by Ally Blake
‘Here! Here!’ Meg shouted, winking at her.
Wynnie gave her a quick smile before directing her next words to Brendan, to Cameron, to Quinn. ‘The same logic applies to all sorts of occurrences in our daily lives. We all use clothes dryers when it’s wet outside, we heat our towels on the column heater before getting out of the shower on a cold winter’s morning, we buy plastic packaging, we get our bills in the mail. But if we all also remembered to unplug any appliances that aren’t being used, if we recycled our newspapers and milk bottles, received bills and memos via e-mail not envelope, that’s a step in the right direction. Just by doing a little bit of good.’
The table was quiet. Too quiet. Her heart began to thud as she tried to decipher from the brilliant poker faces around her if she’d made it through.
With thirty seconds up her sleeve she uncrossed her legs, sat forward knocking her knees and letting her hands talk for her. ‘I grew up in a place where the people were drawn to the principles of permaculture, of living off whatever the community could produce. My family saw this as a way of taking responsibility for their existence, so this stuff is not new to me. But I’m just like you. I eat meat. I wear leather. I like fishing. I’m not suggesting we all live in eco-bubbles and eat nothing but spinach. I just think we can all try a little harder to think not only of ourselves but the wider community, as well.’
Quinn’s eyebrows slowly rose. ‘To not only think of ourselves, did she say?’ He shot a look at his wife. ‘Do you think that was a direct jibe at our lot?’
Mary’s smile was wide and genuine. ‘If so, it was a fair one.’
Wynnie released a long slow breath and planted her shaking feet firmly on the ground. She’d been accused once upon a time of pushing too hard, of getting too close, she could only hope she hadn’t done it again. Or if she had, this time it had worked.
When Quinn clicked his fingers and a man appeared as if from a hole in the ground, he asked for more iced tea, and Wynnie knew she wasn’t about to be kicked out on her rear.
Quinn turned back to her, his eyes smiling. ‘So, Wynnie, tell me, where did you grow up?’
The question was so unexpected she sat there in stunned silence. She had brought it up, in a round-about kind of way, but the details were something she’d much prefer not going into lest her past and her present begin to intersect—
‘Nimbin.’ Dylan’s deep voice rang loud and clear in her right ear as he leant over and grabbed a condensation-covered glass of his own. He took a long slow sip before adding, ‘She grew up in Nimbin.’
‘Get out of here!’ Meg hollered, cutting into her thoughts. ‘The land of milk and hemp. I always thought that place was some kind of myth.’
‘So Nimbin’s where they grow consciences nowadays,’ Quinn said with the kind of smile that would have made Wynnie blush if her cheeks weren’t already so filled with a rush of blood they felt as if they were burning.
‘Her parents were newlyweds,’ Dylan continued, leaning lazily against the arm of her chair—filling her personal space with his warmth, his size, his shadow. ‘They attended the Aquarius Festival on their honeymoon and stayed, living off what they grew themselves and home-schooling their kids.’
‘Oh,’ Mary said, ‘so you have brothers and sisters?’
Wynnie’s feet suddenly felt as though they were no longer touching the ground. She had to grip the arms of her chair lest she slide right out of it onto the grass.
But Dylan didn’t, he couldn’t possibly know—
‘One brother,’ he answered for her, and her throat burned as though it suddenly filled with bile.
She glanced up at him to find his face was haloed by the bright light of the setting sun. But he was no angel. He was the devil incarnate. Somehow he knew her darkest secrets. How long he’d known them she had no idea.
But she did know that in that moment he was showing his cards. If he saw the need to do so, he would use her secrets in any way he saw fit.
As if realising she was close enough to physically hurt him if she saw fit, Dylan drifted away.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Mary Kelly’s voice murmured in a fuzzy corner of Wynnie’s shut-down brain. ‘Family is everything. If more people realised that, then feeling a part of a wider community would naturally ensue.’
Quinn stood, his wife was at his side in a lightning flash, cradling his elbow. Wynnie lifted slightly off her chair wondering if he needed help.
But Mary’s beatific smile made her realise it was love that had her at her husband’s side, not anything more sinister.
‘I like you,’ Quinn said, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I hope Dylan sees the light and lets you in. KInG has become far too stuffy these past months.’ And then he and his wife were heading slowly back to the house.
Dylan? she repeated in her head. He hoped Dylan would see the light? But—
Brendan cleared his throat and shot her a quick smile as he stood, as well. ‘Nice pitch, Ms Devereaux. Inventive as all get out. If you’re ever looking to get a real job, give me a call.’
Meg glanced over her shoulder before flouncing away from the table. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back. I just have to make a phone call. Great job, though. A whole afternoon and I haven’t been the centre of attention once!’
Cameron and his wife, Rosie, had quietly disappeared some time around the first mention of ice cream, meaning Wynnie had been left alone to try to pick up the pieces of what had just happened.
She pulled herself from her chair and spun to find Dylan a metre away. His eyes were blank, his stance far too cool for a man who had just quietly proven he could ruin her life with a word if it suited him.
