by Ally Blake
She needed to move before he woke and found her feeling so soft, and squidgy, and enamoured. He might get the wrong idea.
Bull.
No, really! He was the one area of her life where she was completely and utterly devoid of hope.
Complete and utter bollocks.
She tried shushing her subconscious but it only crossed its arms and held its ground.
She risked another glance at the subject in question and, the moment she did, her heart tripped and tumbled. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t feel even the smallest flutter of what if?
No. She shook her head. She wasn’t falling for Finn. Not for a guy who’d made it clear from the outset that falling was not an option. The only way that would end was with a kersplat!
Biting her lips together and holding her breath, April slowly slid her leg out of the tangle of sheets. Inch by slow inch. She made it as far as her foot before she realised the gentle snoring had stopped.
“Where do you think you’re going?” growled a deeply sleepy voice.
Dammit! “Ah, home?”
“I thought you had more gumption that that.”
Her foot stilled. “I have gumption. Gumption to spare. What I don’t have is a single clue how best to extricate myself from a one-night stand.”
“Who said this was a one-night stand?”
“Um, you did. So vociferously I was expecting find myself presented with an actual contract saying as much before I dared enter your bed.”
Finn turned, his big body shifting the mattress so April rose on a wave before settling back into a dip. He heaved himself onto one elbow, his bicep popping. His hair fell over his forehead making him look younger. His blue-blue eyes were shadowed, sleepy, sexy as all get out. The sheet had moved with him, covering his bits but leaving bare the arrow of hair leading from his navel to the promised land.
“Is that what you want?” he asked.
April whipped her eyes from his hip-region to stare between his eyes. “Hmm?”
“Just one turn on the merry-go-round?”
Oh. Okay. “Are you suggesting that now you’ve had a taste, you’d be amenable to doing this again, another time or two?”
Finn shook his head. “For a woman with your imagination, your foresight is disappointing. Another time?” He used his spare hand to run a course over her hip. “Or two?” He reached the side of her breast, scraping a fingernail so close to her nipple she shuddered. Then he leaned in and followed with his tongue, laving the spot till her eyes fluttered closed. “Sweetheart, this night is so far from over its not funny.”
April wasn’t laughing.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” he hummed against her breast.
“Did you see the size of my purse? It wouldn’t fit.”
He laughed, his hot breath wafting over her nipple until it tightened into a painful nub.
He lifted to look into her eyes. “When I told you my life is complicated right now that’s not a line. If I had even an ounce of altruism I’d toss you out on your delicious ass. But I don’t. So I won’t let you go. Not yet. Because, while my life is a series of snarls and complexities, when I’m with you things feel... simple.”
He lifted a meaty shoulder in an unapologetic shrug. Sexy brackets formed either side of his heavenly mouth. And April was undone. Unspooling like a rogue ball of twine until she was a puddle of string at his feet.
She rolled her eyes, feigning nonchalance. “Fine. I’ll stay.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said, his voice lower, full of promise.
And she was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh.
“So what do we do now? Spoon? Snuggle? Watch Netflix?”
Like lightning, Finn moved so that he hovered over the top of her. Only the man’s brute strength kept him from crushing her. “What would you like to do?”
“Um, there was that thing you did last time. I don’t quite know what to call it.”
He pressed a mite closer and whispered in her ear. The things he said, the things he promised, made her toes curl back so far she feared they might snap right off.
“Yep.” She managed to get out, “that’ll do it.”
He began to move into position, but she stopped him with a hand at his chest. She pressed into the steady beat of his heart. Her poor heart was galloping like crazy.
But she had things to say. “You want simple?”
He looked down at her. Into her. Dark and secretive and contained. And silent.
Have mercy.
“Then here’s my version of simple. I like you, Finn. But you’re a smart guy. You already know that. What you don’t know is that you get to me in ways I can’t rationalise. And even while it scares me a little, and even while I know this isn’t forever, I need you to know that while we’re doing this, I’m all yours.”
His nostrils flared. His eyes turned the colour of a sky before a storm.
His voice came out so deep it was barely human. “I know.”
She knew that too, yet the fact he’d said it out loud made it feel all too real.
She wriggled, making space for him beneath her skin as his words, his voice, the hunger in his expression seeped into her like roots absorbing nutrients from the depths of the earth. “Good, because its a big responsibility. I am a woman of needs. I only hope you’re up to the task.”
He smiled, only this time it didn’t reach his eyes. They’d gone dark, shadowed, clouded with needs of his own.
Then he kissed her, taking her out of her body and out of this world. And there was nothing she could do but hang on.
April tiptoed past Mrs. Parsons’ front door, a teeny edge of guilt shadowing the creaks on the stairs as she remembered the contract of sale that would soon be on its way.
Sunlight crept under the front door as April let herself into her place as quietly as she could. No need to wake Erica.
Hope sprang eternal.
As did the karma pixies. A floorboard creaked the next step she took.
Erica snaffled awake, tossing her blanket to the floor by the couch. Her feet hit it a moment later. “What? Who’s that? Where? What?”
“Go back to sleep,” April whispered as she edged past on her way to her room.
