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“Want to bet?” she asked.
And she turned and left the bathroom before her knees gave out and completely ruined her exit.
Her hands were still shaking in her lap when Mick drove her home after their lunch at a waterfront cafe. The distance was approximately forty-five seconds by car on a good traffic day, but he was going on to an afternoon appointment in Wanaka, over the Crown Range, and he wanted to have a look at the box of paints. Her half-hearted joke that they were unlikely to be concealing plastic explosives or laced with asbestos had fallen flat. The whole meal had been awkward, with barely a word spoken and eyes skittering off in all directions if they accidentally made contact. Seeing each other naked seemed to have thrown them straight back to the public shells of their first meeting, stammering shyness on her part and impenetrable reserve on his. When she did sneak a peek at him, he was usually watching her with a conflicted concern that slid back into aloofness under observation.
She was reaching out to open the front door when he stopped her with a hand on her elbow.
“Sophy,” he said, and then hesitated, seeming to consider and discard various options for speech. She waited, her knuckles locked around the door handle. Butterfly wings were beating a fast tattoo in her stomach.
His dark grey eyes were intent on her face, his wide shoulders tense. He reached out and cupped her cheek with one enormous, comforting palm, his blunt nails gentle against her skin.
Compelled by both the desire to put off a conversation that seemed to be gathering in speed and importance at the rate of an incoming tidal wave, and by desire in general, she slid her own hands up his sides, curving under his arms to clutch his shoulders and tug him down. Her mouth met his, hard and rough, and he returned the kiss without restraint, his forearms falling to form a familiar supportive cross at the base of her spine as he urged her up on her tiptoes.
He tasted good, he smelled amazing and he felt frighteningly safe, but she was not so decimated by the embrace that she didn’t hear the door opening. She didn’t really believe that outside of fiction people could be so overcome by lust that they genuinely didn’t notice when their boss walked in, or the stage curtain went up, or the elevator doors opened, revealing them in flagrante. In this case, it was a little difficult to avoid the reality of Jeeves jumping up and clawing happily at her backside or the sound of her cousin snickering on the doorstep.
Reaching behind her to pull Jeeves down before he accidentally ripped off her skirt and tipped the scene over into a complete farce, Sophy hurriedly backed away from Mick, her cheeks flaming with her seven hundredth flush of the day. Tongue kissing in front of family members – mortifying. She coughed and her gaze skated over Melissa’s malicious delight to land on Dale, standing behind her cousin with his hands in his pockets and an expression on his face that she’d never seen. On Dale, that is. She’d seen that particular shade of aloof on Mick plenty of times. Dale, however, was like Sean, larger than life, emotions hung out in the wind for all to see.
Uneasily, she glanced back up at Mick and saw that he too was watching Dale. His mouth was set grimly.
It occurred to her that she seemed to have been involved in quite a number of these Wild West stand-offs in the few weeks since she’d met him.
Fortunately, there was Melissa to break the tension this time and she did so by waving a worse-for-wear shoe in Sophy’s face.
“This is a Ferragamo pump,” she said crossly, outrage having reclaimed its position from amusement. “This is a dog puke covered Ferragamo pump.”
Sophy blinked, forced her attention back to Melissa, attempted to drag her brain along for the ride.
“What?” she asked blankly and then frowned. “Why were you wearing your Ferragamos around the house on a Monday morning?”
“I’m sorry, is that the point? No.”
“Sorry to interrupt…this,” Mick broke in hastily, his male alarm obviously going off at the prospect of women arguing over shoes, “but I have to get going, Sophy, or I’ll be late for my meeting.”
“Oh. Sure. Of course.” Sophy shoved at a stand of hair that had fallen loose from her bun. “Um, call me later? Or something.”
“Aren’t you working tonight?” he asked, one hand playing with his keys, rotating them over his knuckles. He cast another long, hard look at Dale, who was still standing silently in the hallway.
“Oh,” she said again, flustered. God, this day. This month. “Yes, I am. I’m on from five until twelve again.”
“I’ll pick you up outside the bar at midnight,” he said, and his tone brooked no arguments. Her eyes narrowed slightly, the Army sergeant staccato hitting her straight in the tolerance nerve, but she would rather be safe than proud. She hadn’t been looking forward to walking home alone again, not until they had figured out whether there was anything to fear.
“Fine,” she said stiffly, then belatedly realised that it was still a favour, even if it had been delivered unwrapped and without ceremony, and added, “Thank you.”
He nodded, said a brief goodbye to a fascinated Melissa and clenched his jaw in Dale’s direction, which might have been guy code for a greeting had it not been accompanied by a stony glare.
The car engine hadn’t faded from earshot when Dale spoke for the first time, abruptly.
“I have to get going too,” he said woodenly, and Melissa stared at him in surprise.
“What? I thought we going to get coffee and head in to work.”
He wasn’t looking at either of them. Bending to pat a mechanical hand to Jeeves’s head, he muttered an apology and a vague mumble about picking something up at a store before their shifts started.
He all but jogged to his car.
Melissa raised a quizzical brow at Sophy.
“Was it something we said?” A grin spread across her face. “And speaking of what obviously hasn’t been said – what have you been up to, chicky?”
