Bold (2 page)

He wanted to break the habits of his past.

“Fuck,” he muttered, swiftly sidestepping a pair of rambunctious kids tearing after their parents, as he wondered if he’d done the right thing.

Trying to make amends for the past by being a better person might be nice in theory, but the ache in his balls insisted he was an idiot for passing up a night of raunchy fun.

For that’s exactly what spending time naked with Chantal would entail: wicked, wanton, pure fun.

He knew her type. Strong, confident, secure in her own skin and not afraid to articulate what she wanted. The kind of woman he was attracted to, because she knew the score and wouldn’t be left broken-hearted when he moved on.

The kind of woman he wished his mum could’ve been. Sadly, when Christopher Harrison left Patricia, his mum had fallen apart and never recovered.

She’d lied to them, telling his older brother Steele and him that their dad was dead. He still resented her for it. For hiding the truth until three years ago, when she’d told them everything that night in hospital when she’d died of heart failure. Broken heart, more like it, considering she’d never remarried and was emotionally detached from everyone including her sons.

Zane knew he should hate his father. The minute he’d discovered Christopher Harrison’s existence he’d Googled him, stunned to discover how wealthy Christopher was, how his sporting goods company was one of the biggest in America, how he’d fathered two more sons with his ex-model wife.

Christopher had ditched his Aussie family to start a new one in America and hadn’t looked back. Hadn’t reached out to his Aussie sons. Hadn’t given a flying fuck when Patricia died.

It had taken Zane a year to work off his resentment and he’d done it the only way he knew how: by killing the opposition every time he stepped onto a footy field.

He’d taken his team to a premiership that year, had won every accolade possible, from his team’s best and fairest, to the Norm Smith and Brownlow medals. He’d been on fire, kicking over a hundred goals that year, a guy no center-halfback could stop. Invincible, on and off the field. The women couldn’t get enough of him. He’d lost count of the number he’d slept with. Partied with. Crossed the line with.

But it had taken its toll, that year of trying to burn the bitterness out of him, of trying to ignore the hurt, of forgetting.

His game had turned to shit the last two years and when his tibia snapped in a tackle gone wrong, he’d called it quits. He’d taken it as a sign to grow the fuck up and had spent countless hours in rehab thinking: about his future, about his past, about reconciling the two.

He hoped meeting his dad would go some way to doing just that.

When he reached Circus Circus, he stopped, turned and headed back to the MGM where he was staying, wishing he hadn’t reneged on Chantal’s offer.

He may have vowed to clean up his act, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun while he did it. Besides, in walking away from her tonight he’d proved he
was
different to the shallow bastard of three years ago, when he would’ve bedded her without a second thought.

He didn’t want his sex life to be like that anymore. A quickie act, empty, meaningless. He wanted…more. Not a relationship, per se, but a connection that meant something beyond satisfying an urge, a way to let off steam or burn off frustration.

Chantal had offered to show him around. He’d be seeing her again. Maybe next time he wouldn’t be such a sap.

Maybe next time he’d explore the possibility of
more
.

Chantal valued punctuality among her employees so when she strode into her office the next morning to find the new IT subcontractor up to his ears in wires and motherboards, she should’ve been impressed.

Instead, unable to shake her residual bad mood after being turned down last night, she scowled, downed the last of her double latte and lobbed the cardboard cup into the trash.

“How long are you going to be?”

The guy didn’t look up from the keyboard on the makeshift desk in the corner. “Good morning to you too, Miss Kramer.”

“Smartass,” she muttered, taking a seat behind her desk, glaring at the stack of paperwork in her in-tray with disdain.

She had to hire two new dancers this week and rather than emailing their résumés, half the applicants had posted them. If they couldn’t follow simple application instructions, what hope did they have learning new routines?

“You need to stay off your PC for the next hour,” the guy muttered as his fingers clacked over the keyboard.

“Lucky me.” Chantal rolled her eyes and was about to start sorting through emails on her cell when Mr. IT looked up.

Curly brown hair. Dark eyes. High cheekbones. Chiseled jaw. He looked familiar and she couldn’t help but stare, trying to place where they may have met before.

He frowned, glaring at her like she didn’t belong in her own office. “Problem?”

