“Twelve.” He said the word crisply, and I could guess from the color along his cheekbones that he wasn’t enjoying the retelling. “And yes, I had fantasies about her, which stopped abruptly when I realized she was one in a long line of women my father had bedded.”
His shoulders moved then, as if he’d suppressed a shudder, but that only made the attraction between the two of us crazier, unless… “Is that why I’m your type?”
He was frowning in earnest. “I think it might be.”
“Did you know that from the start?”
Should I be insulted? Or was it irrelevant?
“No,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t until the press were at the door and you were standing there all disheveled and sexy that I remembered how my father had been caught.” He put out a hand. “And before you ask, no, it doesn’t seem inappropriate to me that I’m infatuated with you. I don’t care about the psychology behind it. The bottom line is that I’ve never felt anything beyond physical attraction with any woman before. Before you,” he added softly.
“Any woman?” He’d told me he was forty. How was that possible? Although, if I was to ask myself the same question…
He shrugged. “Without delving into psychology again, I suspect that my father’s philandering had something to do with it.”
“But now…?”
“The one person I actually feel something for, is the one person who will tip my mother over the edge.”
I swallowed, trying to push down the hurt of rejection, to tell myself we’d only known each other for a day. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. And I couldn’t help saying, “What edge is she in danger of tipping over?”
“She has…problems?”
His face was closing down, going into that mask I’d seen when his shields raised, so I decided to cut him some slack. “That’s okay. It’s not my business.” And I reached out across the table for his hand, to show him I wasn’t feeling rejected.
He took it immediately, stroking a thumb across my palm. “Thank you.”
“So, I want to be an adult about this.” I straightened my shoulders, “But I also greedily want more of you.” My brain was racing for solutions, so before I could filter whether it would be helpful I said, “What about friends?”
He shook his head, but his incredulous smile lifted some of the tension between us. “I have no self-control around you. I can’t think past wanting to be inside you. Touching you. Licking you. Making you squeal.” He shook his head decisively. “There is no way I could see you and not want to have sex with you.”
“Okay.” Even though it was a dead-end, I was greatly heartened to hear he was as insatiable as I was. “Ditto.”
His wry smile faded. “If only my father hadn’t shagged the nanny.”
“No, it’s great,” I said and he frowned. “I mean, apart from making me ‘your type’, it’s given me fuel for a hundred naughty fantasies.” That sparked his interest, and his stroking thumb stilled. “So if you can work out how to see me and not upset your mother…” I nodded as if confiding a secret. “…you and I are going to have a spanking good time.” I winked for good measure, and that made him laugh out loud.
“Dear God,” he said softly. “I am not going to be able to stop wanting you.”
I shrugged. “I know. I’m a goddess. What can I say?”
We smiled at each other across the table and it felt companionable. I’d said what I could. There was nothing more to add. So when there was a knock on the back door a minute later I didn’t feel bad.
I just squeezed his hand and got up. “Stay here.” It was my house.
He let me.
One peek through the laundry window showed me Traci and two others, both beefy men, wearing black. I let them in and pointed. “Kitchen.” Then I waited in the laundry while they went to see Max.
Traci came back two minutes later. “I’m staying with you,” she said. “We’ll drive into town when we’re sure the jackals have gone.”
That would be the press. “Thanks. But I have to get to work by ten.”
She just looked at me.
“Or I could ring the shop and tell them I’ll be late.”
She handed me her phone. Then she stood watching me as I rang and told Desiree I wasn’t sure when I’d be in. Desiree didn’t ask whether I was sick from the trout and I was grateful for that. She was obviously busy and kept the call short.
It wasn’t unusual for me to change the schedule to suit myself, but with the town full this weekend, I didn’t want to leave her in the lurch. So I ended the call with a promise to get there as soon as I could.
Then Max was in front of me, holding out his hand and looking so professional, I had a moment of thinking I’d slipped into an alternate reality.
“Miss Wynde,” he said formally.
I shook his hand and did my part by saying, “Mr. Banks. It’s been lovely to meet you.” Then some wicked part of me added, “Thank you so much for sharing that molten strawberry petal recipe. It was life altering.”
He was gazing straight into my eyes and didn’t even flinch. “My pleasure,” he said smoothly and gave my hand an extra squeeze before he let it go.
And then the muscle that Traci had brought with her were escorting him out the backdoor and into a sedan with seriously tinted windows. I had a last glance of those broad shoulders and that deliciously thick black hair of his before the door closed and seconds later they were gone.
I would have sighed, but Traci was standing beside me. So I said, “Tea?’
She shook her head. “I’m a coffee girl, actually.”
Either that or she was trying to avoid my Banchee Tea. I shrugged, then led the way to the kitchen, unperturbed. Max had told me I was the only woman he’d had feelings for that went beyond the physical.
In his life.
That was epic.
And despite the dire might never sleep with him again soundtrack that was running through the back of my mind as I made coffee, I clung to that revelation, because despite my sluttery, I honestly believed that true love conquered all.
