Floored

by Paton, Ainslie

  “I didn’t think this was an argument. But if you’re leaning that way and I push hard enough will I see sparks?”

  “You’re a spoilt kid who’s used to getting everything he wants.”

  He nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Not a bad assessment.”

  “Could we just do the washing-up?”

  “Annoying you is so much more fun.”

  “For you.” She put her hand out and wriggled her fingers, trying to inspire him to do something other than look at her.

  “Answer me one question.”

  She sighed. “What?” Whatever he asked she’d dodge.

  “Ironman or The Hunger Games?”

  He had a great big grin on his face. He knew very well she’d expected something personal. He had it coming. She flicked at him with the tea towel. He backed off a few steps.

  “Hey.” He laughed.

  She flicked again, coming dangerously close to hitting him on the arm. He danced sideways and made a grab at the drawer where the kitchen linen was stored. He armed himself.

  Caitlyn lowered her weapon. Let him think she’d given in.

  “You think I’m going to fall for that? You should see your eyes. You want to get me something bad.”

  She did. She so did; for all his smart-mouthed teasing and impossible to ignore ways. “No. I give up. There’s no way I can best you. You’ll be too quick.” She aimed at forlorn and defeated. He put his tea towel down and made for the sink. She struck, flicking the towel at him; it made a dry crack sound and caught him on the shoulder. He grabbed for it and hauled it to him and before she could think about letting it go she was trapped against his chest, both hands held by her sides.

  He was laughing and his chest expanded into hers. He was curved around her. They were nose to nose, hip to hip. “Do you like being right, Cait?” His voice was a hot breeze across her mouth and throat. If he kissed her it’d be painful, like ripping hair out at the root. It’d be freeing like flying.

  “Yes.” The word forced out of her, a request not an affirmation.

  He released her as suddenly as he’d snatched her up. “I bought popcorn.”

  She leaned back against the bench, using it to hold herself upright. He had his hands in the sink again, his back to her. It was all a game to him, all part of his act and she needed to remember that. He put cutlery on the draining board. She was horrified to see her hand tremble when she reached to pick the silverware up. No, she wasn’t scared of Sean—she was terrified of what he made her feel: light-headed, weak-kneed, vain and self-conscious. She’d wanted him to kiss her and the slash of disappointment when he mentioned popcorn instead was like toothache, like a joint dislocated, leaving her unbalanced and stumbling.

  He put the last pan on the draining board. “I’ve lost you haven’t I?” He leaned on the sink watching the suds swirl down the drain.

  She was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the popcorn. She picked the pan up and wiped the inside surface. “Yeah I’m stuffed. I couldn’t fit another thing in.”

  He looked around and she did her best impersonation of defiance, meeting him eye to eye. He didn’t need to know she had a knee jammed against the cupboard to steady herself. All he needed to know was that two could play his game. “I’m going to have an early night.”

  He straightened up. “I can’t tempt you to watch a movie with me.”

  “I am beyond temptation.” Her tone was pleasingly flippant. She ignored him and wiped the draining board down with a sponge. She expected some smart quip and mentally braced for it.

  From over by the TV he said, “Goodnight, Driver. Sleep well,” and the distance in that one little name, in the use of her occupation, should’ve been satisfying, should’ve been sanctuary. But unlike anything he’d yet served up, it gave her heartburn.

  19: Popcorn

  What he was doing was wrong. Had to be. That’s why he was feeling so churned up, so oddly flat. Sean sat in the flickering light of the TV thumbing the worn, rubbery arrow on the remote, shifting from channel to channel. He couldn’t settle on anything. Wasn’t that some kind of a metaphor? He so should not have grabbed her. But the minute she’d snapped the tea towel at him, he knew it was on. He knew it. She wanted whatever was building between them too. Didn’t she? The way she looked at him. That coolness outside; that flame burning in her eyes.

  Yeah, right. That’s why she was in bed, probably wearing something she thought disguised her loveliness, and he was out here on his own with a bowl of popcorn he no longer felt like eating. He ate it anyway. It was bound to make him thirsty, but it was something to do.

