by Nikki Logan
And that he was near naked.
She cleared her throat and slid off the stool until her toes touched the cool slate floor. ‘I’m sorry I pushed my way in here. I’ll let you get to bed.’
‘Ava, wait.’
She paused midway across the room, dreading what was coming next.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said.
Her face snapped up and her breath hitched. Not what she was expecting!
He watched her warily from behind the kitchen bench, a thousand uncomfortable miles away. ‘What I said yesterday. It was unnecessary and rude. And I’m sorry.’
Apologies clearly didn’t come naturally to him. Not the new Dan. ‘Which part?’ she asked.
He grimaced. ‘All of it, but particularly about what you and Maddox have going. It’s none of my business. I was just…concerned.’
Ava blinked cautiously, then returned slowly to her stool. The sight of his naked torso in the kitchen had her imagining that the rest of him was naked too. Naked and making her coffee. Suddenly she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Or how to speak.
He filled two mugs with piping hot water from an elegant spout fixed to the wall. He stirred one sugar into hers, then slid it over to her, black.
‘Hope you don’t mind instant.’
She was too amazed that he’d remembered how she liked her coffee to care. The last coffee he’d made her had been nearly a decade ago.
‘I’ll be right back.’ He padded up the darkened hallway.
She took a deep, steadying breath, then pulled the aromatic brew towards her. Her cold hands shook slightly from the fright of the past ten minutes. She warmed them on the expensive ceramic mug.
Dan returned a moment later, a navy blue robe providing considerably more modesty. It was still creased from where it had been folded, and a price tag swung off the collar. Ava stepped towards him and reached her hand around behind his neck.
He froze on the spot. His eyes fluttered shut.
She broke the tag free and stepped away, handing it to him. ‘You don’t get around in this much, then?’
His smile was sheepish. His blush endearing. ‘I’m not used to putting more clothes on when there’s a woman in the house.’
I’ll bet. Just another reminder of the world he now mixed in. And how she didn’t fit.
With less hard flesh on display, she could think again. She didn’t want to be angry with him. He was her friend—someone she wanted to like and respect. There were things he’d done that she wasn’t crazy about, but it was hardly his fault that she couldn’t think straight when he was around. That he drove her to do stupid things.
Like kissing Brant.
‘We’re not involved. Brant and I,’ she said on a rush. Dan raised a single expressive eyebrow. She took a deep breath and raised her chin. ‘You made me angry. That’s why I kissed him.’
‘It’s none of my business.’
Lord, what was worse? His infuriating excessive interest in what she was doing, and with whom, or this new lifeless disinterest.
‘You were judging me based on nothing but the speculation of a bunch of tabloid reporters. It made me mad,’ she said.
‘And do you always express your anger in such physical terms?’
Ava blushed. ‘The only person I owe that explanation to is Brant. He was most immediately affected.’
‘Oh, I saw how affected he was.’
His gaze strayed down to her bare feet, twisting awkwardly on the footplate of her stool. Not wanting to show how nervous he was making her, Ava consciously arched them, elongating her ankle where a delicate silver anklet rested. His eyes snapped back to hers, flaring briefly.
‘Brant is not the man you think he is,’ she risked.
Dan’s jaw clenched. ‘I’m fairly sure we’ve covered this already.’
‘I just want you to understand…’
‘Why is it so important that I understand?’
There were a number of answers to that, and none of them good. The nervous breath Ava blew out lifted her fringe. ‘Because he’s a good person. And he’s being unfairly judged. Having had a taste of assassination by media myself, I can empathise.’
His eyes flashed and darkened, and she knew that was too low a blow. It was hardly Dan’s fault that the media were suddenly crucifying her.
‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ he said. ‘Why is it so important to you that I understand?’
‘I’m trying to explain…about Brant.’
He surged to his feet. ‘I’m so sick of talking about Brant bloody Maddox. Everything revolves around him. He isn’t even here and he’s dominating the conversation.’
