Awakened by His Touch

by Nikki Logan

  Laney’s soft hair shifted with the tilt of her head. ‘Are we late?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’ The man’s laugh boomed. ‘I meant it’s a pleasure to meet you after all this time. Those of us who have been working on Helena for two years wondered if we’d ever get the pleasure.’

  Elliott held his breath. This could end badly.

  ‘You...’ Her frown was very definitely real this time. ‘You named your project after me?’

  Another thing he really liked about her. She didn’t waste anyone’s time with fake humility.

  ‘To the rest of the world this project is VisApis 439, but we know it affectionately as Helena. And, yes, we named it for you, since it was born out of the research you commissioned.’

  Standing this close behind her, Elliott knew the moment she stiffened like an old lock.

  ‘Morgan’s commissioned it.’

  ‘But it was your experiences that led us to the software breakthrough we’d been chasing for a decade. If not for your experiences we never would have looked at bees.’

  For the first and only time he was grateful for Laney’s lack of sight. Lord only knew what she’d make of her name splashed across their whole lab. Affectionate or otherwise... And then as he looked around the lab he saw all the evidence of how they’d planned for her visit.

  Every chair was pushed in at every computer terminal, every bin had been lifted onto the empty desktops. Every obstacle had been kindly and carefully cleared.

  ‘We’re looking forward to learning more about your project,’ Elliott broke in, intentionally leaning on the word ‘your’. He wanted today to go well—all of it—and this fawning over Laney wasn’t the fastest path there.

  Fortunately the guy wasn’t just engineer-smart. He picked up on Elliott’s subtle cue and moved smoothly on to a civilian version of how the software worked and what they were already able to do with it. Elliott used the time well to surreptitiously pull out a chair or two specifically for Laney to negotiate. She did her part by nudging them with her cane and neatly sidestepping them.

  It was nearly ninety minutes before they’d seen all the progress the team had made and Laney had answered the many questions the project director had about her observations on bees—and he hers—but finally Elliott gave her his arm to manage the exit.

  ‘I liked them,’ she announced, halfway down the steps.

  ‘I’d say the feeling was mutual.’

  ‘They didn’t Laney-proof their entire office.’

  Any residual guilt he’d felt at littering the office with obstacles evaporated. ‘That’s important to you?’

  ‘I hate being catered for. I don’t expect it and I don’t enjoy it.’

  Something she’d said once before echoed again. That her father had pushed constantly for others to make allowances for his little girl.

  ‘I like that my sight is the least interesting part of the process for them.’

  Two thoughts collided then. First that their choice of name for the software suggested that wasn’t at all true, and second—strong and dominant—that he didn’t want Laney heaping gratitude on any man other than him.

  A nicely prehistoric little sentiment.

  He’d been going out of his way to treat her just like anyone else. He’d been suppressing his own masculine instincts to rescue her every five minutes. It rankled that the white coats had earned her respect so easily—and so quickly—when she seemed to give respect away so sparingly.

  Right behind that he realised how important her good opinion was to him.

  And right behind that he realised that he was still sixteen emotionally.

  Come on, Garvey. Man up.

  He forced the conversation back on track. ‘What did you think of their progress?’

  ‘I think it’s exciting. And amazing. I look forward to when it’s finished.’

  ‘How do you feel about them naming it after you?’

  ‘Their choice, I guess.’

  ‘It’s not an honour?’

  ‘It’ll be good for Morgan’s to be associated with the research,’ she hedged.

  Morgan’s again. Never Laney. A big part of him wanted her to know that was her name emblazoned across their lab. Hers, not her family’s. But that wouldn’t be helpful to his cause.

  ‘Well, thanks for indulging the detour,’ he said, settling her back into the passenger seat. ‘It really helped me to understand the project. And the potential.’

  ‘I’d have thought this sort of thing was too random to reliably count as potential.’

  ‘The specifics, maybe. But research could be a good sideline for Morgan’s. You can only accommodate so many bees in labs, and Morgan’s can offer researchers the kind of sample sizes they need to get verifiable results. Tens of thousands. Maybe there are other partnerships like this one you can form in the future.’

  Tiny creases appeared between her brows.

  ‘That worries you?’

  ‘I just like the...the organic nature of our business. No pun intended.’

  ‘You get less joy out of things that are planned?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to today?’

  Her head turned to him, though it didn’t need to. ‘Parasailing? Yes, very much.’

  ‘We planned that.’

  ‘Yeah, but can you imagine how much more exciting it would have been if you’d said to me up at the bluff, “Come on, Laney, whack on this harness. We’re jumping from the cliff right now”.’

  ‘But then you’d miss out on all the anticipation. The build-up.’

  ‘Build-up matters?’

  ‘Laney... Build-up is the best bit.’ His car purred to life at the press of a button. ‘Didn’t you have to plan things out growing up?’

  She didn’t answer and a lightbulb flashed on above his head, bright and obvious.

  That’s exactly why she prefers spontaneity, moron.

