‘OK…OK,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Neither of them heard the car pull up in the driveway, nor the footsteps hurrying through the open garage and into the house.
‘Dan!’ Lisa wailed loudly, convinced she was about to disgrace herself on the bedroom floor. She would just die if she humiliated herself like that in front of him.
He swore when the knots refused to budge. ‘I’ll have to cut it.’
‘You’re not cutting anything!’ a voice snarled from the doorway.
Dan and Lisa looked up in slack-jawed astonishment at the woman standing just inside the doorway to the bedroom, her long, long legs spread, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet as if she were getting ready to spring.
Lisa saw her sister.
Dan saw the woman from the supermarket car park.
Sherry saw the fruitcake that sounded but didn’t look like her sister tied to a bed at the feet of the huge American doctor who was dressed in a black Neoprene wetsuit. He was fiddling with the strap fastening Lisa to the bed.
‘Get away from her!’
Dan stared at Sherry in amazement. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Sherry wondered that herself. But when she’d heard Lisa’s tormented cries over her mobile phone, nothing on earth could have kept her away. She gave up trying to tell herself that it was impossible Lisa was alive and well inside Linda Brogan’s body.
‘Sherry, it isn’t like that—’ Lisa began in a tortured voice.
To her astonishment, Dan suddenly marched out of the bedroom. He was leaving her? Abandoning her at a time like this? The burning pain from her overfull bladder reclaimed her attention. ‘I can’t…hold on…any longer…’
Sherry slid across the bed to inspect the knots on the white silk material. ‘What has that bastard been doing to you?’
‘No…no…’ Lisa moaned as Dan walked back into the room with a pair of scissors in his hand. Holding them out to Sherry, he said curtly, ‘Here, you’ll need these.’
Sherry narrowed her eyes at his tone.
Lisa made a strangled sound and sank from view onto the carpet by the bed.
‘You’d better hurry,’ he advised crisply. ‘She’s about to pee on the carpet.’
Snatching the scissors from him, Sherry snipped the taut fabric in half and sank back on her heels on the bed as Lisa launched herself from the floor and ran towards the bathroom with her hands clamped between her thighs.
Sherry and Dan glared at one another and tried to ignore the sound of Lisa attending to nature in the next-door bathroom.
The noise from the bathroom went on…
And on…
Their brows began to rise in unison, their faces turning towards the bathroom door in fascinated disbelief.
And on…
It stopped.
Dan grunted.
It started again.
Sherry’s eyes popped wide open.
They waited tensely until at last all was silent and Lisa reappeared, the trailing ends of the white silk tie hanging from her wrist. She refused to look at Dan.
‘What are you doing here, Sherry?’ She could see Sherry had flung her clothes on in a hurry without taking time to ensure her usual high standards of grooming.
‘I came because you answered your mobile yelling for help,’ Sherry said tersely, giving Dan a look cold enough to freeze him into a large Popsicle on the spot. ‘What were you doing to her?’
Despite himself, Dan was impressed. This was not a woman to tangle with. He ignored her, cutting across Lisa’s clumsy attempts to explain. ‘Perhaps you could introduce us, Lisa?’ he suggested sardonically.
Lisa glanced warily between the two of them, feeling like she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. ‘Dan, this is my sister, Sherry Jackson,’ she said. ‘Sherry, this is Dan Brogan, my…’ She ground to a halt.
Dan watched her, one brow raised in query. When it became clear Lisa didn’t have anything further to say, he turned a cool gaze on Sherry and repeated, ‘Your sister.’
‘Yes,’ Lisa insisted defensively.
He continued to watch Sherry. ‘Is that so?’
Sherry ignored him. ‘What were you doing to her?’
‘Sherry!’ Lisa cried reproachfully, looking from her sister to Dan and wondering why they were both behaving like a couple of kindergarten kids. The elation she felt at Dan meeting a member of her family began to fade. Sherry obviously didn’t want to be here and Dan didn’t want her in his house. ‘Why are you two behaving like this?’ she exclaimed.
‘What do you mean, what was I doing to her?’ Dan retorted.
‘It isn’t what you think, Sherry,’ Lisa protested.
