by Morey, Trish
“Um, what are you doing?”
He paused, considering her a while. “Is that a trick question?”
Her eyes narrowed. After three weeks in Australia, she was becoming aware that Australians didn’t always say exactly what they meant. It was kind of funny when she could keep up. But how did you respond when you weren’t sure? “I don’t—think so.”
“So what’s it look like I’m doing?”
“You’re taking off your clothes?”
He smiled, and she damn well wished he didn’t look so happy with it. “Bull’s eye.”
“But...”
“But... what?”
She blinked as he stood and undid the belt at his jeans and then unzipped his fly. She felt every one of those zipper teeth scorching a heated trail down her backbone. “Nothing.”
“You’re not shy, are you?”
“No! I’d just hate for you to catch cold.”
He hesitated with that, the start of a smile tweaking his lips. “I didn’t expect Bella’s Belle’s to take care of all my physical needs.”
“All part of the service,” she said breezily, willing the floor to open up and swallow her whole and spit her out the other side of the world. Anywhere would do. Anywhere at all would be preferable to being here. “Which reminds me,” she said, latching onto an alternate means of escape, albeit temporary, “how about I get you a beer or something?”
“Had one,” he said, a slight frown creasing his brow while the fingers of one hand casually flicked open the buttons of his shirt. In spite of herself and her needing to flee, her feet stayed exactly where they were as her eyes were drawn to his chest, tan-skinned and dusted with hair. Firm skin. A dusting of hair rather than a forest. Just the way she liked it. Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms to stop them aching to reach out and run her fingers through it. “And the last thing I want right now is brewer’s droop.”
She blinked, and had to drag her eyes away to meet his. “Excuse me?”
“Too Aussie for you, sweetheart? I do want to be able to perform.”
“Oh.” Heat scorched her cheeks and she looked away, although she wasn’t really sure it was because she was embarrassed at his words, or because he’d peeled off his shirt and dispensed with his jeans in quick succession, leaving nothing to cover him but a band of black, that hugged the nether regions of his body and left nothing to the imagination.
Absolutely nothing.
Suddenly her lungs felt as if they were flapping around like freshly landed trout on a lake shore. She put a hand over her chest to try to calm their flailing tails before they flapped right out of her. “Right,” she managed at length. “That would a shame.”
He looked at her then, his eyes going from the cowgirl hat on her head all the way down to her boots and back again until her skin tingled inside and out, and he smiled a broad hungry smile that this time set every organ inside her flapping. “Cowgirl, that would be all kinds of tragedy.”
And he turned and swiped off his underwear, picked up his towels and padded naked to the private bathroom.
Breathe she reminded herself, as the sight of the most perfect male buns she’d seen in a long time disappeared from view. Buns with dimples nestled just above, either side of the spine that bisected the two perfect halves of his back. Buns that sent a rush of heat to her blood and a tingling anticipation between her thighs.
Because soon he and his buns and his dimpled spine and his hungry eyes would be back and they’d climb onto that big wide bed together and make love and...
Whoa, right there!
What the hell was she thinking, constructing some kind of fantasy version of what was happening here? There was no making love. No matter what his hungry eyes might say, this was sex, pure and simple. A business transaction pure and simple, nothing more.
Business, she reminded herself, as she busied herself checking that everything was in order even though she already knew it was—the sheets freshly changed, the box of Kleenex at the ready, the condoms that were waiting on the bedside table.
Three condoms, she couldn’t help but notice.
Gulp.
Mitch wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it sure hadn’t been the green-eyed cowgirl waiting for him in the bedroom. Sure, she looked hot enough with scarlet hair that matched her name and dressed in that cute little black and pink number and those perky little boots, Oh man, if those provocative little boots on the end of those pins were enough to make him hot under the collar, it had definitely been too long. Yes sirree, he’d been looking for hot. He just hadn’t expected the skittishness.
But then, Bella or whatever her name was had said this girl was new. Maybe that was why.
Or was that just part of the act?
Maybe some guys went for that?
He shrugged as he put his face into the stream of water to rinse his hair. He had no idea what other guys went for. But he’d handed over his credit card and he was paying the money and he was already half primed in anticipation. Something about that nutty combination of black satin and pink bows and red hair and green eyes and a name like Scarlett—because what else could she be called in a place like this? Whatever, he could do a hell of a lot worse than an hour or two with someone who looked as good as this temporary cowgirl.
And if it meant he’d be in a better mood by the time he got to Broome for Robbo’s wedding, so much the better. He didn’t want to go anywhere near Kristelle with anything like a hungry look in his eye or she’d take it a sign of victory. And he was so not giving her one of those.
He felt himself wilting and cursed, snapping off the flow of water. Why the hell would he be thinking about Kristelle when he had princess in boots waiting in bed for him, and when he was paying for her time?
Why waste a minute of it?