  He paused just before clicking his seatbelt into place and leaned over her before he thought better of it. She stiffened slightly with surprise, but didn’t push him away when he brushed his lips over hers.

  ‘What was that for?’

  The warm caress of her breath on his lips teased them to life even more. ‘I was being spontaneous.’

  ‘By kissing me?’

  ‘You were probably expecting it at the end of the day.’

  ‘I wasn’t— I’m not expecting anything.’

  But that wasn’t anger flushing red over her shirt collar. She liked it. Either the kiss or the exhilaration. Didn’t much matter which. He was just pleased to have finally unravelled a bit more of the mysterious Ms Morgan.

  ‘Well, you can expect an awesome afternoon on the water. Next stop the Indian Ocean.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘SERIOUSLY, DUDE. A blind chick?’

  Elliott threw Danny his most withering stare. ‘She’s not a “chick”, Dan. She’s a woman.’

  Danny flicked his gaze to where Laney sat, firm-knuckled around Misfit’s gunnel, her white shirt blown back tight against her torso. Showcasing every curve. Elliott instantly felt protective of those curves, because she couldn’t see them to know how uncovered they were by either her one-piece swimsuit or the translucent shirt. It felt vaguely wrong to be appreciating them.

  ‘She sure is.’ Danny grinned. ‘A blind woman.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s not your usual type.’

  ‘That’s the least of the ways Helena Morgan is not my type, Danny.’ He kept his voice low, just in case the laws of physics suddenly decided to change direction and carry their words to her extra-perceptive ears. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is what are you doing? Is this serious? Is it casual? Is it work?’
/>
  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It matters, mate. If this is work then why is she here, out riding with us? And if this is casual then you might have picked the wrong girl to hit.’

  ‘She’s blind, Dan, not impaired.’ The vehemence of his own voice surprised him. ‘She’s as capable as any other woman of dealing with something short term.’

  ‘And that’s what this is? A bit of short-term something?’

  No. It wasn’t as seedy as Danny made it sound. He’d thought he knew, but he was starting to doubt his own mind. ‘It’s not anything.’

  Yet—and only if you didn’t count two kisses and the impending promise of more.

  ‘I wanted to get her off the farm. Have a chance to talk with her in a different context.’

  Danny glanced back at him from the wheel of Misfit. ‘Why?’

  Good question. ‘To see what makes her tick.’

  ‘Why do you need to know that?’

  You didn’t buy a boat with someone if they weren’t a good mate, but that wasn’t something he was prepared to answer honestly to himself, let alone his best friend. ‘Because this job hangs on getting her co-operation.’

  Ugh, when had he become such a good liar?

  ‘Ah, so it is work. Are Ashmore Coolidge cool with you sleeping with your clients?’

  ‘I’m not sleeping with her. And the firm trusts me to use my best judgement.’

  ‘In other words they’re cool with you sleeping with a client if it leads to revenue?’

  ‘I’m not sleeping with her.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Damn it, Danny—’

  ‘Hey, I’m just trying to work out if I should bother getting to know her.’

  ‘She wants to try parasailing. That’s it.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Mmm, what?’

  ‘Smacks of dirty pool, Elliott. Getting her high on adrenaline and then hitting her up for whatever it is you want.’

  Anger bubbled hard and fast just below the place where he usually kept it contained. ‘That’s not what I’m doing. She just wants to experience something new.’

  Though wasn’t he? Could he truly say it hadn’t crossed his mind how good a kiss between them would be right after she landed? Or in the air?

  Danny eyeballed him. ‘And since when did you become a life coach?’

  ‘Why are you busting my brass about this?’

  ‘There’s a blind woman clinging to the front of our boat. That’s not usual, man.’

  Elliott’s eyes narrowed and focussed on Laney’s white-knuckled grip on the chrome catch bars that lined the bow. Was that just a secure farm grip...or was she absolutely terrified?

  Danny must have read his mind. ‘Is she okay out there?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘What if she falls off?’

  Irritation warred with concern. ‘Last time I checked, blindness didn’t affect grip.’

  ‘But what if she does?’

  ‘Then she treads water until we circle back and pick her up, like anyone else.’

  His friend gaped at him. ‘That’s harsh, man.’

  ‘She can’t see, Danny. She’s not a two-year-old.’

  In one whump it all hit him—how tired Laney must be of being treated as if she was a child. Or disabled. When she was the least disabled disabled person he’d ever met. How the two sides of her must come into conflict all the time—the independent woman who didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves and the gentle soul who appreciated that everyone truly meant well.

  Danny meant well and Elliott wanted to thump him already. ‘Just treat her like anyone else. Except maybe ease up on the ogling.’

  ‘She can’t see me do it.’

  ‘No, but I can.’

  With that, he swung around the boat’s windshield and manoeuvred his way up to the bow to join Laney. Despite the strong headwinds caused by their speed she either heard his approach or felt his footfalls, because her head tilted towards him just slightly even as her hands tightened even more.

