“It’s okay, Laney. I’m not going anywhere,” he said reassuringly.
And he wasn’t. Their relationship might be changing, evolving. But Delaney was a part of his life, always would be. They would get through this.
Delaney didn’t say anything, she simply lifted one of his hands and pressed a kiss into his palm.
Sam looked up at the stars twinkling high above them. It was a beautiful night, and he was in a beautiful place, and there was no one else he’d rather be here with. Relaxing at last, he settled more deeply into the water.
“It’s all going to be fine,” he murmured reassuringly as he closed his eyes.
DELANEY FOLDED her last T-shirt and pushed it into her overnight bag. Tugging the zipper closed, she sat back on her haunches and let out a small sigh.
It was all over. In an hour’s time they would be back in Melbourne, and the weekend would be nothing but a memory.
“Kitchen’s clean,” Sam said, and Delaney quickly schooled her expression into something that might pass as normal.
Inside she was dying. She was such a self-delusional fool. She’d known this was coming, too. Telling herself that she could shag Sam out of her system—had she ever really believed that was true?
But it had been the excuse she needed to have this weekend. To pretend, for just a few crazy days that he was hers, that he returned her feelings, that they had a future.
Now it was time to pack it all away and return to reality. Time to pay the price for her flight of fantasy.
Last night in the bath, Sam had assured her that he wasn’t going anywhere. She’d been so glad she had her back to him and he couldn’t see her face. She was sure her thoughts were written all over it, as plain as day for him to see: he wasn’t going anywhere, but she was.
Soon she would no longer work with him, and once she’d sold her apartment, she would no longer live with him, either. And then it would just be a matter of slowly easing away. Within a few months’ time, Sam would be out of her life.
“I’ll start loading up the car,” Sam said, breaking into her introspection.
She watched him stoop to collect his backpack and their other belongings, and an impetuous urge shot her to her feet. Stepping close to him, she put a hand on his chest and looked up into his face.
“We’ve still got another hour before we have to hand the keys back,” she said, hating herself for being the one to cling to the magic of their time together.
Sam dropped the bags with alacrity. “You are so a woman after my own heart,” he said.
Delaney almost burst into tears at his words, but lust came to her rescue. He only had to touch her and she was lost. She’d learned that by now. A weekend of lying skin-to-skin hadn’t cured her of her addiction—if anything, it was worse, now that they had taken the greedy edge off their mutual desire. After their bath on Saturday night, Sam had made long, slow love to her, kissing and licking and teasing every inch of her body until she was writhing with need. Even when he entered her, he took his sweet time, stretching the experience out as long as he could. She came twice, the second time a climax that was so deep, so all-encompassing that she’d lost all sense of time and place.
Now, Sam kissed her deeply, holding her body tightly to his even as he backed her toward the bed. She felt the mattress behind her knees and allowed herself to fall backward, Sam coming with her.
Just the feel of him resting between her spread legs was bliss. A torturous, need-inducing kind of bliss, but bliss nonetheless. Knowing full well that she was touching his beautiful body for the last time, Delaney took her time peeling his clothes off, her hands smoothing reverently over each newly exposed expanse of skin. He was in his prime, strong and tanned and full of life. She drank him in with her hands and her eyes, her feverish mind trying to store away memories for later—the smell of his skin, the way his eyes darkened when he was turned on, the giveaway twitch of his hips when he particularly liked something she was doing to him.
His hands were just as slow and thorough on her body, and she was soon quivering with the need to have him inside her. Pushing his shoulders down onto the bed, she slid on top of him and guided him inside her. They locked eyes as she rode him, the act a mirror of that first, frantic time they’d come together. This time, however, Delaney delayed the inevitable, trying to stop time, to steal just a little more of Sam for herself. But inevitably the delicious tension built within her, and she bit her lip to hold back her moans of pleasure.
Sam’s hands slid up her torso to cup her breasts, and she couldn’t help herself.
“Sam,” she breathed, sliding along his hard length. “Sam.”
He seemed to understand what she wanted. His hands slid to her hips and he gripped them firmly as he thrust up into her, never taking his eyes off hers. His face grew taut, and she felt the muscles of his belly tense beneath her hands. He was close, she knew, and so was she.
Their cries mingled together as Sam’s hips pushed up against hers one last time, the slip and slide of their bodies too perfect to deny for long. Exhausted both emotionally and physically, Delaney flopped across his chest for a brief moment. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and hear the harsh sound of his breathing.
She experienced a fierce moment of pride. She had done this to Sam—she had pushed him to the edge and over, sent his pulse sky rocketing, made him hard with need and now compliant and lazy with satisfaction. She had this, at least, to keep her warm on the long, lonely nights to come.
Carefully, methodically, she pulled her messy feelings together inside herself and wrapped them up nice and tight. Right now was where it had to end. There could be no more reprieves.
Pulling away from Sam, she began to dress. A dull weight was sitting in the bottom of her stomach. She had a feeling it was going to be there for a very long time.
