Kiss It Better (15 page)

‘What?’ he asked, conscious of her watching him.

‘I like your style,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘The way you drive. The way you do everything. Total control.’

‘I think today proved that was an illusion. First I can’t stop your cousin being a prat. Then my dad says he’s not — my dad, that is — and he’s right.’

‘Gordon’s still your dad.’

‘Let’s talk about something else.’ He flexed his hands on the steering wheel.

‘Do you want to talk about me?’

Surprised, he glanced at her.

She smiled. ‘I’m fascinating.’

‘You are.’

‘That would sound more convincing if you didn’t laugh.’

‘It was only a half-laugh. More like a…’

‘Snort?’

‘Cough sounds more polite.’

‘Screw politeness. I’m wondering if I still want to be a nurse.’

It shocked him. He tensed, but the car’s speed remained steady. The wonder of cruise control.

‘Too deep?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s fine. I guess I thought you looked good, sounded good. I thought you were okay.’

‘I am. But Africa was why I became a nurse. If I can’t work there…’

‘You don’t have to work in a crisis position,’ he said. Although offering her options to leave Australia felt wrong. ‘You could work in a city, somewhere where there was a respite from your work rather than being engulfed by it.’

‘Engulfed is a good word. My experience was like that. It chewed me up and spat me out.’

He heard the emotion behind the words and answered that. ‘You don’t want to go back.’

She sighed. ‘I feel bad about it, but no. I’m scared I won’t cope. Once bitten, twice shy. Maybe if I plunge in, try the Africa-Lite version you suggested, I’ll be okay.’

‘There’s nothing wrong in wanting to stay in Australia. It’s home. We need nurses here, too.’ He saw the halo of another car’s headlights approaching and flicked his own down to low beam as the road dipped, straightened and the two cars passed. ‘Have you thought about temping?’ He flicked the headlights back up.

That was the difference between seeing a little bit of the road ahead and seeing your whole future.

This morning he’d had a clear idea of his future. Now his past had convulsed with an earthquake, and his future was fuzzier than low beam lights. He understood the situation Cassie faced.

She’d thought she was one person, a crisis care nurse, but she’d lost that person. Now she had to dig past the broken pieces and find a new path. Find what would make her whole and happy.

‘Do you know you’re a problem solver?’

‘Yes.’ He couldn’t imagine why she sounded critical. Maybe it was lack of sleep.

‘I don’t want solutions,’ Cassie said.

‘Are you being a girl and wanting me to empathise?’ He said it just to make her cranky.

‘Yes!’

‘I do. More than you realise.’

‘Sorry, Theo.’ She slumped in her seat. ‘Would you rather talk about you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that was definite.’

‘My turn to apologise.’

‘Not really. I was getting at you. I know guys don’t like to talk about feelings.’

‘We’re okay talking about sexual feelings.’ It surprised a laugh from her. ‘And you did say I was a sex god, so we could talk about…’ She was laughing too loudly for him to bother finishing.

‘That is not going to happen.’

‘You don’t want to talk about positions, happy spots…I’ve never done it in a car.’

He took his eyes off the road.

‘Ha! Got you.’ She pointed at him.

‘Evil tease.’ A pause. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘Yeah. Cars are awkward. There are gear shifts and hand brakes. Seat belt clickety-things.’

‘The Chevy has a bench seat.’

‘Have you?’

‘Not in the Chevy. I’ve only had it a couple of years.’

‘And by then you were too old for gymnastics?’

He grinned. ‘You are evil.’

They both fell silent, but the atmosphere was lighter from their laughter, although he did wonder if she was also thinking about sex, with him. He reckoned she’d be an enthusiastic and engaged partner. Not one of those women who lay there ‘paying’ for the relationship by allowing sex or expecting the man to do all the work.

He snorted.

‘Private joke?’

He decided to share. ‘Just thinking you wouldn’t be inclined to lie back and think of England.’

He expected her to laugh, so her silence disconcerted him. He glanced at her, but the darkness made her expression difficult to read. ‘Cassie?’

‘We’re finished talking about me.’