Her fingers curled into her palms so that she didn’t do as she so wanted to do and slap some life back into his beautiful aloof face.
‘They never had any intention of giving me a chance, did they?’ she asked, her voice husky, skirting the subject that truly ate her up.
‘Of course not. They’d never side with someone outside the family over me.’
A glint lit his eyes. She reacted to it physically as she always had. She slapped down the rising heat and thought cold thoughts, such as how it might feel if she encased his large bare feet in concrete and dropped him to the floor of the Arctic Ocean.
She waved a hand towards the big house which was mostly hidden by the sun sail above her head. ‘Yet you just stood there and let me make my pitch to them, knowing it wouldn’t make a lick of difference.’
‘Would you have kept mum if I’d asked you to?’
She knew the answer was no, so she bit her tongue and just glared at him instead.
‘And how the hell did you know all that other stuff about…me?’ She paced back and forth and waved her arms about her head so fast she felt like a helicopter preparing to take off.
He sipped at his drink. ‘I had you investigated.’
Her blood turned to acid in her veins. ‘You what?’
Then she realised if it wasn’t because she’d slipped and told him more than she should have in her weaker moments around him, then he probably knew everything.
He slid his spare hand into his pocket and downed the last of his drink, his tanned throat working with every swallow. The fact that she could still find him sexy, even now, scared the hell out of her.
‘There’s no point in being all sanctimonious about this, Wynnie. I’d bet my house on the fact that you had me researched to the nth degree before deciding I was the one you had to have.’
Her pacing range shortened but didn’t lessen in fury one bit. ‘So when you leapt in all heroic and saved me from the big bad reporter who knew my real name—’
‘You mean, last night.’
She flapped a hand at him, as if it didn’t matter that it had been less than twenty-four hours since he’d spent hours kissing every inch of her that he possibly could. As if that weren’t the crux from which all this new tension between them had sprung.
‘You knew everyth
ing,’ she continued. ‘You weren’t protecting me from him. You were saving the information for when you might need it yourself.’
This time he didn’t argue, didn’t interject. Because she’d hit the mark dead centre.
The moist grass squished beneath her shoes and she replayed every conversation they’d ever had, every time she’d thought she’d had the upper hand, every moment he’d treated her body as if it were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Her pacing stopped; she faced him, crossed her arms and asked, ‘Tell me the truth. Right here and now. Have you been playing me all along?’
He blinked. The shutters cleared. The man behind the dangerously charming mask appeared.
Her heart reached out to him, begging him to stay, to break through. But all too soon the glint in his eyes returned and he was lost behind the practised blue haze.
She said, ‘From the moment you walked out into that forecourt and gave me that seductive little smile, from when you sent Eric to check your iron to get me alone, and our dance, when you let what’s-his-name punch you first, and let me play nursemaid, and let me…’ She had to stop to take a breath. Letting him see how important last night had been was not in her best interests in that moment. ‘Has every second been a game to you?’
His cheek curved, her stomach dropped and he said, ‘Have I ever done anything to make you think it hasn’t?’ He took a second to let his eyes rest on her left shoulder, the curve of her waist, her right thigh. His hot dark eyes were locked right on hers as he finished the thought.
She blinked up at him, the memories flooding over her, replacing bad thoughts with good. No man who made love like that could possibly be all bad.
‘Dylan,’ she said, her voice imploring.
But the shutters came back down over his cold blue eyes—bang, bang.
She threw her hands in the air, spun on her heel and stalked away towards the side of the big house.
Coming here had been a mistake. To badger him into listening to what she had to say about her life’s work was one thing, to allow him to see her in a moment when her heart felt as if it were beating outside her chest was just plain reckless.
She heard his footfalls right behind her. ‘Stop following me.’
‘I’m not, we’re just going in the same direction and you’re so small my strides eat yours for breakfast.’
‘Ha! Like you’d have a clue what I eat for breakfast. You were out of there so fast last night you left skid marks in your wake. Oh, sorry. I’d forgotten, your investigator probably gave you a rundown on how I like that, as well!’
His fingers wrapped around her elbow, slowing her down. She twisted her arm away. He slid an arm about her waist instead, turning her to face him, and the guy had such a hold her only way out would be to slip to her knees and crawl.
She pushed her hands against his chest, dug her toes into her shoes and glared at him. Let him speak next. Let him find another new way to prove to her that she was damned to choose very, very badly when she chose to love.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight lest he see the startling realisation that had been slowly dawning on her all the long day.
He said, ‘We both knew what we were getting into last night.’
Her laughter was slightly hysterical.
‘Look at me,’ he demanded.
Her eyes flew open; she glared at him for all she was worth.
‘We are combatants on a field of play,’ he said. ‘And last night we simply took a moment’s armistice. If that’s all it was, then there is nothing wrong with that.’
He reached out and tucked his hand into her hair, and again she felt his eyes looking for answers in hers while only he knew the question.
His suddenly hot gaze trailed down her face to rest on her lips. ‘Nothing at all.’