‘And that would be what?’ Sherry’s lip curled. ‘That the good doctor likes to dress up in rubber suits and tie you to the bedpost?’
‘No!’
‘OK. So you like him to dress up in rubber suits and tie you to the bedpost?’
Under other circumstances Dan would have laughed, but there was nothing about this situation he found remotely amusing. He was disturbed that Lisa Jackson’s sister was in his house treating his wife like she was someone she couldn’t be.
‘It’s not funny, Sherry!’ Lisa fumed.
Sherry placed the scissors on the bedside table with a clatter. ‘What the hell were you up to, Lees?’
Lisa limped towards the bed. Her injured leg was bare beneath the knee-length T-shirt she wore as a nightdress; she didn’t have to wear the white Tubigrip bandage to bed.
Sherry watched closely as a tight-lipped Dan Brogan immediately went to take Lisa’s elbow and help her to the bed. ‘You’ve got your cast off,’ she remarked.
Dan disappeared from the room and returned with a long white piece of material in his hand. Kneeling in front of Lisa, he folded it in half and despite her murmured protests helped slide it up over her instep to beneath her knee. Sherry was intrigued to see Lisa momentarily brace her hand on one of his shoulders when she lifted her leg and snatch it away again as if she’d been burnt, while Dan Brogan looked like he wanted to touch a whole lot more than Lisa’s bandage.
Surveying his sleek, black Neoprene-covered back and the wide shoulders topping it, Sherry had to admit he was extremely well put together.
Catching sight of Sherry’s lazy perusal of Dan’s back, Lisa glowered at her over his shoulder.
Sherry smirked and shrugged a shoulder.
Oblivious of the byplay, Dan climbed to his feet, saying tersely, ‘I’m going to take a shower and change into my bondage gear. Lisa, go find the whips and handcuffs.’
Sherry laughed as he stalked into the bathroom and closed the door.
‘Don’t look at him like that!’ Lisa hissed.
‘Like what?’
‘You know what I mean, like he’s a piece of rump steak on your personal barbecue.’
‘I have to admit he does have a nice rump,’ Sherry agreed, suppressing a smile when Lisa responded like a cat whose fur had just been stroked the wrong way.
‘Dan Brogan is nothing like the guys you date, Sherry. He’s a gentleman!’
Sherry snorted. ‘For your sake, I hope not. I can’t imagine anything more boring than making out with a gentleman.’
‘I’m not making—’ Lisa clamped her lips together.
Sherry’s brows rose. ‘You’re still not? Why not, when it’s so obvious you’re both dying to?’
Lisa refused to be drawn any further. ‘Why did you call me?’
‘I was phoning to see how your appointment at the hospital went.’
‘Were you?’ Lisa brightened. ‘They took my cast off.’
‘Yeah, I can see that,’ Sherry replied impatiently. ‘I also wanted to know what the hell you think you’re doing taking Dad a never-ending supply of sick plants. Didn’t we agree that Mum and Dad were strictly off-limits to you for the foreseeable future?’
‘No, we didn’t, you did.’ Lisa said resentfully. ‘How else was I supposed to get to see Dad
?’
‘That’s the point—you weren’t!’
Lisa looked stubborn. ‘You’re not going to stop me from seeing Dad. Anyway, it’s a bit late now.’
Sherry glared at her but it was obvious Lisa wasn’t about to back down. She sighed. ‘Tell me why you tied yourself to the bed.’
Lisa explained about her sleepwalking.
Sherry decided she’d never heard anything more stupid. ‘You’re sleeping in separate rooms?’
Lisa looked at Sherry as if she’d just grown horns. ‘Of course we are!’
Sherry touched her forehead with her fingertips, shook her head, looked at Lisa and rolled her eyes.
‘What?’ Lisa cried.
‘Let me get this straight. You’re sleepwalking, Brogan’s having to dive out of bed to rescue you, and you’re both clearly dying to jump each other’s bones—but you’re sleeping in separate rooms.’ She shook her head again. ‘That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’
Sherry left soon after. It was just too freaky being in Dan and Linda Brogan’s house. Too freaky having a conversation with her sister when she looked nothing like herself. Sherry totally understood Dan Brogan’s hostile attitude to her. She felt the same way about him. Unfortunately Lisa didn’t understand at all. When Sherry refused to stay for coffee Lisa made up some excuse about needing to do a load of washing, but Sherry saw the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. And when she hesitated to leave, Dan Brogan told her, ‘Leave now. I’ll take care of her.’