  He raised his voice over Misfit’s motor. ‘Okay, Laney?’

  ‘Loving it.’ The wind almost stole her words from him.

  He shuffled closer. ‘Your knuckles are looking a little pale...’

  ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t also terrified.’

  He slid down next to her and matched her death-grip on the chrome trip rail.

  ‘I think this is the fastest I’ve ever gone in my life.’

  ‘Really? I thought for sure Owen would have put the pedal to the metal a time or two out on the back roads.’

  ‘Yeah, he has. But I didn’t have my head out of the window like Wilbur so it’s not the same. And although I’ve doubled with someone on a horse once it was a shire horse, to take our combined weights, so it didn’t get up a whole lot of speed.’

  ‘Want us to slow down?’

  ‘No! This is awesome.’

  But her knuckles weren’t getting any pinker, and again he realised how many things she must have done in her life despite her fear. And right behind that he realised that she wouldn’t necessarily have been any more or less afraid even if she could see the water whizzing by at one hundred and thirty kilometres per hour.

  She tipped her head back and opened her mouth. ‘I love the spray.’

  The salt and the speed.

  ‘It stings.’

  ‘Pfff. This is nothing.’

  Her bees. He chuckled, then raised his voice to be heard. ‘No. I guess not.’

  ‘So where are we going in such a hurry?’

  ‘There’s a sandbar east of here. We use that as a launch site.’

  ‘You don’t lift off from the boat?’

  ‘Not if we have a choice. And not when we’re doing tandem. It’s easier from terra firma.’

  That brought her head around again. ‘We’re going up together?’

  ‘You think I’m going to send you up alone on your first flight?’

  What kind of a man did she think he was?

  ‘Can it hold two?’

  His laugh barked out of him. ‘We’ll find out.’

  But she wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Yes, Laney. It can hold two. And this isn’t optional. You’ve never parasailed before.’

  Her frown didn’t ease.

  ‘Who did you think was going to give you instructions?’

  ‘I didn’t really think about that. In my head it’s all very...’

  ‘Organic?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Misfit lost speed. ‘Well, you’re about to find out. The sandbar is just ahead of us.’

  * * *

  ‘When you feel my body move, just move with it. Like we’re dancing.’

  No. If they were dancing she’d be facing him, respectably, instead of strapped in tight with her back to his big, hard chest. Like upright spooning.

  ‘And as soon as you feel the upward tug if you don’t think you can run with me then just lift your legs.’

  ‘And let you do all the work?’

  ‘The boat is doing all the work, really. I’m just keeping us upright.’

  Yeah. That was all he was doing. He wasn’t giving her the experience of her life. He wasn’t keeping her thundering heartbeat in check by his very presence.

  He took her again through the basic instructions and then treble-checked the harnesses. Every yank nudged her body closer to his; every buckle-rattle brushed her body with his knuckles. In case she’d forgotten how close together they were standing.

  His friend gently revved the boat a way off the sandbar.

  ‘Ready, Laney? Bend forward.’

  Right. Because that wasn’t suggestive at a
ll when you were tucked this close to a man.

  But she had no choice as his chest and shoulders bent towards her—

  ‘Now, run!’

  She did—absolutely determined not to pike out and lift her legs. It took a certain amount of trust to run on unfamiliar terrain, but being strapped to Elliott went a long way to reassuring her that he’d have checked their path for obstacles if for no other reason than his own preservation. His feet ploughed into the sand next to hers—virtually between hers—until the promised yank came, and then another closely after it, and suddenly there was no more sand to plunge her feet into and the harness pulled up taut between her thighs.

  And she was running on thin air.

  Her stomach didn’t lurch, as she’d half expected, and the only clue that they were ascending was the circulation-restricting pressure of the harness and the gentle whoosh of air diagonally down her face.

  ‘Danny’s turned on the winch,’ he said, and sure enough, the sounds around them changed as they lifted further and further from the ocean. Less boat, more sky.

  ‘How far up will we go?’

  ‘We have two hundred and fifty metres on the winch.’

  She knew which hives were a quarter of a kilometre from the house and tried to imagine that in an upward direction. It was tough imagining high when you’d never seen it. Or felt it, particularly.

  They fell to silence and before too long that was more or less what they had. Even the rumbly engine of Misfit and the sounds of the sea were replaced with the sounds of...

  ‘Nothing,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’ Elliott leaned in closer to her ear and the comparative warmth of his breath on her cheek was the first time she’d noticed that her skin was so cool. Even though it was a warm autumn day.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so quiet,’ she said, and barely needed to raise her voice. ‘I thought there’d be whooshing.’

  ‘Danny’s slowed the boat to a gentle run.’

  ‘Can you describe what you see?’

  He could. He did a great job—not quite as good as her talented mother, but not bad for a rookie, and better again than his descriptions of buildings. He talked about the shape of the land, the winding line of the coast. The island off in the distance to their left. Her brain immediately adjusted and added her version of an island to her imagined vista and she nestled into the deepness of his voice.