Before she even had the chance to draw breath, he drew her in, and he kissed her. Hard, soundly, in a way meant to wipe anything from her mind but him.
She fought against the instant rising waves of heat lapping against her stomach, her breasts, her throat. But when her hands began to soften against his solid chest she was gone.
Her fingers curled into his T-shirt and pulled him closer as she pressed herself along his pitilessly rock-hard length.
They kissed as though every word, every smile, every clash between them thus far had been foreplay. Wild, unchecked, hopeless passion sent Wynnie’s senses spiralling away from her and over the edge of reason.
When there was nothing reminding her who and where she was but a speck of sunlight far, far away in the corner of her mind, she somehow managed to drag herself back to the surface. Not nearly soon enough.
She glared at his rising and falling chest as sense returned like a slap to the back of the head. ‘I knew you were hard,’ she said, her voice red raw, ‘but I never thought you could be cruel. No matter how much you might want me gone, you should never have used sex as a weapon.’
His smouldering eyes cooled until they were lit as though by chips of ice. ‘Honey—’
‘Don’t call me “Honey”,’ she shot back, ‘like I’m some kind of interchangeable body to warm your bed. Like I’m not important enough for you to bother knowing my name.’
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘Guinevere.’
She reared back as though slapped, and he let her go. She stumbled now he no longer held her up.
A butterfly fluttered past her nose. Beautiful, fragile, its days numbered. With it she found her centre.
‘If I’m right,’ she said, ‘and you have all sorts of juicy information in that dossier of yours, you’ll know that I am an abnormally forgiving person, even of those who have used me and hurt me more than one person deserves to be hurt. But right this second, I am looking forward to the day you rot in hell.’
Energy surged through her, giving her the impetus to finally walk away.
Wynnie all but ran as she rounded the side of the house. She’d send Mary a note thanking her for lunch, but right now she couldn’t face a one of them.
As always happened when she walked away from him she felt Dylan’s eyes burning a trail down the length of her body.
Only this time it didn’t fill her with the kind of sexual energy that would keep her going all day. This time it felt like goodbye.
CHAPTER TEN
ON THURSDAY evening Wynnie trudged up her lushly overgrown footpath, her eyes feeling full of grit after not having slept properly in days, her feet sore from wearing high heels for twelve hours at a time as she worked herself senseless, her throat dry from the hundred odd cold calls she’d made in the past four days trying to line up preliminary interviews with the heads of every big company in town.
That was all she deserved for screwing up so badly with the only company she’d even thought about reeling in. Falling into bed with the target; what had she been thinking?
She slammed open the mouth of her neat white mailbox and grabbed the mail as vehemently as such a thing could be done.
Once inside the cottage, she kicked off her slinky red high heels, checked her phone messages to find the one from Meg from a few days back had still not been deleted from the ruddy machine.
‘I saw you kissing after lunch,’ Meg’s lilting voice called through the small speaker. ‘Don’t worry. It was only me peeking out the window. The rest of them are far too self-involved to have noticed a thing. I just wanted to say “yay”! And even though D’s a right pain, he needs someone like you to keep him in line. See ya soon!’
She jabbed a finger at the machine, several times, until it read zero messages. But, knowing she’d only have to hear the damn message again the next day, she pulled the cord out of the wall.
Punishment. That was what her life had become. An endless round of paying for her mistakes.
It had been four days since she’d laid eyes on Dylan Kelly. Four days since she’d heard his voice, been witness to his sexy smile, and her heart still felt as bruised as if she’d walked away from him five minutes ago.
Her foot slid to the floor. She needed them both flat on the ground for this. Her blood thundered in her ears and her breath released on the one word: ‘Felix.’
She ran her thumb over the shiny picture on the front. Palm trees. Blue water. White sand. Tahiti.
She didn’t need to turn the postcard over to know it was from him, but she did anyway. As always hoping for a message, some kind of word on where he was, what he was doing, that he was safe.
And as always the back side was blank, bar a stamp, her address written in someone else’s hand, and a postmark from of all places, Lima. It would only lead to a dead end.
She slumped till her backside rested against the dining table.
More punishment to add to the rest. A teasing reminder that she had someone out there who was meant to be on her side no matter what, but she couldn’t have any contact with him. And a thump to the heart reminding her that she had let herself be denigrated, torn apart, broken down all to save his guilty hide.
And all she ever got for her troubles was a batch of blank postcards.
She flicked her hair off her face and her eyes fell on the chocolate-brown couch with the red angora rug draped lazily over it.
Postcards and a string of bad decisions when it came to knowing who to trust. And for the first time in her life the ache to see her brother again had less to do with love for him than it had to do with wanting to shake the breath out of the little punk and make sure he had a clue how he’d messed up her life.
She threw the postcard onto the pile of junk mail, and headed into the kitchen. There she found a bottle of red wine and a large glass and took them both into her bedroom.
Wynnie cradled a glass of red wine, her third, in her palm as she sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, still dressed in the off-the-shoulder, belted, short black dress she’d worn to work.