“That’s not likely, the way you clomped in here.” Erica ran two hands over her face.
Her dead straight hair looked ruffled and sexy, even after sleeping on one side. Eyeliner smudged beneath her eyes. Her arms were too skinny in her Red Hot Chili Peppers tank top.
For all the tough facade, April saw a delicacy in her sister no one else seemed to see. Fragility rather than brittleness.
She eyed the empty Downton Abbey DVD case open on the coffee table and her heart somehow made a little extra room for her caustic sister. Biting back a yawn, she climbed over the blanket and sat next to her sister. “Go on then. Let me have it.”
“Have what?”
“My walk of shame.”
Erica’s eyes slunk sideways as she took in the shoes April cuddled to her chest. Her sexy little cocktail dress. Her nearly straight hair. Hours of Olympic-level nookie had put paid to the efforts of Blue Hair.
Her eyes finally settled back on April’s. “Do you feel ashamed?”
April let her head fall back against the couch and she breathed out hard. She felt tired. She felt achy and odd and hollowed out some. But ashamed?
“Not a single bit.”
Erica grunted. Then gathered up the blanket and threw it over the two of them, which, for April’s big sister, was as good as a hug.
“What are we watching?”
Erica shrugged. “That sappy show you love so much. I needed something to put me to sleep.”
April found the remote, picked the very first episode and tucked her legs up onto the couch. Tired as she was, her head was so full she wondered if she’d ever sleep again.
April stirred. She smelled coffee on the air, heard the sound of the fridge opening and shutting and the murmur of voices.
&
nbsp; Slowly unkinking her kinks, she clenched all over when gravity reminded her she’d fallen asleep on the couch.
And everything came back to her in a rush – the night before, her walk of shame, falling asleep in front of Downton with Erica at her side.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”
April creaked open one eye to find JJ – Erica’s best friend—and the success story that inflicted the Cinderella Project onto the world—sitting on the adjacent couch curling and uncurling her toes on the coffee table.
“Wrong fairy tale,” Erica said as she stepped over JJ’s knees and curled up next to her. “Look at her hair. Check out the shoes under the coffee table. Our girl’s given herself a serious Cinderella makeover. It’s weird.”
Pinking at how close Erica had just come to the truth, Aril turned to JJ. “When did you get in?”
“Ship hit Sydney yesterday. Kane and I are land-locked for the next couple of weeks this time. Lucky, because it seems we have an engagement party to throw.”
JJ flashed her left hand and with it a pretty ring, sporting a serious champagne diamond that matched her whiskey brown eyes.
April dragged herself to sitting and peeled a long straggly hair out of her mouth. She grabbed JJ’s hand. Then pulled her into a big hug.
“Oh, JJ! That’s gorgeous news. I’m so happy for you both.”
JJ grinned as she pulled away. She shot Erica a look. “So, you two are living together.”
“Seems that way,” Erica said.
April poked a finger towards JJ. “I blame you.”
“How’s that?”
“If you hadn’t have gone on that cruise you’d never have met Kane, never have fallen in love, never have moved in with him, and you’d be looking after Erica now rather than me.”
“How the world turns.”
Indeed. If it had just been JJ, April might have taken that moment to spill all. To tell her about Hazel and the Cinderella Project. JJ was pragmatic. And had none of Erica’s issues.
JJ gave April a closer look. “So why the makeover?”
Erica piped up. “April had herself a hot date.”
“The Thor guy from New Year’s you said was following her around like a lost puppy?” JJ asked. “No, the cute guy from work?”
“New new guy.”
“Sweet!”
“Not sweet,” Erica said, giving April a long look. “Enigmatic, broody. But he’s sweet on her.”
“It’s new.” April qualified. Temporary. Over already? “Totally casual.”
“Look at her,” JJ said. “She’s a goner.”
“What? No. It’s all fun and games. Nothing more.”
“Whatever you say.” JJ pulled herself to standing. “Invite him to the engagement party if you’re still playmates by then. And on that note...”
She ambled over to April’s makeshift bookshelves with their piles of magazines, psychology texts, cookbooks, historical romance novels. April wondered, not for the first time, if painting the shelves might make the place feel more snug, more homely. More like it would really one day be hers.
JJ bent, impeding April’s view. “I want a cake for the party that’s totally Kane. Can I borrow that kids’ cake book, the one with the football on the front?”
“Sure.”
“Ah, April?” JJ’s voice sounded weirdly strained.
April turned to find JJ holding a cookbook in one hand, and what looked like...
Oh god. Oh no.
April was out of the couch and leaping over the coffee table, her slippery green dress hiking up to her thighs. “That’s nothing. Here, give it to me.”
But it was too late.
JJ had found her contract for the Cinderella Project. The one she’d hidden in a cookbook, knowing Erica would never go looking there in a million years.
“What is it?” Erica asked.
JJ held the contract out of April’s reach, and narrowed her eyes. “I leave you guys alone for, what, a month? Erica, how could you let her do this? She’s your little sister? It’s your duty to protect her from exactly this kind of stuff!”
