Floored

by Paton, Ainslie

  Fuck. He wasn’t falling in love; he was already rock bottom with no way out.

  He was floored.

  28: Unsafe

  Caitlyn woke smiling. This morning everything about being awake would be good. Almost certainly sinfully good. If Sean was awake too. If he wasn’t, how delicious to wake him. She rolled, hand searching beside her for warmth; there was only cool cotton. He was sitting in the chair opposite the bed, watching her. She stretched, blinking against the light from the window behind him. He should be in bed beside her. He’d showered. He had a towel around his waist.

  And a gun in his hands.

  She scrambled up and away, dragging the sheet with her. Her heartbeat exploding out of her ears. She’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. Her eyes widened to take in the bed, the room, the chair, the town, the world. Then narrowed to his face, set in an expression of what—not hostility—disappointment. Then she looked at his hands.

  The gun he was holding was hers.

  She sagged against the bed head, a full breath shuddering out of her panicked lungs. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  He turned his hand and the gun sat across his palm like it was an ordinary household item like a plastic TV remote, a pair of tongs, not an agent of death. “Why do you have this?”

  “How did you find it?”

  “How about my questions first?” His tone was all business.

  “Is this an interrogation?”

  “Maybe.” He cocked his head. “Definitely.” There was absolutely no warmth in his eyes.

  “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  “No you don’t. But I’m hoping you will because you’re smart, and carrying a loaded pistol in your toiletries bag isn’t.”

  She stared at him across the rumpled bed. One he had no intention of joining her in. He looked like he’d rather handcuff her to it and not in way she’d enjoy. He shook his head at her.

  “Why was it loaded?”

  “I didn’t know it was.”

  He put the gun on the side table. Those must be the bullets beside it. She’d rarely touched the evil thing. Just carted it around because it was too risky to leave it anywhere. He sat back in the chair, mouth drawn, brows angled down. “Have you got any idea how dangerous that is? Is it yours?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Bullshit.” He spat the word out, his voice full of vitriol, his fists clenched on his thighs. “If it was yours you’d have known it was loaded. Where did you get it?”

  She wrapped the sheet more firmly around her. She dropped her eyes. He was making it hard to think, to get her story straight. Once she’d agreed to one room, she should’ve thought to prepare for this. Idiot. She’d thought she could get dirty and dance close with an enemy and get away with it. She’d let him entice her and unless she could find a satisfactory way to answer him she was… God. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t think.

  In the instant she stopped watching him he was in front of her. His hands on her face, his expression now collapsed into distress. “Caity, you scared the shit out of me.” He pulled her to him in a rough hug. “I’m not angry with you. I’m worried for you. I need to know why you’re carrying a gun that’s not yours.”

  After last night, she had almost no resistance left. She let him hold her and stroke her hair and her hands crept up around his neck. He smelled of soap, and cheap, too fragrant hotel shampoo, and his skin was still damp.

  He shifted on the bed and moved her nearer. “Ah, Cait. What are you running from? For Christ’s sake let me help you.”

  Building tears made blinking bitter. She could tell him everything. She could finally confess and be rid of the burden of it, but she knew what would happen. He couldn’t let it ride. He was the wrong guy to do the wrong thing. By the way he was holding her now and had loved her last night; she was the right girl to break his heart. Nothing about last night had been casual, temporary like his tattoos. Everything he’d done was making a permanent score on her heart.

  But it could all end here; in an untucked bed in an oyster town, where the locals liked to keep it clean. She’d have only half the memory, half the dream and she wasn’t ready to give him up.

  She lifted her face from his shoulder and gulped back the threat of tears, steadying her frayed breathing. His expression was a collage of mixed emotion. Concern butted up against tenderness, slid alongside fear and eased in next to stubborn insistence. The whole mix was slapped down on the rationale of duty, but edged with something that looked a lot like affection. She couldn’t tell him all of it, but she could tell him this.

  “I found the gun. I found it with a bunch of papers I didn’t understand. Part of what Justin kept secret, part of what he told me I didn’t need to know. There was no reason for him to have a gun. None that I knew. I took it and I ran.”

  “Why, baby, tell me why?

  She could. She could tell him that.

  “Other than the death of my parents, the day I found the safe and all the money was the worst day of my life.” She looked away, over his shoulder. “We lived in a large apartment. I had a dreadful headache. I’d been working long hours. I could hardly see straight. I came home early. I never did that. I only wanted to lie down with a packet of frozen peas on my head. I thought I’d get rid of the headache and work from home. I thought I was alone. Justin was in the US talking to Silicon Valley investors. By that time he was hardly ever around. First thing I did was go to the fridge. The safe was open. It’d been hidden behind a false wall in the kitchen. It was full of money, so much money, Sean, just so much.”

  She took a breath, she was back in their designer kitchen; the one Justin had supervised the construction of with meticulous attention, two years earlier. Sean squeezed her hands in encouragement.

