Hot Christmas Nights

by Rachel Bailey

  He frowned again. “But you live in London. You’re a chef.”

  “I came home for Christmas. I only got here the day before yesterday. But my friend Felicity had to go to hospital to get her appendix out. You remember Felicity?”

  He nodded, his reluctance to remember anything about her or their shared past obvious in the restraint of his expression, his tautly held shoulders.

  “She asked me to help out with her kitty-sitting business. Christmas is her busiest time of the year and she—”

  “I get it. Hence the pink.”

  Carly cringed at the thought of how she looked in the hot pink cat-sitter uniform with the cutesy cartoon logo on the pocket and the cap.

  Dylan looked her up and down with appraising eyes, his lids half narrowed—just the way he had in the moments before they’d made love. Carly had to suppress a gasp at the memory. She was aware of how her skinnier friend’s clothes clung tightly to her own more generous curves. Her hair was tucked up under the pink cap and she was flushed and shiny with heat. No makeup either—who wore makeup to clean out litter trays?

  Why, oh, why did she have to be at her worst the first time she saw the man she’d once thought was her only love? The man she’d hurt so badly he had vowed never to forgive her? The man who was now looking at her with an expression of cool indifference?

  His broad shoulders, rippling chest and arms, the washboard abs, signaled masculine perfection to her suddenly switched on senses. He was hotter than ever.

  Of all those good ideas turned bad that littered her life, leaving Dylan Burke had been the worst idea of all.

  Dylan had spent the last four years trying to forget Carly de Luca. Now he realized all he’d done was suppress, not forget. At the sight of her, memories came flooding back in an unwelcome surge. Carly at age nineteen when he’d first met her at her parents’ restaurant—the mesmerizing sway of her hips, the way her eyes shone when she smiled, her husky enticing laughter. How they’d had to sneak out behind her strict Italian father’s back to grab a chance to be alone. Their first kiss. The first time they’d made love. But the good memories were overridden by the bad. How she’d dumped him with no valid reason that he could see. How she’d pulverized his heart.

  “Fifi’s Feline’s?” He read the logo from the bill of her cap rather than from the breast pocket of her shirt where it sat across the swell of her breasts. The hot pink jeans clung to the sensual curves of her hips. She was as desirable as ever. Even with her heart-shaped face flushed with heat and eyes still dilated with sudden fear, she was beautiful. He couldn’t look at her mouth, her lush, lovely mouth if he were to keep those memories at bay.

  “Yep. Not exactly the way I planned to spend my vacation,” she said. “But how could I say no?”

  He was not surprised. Carly had always been warm-hearted and generous to a fault. But she looked weary, with dark circles under her eyes. He noticed her hands were trembling.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said. He made sure his voice gave only the concern of a distant acquaintance.

  She shrugged. “That’s okay. Heart attack averted. That…that weapon, though, would you have used it?”

  “The nunchuck? If I had to, in self-defense.” He balanced the two wooden rods attached by a short length of chain. “It’s a martial arts thing.”

  “I didn’t know you did martial arts,” she said.

  “You don’t know a lot about me,” he said tersely. After she’d left, he’d channelled his anger and hurt into martial arts. It had also taught him restraint and control. He would not let her see how shaken he was at her sudden appearance in Sydney.

  Her eyes widened. “Dylan, I wish—”

  He did not want to hear what she wished. To change the subject he looked around the corridor. “Where’s Morris? Is he all right?”

  “You know the cat?”

  “I live next door. Three lively kids live here. Morris often escapes into my place for some peace.”

  “You live next door? But…but the whole street is nothing but mansions.”

  Now it was his turn to shrug. “I call it a large house with a great view of the harbor. Feel free to call it a mansion if you like.” Prices in this street all started in the multi-millions. They were investments as much as homes.

  “I heard you’d done well,” she said, her voice trailing away.

