Unsuitable
Page 37
He kissed her. Too soft, too brief. Too shockingly beautiful. Breaking away to tease. “What, no bended knee?”
She tried to move to give him what he wanted. She’d go to her knees for him because of everything he meant to her; love and respect and family and work, and lives of dependence and independence, and all the tangled states in between.
He stopped her shifting, tightened his grip around her. “Yes, yes, yes, Audrey. I’ll be your carer.” He kissed her, too quick again. “Your lover, your husband, your wife, father to your children, supporter of your career, maker of your meals, doer of your laundry. I want all of it, the noise, the tears, the frustrations, the laughter, the ambition, the crazy joy. But if we can afford it, please can we keep Cameron, because twins in a two career family, we’re going to need the help.”
“I hope you’re good with boys.”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand and then went still. “We’re having boys?”
“It’s going to get wild, isn’t it?”
He blinked and all his sorrow was washed away. “It’ll be hell. And I’ll love you all the way through it.”
She kissed him with no finesse, with bumped noses and scraped teeth, with hunger that smoothed out to a banquet of his lips and tongue, his hands in her hair, hers on his face.
And their hearts beating unsuitably fast, but arguably, appropriately, thrillingly, together.
About the Author
Ainslie Paton is a corporate storyteller working in marketing, public relations and advertising.
She’s written about everything from the African refugee crisis and Toxic Shock Syndrome, to high-speed data networks and hamburgers. She writes cracking, hyper-real romances about women in control and the exciting men who love them.
You can find Ainslie on her website and blog: http://www.ainsliepaton.com.au and on Twitter @AinsliePaton. She also has an author page on Goodreads and Facebook.
If you enjoyed Unsuitable you might enjoy Insecure, due for release March 2015 or White Balance which is available now.
Read on for a sample of White Balance.
White Balance
Eighteen months ago
The wet salt smell of the sea was sharp, a shock to the head like a blast of nasal spray. The sky was pink, only just awake. There was a ragged fringe of weed on the shore that didn’t hide the lethal veins of bluebottle tails.
She used a telephoto lens to get nitpick close to the figure against the rock wall. She had to be quick. Chris was double parked, the engine idling. He was anxious about getting to the hospital on time and annoyed she’d wanted to do this, of all mornings. She was uneasy too, but this was a normality she wouldn’t have for a while, and it seemed a small thing to want it now.
Frame. The man sat very still. He looked to be asleep. Head dropped forward. Not a vagrant. Not a homeless person. He was dressed too well, dark jeans and boots, a light jacket. Maybe he’d had a hard night. Maybe he was doing what she did in another way - being with the morning. Though she’d not seen him here before, and the beach had its regular cast of characters, especially at this time of the day. He was out of place. Wrong clothes. No towel. No look of readiness for an early swim, or satisfaction from having already had one.
Zoom. She invaded his privacy further.
When he moved suddenly, lifting his face, looking right at her, she fumbled the camera almost dropping it. He unfolded; stretched his long legs out in front of him, braced his back against the seawall near the surf club. He had broad shoulders rolled slightly forward - comfortable or was it defeated. He was young. A man in his prime.
Zoom.
His head kicked back, chin lifted, face tilted to the sun. He had straight black hair, well cut with a lick that fell forward over his forehead. And the look on his face - not rested, not relaxed, not with the morning. What she saw in him was loss and despair. She didn’t know why she thought that. The set of his jaw, the fix of his lips and the line of his chest - there was something about him that suggested anguish.
Her eyes could touch every part of him though they were separated by a walkway, and a wide strip of beach, but she couldn’t shake the idea he was forsaken. If he could see her at all, she’d be a huddled shape on the promenade. A voyeur intent on pilfering his image. He was handsome.
Zoom.
His hands were clasped together lying in his lap. He had long, clever fingers with neat nails.
Focus.
Wedding ring. He was somebody’s husband.
Click.
She lowered the camera and hobbled back towards the car. The pain was bad this morning. The drugs no longer helped much. She’d grown immune to their floating state, their, numbing ease.
“Are you done?” Chris was trying hard not to sound impatient, but it bled though in the clipped words.
She curled up on the backseat, the throbbing too bad to allow her to sit properly; to rest her weight on her tailbone. “Let’s go.”
He drove carefully, like he always did.
In the end she didn’t post the picture of the man. It felt far too intimate, too much like she’d stolen his soul in a moment he’d bared it. She could’ve done something with his hands, but even that felt like an assault on him.
That and Chris confiscated her camera.
Eventually his image went into a backup file along with a bunch of others that hadn’t suited her mood, or were too boring or similar to photos already used. She rarely looked at those images, but they were too much a part of her to bin completely.
She remembered the man for two reasons. The date and the way he made her feel. She’d found him the morning of the surgery, as though he’d been put there for her when she’d needed to be reminded that pain takes many forms. He made her feel protective. She’d wanted to go to him, ask where he hurt, soak up the stress in his voice and hold his hand to help him get past it.
When she met him, she had exactly the same reaction.