by Ally Blake
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
She looked down at her calf where a trickle of dried blood was smeared. She watched in shocked silence as Adam rolled up the leg of her cut-off jeans to reveal a pretty nasty scrape on her knee. But Cara was less aware of that than of his hands creating a warm rush that reached deep within her stomach.
‘Didn’t you know you were hurt?’ Adam asked, his brow furrowed in concern.
Cara shrugged. She was sore all over from that stupid proud slide of hers, and, though her knee had stung ever since, it was one of many bumps and bruises that would only look worse by the next day.
‘Wait here,’ he said before leaving her to walk up to the front of the bus to grab the first-aid kit from the driver.
When he returned, Cara held out her hands to take it but Adam ignored her. He sat down in his seat, his legs stretched out into the aisle so that he was facing her. He gently dragged her knee so that it was settled between his.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Cara insisted, all but scrambling onto her seat as far away as she could get. ‘I can do this myself.’
Adam shot her a look from beneath his dark lashes that shut her up fast. It also caused the warmth in her stomach to spread to the rest of her body.
‘You are not going anywhere near this scrape with those filthy hands,’ Adam insisted, going through the bits and bobs until he found some antiseptic, cotton wool and a bandage.
Cara hadn’t really noticed how dirty she was. Compared with her just-as-dirty arms, her hands hadn’t looked particularly bad, but, sitting in the clean air-conditioned bus, she suddenly realised how gritty she felt. Her hair was stuck to the back of her neck, her feet felt damp with sweat, and she could even taste dirt in her mouth. She must have looked frightful.
But then Adam touched her knee with a patch of antiseptic-covered gauze and she forgot all about how she must have looked as a sharp pain took the place of all other sensations, good or bad.
‘Yowza!’ she shouted.
Adam looked up, his spare hand moving to rest gently on her thigh.
‘Did I hurt you? Am I too hard?’
He was doing the furrowed-brow thing again and she had to swallow to wet her dry throat. Besides which, his hand was still resting on her thigh. Gently. On her thigh, for goodness’ sake! Pain gone. Good sensation back.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she croaked. ‘It’s fine.’
Adam’s brow smoothed out as he looked deep into her eyes. He didn’t believe her for a second and she could see that he wanted to make sure she was not hurting in any way. She looked back, hoping beyond hope that he saw none of her deep awareness shining from her eyes. ‘Really, Adam. It was just cold. That’s all.’
He nodded shortly then went back to his job, which entailed running soft cotton pads lightly over her knee. Slowly. Softly. What was he doing being so tender? Adam was meant to be unsympathetic, gruff and unperturbed. Not delicate, and comforting, so much so that the sting was soon nothing compared with the sensation raging through her at his deft touch from his beautiful fingers. Those fingers that were as sure and as warm and as skilled as she had imagined.
This was bad. The last thing she needed was to find herself thinking such disturbing and ultimately distracting thoughts when she was meant to be focussed on her job. Maya had warned her to be good, but her imagination was being very, very naughty.
All the same Cara watched Adam’s face as he went about his job. He was silent with concentration. Every fibre of his being was focussed totally on the task at hand. She had never met anyone who could focus so fully. Her mind was never settled. No matter which job she was on, she was thinking ahead to the next three. Yet this guy, with millions at stake in every conversation he had, could leave all that behind just so that her knee would be clean and germ-free.
He pulled out a bandage and wrapped it neatly across the scrape. Mission accomplished, his gaze travelled back to meet hers. There was a smile in his eyes. Simple pride at a job well done. What could she do but smile back?
‘Thanks, Adam. That was very kind of you. Unnecessary, but kind.’
He rested both hands about her calf, encircling the width as he had encircled his baseball bat earlier, with familiarity and finesse.
‘We can’t have this leaving a scar,’ he said. ‘Your legs are too nice for that.’
She raised one eyebrow, careful not to let him see how his words and his touch were affecting her. ‘Are you flirting with me, Adam Tyler?’ she asked, trying to keep the conversation light.
