Awakened by His Touch

by Nikki Logan

  ‘You haven’t let yourself or you don’t know what comes next?’ His hold loosened even further at her silence. ‘Have you ever slept with anyone, Laney?’

  Her mind spiralled in a slow circle, making thinking difficult. ‘Wilbur.’

  ‘Not counting your dog.’ He chuckled.

  Then, no. ‘Why? Does that make a difference?’

  He released her that little bit further. ‘Yeah, it does. Of course it does.’

  ‘I’m twenty-five, Elliott. It has to happen eventually.’

  She really wanted it to happen eventually. Actually, she kind of wanted it to happen now. While her body was still on board with that plan.

  Those lips that had just tortured hers so perfectly shaped new words. Final words.

  ‘But not tonight.’

  * * *

  She placed one foot behind her to steady herself as her stretch shrank backwards. Away from Elliott.

  Here it comes...

  Confusion stained her pretty face. ‘You’re not attracted to me?’

  ‘Laney...’

  ‘That’s a genuine question, Elliott.’

  Yeah. She wasn’t the fishing for compliments type. ‘It’s not about attraction, Laney. It’s about appropriateness.’

  Half the extra colour birthed by their kisses drained from her face. ‘What?’

  His stomach fisted hard, deep in his body. ‘Sleeping with you would be...’

  ‘Inappropriate?’

  Just do it, man. It was always going to end like this. Of course it was.

  ‘Unethical.’

  That word—that sentiment—had her taking a second step back. The coffee table hit her calves. But she stabilised and straightened. ‘Isn’t that something you should have thought about before all the kissing started?’

  ‘Look, Laney. There’s a big difference between kissing someone and taking their virginity.’

  One meant something. The other meant everything. And he didn’t do everything.

  Her arms crept around her torso. ‘So if I wasn’t a virgin we’d be having sex right now?’

  Would they? Would his galloping confusion be any less if he was not her first? Or would his conscience still have raised its unwelcome head.

  He sighed and turned partly away. ‘No. There’s still a difference.’

  And his brain had been trying to get his attention as he’d paced up and down in the little chalet, waiting for her to arrive, but his body had kept overruling it. Because he wanted to be able to want her. So badly.

  ‘Who’s going to know?’

  ‘I’ll know, Laney. That’s not the kind of man I am.’

  ‘Really? The kind of man that would lead a woman on and then drop her cold?’

  He couldn’t say he didn’t deserve that. Except he discovered he couldn’t say anything at all.

  ‘Why not have someone else assigned to Morgan’s?’ she suggested finally. ‘Nothing inappropriate then.’

  And he’d have jumped on that if it were the only thing stopping him. If it weren’t for the raging tightness deep in his chest. But she was handing him the perfect out and he was coward enough to take it.

  ‘Because you’re my case.’

  ‘Sure—normally. But under the circumstances...’

  ‘No one else wants you, Laney. I’m the one pushing Morgan’s at executive level.’

  Speaking of pushing...something was driving him hard. Pushing Laney back. Pushing her away as determinedly as he’d dragged her towards him only minutes before.

  ‘But if they agree we have potential? Wouldn’t someone else run with that?’

  Everything he’d worked for over so many years suddenly felt unstable—unreliable and totally out of his control—and that big, gaping void inside him seemed to loom large and hollow.

  ‘I don’t want someone else running with it. Morgan’s is my client. My opportunity.’

  She sagged down onto the coffee table and the rest of her colour abandoned her. ‘Opportunity for what?’

  Surely she’d understand... This was Laney. She was amazing. If anyone could understand him, what drove him—

  ‘I’ve been gunning for partner for two years, Laney. And Morgan’s is going to get me there. I’m not about to pass that opportunity off to someone else, even for—’

  He caught himself, but the sentiment hung out there, all miserable and unmissable. Even for a blind woman.

  Her fingers curled on the table-edge just as they had on his boat.

  ‘For me?’

  Hurting her hurt him. It was like an open wound in his body. But something stopped him from going to her. Some ancient fear. Some inherent...lack. When all he wanted to do was trust someone with the truth.

  Trust Laney with the big void inside him.

  ‘I see. So the kissing? The parasailing?’

  ‘I wanted to get to know you, Laney. I still do. I really wasn’t thinking about what would happen next.’

  ‘You’ve filled the place with candles. And you had a couple of hours to think about it...’

  He opened his mouth to defend the undefendable. So he just closed it again.

  Her spine forced her upright, rigid and erect. ‘Your career means more to you than an opportunity to take things further with me?’

  No. That wasn’t it at all. But lying was easier than trying to untangle the truth when the truth was so deeply woven into his flesh. ‘My career is important to me,’ he hedged.

  She pressed her palms to her cheeks, as if that could mask the dread now there.

  ‘Laney, don’t look like that.’

  ‘There is no way this could have worked,’ she whispered. ‘We’re such different people...’

  ‘No, we’re not. But the timing is all off.’

  Her head came up. ‘How is time going to change anything?’