  His radar was way off. Needed a good service. He’d been out of things so long now maybe any woman who looked at him and didn’t see a walk-on-the-wild-side, bad-boy sideshow alley experience would turn him on. Because women who looked at him and saw Fetch certainly didn’t. That had to be it. Cait wasn’t some good time girl, an easy lay. She’d been genuinely horrified about sharing a two bedroom apartment, genuinely uneasy about him cooking for her.

  He should back off and leave her alone. He could hire his own car. Hell, he could quit this whole self-deluded need to get to Perth idea and go home and see his family. Cop the beat up Mum would give him, the Ice age before the inevitable thaw. Play golf with Dad. See all the nieces and nephews; how they will have changed, grown, forgotten him.

  He could find a red light, make a call, pay a fee and get laid. Maybe that was all he needed. They had to pass through Kalgoorlie. If he couldn’t get sorted in a town famous for its brothels, he might as well give it up.

  Was he depressed, was that what this indecision was? It happened after a big job. They warned you to expect it. A bad case of the black dog, the blues, when your undercover life got passed over, your personae killed off. They told you to look out for it. He’d thought if he kept moving, kept focused it might pass on over him.

  So was this depression? Sitting in the dark on your own when a perfectly beautiful woman who gave you come-on eyes lay in the bed only a thin plaster wall away. It had to be the very definition of it.

  He flicked the channel. Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Nah, felt a day in the life. Car racing. As boring on TV as in real life. A cooking show. Not in the mood. Mash. Still—are they kidding? A choice of American sit-com repeats: Everybody Loves Raymond—not true, or Two and a Half Men—not funny.

  Christ. He wasn’t depressed. He was just bored. Depressed people didn’t get excited about cooking, or driving to Port Augusta tomorrow. They got thrilled about lying in bed with the covers over their heads and not talking to anyone. He could hardly wait to talk to Cait again. Even if she was all about avoiding him. Half of him thought it was a good idea to go knock on her door and see if she was awake and wanted a cup of tea. The rest of him knew that was stupidity in motion. Didn’t stop him going to stand outside her closed door, in case he could see a light or hear a movement.

  It was a good thing he did stealth well. It was a better thing he had a grain of sense left in his fractured personality. Showing himself as a stalker would really crap all over his chances of winning her trust.

  And he did want to win her trust. More than feel her hands on him, more than hold her and explore her body, he wanted to know what was going on in her head. Because there was one hell of a war being fought in her and all that camouflage, all that biting off her natural reactions and masking her feelings—it did something to him. Yeah, he wanted to see her smile and laugh without the self-consciousness, and he’d pay a fee for front row seats to see her lose her cool and really let go, but mostly he wanted to know why she was undercover too.

  He wasn’t depressed. He was sleeping properly. He was interested in food. And women. Or at least one woman. He wasn’t even angry anymore, unless you mentioned the word pizza.

  But he was wound tight. An excess of energy that he’d needed to keep his cover, to become Fetch and survive in the gang environment had nowhere to go, and sitting in a car for hours didn’t help. H
e’d never done sitting still well and he’d gone from hyper-vigilance to hyper-nothing in less time than it took to burn a good sauce. No wonder he was unsettled.

  Didn’t explain how he felt about Cait though. Or what he was doing. He was working her. Forget the rationalisation about thinking he could help her drop her guard and relax. Forget the do-gooder notion. Nothing he wanted to do to her was defined as good, in the ex-altar boy, go to Catholic Mass, Bless me Father, sense of the word. What he wanted was fast and hard and dirty. What he wanted was sin so intense it was heaven. He wanted to touch her and feel new, sense her excitement and lose himself, join with her and be whole. He wanted skin and sweat and the tight, unbearable pain of pleasure. He wanted instinct over reason, sensation over thought, madness over responsibility. He wanted to see her unravel and fold back into her real self and know he’d done that to her.