She was leaving, until she caught sight of the back garden and the cliff edge through the vast living-room windows. Sherry stopped so suddenly that Dan almost crashed into her back.
‘What now?’ he demanded.
Sherry pointed at the view. ‘Is that all that separates your garden from the cliff? That little fence?’
Dan glanced at the fence and back again. He knew exactly where this conversation was going. ‘Yes.’
Sherry struggled to contain her anger and fear. Dan Brogan might not be a great host but he was certainly no idiot. Or at least that’s what she’d thought until now.
‘Lisa has been known to unlock doors and climb out windows when she’s sleepwalking,’ she explained, trying not to imagine Lisa’s battered body at the bottom of the cliff being swept out by the tide. ‘So yonder little fence isn’t going to stop her from falling off the damned cliff one night.’
‘I keep a close eye on her,’ Dan said in a tight voice.
Sherry lost her temper. ‘Bullshit! If you were keeping such a close eye on her she wouldn’t feel the need to tie herself to the bedpost, would she? Lisa’s frightened, Brogan! She knows how vulnerable she is, but of course being Lisa her main concern is she’s disturbing you.’ She eyed him disgustedly. ‘She didn’t survive that car crash to fall to her death from that cliff.’
Sickened by the images she was painting in his head, Dan went on the attack. ‘Back off. She isn’t your damned sister.’
Sherry didn’t scare easily. She took a step closer, her eyes like blue flames. ‘You think I’m comfortable with this? You think any of this makes sense to me? I’m as freaked by the idea as you are.’ She glared up at him, a tall woman with a will of iron. ‘But just answer me this, can you say with absolute certainty that the woman you’re living with is your wife?’
Dan glared back, unable to answer her.
‘I thought not,’ Sherry bit out. ‘So I’m saying it just one more time: you keep her safe.’
When later that night Dan found Lisa wandering in the back yard, he gently steered her back into the house, but this time he put her back in his bed, deciding he’d figure out a way to explain things to her in the morning. She slept like a baby for the rest of the night.
Lisa woke on Sunday morning feeling the most refreshed she had in months. She uncurled herself between the sheets, stretching her arms and legs luxuriantly until the sole of her left foot encountered something warm and hairy.
Snatching her foot away, she shot upright in the bed, clutching the bedcovers to herself.
Dan looked up blearily from beside her. ‘Morning,’ he mumbled in a sleep-roughened voice, swiping a hand across the stubble on his chin.
Lisa stared at him for several moments before looking around the room. ‘This is your bedroom. I’m in your bedroom.’
‘That’s right and before you jump to any conclusions: nothing happened, OK?’ He sat up, rearranged the pillows at his back and, reaching behind his head, grasped the wrought-iron bedpost in his right hand, his elbow pointing at the ceiling.
Lisa looked at the tuft of dark hair in his armpit and his naked shoulders and chest. Her eyes drifted downwards to where the white sheet was draped about his waist and legs. Despite her best efforts, her eyes were drawn back to the juncture of his legs and the tantalizing outline of his genitals. She looked up to find Dan watching her curiously and wanted to hide her head under the covers in mortification. He had just caught her checking out his dick.
Dan raised one knee and balanced a forearm across it. ‘Don’t worry, Lisa, I’m wearing pyjama bottoms,’ he said in an ironic tone.
Lisa nodded jerkily and, stretching out her foot, began to slide out of the bed.
‘Don’t you want to know how you got here?’
She stood by the side of the bed, tugging the bottom of his old University of Colorado T-shirt lower on her thighs. ‘Um—I walked in my sleep and you brought me here?’
Dan couldn’t figure out why she was acting so jittery, like a teenage virgin. He also couldn’t figure out how he was going to get out of bed without Lisa seeing the erection he’d got when she’d looked at his dick. The fact he’d reacted like a horny teenager made it even more imperative that he explain that having sex with her wasn’t the reason he’d decided to bring her into his bed. That it hadn’t even entered the equation.