  ‘Circumstances could change.’

  Misery thickened her voice and deadened her eyes. ‘I told you Morgan’s isn’t interested.’

  ‘You haven’t heard my proposal yet.’

  ‘I don’t really need to, Elliott. We’re just not interested.’

  ‘Wait until you see the numbers.’

  ‘Like that’s all that matters.’ But then her face lifted. ‘If Morgan’s was not an Ashmore Coolidge client any more...could we keep seeing each other?’

  ‘You’d fire us?’

  ‘I can get anyone to do our financial management.’

  The implication being she couldn’t find just anyone to make her feel the way he did. His heart hammered dangerously faster.

  ‘Just so we could be together?’

  * * *

  And there it was.

  The great imbalance in their respective feelings and attitudes made manifest in that one little word.

  Just.

  Laney would have done almost anything to give them a chance to explore this thing between them more. Elliott would do virtually nothing.

  She shot back to her feet. Angry enough to stir. ‘So, a one-night stand, then?’

  Not that she had any intention of doing anything of the sort.

  Anger hissed out of him. ‘I told you. It’s—’

  ‘Unethical. I know. But that’s a relationship. I’m talking about a one-off thing. No strings attached.’ She waved her hands wildly around her. ‘What happens in the chalet stays in the chalet.’

  ‘Laney—’

  ‘Come on, Elliott. Throw a girl a bone. I want to get it out of the way.’

  ‘Laney... You’re angry.’

  Fury boiled from down deep inside. ‘Yeah, I’m angry! You started the whole touchy-feely thing. You with your interesting conversation and gorgeous smell and gentle touch. Why even start it if you knew
you couldn’t do anything with what happened?’

  ‘Because I didn’t think anything would happen. I thought it was safe.’

  Her snort startled a collar-jangle out of Wilbur. ‘To mess with a blind girl?’

  ‘To get to know you. To have you get to know me. To enjoy it.’

  Natural justice ran strong in her. She couldn’t really stand here and criticise him for not thinking it though when she’d totally failed to do so. She was just so caught up in him.

  ‘Why bother?’ Except it hit her then. Exactly why he’d bothered. ‘Or did you think it would improve your chances of us saying yes if we’d all come to like you?’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say I. She could barely manage ‘like’. Because somewhere this weekend she’d gone flying past ‘like’ as surely as if she was back in that parasailing harness.

  What she felt for Elliott Garvey had stopped being ‘like’ a half-dozen conversations ago.

  Not that it mattered now. Except to name exactly what it was she could never show him.

  ‘At first, maybe. It’s good business to build a good working relationship with clients.’

  ‘Do you have dinner with all your clients? Drink wine and share stories?’

  ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

  ‘Do you kiss them all too? Take them up into the sky and press your body against them?’

  Who knew? Maybe he did...

  ‘That’s not why I took you parasailing.’

  ‘Then why did you? You called it a date.’

  He sighed. ‘That’s what it felt like.’

  ‘So why do it?’

  ‘Because you wanted to. And because I—’

  ‘Because you what?’

  ‘Because I wanted you to get off this farm. I wanted you to try something new and see that it wasn’t so earth-shattering.’

  Something cold sliced in under her diaphragm. And the hole it left sucked every bit of joy out of the day they’d just shared. Breakfast, the research lab, the flight, the kissing.

  Yet earth-shattering was exactly what it had been.

  ‘You thought one train trip to the city and an afternoon boating was going to make me change my mind about taking Morgan’s global? How much of a hick do you think I am?’

  ‘Be honest, Laney. Your horizons are bounded by ocean, trees and a small town. It doesn’t hurt to stretch them a little.’

  Offence blazed large and real in her chest. ‘I was just spending time with you. I didn’t realise I was signing up for a self-improvement class.’

  Though now she could clearly see what today had really all been about. And what that meant Elliott thought of her.

  Nice girl. Smart and business savvy. Good kisser. Charmingly provincial.

  ‘You think that taking me to the big smoke and spoiling me with experiences, getting me to trust you, was going to change my mind? I’m not that shallow, Elliott.’

  Though it looked as if maybe he was. Disappointment leaked in with all the hurt.

  ‘No, you’re not. But you are—above all else—unfailingly sensible and loyal to Morgan’s. I was counting on you wanting the best for them. Regardless of your own fears.’

  She reeled back as if he truly had slapped her clean across the face. ‘Is that what you think? That I’m afraid?’

  He took both her hands in his, gave them a little shake. ‘You shouldn’t be. You are amazing. You can do anything.’

  Snatching them back caused a suck of breath from him. Seriously—he was still campaigning? ‘Just because I can doesn’t mean I should!’

  She turned and fumbled with her hands for the nearest grabbable surface, but only encountered a tealight full of molten wax. It spilled as she upended the tiny candle in her haste and she stumbled away from the pain. But of course it only went with her.

  Life in a nutshell, really.

  ‘Laney, let me—’

  ‘No!’