Color me hopelessly romantic, but especially after watching Jill, Angela and Louella get over their own emotional baggage to claim the man of their dreams and a happily ever after, I wanted my shot.
But would a disapproving mother, relentless paparazzi and my own fuckwittery be too much of a hurdle?
As I put the cup down on the kitchen table in front of Traci, I was about to ask her what she knew about the press and how to avoid them.
But before I could speak, she said, “By the way, the leak to the press wasn’t your doctor friend, Todd. Someone from your café, I think. A young woman, our sources said.”
Marika!
CHAPTER TEN
“You’re fired.” I stood in front of Marika, trembling with rage. “Put down those plates and get out.” Luckily we were in the kitchen where no customers could see us, but side-of-sight I saw Sammie walking toward us. I waved him away. “Marika. Now.”
She put down the meals she’d just picked up and untied her apron which she slipped over her head and let go, so it dropped on the floor in front of her. “The law says you have to give me a week’s notice.”
Brash to the end.
As far as I knew it was two weeks. “I’ll pay it out. I don’t care. I just want you out of my teahouse now.”
She tilted her chin and sneered into my face. “I wouldn’t work another day for a cheap slut like—”
“Sticks and stones.” I deliberately turned and walked out into the restaurant, saying to Sammie on the way out, “And don’t you commiserate with her or you’ll be next.”
Desiree met me with a raised eyebrow when I reached the register but I only said, “I’ll be taking over Marika’s tables. She’s left.” Then I started pretending to organize the cakes in the display stand beside her, while keeping an eye on the kitchen doorway to make sure the little bitch wouldn’t come out and make a scene.
“Was she still in one
piece?”
“Customers.” I pointed toward the people approaching the register.
“O-kay.” She did the wiggle-fingers thing that’s supposed to mean I guess I have to treat you with kid gloves before she turned to serve them, and I knew she was teasing, trying to get me to calm down. Because my jitteriness was probably unnerving her. I was the chilled one in the shop, sorting problems and placating people. She’d probably never seen me angry before. Still, she was handling it well.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t handling things well at all. From the moment Traci had told me about Marika, I’d gone into a tailspin, wondering just how much the little bitch had told reporters. It was one thing to identify me as Max’s one-night-stand, but if she’d blabbed about my sexual history…
In retrospect, firing her on the spot had probably made things worse. What if she hadn’t told them much about me, and now she was motivated to spill gory details.
Fuck.
Why did I never think things through?
It was a wonder the shop ran at all. Well, that was probably down to Desiree’s practicality. She was the process side of the business, organizing rosters, ordering supplies. I was the ‘personality’ side, as she called it: tweaking menus, displaying the merchandise, charming the customers.
The great thing was, the place ran when I wasn’t there. That was important. And I thanked my lucky stars every day for finding Desiree. Marika, not so much. Her customer service was amazing, but as I watched her storm across the street to her car, I had to acknowledge that I’d always suspected her of backstabbing.
I’d just never thought she’d do it to me.
“Thank you!” Desiree said to the customers and I smiled at them by rote as they took their change and turned to leave.
“I’m serving,” I said, and gave Desiree a hug before I left, grateful that at least one person had my back. But as the afternoon progressed, I realized she wasn’t the only one. Sammie was particularly gentle with me, insisting on making me a dinner to take home, and asking if I needed company because I looked upset.
I was upset. The more time passed, the more I worried about what was going on in the media that I was deliberately not looking at. Jill left me a text message that said Call me. And I texted back Working. Later. Then Angela and even Louella tried to ring. I let them go through to message bank, not game to stop working because that would give me too much time to think.
I’d started out serving, but as a pack of jackals formed near the front of the shop, I moved into the kitchen where I couldn’t be seen. And maybe I should have left sooner, but the shop was busy and Sammie appreciated the help. Besides, Traci had left two ‘doormen’ at the front who vetted entering customers to ensure none of the jackals snuck in.
By nine pm when I was saying goodbye to the staff and going over my closing routine, I could feel apprehension like a rock in my stomach. I didn’t give in to it, however. Instead, I gathered up the overnight bag I’d packed that morning and met Traci at the back door.
She drove me in silence to a motel in the next town where she’d already checked me in. Then she let me into the room and handed over the key. “I’ll be back in the morning at seven to take you to work.”
My own home was no longer ‘safe’, and I had no idea how long that would go on. Desiree had told me to take leave, and I had to admit I was considering it. If I did, the jackals might leave the shop alone.
“Thanks.” I said to Traci and tried to smile.
She gazed at me a moment longer, then said, “I’ve put Mr. Banks’ contact details on the bedside table, as per his instructions. Mine are there too. Please call me if you’re worried in the night. But you should be perfectly fine here. No one followed us.”
She’d sent one of the doorman to my place in the Kombi as a distraction, and it all felt so theatrical I wanted to laugh. Except…I didn’t.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. “This feels like it’s way beyond what an assistant would do—”
“I’m a bodyguard.”
We stared at each other for a long moment as the component pieces fell into place in my mind, most particularly Traci standing at my door saying I’m paid to be near him, ready for anything that might occur.
