Socialite's Gamble

by Michelle Conder

‘No.’ God. ‘I’d like you to come with me.’

  ‘Good, that’s settled.’ His voice was a hot whisper along her skin, making her nerve endings strain for more. ‘Now we just have one more thing to settle.’

  Cara slid her hands into his thick hair and loved the feel of its soft springiness. Was he seriously going to come with her to London? She couldn’t stop the smile from splitting across her face and she pushed aside the little voice in her head that reminded her that he didn’t believe in true love. ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  His hands slid to her waist and he stepped her backwards, towards the shower. ‘The island frowns on water wastage. I didn’t want to say anything before but …’ He turned on the shower and pulled her towel away. ‘I think we should consider sharing.’

  ‘Really?’

  His gaze drifted over her body. ‘It’s a very serious offense.’

  ‘Well, I certainly don’t want to offend anyone…. ’ Cara demurred.

  ‘Glad to hear it. So …’ He smiled. Stepped forward and crowded her back.

  Knowing she was probably going to get hurt, knowing that there was only one way this could end, Cara felt helpless in the face of his raw masculinity and her own deep yearning and backed into the shower stall.

  Breathless, she watched Aidan shuck out of his shorts and pick up the soap. He rubbed it between his big hands until they were thick with bubbles.

  ‘Here.’ He offered it to her. ‘Hold this.’

  She took it and he cupped soapy hands around her shoulders, slowly making small circles south. Her nipples stiffened and Cara squeezed the soap as he eventually reached them and tugged. She moaned and bit her lower lip as he continued soaping her torso and between her thighs.

  Then he took down the nozzle from the shower and sprayed her aching body. Cara collapsed back against the wet tiles as he cupped her and rinsed the soap away. Then he fell to his knees and took her with his mouth and she nearly lost it, gripping his head with her hands to try and keep herself upright.

  The sound of the soap hitting the tiles brought a husky laugh from him and she dragged him upwards and slid her soapy hand around his impressive erection.

  Aidan growled and pressed the nozzle more firmly against her core. When Cara started undulating against it he let it swing against the wall and lifted her and thrust himself inside her with one smooth motion.

  Cara felt her womb contract as she gripped him. This was pleasure at its most elemental and fulfilling and she arched her back and started to ride him.

  ‘Christ, Cara.’ Aidan released her breast and braced a hand behind her on the tiles as if he couldn’t hold them up. ‘You feel …’ He pulled back and surged forward. ‘Fantastic.’

  Cara gasped, her body convulsing, her mind spinning into another vortex as Aidan joined her in the most exquisite release.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CARA STARED AT her reflection in the bathroom mirror and wondered if she’d done the right thing in colouring her hair. Or having the five-star spa colour it for her.

  It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision after Aidan had booked her in for an afternoon of relaxation. ‘We’re going somewhere special tonight,’ he’d said. ‘Dress up.’

  She’d been excited all day wondering how he was going to top the past three blissful days where daylight had slipped into night and then night had miraculously slipped back into day.

  When the sun came up they ate a quick breakfast—usually in bed—and walked around the island, sometimes stopping to kayak in the bay or snorkel around the shallows. By afternoon they had usually collapsed into a hammock, or their king-size bed where Aidan had threatened more than once that he was going to tie her up the next time he wasn’t so exhausted from their lovemaking.

  On this particular day Aidan had hired a yacht. They’d sailed it to a nearby island that was deserted and had a picnic on the beach. Made love. Then Aidan had produced scuba-diving gear and taken her down into the clear depths of the ocean where twelve feet looked like three.

  It was another world. A secret world. At once quiet and enclosed and yet alive with activity. Brightly coloured fish ducked in and around coral that looked like it belonged in fairyland.

  Aidan had picked up various animals from the seabed. A starfish that was stiff as rubber but somehow still malleable and an oblong brown shape—he’d later informed her was a sea cucumber—that looked like a brick and was as soft as a sponge to the touch. Then he’d put her hand out to a school of curious clownfish and she’d squealed and jerked back into his arms when they had come close enough to nip her.

