The Hero (Hot Aussie Heroes Book 2)
Page 3
“I think you’re wrong,” he murmured.
And he intended to use their enforced time together to show her just that. If nothing else came out of this week, if she kicked him to the curb and didn’t ever want to see him ever again afterwards, he could live with that as long as Dale was out of the picture, too.
*
Edwina was relieved that the first small town they came to had some enthusiastic locals lining the road, it gave them something to do, to focus on other than the low hum of longing that cluttered up the inside of the car, that blew hot despite the deceptive cool of the state-of-the-art air-con.
They stopped and got out, greeting the little band of well-wishers, signing autographs and posing for pictures. They even used their donation bucket for the first time and Edwina was surprised to see how generous people were. Hopefully, the trend would continue.
It felt good to be out amongst people whose lives they touched in some small way each day, just through the magic of television. It was easy to get caught up in the trappings of fame, in the publicity and the way people fawned. But these locals didn’t care about ego or any of the Green Room politics, they were just happy to see famous people they watched every night on the tele coming through their tiny town, where nothing exciting ever happened.
So she smiled and signed and answered questions happily. There was one very persistent Gift Of Life fan that asked some personal questions that Edwina had to dodge, but she was okay with that too – it wasn’t anything she hadn’t had to dodge before, and the very arty We Love GrOwen sign looked like it had taken an extraordinary amount of time to construct.
Then Justin had kissed the girl on the cheek, pretty much taking care of the questions as the teenager seemed to forget just about everything, including her own name.
Edwina knew how she felt.
Justin’s kisses could make a MENSA graduate dumber than a box of nails.
And that pretty much set the pattern for the rest of the day, as they wound their way through Snowy River country and crossed the state border into New South Wales. Stopping every half an hour or so to pose for a photo, sign an autograph or accept some money.
Five hours later they stopped for lunch in Cooma, along with a bunch of the other rally cars, eating hot meat pies from the bakery and guzzling down tins of cold soft drinks or icy water. They chatted with each other and with people from the town, and Edwina was amazed at the sense of camaraderie. Her heart just about burst with pride at being part of this incredible act of charity, for such an iconic national organisation.
She wouldn’t have wished the catalyst for it on her worst enemy, but channel five could be damned proud at how they were repaying their debt. As Dan Wylie, the CEO, had said this morning at the briefing, “Channel five owes the Royal Flying Doctor Service for the way they saved one of our own.”
Who knew – maybe if the ratings were good and they hit their monetary target, they’d make it a yearly thing?
By the time they drove into Canberra around four in the afternoon, the sun was lower in the sky and flocks of pink galahs were already feasting on the dry, grassy roadside verges that lined the entrance to the nation’s capital. Edwina and Justin had over five hundred dollars in their bucket and they were on every social media page in the country.
Actually, the entire rally was. It was trending on Twitter, which had lit up with pictures coming from people in the places they’d driven through, and the special Facebook page channel five had set up for the event was flooded with photos from fans who’d been lucky enough to score a moment or two with their favourite channel five celebrity.
The cars straggled in, one by one, over the course of an hour, pulling up at a park on the shores of Lake Burly Griffin, where a huge free BBQ was being thrown by channel five and local businesses keen to help in whatever way they could.
“Well, we made it,” Justin said as they pulled up, traversing the area slowly as the crowds had already started to build. The vehicle beside them was an old decommissioned ambulance that had been painted with rainbows and mermaids.
“And the back seat is still a virgin,” Edwina smiled.
He laughed. “Lucky for you there were a lot of distractions today.”
He was right. The proximity of towns and the enthusiasm of the people had given them plenty to do and talk about when they were alone in the car again, distracting them from more carnal thoughts.
But suddenly, with that gone, the air was thick with longing again. “Do you have many more of those things?”
Edwina frowned as he nodded at her Capris and looked down at them, running a hand down her thigh. “I have a pair for every day,” she said. “Why, what’s wrong with them?”
He dropped his head to the steering wheel and groaned, deep and low. “You are trying to kill me.”
His groan weaved through the fibres deep inside her belly. “They’re perfectly decent. They cover practically all of my legs. And I’m trying to be retro… to meld in with your car.”
He glanced up at her, his forehead still resting on the wheel. “The car’s from 1975. You should be wearing bell bottoms and psychedelic dresses. Not… cute little… tight little… flirty little… innocent looking… Gidget clothes, with that ponytail that swings perkily and brushes against your neck. I swear, all I want to do is pull your hair down and zip you out of those pants.”
Edwina blinked. She’d liked the Gidget look on her, but she hadn’t done it deliberately to get to him. She really had been trying to go with the retro elegance of Justin’s restored Monaro – his pride and joy – that spent so much of its life now locked up and under cover in a garage.
But it was interesting to know he was getting off on her look. Kind of an ego boost, really. But should she stop? Was it fair to keep tempting him? Or was it unfair of him to even mention it in the first place? He may be a man, and they may often be ruled by the tiny brain in their pants, but that was no excuse for lack of control.
