He didn’t bother to wait for her reaction. Turning back to the foyer, he looked at the last place he’d seen Cameron. The party swelled around him, a mass of people he had no interest in. Where was she?
Five steps later, he saw her standing on the top step of the entryway. And he froze.
A man was smoothing his hands up and down her arms, ostentatious pinkie ring glinting in the foyer’s lights, perfectly capped teeth shark-like behind a smug smirk.
Something hot and tight and dark stabbed at Lachlan. Something he’d never experienced before. Jealousy.
He didn’t know the man touching her, but that didn’t stop him wanting to—
Mr. Pinkie Ring dropped his hands to Cameron’s arse and squeezed.
Lachlan’s blood roared in his ears. He ground his teeth together. An indescribable pressure wrapped his chest. Someone else was touching her.
And then Cameron turned her head away from the guy and Lachlan saw her face.
She didn’t want the man’s attention. Discomfort pulled at the corners of her eyes, the same tension thinning her lips, but whoever Mr. Pinkie Ring was, he wasn’t getting the hint. Cameron squirmed in his hold, resisting his attempt to tug her against his paunchy body.
Cold rage cracked Lachlan’s unnerving jealousy. He stormed forward, fists clenched, blood pounding, stare fixed on Cameron. The groping bastard was about to get his arse—
The man crumpled over. Just like that. One second the Armani-clad wanker was mauling Cameron’s backside, the next he was folded in half, his face red, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands buried in his groin.
“Try driving your Porsche now, dickhead.”
Cameron’s voice—calm and totally collected—reached Lachlan before he reached her. She straightened her shoulders and began walking out the front door and down the sweeping entry stairs, not even bothering to give her groaning groper a backward glance.
Lachlan quickened his pace, burning the man’s image in his mind as he hurried past him. Whoever he was, he was done in Sydney. Lachlan would see to that. Right after he made sure Cameron was okay.
She was at the bottom of the stairs by the time he caught up with her, the Balinese torches lining the pathway reflecting in her midnight hair like burnished copper.
“Cameron,” he called, sliding his fingers around her wrist.
She spun about and smacked her palm against his cheek.
The slap cracked the night air like a gunshot. Hot pain erupted in Lachlan’s cheek. Black stars swirled over his vision. The few guests mingling on the front lawn fell silent, their stares locked on Lachlan and Cameron.
But Lachlan wasn’t looking at them. Didn’t give a fuck about them.
He studied the woman before him, unable to miss the sheer terror in her eyes.
She shook her head, her stare never leaving his face. “I didn’t…I thought you were…”
He gave her a lopsided smile, rubbing his fingers against his stinging cheek. “That’s a fine swing you’ve got there, Kole.”
The name slipped from him before he could stop it. Or maybe he was trying to disarm her? Jerk her away from the fear so obviously consuming her. Either way, it didn’t work. Her face, the stunningly beautiful face he’d fantasied about since he was seventeen, twisted with hate. Contempt.
“I’m not Kole,” she snapped.
He released her wrist and held up his hands in a show of capitulation.
Capitulation, Lachlan? Surrender? Since when do you surrender?
“I’m sorry,” he said, for the moment uninterested in the answer. “I know. I just wanted to—”
She turned and started to walk away. “Coming here was a mistake.”
Lachlan’s gut clenched. He followed after her, the humid night air thick around him. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
The single word answer was flung over her shoulder. Her stride lengthened and Lachlan had to increase his own pace to keep up. “Tell me why you’re scared? Was it that guy? The wanker with the pinkie ring? He won’t bother you again. I promise.”
She didn’t slow down, continuing instead to storm along the path onto the car-crowded street. The muted light cast from the party in his house faded, the darkness of the night almost swallowing her. “I’m fine. Please, just leave me alone.”
Lachlan pushed himself into a jogging stride until he drew level with her. “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
She rolled her eyes, the exasperation on her face barely visible in the dark. “Make up your mind, Lachlan. One minute you want nothing to do with me, the next you’re chasing after me like a puppy.”
