by Kris Pearson
CHAPTER ELEVEN — NEWS FROM TYLER
“That’s how we work together and still have sex,” Nick said, letting a luxurious stretch work right through his body and then pulling Sammie in close again.
“That’s not working together,” she objected sleepily. “That’s just having sex.”
“Weren’t you working? To make it good for me?”
“Oh, that,” she murmured. “Yes I was working to make it good for you, but that’s not what I meant, and you know it, you arrogant jerk.”
He felt her nestle closer against him and slide a hand around his waist.
Watched as she tried to keep a serious expression on her pretty face and failed.
“I worked hard to make it good for you,” he teased.
She laughed softly. “I noticed.”
“And was it?”
“You know it was. Especially the ‘hard’ bit. The neighbors are going to wonder who’s moved in next door. An axe murderer and his victim...” She elbowed him in the ribs. “Didn’t think of that when you were winding me up, did you?”
“I’ll have to gag you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “Handcuff me too while you’re about it.”
Nick’s cock gave a lazy, rolling lurch at the thought. “You’d let me?”
“Only to my desk.”
“Hmmm—on the job together and sex together. See, we can make it work, Sammie.”
“Nick,” she muttered grumpily, “I don’t want to make it work. I’ve signed up for a month’s assignment until my passport comes through, and then I’m off outta little old New Zealand.” She twisted so she could look up and fix him with a sterner gaze. “I’ve spent twenty-six years here, and I want to see what else is out in the big wide world. Mom and Dad infected me with the travel bug. They had pictures of dozens of different countries pinned up on the walls at home. Were always planning trips they might take. I thought they had the ideal way to live. But then they died and I got stuck with Grandpa.”
Nick winced at her turn of phrase. He’d thought her fond of the old man. “What happened with him?”
Sammie sighed. “He had a stroke, poor darling. Quite a bad one.”
He relaxed again. Not as hard-hearted as she’d sounded, then.
“The hospital rehab people were wonderful—they got him pretty mobile and managed to get some of his speech back, but you couldn’t say he ever got properly well. He used to go to a daycare place sometimes, and he managed okay on his own when he had to. But I didn’t dare leave him overnight.”
“For six years? That must have cramped your style. With boyfriends, I mean.”
“I know what you mean.” She shot him a mischievous grin. “No Nick, it’s amazing what you can do between seven-thirty and midnight if you really want to.”
A tug of annoyance spoiled his warm teasing moment.
“Anyone special?” he asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
“None of your business. I wouldn’t ask you. You’d have too big a selection to choose from anyway. Do you ever hit on the clients at the fitness center? Nice toned bodies in stretchy little leotards? Hmm?”
“No,” he snapped, grimacing with real annoyance now. “They hit on me.”
“Ooooh, Nicky, poor old you...” She gave his shoulder a playful nip.
“Cut it out! Yes they do, if you must know. It used to be flattering, but these days I like to choose my own partners.”
Sammie tsk-tsked. “So I’m just another woman dragging you into bed against your will. Bad luck Nicky.”
Not that much against my will.
He turned his head and listened. What the fuck? His mobile—after midnight. What was wrong?
“Sorry.” He slid away from her and found his jeans. Rummaged until he extracted the phone and opened it, then stared at the screen and read the text aloud.
“BABY ON WAY. T.”
“Tyler?”
“Know anyone else expecting this week?”
Sammie grimaced, thinking of Tyler’s hard work ahead. “Good luck, girlfriend,” she murmured.
Without Tyler, and without Nick all morning, Sammie found herself rushed off her feet. Many people seemed to have nothing better to do than phone with queries because the weather kept them inside.
Unfamiliar with the time-sheets, it took her ages to attend to the payroll. To her annoyance, she had to resort to asking Rich for some explanation and guidance. She found names of staff she’d not met yet—people who worked early or late shifts to cover BodyWork’s long opening hours. Nick was apparently a flexible and accommodating boss.
“Get a life!” she snapped at the switchboard as it demanded her attention yet again.
