Pleasured in the Billionaire's Bed
Page 14
Lisa had to admit that they probably would. Hal’s wickednesses with women were very exciting to read. Exciting when fiction became reality, too. Regardless of what eventually happened between them, Lisa could never regret her affair with Jack. It had been an incredible experience.
‘I’m reading all your books again,’ she confessed. ‘I started the one set in Africa last night, where all those women and children got massacred and Hal reaps vengeance on their behalf.’
‘I reread that one myself sometimes. I like the ending.’
‘Did you witness something like that, Jack? For real?’
Jack didn’t answer for a few seconds. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘Yeah, I did.’
Lisa found his body language very revealing, and reassuring. It was a relief to discover that Jack, unlike Hal, still had a heart. She could see the hurt in his eyes, and hear the pain in his voice.
‘How dreadful for you,’ she said gently.
His eyes flashed. ‘What was even more dreadful was that I couldn’t do anything about it. I was ordered not to become involved, yet we were stationed there as a peacekeeping force. Fat lot of peace we kept. That bastard who was running the country at the time was nothing but a homicidal maniac. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to shoot him down like the rabid dog he was.’
‘So you had Hal torture and murder him instead,’ Lisa said.
‘Only fictionally. He’s still alive somewhere, living off the rewards of his evil.’
‘I think you’ve seen a lot of evil, Jack.’
‘Toomuch,’ he admitted. ‘Not just in Africa, but in other war-torn corners of the world where people do unspeakable things in the name of power and greed. Unfortunately, most of the atrocities committed were against innocent women and children.’
‘I can imagine seeing things like that would harden a man.’
Jack shot her a sharp look across the table. ‘Let’s just say by the time I left the army, I was a candidate for therapy.’
‘And did you have therapy?’
Jack laughed. ‘Are you kidding? Lying on a psychiatrist’s couch isn’t my style. Not only that, I’m not sure it would have done any good. Creating Hal became my therapy, just like you so cleverly deduced. He enabled me to give vent to my suppressed need for justice and vengeance. And to release all the hate and anger I had bottled up inside me.’
‘I see,’ she said, a quiet hope filling her heart. ‘And has Hal finished his work yet? Are you feeling better?’
‘Much better, actually. I didn’t realise how much better till I met you. I’m no longer the emotionally dead man who left the army six years ago, Lisa. I’m no longer Hal, if that’s what you’re trying to fathom.’
‘I suppose I was,’ she said, though Lisa suspected there was still a fair bit of Hal left in Jack. Which was perhaps why she’d fallen for him.
Tall, dark and dangerous could be very attractive.
‘Look, I understand why you’re wary of me, and of letting me into your son’s life,’ Jack said suddenly. ‘And I respect your decision. I can see how important Cory is to you and how protective of him you are. But I want to be more than your secret lover, Lisa. I want our relationship out in the open. Is that too much to ask?’
A great lump had formed in Lisa’s throat with his speech. Maybe he did love her a little.
‘I guess not,’ she said. ‘But I still don’t want you staying over at my place. Or taking out my son. Or buying him things. Not yet, anyway.’
His face betrayed some annoyance at her demands. ‘I’ll hang on to that “not yet” bit. But I insist you tell your mother about me. Either that, or let me hire a babysitter occasionally for your son. I want to spend more time with you. I don’t want to just snatch an hour or two whilst your boy’s at school.’
‘Not my mother,’ she immediately rejected. ‘I’ll hire a babysitter myself.And pay for her.’
‘Aah… Independent.’
‘That’s the way I am, Jack. I can’t help it.’
‘It’s all right. I like your independence. No one could ever accuse you of wanting me for my money.’
Lisa stared at him. ‘Your money?’
‘I do have a lot of it, Lisa. If it turns out you’re expecting my baby, you can take me for a bundle.’
‘How can you ever think I would do such a thing?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t. But other people might.’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘Hush up. People are looking over at our table. Which reminds me. When you were talking just then, there was a woman just over there, staring at us like we’re visitors from another planet.’
Lisa’s head swivelled round.
‘No point in looking now,’ he said. ‘She’s gone.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Plump. Fiftyish. Attractive in an offbeat way.’
‘Please don’t tell me she had red hair.’
‘Nope. No red hair. She was blonde. Sort of.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘Your mum’s got red hair?’
‘The reddest.’
‘Then it was definitely not her. Maybe it was one of your cleaners,’ he suggested.
‘No. None of them are that old. Could have been someone who thought she recognised you, Jack.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
Their food arrived at that moment, two plates of quiche and salad, followed by huge mugs of steaming black coffee.
