“Where did the family money come from?”
“I don’t know. It was one of those subjects best avoided. One of the many things I let slide.”
He shifted so he could press a kiss on her forehead. A signal that she was okay in his eyes despite the failings she hated in herself.
“When we started the business, I knew for Justin it was about trying to catch up on what he’d lost. For me it was about having something of my own I could rely on. We were a good combination. He had unlimited ambition and he inspired me to believe I could succeed. I grounded him in the possible and came along behind him and made sure his grand plans had legs to stand on. At least that’s how I thought it was.”
“What went wrong?”
“It was too slow for him. He wanted things to grow faster. I did too, it seemed like we were building a future where nothing could touch us. I guess he got greedy. He stopped including me. We’d divided up responsibilities, which was smart from an operational point of view, but I see now he wanted me quarantined from the main action.”
“He made you his mushroom.”
She nodded into his neck and he squeezed her close, hoping to reassure her, hoping to keep her talking. Stud had come back to him. Nothing unusual to report on Justin Cumberland or Bidwell, but the tax office now had a flag against both the man and the business. Sean wasn’t entirely convinced it was a simple corporate matter. That was either his cop nature or his overdeveloped desire to protect Cait. Whichever it was, it meant he wasn’t finished with the topic.
“I loved him.”
Sean’s heart contracted as Cait’s voice wobbled. “But I didn’t know him. I only thought I did. The woman I found him with. She wasn’t the first. I should’ve guessed something was wrong. He’d withdrawn from me physically about twelve months before I found him out. He was always tired and I thought we were stronger than a little strain in the bedroom. I thought when the listing happened we’d get back to normal.”
“There was never going to be a share offer, was there?”
She captured his jaw, coming up on her elbow to look at him. “How do you do that?”
“Do what? I’m just listening to you.”
“You put the big pieces together when all the little ones are still missing.”
He took her hand and used her finger to trace his lips, then he sucked it in his mouth. She leant over him and put her lips where her finger had been and it was a while before either of them spoke again.
“Do you still have feelings for him?” He needed to know. It wasn’t going to stop him making love to her, but it was good to get an appreciation for what ghosts would be in the bed with them. Her hesitation nearly cut him in half.
“I’m frightened of him.”
He sat up and brought her with him, holding her at arm’s length. Now the truth. He watched her eyes. “Tell me why?”
“He had associates I didn’t like. Sleazy, fast talkers. There was all the money in the secret safe.”
“We’re going to check him out.”
Her face registered shock and she pulled away and stood up. “No. You can’t. I’m sorry I told you. You can’t do that.”
He sat cross-legged on the rug and frowned up at her. “He won’t know we’re looking at him. He won’t know you’re connected to it.”
She got to her knees in front of him. “Please leave it alone.” She was genuinely distressed. “I need you to leave it be. It all happened six months ago. It’s over. I have to pull myself together and get over it.”
He reached for her. “Okay, baby. Come here.” She tumbled into his arms. “I don’t want you scared.” There was no way he was going to leave her open to repercussions from leaving Justin, no matter how far-fetched it might seem that tax dodging equated to danger. He’d owe Stud another favour to check out the family name further.
She spoke into his neck. “I’ll be okay. You make it okay again, just by giving me back my confidence.”
He wanted to believe that.
The drive back was as pretty as it was coming out. The light was different, casting new colours and shadows. Was it worth continuing on to Perth? He didn’t feel the need, the responsibility anymore. It’d hung over Fetch’s termination like a loose end, something he couldn’t let go of because the job wasn’t done right, wasn’t finished. But now, with the chance to spend time with Cait, the fire was out. That particular fire anyway. He looked across at her and she must’ve sensed his movement; she turned her head and smiled back at him.
He had the John Butler Trio on the stereo, a song called Better Than. What could be better than winning the girl and making his superior officer happy in one neat move? Maybe the new plan was to take off from here and simply be tourists. Just be together with no agenda for a week or so.
They cruised into town in time for an Indian meal before the kitchen closed. It’d been Indian or pizza and he knew he was really feeling on top of things again when the idea of pizza didn’t make him want to hit someone. He was even able to smile at the harried delivery dude in his daggy uniform as he almost barrelled into them on the street.
They chatted easily over the meal, no restraint, no gaming each other, but enough innuendo to put Sean’s gut on full alert. Leaving Cait tonight was going to be so much harder. Because if last night had been designed as a seduction, today was designed as discovery and while their intellects had been stimulated, there was a lot of nervous physical tension in the air.
They’d held hands on the way from the car to the restaurant and it’d made him feel death star ray-proof. Such a little thing. Such a normal thing. But a new normal for him. A normal flavoured with the idea that life could be different.
He’d been so caught up in being Fetch and finding Sean again, he hadn’t thought much about what came next. No more long term undercover, that was for sure. He was finished with that. It mucked with his head in a way he didn’t think was healthy. In a way he was feeling too old for. That meant going back to the detective squad or maybe a behind the scenes role in the gang crime unit. Both of those options closed doors. He wouldn’t be so far forward on the frontline. But they opened doors too.