When I didn’t say anything, she added. “Large male bodyguards like you saw this morning can attract the wrong sort of attention. Unfortunately, Mr. Banks’ television persona has gained him a reputation as a man who needs to be brought down a peg, and a certain sort of drunk might try to do that with his fists.”
“And you protect him from people like that?”
“No man wants to be set on his ass by a small woman.” Her smile was slow, and completely confident. “It’s a good deterrent in a group situation.”
“I’ll bet.” I never wanted to be able to hurt people, even to defend myself, so I wasn’t envious of her skills, but I loved her self-assurance. She was good at her job and she knew it. But that only raised the question of what—if anything—I was good at, and whether there was anything in my life, apart from being a great friend, that I could be truly proud of.
Luckily for me, my navel-gazing was short lived, because when Traci was gone, nervousness set in. I didn’t want to turn on the television or check news sites on my phone while I was alone because negativity might overwhelm me, so I lay on the too-firm motel bed and rang Jill. She picked up in two rings, as if she’d been waiting.
“F. Are you okay?”
“I’ve been working all day. What are they saying about me?”
Big pause.
“You haven’t seen anything yet?”
“No…” It must be bad.
“There’s a picture of you at your front door, with…”
“A tee shirt on?”
“Yes…but you’re reaching up, trying to cover your face and…”
“What?”
“You didn’t have knickers on.”
For a horrible second my brain froze, then it jarred into life. “Is my twat—”
“Yes.”
“Fuck!”
“They’ve got a blooper thing over it, but your thighs are showing on each side, so it’s clear that you’re knickerless.”
In the empty hotel room, I shook my head, too appalled to speak.
“You look sexy as hell,” she added, then I heard a slapping sound, and that was probably Finn sitting beside her. “But yes, inappropriate to have your girl bits splashed across the Internet.”
“I have to go.” I could hear blood pounding in my ears. Someone, somewhere, had a picture of my shaved twat, and one day they might decide to release it into the wild.
That idea was so disgusting I thought I might vomit.
“Do you want me to come to you?”
“No.” I shook my head for good measure. “I’m in a secret location where the press can’t find me. And anyway, I probably need to be alone right now.” Possibly drunk.
“Honey. Don’t look at the internet, okay? I’ll tell you if anything new turns up.”
I nodded and hung up, completely forgetting that she couldn’t see me.
Then I lay on the bed with the phone in my hand for so long, it felt as if my brain had stopped working because it couldn’t confront reality.
An image of my father slashed into my mind and my stomach lurched.
If he saw that—which he would, someone in town would bring it to his attention—there would be no defense. If I somehow died before he did, he’d take pleasure in putting Here rests Dakaroo’s biggest SLUT on my gravestone.
I swallowed against a rising tide of hysteria and sat up on the bed, swinging my legs over the side. Then I swiped my phone and clicked open a local news webpage, thinking I might need to scroll or type my name into a search.
But no.
There on the front page of the website was a picture cut in two parts. Me on the left at my front door, looking like a stunned mullet with an arm thrown up and—thank god—a smiley face pasted over my twat, presumably so the pic was
PG, and beside that was a stock photo of Max from his television show Pariah in the Pantry, snarling with his trademark raised finger.
I’d forgotten that “Get it up!” was his standard harassment, whether he was talking about food coming out of the oven, bread that needed to rise, or simply a dish that should have been plated up already. It was his trademark line.
So it should have been no surprise to see the headline: Pariah’s girlfriend Gets it Up!
It would have been sensible to go on and read the article, to see what they’d said about me, but I couldn’t stop staring at the word girlfriend. They—the media—thought I was Max’s girlfriend.
It was ridiculous, outrageous, in the circumstances, to be feeling happy about that, but my expectations of our future together were so low, this felt like it was as close as I’d actually get to a relationship with him.
So I just looked at the headline, practicing Hello, I’m Max Bank’s girlfriend in my mind. Which was beyond pathetic. Eventually I managed to push myself past that to read on:
Rumors of a new romance for Food Critic Max Banks were confirmed today when he overnighted in the one bedroom cottage of Belandera teahouse manager, Fritha Wynde. Banks was in Australia on the pretense of researching for a new documentary series when he linked up with Wynde who is described by locals as an eccentric cougar with a taste for men half her age. Clearly she makes an exception for celebrities.
“Bullshit!” I yelled at the phone. I was thirty-five. Half my age would be an eighteen-year-old. I’d never gone that young.
Had I?
I searched my memory frantically, because if I was asked about this in person I wanted to be able to deny it, only…there had been that one time. Desiree and I had been trialing a food stall at the local produce market when Bohemian Brew had first opened, to encourage people to sample our wares.
I’d taken a liking to a hippy on the next stall who was selling vegan aphrodisiacs. One thing led to another, and that night I’d gotten a bit wild with him and his younger ‘friend’ who’d been passing through town.
I’d had ménages before, but never with two guys who were into each other as well. It had been crazy and exciting, and at the time I’d thought it wasn’t my fault there was a younger guy involved. I’d started out with the thirty-year-old.
Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4) Page 16