Like that was the truth.
‘We both needed to get some sleep, Lisa, and this way I should be able to stop you getting out of bed in the first place.’
‘Uh huh.’ Lisa sidled around the foot of the bed towards the bathroom door.
‘If you’d prefer to sleep in your own room, I’ll understand,’ Dan offered.
‘No, no…this is fine, I’m fine!’
She didn’t sound fine.
‘You’re sure?’
Lisa fumbled behind her for the bathroom-door handle, nodding vigorously. ‘Yes, absolutely…makes sense.’
She made Dan feel like a pervert. ‘I can keep my hands to myself, Lisa,’ he assured her. ‘You haven’t got to worry on that score.’
‘Never crossed my mind, never in a million years.’ She gestured to the bathroom. ‘I just need to…you know…’
‘Go right ahead,’ Dan said testily.
With a look of relief, Lisa bolted through the door.
‘Way to go, Brogan,’ he told himself sourly. ‘You handled that real well.’
23
Lisa didn’t have a problem about sleeping with Dan.
The problem she had was sharing a bed with him and not sleeping with him. If she’d been a teenager she might have been able to pretend she had a crush, but she was a mature woman with a once healthy, active sex life, and what she felt for Dan was a strong sexual attraction wrapped up in a lot of far more profound emotions she didn’t want to explore. She pictured him naked, imagining how it would feel to have the weight of that long, lean body pressing her into the mattress. But Dan couldn’t have made it any clearer that he’d brought her into his bed as a last resort. He was tired and at the end of his tether. Not attracted to her. When Lisa had sometimes thought he looked at her with frustrated sexual desire, it had more likely just been frustration.
They had an unspoken agreement when it came to bedtime. Lisa usually went to bed first and either fell asleep or pretended to be asleep when Dan finally came to bed. Dan kept his distance from Lisa, always falling asleep on his side, facing away from her.
The problem was that Lisa was a snuggler.
As soon as she fell into a deep sleep she drifted across the bed, usually spending the night curled against Dan’s warm back while he lay tense and sweating, feeling every breath and hearing every sigh. Linda had liked to be held but she had never been able to fall asleep wrapped in Dan’s arms. He suspected Lisa could spend the entire night cuddled against his chest if he ever gave in to the urge to roll over and pull her into his arms. Instead he rose early each morning before she awakened and stood under a cold shower, his hands braced against the wall, wondering how the hell he was going to get through another night without touching her.
Lisa tried to sleepwalk on the first two nights, but each time Dan gently eased her back into bed and held her until she settled again, and as soon as she had, he made himself roll over and tuck her against his back.
By the end of the week, lack of sleep and sex had turned Dan into the taciturn, short-tempered human equivalent of a bear with a sore head. He snapped at everything and everybody except the kids at the hospital. If he’d been back home in the States he probably could have looked up an old girlfriend and got laid, but he didn’t have the luxury of old acquaintances here in New Zealand. And besides, he didn’t want to sleep with just anybody. He wanted to sleep with Lisa, who looked clear-eyed and as fresh as a daisy since she’d moved into his room. By contrast, Dan was certain the sprinkling of grey hairs at his temples had doubled.
When he came home one night to discover Lisa sitting in the living room playing a guitar for a left-handed player and singing a Dixie Chicks song to herself, Dan demanded to know where she’d found the guitar and who’d taught her to play.
‘It belongs to Slade and I was taught to play by my brother Ben.’
‘You don’t have a brother called Ben!’ Dan shouted. ‘And by the way, tomorrow is your thirtieth birthday.’
Lisa took a deep breath and counted to ten. Her clear eyes and fresh-as-a-daisy appearance were a sham. She might appear to be sleeping at night, but whatever she was dreaming about was exhausting the hell out of her. ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied firmly. ‘And tomorrow is not my birthday.’
Dan glared at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’
On Wednesday morning, Lisa woke in the middle of a wonderful dream to discover she wasn’t dreaming at all and that Dan’s hands really were fondling her breasts and he really was delivering delicious little nips to the spot where her neck met her shoulder. She moaned and arched her back to give him better access. Dan ground his pelvis against the soft curve of her buttocks.
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