He looked at Cait, waiting for him as he paid for their meal. With a more normal job he could safely have people close to him. The thought was a warm buzz that started in his toes and travelled through his whole body, till he was consumed with the prospect of having someone like Cait to come home to every night.
Outside the restaurant he pulled her into the shadows and clamped his mouth down on hers. She tasted of butter and spices. She tasted of possibility. She was pretty keen on whatever he tasted of too. She returned his kisses till she had him buzzing.
On the drive back to the motel she virtually sat in his lap. He let the whole seatbelt thing go; he had her safe and it was only a five minute drive. When he parked, she treated him to a fiery reign of touches and kisses that left him squirming and hyperventilating.
“Ease up, Tiger. I’m only human.” She put her hot tongue in his ear. Giving no quarter, paying him back for the Tiger comment. He bashed his elbow on the door. “Cait!”
She pulled away laughing. “Come inside with me.”
That was too close to ‘come inside me’, too close to everything he wanted. She was driving him insane. He groaned and flicked the lever at the side of the seat to send it backwards. She took the opportunity of more space to climb over his lap and sit astride him. She worked on his buttons. “Do you have any idea how amazing you are, Sean Kennedy?”
A purely rhetorical question surely. He captured the hand she pressed down on his jeans zip and brought it to his lips. “B-b-be fair.” He was a stuttering wreck because she took his capacity to form words away.
She laughed again. “Oh, you can count on it.” Her other hand was at his belt buckle. She undid it.
He said, “That’s not, not fair,” but he couldn’t stop watching her hands, or the way his body lifted into her touch.
She yanked the belt apart and popped
the stud under it. Her fingers scrabbled for the pull on his zipper. “I’m just repaying you for the heightened state of awareness you smacked me with last night.”
He jerked under her touch. “N-no need to return the favour.”
“I’m not doing this for you.”
He said, “Demon woman,” but through clenched teeth so it came out a like a curse in a foreign language and made her laugh.
She eased his zipper down. She sent his temperature soaring into wet, broken blister territory. “You don’t like this?”
He liked it very much. It was the nicest thing that’d happened to him all day and the whole day had been miraculous.
“Do you want me to stop?” The only thing he wanted more than for her not to stop was world peace. She worked him with one hand, while the other was raking through in his hair, combing his scalp. He must’ve swallowed his tongue a while back because he had no words. This was getting way out of control. He mustered a defence, stilling the hand mostly likely to inspire an explosion. It was a difficult choice.
“Christ, Cait, tell me there’s a no sex in the car rule.”
That stopped her moving momentarily, long enough for him to pop the door and bring the interior light on, making them both blink with discomfort. Long enough to capture both her hands and pin them to his chest where his lungs made a show of working hard like he’d done something life threatening.
“We leave in the morning for Ceduna. Tomorrow night I’m buying two rooms, but I’m hoping we’ll only use one. Got any objections to that?”
She wrestled one hand out of his grasp and placed it not too carefully back where it was most dangerous. He took that as a no.
26: Rules
If Sean wasn’t so intoxicating, so under her skin and filling all her senses; if she didn’t want this so much—Caitlyn would’ve run. She’d have left him in Port Augusta and disappeared. Adelaide was only three hundred kilometres away. It wasn’t Perth but it wasn’t Sydney either. If she dumped him like that, after he’d been so honourable, he’d be furious and hardly likely to chase down someone who’d screwed with him so heartlessly.
She’d let him get too close. She’d told him too much. And she didn’t trust he wouldn’t still make enquires about Justin and then the whole charade would come crashing down.
But she’d risked it. She’d stayed. She was incapable of leaving this affair before it was played out. Which meant she needed a new rule book. Sean had broken every rule she’d set and quite a few she’d never thought she’d need to. Debating that no sex in the car question had kept them entertained for a good part of the night.
To no one’s satisfaction, but an odd feeling of relief, they’d ended up in the back seat, buttoned and zipped, cuddled together, simply talking and laughing. He was so hard to sway off a chosen path. No matter how clever her hands and mouth had been. He was determined to keep to his three date plan if it killed them both. She hadn’t picked him for a sadist and she’d never had to play the tease.
Justin would think she’d used the money she stole to buy a new personality. It was something Sean brought out in her. He was so easy to talk to, so easy to laugh with. So easy to trust when she shouldn’t. She’d fallen asleep on his chest and they’d woken with the sun.
This incredible man was going to be the secret affair of her life. The one big, chancy, glamorous, sexy memory she’d carry in her heart for the rest of her conscious days. He’d fill the pages of her interior scrapbook. On her down days she’d be able to call up images of his fit, muscled body, his bright watchful eyes. She’d be able to recall the way his voice cracked when he was turned on, and even more importantly how he’d made her feel.
Wild. Out of control and in command all at the same time.