The snarled words should have cut him. Should have stung his pride the very way her slap had stung his cheek. They didn’t. They just made him more determined.
To what? Get your own way? How very Roland McDermott of you?
He bit back a curse at the thought and stopped when Cameron did beside her restored Mini. When she reached for the driver’s side door handle, he beat her to it, stepping between her and the classic car as he did so. He shook his head, meeting her glare. “You’re not in any state to drive.”
It was true. Even in the dark he could see she trembled, could feel her agitated fear radiating from her. That the emotion gripped her stirred something in Lachlan he couldn’t comprehend.
Empathy?
For the woman responsible for debasing Lillian? Impossible.
“I’m fine.”
Cameron’s sharp declaration, uttered with an even sharper vehemence, drew his spine straighter. He didn’t budge. Not even when she tried to reach for the door handle behind his arse. “Bullshit you’re fine. You’re shaking. If you get behind the wheel in this state you’ll kill someone.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
He studied her, wishing he could see her more clearly. She was an enigma. A question mark for which he needed to find the answer. What other reason for his uncharacteristic behaviour now? Since when did he follow a woman who so obviously wanted to be left alone?
Never. But something in his gut told him being left alone was the last thing Cameron needed, no matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise. “The thought of you behind the wheel makes me worried. Let me drive you wherever you want to go.”
The offer surprised him. For no other reason than he made it. No command to return to his house. No insistence she do what he said. Just an offer to help her.
So completely unlike Lachlan McDermott. Was he really this weak?
Does it matter?
Before he could contemplate the unexpected question and equally unexpected turn of events, Cameron let out a sigh, raked her fingers—still trembling, he noticed—through her hair and stormed around to the passenger side of her car.
“Heads up,” she muttered, tossing something at him over the bonnet of the Mini. He caught the silver object without thought, his fingers closing around a set of car keys.
She was settled in her seat and buckled by the time he could open the driver’s side door, the interior light casting her in a soft yellow glow, the confined space of the car emphasising just how tall and slender and sublimely stunning she was.
He let out a ragged breath. Perfect was the word. Perfect and scared and angry. The thing was, Lachlan knew he wouldn’t be able to let her alone tonight while she was scared and angry, and the longer he stayed in her company, the deeper he fell back into the fantasy of her perfection. Which was troubling when he despised everything she stood for.
Damn troubling.
Cameron kept her eyes on the road. Lachlan drove with the skill and ability of a natural racecar driver, handling her Mini and its retooled engine like he’d spent his life behind its polished-wood wheel. It didn’t surprise her. Pissed her off, yes. Of course, he would be an amazing driver. Of course, he would exhibit a phenomenal understanding of the car, the road and how to get the best out of both. But surprise her? No. She didn’t doubt Lachlan McDermott did everything in his life wi
th absolute accomplishment and talent. Drive. Control global media empires. Deliver orgasms with his mouth…
Her pussy fluttered at that last skill. Damn, could he deliver orgasms with his mouth. He could also destroy her with his mouth. With the words that fell from it.
She shifted on her seat, watching the opulence of the Northern Beaches give way to more accessible homes and cars. She didn’t know where he was taking her. She’d refused to give him her address. Since the night she’d discovered her bodyguard straddling her, her home address was something she rarely gave out. It wasn’t that she thought Lachlan was a psychotic stalker, but old habits die hard, and the habit of keeping everything about herself private was now a very old one. When he’d asked her where she wanted to go, she’d shrugged. Be buggered if she was going to let him see how rattled the creep with the Porsche and grabby hands had made her.
No, rattled wasn’t the word. More like petrified. She hadn’t been that scared since Andre tried to—
“Where are we going?” she blurted, needing to kill the grim thought.
Lachlan gave her a quick sideward glance, his lips curling with a small grin. “Not sure really. Just seeing where your car takes us.”
Cameron frowned. Why did he have to be so damn sexy? Infuriating and sexy. It was…it was…well, infuriating.