“Do I know you?”

“Unless you frequent IT conventions or live in backwater New Orleans, doubtful.” He scowled and jabbed a finger at her mainframe. “Your systems are shit.”

“That’s why you’re here, Einstein, to fix them.”

He raised an eyebrow at her snarl. “If you took some of that anger out on your PC, I’m not surprised you’re screwed.”

She hadn’t been screwed, that was her problem.

“What’s your name?”

“Wyatt.” He doffed an imaginary hat and with that simple tilt of his head, she was once again struck by his resemblance to…Damn, who was this guy? “Wyatt Harrison, the best in the business. So if you’d let me get back to it?”

Chantal gripped the edge of the desk, reeling as the truth detonated. Wyatt Harrison had to be Zane’s half brother. Their coloring was different but those cheekbones, that jaw, even the head tilt, had been so similar she’d noticed the resemblance before he’d divulged his name.

But if Zane hadn’t known his half-brothers existed until a few years ago, odds were Wyatt had no idea about his Aussie half-siblings either, so she had to tread carefully.

“Any relation to Kurt Harrison?”

She only just caught an exasperated sigh before Wyatt nodded. “He’s my brother. And no, I don’t play ball. Hate sports.” He brandished his keyboard. “Which is why I’m a geek and he’s a jock.”

Wyatt placed the keyboard down and folded his arms, his lips compressed in a thin, angry line. “You angling to meet him?”

“Hell, no,” she said, her vehemence garnering a glimmer of a smile from surly Wyatt.

“You’d be the only woman in the country who didn’t want to use me to get to him.” He sounded resigned rather than bitter. “Anyway, how did you know?”

“You look alike,” she said, wondering if he knew he had another brother he looked like.

He grunted in response and pointed at the array of equipment in front of him. “Much as I’d like to make meaningless small talk, I need to get back to it.”

Chantal wanted to say ‘take a chill pill, dude.’ What she said was, “Sure, sorry to interrupt.”

Wyatt muttered something unintelligible and returned to his work, while she pondered the wisdom of letting Zane know one of his siblings was in her office right now.

Would he thank her, or blame her for interfering? From his revelations last night, there had to be tension simmering beneath the surface. Resentment against his father, probably against his half-brothers too. Plus a whole stack of emotions she knew only too well.

When she’d discovered she had a dad on her eighteenth birthday and learned he’d left Craye Canyon before she’d been born, she’d been angry. Furious, in fact, at her father for escaping the dead end town, something she’d longed to do growing up, and at her mother for driving him away with her drudgery. Because that’s what it had to have been, considering how boring her mom’s life was. How mundane and routine. Her step-daddy had been a serial cheater, and when her resentment really kicked in she’d wondered if her mom had driven him away too.

Chantal had never forgiven her mom for not telling her dad she was pregnant, for allowing her dad to walk away without knowing he had a child on the way. She’d been in a constant rage over her mom’s failings when she first learned the truth. Then the sorrow had set in. And the self-pity. She’d been an unwanted child before she’d even been born.

Thanks to her mom’s selfishness, she’d been robbed of eighteen possible years with her real father. Eighteen goddamn wasted years, when her mom had been too wrapped up in her church fetes and PTA meetings and bake sales, trying to maintain a façade of normalcy when in reality she had a crappy marriage and a daughter she didn’t care enough about.

Chantal had left Craye Canyon shortly after she’d learned the truth and never looked back. And now, nineteen years later, had a real relationship with her dad, who lived in New York. They Skyped regularly, caught up in person several times a year. She treasured every moment, though it didn’t make up for those wasted years.

She’d bet every last sequin in this place that Zane would give anything to have that with his dad. He wouldn’t have travelled half way around the world unless he wanted some kind of relationship with him. He’d virtually said as much.

What if she could smooth the way before he met his father by facilitating a meeting with his half-brother?

Annoyed by her prevaricating when she was usually so decisive, she pushed away from her desk and stood. “I’ll be in the main rehearsal room if you need me.”

Wyatt waved her away without glancing up from his work and she sighed. What she was about to do could either earn her major Brownie points with a guy she’d like to get to know better, or ensure she alienated him once and for all.