His smile grew, kicking into a grin. ‘What if I am?’
Now that was a question loaded with trouble and she had been incredibly stupid to invite it. So it was up to her to bring it to a close.
‘Then maybe you should stop.’
His smile stayed, but his hands began to move, slowly travelling down the length of her leg.
‘All work and no play—’
‘Means that Cara will take home pay.’
His hands stopped, meaning Cara’s breathing could restart.
Their gazes clashed. Held. Fought a battle of wills all on their own. Cara ached to look away but she knew she couldn’t. This was no time to seem coy. No time to seem unsure. She did not want some sort of holiday fling with this guy—this guy with the sort of strong, sure hands that could take a woman’s breath away. This job meant the world to her, and nothing and nobody was going to jeopardise that. No matter how unexpectedly considerate and unquestionably sexy and…
The bus suddenly slowed.
‘We’re home, guys!’ Jeff called out and the crew groaned as one.
Cara and Adam still stared.
‘But think of the hot shower and buffet dinner that awaits,’ Jeff yelled, and the crew cheered as one.
Then finally Adam blinked. Slowly. But it was enough. His hands eased away, leaving a zinging trail of heat as they slipped off her leg. And as the crew tumbled down the aisle of the bus Cara was left to wonder if the strange, heady encounter had all been a heat-induced dream. Maybe she had concussion after all. Whatever she had, it made her feel hot and cold and breathless all at once.
That hot shower, followed by dinner alone in her room, sounded like just what the doctor ordered.
The next day, Cara spent the morning working hard following Chris and the girls around the glorious Melbourne Zoo. She primped, she preened, and she even helped out with the girls when she found the chance, anything to feel as though she was contributing as much as she possibly could. So by Sunday afternoon, happily tired from a hard day’s work, she felt as if she had actually earned a little down time lazing by the pool.
After a quick refreshing dip, she was back in the shade of a large beach umbrella, lathered in sunscreen, damp hair tucked up into her wide-brimmed hat, and sheer white shirt covering her black bikini.
Lying on a sun lounger, she stared contentedly upwards, watching for long minutes as the small puffs of cotton wool clouds drifted across the wide expanse of beautiful blue Melbourne sky. The fat green leaves on the banana palms behind her rustled heavily in the warm spring breeze.
She mused over the fact that the night before was the first Saturday Night Cocktails get-together she had ever missed since the tradition began. While Kelly had been honeymooning, she and Gracie had kept up the tradition in her absence, meeting at Cara’s for nights of cocktails and gossip. And the night before, tossing and turning in bed, she’d known if they had come together as usual she would have been the one asking for advice, not the one giving it. But by morning she was seriously glad the secrecy of the show had meant she’d had to forgo any meeting with Gracie.
How would she have explained her concerns, anyway?
‘There’s this guy. Don’t know him well, or at all, really. Super rich. Dates models. Has eyes that I am sure can see right through me, and hands that make me blush every time I think of them. Glares at me more often than not but called me sweetheart when he thought I was hurt.’
No way. If she had said all of that Grac
ie would have raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow and told her to get a grip, or on the flipside would have goaded her incessantly and called her sweetheart in every conversation they had for a week.
Nope. Cara was seriously glad that, this weekend of all weekends, Saturday Night Cocktails had been postponed. Now she could rest easy that her disquiet had gone no further than her own sleepy head.
Instead Cara planned on enjoying her afternoon off spent with a book she had borrowed from the hotel library.
‘Is this seat taken?’ The deep, familiar voice that had invaded her sleepless night now invaded her happy alone thoughts.
She opened one eye to find Adam looking down upon her through a pair of dark sunglasses. ‘What if I said it was?’
‘Then I would say they should have left a towel upon the chair to bar it, else someone consider it fair game.’
Considering the provocative smile that kicked at the corner of his mouth, Cara felt the sudden urge to cover herself in a towel too. Their fleeting flirty conversations of the day before came back with such a rush she felt as if they were still mid-sentence—as though a whole day hadn’t passed since they had last laid eyes on each other.
