back, and crossover spaghetti straps that meant you absolutely had to go braless, and everyone would know it.
Azra had made her buy it two weeks ago. “You’re lucky to have such cute little breasts, so you can wear it,” her friend had insisted, fortunately in Arabic, so everyone around them hadn’t turned to stare at the Amazing Boobless Woman. Azra had held the dress up higher on its hanger and shaken it at Willow. “Look at it. It’s saying ‘Try me on. I was made to be yours.’ If I wore it, I’d look like a currant bun. When you wear it, you’ll look like a sex goddess.”
Yeah, right. Willow had never looked like a sex goddess, and so far, she hadn’t worn it, except once, riding home from the beach, over her bikini. You didn’t wear that kind of thing to cook, much less at an event, and the past month had been all work anyway, with summer wedding season in full swing. The “maybe you’d like to come along” event Gordy had almost-invited her to, in fact, would be their only going-out-with-clothes-on date in weeks. She’d been with him, though, on that ride home from the beach after a surfing outing, had pointed out that the dress was new, and he’d said, “Yeah? Huh. Nice.”
“No good?” she’d asked, keeping it light. Your opinion, mate, she’d tried to think, but that was never easy.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s pretty. Makes it obvious you’ve got no tits, though. Maybe something sort of . . . filled out would be better. Sexier.”
She’d almost broken up with him then, but had decided he was just honest. Men liked big breasts. That wasn’t news. If she broke up with Gordy, the next bloke would like big breasts, too. Besides, Gordy was a brilliant surfer, and he liked the things she liked. Wasn’t compatibility meant to be the most important thing?
Now, she put the dress on. She liked it, anyway. She liked everything she saw in the mirror, or at least she accepted it. It was her. Wild, curly ginger hair, freckles, and untannable skin. An athletic body that could run and bicycle and surf and swim with equal ease and no heavy-duty support garments. Giraffe-long legs, height, and all the rest of it.
People were different, and she was fine. Surely, she was fine.
She wanted more than that, though. She wanted a man who didn’t want her to wear anything padded, because he thought she was beautiful as she was. She wanted him to take off her clothes, and she wanted his breath to catch when he finally saw her naked. She wanted her heart to melt at the way he kissed her, soft and tender and thorough, like he couldn’t get enough, and like only she would do. She wanted his hands and mouth all over her, and she wanted him to love her for hours. Or at least for more than ten minutes.
Why were all those “Love you all night long” songs
so popular? Because it was a fantasy, that was why. Well, she wanted the fantasy at least once. She was thirty, and this day could have been her last. Surely it was time to stop settling for less.
Right now? She wanted to wear this dress like she meant it, and to find out whether her new friend actually was wearing a shirt with “Fuck” on it. After that, she wanted to cook breakfast, tease him out of his seriousness a little more, see if his heart was doing the same dance hers was, and not think about sharks. So she headed out there to start doing it.
She hadn’t died, and life was for living.
Brett dropped the package of bacon, made a grab for it, and watched helplessly as the meat slithered out of its plastic wrapping and fell greasily onto the tiled floor.
He’d meant to set it on the counter. But Willow had walked into the kitchen, and somehow, his hand hadn’t made it to the counter.
It was the hair, maybe. It was wet, and it was wild. Copper ringlets, falling below her shoulders like fire. It was also the dress, all feminine flirtation, the top cut down to her breastbone in the middle, the hem ending halfway to her knees. And the way she walked in it, like she knew exactly how sexy she was right now, and exactly how much she made him want her. She had that part right.
He recovered and bent down to pick up the meat, she did the same thing, and their heads bumped. She said, “Ow!” and staggered, her bare foot slipped on the pseudo-bacon, she fell straight back onto her pretty ass with that flippy skirt all the way up her thighs, and she started to laugh.
This never happened to James Bond.
