by Abby Green
‘Let me have a go.’ He went back to the kitchen, washed his hands, dried them and then reached for the fabric.
Stunned, she handed it over. ‘You really were some sort of Boy Scout?’
He glanced at her then, his eyes full of awareness, and she kicked herself for bringing the memory of that night out into the open. She flushed.
He looked back to the needle, lips twitching. ‘Actually, no, but I figure I can’t do as bad a job as you are.’
‘Thanks very much.’
He sat in the chair next to hers. Suddenly antsy, she moved and took a quick walk around the room before returning to stand over him. He’d been out running for over an hour. She could see the ‘68’ minutes frozen on his stopwatch where he’d recorded his time. Yet his breathing was now normal. Fit guy. But then she knew that already. She could feel the heat from him and all it did was make her uncomfortably hot and her breath came shorter and faster still—as if she were the one out marathon training.
He didn’t look too competent with the needle, though.
‘Damn.’
Sure enough he’d pricked his finger.
She felt mightily glad to see he was a little useless at something.
He looked up at her, his eyes suddenly all puppy-dog apologetic. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Tell you what, I’ll get my dry-cleaner to take it—they do mending as well.’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Bella, I have to. I’ve smeared blood on it now. I owe you.’
She looked at the dress; sure enough, there was a big spot right on the cute capped sleeve.
‘Oh.’ Her heart lurched.
‘It’s the least I can do.’ He really did look sorry. ‘I’m sure they’ll be able to fix it.’
She hadn’t got the wine stains out. She’d have no luck getting the blood mark either. Damn it, he’d put her in the position of having to accept his help again. ‘OK.’
He slung the dress back over the chair. ‘They’ll have it back in twenty-four hours.’
Just as he turned away she caught sight of his wicked grin and the suspicion that he’d done it deliberately flew at her. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words died on her tongue as she thought about it. She loved that dress. She needed that dress. She could pay him back after the party, couldn’t she? She really had no option.
‘I’m starving.’ He stretched. ‘Let’s do pizza.’
Take-out pizza she could handle. It was cheap; it was yummy. Her sense of independence surged. Hell, she could even buy it.
‘Just give me a couple of minutes to shower and change,’ he called as he headed to his room.
She was opening all the kitchen cupboards and drawers when he got back.
‘Looking for something?’
‘Phonebook,’ she muttered.
He stared at her quizzically for a moment. ‘Ever heard of the Internet? Anyway, we’re not ordering in, we’re going out.’
‘We are?’ Nonplussed, she stared at him. Since when? But he was halfway to the door already.
She called after him as he sped down the stairs. ‘Going out where?’
He grinned up at her as she descended the last few hundred steps. ‘My favourite.’
It was a colourful Italian restaurant about five doors down from his warehouse. Not quite the cheap and cheerful she’d imagined. More refined than relaxed, but they didn’t seem to mind his casual jeans and shirt and her charity shop special skirt.
Bella had kittens as she read the menu—and saw the prices.
Owen seemed to read her mind. ‘My treat. A further apology.’
That was the point where she finally baulked. ‘No.’ She was not going to have him call all the shots like this, and certainly not have him pay for everything. It made the situation sticky.
‘Pardon?’ He looked at her. The air almost crackled.
‘No, thank you,’ she enunciated clearly. ‘You’ve already done far too much for me, Owen.’
He’d frozen. Clearly he didn’t hear the word no very often. She was going to have to remedy that. ‘You don’t have any brothers or sisters, do you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, surprised. ‘How did you figure that?’
‘You’re too used to getting your own way.’
He stared at her; she met the scrutiny with a determined lift to her chin. ‘You think?’ He suddenly stood. ‘Let’s get out of here, then. We’ll do your precious takeaway.’
‘I’m paying.’ Assertiveness plus, that was the way.
‘Fine.’ His lips were twitching again.
The rooftop was as warm and seductive as the night before and Bella soon realised she would have been far safer in the overpriced restaurant. Desperately she went for small talk—anything to distract her from how hot he looked, how hot she felt. And to stop her from making a fool of herself. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Mum’s in Auckland, Dad’s in Australia.’
So they’d split up. Somehow it didn’t surprise her. ‘Were you very old when they busted up?’
He looked cynically amused, as if he knew how she was analysing him. ‘I was nineteen.’
‘Really?’
Owen smiled at her surprise. ‘Twenty-three years of marriage gone. Just like that.’
‘Did one of them have an affair?’
‘No,’ he answered. Not to his knowledge. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He hadn’t known about any of it. He’d been so obtuse. Maybe it would have been easier if one of them had. ‘They just grew apart.’
She was frowning. ‘So what, they just woke up one day and decided to call it quits?’
That was how it had seemed to him at first. A bolt from the blue. Utterly unexpected, unforeseen. But if he’d had an ounce of awareness, he would have known. It still pained him that two of the most important people in his life had been slowly imploding and he hadn’t even noticed. He’d been too preoccupied with himself and his work and all his great plans.