  “There were these ledgers I’d never seen before. Some of them were old, older than our business. Transactions of some sort, but written in a code. I couldn’t work them out. Some of them were about our business—that much I could tell. There was also software code. I’ve got no idea what it meant. If it was code for Bidwell why was it hidden? And there was the gun. It was just lying there. I heard a noise. I went to the bedroom and he was there with the blonde. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew he was a liar and I’d seen what he’d kept secret from me. They didn’t know I was there. I took the gun. I left everything I owned behind and I ran. I never went back. I…”

  Behind her closed eyes was the sight of the blonde, sideways across the still made bed: tanned, beautiful, her long hair flicking the floor with the bounce of the bed, her eyes closed in ecstasy as Justin took her with a frenzy they’d never shared. His head thrown back, his eyes shut too. Their skin shone with sweat. The room smelled of their animal joining. It rang with the language of their lust. They were in a world of their own.

  They’d just taken her world and broken it into jagged halves.

  She bit her lip. That was the day that brought her to this. To lying to a man she thought she cared about deeply.

  “Why didn’t you go to the cops, Cait?”

  Why couldn’t Sean leave it at that? What answer could she possibly give that would get him to back off? How about the one where bad cops put her father in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, or the one where Justin was in bed with a detective? Would he like that? Would he understand then? She pulled out of his arms. The tears that threatened now were about frustration not fear. She was trapped and she’d brought it on herself.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “I was frightened.” Her voice shook and she knew it was from fear of what would happen next not the savage suck of humiliating memories. “I was pissed off. I loved Justin and he took everything I thought was real, everything I’d worked for and made it a nightmare.”

  “But you didn’t report him.”

  She had no answer that worked. How could she tell Sean she couldn’t report Justin because of what she’d done: out of outrag
e, out of hurt, out of retribution? Out of being blindsided with Justin’s duplicity and her own stupidity. Out of revenge and greed, venial, but pure and simple too. One moment of madness that condemned her to running, to hiding, to screwing up any chance of collecting more new memories with this man.

  Sean stood, left the bed. He found his grey trackpants and pulled them on. His silence was more ominous than his cross-examination. He came back and sat on the bed again a look of weary resignation on his face.

  “Here’s the way I see it. I’m the guy who works undercover. I’ve been an open book with you in every way I could. But you.” He closed his eyes, opened them again with a throaty sigh. “You have these secrets and you want to hold on to them and there’s nothing I can do to make you give them up. I think they hurt you. I think I can help you. But you’ve got to want me to.”

  “I’ve told you everything.” She couldn’t look at him. He already knew that wasn’t true.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You’re calling me a liar.” There was no weaker point she could make but she managed to keep the misery out of her voice, acting the one being wronged.

  “Everyone lies, Cait. You’re no more a liar than I am when I have to be.”

  “Then what, what do you want from me?” It didn’t matter what he wanted, the only thing left for her to do was run, run again. Run from Sean so she didn’t force his hand. She had to get out of this bed, pack her things, leave him the gun and go. But it was so hard to move when he was looking at her like that. As if he knew the way out of this. He was looking at her like he’d forgive her anything. He reached for her. That action worse than anything he’d said. Worse still, how she wanted to fold into him.

  “The gun stays with me.”

  She nodded; teeth jammed together too close for words.

  “I don’t want you to run. I want you safe.” He curled his fingers impatiently, a come-here gesture, and that was all it took; she pressed against his chest. “I can try to worry quietly.”

  He would succeed at breaking her into tinier pieces. He dropped his head, he spoke close to her ear, so his words shot straight to the place where her hope had lived and died. “I want you happy. I want you with me.”

  29: Shifting Sands

  Sean packed the car while Caitlyn used the teller machine in the pub. This is not how he thought the morning would play out. If someone had told him he’d stumble into the bathroom, knock her toiletries bag off the shelf, and find a .40 calibre Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol spilled on the floor with her shampoo, conditioner and body lotion, he’d have bet his life savings against it.

  He’d heard the clunk as it hit the tiled floor. He told himself it was a perfume bottle or some other item of vanity. But Cait didn’t do vanity and he’d heard that sound too often. Hard polymer and steel resounding as it dropped. When he hit the lights there it was. Jesus. At least the safety was on.

  He knew she wasn’t being straight with him, but what the fuck? Then the look on her face when she saw him, shock, panic, the way her eyes bled fear until she realised he wasn’t going to shoot her—that very nearly ripped him in half. He’d wanted to go to her and kiss the horror out of her but he’d needed answers first.

  He still didn’t have them. He couldn’t shake the feeling everything had turned to shit.

  He watched her wait in line. She’d let him hold her, soothe her. She’d responded to his kisses, going deeper with him until some spark lit in her and she was pushing him for more. He let her take the lead. But there was a desperate quality to it. As though she wanted to climb into his skin with him and disappear.

  She’d wanted to forget and he gave her a piece of fleeting oblivion. He made her eyes glaze with anticipation of release. He made her claw his back to hold onto him, and bite his lip to hold onto herself. He’d had his moment to fly too, but the soul of it was all screwed up; too full of unspoken fears and failed expectations. Already. Shit.

