Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘So you’re meeting at seven o’clock?’ Kensey asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Chelsea said, biting at a fingernail.

  ‘You’ll both be needing dinner about then. How about you casually slip into the conversation something like, “Here’s your phone, Damien. And, boy, am I famished? Aren’t you famished? Perhaps we could pop inside and unfamish together.” Then later, much later, call me. Please. If I don’t get a complete rundown on every second I’ll never forgive you.’

  Kensey kissed her on the cheek, then swanned out of the room. A crash and a bang somewhere else in the building snapped Chelsea completely back to real life. Time she got back to work.

  But first … She dialled the number of Amelie’s restaurant. It was the kind of place you had to book a month in advance, but she saw no harm in trying. Especially when she had a desk covered in samples of rose-scented doggie shampoos and bedazzled cat ponchos from which to choose a nice little sweetener for her new favourite cloakroom attendant.

  Three o’clock came around slowly. Damien knew as he’d checked his watch a dozen times since he’d found out exactly who had his phone.

  He’d probably made less money for his clients that day than he had for himself when his father had insisted he get a job flipping burgers to learn the true value of money, and a hard day’s work, during the holidays from his private boys’ high school.

  Because now he’d decided he was ready to handle some pleasure for pleasure’s sake he couldn’t think past her voice, her fingers running up and down those gold beads, her lips smiling softly, her crossing her legs and rocking her top foot up and down to some slow, seductive inner rhythm. It was as though she was all he had room in his mind for.

  And the bold truth was he couldn’t wait until seven to get a fix.

  Needing privacy, especially from Caleb who had an even better radar for sexual tension than for making money, he took a walk into the executive bathroom, checked under the stalls, and, finding himself alone, slid Chelsea’s phone from his inside jacket pocket.

  Chelsea was in the blue room blow-drying a Persian when the mobile rang. She tugged it from her back pocket, flipped it open, shoved it to her ear and said, ‘Chelsea London.’

  ‘Hi,’ a by now all too familiar deep male voice said, and she almost dropped the hair-dryer.

  ‘Give me two seconds,’ she said, before throwing the phone to the metal bench. She turned off the dryer, put an almost dry Snookums back into her cage, washed her hands, straightened her back, looked in the mirrored wall and flicked a fleck of cat hair from her cheek before picking up the phone again.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, her voice breathier than usual.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Damien asked, the face and the voice merging to create a killer combination.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘So what are you doing?’

  Chelsea frowned. Suddenly she felt as if she were in the eighth grade talking to the boy she’d had a crush on who’d ended up only using her so he could copy off her Biology paper. Another dud to add to the list of men who’d left her disenchanted in the gender as a whole. ‘Damien?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there something in particular you were after?’

  Something about his pause had her holding her breath. The sounds of traffic from nearby Brunswick Street permeated the silence. Until he blew out a fast shot of breath and said, ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, just managing to make it over to the sunny window-seat to sit with one leg tucked beneath her. Better that than be upstanding when her knees gave way. ‘What were you thinking exactly?’

  She could have sworn his voice dropped an octave when he said, ‘I was wondering what it is you do for a living.’

  And just like that her blood returned to her extremities. He wasn’t thinking about her as she’d been thinking about him. He was bored. She flicked herself in the side of the head.

  ‘My friend Caleb has a theory that you are in fact a vendor of adult products. I just wanted to set him straight. Or not, if that’s the case.’

  Chelsea blinked. ‘Your friend thought …?’

  ‘He did. He has some imagination, my friend.’

  Well, what do you know? she thought. Mr Perfect was nothing at all out of the ordinary. He was just a guy after all.

  ‘Is your friend in the room with you?’ she asked, her voice now in total control.

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’

  ‘Well, you can tell him that there is a great way to waste your own time rather than other people’s. So why don’t you go right ahead and search for me on the Internet.’

