Happy Mother's Day! (38 page)

‘What the hell do you think you are you doing?’ Her lungs were tight with the extra work her pumping adrenalin was giving them.

She stared at the flowers—iceberg roses, at least a couple of dozen of them—though he wasn’t quite suave enough to have given them to her in order to give her hands something to do other than poke him in the ribs, as she was doing now.

‘When you left the house today you gave me the sense that you weren’t coming back,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think that I can let that happen.’

‘Oh, you can’t?’ She crossed her arms, staving off the thrilling shivers that were running up and down her body at his words.

‘I had planned to serenade you,’ he said, his mouth kicking into that half-smile that had made her half crazy for him in the first place, ‘if that was what it took to get you to see me, but it turns out you are easier than I had expected.’

Her hands dropped to her hips and she glared back at him. ‘I’m easy?’

He grinned and her giddy heart all but went kaput.

‘Easy? I don’t think any man in the history of time has had to put as much work into wooing a woman as I have. It has been very demanding attempting to get you to realise how much I think of you.’

Her hands dropped to her sides and all her self-fuelled anger fled. ‘You think of me?’

‘Siena, sweetheart.’ He took a step towards her. ‘Since meeting you I’ve thought of little else.’

He moved in again, taking her by the arms so that the flowers squished up against her sides, the soft petals and sharp stems creating the strangest sensation against her skin. Or maybe it was his nearness that was giving her such new
sensations. But when she glanced up into his warm grey eyes, all sensation was lost to her.

‘James, I’m not all that special,’ she said, trying to drag herself out of the whirlpool of affection in his eyes. ‘Believe me. When one lives alone and has no responsibilities bar one’s occupation, that person can’t help but be fascinating to a person with the responsibility of the world on their shoulders.’

His smile deepened and she was all but undone. ‘You’ve got me there. With a child in your life the term responsibility-free time becomes a pipe dream.’

She swallowed and managed to gather her thoughts. ‘Are you really trying to sell that life to me, James? Because you really are making a hash of it.’

But he just shrugged. ‘I’ve realised I can’t sell it to you by having Kane butter you up, or plying you with beers in the sunshine, or taking you on long leisurely trips up to Kuranda. If this is meant to be I shouldn’t have to sell it to you as some sort of alternative to the glamour of Rome. You should want it despite the inducements.’

‘I like inducements,’ she said, glancing at the roses he was waving about. But he didn’t seem to get it. ‘Oh, just give me the damn flowers.’

Siena reached out a hand, flapping her fingers against her palm to hurry him up. James handed them over. Once she had them, she couldn’t help but bring the bouquet to her nose, burying her face in the familiar scent.

The roses weren’t just any roses. They were his, cut from his own garden, and they smelled as good as the one she had kept by her bedside. They weren’t glistening in fake dew like roses she had received from suitors before. They weren’t
wrapped in layers of fabulous tulle and ribbon. Some were bruised, others had lost petals. But to Siena they were the most beautiful gift she had ever received.

‘They’re beautiful, James.’

‘Not nearly as beautiful as you.’

She could have laughed. It really had been some time since he had done this. But she couldn’t. The tone of his voice told her how true he thought his words. It wasn’t some line. It was a declaration.

But, after the topsy-turvy evening she’d had, a declaration was the last thing she was prepared to deal with. If she could somehow send him away until morning.

She looked up to find he was inches from her, the big bouquet the only thing between them. His grey eyes glittered in the moonlight, serious and intent, despite the banter he had kept up the whole time.

He was going to kiss her. Any moment now she was going to find herself enveloped in his warm, intimate embrace.

She swallowed down a sudden flash of trepidation. When she had left his house that day she had planned on not looking back, but that didn’t make a lick of difference to her determination if James had every intention of remaining in her future.

But for her that future was still a big blur. For the first time in her life she really had to look ahead and not back to the past. And as yet it was undecided. She had no clue what she was going to tell Max tomorrow.

Rome was all she’d ever wanted and it was within reach. But now she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted Rome for the right reasons. Had it been because it was her one great chance to live the life she really desired above all others? Or had it been because she wanted to prove herself to Rick? All these
years she had defined herself by his opinion of her and now that had been turned on its head. And then there was James.

She needed time to sort through everything she had learned about herself and the men in her life over the last couple of days. If James had simply not come, if he’d let her be for the night, who knew what decision she might have come to in the morning?

But in that moment all she knew was that she needed just a little more time.

His eyes lost all trace of a glimmer as he began to bend his mouth to hers, and the only words she could think of to stall him came out in a great rush.

‘James, I’ve been reading your blog.’

She had thought he had been hard to read, but in that moment she realised she had come to know that face so well over the last couple of days.

The tightening in his right cheek was a dead giveaway that he was affected. And the fact that the kiss that had been threatening did not eventuate was a pretty good giveaway too.

‘I saw it on the computer in your workshop that first day,’ she admitted. ‘And that night, after knowing about your wife, after you told me yourself about Dinah, I had to know everything. I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I thought I was never going to see you again, but still I just had to know everything. I tried to tell you I’m a snoop. I tried to warn you.’

Her voice faded as her mind skittered, wondering if she in fact wanted him to hate her for it, or if she wished she could take the words back. Had she known from the second they had met that it would come to this? Had she thought so little of herself that she’d read his blog in an effort to sabotage the relationship from the outset?

His throat worked as the news went down. A million thoughts flickered across his eyes as he obviously thought through the pain, the private moments, the intimate details he had revealed to his computer diary. She stared into his eyes, trying to figure him out, but his thoughts passed too quickly for her to catch.

A storm was gathering and it blew hot tropical air in its wake, rustling at the willow branches above them. The breeze may as well have been Arctic for what it was doing to Siena. With each passing second, Siena’s skin grew cold and nothing could prevent the chill enveloping her. She trembled, her chest ached, and the hairs on the backs of her arms stood to attention.

