Songbird (Songbird, #1) (11 page)

She gave me a sad smile. “Was I wrong?”

“No, probably not.” I sighed. “It would be hard for me to have a long-distance relationship, but there’s no reason why I couldn’t just hang out with him and have some fun.”

She shook her head again. “From the fireworks the two of you set off before, I don’t think you can just be friends.”

“Maybe not … but it’s been so long since I’ve had sex!” I flopped back on the bed, frustrated.

“Tara … shhh!” Kelli warned me, but it was too late.

I was just about to reply when Cooper’s voice travelled through the thin wall. “How long has it been, Fox?”

My face flushed. I had forgotten that there were no secrets in this apartment, and I searched my brain for a flippant response to his question.

“Longer than I care to remember, Chook.”

“Well, if you’re really desperate, I know a couple of guys … ouch! Fuck, Irish, what was that for? I was just messing with her. She gives as good as she gets.”

Kelli and I burst into laughter. “I think someone’s defending your honour.”

I checked my watch, not wanting to be late to meet up with Jason. Kelli took that as a signal to start trying on the dresses and looked over the four of them that had been laid on the bed.

I had brought over the sexy fire-engine red dress, and Kelli picked that one up first to try.

“I love this dress on you. I hope it fits me.” She looked at me, head tilted to one side. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to borrow this one? It’s sort of your
new you
dress.”

I smiled and nodded. “You can borrow anything of mine; you know that. Now, let’s see how it looks on you.”

Sitting up on the edge of the bed, I checked the time again, then punched out a quick text to tell Jason I might be a little bit late but would definitely be there. Kelli, meanwhile, had pulled the dress on, and was fidgeting with something. She turned to face me.

“How’s this?” she asked, sounding serious.

I tried to stifle a laugh but failed miserably, and fell back on the bed holding my stomach. The dress did fit me perfectly, and I could fill it in all the right places. Kelli, however, was virtually flat chested, so to compensate had jokingly stuffed several pairs of socks into the moulded cups of the dress.

“Do you think anyone will notice?” She laughed, and I cracked up even more.

There was a knock on the door, and we both jumped. Cooper opened the door slightly, poking his nose into the room.

“Sounds like the party’s in here.” He looked over at Kelli. “Oh babe, maybe if you’re a good girl Santa will bring you some real ones for Christmas.”

She pulled a sock out of her top and threw it at Cooper, who easily ducked as it went flying past him.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I volunteered to get us drinks while Kelli tried on the next dress.

I walked out of the room, and across the living space towards the tiny kitchen. As I went past the couch, I took a sneaky peek at Riley and Jacqui, and smiled to myself. While Jacqui was doing her best to drape herself over Riley, he in turn was doing his best to get away from her, having edged over until he was pressed hard against the arm of the couch.

I made my way into the kitchen and opened the fridge to get out a bottle of champagne. The sound of the fridge must have caught Riley’s attention, and he turned to me.

“Do you need some help with that?” he asked as he jumped up.

Opening my mouth, I started to reply that I could manage, but the “help me” look on his face made me smile.

“Sure, that would be great.” I held out the bottle to him.

He strode over, looking relieved as he rolled his eyes at me, and leaned in. “She’s a bit full on, isn’t she?” He indicated to Jacqui.

“That she is, but I thought most guys would be happy to not have to put in much ground work.”

He laughed, and I noticed that his bottom two middle teeth were slightly crossed, so he wasn’t completely perfect after all.

“She’s not my type," he replied screwing his nose up, as he opened the bottle for me.

“So what is your type? I’m sure we could pop a wig on her,” I said with a mischievous grin.

He caught my eye, his expression playful. “No amount of fake hair could change my mind. Besides she’s fake enough as it is.”

I laughed, and oh my God … I snorted! I quickly clapped a hand over my mouth, the snort ringing in the now silent kitchen. I looked at Riley, wide-eyed. He was trying so hard not to laugh, bless him, but it was no use—his grin widened and he cracked up.

“I didn’t know Foxes could snort,” he teased.

I turned away, mortified, then, unable to contain my own laughter, joined his.

After we had managed to control ourselves, I started moving around the kitchen with familiarity, finding something to nibble on in the pantry and then squatting down to open the sticky glasses cupboard in the way in which I was accustomed.

“You know there’s a door handle on that cupboard, right?” Riley quipped, as I crouched down and thumped the door. It flew open, banging into my knee and knocking me back on my ass.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed, rubbing my now red knee.

Riley was down on the floor next to me in an instant. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice full of concern.

I tried to smile, feeling like a total idiot.

“I guess I should have mentioned that we fixed the door today, so it doesn’t stick anymore.” He looked at me apologetically, but I could see from the glint in his eyes that he thought the whole scene was hilarious.

Summoning up as much dignity as possible, considering I was still on my butt on the kitchen floor, I folded my legs under me to stand.

Riley rose beside me and took my hand, his grip firm. “You sure you’re okay? Do you need to sit down?”

Shaking my head, I mentally kicked myself. If there were ever any spark between us it was well and truly extinguished now, after my extremely ungraceful swan dive.

I couldn’t help laughing. My mother had spent so much money trying to turn me into the perfect little lady, with ballet lessons and deportment classes—she would be more mortified than I was.

Riley chuckled. “At least you can laugh at yourself. I like that.”

I dusted myself off. “Two choices: laugh or cry. I’ll choose laughter every time.”

He was still smiling at me, so I guessed that was a good sign. In fact, from the moment our eyes had locked, he hadn’t stopped smiling, in one way or another. He had one of those faces that, even when he was talking about something that was not remotely funny, his eyes looked like they were hiding some secret joke behind them. My pop had called eyes like Riley’s smiling eyes, and I could now see why.