SAM KEPT GLANCING across at Delaney as he tooled along the freeway back to Melbourne. The sun was just going down on the horizon, and her profile was limned with the rosy fire of the setting sun.
She looked infinitely sad, and he wanted to pull over and demand that she talk to him. She’d been very quiet since they left the cabin, and he’d respected her silence so far because he had assumed that it sprang from the same regret he felt that their special time together was over.
Seeing her face now, however, he wasn’t quite so sure.
“You okay?” he asked, even though he felt that he’d somehow traded away the right to ask such things when he’d agreed to their weekend.
“Just thinking about the business,” she said.
Sam’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Haven’t changed your mind, then?” he asked, keeping his tone purposefully light.
“No,” she said flatly.
Silence fell between them for a few kilometers. Finally Sam spoke again.
“The bank’s cool with everything. You know that. I just have to tell them when I need the funds. And then it’s done.”
He could see her nod in his peripheral vision.
“Okay.”
“So the timing is up to you,” Sam said, stating the obvious.
He knew in his bones that she didn’t really want to go. Why else would she be so sad about the prospect? She’d built Mirk Publications up with him from nothing. There was no way she didn’t feel as passionately about it as he did. He held his breath as he waited for her answer. He’d called her bluff, and now it was time for her to talk in terms of months, and long handover periods and other time-consuming, face-saving measures that confirmed his belief that she didn’t really want to go through with this.
“I was thinking maybe three weeks. If you think we can find a replacement for me that quickly,” she said.
Sam felt as though he’d been kicked in the belly. Three weeks? Three measly, cotton-picking weeks?
“What do you think?” she asked, and Sam realized that he hadn’t responded to her suggestion, and that he’d pressed his foot down on the gas and was now speeding.
“We’ll have to advertise straight away. It probably depends on notice periods for the new person, how soon we can get them.”
“Of course. I won’t leave you high and dry, don’t worry,” she said.
Sam wanted to turn and tell her that that was exactly what she was doing. But he didn’t. Belatedly he saw that perhaps their weekend together hadn’t cleared up any of the problems between them at all. Maybe, in fact, it had made things worse.
“I was thinking that we—I mean, you, sorry—could start training Sukie up into an assistant sales role. You could assign her some of our smaller advertisers, start her up slowly. That will leave the new person plenty of time to build relationships with our major players,” Delaney said.
Sam forced his mind away from the dark place that had opened in his soul and tried to concentrate on what she was saying.
“That’s a good idea. Sukie’s great on the phone,” he said.
“That’s what I thought. And I kind of get the feeling that she might be getting a little bored with admin work. If you train her and give her a pay rise, she’ll stay with you for longer.”
They talked about the magazine the rest of the trip—careful, emotionless conversation about future planning and things they’d been putting off that Sam would need to do on his own now. Every word seemed to hammer home to him just how much he didn’t want things to change, how much he was going to miss Delaney.
But he was slowly beginning to understand that this was really happening. She was going. She wanted to go, worse. And there was nothing he could do to stop her.
They were both calm but a little withdrawn by the time he pulled into his parking spot beneath their apartment block.
“Thanks for driving,” Delaney said, flashing him a small smile. “I should have offered to drive us back, since you took us out.”
“I like driving, you know that.” Sam shrugged, hating the awkwardness. Definitely things were worse now than when they’d left.
And it wasn’t about sex or lust or desire or guilt. It was about their friendship. He could see that now. The certainty that he’d felt last night in the bathtub evaporated and he realized there was a very real possibility that they would never recover from this seismic shift in their relationship.
The thought of it made him dizzy, as though someone had just told him that gravity was a myth and he was suddenly floating free, with nothing or nobody to tie him to the earth.
The feeling only got worse when he followed her up to her apartment and stood beside her as she listened to her answering machine messages.
“Delaney, it’s Harry from the real estate office. We’ve been trying you on your mobile but you’ve been out of range all weekend. You’ve had an offer on your apartment. Spot on your asking price—I think you’ll be very happy. Call me as soon as you get in.”
Sam felt as though his legs were made from solid granite as he crossed to the sofa and sat while Delaney made the call. She talked quietly and briefly for a few minutes, then put the phone down. The expression she turned to him was completely blank.
“Wow. That was fast.”
“You’re going to take it?” he asked flatly.
“It’s right on the money. They don’t even want to haggle. And they want a three-week settlement. It’s like it was meant to be,” she said.
“Yeah.”
If he were a more generous person, he’d be leaping up now, offering to go buy champagne to celebrate her news. But he wasn’t that generous. He’d just been delivered two stunning blows, one after the other—he had only three weeks left of Delaney in the business, and about the same before she moved out. Despite all the reassurances he’d been making to himself, change was coming like a freight train along the tracks, and he was standing squarely in its way, about to get squashed and shredded.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good if I asked you not to go?” he heard himself ask. If he thought it would make him look any less pathetic, he would have punched himself in the face.
Delaney’s hands found one another and she gripped them tightly at her waist.