She looked at what he was wearing. Trendy mustard coloured shorts that hugged the lean length of his thighs and sat just above his knee, exposing the light brown hair of his legs, and an aubergine t-shirt that sat flat against his belly.
Did he seriously think he was any less tempting?
Although, she couldn’t think of a single thing he could dress himself in that would make her want him any less.
“Well, apart from a few evening outfits, this is all I’ve got, so I guess you’re just going to have to suck it up.”
He nodded, closing his eyes, his forehead still attached to the steering wheel. “I’m never going to last,” he muttered.
A flash flared startling both upright in their bucket seats. Two teenage girls standing directly in front of the Monaro laughed excitedly and jumped up and down looking at the photo on their phone.
Edwina just knew it was going to end up on Facebook.
She looked at him. “Yes, you damn well will,” she said. “We both will.”
*
Four hours later, Edwina was dog tired. The shores of the lake had been picture perfect, the phallic rise of Black Mountain tower an impressive back drop. But she was done. She’d mingled, smiled, signed, posed, and done four interviews on the run – two with Justin.
She was over being polite and friendly.
She was over being Dr. Grace Harper.
Lying on her hotel bed, eating hot, thick-cut room service chips, she was just Edwina Calloway.
And she was exhausted.
Her mobile rang. Jenny. She answered it immediately.
“Hey, Jenny.”
Her older sister greeted her with her usual cheeriness and complete lack of artifice, excited to tell her all about how she’d seen Edwina on the news tonight, and how tomorrow a special bus was coming to pick a bunch of them up to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb.
Edwina’s heart squeezed in her chest as it always did when she spoke to her older sister. Chatting with Jenny, who had the intellectual capacity of a twelve year old, E
dwina realised how easy it was to get bogged down in first world crap. Jenny’s world revolved around her part-time job at the printing factory, her three flatmates at her residential care facility, and what she’d seen at the movies that week.
Tonight such uncomplicated pleasures seemed like bliss and she smiled as Jenny chattered away.
There was a knock at the door and, distracted by Jenny’s happy prattle, Edwina walked over and looked through the spy hole.
Justin. Of course.
“Jus is here,” she said into the receiver as she opened the door. She was in her robe again but Jenny adored Justin. Always had.
Dale, not so much.
Justin quirked an eyebrow at her as he stood on her threshold. “It’s Jenny,” she mouthed.
He grinned and held out his hand for the phone, entering the hotel room without having to beg or plead his way in. Edwina fell back, letting him enter as he teased her sister in that light, bantery way he always had and they both knew she loved.
“You got it?” he said as he wandered across her room with her phone. “Excellent. I’m always worried about posting things.”
Before she knew it, before she could figure out what he was talking about, he was stepping out onto the balcony, his deep, steady baritone reaching inside to her through the open sliding door.
Edwina followed, her gaze landing on the long, lean contours of Justin’s back and the outline of his narrow hips in the moonlight, which shimmered on the surface of the lake and painted everything in alabaster.
Justin turned, laughing at something Jenny had said, leaning casually against the balcony railing, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle.
“Okay, Jenny. Here she is. Talk to you later.”
He smiled at Edwina and passed the phone over, and her heart did a funny summersault in her chest. Jenny was about to miss a television show and wasn’t interested in making any more small talk, so Edwina said good-bye quickly and hung up.
There was silence for a long moment, during which Edwina was conscious of Justin’s gaze on her hair, her neck, her mouth as they stood on her hotel room balcony, in the milky glare of a full moon.
“She sounds good,” Justin said.
“Yeah. She’s thriving at Dundas House. It was the best decision I ever made for her.”
Edwina had been responsible for her intellectually impaired sister since both parents had died in a car crash a week after Edwina’s twentieth birthday. Jenny had been thirty and residing in an independent living facility at the time, and Edwina had promised Jenny she’d be okay, that she’d look after her. And it had been one of the many things she’d been dealing with when she’d met Dale.
Government cutbacks had changed the system and the way it was funded and set up, and Jenny hadn’t been happy in her old facility any longer. So Edwina moved Jenny back home and had been her carer and protector and advocate – without Dale’s support.
But Jenny craved the independence she’d lost, and after many false starts they’d finally, a few years ago, found a place and a job that Jenny loved.
“What have you been sending her?”
He shrugged. “Just some signed movie posters. Apparently she has a friend there who’s a fan, so she passes them on to her.”
Edwina tried to nod calmly as Justin admitted to something that made her heart melt. Dale had been hopeless with Jenny, treating her like she was some kind of alien or very hard of hearing. But Justin, who had met Jenny several times, had been cool and easy with her from the get-go and Jenny had adored him. She’d never missed a single episode of Gift of Life in those two years that Justin starred alongside Edwina.
“That’s very nice of you.”
His gaze dropped to her cleavage. “I’m a nice guy.”