Scarlett was sitting on the bed, her legs crossed, trying to look casual when the guy emerged from the bathroom. It was his fault entirely that she wasn’t able to carry it off, emerging as he did with his hair beading moisture at the ends and with a towel slung low on his hips.
Dangerously low.
Dangerously... delicious.
Just business, she reminded herself, when in truth it was all she could do not to drool at that glorious expanse of chest and abs, and that beguiling line of hair that separated the two sides of his abs and circled his belly button before heading south and disappearing under a knot of fluffy white towel.
She looked up and found him smiling at her, and she knew she’d been sprung. But he looked so good when he smiled that it was all but impossible to stop herself from smiling back. And somewhere in the back of her mind she knew one shouldn’t drool at a client, or smile without having to make some kind of effort. Shouldn’t actually be tingling at the thought of having sex with this man. But the way he looked at her made it so damned hard to remember this was business.
He took her hands and hauled her to her feet. “I thought we were going to bed.”
And the jolt she felt on contact, a hundred times more powerful than when their fingers had brushed, warned her that the six times tables or even the sevens weren’t going to cut it. It was time to bring out the big guns.
One times eight is eight.
Two times eight is sixteen.
“Sure,” she said, with her head back in a Marietta Elementary School classroom with a wall filled with numbers and tables and charts and old Mrs. Henson with her stick pointing out the next line in the chant and she felt better already.
Three times eight is twenty-four.
“In that case,” he said, as he swiped the hat from her head and spun it away into a corner, “it appears one of us is over-dressed.”
Four time eight is...
He touched his hands to her shoulders—long-fingered hands that brought with them that jolt of electricity and the wall of charts and tables blurred and faded in the knowledge that these hands—these electric long-fingered hands—would soon be all over her, and that thought damn near
sucked the air from her lungs along with her recital.
Four times eight, she persisted, finding her place. Four times eight is thirty-two.
Good. She just needed to stay in control. Who was the client here after all? She made a move to twist out of his arms, to sit down on the big wide bed. “I’ll just get my boots off—“ But he stopped her descent, her shoulders held fast in his big hands, fingers squeezing into her flesh, and she knew that if her knees buckled under her right now, she would not fall.
And given the way the muscles in his arms and chest had contracted as he’d supported her, it was a wonder her knees hadn’t buckled.
Forget muscles!
Think boring.
Five times eight is forty.
Six times eight—
“How about we leave the boots on, cowgirl, at least for now.” His voice was husky low and so sexy that there was only one way for her pulse to go and that was into overdrive. And that was before he dipped his mouth to her throat, drawing her closer as his lips set fire to her skin, sending her senses damn near into meltdown.
She heard a sigh, and realized it had come from her, as he collected her close against his chest, his hands molding her to him, from shoulder to waist to butt, his mouth doing wicked things to her skin, the drumbeat of her blood blocking out rational thought, so that she wondered the point of an eight times table, anyhow?
It made no sense at all.
Nothing made sense beyond the desperate need to lace her arms around his neck and drink in the feel of him, hot and hard against her.
God, but he smelt good, of clean skin and lemon soap and all overlaid with the scent of masculine desire.
She shuddered against him. He was like Christmas and New Year all rolled into one; the surprise package under the Christmas tree and the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. He was the birthday present she’d always wished for and never gotten, and the blessing she would have given eternal thanks for at Thanksgiving.
He was the lover she’d imagined meeting when she’d knocked on that ordinary door on an ordinary house in a middle-class suburb in Perth.
And didn’t that sluice a bucket of cold water over her right there? How cruel life was that it would send her a man who could make her feel like this now. Here. In this place.
A place where she had no wish to feel anything, least of all this heavy, pooling heat between her thighs.
Vaguely was she aware of the towel at his hips tugging loose between them and falling away at the same time as his hand curled over her breast, his thumb tracing the line where skin disappeared under fabric.
His mouth moved lower and he kissed her there, his tongue flicking fire across the skin of her breast and she gasped, knowing she’d lost any semblance of control—times tables long forgotten, her senses in disarray.
A day or two more—a few more clients—and she’d be used to this.
And part of her rebelled.
She didn’t ever want to get used to this.
She didn’t ever want to be numb to something that felt so good.
Didn’t want something that felt so good as to be ultimately meaningless.
She felt his hands at her back, felt a tug and a loosening and his hands easing the corset down and her nerves turned to panic with the knowledge that she couldn’t do this—could no more turn off from what was happening than pretend that up was down or that night was day.
Couldn’t bring herself to do this, whatever the reason, and knew that her mother would never in a million years expect her to.
“Actually, you know, maybe not,” she said, wriggling away on an bubble of panic that came out half way to laughter, while her fingers held on tight to the front of her loosening corset.
He growled approvingly against her ear, his warm breath threatening to break her resolve as his hands skimmed her body and honed in on her panties instead. “You want to keep it on with the boots? Kinky.”
“No! Yes!” She shook her head and tried to wriggle away. “But no, that wasn’t actually what I meant.”