“This is a good offer, Sam. And it’s time to sell the apartment. Time to move on.”
Sam stared at her, deeply, mortally afraid that there was a deeper message for him in her words.
“You’ll just have to put up with me hanging out at your new place all the time. Better get that spare bedroom up and running,” he joked weakly.
“Which reminds me—I can put an offer in on the place in Camberwell now,” she said.
Sam brooded darkly as she made another phone call, only tuning in again when he noticed her checking her watch.
“In half an hour? That would be great,” she said into the phone. “I’ll see you then.”
She ended the call and was about to make another one when Sam spoke up.
“What’s going on?” He was starting to feel a teensy bit irritated at the way he seemed to have been shoved into the corner and forgotten. They had just spent the whole weekend away together, most of it lost in each others arms. He didn’t expect a brass band and ticker tape parade, but a little bit of attention wouldn’t have gone astray.
“What? Oh, sorry. The agent has offered to get me through the house again tonight. The owners are really keen to sell,” she said vaguely, obviously itching to get back on the phone.
“Who are you calling now?” he asked, hating the fact that he sounded jealous. He wasn’t. He was just…interested.
“Claire. I need a second opinion before I start seriously thinking about making an offer.”
Sam flinched. A second opinion. What was he, chopped liver?
Maybe Delaney read that she’d hurt his feelings, because she seemed to hesitate a moment before putting the phone down.
“Would—would you like to come, Sam?” she asked.
Sam stared at her a long moment, wanting to ask why she hadn’t thought of him off the bat. Hadn’t he always been her second opinion? Wasn’t that the way they’d always worked, each having the other’s back?
“Sure. I’d love to come,” he said, making an effort to sound normal.
“Cool,” Delaney said, and for the life of him he couldn’t work out if she meant it or not.
Scooping up her car keys, she led the way down to the underground parking garage. Sam sat silently beside her as she eased out into the twilight, her MINI zipping smoothly out into traffic.
Desperate for conversation, he scanned the interior of the car.
“Still running well?” he asked, patting the dash.
“Like a dream. Best car in the world,” Delaney said, echoing his gesture and patting the dash as well.
They promptly fell into awkward silence again. Sam wracked his brains for something to say, but he was too busy trying to work out what was going on with Delaney. Did their weekend away mean so little to her? She was seriously behaving as though they had been fishing or hiking, not devouring each other at every given opportunity.
In just fifteen minutes, they were turning into one of the oak-lined streets that Camberwell was famous for. Dense green boughs reached over the street from either side, meeting in the middle to form a leafy archway. Delaney leaned forward with excitement as they came up on a house with a For Sale sign on its front fence.
“Here we are,” she said brightly. “Isn’t it nice?”
Sam glowered at the wide porch and the diamond-paned windows and the charming heritage color scheme. It was nice. He just didn’t want to acknowledge it right now. This was the house that could potentially steal Delaney from him. He intended to hate it on principle.
They were exiting the car when a slick real estate type pulled up in a late model Porsche. Sam did a mental eye roll. Could the guy be more of a cliché? And he was wearing a suit at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening. What a slimy shark.
Sam was about to warn Delaney to tread carefully when she strode out across the road to sh
ake Mr. Slick’s hand.
“Thanks for this, Matt. I really appreciate it,” she said.
“Not a problem. As you know, the owner has moved into a nursing home so I knew I could get you through easily enough.”
Sam noted that there was a definite glint in the other man’s eyes as he gazed at Delaney, despite the fact that he only looked like he had twenty-five years under his belt.
Not going to happen, pal, he felt like saying. Never in a million years would you have a chance with a woman like Delaney. Instead, he had to be satisfied with crossing to stand behind her and placing a territorial hand on her shoulder.
To his chagrin, Delaney shot him a surprised look and twitched her shoulder, indicating she wanted him to let go. Teeth gritted, Sam complied. But he wasn’t happy.
He didn’t get any happier as he followed Delaney and Matt up the cutesy-wutesy garden path. It was a clear night with a full moon, and he could see that flowering plants and shrubs framed the brick walkway, the epitome of a charming English garden.
“The owner was a keen gardener, as you can see. The gardens are very well established and give the house good street appeal,” Matt said.
“Lots of maintenance,” Sam said, keen to offset Captain Slicko’s patter. “Probably get over-run really easily.”
“The old lady’s family are using a gardening service to maintain it at present. I believe they’re very affordable,” Matt countered.
“For a few weeks, maybe. But not on a long-term basis, I bet,” Sam said repressively.
Delaney shot him a look that plainly told him to shut up. But he wasn’t going to. He felt as if he were fighting for his life here, and he was going out with a bang, not a whimper.
The agent ignored his last comment as he opened up the house and started walking through, flicking on lights.
Sam found himself blinking in a wide entrance hall with a doorway on either side and another straight ahead. The walls were a dull putty color, the timberwork heavy in its original dark stain from the 1930s, and the floor was covered with a truly repellent speckled carpet in shades of purple and brown.
Anything For You (Harlequin Blaze) Page 17