‘Okay.’ A couple of kilometres went past. ‘Actually, it’s not okay. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘You didn’t. Oh hell.’ She pushed her arms up, hands against the roof of the car, and stretched.

His mind presented an interesting vision of her arching like that under him.

‘I’m twenty-seven.’ Apparently that was meant to mean something, but when he failed to respond she continued. ‘I want to find a guy who’ll make me forget everything but him. I didn’t think it mattered. I thought I could be, would be happy with someone as committed to his work as me.’

‘You had a relationship with a co-worker in Africa?’

‘I tried. A couple of times. It never…I think sex should mean more than casual entertainment or a way of escaping. If I go back to Africa, what life would I have?’ She was talking more to herself than to him.

Darkness, the late hour, their emotional overload. The barriers were down.

‘Cassie, you’ll find someone wherever you are. Whatever you’re doing. You’re amazing.’

‘Then how come I feel so alone?’

***

Cassie cringed. Could she sound more pathetic? And asking for sympathy when it was Theo who’d just had his emotional security ripped from under him…tacky. She was cruel, self-absorbed…

The car slowed. Theo pulled off the road.

‘Don’t stop. Keep going. Keep driving.’ She waved her hands, indicating that he should move on. Forget everything she’d said.

He turned off the engine. Then he opened his door.

She blinked. That was unexpected.

‘I need to stretch my legs.’

Stretch his legs. Take a break. Change the subject.

She could do that, too.

The night was cool, a shock after the warmth in the car. She let Theo walk away, and turned her face up and studied the stars. The familiar constellations had reassured her while she was in Africa. The world was strange, but the stars remained. And she had to stop referencing everything back to Africa. She’d admitted it out loud to Theo: she wasn’t going back.

She had family here. Friends. She wasn’t alone.

Strong arms encircled her and pulled her into the warmth of Theo’s body.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I tried to be sensible, but I don’t see why we should be lonely alone.’ His mouth covered hers.

There was that moment of adjustment. How their mouths fitted, bumping noses, her arms going around him, and then, wham! The sexual attraction she’d sensed from the first exploded.

He leaned back against the side of the car, tugging her into the
V
of his thighs. His hand slid through her hair to the warm, sensitive skin at the nape of her neck and up, pressing into her scalp, tipping her head further back as he deepened the kiss. She stroked his tongue as it speared into her mouth.

He cupped her breast through T-shirt and bra, made a sound of impatience and burrowed under the shirt. Skin against skin set her shivering. She wanted her shirt off so that not just his hand but his body would heat against hers. She tipped her hips up a fraction, instinctively adjusting to his wide stance. He rubbed her nipple and she mimicked the rhythm with her hips.

‘We’re outside. By the road.’ He kissed her ear.

‘Are you saying we should stop?’ She had her hands under his shirt, running up over ribs, running from his back around to find flat male nipples erect and just eager to be toyed with. She toyed.

He groaned and took her mouth again, pulling her hips tight to his and thrusting up.

Headlights caught them, slowed.

Freaking voyeur.

They froze, even after the car passed. Their mouths were only a breath apart.

Yep, she was the woman who didn’t do casual sex, who talked about commitment and meant it. She figured she ought to let him go, before he got the wrong idea: the idea that she wanted to try car sex. She could imagine it actually; on her knees, over him, his mouth on her breasts until neither of them cared about foreplay any longer, just riding hard to oblivion.

She pulled away fast. Panicked. She hauled her bra back into place and walked around the car. When he got in the car beside her, her body screamed with wanting.

‘My fault.’ Theo got the car back on the road. He planted his foot on the accelerator and it roared.

‘I don’t think you can claim all the credit.’ Her voice was weak. Every hormone in her body was awake and howling. She cleared her throat. Who told a man he was a sex god and then didn’t expect to be jumped on? ‘I want you, but we’re both too messed up at the moment to make that sort of decision.’

‘Cassie, I reckon some part of me made that decision when I invited you to stay at my house.’

His mum had said the invitation to stay at his home was significant. But all of that was before his dad’s big announcement of Theo’s parentage. No matter what he said, he was working through issues, and neither she nor he deserved to be used as sexual anodyne for their troubles. Still, the male ego was fragile, so she took the blame. ‘All right. I’m messed up. So even if I throw myself at you, don’t catch me.’