  “Yeah,” he said. Obsessed with work, she’d called him. No fun. A stickin-the-mud. Boring. All her words had wounded, but nothing had stopped his relentless drive for success. It had paid off. In terms of material success, that is.

  She smiled, a slow curving of her lips. “We’ve both come a long way from the western suburbs, haven’t we?” she said. “You in posh Mosman, me in London.”

  “I never forget where I came from,” he said. A small, rented house in an undesirable suburb, money a constant struggle.

  “Me neither,” she said. “My parents would never let me forget even if I wanted to.”

  “How are your parents?” He’d always liked them, from when he’d been a casual waiter in De Luca’s, her family’s restaurant, as he’d worked his way through one university degree and unpaid internship, then another.

  A shadow passed over her face. “They’re okay. Well, as far as I could judge in the few hours I saw them before they tripped off on an ‘over fifties’ cruise.” She shuddered in an exaggerated way and gestured with her hands, as dramatic as ever. He’d used to find it endearing. “They tried to get me a last-minute place on board but couldn’t, which was a mixed blessing. Me and all the geriatrics? I don’t think so.”

  Dylan didn’t want to smile. But he’d never been good at resisting her. “I’d hardly call our parents’ generation geriatrics,” he said.

  In response to his reluctant smile, her eyes lit up in the enchanting way that brought out the green in the hazel. “I’m only joking of course. If they’d been able to get me a ticket I would have gone with them like a shot. As it is…they’ll be away and I’ll really miss not being with them on Christmas Day.”

  The hitch in her voice made him want to sweep her into his arms and comfort her as he’d done so many times. But those days were long gone.

  “That’s tough for an only child,” he said gruffly. “Did they come visit you for Christmas in Europe?”

  “Not the first year,” she murmured, unable to meet his eyes. “We weren’t allowed to have visitors on the boat and, of course, I had to work.”

  “You mean the super yacht?” He spoke through gritted teeth.

  Now she raised her eyes to him. Defiantly but with a hint of guilt that cut through him. The thought of what might have happened on that yacht had tortured him.

  “Yes, the super yacht where the billionaire owner worked the chefs like slaves, but it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.”

  And André? Did the French chef count as an exciting experience? Dylan ached to ask the question. But he didn’t. Jealousy still seared through him. And he didn’t want her to think that after all these years she still had the power to hurt him.

  But the name hung between them like vapor trails of a skywriter hanging suspended in the sky. André, the French chef she’d worked with in Sydney, who had filled her head with tales of a more exciting life in Europe. Of working with him on a super yacht as they cruised the Mediterranean. All to get into her panties—or so Dylan had been convinced.

  As if he could read his thoughts, Carly winced. Her words were tentative when they came. “I…I did beg you to come with me, if you recall. To take a year off and work as crew on the boat.”

  So they were going to go over the same old ground that had led her to dump him and storm off to Europe with André. “You know I couldn’t neglect my responsibilities,” he said flatly. “My mother, my brother Mike. They needed me here.”

  His father had died when Dylan was only fourteen, and had entrusted his older son with the care of the family. Dylan had taken the pledge very seriously. His famil
y had turned out fine. And the finance industry job he’d snagged after she’d gone had led to great things in terms of building his fortune. But he had lost Carly.

  “I know,” she said softly. “But I was too self-centered then—I was going to say too young, but it was only four years ago—to realize that.”

  That was a big admission for her to make, but he could not let her know that it pleased him. Carly was part of his past and he wanted to keep it that way. She had turned his world upside down when she’d left. He would not go through pain like that again. Not for any woman.

  “You were too young to realize the complexity of it,” he said.

  “For a long time I’ve wanted to apologize for…for how heartless I must have seemed,” she said. “But you didn’t want to—”

  This was leading into dangerous waters. No way did he want to stir up the past, to rock the boat that was his steady, secure life. When he’d finished with her, it had been for good. The hassle of heartbreak was not worth it. He would never let himself feel again what he’d felt for her. “We all make mistakes,” he said as firmly and impersonally as he could. “That’s over and done with.”