  Her bark drew Wilbur to her side and he leaned against her leg, where she could more easily reach the handle on his harness. She grabbed it like the lifeline it was. Hardening wax and all.

  ‘I thought you understood me.’ I thought you liked me. ‘But you’re just like all the others. Humouring me.’

  Using me.

  She thought back on how she’d been with him. How vulnerable she’d let herself be.

  ‘This was a mistake.’ Emotion thrummed through her voice. ‘Something between you and me could never have worked.’

  No matter how good the kisses were. Or how he made her laugh. Or how attracted she was to his brain. Damn it.

  ‘Laney, let me walk you back to the house.’

  ‘I’m fine. I have Wilbur.’ There was one male in her life, at least, who accepted her for who she was and was always there for her. Unfailingly.

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ he risked.

  She threw her arm out and found the doorframe before feeling her way down to the handle. ‘Where else am I going to go with such diminished horizons?’

  ‘Come on, Laney—’

  She swung the door open, tiredly, and stepped down off the step. ‘Leave it, Elliott. Let’s just get back to the real reason for your presence.’ For every single thing he’d done here. ‘Back to business.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave it like this.’

  ‘Well, too bad. It’s not your call. I’m a bit over doing what other people want of me. Now I’m doing what I want. And what I want is to end this conversation and get the hell out of your cabin.’

  And his life.

  She nudged Wilbur on with more force than he deserved and he shot forward in apology. Guilt immediately washed through her.

  ‘Sorry, pup,’ she whispered as he led her back through the silent paddock towards the house. Towards privacy. Towards her long, lonely future.

  As if being physically blind weren’t difficult enough... Now she could add social blindness to her list of challenges.

  How could she not have realised which way the wind was blowing? Elliott had made it perfectly clear how important his work was to him and how fully he was backing his proposal. But she’d looked right past the obvious the moment a man came along who appeared to understand her.

  Pretended to, perhaps?

  Yet for all his corporate gloss, charming words and plain yummy smell, Elliott Garvey was just like all those other men she’d dated. In it for number one. And feeling disappointed and disillusioned was painful enough without also feeling like the blindest blind woman ever to have stumbled on the earth.

  Although there was one benefit to having no vision—it made no difference to how fast you could move while tears streamed down your face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHAT A MORON. He really couldn’t have messed things up any better.

  Any worse.

  Elliott moved quietly behind Laney as she showed him the final remaining area of Morgan’s operations. Her movements were as dull as her expression. As carefully distant. Closed to any further discussion outside of the necessary.

  Utterly closed to him.

  And why wouldn’t she be? Everything she’d said last night was right. He shouldn’t have started anything with her without knowing where and how it was going to end. He didn’t do unevaluated risk. He did strategic risk. Carefully measured risk.

  He absolutely didn’t do head-swimming, mind-addling, resolve-defying risk.

  Because this was how it ended.

  Enjoying Laney’s company was an indulgence, and kissing her had turned out to be a luxury he couldn’t afford. But it was because of his personal values—not his corporate ones. Ashmore Coolidge was an old-school boys’ club. They wouldn’t have given a toss about one of their team sleeping with a client if it meant closing the deal. Actually, in truth, they would
have had a lot to say behind closed doors—especially with a client as young and attractive and blind as Laney—but none of it would have been negative. Unless it had lost the deal, of course.

  And he wasn’t about to lose the deal. He was a realiser. Not a loser. Without his professional success, what did he have?

  Just him, his nice apartment, and the big vacant place inside him.

  Laney finally wrestled free the front base cover on one of the hives in the stack they were looking at. Her fingers dusted over the front of it.

  ‘When the slide is in this position—’ she lowered it ‘—access to the hive is uninterrupted. But when I raise it—’ she did so ‘—the bees have to go through the collection plate to get inside.’

  ‘It’s tight,’ he said, really just so that he could gauge her reaction to him. So that she had to engage with him and not just deliver some kind of professional monologue.

  ‘That’s how we harvest the pollen. They have to drop the biggest bundles in order to get through with the rest. Then we sell it to the commercial food industry.’

  Her eyes were utterly lifeless. And that was when he realised just how full of life they usually were—if you took the time to look for it.

  ‘They don’t sound too happy.’

  ‘They don’t like change.’

  ‘Or having to work doubly hard to bring in their quota?’

  She turned. Finding criticism where he’d intended none, judging by her unhappy expression.

  ‘I would have thought that was right up your alley? Maximising their output. No wasted potential.’

  Yeah, it was. But it wasn’t like her. So there had to be a good reason. ‘Is pollen lucrative?’

  Her frustrated sigh was telling. ‘Yeah. It is.’

  Like everything bee-related except maybe honey.

  ‘But that’s not why you do it?’

  ‘I do it because we can freeze it and feed it back to the hive during winter to sustain them. It means fewer deaths in winter.’

  Death in winter. That was about the most perfect opening he was going to get to talk about his expansion ideas. But that freckle-kissed face was not open to ideas. Not right now.

  Maybe never. Not to him.