“Sammie?” asked Cam, Tyler’s as-yet-unseen husband. “It’s a girl! As beautiful as her mother. Both great. Which is more than you can say for me. What a performance—we’ll never have another.”
“Not this week, but you wait a while,” Sammie said, thinking of friends who’d declared the same. She sent her love and congratulations and asked when she could visit. Then she quickly composed an announcement for the notice boards in the locker rooms and the staff room, adding some pink clip-art balloons and a stork carrying a baby. She printed off several copies and pinned them up, then dashed out to collect the day’s mail and buy a card for everyone to sign.
“Anything interesting?” Nick asked as she arrived back upstairs slightly out of breath and damp with rain. She’d twisted her long hair up to keep it dry.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, too surprised to be embarrassed. Then she remembered what they’d done the night before and a blush rushed up her neck and over her face.
“Adoption Services,” he muttered. He glanced around to ensure he couldn’t be overheard. “I went online this morning to see what else I could find out. By law, you have the right to information about your adoption once you turn twenty. They weren’t too pleased when I turned up without an appointment, but this is something I really want an answer to.”
Sammie nodded, understanding his impatience, and imagining all too clearly his insistent manner with any unfortunate official he’d tried to get information from. He hadn’t shaved. He was literally bristling—with indignation and stubble.
“But because I have an apparently valid birth certificate they can’t help. So we’re back to Gaynor and Brian. Like they’re going to be keen to tell me!” His eyes glittered with determination.
Sammie handed him the day’s mail, hopeful it might distract him. “Will you open this or do you want me to?”
He flipped through the envelopes, took a couple, and handed the rest back before striding along to his office.
She felt almost relieved. No attempt to touch her, no secret kisses, no special smile. It was as though their sexy night had never happened.
After processing a couple of Visa payments, she wrote a congratulatory message to the new parents, and poked her head around Nick’s door so he could be first to sign. “Sorry, should have told you. Tyler had a daughter. I’ve bought a card.” She waved it at him.
“Flowers?” he suggested. “Charge them to BodyWork. The details will be in the desk somewhere.”
Yes, Sammie had seen the page, carefully filed in the information folder. Tyler had intimated Nick bought a lot of flowers. No doubt for a lot of different women.
“She likes yellow roses,” he added, surprising her. “And get the flower shop to put some sort of baby thing with it. A teddy bear, a fairy doll...something?” He reached for the card, read her message, nodded, and scrawled a big black ‘Nick’ below it.
The reception bell dinged and Sammie hurried away. Anita stood there, dabbing at her nose with a tissue, and peering through the long glass wall at the array of machines and people using them. She looked like a fish out of water, shifting from foot to foot, and dressed in an obviously new cream tracksuit and gleaming white trainers. Sammie grinned at the unexpected sight. “Come for lunch?”
Anita swung around, plainly ple
ased to see a familiar face. “Darling—just the opposite. I’d like to get trim enough to wear that lovely suit I loaned you. I thought this might be the right place. Although...” She looked anxiously at one of the serious body-builders bench-pressing about as much as a small car.
“No,” Sammie assured her. “That won’t be you. You could maybe enroll for a Pilates class to get supple to start with. Shall I see if any of our personal trainers are free?”
“A personal trainer?” Anita murmured, looking impressed.
“Take a seat for a moment.” Sammie motioned her toward the sofa, remembering she’d seen Heidi heading to the staff room. Anita would be a client well worth having.
As she whipped past Nick’s office he called, “Got a minute, Sam?”
She backtracked a couple of steps and poked her head through his doorway. “I’m looking for Heidi—or anyone else who can talk to a possible new client. She has money. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Go. We can do this later.”
She wondered about ‘this’ as she hurried on down the corridor, apologized to Heidi as she interrupted her early lunch, and led her back to introduce to Anita. The phones immediately claimed her attention again, and she’d started jotting down a message to give to Jarrod when two big hands descended on her from behind. She stilled, and strong thumbs slid up and down her exposed neck and dug into the tense muscles of her shoulders. Nick’s distinctive scent floated on the air, teasing her senses and reminding her of the deep dark pleasure he’d spun for her the evening before.
