‘Am not.’
‘Are too. Or else.’
She narrowed in on his naughty vibe. ‘Else what?’
‘We won’t be checking any more items off your list.’
She gasped at his ‘I mean it’ expression. ‘You’re bluffing.’
He sat back, patted his lap for her as if she should come sit astride it. ‘Come try and tempt me.’
The heat began to rise upwards, her chest, her neck, her face. But she wasn’t going to let him tease her into saying yes to his bossiness. ‘Don’t need to. I can figure some fun for myself.’
‘Think you’ll find going solo isn’t nearly so sweet now, Roxie,’ he taunted.
She swiped up the damn book and opened it on a random page. Just so she could bury her burning face in it. Because she knew he was so right.
‘You can do the practical in my car if you like.’ He resumed the conversation as if he knew full well she wasn’t concentrating on the printed words. ‘Might be easier? I can get you covered on the insurance.’
Ugh, insurance. She hated that word. ‘Thanks, but no, I couldn’t.’
‘You’re too scared to drive something that actually goes fast?’
‘I think you know I’m not afraid of fast.’ She shot him a look over the boring rule book.
‘Everything comes back to sex with you, doesn’t it?’
‘Are you complaining?’ she mocked, tossing the road code aside. ‘We are sex, Gabe. We’re a shag team.’ But she wasn’t being completely honest—not even to herself. She got up from the table quickly. ‘I’ve got the most awesome dance flick ever for tonight.’
‘Oh, I can’t wait.’ Gabe didn’t sound any less sarcastic than he had a moment before.
But the opening theme had barely started when his phone beeped. He glanced at the message and groaned.
‘What’s wrong?’ She pressed pause on the remote, the opening number wasn’t one to be missed.
He was studying the screen intently, scrolling through some lengthy missive. ‘One of the boys has gotten into trouble. Cheating while on summer tour. Pretty sordid too, going to be all over the front pages tomorrow.’ He shook his head and tossed his phone to the floor. ‘This is why they shouldn’t get married. Commitment doesn’t work with this lifestyle.’
Roxie giggled. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Absolutely.’ He met her smile with censure in his dark eyes. ‘The pressure these guys are under? They’re away so often. There’s all that adrenalin—they need a release. Distance relationships never work and in this business there are even more factors to make marriages fail.’
Roxie gaped at his earnest expression. ‘You call this lifestyle working with a distance relationship?’ she mocked. ‘Gabe, you’re not talking being away months or even weeks at a time. You’re talking days.’
‘You don’t understand the temptation they face.’
‘Oh, please. Temptation passes you on the street every day. The number of women who give you that look.’ She shook her head. She’d seen it so many times at the stadium. ‘The guys who give into temptation on a short trip like that would give into it at home just as quick if the opportunity arose,’ she said bluntly. ‘It’s not the lifestyle that’s the problem, it’s that the guy doesn’t know how to keep his zipper up.’ She chuckled again. ‘I mean, really, Gabe, you’re away for what, a week at most?’
‘When we go on tours it’s weeks at a time,’ he said defensively.
‘Oh, come on, it’s a big fat excuse and you know it.’ She leaned closer, getting into the stride of her argument now. ‘You don’t want to give up your freedom in case something better swings along. That’s okay, you don’t have to. Just don’t try to hide behind your job as some lame excuse for being unable to make a commitment. If you wanted to, you would. But you don’t want to.’
That was right. He didn’t. Gabe was stunned with how she had him pegged. And that she’d just shot him down with a couple of snappy sentences. Yes, he liked the convenience of the short-term fling—and the out-of-town bender was even better. No mess in his backyard. ‘Okay, you’re right. It took a lot to get my freedom and, no, I won’t give that up for anyone. I’m not willing to compromise on the most important things in my life.’ That was still his view, right?
She nodded, apparently all understanding now. ‘I know exactly how you feel. I don’t regret any of the time in the last few years. I’d still be doing it if I could. But now? I want my time. I want my freedom. I don’t want anybody holding me back.’ She grinned impishly.