Ava let her mouth snap shut, realising at last that she was on dangerous ground. She glanced at the door and considered her escape. He moved into her line of sight, blocking her exit.
‘Too late, Ava. You wanted to know what happens when I get mad? Well, you’re about to find out.’
He closed the space between them in one fluid movement, stepping effortlessly between their stools. One arm slid around her while the other burrowed into her thick hair to hold her face still. Then he hauled her towards him. His lips pressed into hers, angled and possessive and his tongue charmed its way inside her mouth. Ava stole a lungful of air in the split second that he realigned his mouth to fit his lips more perfectly against hers. The oxygen did little to ease the spinning of her mind, and her protest came out more of a moan than a squeak. She battled the carnal desire to lean into him, fighting the seduction of his personal scent until finally he noticed. The bruising pressure of his lips instantly eased. His mouth brushed rather than consumed. The iron bars of his arms relaxed their hold and his kisses gently nipped where only moments ago they’d crushed so violently.
‘Ava.’ It was more a breath than a word. He lifted his head, gazing through molten eyes, his voice thick and hoarse. ‘I can’t stand knowing that my kiss wasn’t the last one on your lips.’ Large hands framed her face.
A single kiss. Another.
Soft, now, and seductive. Hands stroking. Ava felt her tension melting. Wait—she was still angry with him. Wasn’t she? She held firm. His lips grazed back and forth over hers. Tempting. Healing. Erasing any memory of the harsh treatment of moments ago. He bit gently at the fullness of her lower lip. Tasting and exploring.
Until she burned to kiss him.
Muscles deep inside her tightened and her Judas body swayed towards his. The smell of him seduced her, eddying around her as she fought the desire to taste him all over again.
His lips stopped moving against hers. He didn’t pull away, but let bare millimetres open up between his stilled lips and her pulsing ones, offering her the next move. Giving her the choice.
She took it.
It was nothing like their fist kiss. And everything like it. She pressed herself into Dan’s hard warmth, increasing the contact of her lips on his. It was easy—easy and natural—to open her mouth to fit better over his. To let her tongue steal out and engage his in a flirty dance. The moment she pressed her lips to his all the tension flowed out of him. As if he’d been expecting her to push him away. Those silk-covered arms, all muscle and warmth, dropped away, leaving just their mouths clinging together.
He slid his palms up her thighs, ruching her dress higher, then nudged her knees apart with his hips. Ava gasped at the startling intimacy of the move, at his boldness and what it meant, but she didn’t clench them shut. Without taking his mouth from hers, he stepped further between them, and then gently closed her knees against his thighs, trapping him inside her grip. Then he tangled his fingers into her hair.
She tore her mouth from his and sucked in a deep breath in the brief seconds before Dan reclaimed her. It was no prelude to something more racy. He just wanted to be closer. To her. Her heart tumbled, lost, into her love for him as their kisses burned on.
Her voice was breathless when she finally lifted her head, tempering the flames with gentle humour. ‘Wow. What d
o you do when you get mad with Steve?’
She hadn’t meant to put the brakes on entirely, but his burst of laughter took care of that. He held his position between her thighs, but let his kisses drop away until the only part of him moving were his magic hands, stroking through her thick hair.
‘I didn’t mean any of the things I said,’ he whispered, hot breath chasing across her skin. A shiver of delight followed every word. Just as well she was already sitting, because her knees went completely to liquid. ‘You have to know that’s not how I really think of you.’
He kissed her eyelid. Her earlobe. She whimpered at the sensation.
‘You think of me as a little sister,’ a breathless, sexy voice said. Lord, was that her?
He smiled and pressed closer to her body. ‘Yes, because this is exactly how the average brother and sister spend their free evenings.’
She couldn’t laugh when his answer meant so much.
He took pity on her, pushing her hair clear to stare intently into her grey depths. ‘Ava, I stopped thinking of you of a kid the moment you walked into my office.’