  But the problem with all that—she couldn’t possibly want it too.

  If she wanted anything from him it was security, defined by her rules, played out in the narrow confines of their contract. That she responded to his teasing, to his handling, was because he had a gold license in manipulation, not because she wanted to. Not because she wanted him. She was consistent about that, about the shutting down and running away, and he was a bastard for pouring it on again and again, looking to break her resistance.

  What she really wanted was the money. Somehow he’d forgotten that’s what this was fundamentally about for her. The economics. The cash.

  Shit. She was the mercenary and he was the romantic, so where did that leave him? With a hard-on for an impossible situation. With an obligation to leave her alone. He should sit in the back seat and quit disturbing the peace. Like she wanted him to.

  He had a dry mouth and the start of a headache. He turned the TV off. It was early still. He should sleep and go for an early run. A long run. Find a hill somewhere and really burn some muscle. That would take the edge off. That would make him back seat capable.

  There was a light on under her door that hadn’t been there before. It made him pause in the corridor between their rooms.

  It made him second-guess himself. Again.

  20: Stockholm

  Caitlyn’s hair was a mess of tangles and knots. She shouldn’t have gone to bed with it wet. Should’ve been an adult, gotten up and gone back out and watched some stupid TV or a movie, instead of tossing and turning and getting all worked up about the fact he’d wanted to kiss her and hadn’t.

  He hadn’t. End of story. He’d backed off.

  Because that was what she needed. Didn’t mean she had to like it. She didn’t like it one bit. Liked it worse they’d spend a whole day ignoring the fact they wanted something from each other. She wasn’t so naive she didn’t know that about him; despite the romance of the dinner and movie scenario, he wanted to fuck her senseless because she was there and because she was making him dance for it.

  It was a shock to realise it was her own fault. She hadn’t intended it to be that way, but Sean wasn’t a guy who’d have to work hard to get a woman to fall into bed with him. And she was making him work hard. Her rules, her constant running for cover, all that was doing was making her more of a challenge and more attractive to him.

  He’d let her escape last night. He might not be so gracious again. She might not be so lucky. He got her to a place where her resistance was so low it was lying in the gutter. If he kissed her she’d have no more ability to run and hide than she would fly to the moon.

  What they felt for each other was a kind of sexual Stockholm syndrome. There was nothing realistic about it. He was on the flipside of a personality makeover and she was using this situation to finish something she’d started and hadn’t had the guts to see through.

  Well, she had the guts now. But she also had a bad case of want. She wanted him so intensely she’d hardly slept. She’d watched the night lighten to dawn, unable to relax enough to more than doze and wake all night.

  She was being squeezed between her desire for him and her knowledge that he was the last man after Justin she could afford to get involved with.

  She hadn’t thought of Justin in days. There was a deep, soothing relief in that. She hadn’t even bothered to activate the new phone. It was still in its store bag. It seemed inconceivable now that he’d ever be able to find her even if she did. As unorthodox as it was, as convoluted as it was becoming personally, the best decision she’d made in a long time was leaving Sydney with Sean.

  She finally had a clear shot at building a new life without having to look over her shoulder. The irony of doing exactly that when she left her room, in her still damp from being rinsed out the night before running gear, wasn’t lost on her. She looked for Sean, but it was early and his door was still closed. Not that he’d gone to bed late. She knew he’d abandoned the TV after doing the typically annoying male thing of channel flicking and watching several things sequentially. She tied her laces. Even when he wasn’t in sight she was either monitoring his presence or living in expectation of it and that made her grit her teeth.

  She palmed a room key and took off. She’d really pounded herself last night and that hadn’t helped with the sleeping, this morning’s run was a different kind of medicine. It was the physical equivalent of Prozac. She wanted to flatten out her feelings, deaden her responses and arm herself for spending a day in denial.

  She ran for forty-five minutes and walked the last fifteen back to the hotel, cooling down, shifting into a neutral place where she could be Driver, not Cait. Her job, not her feelings. That calm lasted until she opened the door to the apartment.