“You seem to know your way around pretty well,” he said, indicating to the not-so-sticky cupboard. “I guess you’re over here a lot.”

He was now leaning back against the wall with hands in pockets, ankles crossed. I’d never seen anyone make faded jeans, a plain white T-shirt and scuffed-up boots look so damn sexy.

Sure the T-shirt was clinging to his body so if you looked hard enough—as I was—you could see the outline of a well-defined six-pack, and the jeans were being pulled down by his hands in his pockets, so the top of his Calvin Klein boxers were showing. But they were just a T-shirt and jeans, right? So what was it that tipped the needle into the red on the sex-o-meter? I couldn’t decide. It was either his tanned, well-defined arms that stretched the sleeves of his T-shirt to the limit, or the pure fact that he didn’t seem to know just how gorgeous he was. I couldn’t decide right now, but I knew I would be pondering that question for quite a few hours after I hopped into bed that night.

I suddenly realised I hadn’t spoken, being too caught up in checking him out.

“Oh, um, actually I lived here for a few weeks while I was in between homes. I slept on the sofa bed you’ve been sitting on,” I replied, absentmindedly rubbing my knee.

“So I’m sleeping in your bed tonight,” he responded with a cheeky grin.

Blushing at the thought of this gorgeous man in my bed, I just managed to maintain my composure. “Well, it’s not my bed anymore—unfortunately—and I should warn you that the springs creak, and it’s not that comfortable.” Then I indicated towards Jacqui. “So you won’t be able to get up to much mischief tonight.”

He shook his head, laughing. “Like I said, she’s not my type. I’ll be sleeping alone.”

I recalled the last time Cooper was here, when I slept on the couch.

“Well, good luck with getting any sleep. You may have noticed the walls here are pretty thin.” I flushed, remembering my little indiscretion earlier. I knew they had heard me lament my lack of ‘action’ recently; had they also heard me exclaim how gorgeous I thought Riley was?

“Do you have an iPod or something you can use to drown them out?”

He shook his head, contemplating the night ahead.

“You can borrow mine if you like; I found it came in very handy. Just turn the volume up
really
loud.”

I dug my iPod out of my bag and handed it to him. He started to scroll through my various playlists—there was everything from Australian classic rock like INXS, Hoodoo Gurus and Hunters and Collectors, to Adele and P!NK.

“Hey, I love some of this stuff. You’ve got a great variety on here.” He kept scrolling. “Including classical,” he said, his eyebrows raised. He opened the classical folder and read some of the names out. “Do you have a favourite in all these?”

“I used to play all of them, but my favourite was always the theme music from my all-time favourite movie
Somewhere In Time
, although technically it’s not considered classical.”

“So what makes it your favourite movie? How many times have you seen it?” he asked, glancing up at me from under his thick black eyelashes to take me in.

Pausing for a second, I tried to think. “Probably at least twenty times, and it still makes me cry every time.” I smiled, feeling like a big girly-girl for crying over a movie.

He looked at me curiously. “What is it about the movie that makes you cry?”

I sighed. “Well, in a nut shell, the movie is about a man from the present time who falls in love with a photo of a beautiful woman from the 1920s. He researches her and discovers she was a famous actress in her time, but ended her life as a recluse who never married. He’s so enraptured by her that he finds a way to travel back in time to meet her.”

Stopping, I looked up at his face expecting to see a sly grin at the storyline, but he was just intently listening, his eyes wide.

I continued the story. “They meet and fall desperately in love and are extremely happy, until one day he finds a coin from the present time in his pocket and is ripped back there, never to see her again. He is so devastated that he can’t be with her, and realises that the traumatic event in her life that turned her into a recluse was losing him.”

Pausing again, I thought of the storyline and the emotions that it evoked in me every time I watched it. “It’s just so sad, and portrays the fragility of love and life; how cruel fate can be that you can meet ‘the one
’
and then lose them. At the end of the day, what’s the point?”

He was still leaning back against the wall, head tilted to one side. “Maybe it’s really a story of hope. The fact that they were from different times, from different worlds almost, but still managed to find each other and have that kind of love … maybe she never married because the short time she had with him was enough to sustain her for the rest of her life.”

I stood there with my mouth gaping for a moment, wondering where this guy had come from, then chuckled. “Well aren’t you Mr Glass Is Half Full.”

“Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic.” He shrugged, grinning shyly.

“There’s nothing hopeless about being a romantic.”

“So can we listen to your favourite piece?” he asked as he unwound the headphones.

He handed me one ear jack before placing the other one in his own ear. I followed his lead and placed mine in my ear, and then he hit play. We stood in the kitchen for the full three and a half minutes in silence while the music washed over us. As the melody reached its crescendo he closed his eyes and I smiled. It was exactly how I liked to listen to it: eyes closed, totally absorbed.

Taking the opportunity while his eyes were closed, I studied his face. His jawline was strong and his skin was smooth and clear. He had just a shadow of stubble starting to grow through what would have been clean-shaven cheeks at the beginning of the day. His lashes were so thick and black they would make any girl envious. I’d spent hours in the past getting mine tinted to the blackest black and they still weren’t as breathtaking as his. I thought he would look awesome with a two-day growth, really rugged.

“That was beautiful,” he declared as he slowly opened his eyes when it finished, making my heart skip a beat. “It’s my new favourite piece.”

I smirked. “Having a
new
favourite piece would imply that you had an
old
favourite piece.”

“I did have.” He smiled. “When I was growing up, my mum used to listen to a lot of classical music while she was painting in her studio. I used to sneak in to watch her, and listen to the music as she hummed along. It’s amazing how music can affect your mood, which in turn can influence the outcome of the piece you’re working on. They were happy times for me.” His expression changed. He looked swept away in memories as he spoke.