‘But…’
‘I was lying to myself. Using that old excuse to keep some distance between us. I didn’t want to get involved.’
His use of the past tense was all that kept her in her seat. ‘Why?’
‘Because I made a promise a long time ago. Not to hurt you. And I thought not getting involved was the easiest way to do that. But all I’ve done since then is cause you pain.’
‘Who…?’
He stared at her long and hard. ‘Your father.’
She straightened. ‘My father? When? You haven’t spoken to him for—’
‘Nine years.’
‘He warned you off me way back then?’
Dan kissed the confused creases she could suddenly feel in her brow. ‘He saw the writing on the wall. Knew that you weren’t getting over your…thing…for me. He asked me to take more care.’
Oh, he didn’t! Heat flared in her cheeks.
‘He did it because he loved you, Ava. And I left because I cared for all of you too much to stay.’
A cold dread came over her. ‘You left because of me?’
‘I thought it would be easier on you to make a clean break,’ he said.
Easier? She’d cried herself sick for a month solid. ‘But you gave up your only family. For me.’ Tears sprang into her eyes.
He stroked away the tears with his thumbs. ‘You were just the catalyst, Ava. I needed to leave. Needed to step out from under James’s protection. It was time.’
Ava stared at him. ‘Did my father ask you to go?’
Dan smiled. ‘“Ask” is a subjective word. Let’s just say a serious talk in the kitchen one day planted the idea very firmly in my head.’
Her eyes widened. That had been her father—the hushed conversation she’d overheard. God, if only she’d stuck around to hear more of it. She never would have…Oh, so much…
‘Why did you never call him?’
‘I called once. You answered.’ He traced her lips with his finger and she sighed. ‘Then the next time I got your father, but he was so busy trying to convince me you were fine I knew that meant you weren’t. It just made things strained between us. Either way I’d hurt you. In the end it was just easier to drop out of contact.’
Ava thought about that. ‘Will you tell him that one day? So he knows? He was hurt when you left.’ Too.
Dan looked at her, kissed her nose, her lips. His eyes held such sorrow. ‘I will. If he’ll speak to me.’
‘Just try and stop him. He never stopped caring about you.’ Neither did his daughter. ‘So all this…hedging…was about keeping a promise you made nine years ago?’
‘I owe your father a bigger debt than you can ever imagine. I figured the least I could do now was never hurt you again. Yet that’s all I’ve done since you irritated the stuffing out of my lawyers.’
‘I’m not hurting now…’ She pressed her lips to his. Although she might be later. Based on their history, that was a distinct possibility.
‘No?’ His smile was easy.
She shook her head, side to side. Pressing her aching breasts into him. Her tongue slid so easily across his teeth, stole into his mouth to taste him, finally on her terms. She leaned into his strength and let her love steal out through that kiss. As though he would somehow taste it. She crossed her ankles behind him.
His eyes flared wide. ‘Ava, you have to be sure. This is not something we can undo. Is this what you really want?’
Am I who you really want? She knew exactly where this was heading. She met his look with more control than she presently felt, and let him see the truth of her words. ‘I really do, Dan.’
‘This will change everything. I don’t think I can go back after this.’
Back to being friends. No, that was not somewhere she wanted to go either. She stared at him, felt the blood still pumping into her aching lips, chest heaving, legs trembling.
‘I don’t want to be your friend,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been your friend for a lifetime. I want to be something else.’
His next word was cautious. ‘What?’
She tightened her leg-hold on him and looked him dead in the eye.
‘I want to be yours.’
Warm lips murmured words close to her ear, tracing light kisses along her collarbone. Butterfly fingers stroked the flesh of her naked belly.
Ava awakened to all these things one by one.
‘Ava, are you okay?’
Concerned brown eyes found her. She blinked her confusion. A husky laugh chuckled out of her. She nestled in closer to his furnace of a body. His beautiful, hard, ex-surfer’s body. ‘That was…’
Gravel rumbled in her ear. ‘Everything I imagined.’