‘You read my blog,’ he finally said.

‘All of it.’ There was no point in lying to him any more. He could hardly think worse of her.

‘That first night?’

‘And since.’

He went pink. ‘My fault for leaving the damn thing open. Kane could have seen it.’

The moonlight had disappeared behind a bank of dark grey storm clouds and James’s eyes were too dark and hooded for her to have a clue how far back from her he had pulled emotionally.

But then the edge of his eye twitched and for a brief second she thought he might actually have been smiling! But how could he? Oughtn’t he to be mortified, angry, ready to tell her exactly what sort of terrible person she was?

But no. That was Rick. The Rick of old. And he’d only been that way out of circumstance and frustration and youth and mixed-up love.

There it was again! The crease in his cheek had joined the eye twitch. He
was
smiling. James was actually smiling to hear
that she had gone behind his back and read his personal diary. How could he possibly be happy that she had done this?

But then she ought to have known that James would be different. Because James
was
different. Different enough from every man she had ever known that he made her feel more, and want more, and desire more from her life than she ever had before.

She suddenly wanted to throw herself into his arms and not let go. But she couldn’t. Not yet. No matter how far her hopes and desires had taken her over in these last few days, her conditioning was still fighting against them.

‘Since we are confessing tonight,’ he said, and Siena had the feeling he had moved even closer to her than he had been earlier.

She moved ever so slightly backward and her back bumped against the solid willow trunk.

‘Now is probably the time to let you know that I listened in at the door when you were talking to Kane about your mum.’

Before she could stop herself she let forth a great bellowing, self-aggrandising, ‘You
what?’

She bit her lip, waiting for the noise to stop echoing in the suburban cul-de-sac.

He laughed so hard he had to lean his hand beside her head on the tree trunk. It was a great rolling uproarious laugh that she felt rumbling through her.

Siena thought back on all the things she had said to Kane, about her own private hopes and fears and self-doubt, and how much she had revealed about her elevated feelings for James.

No wonder he had come with flowers!

‘You were eavesdropping?’ she asked, her indignation obvious. ‘And remember you snooped through my PDA that first day too! I should have seen this coming.’

But James only laughed again. ‘You think you have any
right to complain? You read my private blog. That’s way worse than eavesdropping. Fifty, sixty per cent worse, at least.’

He was right. They were just as bad as each other. Made for each other.

She shook her head and realised his hand was still resting beside her head. If she tipped her face sideways she would be able to snuggle into his strong wrist.

‘My reasons were altruistic,’ she said, her stubbornness fading as she felt the chill seep from her bones as his natural warmth enveloped her.

‘Mine weren’t,’ he said, his eyes now filled with a fire she had never seen there before.

And, pretty certain that she wasn’t in her right mind any more, she dropped the hand holding the bouquet to her side, reached up with her spare hand, grabbed a handful of his blue sweater and pulled him hard towards her.

It felt as though James had been waiting his whole life for this moment—the moment this woman was able to get past her stubbornness to make the first move.

He leaned in without resistance, his lips crushing against hers, hot, insistent, dissolving him from the inside out. Her skin was so soft and creamy, she tasted of toothpaste and heat.

Her other hand crept around his neck, dangling his now squished roses down his back as she pulled him closer and closer still, pressing her body against his. He pressed back and felt her breasts crushed against his chest.

Oh, Lord. She had nothing on beneath that soft top of hers. He took her around the waist, so thin, his hand burning against the hot skin of her lower back, his little finger diving beneath the elastic of those hot red pyjama bottoms.

She reached higher on tiptoe. Without those insane red high heels of hers she was so small. So delicate. So fine …

His whole body thrummed with excitement that they were actually together, and not just together, but kissing like he hadn’t since he was an oversexed teenager.

He stole a hand behind her head, diving into those tempting curls as he had wanted to since that first afternoon. He held her, gentle yet uncompromising. She was exactly where he wanted her, and he was sure that she couldn’t have pulled away from his loose grip for all the world.

He buzzed—until he realised that so did his pocket.

‘Your phone …’ Siena murmured against his lips.

‘Ignore it.’ He trailed kisses along the edge of her mouth, but he knew she was already pulling back.

‘James …’ she said, the word torn from her as she did what he couldn’t and pushed a hand against his chest, breaking the last tenuous strands of their luxurious embrace.

He stepped back, took a deep breath, rubbed a frustrated hand over his hair, then dived into his pocket for his phone.

‘It’s home,’ he said, his face contorting into a tight frown. What was Kane up to now?

But it was a message from Matt asking him to bring home milk.

He grinned. Matt had joked he would send a message in case James needed an out if it all went horribly wrong. Who knew that the message would come just as it had all been going so very right?

‘You should go,’ Siena said, her voice ghostly soft.

And James’s grin faded. It took some effort to look into her eyes as, for some reason, for the briefest of seconds, he thought she meant for ever.

‘Go?’ he repeated.

She nodded, her eyes wide and skittish.

He bit back a growl of frustration. He’d thought that they were finally on the same page, but she was looking at him not like he was the answer to all her dreams but more like the big brick wall in their way.

He took in a deep breath, centred himself, then took her spare hand in his. It was limp and unusually cool. He could feel she was shivering. He wanted nothing more than to drag her into his arms and not let go, but somehow he didn’t think that would help.

He had to be honest. To stop playing word games and tell her outright why he had come to her.

‘Siena, I have come here tonight to ask you to tell Max you can’t go to Rome. I would like you to stay.’
Here goes …
‘Stay for me. Let’s see how this thing between us could develop with some real time invested in it.’

Her eyes blinked up at him, moist and wide.

She swallowed, her thin throat obviously working hard.