The conference. Guilt swished in her stomach. He’d hired her to help him prepare for his speech and what had she done? Other than humiliate him in front of a group of toddlers and take him to a dance rehearsal just because she wanted to see him...yet she’d taken his money.
A lump lodged in her throat. It was wrong; taking his money for doing so little went against everything she believed in. Yes, she’d been desperately trying to avoid the confrontation of letting one of her teachers go and not dealing with the real reasons why her life was a massive failure.
She had to give the money back...well, minus what she paid the air-con guy, but perhaps he would consider that little bit to be a loan. Then she could get back on her feet and repay him later. She couldn’t wait. She needed to see him now; she needed to tell him that she planned to return the money. At least that way when he left, she wouldn’t have the burden of being indebted to him.
* * *
At last the clean-up of his father’s place was complete. There had been a supremely awkward encounter with his father’s girlfriend who wanted to stake claim on a few items of furniture and a framed picture of them both. Col had never met her before, but her sad eyes and quivering lip told him that at least one person was mourning the death of the late Arthur Hill.
He wondered if the girlfriend knew about Arthur’s shady past and his abusive tendencies... He hoped for her sake that Arthur had at least given up his temper if not his addiction to alcohol. Though he seriously doubted it.
All that remained of the estate had been collected by a charity, with the exception of the items he gave to the girlfriend. She’d tried to convince him to keep the photograph he’d thrown at the wall a few days ago, but he crumpled the old paper in his palm. There was no way he wanted to keep a single thing from his childhood; the internal scarring was enough.
Now he wanted a shower—perhaps the rush of hot water would clear his mind. He needed to get last night’s encounter with Elise out of his head and focus on preparing for the conference tomorrow. So much to do, so little headspace with which to deal with it all.
He stripped, showered until his fingertips shrivelled and strode out into the main room with a towel around his waist. Daylight was fading, the last red-gold beams of sunlight dipping in the distance. The city had turned on its lights, glittering bulbs scattered across the view like sand on a breeze.
A knock at the door broke him out of his reverie. He frowned. Usually room service announced itself but no voice followed the knock.
‘Who is it?’ He approached the door, wary. If this was another reporter trying to catch him off guard...
‘It’s me. Elise.’
He pulled the door open and stifled an amused smile as a shocked ‘O’ formed on her utterly delectable lips. Her eyes traversed his naked torso and it was all Col could do to restrain himself from puffing out his chest under her appreciative gaze.
‘Did you come for any reason in particular or was it just so you could admire the view?’ he asked.
She recovered quickly, her blonde brows narrowing as she shoved her upturned nose in the air. ‘I came to talk. If I only wanted abs I wouldn’t have bothered to trek into the city, I can get that off the internet.’
‘Well, since you’re not here to indulge your internet porn fantasies in person...’ he stepped back and opened the door wider ‘...do come in.’
He didn’t miss the flush that peeked out from the modest neckline of her grey top. The colour matched her eyes perfectly, and the long chain that hung down past her breast was weighted with a horseshoe. She fiddled with it as she stood in the middle of the room, rolling her eyes at him.
‘Have I ever told you just how full of it you are?’
‘Frequently.’
‘So long as we’re on the same page.’ She smirked.
‘How did you find me? I don’t think I told you where I was staying and I never got a call from Reception.’
‘The same way you got my number when you arrived here without warning.’ She folded her arms across her chest, forcing the small curve of her breasts upwards.
‘You called my assistant?’
‘I did some sleuthing,’ she corrected.
‘Are we suddenly in a Nancy Drew novel?’ He laughed, feeling some of the tension release from behind his eyes. Elise had always had that effect on him. ‘Is this Elise Johnson and the case of the missing CEO?’
‘I’ll turn it into a murder mystery if you’re not careful.’ Her lip twitched. ‘I know this is your favourite hotel—you told me so once when I did a performance here. I figured you’d have the penthouse suite, so I came up.’
‘How did you get up without a swipe card?’
‘I told the cleaning lady I was your sister.’
‘And she fell for that?’
‘I’m very convincing.’ She grinned, and he didn’t doubt for a second that she could charm the pants off anyone she set her sights on. It’d certainly worked on him.
‘I’m flattered that you went to such lengths to come and see me, though you could have just called.’ He folded his arms across his chest, wondering for a second if he’d knotted his towel tight enough. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Not to see you naked, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I wasn’t.’ Okay, so maybe he was.
She took a deep breath and unfolded her arms as if making a conscious decision not to block him out. ‘I came to tell you that I’m returning your money.’
‘You’re what?’
His chest constricted. Was this her way of telling him that she wanted to sever all ties? He knew that his trip to Australia would be short-lived, but with each passing day there was a niggling sensation that perhaps things could be different between them. The fact that he thought that after their last few encounters was saying something.
‘I don’t feel right taking this money. The only reason I did it was because I was desperate to save my studio.’ She blew out a long breath, and shifted her weight. Her fingers toyed with the gold horseshoe. ‘But it was the wrong thing to do. I got myself into this mess and I need to get myself out. I shouldn’t be taking charity from you—’
‘It’s not charity.’
