Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) (8 page)

Still, his words were stilted. Perhaps he
was working through his lunch break. It wouldn’t be the first time. “I won’t
keep you,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know I’m okay. I did get picked
though.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

“I know. Hardly anyone turned up! Typical.”

“Couldn’t you ask the judge to excuse you?”
he said.

She shifted awkwardly. “It’s a bit late
now. The case has started.”

“Honey, honestly. You should have told the
judge once you were chosen—I’m sure he would have excused you.” He sounded
irritated that she hadn’t thought of that herself.

She frowned and scraped at a mark on the
steering wheel. “It’s my civic duty. I wanted to do it.” It was partly true. To
be honest, it hadn’t entered her head that she could have asked to be excused after
she’d been chosen. And now she was stuck there for the next few days. The judge
had said the evidence would be presented over Monday, Tuesday and possibly
Wednesday, and then they would have to make their decision. She could be there
until the end of the week!

“What’s the case about?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I’m not supposed to say.”

He gave a barely suppressed sigh. “Fair
enough.”

She flushed, even though he couldn’t see
her. “It’s the rules, Dex. I’m not supposed to discuss it with anyone.”

“Not even the guy you’re marrying at the
end of the week?”

She couldn’t tell if he was amused or
irritated. “You
are
a police officer,” she pointed out. “You could have
been involved the night it happened.”

“I suppose.” Obviously picking up on her
mood, he fell silent.

Her stomach knotted. They hardly ever
argued, and she wasn’t used to this feeling of awkwardness with him. Yet again,
she worried about the distant look he’d had in his eyes over the past week. She
swallowed down the panic that threatened to rise within her. He would never
leave her at the altar. He’d only done that before because Cathryn had been so
awful to him.

“I’d better go,” he said.

Something was definitely wrong. She closed
her eyes and tried to envisage him in her arms, in her bed, but that only made
her heart race even faster at the thought of what could go awry in that area. “Is
everything all right, Dex? Only you sound…odd.”

 “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll ring you
tonight.” He hung up.

She stared at the phone, flipped it shut and
then banged the steering wheel. She’d annoyed him with her questions. He was
nervous and anxious, just like she was. Why did she have to blow everything out
of proportion?

And why was she so worried about the bloody
wedding night? She wasn’t a virgin, for crying out loud. Saturday was going to
be wonderful, the culmination of a year of longing, a blissful coming together
of two souls who were meant to be together. Ian had called her bad in bed
because he wanted to hurt her—it didn’t mean anything. Dex loved her—it didn’t
matter if she hadn’t swung from the chandeliers or didn’t know the Kama Sutra
inside out. Just being together was going to be fabulous. Nothing was going to
go wrong.

She bit her lip.
Please God, don’t let
anything go wrong.

Dex slipped the phone back into his pocket
and walked across the café to the table where he’d left Cathryn nursing a
latte. He pulled the chair out and sat, conscious of her watching him, and leaned
back, putting as much distance between them as he could.

Honey’s call had unsettled him. He hated
lying to her. Well, he hadn’t lied because she hadn’t asked where he was and
who he was with, but he hadn’t been open either. He hadn’t said, “By the way, my
ex came to see me and we’re just having a chat.” He hadn’t told Honey because
he knew it was wrong and it would upset her. So what the hell was he doing here?

He wished he’d walked away when he saw Cathryn
standing by the car, but his instinct to get her away from his hometown had
overrode his natural caution at being within ten feet of her. He’d driven to a café
on the state highway some fifteen minutes from Kerikeri, but now it didn’t seem
far enough. He should have driven to Australia.

His heart thudded at twice its normal pace
as he wondered what she was doing there. Her letter had been brief, had just
said that she’d be in the area and had thought of popping into the station to
see him. How had she found out where he was? He hadn’t told her where he was
going when he’d left Wellington.

He wondered if she’d heard he was getting
married. Had she come to ruin it? He wouldn’t put it past her. She was smart,
beautiful and sexy, but she had a mean streak he had been on the receiving end
of too many times to doubt her ability to drop a bombshell should the need
arise.

She smiled at him over the rim of her
coffee cup, the naughty twinkle in her eye that he remembered so well suddenly appearing.
“Relax, sweetie. I don’t have an axe hidden in my handbag or anything. I’m not
here for revenge.”

He said nothing, turning a packet of sugar
over and over in his fingers. He wasn’t willing to believe it just because she
said so.

She sipped her coffee, looking across the
room and out of the window to the road as she did so, watching the logging
lorries and numerous cars trundling past. He took the opportunity to study her,
to see how she had changed over the past two years. She was still shockingly
beautiful. Her dark hair was longer, shiny, bouncing around her shoulders.
She’d put on a little weight but it suited her, filling out her figure, and
she’d lost the haunted, gaunt look she’d had near the end, when things had got
so bad between them. There was no evidence of the hatred, the madness that had
seemed to overtake her that last time they’d met, when she’d screamed until her
voice was hoarse, the razor in her hand, threatening to slit her wrists.

His last memory was of walking out of the
house, glancing back over his shoulder and seeing her fall to her knees, her
face filled with fury and anguish that he didn’t seem to care if she took her
own life. He hadn’t, at the time. Later, he’d rung one of her friends to make
sure she was all right, but it was more out of guilt than out of genuinely
caring whether she lived or died. In many ways, he knew it would have been
easier for him if she had died, although the guilt would have been even worse
then, probably bad enough to ruin any future relationships for him.

Now, though, she seemed calm, and when her
gaze came back to him, her eyes danced with the playful humour that had kept
him coming back to her so many times even though deep down he’d known she was
bad news.