She tilted her head to look at him. ‘You’ve been imagining?’
Dan laughed. ‘You have no idea. Did you think you’d cornered the market on unrequited lust?’ He looked down quickly.
Ah. Not love, then.
Ava allowed the tiny heart-bleed, even though she hadn’t gone into this expecting anything more than the fulfilment of one of her own lifelong dreams. It should have been easier to swallow her disappointment after a lifetime of practice, but she got there. She stretched in his arms, lazy as only a highly satisfied woman could be.
‘I’ve been wondering what you’d feel like,’ he said. ‘Since that night at the guesthouse, actually.’
‘Really? So you’d been working on it? This seduction?’
‘Not working. Hoping,’ he said.
She eyed him seriously. What was he saying? ‘Then this isn’t—wasn’t—purely spontaneous?’
He met her look with his own level one. ‘I don’t do spontaneous.’
‘So the last time…?’
‘Not entirely unplanned,’ he granted. ‘I’d been watching you shuck mussels all night, and wondered how I could get you to use those lips on me.’
She feigned outrage and went to push him off. He wouldn’t budge. Her eyebrows lifted as colour piped into her cheeks.
He answered with an endearingly smug smile. ‘I’m not done yet.’
She pressed her lips to his sweat-slicked shoulder, then his mouth. Their kisses forestalled conversation for some time.
Finally, his breath burned against her ear. ‘So, no more Maddox?’
‘I thought you were sick of talking about Brant?’
‘I don’t want to talk about him; I just want to hear you say it. You guys are through, right?’
Ava turned her head on the feather pillow to study him. There was no point denying it yet again. It wasn’t what he wanted to know. ‘We’ll always be close friends.’
‘Just not too close.’
‘Don’t you need us to…seem close? For the show?’
Dan closed his eyes, and when he opened them they were pained. ‘No.’
Ava knew better. ‘Yes.’
‘The network needs it.’
‘
And you are AusOne’s creature.’
He kissed her long and hard, fingers punishing her with a pinch on her still sensitised flesh. Pleasure had her muscles clamping hard around him.
Dan hissed.
‘Serves you right.’ Her laugh was lusty.
‘I’m your creature,’ he joked gently.
She grazed her lips across his and closed her eyes to appreciate the moment. How much would she give to have him mean that? ‘I’ll do whatever you need me to, Dan. I know how important this is. Maybe we could just keep it simple?’
‘That didn’t really work the first time. The papers have a way of turning simple into scandal.’ He moved against her and they both sighed.
‘Not all of them, surely? What about this one who’s doing the full-length feature?’
‘I’ve called in a few favours. Got a good journalist assigned who’ll favour an angle other than what you and Maddox get up to between takes.’
Ava laughed, thinking of the games of cards, old wives’ gossip and many, many cups of very unexciting coffee she and Brant had shared between shots. ‘They’d be seriously disappointed with Brant and me. You and me, on the other hand…’
She pushed hard against him. His eyes fluttered shut. She kissed each lid. When they opened again they were umber. Funny how many browns there were, and how she’d learned to read them. Like a secret code.
‘We can’t let anyone know about this, Ava. You understand that, right?’
Ava thought about Cadence, and how many years she and Brant had kept their relationship under wraps. ‘If Brant can do it, we can too.’
His head jerked back as he looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
This little titbit would have made a lot of difference to their relationship earlier. She’d withheld it intentionally. Self-defence. She took a breath. ‘Brant has a long-term girlfriend who he loves desperately.’
Dan laughed. The movement caused delicious friction inside her. ‘Maddox wouldn’t know love if it bit him on the butt.’
‘I was at the movies with her tonight. She’s lovely—in a spooky kind of way.’
Dan stopped moving. Confusion and realisation filled his face. ‘You’re serious! But the network…the papers?’
Ava nibbled her way across his chest. ‘Looks like they don’t approve of Cadence. She’s not TV royalty material.’