‘Yes, it is. I haven’t really helped you at all. Though I did tell you I was the wrong person...’ She looked up at him, sucking on her bottom lip for a moment before continuing. ‘It doesn’t feel right, I shouldn’t have taken money from you knowing I couldn’t help.’
‘God, Elise.’ Col raked a hand through his wet hair, sending droplets of water over his neck and shoulders. ‘I would have given you the money anyway.’
‘So it was charity!’
‘You’re like family to me. Hell, you’re the only family I’ve ever known and no matter what I do I just can’t seem to get it right. It’s not charity, it’s one person trying to look after someone they care about.’
She folded her arms back across her chest and looked out of the window. There she went again, shutting down the second things got real. But he didn’t want to stop, couldn’t stop. Something deep in his gut compelled him to say the words that he’d held inside five years ago.
‘You did everything for me growing up—your family did everything for me. And what did I have to give in return? A big, fat nothing.’
Years had passed but the shame hadn’t lessened. Therapy had dulled his rage to a manageable roar, but it was still there quietly haunting him at every turn. He wasn’t strong enough to stop his father, he wasn’t strong enough to protect himself...at least he hadn’t been. Now his sights were set firmly on a level of success so atmospheric that no one could possibly call him a loser again.
So what if he wanted to use some of that success to help Elise out? What was so bad about that? Deep down he’d known that she couldn’t cure him of his public-speaking phobi
a. Hell, even the therapist hadn’t been able to totally fix that one. But being around Elise calmed him, it always had...and that was an improvement he needed right now.
‘I don’t want your charity.’ She didn’t look at him.
Emotion welled up inside him and he knew he had to do something before he blurted out words that couldn’t be taken back. He closed the space between them and grabbed her shoulders.
‘Look at me,’ he growled. ‘I care about you, Elise. I care about you more than I’ve cared about anyone in my whole life. I never forgot about you, and believe me I tried.’
‘Don’t do this, Col.’ She turned to him, grey eyes frosted over like ice on a windscreen—hard and opaque. ‘I want to make things right.’
‘And you think the way to make things right is by giving me my money back and pretending nothing ever happened between us?’
‘Isn’t it?’ Not one of her muscles moved under his hands. ‘We’re stuck in this weird, no-man’s-land. We family, but we’re not. We’re lovers, but we’re not.’
‘We could be.’ The words escaped his lips before he could even think about stopping them.
Why did he keep doing this? It was a situation that couldn’t possibly work and yet she was a girl who deserved long-lasting, grow-old-together love. They’d known each other for over two decades and they still couldn’t work one another out. It was doomed; they were doomed.
‘I’m not like other girls, Col.’ Her hands came up to his bare chest, the gentle press of her fingertips sending flames through him. ‘I can’t take something from you without giving something back. I don’t want this to be what I give back. I want to give you something real.’
Her long, curling lashes fluttered and the ice started to melt. Her cheeks coloured, her breathing came faster and when she looked up at him he thought he might drown in the sincerity of her.
‘I want to tell you something.’ She swallowed. ‘Something real.’
It was the best gift she could have given him, a glimpse of the truth that had been locked inside her head for so long that he’d thought he’d never be able to see behind her mask. His body swung the confusing distance between being incredibly turned on and totally sombre with the seriousness of what she was about to do. His body fired under her touch, every nerve-ending alight with the presence of her.
‘I want to tell you why I quit ballet.’
Okay, so it wasn’t quite what he was expecting but it was still a step in the right direction. He knew she’d quit her position with the Australian Ballet after her father died and assumed that was the reason.
‘You know I studied very hard growing up,’ she said, watching as he nodded. ‘My aim was to be the best technical dancer the Australian Ballet had ever seen. I wanted to nail the angle of every arabesque. I wanted to perfect every turn, every lift. I wanted to be perfect. I was pretty damn close to being a “perfect” dancer. I never got a step wrong.’
‘I’d call that perfect.’
‘But I realised one day that in my quest to be the perfect dancer I’d missed a very important element. Emotion.’
Her chest rose and fell, her small breasts grazing against him ever so slightly. He bit down on his lip and willed himself not to get hard; he would not ruin this moment.
‘I would watch other dancers like Missy and Jasmine and I could see this love, anguish and splendour pour out of them. Their faces would be like beacons. I even studied them so I could see if I could make my face do the same thing. But I realised then, as I was practising in front of a mirror, that I was forcing something which didn’t exist.
‘If I didn’t feel the emotion, I couldn’t fake it. There was something fundamentally missing and it meant I could never be as good as those other dancers. The teachers saw it—it’s why I was never able to move out of the corps de ballet. They knew there was something missing that no amount of technique could make up for.’
His chest ached, not so much for the story itself but for the fact that even now she told it without an ounce of emotion in her voice. He knew it was there, unreachable beneath the surface of her carefully managed exterior. He wanted so desperately to kiss her, to kiss all of that pain away.