“Don’t,” she begged, relieved Anita and Heidi had moved on. “This is exactly what I don’t want happening. People will notice and talk.”
“No-one’s looking.” His thumbs continued their heavenly massage through her cream voile top. “Have lunch with me.”
“Why?” she asked, exasperated.
“Because we need to eat. Because it’s almost time for a break. Because I want to talk some more.” His hands deserted her shoulders as female voices drew nearer.
“Why me?” She dragged in a determined breath. “I’m not the one you should be talking to. Ask your parents.”
“I’m working around to that. Need to be sure of my ground first.” He looked up as Anita and Heidi approached the desk again. “Have lunch with me,” he murmured.
“No Nick—I don’t want people talking.”
“I’ll meet you by the front door.” And he’d gone, down the stairs in a whirl of long legs, leather jacket and wide smile.
Sammie kept him waiting—quite content to sign Anita up, process her payment, and talk a little about Kelly’s apartment. Once she’d excused herself, grabbed her bag and jogged down the stairs, she found him sitting in his rain-spattered car at the street end of the alley. He was listening to the radio news and apparently unconcerned at the time she’d taken to arrive. He reached over and pushed the passenger door open.
She gave an exaggerated sigh, slid in beside him, and belted up. “So where are we going?”
“My place.” He accelerated out into the traffic.
“Nick!” She shot him an aggravated glare. “I thought you meant a quick coffee somewhere nearby.”
He met her eyes with an easy grin. “This’ll be a lot more private. No worries about being seen with the boss.”
“At the beach in weather like this?”
“Wait and see.”
“And who’s looking after BodyWork?”
“Someone on the team’ll fill in where they need to.”
Sammie marveled he had such faith in his people and his systems. A reflection of his own abilities, she presumed. “You hardly need me at all then.”
“I need you for things you can’t imagine.”
Oh, but she could—and all too vividly.
After a couple of minutes, he made a sharp left turn and shot up a steep, narrow street. The engine relished the challenge and growled its way up as far as a stucco-finished art deco house painted pale blue with pink facings. Anything less like Nick she couldn’t have imagined.
“It looks like a nursery rhyme,” she exclaimed as he braked in the driveway.
He nodded sagely. “I keep telling Bonnie she’s got the colors wrong. She’s going to love that description.”
“Who’s Bonnie?”
“She owns this little fantasy.”
“It’s not yours then?” Damn—she hadn’t meant to sound so suspicious.
He pushed his door open. “No, it’s Bonnie’s house. Her son Mike and I share it with her, for now.” He waited for Sammie to alight. “We’re close to the city center with a great view. I travel quite a bit so I can come and go as I please, and she never minds. And she needs the rent.”
Sammie digested that while Nick unlocked the house. Presumably Mike was an adult so Bonnie wasn’t in the first flush of youth. A landlady rather than a flat-mate, then? She found herself hoping so and pushed the thought away with annoyance. It was none of her business. She didn’t want it to be her business. Why was she even interested?
He stood aside for her, and she climbed the two pink-painted concrete steps and preceded him in. The interior looked as quirky as the outside. Bonnie collected old china—color-themed collections of plates and jugs clustered on shelves and hung on walls that glowed sunshine yellow. At the end of the entrance lobby, a line of old Toby jugs glared down.
“I pictured you in a minimalist high-rise apartment with heaps of electronics,” Sammie said as she entered a sage-green living room. More china, hundreds of books, vases of peacock feathers and dried grasses...
“Been there, done that, got offered a silly price and took it.” He smiled broadly. “Bet they wish they’d offered less, the way prices have dropped now. It suited me to have the cash on hand for other projects.”
He led her to the kitchen, opened a can of seafood chowder, tipped it into a pot, and set it to heat. Two ceramic soup-bowls and spoons were ready and waiting on the table.