‘They were unhappy for a long time. I never knew. I was too busy with school and sport and socialising to notice. But they agreed to stick together until I was through school and then separate. In those teen years it seemed every other mate’s parents were busting up. I thought mine were the shining example of success. Turns out they just wanted to protect me—stop me going off the rails like so many of those mates then did.’
He didn’t want to know that level of ignorance again. Part of him was angry with them for not being honest with him sooner, part of him respected them for the way they’d loved him. More of him was angry with himself for being so blind. And he couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t be that blind again, so he wasn’t up for that kind of risk.
She’d stopped eating her pizza and was staring at him with such expressive eyes, it jabbed him inside to look into them. He stared at the box between them instead and kept on talking to cover it.
‘I think they got bored with each other. They had different interests. The only thing holding them together was me.’ Together forever just wasn’t a reality—not for anyone. If his parents couldn’t make it, no one could. He cleared his throat. ‘It wasn’t acrimonious or anything. Don’t think it left me scarred or anything. We can all get together and do dinner. They were both totally supportive when I decided to quit university to concentrate on developing my company.’
Not scarred? Bella doubted that. This was the man who swore never to marry. Who said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. While many men could claim commitment-phobia, his seemed more vehement than most. If that wasn’t scarred she didn’t know what was. But maybe there was more to it. Her newly assertive, independent persona took a bite of pizza and went for it.
‘And so you’ve just been working on your company ever since? No serious girlfriend?’
‘What is this?’ Irritation flashed. ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’
So there was someone. ‘Just answer.’ She pointed her pizza at him. ‘Has there really been no one serious in your life?’
‘All right.’ He took a huge bite of pizza and answered out the side of his mouth. ‘I had a girlfriend. A long time ago.’ Then he shut his lips and chomped hard.
‘What happened?’
He shrugged, eventually swallowed. ‘Nothing much.’
‘Did you live together?’ Why did she need all the details?
She couldn’t help but want all the details.
‘For a while.’
The niggle of jealousy was bigger than she expected. ‘What happened?’
‘She met someone else. They’re married now. Has a kid—two maybe.’
She stared at him, shocked. ‘She left you?’
He looked levelly at her. ‘I’m not a good companion, Bella.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Good grief, the guy was gorgeous.
‘When I’m working on a project, that’s my world, that’s all there is. For those weeks, months, whatever, other things pass me by.’
She frowned. ‘Are you working on something now?’
‘Yes.’
Yet it seemed to her that nothing much passed him by. ‘You don’t think you’re being a little hard on yourself?’
‘I didn’t notice my folks falling apart. I didn’t notice her falling apart.’ His face hardened. ‘I’m selfish, Bella, remember?’
She stared, her mental picture elsewhere, thinking. From what she’d seen of him, it didn’t quite ring true—yes, he did what he wanted, but he did what others wanted too. But he’d totally closed over now, moodily staring at the half-eaten pizza.
She wanted to lighten the mood. ‘So what, you just lock yourself away and do geeky boy hacker things?’
His blue eyes met hers and sparked again. ‘I have programmers who build the software, Bella. Then I use the programs to do the work that needs doing.’
‘I’m surprised you need the programmers, Owen,’ she teased, pleased to have his humour back. ‘Why don’t you get all your precious computers to do it all for you?’
He chuckled. ‘There’s one thing that computers can’t do. Something that I can do really, really well.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Imagine,’ he answered softly. ‘I have a really, really good imagination, Bella.’
She stared at him, reading everything she wanted to read in his expression—heat. She was a dreamer—her father had told her off for it. That she wouldn’t get anywhere sitting in a daydream all day …
‘Someone has to dream it up.’
Someone like him. He was so enticing. Did he know what she was imagining right now? She suspected he might because that look in his eye was back.
Confusion made her run for deflection. ‘I could never sit at a computer all day.’
‘I could never stand on my feet slaving after people all day in a ton of noise.’
‘I like the noise of the café. I like watching the customers as they sit and people-watch. I like the face-to-face contact.’
‘I like face to face.’
‘Really?’ She didn’t quite believe him. She had the feeling he holed himself away in that big apartment and thought up things her brain wasn’t even capable of comprehending. And then he sold them. She’d been wrong—he was more entrepreneur than anything.
His grin turned wicked. ‘And body to body.’ He leaned closer, his voice lower, his eyes more intense. ‘Skin to skin.’
Owen grinned as he saw the change in her eyes again. The sparkle went sultry. When he stepped close to her, when he spoke low to her, she coloured, flustered. But he wanted her more than flustered, he wanted her hot—and wild. And now he saw the way to that was so much simpler than he’d thought. All he had to do was get close to her. And she wanted to know about him? He’d tell her about him.
‘A couple of years ago I sold the business to a conglomerate for many millions of dollars.’ He was upfront, knowing money wasn’t something that rang her bell. She seemed to take a strange joy in being broke; it was almost as if she deliberately mucked up—as if it was some sort of ‘screw you’ signal to her dad.
