AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she came out with the offer to drive him home, the invitation to eat together, he had no option but to be rude about it because mentally he was already on her couch, his legs tangled with hers, her head on his shoulder like it’d been last night.
He should never have touched her last night. Letting her fall asleep was a foul piece of business. She should’ve been home in her own bed. He should’ve bundled her off, made sure she knew not to come back in a hurry. But one look at her sleep-slackened body and her heavy eyelids and he’d had a whole other rationalisation.
She was safer staying than driving home tired. Safer with him.
So he’d let her drift off, and he’d sat close, taken her weight on his shoulder and his side and held a kind of vigil over her, watching the day break with sunshine in his arms. That screwed just about every rule there was, scrubbed out all the hard lines and left him with logic so fuzzy he’d thought showing up at her home was a reasonable thing to do.
It was more unreasonable than living in a cave.
So getting in her car, eating together, that was preposterous.
He had to stop and catch his breath, choose a side of the street to climb; the side with the stairs and the handrail, which most people who had no option but take this hill chose, or the opposite side where the pavement ramped at extreme angles.
No choice. They didn’t call it heartbreak hill for nothing.
Exhaustion was one way of pushing Foley out of his head. The feel of her body, its weight against his, the way her breath swelled her chest and her lips parted as she relaxed into sleep, her head on his shoulder, her hand resting against his thigh.
That was all far too intimate, a feeling he could easily start to crave; better to scald the memory of it out of his muscles than make another mistake, inserting himself into her life outside work like he’d just done.
If she wasn’t so genuine, if she wasn’t so down to earth and open and sparkling with humour and life, it’d be easier to write her off as a professional pain in the neck. He could bark at her like an attack dog, bare his teeth and send her on her way without a qualm. That’s what he’d planned on doing. Playing the unstable caveman part, she’d hardly be surprised. If he made it difficult enough for her she’d give up on him. She wasn’t stupid.
But Foley wasn’t so easy to get rid of either, especially when she looked at him like she’d done after the shock of seeing him at her door sloughed off.
She looked at him like she was delighted to see him and not just her wallet. And yet he was tattered and torn, tanned and weathered and scruffy. But she wasn’t put off. She didn’t flinch. She blushed.
And damn his soul if he’d hadn’t liked that, liked the way she lit up when she saw him. It’d made him think a ride home, a stop to eat, wasn’t the worst idea, before reality arrived in the form of the flatmate.
His calves cramped, his legs burned and his lungs squeezed. He was halfway up and no closer to getting Foley out of his head. No closer to understanding why he was so affected by her. There’d been a lot of women before her, but none of them had managed to call his bluff quite like she did.
His nostrils flared and he breathed deep. He turned to look back at where he’d come from, the suburb spread out behind him, the storm building above him. If you were scared of heights, looking down from here might trip your fear sensor.
Foley certainly tripped his.
There was lightning in the distance. At some point before he got home he was going to end up very wet. Better that than the range of humiliations he’d almost opened himself up to.
He was falling for Foley, for her confidence and determination, for her pluck and her honesty. She was shelter for his storm and he didn’t deserve that kind of peace. It scared the hell out of him.
9: New Deal
Drum wasn’t anywhere she could see on the street. Foley got in her car and took off, not entirely sure which way he’d go, but given how overcast the sky was, assuming he’d take the most direct route, which meant heartbreak hill. Straight up, so steep there were stairs on one side, two codes of football used it for pre-season training and her car hated it, even in low gear.
That’s where she found him, his powerful stride eating the sloped pavement as if it were fairy floss, his calf muscles bunched, arms swinging easily. The back of his shirt was wet, stuck to his skin, but he was almost at the top. She pulled up alongside him and lowered the passenger side window. He didn’t break stride. There were a couple of parked cars, so she pulled back out and around them, her engine roaring, and pulled up in front of him.
When he drew level she called his name. He flicked an annoyed quick glance at her and kept walking. She kept pace with him. “It’s going to rain. You’ll get drenched.”
He turned his head. “I’ll dry.”
She accelerated and parked ahead of him, but when he didn’t show up, she checked her mirror. He’d stopped. He was standing a car length back, his head tipped up to look at the sky. He might cross the road to get away from her. That’s when she figured he really did want to be left alone. She was doing to him what she’d stopped Nat doing—harassing him. She sighed and watched him, as the first drops of rain hit the back windscreen. If he crossed, she’d drive on.
He lowered his head, appeared to fix on the car and walked forward. She couldn’t stop the smile that filled her face, and when he got in she was practically vibrating silly with it. They stared at each other while the rain came down and for once he didn’t look away first. She did.
“It’s pouring,” he said.
She turned to face him again. Was he being funny, or was that his justification for getting in the car? He’d spoken first as well. She didn’t know what to make of that on top of what was the longest eye contact they’d ever held. His raisin toast scent was on speed, mixed with his sweat and the green metal smell of the storm, it filled the cabin of her old Mazda. It made her feel happy.
There were raindrops in his hair. “You’d have been very wet.”
“I’ve been wet before.”