Edwina half laughed, half snorted in a very unladylike manner. Her nipples responded to the blatant perve. They were hard and tight, and difficult to ignore under the huge lunar spotlight, and she noticed that Justin didn’t even bother trying.
Her breath caught in her throat at his unhurried approval of their state and she knew if she didn’t make a move to stop this, she was just going to open the damn robe and be done with it.
She folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t look like you’re having very nice thoughts at the moment,” she said, filling her voice with reproach.
He smiled unabashed as he returned his gaze to her face. “That’s true. I do want to do bad things to you.”
His statement rumbled over her like a physical caress and Edwina rolled her eyes to hide the sudden leap in her pulse.
“Okay,” she said, “did you want anything in particular or will you coming to visit me in my room be a nightly occurrence? Are you trying to test yourself, Jus, because that seems kinds of dumb, given the circumstances?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I just don’t seem to be able to keep away.”
“Well, try harder,” she said, yanking the tie on the robe tighter then turning on her heel and marching back into the room, heading for the door.
They were never going to make it through if he turned up on her doorstep, telling her he wanted to do bad things to her.
For starters, the press were staying in the same hotel.
For seconds, she might just take him up on it.
“The party’s still going on down there. That’s two nights in a row you’ve piked now,” he said from somewhere behind her as he came in from the balcony. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” Edwina said, dismissing the question with a flick of her hand as she turned to face him. “You know me, never been much of a party girl.”
At the start of her career, attending functions and parties had been a heady and exciting part of her job, but they’d gotten really old really quick, especially after she’d married Dale and become his pretty little bauble to show off.
There was so much fakeness and artifice at celebrity shindigs, it was hard to know who was being genuine and who was being friendly just because they wanted to be signed by Dale.
“I think that’s what I like about you best.”
It was on the tip of Edwina’s tongue to say what was under her robe was what he liked best, but there was no point poking that ant’s nest – not if she wanted the tie of her robe to remain intact. She smiled instead. She’d missed him in so many ways, but probably this way the most. The fact that he’d only known her for four years but he knew her more than Dale ever would.
“Okay… there is something up,” he said, frowning at her.
“No.” Edwina shook her head. But Jenny’s phone call had sparked something that had been worrying at her brain for a long time.
He crossed his arms. “Ed.”
Edwina relented on a sigh. “Can I ask you something?”
“You know you can,” he replied softly.
“What do you think about…”
When it came to verbalising it, Edwina wasn’t even sure she could. It had always been so clear cut in her head but everything had changed. “I’ve been thinking about telling the press… maybe writing an article for one of the more female friendly blogs out there… about Jenny.”
His frown deepened. “Okay… but why? You always wanted to protect her from any exposure to adverse publicity. So she could just live a normal life, without paparazzi trying to get pictures of her and slap her on magazines covers like she was some freak you were trying to sweep under the carpet.”
Edwina nodded. “Yes.” And there wasn’t one part of her that didn’t still want to protect her sister from prying and often unkind eyes. But…
“Dale’s threatened to take the story to the press.”
If they hadn’t been having such a serious conversation Edwina might have laughed at the comical what-the-ever-loving-fuck expression on Justin’s face.
“What story?” he demanded. “Jenny’s your sister. She’s not some… story. Wow.” He shook his head in disgust. “He just gets to be more and more of a screw up, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he is, and yes, I know Jenny’s not some story for the media machine to chew up and spit out, but by keeping that part of my life private in order to protect her, it’ll look like I’ve been trying to deny her existence and he knows it.”
He clenched his hands and shook his head. “For fuck’s sake,” he swore. “Dale was the one who convinced you to keep it all hush-hush in the first place. He didn’t want you embarrassed by your sister’s condition, remember?”
“Yes. The irony is not lost on me. But he’s mad enough at me to lash out about it.”
Justin shook his head again, his lovely mouth set in a grim line. “He’s mad at you? He really needs someone to punch him in the face.”
Edwina laughed. The thought of punching him right in the kisser had occurred to her many times, but she’d just wanted out with as little controversy as possible. He wanted half her money and a share in her royalties and all her future earning – fine. She didn’t care and she hadn’t fought him.
Having him gone was all that had mattered.
But even six months after the divorce, he was still digging in. “I feel like…” she paused. “I feel it might be better if I control the story and not him. I’ll be able to prepare Jenny and work out something with Dundas House to help protect her from prying press.”
“Yeah.” Justin raked a hand through the longer hair on the top of his head. “I guess that’s probably the best way to handle it. But it sucks though, doesn’t it, that he’s putting you in this position?”
“Yep.” Edwina nodded. “I don’t think he will, because he knows I’d sack him as my agent for sure and I think that’s a lot of the reason why I stay and he knows it. We have kind of an… armed truce. Which is why I honestly don’t think he’s going to rock that boat, but I’ve just been thinking maybe I need to take the live ammunition out of his hand?”