Strangely, even though she was now agreeing with him, Gabe didn’t feel any better. ‘So you’re really serious about the no-marriage-and-kids thing?’
‘I think I take after my mother,’ she said, settling more comfortably on the sofa. ‘She didn’t want me despite going ahead to have me. I’m not doing that to anyone. I’m never having any in the first place.’
‘No permanent man either?’ He had no idea why his pulse had just picked up.
She shook her head. ‘Playmate every now and then. That’s the way forward.’
She was quoting his own philosophy but it sounded so wrong coming from her mouth. He didn’t like her turning her back on the idea of being with someone for good. She should be cherished and treasured and adored—the prize, the heart, of some guy’s life. And any guy who even thought of straying from Roxie would need his head read. Who’d ever want to give her up?
Gabe really needed to bury this line of thought—it was weird. He pressed the pause button on the remote she still held so the movie started running again. But a dance flick was hardly the kind of movie to completely absorb him, so those damn thoughts kept circling. Had he been hanging back from doing anything more with any of his exes in case someone better came along? Surely not, he’d just thought he had it sussed. Even after the Diana debacle he’d merely figured all he had to do was fling it with the right kind of woman. But Roxie wasn’t that kind. In fact he now wondered whether that kind of woman even existed.
Yet here Roxie was basically trying to walk in his foolish footsteps. That just didn’t sit right with him.
Damn it, none of this was right.
CHAPTER TEN
AS ROXIE drove towards home she saw Gabe jogging through the park. He signalled and she pulled over. He raised a brow at the P-plate on the rear window. She’d known he’d spot it straight away.
‘I didn’t just do the theory, I passed my practical. First time,’ she said smugly.
‘I should hope so,’ he answered drily as he got in the passenger seat. ‘You’ve been driving on the roads long enough.’
Roxie giggled and drove the final few metres to the garage. It had been a brilliant day: she’d taken the afternoon off work and done her test, gone to practice with the Blades, they’d asked her to do some freestyle—to help work out a new routine. Now she’d come home and found him. And he’d just gotten out and opened the heavy old garage door for her to park the car and was waiting to close it once she was in. First time ever anyone had done it for her. Life just couldn’t get better. Her smile widening, she stepped out to meet him. And her foot sank into a puddle. Several inches deep and lapping—water was flowing in from somewhere. She headed straight for the boxes sitting in the new lake.
‘Maybe we left a hose on.’ Gabe disappeared out of the side door. He was back in a nanosecond but the sound of running water hadn’t ceased. ‘Probably a burst pipe, won’t take anything to fix,’ he said, pulling his phone from his shorts pocket.
Only money she didn’t have. She should have been saving everything—not having her hair done or buying multiple bottles of Bollinger. She should have waited until she had more resources to deal with these seemingly inevitable setbacks. The house had eaten all her resources over the last year; she’d really hoped she’d hit the end of it. This was supposed to be her new start. Angered with her idiocy, she splashed forwards to lift the first of the boxes to safety out in the garden. The contents of the ones at ground level must
be sodden already.
Gabe had his phone to his ear; she could hear the ‘on hold’ music as she walked. ‘You should move into the Treehouse while this dries out,’ he said.
She shook her head. No way would she move in with Gabe. Her instinct had been whispering a warning to pull back on the time she spent with him and at that suggestion it shrieked. ‘It’s just a flood. Upstairs isn’t damaged, only the stuff stored down here. It won’t take long to dry.’ She hoped. She also hoped like hell the plumber wasn’t going to cost a bomb.
‘You might want to transfer some of this stuff to plastic boxes for longer-term storage, especially the paperwork,’ he said.
Did he think she hadn’t considered that first time round? Of course she should have used better storage when she’d originally sorted all the stuff, but the banana boxes had been free from the supermarket. She didn’t bother answering—the man was made of money, he had no clue what it was like for those not born with silver spoons.
‘Don’t do that.’ He frowned at her. ‘I’ll lift them for you—’ He broke off as someone finally took him off hold.
