by Fiona Harper
She didn’t believe that. Her boys could drive her to distraction, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love them. She was sure it must be the same with Jason’s parents, but that Everest-sized chip on his shoulder was stopping him from seeing clearly.
However, the key thing was that Jason obviously believed what he’d said, and she had a feeling he’d never fully conquer that all-consuming need to pull out and not get involved when things got tough unless he faced this. And suddenly Kelly really wanted Jason to be the kind of man who had it in him to stick around, who didn’t run from the tough situations in his life.
He downed the last of his drink and put the glass back down on the sideboard. His gaze flicked towards his bedroom door.
‘It’s late,’ he said and checked his watch, ‘and we’ve had a pretty surreal evening.... I’ll see you in the morning.’
She wondered for a moment if he’d kiss her again, but that sense of connection and ease they’d shared not an hour ago seemed to have evaporated entirely. He walked to his room without looking back and she watched him go. When he’d disappeared, she collapsed into the dent in the sofa he’d made and stared at the closed bedroom door.
Great. Just when she’d decided to live a little, take a chance this thing—this rebound fling, or whatever it was—was going to go somewhere, it had all gone pear-shaped yet again. Great going, Kelly. What are you going to do now?
ELEVEN
Jason froze at the soft knock on his bedroom door. There was only one person it could be and he wasn’t sure he was ready to see her yet. Too many conflicting thoughts were running through his head. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, hurt her, and he was scared he would while he was feeling like this.
‘Jason?’
He’d just finished brushing his teeth and the only light still on was the one in the bathroom. Half the room was draped in shadow. He padded over to the door, his pyjama bottoms low on his hips, and opened it.
Kelly was standing there, her hair loose around her shoulders and kinked from where it had been liberated out of its updo. She was no longer in her slinky black dress and red heels, but an over-sized T-shirt that was threatening to slip off one smooth shoulder.
He lifted his chin in lieu of a worded greeting.
‘Can I talk to you for a few minutes?’
‘Couldn’t we do this in the morning...?’ he started to say, but she pushed her way past him and walked into his room, leaving him leaning against the door jamb.
‘Hey!’
Jason had a surreal out-of-body moment, one where he was looking down on himself, shaking his head, wondering just when he’d turned into the kind of guy who minded when a hot woman beat down his bedroom door.
Kelly walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. ‘I think you need to talk about your family, about your brother’s accident.’
Well, Jason thought he had a greater need to jump off the twenty-fifth floor. Didn’t mean he was going to do it.
She patted the edge of the bed and gave him a smile that was most un-Kelly-like—shy, sweet, inviting. And bewitching as hell. He found himself walking towards her, sitting down.
But he wasn’t going to talk. Oh, no. There were much better games they could play with only a few pieces of clothing between them and a super-king-sized bed as their playing field. He turned to her with a devilish smile and pulled her to him. Her resistance melted a split second after his lips met hers and he gathered the thin cotton of her T-shirt and bunched it in his fists.
This was what he’d been waiting for. Right from the moment she’d first strutted into his office and hypnotised him with that prim top button. But there were no top buttons now, just loose fabric and acres of soft skin beneath. He slid his hand under the hem of her T-shirt, found a long, lean thigh and worked his way up from there. Sweet mercy. He didn’t know when he’d wanted a woman more.
Kelly inhaled sharply as his fingers paused at her hip bone, but he didn’t stay and explore. Not yet. First rule of play in Jason’s bed was that no one quit the game early. There was plenty of fun to be had before the big finish.
‘This...this...wasn’t what I came in here for...’ she gasped.
He knew. That was the point. And he preferred his idea.
His fingers started making lazy circles from her navel up to her ribcage. She arched beneath him. ‘Do you want me to stop?’ he asked.
Her eyelids were closed and he watched myriad thoughts cross her features. ‘Yes...I mean, no.... Oh, God, Jason.’
She pulled him to her and kissed him fiercely. Before he knew it they’d rolled over and she was on top of him. She pushed herself up on her forearms and her T-shirt draped down, offering the most wonderful space between skin and cotton. His fingers resumed their journey and he chuckled deep inside his chest.
Kelly broke away from him, her breath coming in pants. ‘This is not funny! I was just going to... I was supposed to...’
‘Later,’ he whispered, and pulled her back down on top of him for a slow and lazy kiss.
It almost worked. For a while she joined him, teasing him with her tongue, but then she slowed and sat up. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she told him. ‘And it’s called playing dirty.’
He put both his hands behind his head and grinned up at her. ‘Didn’t know there was any other way.’
She didn’t smile back. Darn. That kind of line teamed with that kind of smile usually worked for him.
Kelly shuffled up the bed, grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it against her front as she rested back against the headboard. He rolled over and crawled up the bed towards her.
‘Jason...’ There was both warning and pleading in her tone.
He smiled softly, still pretty confident he could get her to see things his way. ‘What, Kelly?’
