by Jess Dee
The one person she couldn’t convince she needed space from was Andrew. But then she didn’t try very hard. They spent the day together, touring vineyards, tasting wines, eating and laughing.
Tori discovered she laughed a lot when she was with him.
He’d somehow managed to wrestle a bicycle out of thin air for her, along with a helmet and other protective gear, and the two of them set off on a late-afternoon ride around the estate. Along the way, Andrew picked bunches of fat, ripe grapes from the vines. When they came to the pond and stopped to watch a family of ’roos resting on the other side, he fed the fruit to her, one grape at a time.
The sun set as they shared a bottle of red; and the world darkened around them as they enjoyed a second bottle. They made love in the gazebo one last time at midnight, laughing the whole way through the encounter. Well, right up until the end, at which point their laughter was replaced with soft moans and long sighs of rapture.
The rest of the night was spent in Andrew’s bed.
Hours after the sun rose, he ordered them breakfast in his room, and they ate it naked in bed, the sheets lying in piles on the floor.
He watched her, his face bemused, as Tori shoveled food into her mouth.
“For a thin girl, you sure do eat a lot.”
“Built up quite an appetite during the night,” she explained between mouthfuls. “Besides, you never fed me dinner. I’m starving.”
“I never fed you dinner? You wouldn’t let me up long enough to go in search of food.”
“Hey, you told me gorging on my breasts was the only sustenance you’d ever need again.” She frowned. “Although I do believe you said tits, not breasts.”
Andrew licked his lips. “I’d gladly forego breakfast for another taste.”
“I’m sure you would. But I’m not giving up this food for anything.”
“Not even another orgasm?”
Tori’s hands stilled half way to her mouth. Instantly, her nipples hardened and her belly tightened. But then she shook her head and shoved the piece of croissant in her mouth. “Nope, sorry. Too hungry.”
His laughter filled the room. “How about an orgasm while you eat?”
“What, I’ll just sit here stuffing my face while you…?”
He stared between her legs, and suddenly her appetite had very little to do with breakfast. “Lie down and stuff my face.”
Her hands stilled again. “You’d do that? Go down on me while I ate?”
“Oh, yeah, sweetheart. In a heartbeat.”
“But…but I’d get crumbs in your hair.”
Again his laughter echoed off the walls. “I bet you wouldn’t be able to take more than two bites before you forgot all about that croissant.”
“Then you underestimate how hungry I really am.”
Andrew set the tray on the edge of the bed, out of their way. “No, Tor. You underestimate how hungry I really am. Now, spread ’em.”
“I’m not going to stop eating,” she warned.
“That’s okay. Neither am I.”
Andrew was right. Tori didn’t make two bites. The croissant fell to the bed unnoticed, mere seconds later. Andrew, on the other hand, took a very long time on breakfast.
And when he’d finally eaten his fill, and Tori had come at least twice, she treated herself to her very own breakfast special: Andrew.
“I’ll miss this,” she said a long time later. Once again she lay replete in his arms. His hand was tangled in her hair, hers stroked his chest.
Andrew’s response was a long time in coming. “It doesn’t have to end.”
“Yeah. It does.” She sighed. “It’s been wonderful, Ando.” Spectacular actually. Amazing. And it had done wonders for her heart. “But I need to get home. Need to confront my life again. And I need to do it alone.”
“So you and I…?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Will just be a memory. A very precious memory that I’ll cherish every day.”
“I can’t convince you otherwise?”
An immeasurable sadness invaded her heart. “You probably could. And I’d probably be more than amenable to it. But…but in the long run, it would be the wrong decision. It’d mean I go from one relationship to another without discovering what I really want from life. I’d just be replacing Declan with you, without ever learning who I am, and without ever really separating you out from Declan. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
He kissed the top of her head. “You’re right. I know that. I’m just not as ready as you are to get back to real life.”
“We both have some obstacles to face when we get home.” At least she only had herself to worry about. Andrew had to go home and put his parents in a situation they didn’t want to be in but had no choice.
“I’d prefer to stay here for the next six months. With you.”
“I don’t believe that. I think that deep inside you know it’s time to get back home. Know you need to sort everything out with your folks.”
He sighed deeply. “I do.”
And again they lapsed into silence, each of them, she suspected, lost in thoughts about their own worlds.
“Will you do something for me before we leave, Ando?”
“Anything, sweetheart.”
“Make love to me one last time.”
Laden with four bags and dragging her suitcase behind him, Andrew followed Victoria down the ramp leading to the car park. He shifted the case of red wine he’d brought for her out of the way and stowed the rest of her luggage securely in the boot. Then he stepped aside, looking on hungrily as she leaned into her car to rearrange a few things.
Sexiest ass in the Hunter, without a doubt. And he knew it intimately.
When all her bags were packed away and his bike secured in the Range Rover, Andrew kissed her one last time. Then he stood and watched as she reversed, turned her wheel in the direction of the main road and drove out of his life.
It almost killed him, but Andrew didn’t stop her.