She swallowed a sigh. Her belly felt like a horde of butterflies was doing a frenzied dance routine inside it, but whether because of the creep or the man currently driving her beloved Mini, she didn’t know.
Equally as infuriating.
Turning back to her window, she tried to make her mind shift into neutral. It wouldn’t. Like a moth to a flame, it kept coming back to Lachlan. He pushed her buttons. All her buttons. Her sexual buttons—the ones she’d denied for such a long time, and her indignant buttons as well. The ones that made her prickly when someone dismissed the modeling industry like Lachlan had. Sure, no one was curing cancer or forging world peace, but it wasn’t the vacuous, pee-brained collection of skinny women most thought it was. Given the humanitarian work Lachlan’s own sister was doing with her fame, the hours dedicated to causes beyond looking gorgeous, it irked Cameron that he thought it was.
Or maybe it was just her he had an issue with?
“Any chance you’d like to tell me what happened back at the party?”
His question, asked with almost off-handed calm, sent the butterflies in her stomach into overdrive. What what happened was he talking about?
She shook her head. Better to deny all of it. “No.”
He chuckled. “I’m talking about Mr. Pinkie-ring, by the way. Not…” He faltered, and for a split second Cameron swore she saw nervous embarrassment flash across his face. It made him look young. And innocent.
Innocent? Was that word even appropriate? After the way he made her come again and again with just his mouth and fingers?
Once more, her sex fluttered, all too easily remembering the masterful way he’d brought her to orgasm. God damn it, why did she have to go and think about that now?
Again? Have you actually stopped thinking about it?
The sudden sideward pull on her belly told her he’d steered the Mini into a sharp right and she tore her gaze away from his profile to study the dark area on the other side of her window. They were in a car park lined with massive old oak and eucalyptus trees, the blackness of the night making it impossible to see what lay beyond the asphalt.
She swung her gaze back to Lachlan. “Where are we?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, staring out the windscreen. “Well, there you go.” The words were a barely audible mutter, their tone as bewildered as his expression.
Cameron frowned. “Lachlan?”
With a shake of his head and a low chuckle, he grinned at her. “Come on.” He didn’t wait for her to answer. He opened his door and alighted from her car. She watched him all but skip around the nose, tossing her another grin before heading for the blackness beyond the trees.
Where were they? And why did he seem so…so…
Excited. Like a kid at Christmas.
She chewed at her bottom lip. She had no idea where they were, no clue what lay on the other side of the trees. Any other time, she’d be climbing over the gearshift and hightailing it out of there. Dark. Unknown. A man she barely knew… This was not how she lived anymore. And yet, the urge to climb from her car, to follow Lachlan, to see what made him smile with such open beguile and boyish charm didn’t just surge through her, it consumed her. What could possibly turn the smoldering arrogant bastard who’d scorned her profession into a sexy, mesmeric young man?
She opened her door.
The warm summer night enveloped her, the soft song of cicadas and crickets joining its caress on her senses. A smile pulled at Cameron’s lips. Wherever they were it felt peaceful, and at that very moment, peaceful was exactly what she needed.
She left her stilettos in the car and crossed the car park. Lachlan stood on the edge of the concrete, his form tall and strong and relaxed in the pale moonlit shadows. He studied the darkness before him, a darkness growing lighter as her eyes adjusted to the dim night.
A soccer field? He’d brought her to a soccer field?
“Interesting,” she said, stopping beside him. “Do you come here often?”
He grinned at her, his eyes somehow alive with a life she hadn’t expected. “Not since I was seventeen.”
Cameron lifted an eyebrow.
“I used to play soccer here with Mac. Every Saturday from the age of fifteen.”
“Mac?”
“Mackenzie Harris. McDermott Media Corps’ head lawyer.” He chuckled. “And my best friend.”
Cameron smiled. The term sounded so unusual coming from the mouth of a man with Lachlan’s ruthless business reputation. It was…sweet.