‘It’s difficult to keep a secret on the coast,’ Lisa muttered after the waitress departed. ‘If you go anywhere in public, someone you know is sure to see you.’
‘That’s why I don’t want to keep our relationship a secret. Why not tell your mother and be done with it?’
‘Because she thinks you’re just it. I wouldn’t be able to live with her if she found out about you and me.’
‘But you don’t live with her, Lisa. You live with your son.’
‘She rings me at least once a day.’
‘That much.’
‘Yes. And drops in all the time. Look, I might tell her, eventually. I mighthave to,’ she added, her stomach flipping over at the reminder that she might be pregnant. ‘But not yet.’
Jack frowned. ‘Is your mother strait-laced, is that it?’
Lisa laughed. ‘Oh, no. Mum’s had more lovers than you can poke a stick at. I suspect that one of the reasons I grew up frigid was because I didn’t want to be like her in any way.’
‘I see. Well, you’re certainly not frigid any more. Which reminds me. Do you seriously expect me to wait till Saturday before I can see you again? In private, I mean.’
Lisa realised she was being pretty silly, trying to keep him at bay. At the same time, she didn’t want him to think her weak.
‘I have to come over and clean your place some time this week,’ she said.
‘No Gail?’
‘She’s left and I can’t find a replacement that quickly.’ Lisa tried not to look guilty, but suspected she failed.
‘You’re lying, Lisa.’
‘OK, so I don’t want to send you a new cleaner. I’d rather do it myself.’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I don’t trust other women.’
‘You’re jealous.’
‘Yes, I’m jealous. And possessive. And crazy about you, all right?’
He grinned at her. ‘Absolutely all right. So when can I expect you to come and clean? Tomorrow?’
Lisa knew if she raced over to his place tomorrow, nothing would get done for the rest of the week. Sandra always came to do the books on a Thursday and her own house desperately needed cleaning. She’d been very slack lately; too much time spent reading.
‘I can’t make it till Saturday,’ she said.
‘Saturday! What about Friday?’
‘I do have other things to do, Jack. The business won’t run itself.’
‘Fair enough. But about Saturday…’
‘What about Saturday?’
Lisa had not long arrived home with Cory when her phone started to ring.
‘You get on with your homework, Cory,’ she instructed him. ‘That’s sure to be your grandma.’
‘Can I talk to her, too?’
‘When I’ve finished.’
He walked off disgruntedly as she picked up the mobile phone. ‘Hello,’ she said, and headed for the side-door. She would get the washing in and start folding it up whilst her mother chattered away.
‘Lisa. It’s your mother here.’
Lisa’s step faltered. Her mother never called herselfyour mother like that. Not for years, anyway.
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘I won’t beat around the bush. I saw you, Lisa. Today. At Tuggerah. With that man.’
The penny dropped straight away, along with Lisa’s stomach. Ithad been her mother staring at them. She must have been to the hairdresser’s and changed her hair colour. Again. She did that at least once every two years or so.
‘Really? You saw me with my new client? Where?’
‘Sitting having coffee in the middle of the mall. A new client, did you say?’
‘Yes. He signed up with Clean-in-a-Day not long ago. He’s filthy rich and owns a penthouse in Terrigal. Anyway, I ran into him whilst I was shopping and he asked me for coffee.’
‘Oh. I thought for a minute there you’d been keeping secrets from me.’
‘Mum! Surely you know me better than that.’
‘Well, it’s not like you to be happy for me to mind Cory two weekends in a row. So when I saw you today with a good-looking man, I thought—’
‘You think too much, Mum,’ Lisa broke in, then almost laughed. She was sounding just like Jack.
‘Actually, he’svery good-looking, Lisa.’
‘I suppose he is.’
‘Is he single?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Did he ask you out?’
‘Mum. Don’t start.’
‘I just want you to be happy.’
‘Mum, can we talk about something else? Tell me what you were doing in Tuggerah.’
Thankfully, this launched her mother into a discussion over her change in hair colour. And Jack was forgotten.
But not by Lisa. He was never forgotten. Not for a single moment. He was there, in her head, all the time. Haunting her. Tormenting her.
Today had been very difficult, especially when they went food shopping together. She’d had difficulty keeping her hands off him, wanting to touch him all the time.
Saturday seemed eons away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘THISis absolutely delicious,’ Jack said as he put down his fork and picked up his glass of wine. ‘You could be a chef, Lisa.’
