The Inconvenient Laws of Attraction

by Trish Wylie

  He didn’t look amused.

  Gravel crunched beneath their feet as Olivia prepared to take on the role she normally did and introduce him. But before she’d opened her mouth, the stately silver-haired man at the head of the line inclined his head.

  ‘Master Blake.’

  ‘We can drop the master part, Henry.’

  ‘Of course, sir…’

  Blake shook his head, the next person in line bringing a smile to his face. ‘Still here, Martha?’

  She beamed in reply. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

  Glancing at the others standing with expectant expressions, he took a deep breath and announced, ‘Go home folks—take a few days’ paid vacation—we can fend for ourselves.’ He winked at Martha on his way past. ‘Good to see you, too.’

  While she blushed and the rest of the staff looked at each other in confusion, Olivia followed him inside, ignoring her surroundings as she stated the obvious. ‘You’ve been here before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I spent a summer here when I was seventeen.’

  Before or after the two semesters he’d spent at high school in Brooklyn? It was a source of great frustration to Olivia that the list of questions she’d formed before she met him grew on a daily basis. After sharing a bed at every available opportunity in the last six days, they knew everything there was to know about each other’s bodies but anything more than that, not so much.

  Setting her weekend bag and laptop at the bottom of the newel post, she turned towards him. ‘You can give me the grand tour, then.’

  Blake pressed his mouth into a thin line as he dropped his bag beside hers. ‘Fine.’

  When he walked through an archway into a room filled with deeply upholstered white sofas, she barely glanced at the understated decor: she was more interested in his reaction to being there.

  ‘Living room.’ He waved an arm to his side and kept walking. ‘Library.’

  She had to increase her pace to keep up.

  ‘Den.’ He nodded to the right as they walked back across the hall again. ‘Billiard room—that’s the British version of pool to you and me—dining room…breakfast room…kitchen…’

  ‘Could we go a bit slower?’

  He stopped so abruptly she almost ran into him. ‘It’s just a house, Liv.’

  ‘The word just doesn’t come close to describing this place.’ She looked up at his face, the realisation hitting her that, ‘You don’t want to be here.’

  Correct her if she was wrong, but hadn’t it been his idea? There were plenty of other places they could have visited and they’d barely scratched the surface when it came to the Warren Enterprises’ subsidiaries.

  Pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, Blake turned his profile to her, his gaze fixed on a point outside the numerous windows lining a wall of the large kitchen they were standing in.

  He shrugged. ‘Thought you’d like it.’

  ‘I do,’ she said softly, touched by the comment, even if she didn’t entirely believe the trip was solely for her benefit. She smiled when he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. ‘I love it. But if you’re uncomfortable here…’

  ‘When did I strike you as comfortable in any of the places we’ve visited?’

  Barring the one time, good point, but—

  ‘You want to see outside?’

  She noted the swift change of subject, but she nodded, struggling to find patience as he opened a door and they stepped onto an expansive stone patio. Down a couple of sets of gently winding steps and around a corner, a large swimming pool twinkled in the bright sunlight, and the promise of a stunning ocean view from the railing beyond drew them forward. As his large hands grasped the metal railing, Olivia blinked at the horizon and added to her question list. How long had he been here? Had his father spent much time with him? What had it been like? Had they been able to talk? Had his mother been here too? Did they visit regularly?

  One question barrelled through the others to make it to the top of the list. ‘Why are we here?’

  When his fingers tightened, she thought he was not going to answer her. Not that it was anything new, but it was really starting to tick her off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a voice so low she almost didn’t hear him.

  The fact he was frowning told her he wasn’t happy he’d said the words out loud. But what got to her was how much it reminded her of the expression he’d worn on the dance floor when he’d told her he wouldn’t hide, not again.

  ‘You want the helicopter to come back for us?’

  ‘No.’ He let go of the railing and took her hand. ‘Let’s go look at the best part.’

  If it was meant to distract her, it worked, at least for a while. Within five minutes of her toes sinking into warm sand she understood the attraction of The Hamptons. In the city it was easy to become bogged down with a million and one things: deadlines to meet, obligations to fulfil, parties to attend and the vagaries of everyday chores causing stress and tension as people tried to squeeze everything into twenty-four hours per day. It was a hectic, fast-paced lifestyle. One Olivia had thought she thrived on.

  But while walking along a deserted beach with her hand held in Blake’s she found herself thinking about the things she was missing out on: the simple pleasures in life it was all too easy to take for granted and the important things she’d relegated to some nebulous point in the future. Her time with him was turning into quite a journey of self-discovery. She smiled wryly. The fact he was so reluctant to talk about his life had made her think about her own.

  ‘It’s beautiful here.’

  ‘It is,’ he agreed.