She wished she hadn’t encouraged him to talk more in the first place. He seemed to have quite taken to the idea, and every second sentence that came out of his mouth seemed to be intended to charm her out of her indiscretions. She and her impatient ways.
Having had enough of him glaring down at her she fluttered a hand at the empty sun lounger beside her. ‘It’s all yours. I was just leaving anyway.’
As Cara made to sit up and gather her belongings Adam rested a hand on her shoulder. She felt its warmth all the way to her curling bare toes.
‘No, you weren’t,’ he drawled. ‘Just stay, Cara. I promise I won’t disturb you.’
Ha! He had no choice on that matter. That was the problem. But Cara did as she was told, sinking back against the chair more to shrink from his enclosed palm than anything else.
He dragged the white towel from across his shoulders and threw it down upon the lounger. It was only then that Cara realised he was wearing nothing but swim trunks. She looked away, hard though it was to drag her eyes from such a sight.
But when he ambled over to the water, her gaze was invariably drawn to him once more. He shook out his long limbs, the muscles in his back and arms clenching and stretching as he went. What a specimen. He was a supremely built man. Tall, sculptured, strong, tanned. Cara knew that beside him she would look like a scrawny, underfed, indoorsy waif. No wonder he was always photographed arm in arm with models, and Amazonian ones at that. Any other woman would be engulfed by his presence.
He dived in the pool with a sleek splash and it knocked Cara from her panting reverie. Now he was out of her eyesight, his presence only felt through the light slap of water as he swam lengths of the pool, Cara purposely lost herself within the pages of her book.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Adam said half an hour later.
Cara lowered her book to squint at him. He was standing before her, dripping onto the pool tiles, his black swim trunks plastered to his lean hips, his torso sleek with water, his hair raked back and darkened from the pool water, his eyelashes clumped and spiky, his dark blue eyes bright and clear.
And for the life of her Cara could not remember what he had just said. ‘I’m sorry?’
He pointed. ‘That book. Where on earth did you find it?’
Aah. She had a good long look at the cover, which read, ‘Unauthorised: Three Generations of Tylers’.
She grinned. ‘Hotel library.’
‘Meaning it was a book some discerning guest left behind in disgust,’ Adam said, his voice deep with chagrin.
‘Mmm. Makes sense to me.’
Adam raked a hand through his wet hair and flicked the gathered water droplets at her. She squealed, shielding herself with the hardcover.
‘Why are you reading that trash?’ he asked as he reached for his towel and dried himself down.
Cara half wished he wouldn’t do that in front of her. But then she half wished he would do it in front of her for a good long time.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I was looking for something lightweight to read on my afternoon off.’
He stopped drying, swung the towel onto the sun lounger and lay his long frame upon it. His head turned her way, his deep blue eyes no longer clear, back to being dark and unfathomable. ‘Lightweight, eh?’ he said.
‘Well, the subject matter is, of course, very heavy and important,’ she said with a grin, ‘but the manner in which it is presented is…lightweight to say the least.’
‘Mmm,’ he growled. ‘So I have been told.’
‘You haven’t read it?’
‘Hell, no.’
‘Why not? It’s a riot. Here, let me quote. This is from the chapter named: “The Son and Heir”. That’s you,’ she qualified.
The smile Adam shot back was distinctly lacking in mirth.
“‘Stricken from an early age by his father’s numerous nuptials and infamous infidelities, young Adam Tyler, son and heir, seemed intent not to follow in his father’s large footsteps, choosing instead to date prolifically, not marry, and thus to keep his own self-made fortune intact. And yet the ladies in his life have been abundant and encumbered.” See, I didn’t make this stuff up about your infamy with buxom blondes.’
Cara looked up to find Adam staring at the sky, his jaw set tight. No wonder he was so protective of Chris, she thought. And of himself. His ‘history with relationships’ that Chris had once thrown at him was hardly littered with giggles and sunshine. Had his father’s less-than-fine example numbed him to the possibility of enjoying a real relationship?