‘The week before Dad died the director sat me down and told me that if I didn’t find some way to bring out the emotion in my dancing then I wouldn’t ever make it out of the corps de ballet. But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t ever let go of the technique, the perfection. I couldn’t feel the way other dancers feel. So, after Dad died, I decided that it wasn’t worth continuing since I knew I’d never be able to get to the level I wanted.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if that was the right thing to do, but I’m glad I opened the ballet school. It brings me a lot of joy to see these young dancers find the pleasure that I missed out on.’
He had to keep himself in check; the protective urges that roared through him threatened to overtake his sensibilities. He wanted to bundle her up into his arms and never let her go. To some her story might have seemed insignificant, to him it was worth gold.
‘You were a beautiful dancer.’ He bent his head and cupped her face with his hands. ‘But you grew up with two very sensible people who had serious, hard, demanding jobs. You learned to suppress your emotions, but that doesn’t for a second mean they’re not there. Hiding your emotions is not the same as not having them.’
EIGHT
Elise knew it wouldn’t be showing, but on the inside she was shaking. She’d never told another person the real reason she left the Australian Ballet. Everyone had assumed it was because of her father’s death, and she never bothered to correct them because it was easier than admitting such a fundamental flaw.
Now she’d blurted out the truth to Col and he wasn’t running. He didn’t think her vain or stupid or frivolous for the real reason. In fact, he was looking at her with such burning intensity that she wasn’t sure what to do next. She had assumed the story would put him off, make him see how broken she was. But it only increased the crackling energy between them.
Suddenly her palms felt scorched against his magnificent, muscled chest. Thinking about the past had taken her mind off his physical prowess, until now. He was fair but the summer had warmed his skin to a light tan shade, dark hair dusted the tops of his forearms, the rings around his nipples and paved the way from his belly button to the well-placed knot of his towel. Her breath hitched and she withdrew her hands.
‘So now you know.’
‘Now I know,’ he echoed. His hands dropped from her face to the tops of her arms. It was as if he wanted to give her space but wasn’t quite ready to let go yet. ‘I know something real.’
She’d never felt more exposed in her whole life, including the time that her leotard strap broke in the middle of dress rehearsal and the time Madame Bershov gave her a public dressing-down for being late to class. She felt even more exposed than when she stood at her father’s funeral and was the only person not crying.
He’d managed to get her to reveal more of herself than any other person, and he hadn’t even asked for it...not directly, at least.
‘You have nothing to be ashamed of, Elise. You’re a wonderful person, you’re caring, incredibly beautiful...’
His breath was coming heavy now, the muscles in his arms tensed. A droplet of water ran down the roped muscle of his neck and pooled at the base. Instinct took over and she leant forward, her tongue collecting the drop from his skin. He tasted fresh and clean, smelled of sandalwood soap. She pressed her lips against him, sucking on his skin before pulling back and looking up with her heart in her mouth.
‘Elise.’ Her name was a long, low growl on his lips.
‘Shut up, Col.’ She wound her hands around his neck and dragged his head down until their foreheads touched. ‘I think we’ve talked enough.’
He pulled her to him roughly, the knot of his towel and the erecti
on beneath digging into her belly. His mouth found hers, hot and desperate and open. His hands thrust up into her hair and he tilted her head back, kissing her as deeply as he could. The world tilted around them, the view blurring until it was a haze of golden dots on an inky piece of velvet.
‘I want you, Ellie. I can’t stop it.’
‘Please,’ she breathed. ‘Don’t.’
Suddenly her back was against the suite’s dining table, though she’d scarcely been aware of them moving. He hoisted her up and placed her on the table, standing between her legs so the knot of his towel rubbed at her aching centre. It was at this point that she wished she’d worn a dress—her denim shorts were far too thick a barrier between them.
His mouth was at her neck, lips sucking and tongue flicking and teeth scraping. He kissed along her jaw and found her mouth again. He tasted of mint, fresh and slightly earthy. The stubble on his jaw scratched her cheek and she knew tomorrow there would be marks of him all over her.
His hand found the hem of her top and slipped underneath; she hadn’t worn a bra and he palmed her so slowly she thought she might explode from impatience. Her hand found the knot of his towel and struggled to loosen it.
‘Did you superglue this damn thing?’ she panted, gasping as his deft fingers found her nipple.
‘I’m a master towel tier.’ He chuckled. ‘Want a hand?’
She nodded and he stepped back, his hands dropping to the towel and slowly unravelling it. The towel dropped to the floor and all she could do was stare. He’d been amazing with the towel, but without he had a body worthy of a museum sculpture. Hard, muscular thighs extended out from narrow hips, far from the skinny boy’s legs she remembered him having. His erection jutted forward, swollen and heavy-looking.
‘You grew up,’ she breathed, hands itching to wrap around him.
‘The passage of time tends to have that effect.’ His grin was sly, predatory. ‘Your turn.’
She lay back against the table, her hands sliding down to find the zipper of her denim shorts. She undid them and started to slide them down her hips.
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