  Once the silence had been interrupted, she felt the need to fill it. You could take the girl out of the city…

  ‘It’s funny how easy it is to forget Manhattan is an island. I never think about the ocean being so close. It’s just there, you know?’ She lifted her hand to push back a strand of hair. ‘When I was a kid, we used to take a trip to the beach every summer—Jersey, mostly. My brothers played touch football on the sand, Dad refereed and I got to keep score. Killed me I never got to play. Uneven numbers, they said.’

  ‘How many brothers?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Sisters?’

  ‘No, took five attempts for my parents to get it right.’ Since she’d opened a line of dialogue, she tried something simple. ‘You have brothers or sisters?’

  If Charles Warren had more than one child, she assumed they’d have been mentioned in the will, but his mother could have married and had children before or after Blake.

  ‘You’re allergic to silence, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s called making conversation.’

  ‘We were doing fine without it.’

  She stopped and waited for him to turn towards her. ‘I can’t be the first person to try and get to know you.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  They hadn’t fared any better, had they? Not that it was much consolation.

  ‘You know enough,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be sleeping with me.’

  Blunt but true. ‘You’re right, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘Not being made to feel like it could be anyone in your bed would be nice.’

  He frowned. ‘That’s how I make you feel?’

  ‘No.’ She searched for a way of explaining what she meant without sounding needy. ‘But if you make it seem like I’m not even supposed to make idle conversation with you, I might feel that way.’

  As she broke eye contact, she shook her head a little, questioning what she was doing. She didn’t regret the decision she’d made to sleep with him, no matter how uncharacteristically spur-of-the-moment it may have been. But was it so unusual to want to know even the most basic things about him—the details people shared every day without feeling it had cost them something?

  She didn’t th
ink so.

  ‘You knew what you were getting into…’

  Actually, Olivia wasn’t entirely certain she had known, not really. Her attraction to him was an unstoppable force of nature, the conclusion as inevitable as the ocean hitting the shore beside their feet. Beyond that, she may possibly have been a tad naive when it came to how casual she could keep things. Sex was intimate, there was no avoiding that.

  ‘So what is it you want?’

  Good question.

  ‘You,’ she replied without hesitation.

  It was the one thing she was clear on. Her body, still aching with sweet reminders of the passion they shared, though satisfied time and time again, was far from replete. But the needs that weren’t being satisfied were beginning to demand similar levels of attention. She wanted to know who she was sharing her body with, to understand how his mind worked, why he reacted to certain things the way he did. The very idea of caring as much as she used to about anything or anyone still terrified her but there had to be a middle ground somewhere.

  An affair with a man like Blake could be viewed as a kind of stepping stone—a way of testing the water to discover if she could allow herself to feel again without getting too involved. If it meant being brave and going a little further out on a limb than she’d planned, she could do that—but not at the expense of her self-respect. Jumping into bed with a virtual stranger was one thing, continuing to have sex with him without getting to know him better was another—so yes, she still wanted him but—

  ‘Just not like this.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Because I want to be.’ She lifted her chin in defiance, in case he told her she shouldn’t feel that way.

  ‘This will end,’ he said in the rough-edged rumble that still got to her. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I do.’

  Blake shook his head, frowning harder. ‘Make it more than it is, it’ll feel worse when it does.’

  She shrugged. ‘The memory might be sweeter.’

  Turning her head, she looked out at the ocean while retreating behind the wall she’d built around the emotions she could feel churning inside. There may have been a time she’d trusted and was led by her heart, but those days were gone. She couldn’t allow herself to get sucked into the maelstrom again but there was a balance to be found, she understood that now. It was something she could take from her time with him.

  ‘Liv—’

  ‘I’m done talking now.’ She tilted her head back and took a deep breath of salty air, calmness washing over her as the churning began to settle. ‘Just getting it off my chest.’ Lowering her chin again, she looked down the long stretch of pale sand in front of them. ‘How far does the beach go? Do you want to walk to the end?’

  ‘I’m just supposed to forget what you said?’

  She arched a brow at him. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, that was me letting you off the hook. I can’t afford to get emotionally involved with you, so if that’s what you’re worried about you can set your mind at ease. Not like there’s much point, is there? None of this will matter in a few weeks. Once we’ve finished scratching this itch—’

  The next thing she knew, he was pulling her against him, his mouth capturing hers with brutal intensity. There was nothing gentle in the way he kissed her—nothing tender—but Olivia didn’t want gentle or tender. She wanted him to need her as much as she needed him, for him to be even a fraction as out of touch with reality as she felt every time he kissed her. When his fingers splayed across the back of her head and his tongue demanded entrance to her mouth, she opened for him. Their tongues tangled as her hands reached for the strong column of his neck.

  Wrenching his mouth from hers, he looked down at her and frowned. He was angry. She could see it. Angry because he’d kissed her, because he hadn’t ended it or angry with her for saying what she had? She shook her head. She didn’t want to argue with him.

  Lifting her mouth, she kissed him with the same urgent sense of need she’d felt when he kissed her. When he groaned and lowered his hands to her hips, she smoothed her hands over his shoulders to his chest, her fingertips exploring the hard, sculpted contours beneath his T-shirt.

