He pushed open the door, urged her inside onto a soft bath mat and then reached in to turn on the shower. Even the sound of the water pulsing on the tiles was too loud. There was a groan and Lizzie realised it was coming from her.
Wordlessly, Dan reached around her, tugging at the zip at the back of her dress. When it fell to her feet in a rustle of red and vomit splatters, Lizzie covered her face with her hands at the indignity of it all. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see the look of disgust on his face that she was certain would be furrowing his brow. Or maybe closing her eyes simply stopped the room from spinning.
Lizzie took in more deep lungfuls of air.
Dan watched her with a grin.
He usually liked being in this position, he realised. Stripping a beautiful woman naked, that is. It was the drunk part that made things complicated. And clear-cut.
With a quick flick of his hand, he loosened Lizzie’s bra and it fell to the floor. And while it was probably wrong to stare at the luscious breasts of a woman who was drunk, he figured that since he’d admired them once of twice before, it wasn’t doing anyone any harm. With an automatic leg lift, and a hand firmly pressed up against the shower screen for balance, Lizzie stepped out of her knickers. Her lingerie was red, lacy and barely there. Holy hell.
Dan guided Lizzie under the spray and closed the shower screen. He knew he couldn’t leave her in there alone, so he leaned back against the cold, tiled wall and watched. It was only for her safety, he told himself. What if she fell asleep? Slipped on the soap? Knocked her head? Drowned? He heard more moans as the hot water sluiced over her breasts, her back and the curve of her arse, down her calves and onto her red toenails.
When Lizzie turned off the taps and tentatively opened the shower door, Dan was there with a huge soft towel and he wrapped her in it. For a moment, his arms remained wrapped around her too, and when he felt her go limp, he tightened his grip, pulling her closer. Lizzie let out a jittery sigh and her head dropped against his chest.
‘Ooh,’ she moaned softly.
Her wet hair and face were soaking him through his shirt but he didn’t care. Something lurched inside him. Standing there, with Lizzie in his arms, he felt like he’d found something resembling home. And that thought spooked the hell out of him.
With a corner of the towel he gently dried her hair, rubbing it into crazy spikes on her head. Then, knowing she would need it, he reached to the basin and handed her his toothbrush, already loaded with toothpaste.
Her big, washed out blue eyes flickered and met his. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered with a wan smile. The world around him seemed to disappear. That was the moment, he would realise later, when everything really changed.
‘Thought a shower might help.’
She nodded. ‘It did. I’m so sorry. I must have had more to drink that I thought. Pretty unattractive, huh.’
He smiled, stroked her cheek, swallowed the feeling in his throat. ‘Yeah, worst thing I’ve ever seen.’
Lizzie’s hand flew to her belly. Her face went pale. ‘Oh God. I need to lie down.’
Dan didn’t hesitate. He took her hand and led her to his bedroom, mindful not to turn on the lights. The room was barely lit by the moonlight through the blinds, and he tugged back the sheets. Beside him, Lizzie let the damp towel drop to the floor and when she found the cool of the bed, slowly lowered herself backwards until her head was on his pillow. She turned away from him and curled herself up in a tight ball. Dan lifted the blankets over her and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her eyelids had already fluttered shut and her breathing was sleep heavy.
Dan couldn’t see his watch in the darkness but he figured it was about one in the morning. He felt too wired to shut his eyes and sleep. Too much had happened. His mind was reeling. Sleep. The way he was feeling, he’d probably sit up all night watching infomercials and still not drift off. Hell, he’d probably wake up the next day having mysteriously ordered a steam mop or one of those craptaculous exercise machines from the all-night ads without even remembering that he’d done it.
How the hell could he sleep, knowing that Lizzie was naked in his bed? Staying away from her hadn’t worked. He simply wanted her more.
Because she was asleep and it was safe to touch her, he moved to the other side of the bed, reached over to stroke her face, the soft coolness tickling his fingers. And because she was asleep and it was safe to, he shifted his weight, leaned in to kiss her goodnight. Because no one should end Christmas Day without a kiss, he decided.