That was the most curious thing. She’d thought dropping her guard with him, being more herself, would make her feel exposed. It’s what she’d been most scared off. What she’d created the rule book for in the first place. He was a cop and she was a common garden variety thief and she knew him well enough to understand he was defined by two things: his family and his job. Both gave him a fine sense of fairness, an instinct to protect, and a way of seeing the world in terms of rights and wrongs. Not that he was rigidly one-dimensional. Oh no, he knew grey. He’d lived it, but it was a state he transitioned in and out of, not his end goal.
Her hold on the situation was tenuous at best and she was more vulnerable to him now than she was when it was possible bikie gangs wanted her dead. Especially if he did interfere by enquiring about Justin.
So the new rules had nothing to do with avoiding Sean, or holding him at arm’s distance, because that was physically, emotionally and mathematically impossible. She craved him, like water, air and light. He was an equation that broke through her fear barrier and reset her trajectory. If she could manage an affair with Sean, her most natural enemy, she had no need to hide from the world in her guilt any longer.
She’d have faked out a world’s best faker.
According to the new rules Sean was a packet of chocolate Tim Tams and she was unable to stop at one. Ultimately it would be bad for her to eat the whole pack, but the experience would be bliss. She planned to overindulge herself with him before the use-by date on their fun time ticked around.
Oh yeah, that was guilt of a whole other species. One that was creepy-crawly. But he should know better, and she needed to do what had to be done to stay free and survive. That nagging feeling she was betraying him was a price she was willing to pay for the sheer transitory thrill of being in his arms and tasting his lips. The bottom line— it’s not like it meant anything to him; it was playtime, a good time after a long time of abstinence, something fun after the abnormality his life had been.
They were due in Ceduna that night after the hiatus in Port Augusta. It was an easy four hundred kilometre drive and their last stop before driving across the Nullarbor. Neither of them had slept much the last two nights so they’d agreed to a late start. Caitlyn waited by the car for Sean. She was officially back on duty but being infatuated with her passenger was a wholly new experience and didn’t feel in the least like a job. It felt more like a lucky door prize.
She watched him come across the parking area from the reception after settling their room accounts. He had his sunglasses on, an olive green t-shirt and his jeans. He hadn’t shaved so there was a ‘couldn’t care less about how I look’ dark stubble on his jaw. He’d been rigorously clean-shaven since he lost the beard. Today he didn’t look like a man whose personality was defined by what he wore or what he did. For a moment, just a passing blip of time, she considered telling him everything else she’d left out.
But she knew what would happen then. She wouldn’t get her rich, seductive memories if she fessed up now. She’d get the real life equivalent of the Monopoly Board Go Straight to Jail Do Not Collect $200 card. Because much as he cared about her, he was the last person to hand out Get Out of Jail Free options.
“Morning, Caity. Sleep all right?”
She nodded. He came around to the driver’s side and nuzzled her face, deliberately scratching her with his regrowth.
She pushed him away. “I bet Fetch’s beard was less prickly.”
He brushed his knuckles over her cheek where he’d rasped. “It’s a short-term insurance policy.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It’ll help me keep my hands off you till tonight.”
She laughed and turned her back to him to open the car door. “You were just too lazy to shave.”
His hands came down on her hips and she started. He pulled her back towards him, anchoring her backside to the curve of his pelvis. Oh God. She had inspired a very good morning. He scratched her cheek as he whispered in her ear, “I’m a conniving bastard. I can have problems with impulse control, and don’t you forget it.”
She drove. He drove her mad, but happy mad, gently sun-tanned by the high beam of his attention mad, giggle stupid mad. He sat screwed around in the seat, one foot
folded underneath him, leaning against the passenger front door, watching her. It should’ve been distracting as all hell. But it was right on track with the new rules.
He peppered her with questions. A whole bunch of inconsequential stuff. Favourite colour, movie, book. Actor, musician she’d give him up for. Dream house she’d like to live in. Imagined holiday she’d like to take. Plus some other stuff she’d rather have avoided. That’s how he learned about the naphthalene and how driving for the bucks’ nights made her feel. That’s how he learned she wasn’t intending to go back. It felt like the right thing to do, to tell him now before they got more deeply involved. To keep things straight between them and put a limit on their exposure to each other so the developing process they went through didn’t strip them of their colour.
“So it wasn’t just my natural charisma in combination with my spending power that made you agree to drive me?” His posture was still relaxed, but there was an inside edge to his voice that made her glad she’d chosen to dump that on him in the car where he couldn’t walk away.
“They both played a part, but the ultimate determination was how little I had to stay in Sydney for.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
She shot him a look and then eyed the white line again. That wasn’t an edge, that was a whole chasm, a Wilpena Pound of attitude in his voice. Did he think some runaway infatuation; a holiday romance would change the course of her life? “Yes.”
“Hmm.” He shifted in his seat, faced around to the front windscreen. It felt like a withdrawal. She had a moment of regret for telling him so soon. It could’ve waited a few days. “I’ll have to work harder then.”
“At what?”
“At you.”
She looked across at him. He made her heart try to climb up her throat and take the wheel. She wanted to launch herself into his arms. Why couldn’t he have been a baker, or a council worker, or a sandwich hand?
“Did you know Ceduna is the oyster capital of Australia?” he said.
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