  She grinned at the memory.

  She’d lost her mouthpiece that time and her mask had filled with water. She should have panicked but Aidan’s arms had come around her and he had showed her how to clear her mask underwater and then leaned in and kissed her, breathing oxygen into her mouth before refitting her mouthpiece.

  Then he grabbed her hand and they’d swam lazily back to the boat where they’d stretched out on the sun-warmed deck and finished off the chocolate and champagne.

  It had been straight out of a fantasy and only the looming sense that, actually, this wasn’t real life for either of them and that in two days’ time they would have to leave kept her grounded in reality.

  Or so she tried to tell herself. It was hard not to get swept away by the romance of the island. And probably the only thing that had marred the day was when the conversation had drifted around to family.

  She’d just finished telling him about the time her twin brothers had chased her and threatened to throw her in the lake—after she’d caught them drinking alcohol when they were thirteen—when she asked Aidan about his family life.

  ‘No, no siblings,’ he’d said.

  They’d been lying on the deck utterly exhausted after the scuba diving. Or at least she had been. ‘So what was it like where you grew up?’ she asked, rolling onto her side to look down at him.

  ‘Nothing special,’ he said, keeping his eyes closed.

  Cara had felt his slight withdrawal and tried to tell herself that she had imagined it and asked why he didn’t like talking about his childhood.

  ‘I don’t mind.’ He’d said it casually, crossing one muscular arm over his face as if to shield his closed eyes from the overhead sun.

  ‘So did you grow up in a big house? A little house? Did you go to an expensive boys’ school or an expensive co-ed?’

  ‘No expensive school. I was a kid from the western suburbs before they became cashed up. Originally my dad was a tradie who started a free newspaper before they were popular and made a business out of it.’

  ‘Entrepreneurial,’ she’d said, brushing a few grains of sand that had stubbornly clung to the dark hair on his forearm. ‘Is that where you get your business brain from?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He’d lifted her hand and studied it. ‘My mother certainly appreciated the shift from blue-collar to white-collar and before you know it goodbye western suburbs and hello Rose Bay.’

  ‘You don’t sound like you liked the move very much.’

  His fingers almost absently laced with hers and he stared at the overhead sky as if he’d never noticed it before and didn’t like what he was looking at. ‘A lot changed after that. My mother left.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Was it a bad break-up?’

  He stared at their entwined fingers as if he didn’t understand how they had got like that. ‘It’s fine, Cara. I was old enough to handle it.’

  Cara, too, studied her small, pale hand engulfed in his much larger one. ‘Do you still see her?’

  ‘No. She died in a car accident eighteen months ago. But I’ll tell you something.’ He stopped and rolled over so quickly Cara was on her back and blinking up at him before she’d even taken her next breath. ‘Boring conversation always makes me horny.’

  She’d wanted to ask more, of course, but he’d already reached behind her and tilted her lower body into his and rational thought had been usurped by instant arou
sal.

  It hadn’t been so much a sharing of information, she realised now, but more a man suffering through an inquisition.

  It made her realise that he didn’t trust her as much as she trusted him and she’d wanted him to. She’d heard the bitterness in his voice when he mentioned his mother and she wondered if his mother leaving was one of the reasons he didn’t believe in long-term relationships. It would make sense. Especially if the break-up had been acrimonious, which she was almost certain it must have been.

  And to know that his mother had died and he’d never see her again was so sad …

  Deciding not to dwell on anything that could bring her mood down, Cara took one more glance at her reflection and headed out into the living room.

  Aidan was already dressed. Denim jeans that hugged his strong thighs, a white open-necked shirt. His hair was slightly damp and his feet bare. He sat slouched in the deep sofa watching some sort of sports game on the TV and Cara’s mouth instantly dried. He was devastating and she thought it would take a hundred years of looking at him to maybe, just maybe, get used to the impact of his masculine presence.