She kept looking straight into his eyes as he got closer and closer. The curve of Jason’s lips increased. She wasn’t pushing him away and that had to be a good sign. He paused when they were only inches apart. But as they stayed like that, gazes locked, something changed...melted. The cockiness about the outcome of the evening drained away. Suddenly, all that charm and swagger he’d had planned seemed like a lot of...BS.
That sobered him up pretty quickly.
‘I know it would be...amazing...’ She blinked slowly and exhaled. ‘But I can’t be one of your one-night stands, Jason.’ She started shaking her head gently and clutched the pillow closer. ‘Please don’t ask me to.’
Her voice wavered on the last few words and he felt it deep down in his chest, in a place where he never felt anything anymore. The truth worked its way up from that forgotten spot and out of his mouth before he could think about stopping it.
‘There’s no way you’re a one-night stand.’
Her eyes shimmered a little, but her mouth tightened. ‘How do I know you’re not just saying that to get me into bed?’
‘You’re already in my bed, Kelly,’ he said, his tone light and playful, giving away nothing of how much her question had hurt him.
Was this how other people—women—really saw him? A predator with no scruples? He stepped outside of himself for a moment, tried to see himself with their eyes and was ashamed to admit that, yes, a lot of people probably did see him that way. But not Kelly. He hadn’t expected that from her. He’d always thought Kelly had seen...more.
His jaw tensed as she continued to stare at him, her eyes making tiny movements as she examined the individual features of his face, searching for the lie—the BS—he realised, and he saw the moment she let out the breath she’d been holding and relaxed her grip on the pillow.
Jason sat back on his haunches and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Boy, that ex-husband of yours really did a number on you, didn’t he?’
Her lips crumpled, even though she was still pressing them together, an
d she nodded.
‘You’re not a one-night stand,’ he told her again. ‘You’re more than that.’
He could see her doing the math in her head as he reached for the pillow and prised it gently from her grasp before tossing it onto the other side of the bed. She folded her arms back over her torso, hugging herself instead.
How much more? she was thinking. Two nights? Three? A couple of weeks?
The truth was that he didn’t know, partly because he had no previous experience of how he was feeling right now to help him guess, and partly because he was too much of a coward to look into the future and do the calculation himself. He had a feeling it would be a sum that neither of them could afford.
‘Do you believe me?’ he asked.
She nodded, but her brows remained dipped over her eyes and her arms locked around her middle.
He knew there was only one way to prove the truth to her. Unfortunately, it did not involve the removal of clothes or further exploration of that creamy, soft skin. He sighed and threw himself onto the other half of the bed. ‘Okay,’ he said wearily, ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know, but on one condition...’
‘Oh, yeah?’
He checked the display of the digital clock on the nightstand. ‘We get in the bed.’
Kelly let out a disbelieving laugh, but Jason kept right on talking. ‘It’s five in the morning London time and we’ve been running on adrenalin for hours. We’re going to crash sooner or later and I’d rather be somewhere comfortable when I do.’
She stared at him long and hard, and then she hitched her legs up and slid them under the covers. Jason slid off the bed, walked over to the bathroom so he could hit the light then made his way back to the bed, allowing the glow of the city coming through the open curtains to guide him. He stretched out, kicking the sheet to one side and was surprised when Kelly scooted closer and tucked herself under his arm. ‘So tell me...tell me about your family.’
He turned to look at her. ‘You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?’
‘If there’s one thing the last few years have taught me it’s that you can’t run from the tough times—you have to turn and fight.’
‘Who says I’m running?’ he asked, his voice light and unconcerned.
She moved closer and he felt her husky voice warm on his chest. ‘Aren’t you?’
He put his free hand back behind his head and stared at the ceiling. His mouth began to move, tell the facts. He was surprised how level his tone sounded, like a newscaster delivering a broadcast. ‘I was in a foul mood that day. We were on holiday at our villa in Malibu. We’d been there less than a day but my father had me doing laps in the pool, timing me. I really needed a rest, but he started hounding me, lecturing me about my latest race time. I could do better, he said. I just needed to try harder instead of horsing around.’
He heard the smile in her voice. ‘Were you horsing around?’
The careless demeanour cracked a little when one corner of his mouth lifted. ‘I did sometimes, but I think what really got me mad was that I was trying my hardest and he just couldn’t see it. If anything, I think my training schedule had been too intense, especially as I’d just finished college and I’d worked really hard at my finals. I guess what I really needed was to take a couple of weeks to blow off some steam then come back to it fresh.’
‘I suppose he didn’t like that idea much?’
‘No...’ he said slowly. ‘Not much. Now that college was done and I wasn’t juggling studies with swimming, we were supposed to be moving the professional career up a notch. I’d done well at the world championships that year. No medals or anything, but I was moving slowly up the table and we knew I still had untapped potential. So...my father and I had a huge fight. The biggest we’d probably ever had. And I decided that if he wanted to accuse me of horsing around, I’d show him how it was really done.’
Kelly let out a gasp and covered her mouth with a hand. He guessed she knew him well enough to know just what a dangerous idea that had been.