  And at that she hung up. She threw the phone onto the window-seat where it bounced and settled like a glaring shiny beacon of collective disappointment.

  She poked her tongue out at the phone and shot to her feet. But it began to vibrate again. She knew it was him. But she wasn’t all that sure what to do with him. Beautiful him. Contradictory him. He was either funny or a jerk. And she wasn’t sure which she preferred him to be. Which would give her the chance at a better day’s work. A better night’s sleep.

  With a muffled oath she stormed over and snapped it open. ‘Would you prefer I told you to bite me? In case you missed the nuances in my voice that’s pretty much what I was trying to say.’

  ‘Chelsea, forgive me,’ he said, his voice contrite, and, oh, so deep and delicious she wanted to forgive him. ‘It was my attempt at finding a believable reason to call.’

  ‘Why?’

  And then he said the only words he could have to redeem himself. ‘Because you’re the girl who fell into my arms, and spilled my coffee, and stole my phone and gatecrashed my thoughts until I had to admit to her that I’ve been seriously thinking that a two-minute phone swap isn’t what we ought to be doing tonight.’

  This time her knees really did give way and she sank back to the window-seat and tucked her spare hand between her knees to stop it from trembling. So much for Damien Halliburton being a mere male clone. She’d never had a man tell her she was the girl before.

  She closed her eyes shut tight as she said, ‘You could have knocked me sideways with a feather when I realised it was you who had my phone too.’

  The second the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. She suddenly felt as though the walls around her had been stripped away until she was sitting out in the cold alone. Naked. Unprotected.

  She pressed her toes into her shoes, and her shoes into the concrete floor, trying to ground herself. Gambling on a successful business she owned lock, stock and barrel was quite different from gambling with her tender emotions. ‘Damien, I—’

  He cut her off as though he’d sensed her backtracking. ‘So have dinner with me tonight. At Amelie’s. I’ve booked us a table. We can swap phones. Eat. And see where the night takes us from there.’

  She opened her eyes, was hit with a burst of bright sunshine from outside. Though the sun hit the cold glass so that she could barely feel its warmth.

  Dinner. A date. With the most beautiful man she’d ever met. ‘Sure,’ she said, wondering where the word even came from. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Excellent. So long as you don’t mind if we make it a little later. How’s nine o’clock?’

  ‘Nine would be fine,’ she said, infinitely glad she’d have time to change … either her outfit or her mind. ‘Better even. I feel like everything has taken twice as long as normal to be achieved today.’

  ‘All because I have your phone, I suppose,’ he suggested, though by the smile in his voice she was sure he knew that wasn’t even half the reason. He probably ruined women’s concentration spans constantly.

  ‘Of course,’ she said smoothly. ‘It’s all about the phone. So don’t forget to bring it at nine.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, his voice a deep hum that tickled across the back of her neck as certainly as if it were his fingers brushing away her hair. She imagined his lips following. The brief brush of his t
ongue along the delicate patch of skin. ‘And there I was thinking you had some kind of love affair going on with that phone of yours and wanted it back yesterday.’

  ‘I do. I did. I …’ She flicked herself again. ‘I’ll see you at nine, Damien.’

  ‘Until then,’ he said, and hung up.

  Until then, Chelsea thought, slowly shutting the phone.

  She stood and found her reflection in the shiny steel industrial-sized sink in which they washed the cats and miniature dogs and pictured Damien standing behind her, all dark good looks and effortless polish.

  She sucked in her stomach and pursed her lips. If you could see past the flat chest and boyish hips, and her slightly crossed front teeth, which had never seen the back end of a pair of braces, her hair was long, her nose passable, and her eyelashes incongruously dark and never in need of mascara.

  She let her breath go and slumped into a more normal posture, and her dirt-smudged T-shirt, the third of the day, turned wrinkled and sloppy.