“I have no idea what you’re wobbling on about.”
“She signed up for the Cinderella Project, you goose.”
“The what now?” Erica asked.
“Hazel, Erica, from the cruise.”
“Right.”
“Remember the party at that crazy dollhouse she opened in Vaucluse? The waiters with angel wings? The kissing booth?”
“I really don’t.”
JJ took her by the shoulders and shook her. “April’s signed up with Hazel Hamilton-Hayes’ new matchmaking business!”
The room grew so quiet April heard a gecko tut-tut from its hidey hole in a crevice somewhere. Then Erica burst into laughter.
April turned on her sister. “I haven’t.”
JJ held up the contract. Pointed to the stylised glass slipper up top.
“Fine, I have signed up with Hazel. But not for matchmaking.” Why did everyone think she needed help in that area? “There’s a promotion at work that I really want. It looked like it might not fall my way so I hired Hazel to help me turn that around.”
“By straightening your hair?”
“That part was unearthing my va-va-voom.”
Erica and JJ stared at her so long April felt heat creep up her neck and land in hot blotches in her cheeks. She knew in that moment what a certain fairy tale heroine must have felt like at the feet of her obstinate stepsisters.
“It’s all in there,” April said, waggling a finger at the contract.
Then Erica shouted. “I knew it!”
“Knew what?” April asked, even while she had the horrible feeling she knew exactly what was coming.
“Mr. Enigmatic.”
April swallowed.
“He’s all wrapped up in this somehow. I knew you wouldn’t be with a man like that without some kind of weird something going on.”
Wow. Erica could be hard work. And her version of blunt wasn’t as measured as April’s. But she’d just flown over the hill to just plain mean.
“Erica!” JJ chastised, shooting an apologetic look at April.
April didn’t even flinch. She’d spent her life on the pointy end of her older sister’s sharp tongue and it didn’t make a dent. Not much. Letting Erica hurt her was something she’d grown out of years ago. But she still felt tender from the night before. Exposed. Her heart not quite fitting inside of her chest. Her soft underbelly was exposed and she felt everything with a newfound keenness.
“No,” Erica said, eyes flaring now that she was on a roll. “The man is stunning, JJ. He’d give Kane a serious run for his money. I tried flirting with him and nothing. He was like a statue. All cool and stony and untouchable. He’s so far from April’s usual soft, squishy deadbeats I’d go so far as saying they’re not even the same species.”
April’s heart squeezed – at the deadbeats jab and the fact that Erica hit on Finn, even when she thought she was April’s boyfriend. How could her sister be so cruel?
You know why. And you’ll never call her on it, because, deep down, you know it’s your fault.
Shaking off those unconstructive thoughts, April said, “You just said he was sweet on me.”
Erica scoffed. “You’re so out of your head right now, he probably saw you as an easy yes.”
“Ignore her,” JJ said, moving to slap a hand over Erica’s mouth.
“Oh, how I try.”
But Erica had hit on something April had been dancing around since day dot.
Finn was closed off and near impossible to break down. All that strong, sexy, stoicism – it was shocking to her how appealing it was. Like a double dare.
She remembered him walking her to her car the night before – no, it must have been earlier that morning. Birds twittered on the air, dogs barked a few streets over, and the first grey light of morning brushed his hair and shoulders.
And he’d kissed her goodbye. She’d felt such heat wash ove
r her, such tenderness.
Then he’d helped her inside the car. Offering no plans, whispering no sweet nothings, giving only silence until the slam of her car door.
Yet the urge to see him again thumped through her like a brand new pulse.
Oh, dog. This was really not going to end well.
“I think it’s time April tells us the whole truth. Remember what Mum always says; ‘Don’t hold it in, girls, or the day you let it all out it will have enough power behind it to bring down cities’.”
“You don’t believe a word Mum says!”
“But you do. Her little acolyte. Always the good girl. Always on her side. Dad never stood a chance.”
And there it was. The great gulf that had been between them for years. Daddy’s little girl blamed her little sister for Daddy leaving. And she wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Out,” April said, her voice barely above a whisper.
But it carried.
Erica folded her arms.
“Out!” April said, shouting this time and waggling a finger at the front door. “Get out of my apartment. Now.”
“Fine.” Erica didn’t even stop to grab shoes, a bag, a key, she just stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
April rushed to the door, opened it, shouted down the stairs, “Don’t forget we have breakfast with Mum tomorrow!”
Erica waved a hand behind her. Or more specifically two fingers.
Right when Mrs. Parsons popped her head out of her front door.
“Everything alright, dear?” she asked, eyes wide as she watched Erica storm past.
April called, “Everything’s great, Mrs. Parsons! I have a container of caramel cream cupcakes if you’d like me to bring you some later.”
Mrs. Parsons wriggled with glee. “That’d be lovely, dear.” She shut the door.
April shut hers. Then slid down the wall till her bum hit the floor. Her stupid borrowed dress was so short she had to wriggle it to cover her bum.
JJ slowly sat next to her. “One day she’ll wake up, realise how lucky she is that you’re in her life and then you’ll never be rid of her.”