Roxie kept lifting and lugging—they were her boxes after all. Gabe’s frown deepened as she marched back and forth past him carrying the worst affected out to the deck. She listened to him issue instructions to the plumber with his innate lord-of-all authority. Which annoyed her even more. She couldn’t ask him not to make the call, didn’t want to reveal her proximity to the poverty line, but she couldn’t let the entire property flood either. As he wrapped the call she bent down for the next box—the bottom one of the first tower. The water was already at the one-third mark. She hoisted it up, cold wet running down her arm.
‘Oh, hell,’ she muttered, quickly changing her grip, but it was too late—the box simply disintegrated and its contents splashed everywhere. Glancing down at it all, her blood froze. She immediately looked for his reaction. Tension twisted his usual good-humoured expression. She could see him thinking, his face hardening as his jaw clamped, his eyes darkening.
Did he doubt her?
Defensiveness rose, intensified by tortured memories and the frustration from this latest fix-it job the house demanded. Truthfully she’d forgotten that box was even there. She’d had to. But his icy attention was fixed on the stuff now scattered, half submerged, over the floor and that defensiveness burst from her in a bitter torrent. ‘I’m not a junkie, Gabe.’
He went all the more rigid. ‘I know that,’ he said roughly.
Given the number of plastic-wrapped syringes, blister packs of prescription-only painkillers, bottles of morphine and who knew what else, she wouldn’t really have blamed him for wondering.
‘They were your grandfather’s,’ he said shortly.
She bent, scrambling to get it all together. ‘I meant to take it to a pharmacy to get rid of, but I just boxed and forgot it.’
‘I can drop it off.’ He bent down beside her and gathered the needles.
‘He was diabetic,’ she felt compelled to explain. ‘Injections a couple times a day. Then pain relief too. Some of the pills were Grandma’s.’ It really did look as if she were running some kind of drugs lab. ‘She had so many they took an age to dispense.’
‘Why did it have to be you?’ he asked. ‘Where were the district nurses?’
‘Busy.’ Her defensiveness resurged—higher. ‘I could manage. Grandad didn’t want to die in hospital so at the end I didn’t call anyone. I gave him the painkiller the doctor prescribed and I held his hand and I watched him. In the end I called an ambulance because …’ Because she couldn’t bear it any more. She paused and tried to suck back her emotion. ‘By the time it got there, he’d gone. That’s a decision I made and I live with.’
She’d fought so damn hard with her stupid garden with her organic everything, and trying to make him laugh and do everything and anything anyone said might help battle that bastard disease. And for a couple of years there she’d succeeded. She’d thought it would go on like that indefinitely—what a dream that had been. Because all of a sudden he’d deteriorated and there had been no coming back from it. She looked up from the dirty puddle. ‘It happens all the time. Cancer is the country’s number one killer. People cope.’
‘Most people don’t have to cope alone,’ Gabe answered gruffly, his hands full.
She shrugged, fully regretting revealing the little she just had to him. ‘There was so much bad stuff happening in the city at that time, the medics were run off their feet.’
Gabe nodded but said nothing more. His pallor surprised her—for a doctor he looked a little shaken by all the medical guff. Tightlipped, he stood and got a plastic bag to tip it all into. Then came back and viciously chucked the remainder in too.
Roxie blinked at the energy crackling off him. He was angry? Well, so was she. She didn’t want to deal with this—least of all in front of him. She was so sick of fighting to keep this place okay. She picked up the box that had her mother’s letters and papers in. She’d put it down here after it had given her nothing but disappointment. Not a single clue as to who her father had been. That dream had died a year ago too. ‘I’ll take some of these boxes upstairs,’ she said dismissively.
‘You don’t want me to help you carry them up?’ he called after her.
‘No, I’m fine.’
Really? Gabe wasn’t so sure about that—he heard raw emotion in her bitten-off words. ‘It wouldn’t take me a minute.’
‘You’ve already done enough calling the plumber.’
Yeah, and she didn’t exactly sound grateful about that. Gabe gritted his teeth, feeling extremely pissed off and it was worsening with each second. ‘It really wouldn’t take a minute.’