  She picked up the closest landline to ring and cancel the seven o’clock table she’d booked, and made a mental note to organise another set of samples for skinny Carrie to keep her mouth shut that the booking had ever existed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BY SEVEN, Damien’s employees had all gone home to their wives, husbands and assorted pets while Caleb had a date with an apparently very bendy Cirque de Soleil performer, leaving Damien alone in his big office with only the high winds buffeting his double-glazed window to keep him company.

  He checked his watch. Two hours until he was due to meet Chelsea.

  He flipped open her phone, pressed the exact right buttons to find her picture and stared at it. Her face half in shadow, half in too-bright light. A shy smile curved her mouth, silky hair tumbled over her shoulders, her pale slender neck seemed to go on for ever.

  He ran his thumb back and forth over the image.

  She seemed the kind of woman who’d enjoy curling up on a soft, cosy couch on a rainy day, legs tucked beneath a blanket, her head resting on a man’s lap, half-empty cups of hot chocolate leaving twin mug rings on the coffee-table while they watched a run of old movies.

  He flipped the phone shut with a satisfying snap.

  That life would never be his. He was a Halliburton, which meant working, living and playing hard. He hadn’t spent a day of his life curled up anywhere and he’d never craved hot chocolate.

  As he’d blithely walked out her door Bonnie had blamed his parents’ divorce for making him as commitment-phobic as he was. He thought it more likely his parents’ subsequent friendship without the marriage part getting in the way had more to do with his unwillingness to settle down. Though they had agreed that the sooner he was honest about what exactly he did want from any woman who came into his midst, the world would be a safer place. So what the hell was he doing asking a woman like that on a date?

  Could it be because he hadn’t forgotten the chemical reaction that had lit those golden eyes when she’d first looked into his? The instant surge of attraction. And just like that the image of her on the soft homey couch changed to include a shift of her lithe body, a lifting of her chin as she kissed him, and melted against him, as he spent hours so devoured by her he could no longer remember any other woman he’d ever met.

  He ran a hand fast over his face, over his tired eyes, and hard through his hair. So what did he want?

  For the rest of his life? He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to answer that question.

  But for now, for tonight, he wanted Chelsea. More than he remembered wanting anything in a long time. And until he had a bed of his own, he’d settle for having her wherever he could get her.

  It was around a quarter past seven by the time Chelsea made it home.

  Home was a beautiful art deco apartment smack bang in the middle of the city. It had been bequeathed to both girls by a maiden aunt on her mother’s side, a woman they’d never met or even known had existed since their mother had done a runner in the months after Chelsea herself was born and never been heard from again.

  She’d agreed to check the place out unwillingly, but the second she’d set foot inside she’d fallen in love. The chintz lounges, cream panelled walls and curling antique furniture created a warmth and a history the likes of which she’d not known growing up in string of small cold apartments.

  Kensey, who at that stage had had a husband, two kids, three chickens and a turtle, had had no need for a one-bedroom city apartment with no yard, so Chelsea had offered to buy her out, convincing herself that prime city real estate was never a gamble.

  She now felt great peace in watering the flowers outside her windows, in polishing to a gleam the dining table she never used, and in allowing piles of books and magazines to teeter in corners of the room. Clutter meant permanence, just as dog-loving meant responsibility. Life could be just that simple if one let it.

  She kicked off her shoes at the door and aimed for the shower to wash off the day’s worth of dog spit, cat hair and other unmentionable ooze.

  She padded into the large master bedroom, pulled off her jeans and threw them onto the floor. Her decade-old sweater was halfway over her head when the mobile phone vibrated atop her dresser.

  Her heart thumped against her ribs as she screened the call but it wasn’t her number looking back at her. It was the offices of Keppler Jones and Morgenstern. It could be important. A message to pass onto Damien in two short hours. Something to fill the conversational void they would no doubt encounter within five minutes of seeing one another again.

  She flipped it open. ‘Damien Halliburton’s phone.’

  ‘Are you still at work?’

  Her heart leapt to her throat the instant she heard that sinfully delicious voice.