  His true blue eyes held hers for a second and then swept down over her figure. She felt more nervous than she could ever remember feeling and she did a little twirl to hide it. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Stunning.’

  ‘My hair is brown,’ she said, more than a little self-conscious. ‘This is pretty close to my natural colour. In fact, if it were to grow out I doubt you’d see any difference.’

  ‘Stop worrying. You look incredible.’

  ‘You don’t think I look like a Stepford wife?’

  Aidan laughed and unfolded from the sofa and came towards her. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Cara could see his chest rising and falling with his heavy breaths and when he stopped in front of her his eyes locked on to her mouth. ‘Does that stuff smudge?’

  ‘It’s called lipstick.’ She laughed. ‘And yes, it will.’

  ‘Damn, then I’ll have to satisfy myself with your neck instead.’

  Cara clutched his wide shoulders as he pulled her in close and bent to the raging pulse point in her neck. She moaned and her body turned boneless as she felt the hard ridge of him press against her. Would it always be like this? she thought, breathless. Would it always be so all-encompassing?

  It was Aidan who finally raised his head, his gaze lingering on her mouth. ‘How much do you care about that lipstick?’

  ‘I don’t, but aren’t we supposed to be somewhere?’ she reminded him.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He groaned and reluctantly released her before walking to a small table with a mirror above it. ‘Come here.’

  Cara saw the black velvet jewellery case on the top. Happy tears spiked behind her eyes and she walked towards him as if in a daze. ‘You bought me something?’

  ‘A memento,’ he said gruffly. ‘Turn around.’

  Feeling choked, Cara did, her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. Was it a memento of her time on the island or her time with him?

  As if in answer to her silent questions, he said, ‘I figure you deserve something nice after last weekend.’

  Oh, so it was a pity present? Her eyes sought his out in the mirror but he was looking at the box and not her. Fixing a smile on her face she took it as a good reminder that this was not a romance novel and that imagining that Aidan had meant anything more by the gesture would be truly foolish on her part.

  ‘Jenny’s pearls,’ she said softly, focusing on the necklace and what it didn’t mean. She stroked the single layer of glowing silver-grey pearls similar to the ones she had admired so much the other day. ‘It’s beautiful. I didn’t see this one.’

  ‘It’s one of her earlier pieces.’ He reached around and took her hand and circled her wrist with a matching bracelet.

  ‘Oh, Aidan. You shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Esther wouldn’t let me leave without it. And …’ He reached into the box once more. ‘Earrings.’

  Cara pressed her hand to her chest as he revealed twin gunmetal grey pearls. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  She felt her lower lip quiver and stuck her teeth into it.

  ‘Don’t cry, or I’ll take it all back,’ he said gruffly, pulling her lip free from her teeth.

  Cara swallowed the emotion bubbling away inside of her and decided to suppress the instinct to throw her arms around his neck and instead picked up the earrings and started fastening them in her ears. ‘I love them. Thank you. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future,’ she said, wanting to fill the void that had once again opened up inside her. ‘And I think one day I’ll open a little shop. Do you think Jenny would be interested in collaborating with me?’

  ‘She might. But what about modelling?’

  ‘Mmm, I like it but … I think I’m better at putting combinations of outfits together than actually wearing them.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said seriously. ‘You look terrible in clothes. From now on I think you should go around naked.’

  Cara rolled her eyes. ‘I’m serious. I love the idea of selling offbeat, hard-to-find pieces that women treasure and keep for ever.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a hoarder.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘You travel with ten suitcases.’

  She smiled. ‘I am a hoarder. When I was younger I could never clean out my cupboard and I refused to throw anything out. One summer I came home and my nanny at the time had gone through my things and tossed out anything she thought was junk. I was devastated.’