  “So you forgive me?”

  Never.

  “I understand more now where you were coming from,” he said stiffly.

  “But still no forgiveness,” she said with a wry little twist of her lips.

  “Carly, I—”

  She put up her hand in a halt sign. “Don’t say it. I understand. That’s all in the past now. Water under the bridge.”

  Why did the way she said that make him feel as though he was inflexible and unyielding? What she didn’t realize was how damn close she’d got to destroying him. How long it had taken for him to pick up the pieces. How difficult it had been for him to eventually get out and date again after she’d gone—the girl he’d thought was his forever woman. To her, it appeared, he’d just been her starter boyfriend.

  “Yes,” he said, unable to say more. Four years of not forgiving her were hard to undo.

  Her eyelashes fluttered and she obviously had trouble meeting his eyes. “You were right about André, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “What do you mean?” But he thought he knew what she was trying to say.

  “He…he did nothing but try to seduce me as soon as I came on board.”

  “And did he succeed?”

  “Of course not.” Her eyes widened in what seemed to be genuine shock. “I liked him. He was an excellent chef. But I wasn’t interested in anything physical.”

  She shuddered with distaste in dramatic Carly manner. “I didn’t find him attractive in that way. But even if I had, I…I wouldn’t have gone there. It would have seemed somehow…disloyal to you, after all your warnings about him.”

  “Even though we’d broken up and you were free to do whatever you wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  Vindication was a fine feeling. Her obvious sincerity was balm to the ache of her loss that had never really gone away. He’d known what the French guy had been up to, but Carly had accused him of being immature and of holding her back when he’d pointed it out. Pointed it out on more than one occasion. Which in retrospect he realized might not have been such a good idea. Perhaps, he grudgingly admitted to himself, at age twenty-five he had been immature in the way he had handled the situation. But the thought of her with another man had been enough to over-ride all commonsense.

  “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I knew he was after you for more than your cooking skills. Which was why—”

  Her eyes widened. “Why?’

  “Nothing important,” he said, determined not to be dragged into further raking over of the past. What was the point?

  Again came that rueful smile from Carly. “No matter. It’s nice to see you again, Dylan.”

  The way she straightened her shoulders had a definite air of finality about it. Her next word would be goodbye. She took a step toward the top of the stairs. Dylan stood aside to let her through, then stopped to block her way. He could not let her go so soon. He stalled. “More cats to look after?”

  She shook her head. “Morris was the last kitty client for the day.” She wiped her hand across her forehead in a weary gesture that tore at him. He’d always wanted to look after her. She took off her pink cap and her hair tumbled over her shoulders in dark, lustrous waves to frame her face. It was shorter than when he’d last seen her. He’d loved her hair—running his hands through it, pushing it off her face as he’d kissed her. It was still long enough to do that. He wanted to do that.

  Dylan had to clear his throat to speak. “What do you plan to do next?”

  Her step had brought her close to him. So close he could see the green flecks in her hazel eyes, smell her warm scent as familiar as it had been four years ago.

  “I thought a swim at Balmoral Beach.” The harbor beach was a ten-minute walk down the hill. “I’m so hot and—”

  “Why not come next door and swim in my pool?”

  The words seemed to just slip out. Dylan didn’t know who was more surprised at his sudden invitation—Carly or himself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For a long moment, Carly couldn’t find the words to reply. Dylan had done such a good job of letting her know she was an unwelcome reminder of a time in his life—the years he’d spent with her—that he’d rather forget. So why invite her for a swim? Why prolong the agony of that awkward conversation?

  She should say no.

  Spending time with Dylan Burke was a bad idea. Not when she couldn’t stop sneaking glances at him. Not when being so close was sending shivers of awareness through her. For so long she’d had to rely on her memories and a few photos she’d had of him on her phone. Not that she’d visited them too often—the memories or the photos—they had evoked too much pain and regret.