“So how’s it been?” she asked.

He stirred his coffee, which he hadn’t yet
touched. “Good.” He lifted the cup, blew on the coffee, then returned it to the
saucer untouched. It was no good—he couldn’t do this, acting like nothing had
happened. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting Laura,” she said.

He searched his brain—her cousin? “And
while you’re here you thought you’d look me up?” He couldn’t remove the
cynicism from his voice that she happened to be visiting the week before the
wedding.

She tipped her head. “Is that so unlikely?
I haven’t seen you for an awfully long time, Dexy. I know we didn’t end well. I
just wanted to say hi.”

He shuddered at her nickname for him,
remembering how she would whisper it in his ear while they had sex. He shook his
head as if he could rattle the memory out of his head, but it lodged in there
like a tick in a dog’s fur. “‘We didn’t end well’ is the understatement of the
year,” he snapped. “You told me you were pregnant to get me to marry you.”

“I thought I was,” she mumbled.

He said nothing, knowing she was lying. Out
of guilt, her friend had told him the day of the wedding that Cathryn had
admitted to her that she’d faked the pregnancy to get him up the aisle. No
doubt a few days after she had a ring on her finger, she’d have faked a miscarriage
as well.

Nausea rose inside him. He didn’t want to
think about it.

“I’m getting married,” he said.

She smiled. “I know. I’m pleased for you,
sweetie.”

He didn’t believe that for one minute. “Oh
really?”

She shrugged. “It’s been two years. I’ve moved
on too, you know.”

He wondered who she’d got her claws into
now. Some poor sap who had no idea what he was getting himself into. But for
the first time some of the stiffness faded from his spine. Maybe she was
telling the truth—maybe she really was just visiting the area.

“Who is she?” Cathryn asked.

Dex hesitated. He didn’t want to talk about
Honey, not with his ex. He looked at his watch. “I really need to go.”

“Does she make you happy?” Cathryn
whispered. “I know you never believed it, but that’s all I ever wanted.”

“Yes, she does make me happy.” His voice
could have cut steel.

An impish look crossed her face. “Is she
good in bed? Only I know how important that is to you.”

“We haven’t…” The words were out before he
could stop them, and he bit his tongue, cursing himself inwardly, sure she
would start laughing. But her face registered curiosity and interest rather
than amusement.

“You haven’t slept together?”

He pushed the full coffee cup away. “We’re
waiting until we’re married.”

Something crossed her face, gone too soon
for him to catch. “How romantic.”

“I thought so.”

She leaned forward, resting her arms on the
table. The movement pushed up her breasts, showing a generous amount of
cleavage above the low cut top. Was she aware? Of course she was, he decided.
Cathryn had been very conscious of body language and had always utilised it to
her advantage.

He forced himself to keep his eyes on hers
and not to glance down.

“How long have you been dating?” she asked.

“Just over six months,” he admitted reluctantly.

She studied him with something akin to
pity. “So you haven’t had sex for six months?” That made her smile. “Good
grief. I can’t imagine you going without sex for a week, let alone that long.”

“It’s surprising what you can do when
you’re in love,” he said, meaning to sound noble, but to his ears it sounded
childish.

“So you have no idea what she’s going to be
like in bed.” Cathryn moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Against
his will, his gaze was drawn to them, painted in a deep red, his favourite
colour. Honey never wore it, preferring a subtler pink gloss, and he’d never
asked her to, but Cathryn had worn it all the time. Her lips curved a little as
she noticed his eyes rest on them. “Does she know what a naughty boy you are in
the bedroom?”

His gaze snapped back up to hers. “Don’t.”

She leaned forward, amused now, her eyes
daring, taunting. “Do you think she’ll be willing to let you do the kind of
things that I let you do to me?” She moistened her lips again. “Whatever your
dirty mind could come up with?”

He pushed his chair back, stood and walked
out of the café, wishing he’d done it ten minutes ago, wishing he hadn’t let
her into the car. He strode across the car park and unlocked the car door, but
before he could open it she put her knee against it, forcing it closed again.

“Going so quickly?” she said breathlessly.
“We’ve only just got started.”

“Get out of my way,” he snapped, pushing
her to the side.

She grabbed him, however, tightening her
arms around him and locking her hands behind his back. “I know you,” she said,
her voice low and sultry. “She’s been happy to go without sex for so long. Do
you think she’s going to understand when you want it five times in one night?
When you ask her to do things—wicked things to fill that darkness inside of
you?”

He tried to loosen her arms, failed and
banged her back against the car. “Let me go!”

But she refused to let him go, one hand
holding his head, her fingers tightening painfully in his hair. Her red lips reminded
him vividly of when she used to go down on him. She had been fantastic at oral
sex, and it had been a difficult vision to eliminate from his memories.

Her lips clamped on his, sticky and hot,
and for a brief moment—it couldn’t have been more than a second or two—Dex
hesitated. Her body was soft, her breasts pressing against his chest, and the
slide of her tongue in his mouth and the feel of her against him had the blood
racing around his body.

And then a vision of Honey shot into his
head, and he stumbled back, nausea flooding him.
Fuck.
What the
fucking
fuck
was he doing?!

Scrubbing at his lips, he pushed Cathryn
away, got in the car and drove off without another word, leaving her standing
there. She didn’t run after the car or even shout—just watched him drive away,
a solitary figure in his rear view mirror, her face filled not with hatred this
time but with amusement and an abiding sense of victory.

He pushed the accelerator to the floor and
flew back up the state highway. His head spun and for a few minutes he worried
he might throw up on the passenger seat.