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In truth, she was tired.
And in pain.
It was purely bad timing that had seen her stumble and fall in front of Dave.Nosy old publican.At least he wasn’t a gossip.
He’d been sitting in the loading bay, smoking a durry, when she’d emerged from the goat track that cut through the gardens at the rear of the pub.
It was her first night back in her tiny hometown, and after dumping her car at the house, she’d gone to the cemetery to visit her parents’ graves. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of her travelling clothes first.
Mia had sat with her parents for hours, talking and sipping scotch, telling them everything and anything about the past two years, all in a vain attempt to avoid going home to an empty house filled with rotting furniture and mixed emotional memories.
Only when the daylight had faded enough for the street lamps to flicker on did she notice how late it was and concede to her fate: a lonely night in an echoey house where the wind whistled through the cracks in the windows and the floorboards creaked with age.
The decision to cut through the pub gardens had been one of pure economy. A time saver to get her off her feet faster and ease the ache in her back and hip. But Dave had spotted her and called out her name, and instead of watching where she was putting her feet, Mia had stumbled and fallen.
When he’d helped her up again, he’d smelled the alcohol on her breath, assumed the worst, propped her up against the milk crates, and gone to fetch her some help.
She’d almost wished sheweredrunk when he came back with Oliver Bennett in tow. At least then there would have been a chance she’d forget any of this ever happened. But that wasn’t to be, because as she sat there listening to the pair of them arguing about Ollie’s sex life, her lower back had spasmed, and when she’d moved to ease the pain, she’d lost her balance. And then she’d lost her father’s flask.
The one he’d given her after her graduation from Duntroon.
The one his father had given him at his graduation.
“So, what now?” she asked, pushing to her feet, making Oliver back up and out of her space.
Her embarrassment was making her snippy, and why wouldn’t it? She’d almost ripped his shirt open, for fuck’s sake, and she’d have to have been blind to miss the hint of chiselled pecs decorated with dark blond hair that had appeared in the V she’d created when his buttons had popped open.Stupid hip.Buttons he’d since refastened, hiding that tantalising slice of tanned perfection.
“You going to hold my hand and look both ways before letting me cross the street?”
Oliver closed his eyes and breathed slowly, like he was trying very hard not to snap at her. Her embarrassment momentarily forgotten, Mia almost laughed. Usually she was the one closing her eyes and counting to ten so she didn’t throttle someone.
“No,” he said, staring down at her once more. “I’m going to do as Dave asked and walk you home, and then I’m going to bed. Alone. Again.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Can you walk?”
Biting her tongue to stop herself from snapping at him and his assumptions again, she deliberately batted her eyelashes and threw down some sarcasm instead. “If I say no, will you give me a piggyback ride?”
Her irritation was short-lived. For the first time since seeing him tonight, his lips twitched up in a sexy half-smile, and little crinkles appeared around his eyes, softening his stern appearance and making her heartbeat quicken. “If I give you a piggyback ride, do you promise not to throw up on me again?”
She jabbed a finger into his chest. “That only happened once, and it was your own bloody fault for bouncing me up and down. I told you I didn’t feel well.”
“And I told you not to eat all those hot dogs.”
“Your brother bet me I couldn’t do it.”
“Charlie bets people can’t do stupid shit all the time,” he said, that sexy half-smile now a full-blown grin. “Doesn’t mean you should do it.”
Mia fully intended to continue arguing her point, even planted her hands on her hips for emphasis, but after opening her mouth, she promptly shut it again. Not because she had nothing to say but because her words had dissolved into laughter, and she was trying valiantly to keep it jammed in her throat where it belonged.
She was mad at him, damn it. The last thing she needed was to lose ground by laughing.
But then, like the proverbial light bulb flickering above her head, Mia realised something.
As of forty-eight hours earlier, she was no longer a soldier. She didn’t have to win on principle. She didn’t have to stand her ground, even when she was dog tired and in more pain than one human being should ever have to be.
She didn’t have to suck it up and shove it down and pretend she wasn’t furious just so no one could accuse her of being overly emotional, or crack jokes about “parting the Red Sea”, or try to cop a feel and suggest all she needed was a good fuck.
Nor was she staring down an insubordinate shithead who couldn’t wrap his pea-sized intellect around the fact that a woman was in charge, that she held all the power.
This was Oliver Bennett. One of Ulysses Bennett’s infamous bastard sons. To say he’d been raised in a sex-positive environment was an understatement. And not just about having sex but in attitudes towards the opposite sex.