  ‘Home.’ She leant back against the end of the bed for leverage as she pulled off her socks one-handed, and so that he didn’t guess she’d come home to change for him she added, ‘I had to feed my neighbour’s cat. She’s away.’

  He laughed. ‘Caleb knew there’d be a cat somewhere in the picture.’

  She wiggled her toes in the lamplight to find at least half of them needed to be re-pinked. ‘Caleb’s the one who thinks I am a kinky sex-toy purveyor, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  She pulled the phone away from her ear briefly to tug her long-sleeved T-shirt over her head. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be finding yourself less troublesome friends?’

  ‘I’m certain I should be. But I’m too nice a guy. Without me he’d be lost.’

  ‘You are Sir Galahad himself.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  Who are you trying to kid? she thought. Conversation with this guy wouldn’t be hard to come by. Every topic touched upon seemed to open up between them like a minefield of verbal possibilities.

  After a pause he added, ‘Are you alone?’

  Her undressing came to a sudden halt with her T-shirt hanging off her left shoulder. ‘Is that imperative?’

  ‘Not entirely. It would just help clarify my mental picture.’

  ‘You’ve formed a mental picture?’ she asked while flicking the shirt from her arm and through the open door onto the en suite floor with the rest of her dirty clothes.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not so much,’ she lied.

  ‘Well, just in case you’re waiting for me to go first, here’s mine.’

  He paused for effect. And it worked. Chelsea stood in the centre of her large carpeted bedroom now naked bar a pink lace bra that had seen better days and white cotton knickers, and she held her breath.

  ‘I see an apartment,’ he said. ‘Lamps everywhere, high ceilings, soft couches a person just sinks into until they never want to get up again. And not an animal print in sight. How am I doing so far?’

  Chelsea wrapped an arm around her stomach. ‘So far … kind of scary close.’

  ‘Mmm. I’m moving through now, deeper. An ajar door catches my eye. I press it open to find myself in a
bedroom. Your bedroom.’

  ‘Just like that? With no invitation? That’s pretty forward.’

  ‘Not only am I forward, I’m also not alone.’

  ‘If you tell me there’s some snaggle-toothed madman under my bed—’

  ‘Chelsea,’ he said with enough force to shut her up.

  ‘Yes, Damien.’

  ‘Did I say you get to talk in my imaginings?’

  She shook her head no.

  ‘That’s better. Now, I’m not alone in your bedroom because you are there with me. Happy?’

  She nodded. And imagined he had just entered, fully dressed in his beautiful suit, one hand in his trouser pocket, pulling his white shirt across his broad chest. His dreamy blue eyes dark in the low light of her muted art deco lamp. She placed the back of her spare hand to her suddenly hot cheek.

  ‘Now, to tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I have not one clue what your bedroom looks like. It could be wall-to-wall shag-pile carpeting. It could have bunk beds and beanbags. It could have a disco ball and mirrored ceilings.’

  ‘How disappointing your imagination only stretches so far.’

  ‘Don’t be disappointed. All I see right now is you.’

  She thanked her lucky stars her bed was there to catch her as she swayed. Permanence and responsibility be damned. She wanted him. With a power and a need that ought to have had her hanging up the phone and ordering in. Instead she allowed herself to luxuriate in his smooth, rich, decadent voice.

  ‘What am I wearing?’ Chelsea asked, this time dead centre in the middle of his imaginings.

  She could all but hear the stretching of his cheeks as his face broke into a sexy smile. ‘You tell me.’

  Her toes dug into the carpet in order to keep the rest of her upright. Because she knew that this was not just another phone call. This time he had a purpose.

  Seduction.

  The idea seeped beneath her skin and warmed her cold, tired bones better than the best hot shower in town could ever hope to.

  She closed her eyes and reached around behind her to unhook her bra. As it slid over her arms, scraping along her highly sensitised skin, she said, ‘I’m naked. Well, not quite.’