Chapter Eleven
“Don’t let him slobber on the baby,” Janine warned as the dog headed in Tori’s direction, a long strand of drool hanging from his jowl.
“Maurice,” Tori chided, rocking her tiny nephew, Aaron, in her arms. “Outside.”
Midstride, Maurice turned around and headed straight back out the door he’d just walked through. Winslow kept coming, stopping only when he’d reached the couch and placed his chin on the cushion beside her.
“My hands are full.” Tori showed him the baby. “I can’t pat you now.”
Winslow apparently thought differently. He sat and pawed her leg until Tori kicked off her shoe, and with a laugh, rubbed his belly with her foot. “Silly dog.”
“For just a minute can we forget about your dogs and focus on the conversation at hand?” Neen complained.
“What else do you want to know? He phoned. We spoke. I hung up. End of story.”
“Don’t ‘end of story’ me. We both know there was more to it. Sheesh, Tor, it’s been three months since you saw him last. Tell me what he said.”
“It was no biggie. Declan called to see how I was doing. That’s all.”
“Gee, that’s nice of him. He waited, what? Twelve weeks, and now he wants to know. Too little, too late, don’t you think?”
Tori smiled patiently, knowing full well Janine wasn’t finished ranting about her ex.
“I should have gutted the bastard when I had the chance. Should have taken the knife and… Wait! Why are you looking at me like that?” She narrowed her eyes, staring into her sister’s. “Aw, Shit, Tor. Don’t tell me. This isn’t the first time he’s phoned, is it?”
“It’s not.” Declan had phoned her several times since their almost-wedding.
“Tell me you hung up on him. Every time he called.”
“I didn’t.”
“Tori.”
“It’s okay. I promise. Talking to him is fine. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I think he just feels really awful
about what he did and about how it all went down.” She kind of understood his need to make contact. For a year they’d been close. Shared their lives. Not having him around was odd. There was a big empty space where he used to be.
“And what did you tell him about how you’re doing?”
“The truth. That I’m okay.” It was reassuring to know she could talk to him without a million red-hot pokers stabbing at her heart.
“Do you miss him?”
Tori stared down into the newborn’s sleeping face. “I miss having someone in my life. Miss the intimacy of a relationship. I miss having someone to talk to at the end of the every day. But do I miss Declan? No.” His actions had hurt her so fundamentally, something inside had died that night—her love for him. Now it was nothing more than a painful memory.
“Look me in the eye and say that,” her sister challenged.
Tori grinned and looked her sister in the eye. “I don’t miss him. Not anymore. Promise. Oh, and guess what?”
“What?”
“I sold the wedding dress.”
“The auction’s over?”
“Yep. Finished last night. I got a great price for it.” She’d watched two eBay bidders battle it out in the last few minutes, forcing the price up way higher than Tori had ever expected.
“Brand-new wedding dress, unused and absolutely stunning? Of course you got a great price for it.”
“I hope the woman who bought it gets to use it.”
“She will, Tor. The dress wasn’t jinxed.”
“Just the relationship.” Aaron opened his eyes and stared up at Tori. She stared back, bewitched, smiling as he kicked his tiny feet against the confines of the receiving blanket.
“At least it ended before you actually tied the knot. Otherwise you’d both be miserable now.”
“There’s that,” Tori agreed. Anything further she had to say was cut off by a loud squawk. “Uh, I think you have a hungry child…”
Janine held out her arms. “Hand him over.”
Tori nudged Winslow out of the way and carried her nephew to her sister. “You feed him. I’ll go make us some tea.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any bikkies in the kitchen?”
“No biscuits, but Mum dropped off a chocolate cake last night.”
“Oooh.” Janine’s eyes lit up. “Iced?”
“Of course iced.”
“Brilliant.”
“I’ll bring you a slice with your tea.”
“Bring me two.”
Tori raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, don’t judge me. Aaron wants a piece too.”
Tori was still laughing as she filled the kettle and popped two teabags in a pot. While waiting for the water to boil, she browsed through the morning paper. She separated out the main section from the rest and pushed the bits she never read to the side.
But something caught her eye. A photograph on the front page of the business section, and she immediately pulled it back for a better look, her heart hammering like crazy.
Was that…? Could it be…?
God, yes! It was.
Tori pressed a hand to her mouth as a wave of longing washed through her, so powerful it shook her from head to toe.
She hadn’t lied when she’d told Janine she didn’t miss Declan. She didn’t. But she did miss the man in the picture. Missed him desperately. Had from the minute she’d driven away and left him leaning against his car outside the Rolling Hills Hotel.
Her every reason for driving away had been valid, and over the last three months Tori had not only come to terms with being single again, she’d also rediscovered Tori as a separate entity from Declan. And she quite liked the woman she was—just like Andrew had predicted.
However, the new-and-improved Tori thought about Andrew constantly. He hovered in the back of her mind at school while she worked with the kids. And at home, alone, she wondered what he was doing. Walking the dogs, she imagined him with a tiny dachshund/Maltese cross name Bruiser, and in bed at night, she fantasized about him naked beside her. She slept in his hoodie, the one he’d wrapped around her that first night. Yes, she’d stolen it, and had no qualms about her action. He’d taken five pairs of her panties. At least.