‘I can manage.’ She had her back to him, box in arms, stomping up the stairs already.
‘I can help,’ he argued. He hated her stubborn insistence on managing all by her damned self. She’d had to manage all kinds of hell as the primary carer, for not one, but two terminally ill elderly people. Alone. Why couldn’t she say yes to a bit of muscle to help lug some bloody boxes now? Why couldn’t she smile and say ‘sure’ and ‘thanks’?
She looked over her shoulder, shooting him a quelling look. ‘I don’t need you to.’
Don’t want you to, was what she really meant.
Gabe flung the bag of drugs into the corner of the garage. He could hear her stropping around up in her postage-stamp-sized studio. His fists clenched. There’d been no need for her to get snippy with him—the pipes weren’t his fault, despite his random wish that she’d move in with him, he hadn’t tampered with the plumbing like some sick stalker. But from years of working with finely balanced athletes, Gabe knew that a bad mood was often aggravated by not enough food. She must have gone straight from work to her driving test and then to the Blades practice. She had to be hungry. So he’d feed her. He wanted her to accept something from him tonight—and not merely sex.
He knocked on her door an hour or so later. For once she answered almost right away but that wasn’t what made him blink so rapidly. No, she’d changed into the most hideous track-pants he’d ever seen, and, given he worked with sportsmen, he’d seen some ratty trackies. These were thick, massive and shapeless and he really just wanted to remove them then and there. But he reminded himself that wasn’t the first priority.
‘I’m guessing you probably haven’t made dinner so I made enough for you too.’ He refused to be offended if she said no to him. Even if he had gone to a stupid amount of effort.
‘You have?’ She blinked at him.
He nodded. ‘It’s on the deck if you want to come and get it.’
She hesitated.
‘It’s getting cold and I’ve gone to a lot of trouble.’ He put on some pressure with a wicked look. He wanted to see her smile.
And she did smile—all sceptical, as if she didn’t believe he’d ever go to any trouble. Oh, the irony.
‘Okay, give me a second.’ Roxie stepped back inside and shut the door. Gabe had gotten o
ver his snappy temper flare, surely she could too. Hopefully he’d forgotten her angst moment in the garage. She was too tough to let a blasted pipe get her down—so it would delay her trip another couple of weeks perhaps; worse things had happened. She grabbed the half-bottle with the D on it—that and Gabe back in stud mode would help bubble her out of the funk.
‘Wow,’ she said, taking in the laden plates on the outdoor dining table. ‘Not sure the Bolly is good enough for this.’
‘Don’t get too effusive.’ He pulled out her chair. ‘It’s only burger and chips.’
‘Not your average burger and chips.’ She sat, breathing in the yum display. They were home-made bean patties, ripped-from-the-plant salad and freshly dug new potatoes cooked then crisped up something yummy. Her mouth watered, her appetite suddenly screaming. ‘You cooked all this?’
‘I’m a single man, living alone,’ he drawled. ‘You didn’t think I could cook?’
‘But it’s—’
‘Veggie, I know. Not bad for a beef-farm boy, huh?’ He popped the cork and poured the champagne into two glasses—frowning when that was enough to empty the bottle.
She picked up her fork and took a bite of the patty poking out from the toasted roll. Oh, wow. ‘You really made this from scratch?’
‘Your amazement is insulting.’
She chuckled, warmth trickling back into her chilled body. ‘I’ve never met anyone who makes veggie burgers like these. From scratch. Not even me.’
He pulled his phone from his pocket and swiped the screen a few times. ‘Okay, I got the recipe online. Here.’
She angled her head to read the page he’d pulled up. ‘The Heganator?’ She didn’t just giggle, she squealed. ‘Hegan?’
‘Yeah, cool recipes for the hot vegan male.’ He turned the phone back to study it, oh, so intently. Then he peered over the top of the phone, eyes twinkling. ‘I think it’s really written by a woman. Apparently hegans like burgers and barbecues.’
‘You’re hot but you’re not a hegan,’ she said, almost all her old flirt tone back.
First Time Lucky? Page 12