‘I did take a cordon-bleu cooking course,’ she admitted, pleased that he liked the stir-fry she’d cooked him. ‘I have this compulsion to do everything to the best of my ability. I think it’s a hangover from my growing-up years. Like my cleaning fetish. Mum was not the best of housewives. Our house was always a mess. And meals were slapdash affairs. Often little more than snacks. Like baked beans or eggs on toast. Things haven’t changed much,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘That’s why Cory likes staying with her so much. Gives him a break from his pain-in-the-neck stickler of a mother.’
‘I think his mother is fantastic,’ Jack complimented with a sparkle in his eye. ‘And I rather like her compulsion to do everything to the best of her ability. Especially in the bedroom.’
Lisa gave him a saucy look. ‘I don’t recall having been in your bedroom too much today.’
‘A mere technicality. You know what I mean.’
Lisa did. Her behaviour from the moment she’d arrived at Jack’s penthouse around ten this morning had been exactly as she’d feared. She’d done whatever Jack had demanded of her, starting with cleaning the place in nothing but an apron.
Looking back, however, she felt no shame over the episode. It had been exciting, and fun, Jack following her around and pouncing on her at regular intervals. Not once had they made love in or on his bed. Things had been far more imaginative than that. She had taken her apron off once, to clean his shower, with the water running full bore and Jack in there with her.
By the time the penthouse was thoroughly clean, their insatiable need for each other had been temporarily quelled.
When Jack proposed they go out for a drive, they’d ended up in Erina—a closer shopping centre to Terrigal—where Lisa had bought the ingredients to cook Jack dinner. When they’d returned, they’d made much more leisurely love for a couple of hours. But once again, not in his bed.
When Lisa had confessed to Jack that there’d been a time when she’d been repulsed by watching people make love in movies, he’d been amazed, but understanding.
That was one thing she really liked about Jack. How understanding he was of all her flaws and foibles. It encouraged her to confide in him. To keep nothing secret. She even told him that ithad been her mother, watching them the other day. With new blonde hair.
‘What did you tell your mum you were doing this weekend?’ he suddenly asked, almost as though he’d been reading her mind.
‘I said I had a cleaning job today. I explained that Gail had quit without much notice and she had this extremely difficult client with very special requirements who would make a fuss if things weren’t done right.’
Jack grinned. ‘You’re becoming a very inventive girl.’
The highly individual sound of Lisa’s mobile phone ringing echoed through the penthouse, making Lisa drop her fork.
‘My mobile!’ she exclaimed, and jumped up from her chair. It had to be her mother. Lisa had told her to call her on her mobile if there was a problem.
Panic swept in as she raced over to where she’d dropped her hold-all on an armchair. Within seconds, her phone was at her ear.
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘Lisa…’
Lisa’s heart squeezed so tight, she thought she was having a heart attack. In that one word, her mother had conveyed so much. There was a problem. And it was serious.
‘What is it?’ Lisa demanded to know. ‘What’s happened to Cory?’
‘He…he went to play with Jason next door and he…’
Lisa listened with escalating fear whilst her mother explained that the two boys had been playing commandos in the forest up behind their properties. One would hide and the other had to find him. Just before Cory was due to come home, he hid, and Jason couldn’t find him. It seemed he’d gone in too far and become lost. Jason had heard Cory yell out once and then nothing. The police had been called and they did search for a while. But darkness had fallen and they said it was pointless to continue, because there was no moon to help them. Cloud had come in late in the afternoon. The search was due to resume again at daybreak.
‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ her mother said brokenly. ‘But I knew you’d be very upset if I didn’t. Although there’s nothing much you can do tonight.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Lisa said, sounding calm, but feeling anything but.
Jack had by then risen from his chair and was standing near by.
‘What is it?’ he asked as she clicked off and shoved the phone in her bag.
‘It’s Cory,’ she said, then burst into tears.
Jack took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Stop that,’ he snapped. ‘It won’t do any good. Just tell me what’s happened.’
She told him, gulping down sobs all the while.
‘I see,’ he bit out, and finally let her go. ‘I’ll drive. You’re not fit. But first, I have to get a few things.’
‘What things?’ she threw after him as he ran off.
‘I’ll explain in the car,’ he shouted back, and dashed down to his gym room, returning after a couple of minutes with a bag stuffed to the brim with who knew what.
By the time they were u
nderway, Lisa was feeling physically ill. What if they never found Cory? Or if they did, what if he was already dead? What if a snake had bitten him? Or he’d fallen and hit his head? Why else would he not have answered everyone’s calls?