The case of wine he’d given her had long since been finished, but she kept one of the empty bottles on the windowsill in her kitchen. It was her symbol of triumph, a constant reminder that with the right attitude and the right people, she could overcome even the biggest obstacles.
It was also a constant reminder of the magical weekend she’d spent with Andrew. And the magic had come at a point in her life when she’d needed it the most.
The time they’d spent together in the Hunter had impacted her more than Tori had ever dreamed. Like she’d done with Declan, she’d assumed she’d be able to file Andrew away as a memory.
She hadn’t.
Her thoughts of him were so real, she constantly smelled his earthy, masculine scent, tasted the salt of his skin on her tongue. His laughter echoed through her ears, and the expression he’d worn when he’d watched her drive away haunted her. She’d watched him too, through her rearview mirror, until he’d disappeared from sight.
Tori ached for him. She had every day since she’d left him.
She hadn’t seen him or heard from him in three months, and now, here he was. In front of her, his gorgeous face captured on the front page of the newspaper beneath a headline stating, Seymour-Stafford strikes gold again.
Andrew stood beside another man, shaking the hand of a third. Tori had no idea who the other two men were, nor did she waste her time looking. Her gaze was fixed on Andrew, on the serious expression he wore. On the suit jacket that covered his beautiful chest and shoulders.
She only knew him in jeans and tees. Or bare-assed naked. The man in the article was a veritable stranger. One who tugged at her heart and made her chest tighten with longing.
Software prodigies Blake Seymour and Andrew Stafford have done it again: created a computer security program so essential to the IT industry, Onyx Solutions has paid over twenty million dollars to secure its part in the launch next week.
Criminey! Twenty million?
Andrew apparently played in the big leagues.
Seymour and Stafford. She mulled the names over in her head, something striking a familiar chord, as though she should recognize the company.
The figure is nowhere close to the US$400 million the pair secured nine years ago when they sold their first software package, but Stafford has declared he’s more than satisfied with the agreement the two companies have struck.
Her jaw dropped open.
Four hundred how much?
“Neen,” she yelled as she stumbled through the house to her lounge room, Winslow following close behind. “Why are the names Seymour and Stafford so familiar?”
“Seymour-Stafford?” Janine asked.
Maurice had come back inside and lay at Janine’s feet.
“Yeah. Why do I think I’ve heard about them before?”
“Aren’t they those two hotshot uni students who sold some software program to a company in the States for an obscene amount of money? It happened years ago. Before Tom and I even started dating.”
“Would obscene be in the vicinity of four hundred million?”
“Yeah, that’s it exactly. It was all over the papers. And the telly. I think the guys who created it were, like, twenty or twenty-one at the time. Hey, why are you asking? And why do you look so shocked?”
“Because, sister of mine, I met the Stafford of Seymour-Stafford the same day Declan and I broke up, and if not for him, I would never have made it through the weekend.”
“You met him?”
“He was there. At the hotel.” His friend and partner’s hotel. Blake Seymour must own the Rolling Hills. “He, um, came across me in the gazebo that night, found me in tears, and…well, he comforted me.”
Janine stared at her for a very long time before lifting Aaron off her breast, laying him
on her shoulder and rubbing his back. “Comforted you?”
“Okay. We had sex.”
Janine’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I’m sorry. You had what?”
“Sex. A lot of it. The whole weekend.”
“You had sex with a multimillionaire? In the gazebo? The same day Declan broke your heart?”
“I had sex with a wonderful man who made me feel like a new woman. I had no idea he was a multimillionaire. And it wasn’t just in the gazebo.”
“Holy shit.”
“He’s in the paper.”
“The multimillionaire?”
“The wonderful man.”
“Why?”
“Apparently he just made a deal worth a lot of money.”
“You slept with a millionaire who’s just made more millions?”
“I never knew.”
“That he was about to make a lot more money than he already had?”
“That he had money. He never acted like it. He’s just so…normal. So nice.”
“Can we forget about the money for a minute and focus on the important stuff? You slept with him?”
“I did.”
Aaron let out a mighty burp.
“My thoughts on the matter exactly,” Janine agreed. She placed him back in her arms and offered him the other breast.
“Are you shocked?” Tori hadn’t mentioned him to anyone up until now. Hadn’t wanted to. But now she’d seen his picture, she couldn’t keep Andrew to herself any longer.
“That you went out and got lucky after finding out your fiancé wasn’t going to marry you? Hell, yeah. But shocked in a good way. Although maybe a little grouchy you never told me before now… Hey, can you pass me my phone?”
“Now? I’m confessing my biggest secret in, like, ever, and you want your phone?”
“I have to call Tom and tell him my baby sister slept with a multimillionaire—at her wedding.”
“Neen!”
“Okay, okay, forget the phone. I’ll tell him later.”
“Great. I’m having a crisis, and you want to gossip with your husband.”