  ‘Take me to bed,’ she mumbled against his lips.

  Their relationship may have been sorely lacking in every other form of communication, but in bed they spoke to each other in ways only lovers could. Having felt the effect even the smallest increase in distance between them could have on her, she needed to feel connected to him again, that he was right there with her, feeling what she felt. It was a Band-aid on what could, if she were foolish enough to let it happen, become a massive gaping wound.

  They stopped again and again on the walk back to the house—her shoes dropped inside the kitchen door—his T-shirt gone by the foot of the stairs. When the kissing and tearing at clothes became frantic he leaned back, the twitch of his lips becoming a full-blown grin. Emotion seeped through a crack in the wall around her heart and dripped into her chest.

  When had she got so crazy for him?

  Fusing their mouths together, he pushed through the door to a bedroom and kicked it shut behind him. But at the side of the bed he stilled, his palms framing her face, thumbs beneath her chin as he looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘You’re not just anyone, Liv.’ The words were husky and low, washing over her like a caress. ‘Don’t ever think that. Not when you’re with me.’

  The impact it had on her heart created fracture lines around the crack, the drip of escaping emotion becoming a trickle. Every danger-sensing instinct she possessed screamed Run! but she reached for him, hands smoothing over his chest and around his neck, her voice thick as she demanded, ‘Show me.’

  Once they were back in Manhattan she would have to think long and hard about what she was doing while she was still in control of her emotions. Even if he had been the kind of guy who stayed in one place, anything more than sex could never be possible between two people unwilling to share more than their bodies. But while he filled her world with warmth, sensation and the physical closeness she’d never experienced with anyone else, she clung to him and held on tight in case she never felt it again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WATCHING Liv withdraw behind the mask she’d been wearing when he met her had made Blake unreasonably angry. At the same moment she’d made it clear he was hardly in a position to throw stones when it came to communication. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hold a conversation. Politics, sports, the economy, big business versus the little guy, which superhero would win in a fight with another superhero—he could hold a conversation on a vast range of subjects when he set his mind to it.

  It wasn’t until Liv that he realised how little he said.

  While she slept, he headed outside to clear his head—what had happened on the beach replaying on a loop in his mind while he replaced the things he’d said with what he could have said. When it came to anything about his life, there was a subconscious wall he seemed unable to break through, even though he wanted to—for her.

  ‘Not being made to feel like it could be anyone in your bed would be nice.’

  He liked to think he’d taken care of that in the one way he knew he could communicate clearly with her—anyone, his ass—but when it came to the other stuff? No, he didn’t have any brothers or sisters—had that been so difficult to say? And when he’d asked her what she wanted and her answer had been ‘you’, why couldn’t he tell her it was the same for him? He wouldn’t have been telling her anything she didn’t already know.

  After walking a long loop, he ended up back at the railing overlooking the ocean. When he’d said he hadn’t known why they were there, it was the closest he’d come to being open, even if it was only partially true. Maybe he’d thought poking the edge of the empty place inside him with a memory-shaped stick might allow something to leak out; maybe he’d thought he would free an emotion he could experience and deal with before he moved on. If that was what he’d thought, he’d been wrong. He
still had a big fat nothing.

  Leaning his elbows on the railing, he breathed deep and looked out at the ocean, comparing the seventeen-year-old who’d been there before to the man he was now. He hadn’t thought he was as messed up as he’d been back then.

  Maybe he’d been wrong.

  His gaze followed a seagull as it glided on a current of air, wings outstretched, not a care in the world. Used to be a time he felt that carefree. Thing was, he didn’t feel so trapped any more either—as if with each property or asset he disposed of he was cutting a string that attached him to the life he’d never even contemplated. By cutting them he was proving he was in control, he was the one making decisions, he was in charge of his own destiny. But if that was true, he would be standing at the helm, not feeling as if he were adrift on a raft.

  The one time he’d felt like himself had been when he’d looked at the warehouse and thought about its potential. He didn’t need penthouses or private jets or skyscrapers with high rental incomes. But building something before he sold it on, something he would only be tied to for the duration of the project, wouldn’t be so bad. He could take his usual pride in a job well done while providing steady work for the guys who needed it and had families to think about.

  Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for the envelope, he unfolded it and looked down at the numerous stamps and scored out addresses. It was the first time he’d been tempted to open it.

  His chin lifted. Why could he hear music?

  Waking up alone wasn’t a new experience, but it was starting to get a little annoying when she reached out and he wasn’t there. Blinking at the empty space, Olivia resolved it wasn’t going to get to her, not when she felt so good. Stretching languorously, arms and legs spread wide in the ridiculously large bed and her head pushed deep into decadent pillows, she grinned from ear to ear. There wasn’t an inch of her body that hadn’t been worshipped. She curled her toes. A few hours with Blake while he demonstrated she absolutely, most definitely was the woman he wanted in his bed had been heaven.