  He kissed her softly on the mouth and when she leaned into him he took a deep breath and stepped back. ‘If we don’t leave right now we won’t be going. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Well, that depends on what you have organised.’

  Aidan pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  It was a theatre flyer from an English group touring the Australasian region.

  ‘Romeo and Juliet?’ She looked up at him and knew her eyes were sparkling with pleasure. ‘Seriously? What made you choose this?’

  Aidan gave a pained groan. ‘I take it from the glow in your eyes that you’ve chosen to go out.’

  Cara smiled at his tortured expression. ‘Well, I do love the theatre and it’s only for a couple of hours…. ’

  ‘Right then.’ He grabbed her hand and headed for the door. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Cara laughed as he pulled her towards the door. ‘You sound like you’re about to make a trip to the dentist.’

  ‘Might be better,’ he grumbled good-naturedly.

  ‘Are you saying that you don’t like Shakespeare?’

  He guided her towards the dune buggy parked outside the entrance to their bungalow. ‘Hey, I’m just a boy from the western suburbs deep down.’

  No, he wasn’t. He was sophisticated and charming and honourable. He was a man you could rely on to always be there if he gave his word that he would.

  ‘Just don’t cry,’ he warned her as he put the buggy into gear. ‘The first sign of tears and we’re gone.’

  Cara reached across the space and laid her hand on his arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘For everything.’

  ‘You promised me you wouldn’t cry,’ Aidan complained as they climbed back into the buggy.

  Cara sniffed. ‘Technically I didn’t actually promise and I’m really trying not to but it was so beautiful. Didn’t you think?’

  Aidan smoothed a tear from her cheek. ‘I’m going to have to start packing tissues around you.’

  ‘No matter how many times I see it,’ Cara said, ‘I wish Juliet had been the type to jump up and run after both their families and wring their necks for being so small-minded that they couldn’t put the past behind them instead of killing herself. Then she could have come back and they would have been together for ever.’

  ‘For ever?’ A strange light entered his eyes that looked a little like fear.

  ‘Of course. They loved
each other.’

  ‘You buy Hallmark cards, as well, right?’ he teased, reminding Cara of what he thought of forever after.

  ‘Actually, I draw my own.’

  He straightened her necklace, a crooked smile on his face. ‘Juliet wasn’t the type to seek vengeance because she was sweet and generous. Giving.’

  ‘She needed to grow a backbone.’

  ‘That was Romeo’s job. He should have stood up for her.’

  Cara smiled sadly. ‘And that’s why it’s called fiction.’

  Aidan scooped her up into his arms and shouldered open the door to the bungalow. It had become like their home away from home, an intimate cocoon where they wrapped themselves around each other every night.

  He stripped her bare and Cara groaned as he started to make slow, passionate love to her.

  Before he turned her into a quivering mess unable to do anything but lie back and take whatever he wanted to give her, she rolled them over and straddled his waist.

  He gazed up at her, his hands behind his head, his blue eyes dark and lazy.

  She leaned forward and placed her hands on his chest, curling her nails into the soft hair there, her eyes drifting over his handsome face. She reached forward and traced her finger over his eyebrows and down the straight ridge of his nose.

  Warmth stole through her and her heart seemed to swell behind her chest. She let her fingers drift across his sensual lips and lightly scratched the stubble that had formed on his tanned jaw. He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring, and Cara realised with a start that she had fallen in love with him.

  Thrillingly, wonderfully, joyously, impossibly in love with him.

  The realisation floored her. She searched her brain for other times she had imagined herself in love but she couldn’t think of a single time that she had felt like this. As if her heart was about to burst.

  Was it even possible to fall in love with someone so quickly? ‘You know, I know we’ve both embraced Fiji time,’ Aidan drawled, bringing his hands out from behind his head to mould around her hips. ‘But I think now you’re taking things a little far.’

  Cara sucked in a steadying breath.

  Was he falling for her, too? Could it be possible?