She heard the deep breath he took.

‘I can’t promise that.’

A statement that had her hormones
yippee
ing. Bad hormones!

‘Do you want me to stay somewhere else? At a motel?’

‘No.’ She looked at him, shocked. What was the point of travelling all this way if he stayed in a motel? He could have done that in Melbourne.

‘So you still trust me?’ A hint of a question.

‘Always.’ The confirmation was out without thought.

He swore under his breath.

‘What?’ She was bewildered.

‘Now I really want you in my bed.’

***

After the day’s upheaval, Cassie’s trust was sweet. And she showed that trust not just in the honesty of her desire, but in the secrets she shared, her revelation of fears and weakness. That took courage. Theo felt honoured by her trust.

Add in her gorgeous body, smile and fierce response to passion, and he had every reason in the world to be craving the taste of her mouth again and wanting her rubbing up against him till they were both wild for him to be inside her.

But she’d made her position clear. She acknowledged how much she wanted him, but she wanted more than casual sex. The old-fashioned protectiveness his family had instilled in him prevented him from talking her around. It was about respect and about honouring the trust she’d given him.

‘It’s going to be a long night.’

Cassie woke to a bright spring morning. Alone.

After Theo’s announcement that he wanted her, they hadn’t really spoken. The wanting running between them had been too strong. She was hyper-aware of his every move, the way he got out at her home, stretched and twisted, caught her watching and froze. That had been a dangerous moment. Her breath had gone shallow and the motion-triggered security lights would have shown her expression: raw hunger.

Just her name, more growl than speech. Warning? Plea?

She left her bag in the car and hurried to unlock the house. Hadn’t she spent the past hour telling herself to be sensible?

She hadn’t risked showing Theo to the guest room. He knew where it was. She fled to hers and closed the door, leaning against it as she fought her own instincts. The cold shower had been drastic but effective. Until she dreamed.

But now it was daylight. They wouldn’t have the forced intimacy of the plane flight and drive. They could dilute the effect of one another with exercise, distance, other people.

So why was she so damn disappointed to walk into the kitchen and find Theo’s note?

Gone swimming. Theo.

She was still scowling at it when she heard a car drive up. She scrunched up the note and dropped it in the recycling. Theo would be safe enough swimming alone as long as he stayed in the sheltered curve of the headland. Further out were rips.

‘Cassie, I thought you’d flown out.’ Aunt Gabby started talking as she walked through the door. She had her own key. ‘I saw the strange car through the trees as I drove past.’

‘It was a short trip,’ Cassie agreed. She hugged her aunt. ‘How are you?’

Aunt Gabby didn’t look good. Her eyes were tired with dark circles under them and she moved slowly, lacking her usual purpose. ‘Don’t worry about me. Was Melbourne so awful with the media coverage?’

Cassie had forgotten Leighton’s lies. She thought suddenly of the photographer at the airport. Would the story of her and Theo change this morning? Which reminded her that she had to explain Theo’s presence — and his reason for being in Jardin Bay wasn’t hers to share. ‘Theo came back with me.’

‘Oh dear.’ Aunt Gabby sat down at the table.

‘What do you mean, oh dear?’ Cassie put on the kettle.

‘Theo’s using you.’

‘He’s not.’

‘Leighton phoned me this morning.’

Cassie stopped delving in the freezer for frozen bread to toast. ‘What did he want?’

‘Honey, I know what he did was awful. First the fraud and then to make a parade of you on the television.’

‘And radio and newspapers.’

‘Leighton thought he was protecting you.’

Cassie dropped the frozen bread on the bench. The loaf thudded. ‘Aunt Gabby, with all respect to you, Leighton is a lying toad. He never thinks of anyone but himself. The circus he started yesterday was about him getting revenge. Although why he thinks he needs revenge for Dad firing him after he defrauded JayBay, I don’t know.’

‘Leighton is sorry. He said the media twisted everything he said about you. He is trying to look out for you.’ And at Cassie’s scornful glance. ‘Make things up to you.’

‘Huh.’ She banged down the toaster.