Her soft lips, moist and slightly open, were all his. He kissed her, tenderly, lingering as long as he thought he could without waking her. She tasted like his toothpaste. When he lifted his lips from hers, she stirred.
‘Dan,’ she murmured.
‘I’m right here,’ he whispered.
Lizzie reached out to grip his arm, her fingers like silk on his skin. It was enough to send sparks flying. ‘Come to bed.’
He took a deep breath, steadied himself. ‘Sshhh, Elizabeth. Close your eyes and go to sleep.’
‘Can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ he said, slowly reaching over to stroke her hair, still damp, like cool water running through his fingers.
You’re going to feel like hell in the morning, he thought. And you’re not the only one.
She sighed, turned, her eyes flitted open to find him in the dark. ‘Can’t kick you out of your bed. Not fair.’
For a long moment, he hesitated. Then decided there was no point arguing with someone who was drunk. He slowly took off his jeans.
Lizzie’s eyes flickered open to the sounds of morning at Middle Point. Traffic. People. Seagulls. The waves. Snatches of the night before came back to her like a crazy slideshow. A bottle of French champagne. Christmas presents. A smouldering kiss from Dan at dinner. Come to bed.
Oh, God.
Heaving in the front yard. Her shoes. Where were her shoes? This was like a bad movie, one of those from her childhood that was repeated endlessly in the summer non-ratings period. Her bad movie. The one in which the heroine does something stupid over and over again and never learns. The one in which the ending never changes. Lizzie groaned, tried to judge if her head would explode if she lifted it off the pillow. An attempt confirmed that it was still intact. She propped herself up on her elbows and when the sheet slipped down her body, she swore.
She was buck-naked.
In Dan’s bed.
With a huff she thought back to the old Dan. The old Dan would be no stranger to having a carousel of women in his bed. Her. Anna. Her again. She looked around on the floor for her red dress and couldn’t see it. Then she remembered what she’d done to it. The groan came from down deep. She’d probably never want to wear it again, anyway.
With a towel wrapped round her, pulled so tight it flattened her breasts, and safely pinned in her armpits by elbows pulled close to her sides, she gingerly walked to the kitchen. The closer she got, the stronger the smell of something damn good assaulted her nostrils. And when she reached the doorway, the sight of something close to perfect assaulted every one of her senses.
Dan’s dark hair was ruffled and sticking up at strange angles and his jaw wore a shadow of growth. A white T-shirt and brightly coloured boardshorts, the summer uniform of the beach, hung loosely on his frame, and he had a chequered tea towel slung over one shoulder. He seemed to be humming to himself as he turned something in a pan on the stove. Bacon. Lizzie closed her eyes in blessed relief. And then she smelled something suspiciously like coffee. Real coffee.
When she opened her eyes again, Dan was looking at her with a smile so warm she forgot to breathe. He put down his cooking utensil and went to her, his hands reaching for her arms, rubbing them gently from elbow to shoulder. He widened his stance and dipped his head so he could look at her more closely.
‘How you feeling?’ There was no smirk hidden in the remark, nothing but kindness and concern.
‘Like shit, actually.’ Lizzie managed a grin
and Dan responded with an affectionate laugh.
‘I happen to have the perfect antidote to that. Go sit down.’ Dan nodded his head in the direction of the table and Lizzie obeyed. In a flash, Dan had presented her with a cup of coffee, strong, black and steaming hot. She wrapped her fingers around it.
‘Since when does a small town boy drink real coffee?’ Lizzie regarded him with a raised eyebrow and a tease of a smile.
He reciprocated both. ‘Since he began hoping a small town girl might drop by again.’
Lizzie’s heart beat a little faster. She didn’t want to look up at him to see what his eyes were saying to her, finding his words too much to take in. Before she could think about what he’d said, a plate of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs and toast appeared before her. It looked greasy and disgusting and was absolutely the best breakfast she’d ever had.
Dan poured himself a coffee from the French press and sat opposite her at the table. When Lizzie popped the last piece of bacon into her mouth, it struck her that both times she’d sat at Dan’s table, he’d fed her. Wasn’t that turn up for the books.