She grabbed her cell, her thumb hovering over Zane’s number. He’d given it to her that first meeting at the airport, yet as she strode from her office and entered the rehearsal room, she still had no idea whether to call him or not.

“Hey, no cells allowed in rehearsal.” Ashlin O’Meara, her choreographer, snatched the phone out of her hands. “Boss’s rules, remember?”

“Give me that.” Chantal held out her hand and Ashlin sniggered.

“You didn’t say the magic word.”

“I’m not in the mood, Ash.”

Ashlin must’ve heard something in her tone because rather than prolong the joke, as the Irish dancer with a great sense of humor would usually do, she handed over the cell. “What’s wrong?”

Being a control freak, Chantal rarely asked for help. When a job needed to be done, she did it. But she could do with some objective advice.

“I’ve got a bit of dilemma.” Chantal beckoned Ashlin toward a row of chairs that lined the far wall, opposite the unforgiving floor to ceiling mirrors. “It involves a guy I like.”

Ashlin gaped for a second before recovering her composure. “Come again?”

Chantal chuckled as they sat. “I know, I know. I like a guy. Sue me.”

Ashlin held up her hands. “Hey, I’m not judging, babe. I’ve been in a similar drought.”

“By choice, obviously.” Chantal gestured at Ashlin, with her lithe dancer body encased in a black leotard, her waist-length auburn hair, big blue eyes and flawless complexion. Chantal was comfortable in her own skin but standing next to the classic Irish beauty made her feel a tad insecure at times. “You’re a knockout and you know it.”

Ashlin punched her lightly on the arm. “Like you couldn’t get a date with a snap of your fingers.” Ashlin clicked hers for emphasis. “Face it, boss. We’re a couple of workaholics who’d rather spend a night here than listening to some guy wax lyrical about the size of his dick.”

Chantal chuckled. “Now that we’re in agreement we’re a couple of choosy bitches, want to hear my dilemma?”

“Absolutely.” Ashlin sat on a chair, cross-legged. “Spill.”

“This is confidential, okay?” Chantal made a zipping motion over her lips and Ashlin nodded.

“That Aussie guy I’m playing tour guide for is in the States to meet his dad and half-brothers for the first time.” Chantal glanced at her cell again, still no closer to knowing what to do. “And in some huge twist of cosmic fate, turns out one of those half-brothers is my new IT consultant and I’m not sure whether to tell Zane or not.”

Ashlin tapped a fingernail against her bottom lip. “Why wouldn’t you tell him?”

“Because he might think I’m interfering?”

Ashlin made a cute exasperated sound through pursed lips. “Honey, you’re the most decisive person I know and the very fact you’re deliberating this, let alone asking my opinion, means you really like this guy.”

“He’s hot, that’s all.”

Ashlin snorted, not buying her feigned nonchalance for a second. “If that’s all it was, you could bang half the guys in Vegas, so what’s the real deal?”

“He’s…different.”

Zane’s vulnerability had got to Chantal in a way she hadn’t expected. Guys didn’t share personal stuff. It wasn’t in their DNA. Maybe it was the fact she barely knew Zane and he felt comfortable offloading to a virtual stranger, but whatever had motivated him last night, she’d been touched in a way no guy had touched her in a long while.

If only he’d followed through with a little physical touching.

“Tell him.” Ashlin laid a hand on her shoulder. “You wouldn’t be stressing over this if he didn’t meant something beyond a fling, so better you tell him now.”

More than a fling? No way. The mere thought struck fear into her independent heart. “I only just met the guy. And he’ll be heading back to Australia once he’s done here, so all he ever can be is a fling.”

It’s what she’d focused on all night, Zane’s ‘anticipation as foreplay’ angle. He wanted to have sex with her just as much as she wanted it. They’d set the sheets on fire then he’d walk. A fiery fling to end her deliberate man drought.

So why the hell was she spending this much time prevaricating over something that was a no-brainer?

Ashlin assumed her patient teacher expression; the one Chantal saw her use daily with dancers under her tutelage. “Fling is good. But on the off-chance he hangs around for a while and finds out you’re working alongside his half-brother who he wants to connect with…”