“Sorry,” he said. He had to laugh himself, and then he was giving her his hand, pulling her up, and not looking down her dress. “I’m getting it,” he told her, somehow unable to stop smiling. “Don’t join me this time, all right? I’m trying desperately to maintain my cool here.”
She was hopping towards the sink on one foot, grabbing for a paper towel, dampening it, and wiping off her greasy foot. One of her shoulder straps fell down, and no, he wasn’t actually going for the bacon package at this moment, because he didn’t even have to look down her dress. Her nipple was pink, it was pretty, and . . . There James Bond went again, his suaveness flying straight out the window. Also, these stupid shorts were much too tight. Another minute of this, and he’d be embarrassing himself.
“Whoops,” she said, looking down, pulling up her strap, and laughing some more. “I didn’t mean to actually flash you. Righty-ho, then. This is one big ‘fail.’ I wanted to wear something pretty, but I wasn’t planning to strip naked over the bacon. Are you turning that?”
He jumped, swore, and grabbed for the pan. The bacon wasn’t exactly burned, but it wasn’t exactly not, either. He turned it over, and she smiled some more and said, “This is my first time wearing this dress. Obviously, or I’d have discovered its failings. Not to mention mine.” She reached over the stove for another frying pan hanging from a pot rack, stood next to him at the stove, turned the gas fire on under the pan and tossed in a generous knob of butter, then focused on a bunch of bananas in a wire basket on the counter, which she peeled, sliced, and shook sugar onto with an efficiency of motion that told him that, yes, she was indeed a professional.
“What do you mean, yours?” he asked. “Also, if you show me the coffee, I’ll fix it. I’m better at that than bacon.”
“No coffee.” She gave her butter a swirl with a spatula. “I don’t have any. Just tea.” She gestured with her chin. “Switch the kettle on, would you?”
He did it, then asked again, “What do you mean, your failings? Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with you or that dress. I’m loving it.” The top of her head was only a few inches below his, and he was six-one. Kissing her would be so easy, even if you were inside her. He got an image of those fiery ringlets spread around her on a white sheet, her arms flung up over her head, and his hands running slowly from her shoulders to her wrists, then holding her there while he kissed her, deep and slow, and ground himself into her in that way that provided maximum friction for her, too . . .
He forgot his bacon again.
She reached over with her spatula, flipped his bacon for him, and turned a laughing face to his. “You’re hopeless, boy. Go make the tea. I’ve got this.”
He stepped back, pulled two mugs from hooks—an orange one and a blue one, because matching wasn’t high on her priority list—and said, “Failings.”
“You’re also relentless,” she complained.
“So often,” he agreed. “If the failing’s that you weren’t embarrassed by any of that, that you laughed instead—I love that, too.”
She sighed and slipped her sugary bananas into the pan, where they set up a most satisfying sizzle. “I was referring to the fact that I couldn’t even hold up the straps.”
He blinked. “Pardon?”
“Kettle’s boiling,” she pointed out, and he poured the tea. “I’m small-breasted,” she said. “It’s been noted. Recently. In this dress. And if I’m blushing? It’s because I am a redhead, and because you made me spell it out. Also, are you married?”
“Uh . . . no,” he said. “Not married, and not entangled. How about you?”
“Yes,” she said, and something in him fell. He hoped it wasn’t his heart. “Entangled. Somewhat. Call it a partial tangle.”
“If he was the one who said you were small-breasted—too small-breasted,” he said, “he doesn’t count. I can do better.”
“You mean, I can do better.” She’d turned the bananas and turned off the fire under the bacon. It all smelled amazing.
“I don’t know what you can do,” he said, “but I know what I can. And I promise you, I can do better.”
Something changed in her eyes, but all she said was, “Grab some knives and forks and a couple serviettes and take them out the back door to the table there, will you? I’m so hungry by now, I could eat fast food.”