‘Thanks for breakfast. Just what I needed.’ Lizzie swallowed, allowing herself only a quick glance in his direction.
‘It’s the least I can do.’
Lizzie looked out the front windows. Cars had already parked along the esplanade and people were unloading eskies and kids and umbrellas, taking surf boards down from roof racks, preparing for Boxing Day on the beach.
‘Elizabeth.’ Dan’s voice was soft, teasing.
‘Yeah?’
‘You know, nothing happened last night.’
Lizzie put her cutlery neatly across her plate. So he wanted to talk about it. She so didn’t. Didn’t want to relive her embarrassment and mortification at her behaviour.
‘I know,’ she replied and felt the heat bloom in her cheeks.
Dan shifted in his seat, crossed his arms on the table, leaned towards her. ‘I think I deserve a medal for my restraint, don’t you? I was a total gentleman. Even though you were naked in my bed.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure the front garden barfing was a total turn-on.’ Lizzie shivered at the memory and covered her eyes with her hands.
‘Not so much. But the part where I took off your clothes and put you in the shower? It was right up there.’
Something shimmied up Lizzie’s spine and lodged in her throat.
‘Nice lingerie, by the way.’
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Lizzie had a flashback to her decision the night before to wear her sexiest red bra and knickers under that red party dress. Julia had convinced her to buy them when they’d gone up to Adelaide. When she’d put them on and stood in front of her mirror, she’d for once been distracted from her wobbly bits and instead saw the bits that weren’t half bad. The lingerie had been a present for her and her alone, to give herself a sexy kick up the arse, and she’d had no clue that the lacy bits of barely-there nothingness would be on display to anybody. Especially not him.
And now he was probably thinking she’d done it all on purpose, that she’d set a mantrap, with her lingerie as the bait. That she wouldn’t care that he was with someone else. That was more humiliating than vomiting in front of him.
‘I’m sure Anna will admire your restraint too.’ Lizzie straightened and met his eyes.
The sexiness drained out of them. ‘What’s Anna got to do with it?’
‘I’m not the kind of girl to cut someone else’s lunch, no matter how drunk I am.’ Lizzie gulped down the last of her coffee and pushed back the chair with a scrape.
‘Hang on,’ Dan said, his voice louder now and testy. He stood too. ‘What kind of a man do you think I am? First of all, I’m not the kind of guy to fuck someone who’s drunk. Even if she happens to be unbelievably hot and naked and in my bed, centimetres away from me. And not even if I had a raging hard-on most of the night. Clear?’
Lizzie gulped. Most of the night? Oh my.
‘And second,’ he clenched his fists at his side, taking a deep breath, ‘There’s nothing going on with Anna and me. Nothing. She’s married, for fuck’s sake.’
Now she really felt like a deflated balloon the day after the party. This was a bad midday movie. Trying to resurrect a shred of self-respect, she went with what she knew but what he hadn’t told her himself. ‘I know you two were involved.’
Dan shook his head in disbelief. ‘Jesus, Lizzie, that’s hardly a secret. She is a fantastic woman. We’re still friends. Good friends.’
‘But you didn’t think to tell me yourself, did you?’
Dan cursed himself. He couldn’t tell her any more. He just couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to give her the whole story. That would have to be enough. For now.
Lizzie stepped backwards. ‘Whoever she is to you is none of my business. I didn’t apologise for my behaviour last night. So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to see that. Thank you for the shower, the bed, the breakfast.’
For taking care of me.
‘You don’t have to apologise. And where the hell are you going?’
Lizzie pulled the towel tighter against her, closed her eyes in humiliation at the question she knew she had to ask. ‘Where are my clothes? I need to go home.’
Dan nodded towards his bedroom. ‘Grab a T-shirt of mine from the drawer. I’ll drive you. I’m not letting you walk home.’
It was a command she was happy to obey. The thought of walking the streets of Middle Point the morning after the night before in a vomit-splattered party dress, looking for all the world like a trashed party-girl, was beyond mortifying.