“So what—” he said, not letting her go and nuzzling the skin below her ear so that she almost purred with it, “—did you mean?”
She pulled herself away from his hot-as-sin mouth. “I meant, you seem like a nice guy ’n’ all… ” She searched for the words. “But I’d rather not have sex right now, if it’s all the same to you.”
Finally she had his full attention. The hands at her hips stilled as he pulled his head back to look at her. “You’d rather —what did you say?”
The hungry growl in his voice was gone, she noticed, replaced by a tone a lot less friendly. And it was a shame to make him mad when he seemed like a nice guy, but she guessed he had a right to be just a little cranky. She shrugged and smiled apologetically. “I don’t know about you, but it’s just not working for me.”
His hands fell away from her, his blue eyes disbelieving, his lip tugged up into a what-the-hell without the words. “You’re kidding me, right?”
She shrugged. “I’m real sorry, truly I am, but under the circumstances, I can’t see the point of going on with this. So—uh—if you don’t mind, you might put your clothes back on and—” her fingers did a little walk in the air between them—“go?”
His face screwed up. “Is this some kind of game? Because I didn’t pay for the innocent virgin package or the comedy bedroom capers. Straight-up sex, that’s all I’m here for. That’s what I chose you for.”
She swallowed and held her ground, which he wasn’t making any easier for her. He looked gorgeous even when he was angry. Angry, naked and utterly gorgeous. There should be a law against it.
“Well, there’s the problem in a nutshell right there,” she said, clutching her loose corset to her breasts like a shield. “Because I didn’t choose you.”
“What?”
“Nobody asked me what I wanted.”
“What?”
“I’m real sorry.”
“You already said that,” he growled, as he plucked up his underwear and his jeans and thrust his legs through the holes like he was punching fence post holes in the ground. “Okay. I’m going.”
She swallowed. She felt bad, she really did, just not bad enough to change her mind again. “I’m sure Bella will give you a refund. Or maybe Jasmine—“
“Forget it.” No way was Mitch staying in this nuthouse a moment longer. He swiped on his shirt, stuffed his feet into socks and shoes. “What is your problem anyway?”
She blinked up at him and for a moment he feared those big green eyes were going to spill with tears, reminding him of another time and another’s tears. Being spun back to that time was just what he needed to get the hell out of here before things got a whole lot uglier. “Forget I asked,” he growled, as he pulled open the door. “I don’t want to know.”
Chapter Three
“I’m hoping to find work.”
Mitch was nursing what was left of his second beer at a table in the front bar of the York Hotel when he heard it: the unmistakable twang of an American accent. A strikingly familiar American accent. His head snapped up and sure enough, she might be baring less skin than the last time he’d seen her, and have tied her hair back into a long rope of a braid for sure, but it was her. With hair that color, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
And for the space of a second, until the shock of seeing her again dissipated and her words actually registered in his brain, he was half thinking she must have followed him here. Except he’d left Bella’s more than an hour ago and there was no reason after what had happened—or more to the point, what hadn’t happened—that she’d want to follow him anywhere. He was in no rush to renew their acquaintance. He pushed back in his chair, shrinking back into the shadows, wishing he had a hat to pull down over his face like they always did in the western movies he used to watch as a kid.
She let the big backpack drop from her shoulder onto the floor where it landed with a heavy thud. A backpacker then, he thought, as his eyes took in t
he view of her from the back in a little white shirt and faded jeans. That made sense. The west was full of backpackers, come to make their fortune, or at least enough money before moving on, while it seemed the rest of the Western Australian population was busy working at the mines.
“Are you hiring at the moment?” he heard her ask the young barman, who, given his accent and his blonde northern European looks, was no doubt a backpacker himself.
The young barman shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the boss,” he said, gesturing towards the fifty-something woman returning from the lounge bar behind. “Maude does all the hiring.”
“What’s that, lovey?” the woman said, hearing her name.
“This girl wants to know if there are any jobs.”
“I’m new in town,” Mitch heard her say, “And someone at the bakery told me she’d heard you had a vacancy.”
The woman frowned and tossed a dish towel over her ample shoulder before placing her hands wide apart on the bar and all but resting her bust on the counter. “Yeah we did. But I’m sorry lovey, not any more. We just hired a new girl yesterday.”
“Oh.” He saw her shoulders drop even though she managed a tight smile. “Okay,” she said, wearily, “thanks anyway.”
She was lugging her pack from the floor and already turning to leave when he heard Maude say, “Have you tried Bella’s? They’re always looking for new girls.”
He saw her eyelids droop, witnessed the intake of breath, before the girl turned back with a weak smile and said, “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
And then she was gone.
Mitch sat there for a while after she’d left, contemplating the foamy residue sliding slowly down the sides of his glass. So the cowgirl had lost her job. Or given it up. Either way, he shouldn’t feel bad, it was clear she wasn’t cut out for it. It wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong.
Damn it, he hadn’t done anything at all.