She needed a minute? He’d give her a minute. He opened the back door and found a minuscule patio, nothing but a tiny table, two chairs, a red umbrella for shade, and a banana tree, but there was a vine growing up from a pot and over the door, putting out a spectacular display of pink and red flowers, and it all worked fine. He set the table, such as it was, and in a minute, she brought out two orange plates and set one down in front of him, and he was looking at something that should have been in a food magazine. A generous wedge of gold and brown crispy-creaminess that was like no French toast he’d ever seen, topped with toasted, sliced almonds, with a generous spritz of whipped cream on one side. Caramelized bananas sprinkled with sliced strawberries, and the poor relation of the party, his semi-charred bacon.
“One second,” she said. “Tea.” She came back with it, sat down and picked up her fork, and at last, he took a bite.
“Wow,” he said, when the creamy deliciousness had all but melted on his tongue. “That’s good. You went surfing this morning and still managed this?”
“Not hard at all,” she said. “I cooked from six AM yesterday, and I didn’t finish until—well, until a long time later. This didn’t take any effort. It’s just mixing up a couple things and bunging a dish into the fridge so Azra and I would have something filling to eat this morning. I won’t have a chance again until evening, because I’m doing an event. Reason for all the cooking. It’s for a bunch of wankers out to spoil the countryside, but then, you can’t always choose your clients.” She smiled at him. “Prejudices on full display, just like my body. How do you like me now?”
He smiled, or he kept smiling. “Full display works for me.”
She sighed and said, “You are so good for my self-esteem,” and he laughed out loud.
“I should be asking some more about that entanglement of yours,” he said, “but instead, I’m just going to say that I like your hair. A lot.”
She was too direct to look at him from under her lashes. He liked that, too. “Not everybody shares that opinion, either,” she said. “Not easy being a ginger.”
“A
ginger?” He was having trouble focusing. It seemed he was looking down her dress again, and the amazing food wasn’t helping. Everything about this was sensory overload. The smell of the food, and some more sweetness in the air that he thought might be her. Not perfume. Something more delicious. The blue sky and the breeze and the pink and red flowers, the colored crockery, and the sweet and savory flavors of the food. And, of course, her.
“A redhead,” she said. “What, you don’t say that?”
“No. We don’t. As a bad thing? No. Nothing but . . .” He tried to get it together. It wasn’t easy. “Nothing but good, as far as I’m concerned. You’re like one of those Maxfield Parrish pictures.”
She blinked. “I am? What’s that?”
“An illustrator. We’re going all the way back to the 1920s here, so fortunately, I don’t have to say it’s a generation gap. Maybe an American thing, though. Paintings. Murals. Romantic. Very popular. A sky of lapis lazuli, the way it looks after sunset, the first stars barely coming out, and a woman. A beautiful one. That would be you.”
She was eating her breakfast, so clearly enjoying it all the way, and she was paying attention, too. White shoulders, intelligent, mobile face, and copper corkscrews of hair, wild and free. “You realize,” she said, “that you can never go wrong telling a woman she reminds you of a beautiful painting.”
“Better than knocking her to the ground on a slab of bacon?” he asked.
“Much better. And you’re stalling. Tell me the rest.”
He sighed. “So . . . there she is, standing on the rocks, by the shore. At least you imagine she’s by the shore. A breeze, but she isn’t cold. She’s wearing some kind of clingy dress, Grecian-looking, her face turned to the sky. She may be reaching for the moon.” He looked at her, straight on, no smile. “He loved to paint women like you.”
“What’s a woman like me?” She’d tried to make it light, but it didn’t quite come off.
“Women who look all the way alive from their head to their toes, and not afraid to reach for what they want, even if it’s the moon. Women with short hair and long hair, with curvy bodies and slim ones, and all of them beautiful. I think—” He broke off. What was he doing, talking about a long-dead painter? He was wearing an obscene slogan T-shirt and too-tight shorts in an Australian beach town, with a surfer who had to be more than a dozen years his junior, who lived eight thousand miles from him and somehow, despite the courage, seemed much too vulnerable for a fling.
Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Page 3