  He was sitting at the dining setting, one leg outstretched on the opposite chair. He was rubbing something into his knee. The tang of menthol and cloves. A pot of Tiger Balm sat on the table.

  All he wore was the livid purple red of his slash wound, water droplets and an inadequate towel.

  “Shit.” He stood, hand to the towel to make sure it stayed in place at his waist. “I thought I’d be finished before you got back.”

  She was only just inside the room, her back against the closed door. He had no obvious weapons, all he had was a frayed blue towel, but he’d pinned her there with an invisible heat ray. It pierced her centre and flooded her with warmth, glued her feet to the tiles, made tight fists of her hands, and closed around her throat like dread—like craving.

  His eyes took their time exploring her. He made her feel naked in her tight fitting three-quarter skins and her lycra singlet. His glance so slow, so languid, so covetous and controlling, she forgot she owned the independent power of speech and movement.

  “Good morning, Cait.” His voice was low with portent, humid with interest, while the cool scent of mint flavoured the air. The sound of her heart thudding in her ears was a syncopated drumbeat. Surely he could hear it too.

  His eyes now on hers: predatory, proprietary. “You were right. We shouldn’t have shared an apartment.” He half turned to go, the split in the towel revealing the strength of his hard thigh. Her toes curled in her runners. “In case you’re wondering, I have an opinion about what you’re wearing but I’ll keep it to myself.”

  She found her tongue, unstuck it from the heady mix of desire and annoyance he stirred in her. “Don’t do me any favours.”

  He laughed. “I’m not that stupid. If I tell you how fucking lovely you are, I’ll have to sit in the back seat all the way to Port Augusta. So I’m not telling you how much I like seeing you dressed that way. I won’t even mention how pissed off I am you’ll hide that incredible little body in some oversized crap and think I won’t remember the shape of you. And there is no way in hell I’m going to tell you you’re hotter than Tiger Balm.”

  He went to the doorway of his room. “Are you hearing me not tell you that stuff?”

  “Yes.” If she could have spat the word out she would have, just to show she wasn’t entirely numb, entirely transfixed by him.

  “Good. ‘Cause I’ll be ready in fifteen and there’s n
o frigging way I’m riding in the back.”

  When his bedroom door closed, Caitlyn made for hers. She had fifteen minutes to get it together. To get her heartbeat to slow, to get her muscles to release, to get her head back in the neutral space where she could ignore how much Sean affected her. She could do it. She could drive for the next five or so hours and serve him nothing but polite and professional. If she didn’t look at him it would help. If he wore all his clothes and didn’t try to distract her it should be possible.

  He was waiting for her, the car already packed with his gear. He huffed a laugh when he saw her. She’d almost retreated all the way back to her uniform, but that felt like giving in to him, giving him what he expected. If she’d had an outfit to wear to burst his expectations with she’d have worn it, but other than her gym gear all she had was the shapeless jeans, trackpants and plain t-shirts she’d stocked up on at Target.

  She flung her bag in the open boot. “Don’t laugh at me.” She jammed a navy blue cap on, twisting her hair up underneath it.

  He put his hands up. He was holding the car keys she’d left on the kitchen bench. “I’m not laughing at you.” He shook his head. “Okay, I am. It’s just that I know what’s under that gear now and I can’t pretend not to like it.”

  “You do know that’s harassment. I didn’t ask to be ogled. I didn’t ask for your opinion on what I look like. It has nothing to do with my ability to drive.”

  “You’re right.” He tossed her the keys. “I apologise. I’ll pull my head in and behave.” He opened the front passenger door. “I’m still not riding in the back.”

  He did. He behaved. He gave off nothing but companionable silence for the next two hours. It drove her absolutely, become a nail-biter, crazy. Sean did something to silence that made you want to examine it for flaws, pull it apart and stitch it back together with rhythm and noise at its heart. He made it absence and longing.

  And he knew it. He used silence like he used chatter. Strategically. She broke against it. “You’re not going to talk at all?”