‘Give me that,’ Adam ordered, his hand suddenly shooting out to grab at the book. But Cara was quick off the mark. She shrugged out of his way, squirming and turning from his grabbing hand.
Adam sprang to his feet and, sensing failure, Cara did the same, rolling off the other side, her hat falling off her head and her air-dried curls tumbling from their makeshift constraint. They faced each other with her chair between them, their chests rising and falling in tandem, Cara with the book clutched tight to hers.
‘Give it to me,’ Adam ordered, his voice ominous.
‘Or else what? You’ll throw me in the pool?’
Adam shot a quick glance in the direction of the shimmering aqua depths. Then he turned to her with a lopsided smile that would have done strange things to her stomach if her pumping adrenalin had not already done the trick. And this time, though he didn’t say a word, he didn’t need to.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Cara whispered.
‘Then don’t tempt me, Cara.’ His low, rumbling voice and his strong body spoke of all sorts of temptations that should have sent Cara running to her room.
‘Give me the book and we both win,’ he said.
Her pulse raced and she couldn’t back down. ‘No.’
His smile broadened. ‘No?’
Letting temptation take rein, Cara again said, ‘No.’
‘Fine.’
His gaze raked over her body, which was trembling from an adrenalin overdose. She pictured her messy curls, her arms clamped over her chest, the sheer white shirt that stopped at her hips, leaving her black bikini bottom and bare legs available to his raking glance. She had no idea what was going through his mind, but no matter what it was she was struck still as a statue. But then when his hot gaze landed upon her knee it stopped. Cara followed the direction of his eyes and saw the scrape he had tended to the day before. It looked pretty raw. As did the massive bruise on her thigh that had come up overnight.
His gaze shot back to her face and she was shocked to see the raw alarm etched there. All evidence of playtime gone, he took a step around the sun lounger but she flinched, clasping the book to herself ever tighter.
He slowed, but kept on coming. ‘Cara, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not throwing you in the pool now. Just let me look at you.’
Cara stood stock-still as he rounded the chair and came to her side, his hands held in front of him as though to calm a startled deer.
‘That bruise is just insane. Have you seen a doctor?’
She shook her head.
He reached out as though to touch it and Cara jumped back, the thought of those warm fingers running down her thigh sending her adrenal glands into overdrive.
‘Don’t tell me Jeff won’t let you see a doctor,’ he growled. ‘If they won’t bring in someone from the outside I’ll sure have something to say about it.’ His gaze whipped from her to flick to the hotel-suite windows high above them.
Sensing that he was about to scale the building to get to Jeff, Cara reached out and took him by the arm to garner his attention. His gaze swung her way. She could not fathom its intensity.
‘Adam, please. I’m fine. It’s a bruise. That’s what happens when a human throws themselves at an expanse of hardened dirt. The human invariably comes off second-best. And it looks worse than it feels, I promise. If I bump into something, which I do often, I bruise. This, though larger than normal, is nothing unusual.’
Adam swallowed as his gaze once more sought out the black and yellow expanse. How Cara wished she were fully dressed. Having anyone stare so closely at one’s bare thighs was never a pleasant occurrence, and having Adam in all his perfect athletic glory do so felt more uncomfortable than usual. His gaze was so focussed she could feel it scorching her bare skin. It was too much.
Her hand moved from his lovely bicep to take him by the chin so she could physically stop him from staring at her legs. ‘Adam. I’m fine. OK?’
After several moments of intense concentration he nodded and she could feel the light stubble on his chin move against her fingertips. Suddenly aching to run her fingers over his cheeks and mouth to learn their texture, she pulled her hand away. Adam grabbed at it before she could get away, his long fingers easily encircling her skinny wrist. He then used his grip as leverage, pulling her closer to him. Caught as she was in his dilated gaze, she could do little but acquiesce.
‘Adam…’ she started.