‘We’d vacationed at that villa for years, so I had plenty of similar-minded friends to go and cause trouble with, if I had a mind to. Which I did. Brad begged to come too and, knowing it would make my father mad if I took him along for the ride, I let him. There was a cliff over the sea and we used to dare each other to dive off it—like those guys in Acapulco. There was one spot we used to jump from regularly and no one ever got hurt, but that day my buddies dared me to climb higher to a part of the cliff we’d never had the guts to jump from before.’
He stopped and turned his head to give her a morbid smile. He could just about make out her features in the gloom as she lifted her chin and rested it on his chest, staring back at him.
‘You might not believe this, but back then I had a reputation...’
She laughed softly. ‘No, really?’
He returned his gaze to the ceiling, unable to maintain eye contact. ‘So I did it. I jumped. Guess I was trying to prove something.’
The rhythmic rise and fall of her torso against his paused and he pressed on quickly while he still could. He hadn’t told this story in years, but each tiny detail came searing back into his mind like hot metal pins.
‘I dislocated my shoulder, tore a bunch of ligaments, but I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of my friends so I lied, said I wasn’t hurt too bad when really it was all I could do to stay afloat. But then I saw Brad getting ready to jump. I tried to put him off, told him it wasn’t for little girls, but he just made rude hand gestures back at me.’
‘He jumped anyway?’
Jason nodded. ‘He hit the water at an awkward angle and fractured his spine in three places. He was paralysed below the waist.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have been honest about how badly I’d hurt myself instead of pretending everything was okay. I should have told him the real reason not to jump instead of being a smartass.’
‘It was an accident, Jason.’
‘Try telling my father that.’
‘He blamed you?’
Jason closed his eyes, blocked the darkened room out. ‘He had every right to.’
‘You didn’t make Brad jump.’
‘I kinda did. I was always teasing him, telling him he’d never live up to his big brother. I should have known he wouldn’t have backed down from a challenge.’ There was something else he needed to say. Something he’d never admitted to anyone. The words came out hoarse and rusty. ‘I blame myself.’
He felt Kelly’s hair tickle his chest and he realised it was because she’d lifted her head to press her lips there. A moment later he felt a warm bead of moisture drop onto his skin. He pulled the hand from behind his head and tilted her face upwards with it. He took a moment to stare into her eyes. He could see them glistening in the dull light.
‘Don’t cry for me,’ he told her. ‘I don’t deserve it.’
He didn’t tell her the rest, how he’d sunk into self-pity, dealt with the tragedy as only a spoilt rich kid could—wasting a couple of years and a whole lot of money wandering, doing nothing but getting good and drunk occasionally.
‘I’m sorry...I’ve been angry for too long. Angry at the disease that invaded my body. Angry at my rat of an ex for not being the man I’d believed—no, that I’d hoped—he was. The only way I knew how to survive it all was to come out fighting. Sometimes I forget it’s okay to stop, and that fight makes me say things, do things...’ she swallowed ‘...especially when I care about something. I didn’t mean to push you...I just didn’t want you to give up.’
‘Why?’ he asked softly. Why should it matter so much to her?
She sniffed and laid her head back on his chest. ‘Boys need their fathers.... I think of my two, how their dad damages them without even realising it when he changes plans at the last minute or when he gets his mum to babysit so
he can go out on the weekend instead of spending that precious time with them. I suppose I hoped that if you could mend things with your father that it meant there was always hope....’
He didn’t want to tell her the truth—that he didn’t think his father would ever forgive him—but it was a different situation with Kelly’s ex and his sons. ‘Maybe there is.’ He even managed to sound convincing, but something else was worrying him, something her gabbled admission had made him think about.
He curled his arm around her and pulled her closer. ‘You’re okay now, right? All clear?’ He kept his voice light, but a chilly whirlpool started up in his stomach.
She nodded. He could feel her cheek moving against his chest and hear her hair swishing faintly.
‘Is that how you got through it all? You just kept fighting no matter what?’
‘Simple, but it worked. My sister-in-law says the Bradford stubbornness served me well. She says the cancer won’t dare to come back.’
There was that word. Cancer. Not something a person could hide from easily. It sent a shudder right through Jason to know it had invaded the warm body curled up against his. It made him think how fragile life was. And how strong Kelly must have been to defeat it. However, despite all her fighting talk, he’d heard the way her voice had wavered ever so slightly when she’d said it.
‘What would you do if it did?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘Fight it some more. I don’t have a choice. I can’t leave my boys on their own.’
She yawned against his chest.
‘They’re lucky to have someone like you,’ he told her. ‘Someone who’s in their corner no matter what,’ he whispered, almost so quietly that she couldn’t hear it. ‘Anybody would be lucky to have you on their side.’
He was lucky to have her on his side. Because she was. She might tell him when he was being an idiot, but she didn’t judge him. She accepted him for who he was, good and bad.
She mumbled something and shifted her weight a little. It wasn’t long before the rhythm of her breathing slowed and her limbs, where they were draped across his, grew heavy.