She swung her attention to the empty expanse of manicured grass, the waning moon and nearby streetlights bathing it in a pale silver wash. “Were you any good?”
He chuckled again. “Put it this way, I never brought the MVP trophy home to the old man. Something the great Roland McDermott was most displeased about. But I loved to play. And I felt—” he paused, his gaze moving over the field, the corners of his mouth curling, “—normal when I was on the field. Equal to the other boys on the team. Not the son of the country’s most powerful businessman but a normal kid doing normal kid things.”
He blinked, a frown pulling at his eyebrows. Something told Cameron the confession had taken him by surprise. The way his shoulders straightened, the way his nostrils flared. Hell, it had taken her by surprise. And shed him in a totally unexpected light.
Normal. Right now, right here, he was like a normal man. Admitting things no hyper-influential, ridiculously powerful business tycoon admitted.
Cameron’s belly flip-flopped. This was the man she’d wanted to meet tonight. The one she’d suspected existed every time Lillian spoke of her brother. And yet it unnerved her more than the arrogant, dominating Lachlan of the party. This was a Lachlan she could spend a long time talking with. A long time getting to know beyond the potency of sex.
This Lachlan—
“Hey, check it out.”
She started, watching as the man messing with her head jogged a few feet away from her. He dropped into a crouch and retrieved something white and round from under the long bench skirting the field’s sideline.
He turned back to her, holding up a soccer ball, a wide grin on his face. “Wanna play?”
Before she could answer, he walked backward onto the field, bouncing the ball on his knees as he did so. His grin stretched wider. A fluid energy took his body, his arms loose beside him, his legs pumping up and down in alternating pistons.
A purely female side of Cameron, the primitive sexual side that recognised a prime male specimen, reacted to the sight. Tight heat speared into her pussy and her pulse quickened. Damn it, had she thought him sexy before?
“Come on,” he called to her from the field, flashing her
a smile so relaxed and open it stole her breath. “You already know I suck. Imagine how good it’ll feel to whip the Lachlan McDermott’s arse.”
It was the self-effacing statement that did it. Or maybe the open grin. Or the boyish cheekiness. Or all of the above. Or something else altogether different. Whatever it was, Cameron couldn’t fight it. She jogged onto the field a few feet away from him, uncaring of the fact she wasn’t wearing the right attire for kicking a ball. She was happy. How was that possible, given her early dread at the Porsche owner’s groping? At Lachlan’s cutting attitude toward her career?
Because the groper isn’t here. And neither is that Lachlan. The Lachlan in front of you is.
The ball arced across the air between them, bouncing on the ground a good foot to the right of where she stood. She laughed. “Is that the best you can do?”
He held his arms out wide, his smile mischievous. “I’m afraid so.”
The next forty minutes were unexpectedly wonderful. They kicked the ball back and forth, laughing at their own atrocious skills. In amongst it, discussions took place on the best sport movies, the best sport stars, the best movie stars, the best movies. By the time Cameron’s unshod toes were too sore to kick the ball again, she and Lachlan had agreed to disagree Robert DeNiro was the greatest actor ever to grace the screens, Beckham was better than Pele, Jaws was infinitely better than Piranha 3D and Vegemite on toast was better than peanut butter.
When Lachlan surprised her with a deft sidestepping steal, hooking the ball from her rather pathetic footwork with a jubilant woop, she burst out laughing and wrapped her arms around his waist as she fought to reclaim the ball.
“Cheating,” he laughed, his own arms draping her back and shoulders as their shins knocked together. “Cheating. Ref, she’s cheating.”
Fresh laughter bubbled up from her chest and she staggered backward, Lachlan’s hands on her back the only thing stopping her landing on her arse.
“Do you see this, Ref?” he called out, looking around the dark soccer field, his face a mask of mock disbelief, his arms pulling her closer as they both stumbled across the grass. “Full body contact! Sin bin! Penalty! I call foul!”
Twister: Party Games, Book 3 Page 6