  She looked up to his blue eyes, the color of the water in the panoramic views from this house. Back when they’d been together, she’d been envious of those eyes, her own an ordinary hazel. “I wonder what color eyes our kids would have?” A flash of memory seared through her, of her and Dylan speculating on their future children. A boy and a girl—preferably in that order. They’d endlessly mulled over possible names.

  “Th…thank you, I’d like that, the swim I mean,” she stuttered. Was it a good idea?

  For a long moment their gazes held. She saw a hint of the same confusion she felt. What had she just said yes to? This was a familiar Dylan in some ways but new and exciting in others. Dylan with a harder edge to him to go with the honed muscles.

  But a certain toughness had always been there. “You go—and I will never forgive you,” he’d warned. “Leave and it’s over—don’t try and get in touch with me.”

  Confident she was the love of his life, Carly hadn’t believed him.

  Back then she’d felt stifled in Sydney. She’d been the only child of older parents, her father Italian-Australian, her mother Anglo-Australian. They’d doted on her, protected her. Over-protected her. She’d gone from them to Dylan, who’d doted on her too. When had she begun to feel trapped?

  She’d grown up in the restaurant as much as at their family home. When she hadn’t been doing her schoolwork in an out-of-the-way corner, she’d been under the feet of the staff, wanting to help in the kitchen, setting the tables, clearing up. Early on she’d decided she wanted to be a chef. She’d started cooking for the restaurant in her early teens, recreating the traditional Italian recipes the customers loved. But innovative new twists to old favorites hadn’t been encouraged. When she’d finished high school her father, wise man that he was, had insisted she be properly trained, learn other cuisines, work in other restaurants. She’d shown real talent that others had recognized and nurtured. But she’d longed for bigger horizons—Europe, Asia, the USA.

  Dylan hadn’t understood. Sydney was where he wanted to stay and build his career. He’d had responsibility thrust on him too young, had set a rigid path to success that involved endless
study and excessive hours of work. “For the future,” he’d explained.

  “But what about now?” she’d replied in frustration. Between the erratic hours she worked and his dedication to work, she’d felt she’d hardly seen him. And she hadn’t liked feeling neglected.

  Now Dylan seemed relieved at her answer. “Good,” he said. “I was about to dive in when I noticed the activity next door.”

  So that’s why he was wearing those swim shorts and nothing else but his tan and a pair of flip-flops.

  “I did wonder at your burglar-fighting attire,” she said.

  Dylan smiled. That slow-to-ignite smile still had the power to make her heart turn cartwheels, feel overcome by a sudden breathlessness. Hands down, he was still the best-looking man she’d ever met. Last time she’d seen him his hair had flopped down over his forehead. He used to say it was because he never had time to get to a hairdresser. But it had given him an appealing boyish charm. There was nothing boyish now about his close-cropped hair. He was all man.

  Carly felt overwhelmed by a painful longing for what might have been, but schooled her face to hide it.

  She’d tried so hard to forget him but she hadn’t succeeded at all. Almost as soon as she’d gone, she’d known leaving him was a mistake. At first there had been the excitement of being on board the last-word-in-luxury super yacht, starting from the island of Mallorca in Spain, sailing to the Côte d’Azur in the south of France, the Italian Amalfi Coast. The billionaire owners’ friends she’d cooked for included celebrities she’d only ever seen on cinema screens or the pages of gossip magazines. Sometime in between fighting off André’s unwanted attentions and the thrill of finding herself in such a very different world, she’d realized how deeply she’d missed Dylan. That nothing was much fun without him to share it.

  But Dylan had been true to his word. His days of doting on her were done. She’d tried to contact him, to explain, to beg him to come to her. He’d changed his cell phone number and his email address. She’d been wiped from his world.

  “I’ll just check on Morris before I go,” she said now. “He’s hiding in the master bedroom. A beautiful cat, but not very friendly.”