‘So what did you do with all your millions?’ she asked, her tone utterly astringent.
There, see? He’d known it would go down like the proverbial lead balloon. ‘What do you think I did with it?’
‘Bought yourself a Ferrari,’ she snapped, ‘and a few other boy toys. A plush pad in the centre of the city. An easy, playboy lifestyle.’ Her eyes were like poisoned arrows pointing straight at him.
He batted them away. ‘Yes to the Ferrari—it was my one big indulgence. But not so many other toys. As you’ve already seen the plush pad in the city isn’t so plush—half of it still has to be plushed up.’
He paused, took in her focused attention. Good, it was time his little fairy saw things the way they actually were.
‘I put half into a charitable trust and built a think tank with the other. The people you saw in that meeting yesterday have some of the brightest and best minds you’ll find anywhere. Total computer geeks.’ He winked at her. ‘I get them together and they work through problems, building new programs.’
‘That you can sell and make lots of money with.’
‘That’s right. We take the money, give half away and get on with the next idea. I like ideas, Bella. I like to think them up and get them working and then I like to move on to the next big one.’
‘You don’t want to see them all the way through?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t like to get bored.’ He didn’t like to be complacent. He didn’t like to be around long enough to ‘miss’ anything. It was better for him to keep his mind moving. ‘As for the easy, playboy lifestyle—sure, occasionally. But for the most part I work very long, very hard.’
‘Why? When you’re wealthy enough to retire tomorrow?’
‘Because I like it.’ Because he couldn’t not. Because he needed something to occupy his mind and his time. Because he was driven. Because he couldn’t face the void inside him that he knew couldn’t be filled. Because he was missing something that everyone else had—the compassion, the consideration, the plain awareness and empathy towards others. His relationship with Liz had made him feel claustrophobic. The family she’d threatened him with had proved to him he wasn’t built for it and he had bitterly resented her for trying to force him into it. He would not allow that pressure to be put on him again. But he’d have a woman the way he wanted—he’d have Bella the way he wanted.
‘For all that success—’ he underlined the word, knowing the concept annoyed her ‘—I’m still the guy who made you laugh that night.’ He tossed the pizza crust into the box and stood. ‘I’m still the guy who made your legs so weak you couldn’t stand.’ He took a step back, determined to walk away now. He spoke softer. ‘I’m still the guy who made you alternately sigh then scream with pleasure.’ He paused. He’d leave her knowing exactly what his intentions were—plain and simple. He spoke softer still. ‘And I’m the guy who’s going to do it all again.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
BELLA stayed in her room until well after nine the next morning, sure that by then Owen would be downstairs overseeing his group of geeks, coming up with some program to bring about world peace or something. Last night had been the most frustrating night of her life—even more frustrating than after he’d left her bed on Waiheke, and she hadn’t thought anything could top that.
After his outrageous comments, he’d gone. With a smile that had promised everything and threatened nothing he’d walked downstairs—presumably to his room. The door had been closed when she’d summoned the courage to leave the roof. What had she been supposed to do—follow him?
She’d badly, badly wanted to. But she didn’t, of course, because her legs had lost all strength again—just with his words.
Now, as she moved quietly across the warehouse, she saw his bedroom door was closed. She knocked gently, just to be certain. When there was no reply she opened it and walked on in. Halfway to the bathroom door on the other side she realised that the big lump of beddi
ng on the edge of his bed was moving; it actually had a lump in it—him. He sat up—all brown chest on white sheets, hair sticking up in all directions and wide sleepy grin. ‘Good morning.’
She froze, halfway across the floor. ‘I thought you’d be at work already.’
‘No.’ He yawned. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
She felt the colour flood into her face.
‘I had a call from New York that went on for a while.’
Her colour continued to heighten. She started to back out of the room. At least she was wearing trackies now under the tee shirt. After the embarrassment of yesterday she wasn’t running the risk of encountering all those people when she was half starkers again.
‘No, don’t worry,’ he said, swinging his legs out of the bed and reaching for a shirt on the floor. ‘Use the bathroom. I’m going for a run.’
She stopped in the doorway. He’d stood up from the bed. Naked except for the shirt he was holding to his lower belly. He was magnificent. Rippling muscles and indents and abs you wouldn’t see anywhere other than the Olympic arena. He yawned again, stretched his free arm, showing his body off to complete perfection.
He was doing it deliberately. He had to be. She swallowed—once. Took a breath. Blinked. Swallowed again. Still couldn’t seem to move her legs.
‘Bella?’
She turned and walked then, straight back to her bedroom. Where she threw herself down and buried her burning face in the cool of the sheets.
Damn it, Owen. If you’re going to do it, do it.
Half an hour later she figured he’d gone and be out for another hour at least. So she headed to the kitchen—she needed a long, very cold drink. As she downed the icy water she heard the door slam.
She turned, and there he was wearing loose shorts and a light tee. He was puffing, sweating a little. He stalked towards her. Straight towards her and he didn’t seem to be stopping.