  She came across the road. The way she walked punctuated her distress. Slow footfall, her shoulders slumped forward, eyes down on the wallet in her hands. Was this something new? He went to her side. He got a watery smile, the intention of which was to make him back off. He backed off. For now.

  By tonight they’d be in Eucla, five hundred kilometres away from this false start.

  She drove. He did the non-physical equivalent of pacing, one foot resting on his ball joint making his knee pump. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it till she leaned over and put her hand on his thigh. He stopped. She snatched her hand back. “Sorry.”

  She’d said that like a chant while they tore up the bed. He’d let it go then, it was woven in with her shudders and sighs. But not now. “What are you sorry for? Sorry for the gun? Sorry for the sex?” Sorry she’d met him? Couldn’t blame her. It came out rough, a knife with a serrated edge. Just what she needed. Even with her sunglasses on she looked stricken. Just what he deserved. “Fuck. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not sorry about the gun. I could’ve told you but it’s none of your business. I did what I thought I had to do and it’s over. I want to get past it.”

  “So past it you want to move across the country.” If he sounded any more pissed off he’d earn himself the silent treatment for the next five hours.

  She gave him a look, so quick he might have missed the slight turn of her cheek. “I’m sorry it ruined a perfect moment. I’m sorry I worried you. I’m…”

  “You thought it was perfect?”

  Another quick incline of her head and her chin dropped. “I wanted you so badly. I waited, but you were gone so long I fell asleep. I was worried you were hurt or you’d go stale on the whole idea. I’m—”

  “You thought it was perfect.” He got the barest hint of a smile out of that. “Christ, Cait. It was perfect. I knew it would be good, but I…” How did he tell her she rocked his whole world? He grinned at her and she grinned back and all the crap of the morning fell away.

  He tapped the centre console to up the volume on the Thirsty Merc CD and sang along with Rai Thistlethwayte to Twenty Good Reasons, cutting in on the line about guilty hearts then belting out the chorus, all about a guy needing twenty good reasons to let his girl go.

  She couldn’t help but listen to him. He only hoped she heard.

  By the time they made it to Eucla they’d broken every one of Cait’s driving rules and then some, except the one about not driving for more than seven hours.

  Eucla, population eighty-six. A gold rush town history used then forgot in a hurry, leaving behind a telegraph repeater station and the effects of a rabbit plague that created sand dunes with territorial expansion ambitions. They’d made it to Western Australia. They had the choice of the Eucla Motor Hotel or the Eucla Motor Hotel. Or driving on. Driving on meant next stop Kalgoorlie but that was another eight hundred clicks and they’d started late. So the Eucla Motor Hotel was it for the night.

  And the night was young.

  She was in his arms before the door clicked closed. The same nervous hunger in her eyes as this morning, and the taste of her sweet and sugary from the raspberry jubes he’d fed her in the car. Was that all they were, a bunch of broken rules?

  Tonight there’d be time to test that, to learn each other, to see if they were more than anticipation meets loneliness and circumstance; to take another go at perfect, and a good hard look at that bottom of the cliff theory.

  He backed her up against the door. “No interruptions tonight.”

  She said, “No,” and it sounded like the pop of a starter’s gun. A green for go. He brought her hips to meet his, no doubt where this was going, slow and fast and all speeds and temperatures in between.

  “The things I want to do to you.”

  “Are they legal?”

  She teased. He slapped. An open palm to her backside. She jumped. “Between consenting adults.”

  She tightened her old around his neck. “Will I like it?”

  He stoppe
d moving, palmed her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I’ll know if you don’t.” But inside the kiss that followed he wasn’t sure that was true. She had too many secrets for him to be sure of seeing the truth in her.

  “No lies, Cait. No more secrets.”

  She held his head so they were forehead on forehead, as if mind-reading might do instead of talk. He tucked his hand between her legs and swallowed her gasp. “I want more than this.”

  He had her shuddering. The words, “I can only hate you so much,” jerked out of her.

  Then there was no more talking, only telepathy; the sixth sense of desire and lust.

  Moving together into the room, there was the mad, fumbling dance of stripping each other; knowing the precise action to make the other soften, tighten, want more. That first hot moment when skins collided and caresses took the shape of push and pull. The language of unintelligible sounds that told you everything you needed to know to give more, less, harder, quicker.

  Sean’s world narrowed to the warm softness of Cait’s skin, to sounds she made from the back of her throat, to lips he left open and wet, and came back to again and again for the drug of her kisses, for the reflex of giving, for the glorious throb and thrust of coming together.

  That was round one. The opener.

  In round two they made it to the bed. There was no hasty fumbling. Just mind-blasting pleasure.

  In between round two and three there was a lot of giggling, and not all of it hers. It was play without objective and fun without trying. He felt like a kid, unselfconsciously excited about nothing. Like the muscles in his cheeks might give out from smiling.

  Round four was the decider.

  It started in the pokey bathtub shower, marvellously too small for two. Add soap and slick silken skin and it was dangerously slippery. Not that any excuses were needed for holding close, or laughing, or sucking kisses that stopped the frigging clock, made the water run cold when it met hot bodies.