CHAPTER
21
Every day for the next week, Lizzie barely had time to draw breath. Tourist season was in full swing. The pub was groaning with people for lunch and dinner and for drinks at every hour in between. Traffic on the esplanade felt like Adelaide’s peak hour, all day. The beach below was filled with life and people and summertime. Sandcastles were being constructed with precision by groups of young children, their noses smeared with sunscreen like tribal markings. Teenage boys sauntered the beach with bodyboards under their arms, their boardshorts so low-slung that the brand of their jocks were visible on their flat, tanned stomachs. Teenage girls in wetsuits took to the waves too, their long hair pulled back in high ponytails, while others in bikinis lay on the sand, topping up their honey tans and sending text messages. Surf schools plied their trade every day in the peak season, their advertising flags staked into the sand and perpetually fluttering in the breeze. Anxious parents crowded the waterline with cameras and little kids with low centres of gravity sprung up on their feet on rented boards in shallow swells, converted to the sport in one wave.
It was high summer in Middle Point, which also meant one other thing. Lizzie had fallen into bed every night, exhausted. She’d barely had time to wave to Julia and Ry when they turned up at the pub for lunch. She’d seriously neglected Harri, and Joe seemed content to wave her hello and goodbye as she came and went each day, mumbling an appropriate greeting in return. The good news was that Ry had been crunching the numbers and it looked like the pub might rack up a record turnover for the holiday season. The bad news was, she hadn’t seen Dan since the morning he’d cooked her breakfast and driven her home.
In the snatches of time when she’d allowed herself to think about him, Lizzie felt as tangled up as a clump of dead sea grass on the beach. So he wasn’t involved with Anna. He’d made that clear. He’d also described her as ‘hot’. She’d only revisited that comment, oh, maybe a thousand times. She heard it in her head the minute she woke up and it bobbed and lolled about all day. And every night, as she lay in bed, bone-tired but unable to sleep, she realised the same thing: he wasn’t going to do anything about it.
At five minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve, Lizzie tumbled out of the pub and onto the roadway on the cliff top with every other patron in the place. The fireworks in the nearby coastal town of Victor Harbor would soon be visible along the coastline in
the eastern sky and would signal the turnover of the New Year. There was a buzz of anticipation in the crowd, fuelled by good food, great wine and friends. It was a still night, and the sounds of celebration and laughter floated high up into the dark sky.
Despite the sense of excitement building all around her, Lizzie felt flat. She’d never liked the last day of the year. She’d worked every one for the past fifteen years as a way of soaking up everyone else’s excitement, but she’d never felt any for herself. It was just another day and, for all but a couple of years, she’d never had anyone to kiss at the stroke of twelve. She’d stuck to her New Year’s Day ritual of drinking champagne on her own, to mark that she’d survived another year, day after regular day.
‘One minute to go,’ someone called from the crowd and people surged forward to the cliff top. All around her, they moved towards their loved ones, wanting to be close when the year ticked over. Lizzie watched them all with a heavy heart. She crossed her arms, hugged herself, wondered what a cruel irony it was that this year, when her nearest and dearest were back in Middle Point, she should still feel so alone.
‘Ten. Nine. Eight.’ The call started. Faces around her were lit up with the excitement of it. Lizzie shivered.
‘Seven. Six. Five.’ Seconds to go.
‘Four. Three. Two. One. Happy New Year!’ A cheer erupted around her and in the distance, the first fireworks exploded in the sky, patterns of iridescent green and purple and blue.
Someone was calling her name, she was sure of it. Someone whose voice she knew. There was a hand on her shoulder. She turned.
‘Elizabeth.’
Dan was right there, creating an altogether different explosion in her heart. His chest was rising and falling with deep breaths. Nine kinds of handsome, his shoulders set in a shrug, his eyes bright even in the darkness.
Was it the fireworks or seeing Dan that had her quivering? And then she knew. She knew she was going to see the New Year in with a kiss this year, that was for damn sure.
Someone Like You Page 21
