DID FINN HAVE any clue how utterly mouth-wateringly gorgeous he looked stretched out like that, as if for her express delectation? Audra knew he didn’t mean anything by it. Flirting was as natural to him as breathing. If he thought for a moment she’d taken him seriously, he’d backtrack so fast it’d almost be funny.
Almost.
And she wasn’t an idiot. Yet she couldn’t get out of her mind the idea of striding around the table and—
No, not striding, sashaying around the table to plant herself in his lap, gently because she couldn’t forget his injuries, and running her hand across the stubble of his jaw before drawing his lips down to hers.
Her mouth went dry and her heart pounded so hard she felt winded...dizzy. Maybe she was an idiot after all.
It was the romance of this idyllic Greek island combined with the euphoria of having whizzed across the water on a jetski. It’d left her feeling wild and reckless. She folded her hands together in her lap. She didn’t do wild and reckless. If she went down that path it’d lead to things she couldn’t undo. She’d let her family down enough as it was.
Finn folded himself up to hunch over his beer. ‘Scrap that. Don’t ask your question. I don’t like the look on your face. You went from curiously speculative to prim and disapproving.’
She stiffened. ‘Prim?’
‘Prim,’ he repeated, not budging.
‘I am not prim.’
‘Sweetheart, nobody does prim like you.’
His laugh set her teeth on edge. She forced herself to settle back in her chair and to at least appear relaxed. ‘I see what you’re doing.’
‘What am I doing?’
‘Reverse psychology. Tell me not to ask a question in the hope I’ll do the exact opposite.’
‘Is it working?’
‘Why are you so fixated on me asking you my owed question?’
A slow grin hooked up one side of his mouth and looking at it was like staring into the sun. She couldn’t look away.
‘Is that your question?’
Strive for casual.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ If Rupert hadn’t put the darn notion in her head—Don’t fall for Finn—she wouldn’t be wondering what it’d be like to kiss him.
She sipped her beer. As long as speculation didn’t become anything more. She did what she could to ignore the ache that rose through her; to ignore the way her mouth dried and her stomach lurched.
She wasn’t starting something with Finn. Even if he proved willing—which he wouldn’t in a million years—there was too much at stake to risk it, and not enough to be won. She was determined there wouldn’t be any more black marks against her name this year. There wouldn’t be any more ever if she could help it.
If only she could stop thinking about him...inappropriately!
For heaven’s sake, she was the one in her family who kept things steady, regulated, trouble-free. If there were choppy waters, she was the one who smoothed them. She didn’t go rocking the boat and causing drama. That wasn’t who she was. She ground her teeth together. And she wasn’t going to change now.
She stared out at the harbour and gulped her beer. This was what happened when she let her hair down and indulged in a bit of impulsive wildness. It was so hard to get her wayward self back under wraps.
Finn might call her prim, but she preferred the terms self-controlled and disciplined. She needed to get things back on a normal grounding with him again, but when she went to open her mouth, he spoke first. ‘I guess it’s a throwback to the old game of Truth or Dare. I’m not up for too much daredevilry at the moment, but your question—the truth part of the game—is a different form of dangerousness.’
He stared up at the sky, lips pursed, and just like that he was familiar Finn again—family friend. Their session of jetskiing must’ve seemed pretty tame to him. He’d kept himself reined in for her sake, had focussed on her enjoyment rather than his own. Which meant that dark thread of restlessness would be pulsing through him now, goading him into taking unnecessary risks. She needed to dispel it if she could, to prevent him from doing something daft and dangerous.
‘The truth can be ugly, Finn. Admitting the truth can be unwelcome and...’ she settled for the word he’d used ‘...dangerous.’
Liquid brown eyes locked with hers as he drank his beer. He set his glass down on the table and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘I know.’
‘And yet you still want me to ask you a possibly dangerous question?’
‘I’m game if you are.’
Was there a particular question he wanted her to ask? He stared at her and waited. She moistened her lips again and asked the question that had been rattling around in her mind ever since Rupert’s phone call. ‘Why do you avoid long-term romantic commitment?’
He blinked. ‘That’s what you want to know?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m curious. You’ve never once brought a date to a Russel family dinner. The rest of us have, multiple times. I want to know how you got to avoid the youthful mistakes the rest of us made. Besides...’
‘What?’
‘When Rupe was warning me off, he made some comment about you not being long-term material. Now we’re going to ignore the fact that Rupert obviously thinks women only want long-term relationships when we all know that’s simply not true. He obviously doesn’t want to think of his little sister in those terms, bless him. But it made me think there’s a story there. Hence, my question.’
He nodded, but he didn’t speak.
She glanced at his now empty glass. ‘If you want another beer, I’m happy to drive us home.’
He called the waiter over and ordered a lime and soda. She did the same. He speared her with a glare. ‘I don’t need Dutch courage to tell you the truth.’
‘And yet that doesn’t hide the fact that you don’t want to talk about it.’ Whatever it was. She shrugged and drained the rest of her beer too. ‘That’s okay, you can simply fob me off with an “I just haven’t met the right girl yet” and be done with it.’
‘But that would be lying, and lying is against the rules.’
‘Ah, so you have met the right girl?’ Was it Trixie who’d texted him?
He wagged a finger at her, and just for a moment his eyes danced, shifting the darkness her question had triggered. ‘That’s an altogether different question. If you’d rather I answer that one...?’
It made her laugh. ‘I’ll stick with my original question, thank you very much.’
The waiter brought their drinks and Finn took the straw from his glass and set it on the table. His eyes turned sombre again. ‘You know the circumstances surrounding my father’s death?’
‘He died in a caving accident when you were eight.’
‘He liked extreme sports. He was an adrenaline junkie. I seem to have inherited that trait.’
She frowned and sat back.
His eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
She took a sip of her drink, wondering at his sharp tone. ‘Can one inherit risk-taking the same way they can brown eyes and tawny hair?’
‘Intelligence is inherited, isn’t it? And a bad temper and... Why?’
He glared and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘Just wondering,’ she murmured.
‘No, you weren’t.’
Fine. She huffed out a breath. ‘I always thought your adventuring was a way of keeping your father’s memory alive, a way to pay homage to him.’
He blinked.
She tried to gauge the impact her words had on him. ‘There isn’t any judgement attached to that statement, Finn. I’m not suggesting it’s either good or bad.’
He shook himself, but she noted the belligerent thrust to his jaw. ‘Does it matter whether my risk-taking is inherited or not?’
‘Of course it does. If it’s some gene you inherently possess then that means it’s always going to be a part of you, a...a natural urge like eating and sleeping. If it’s the latter then one day you can simply decide you’ve paid enough homage. One means you can’t change, the other means you can.’
He shoved his chair back, physically moving further away from her, his eyes flashing. She raised her hands. ‘But that’s not for me to decide. Your call. Like I said, no judgement here. It was just, umm...idle speculation.’ She tried not to wince as she said it.
The space between them pulsed with Finn’s...outrage? Shock? Disorientation? Audra wasn’t sure, but she wanted to get them back on an even keel again. ‘What does this have to do with avoiding romantic commitment?’
He gave a low laugh and stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘You warned me this could be dangerous.’
It had certainly sent a sick wave of adrenaline coursing through her. ‘We don’t have to continue with this conversation if you don’t want to.’
He skewered her with a glance. ‘You don’t want to know?’
She ran a finger through the condensation on her glass. He was being honest with her. He deserved the same in return. ‘I want to know.’
‘Then the rules demand that you get your answer.’
Was he laughing at her?
He grew serious again. ‘My father’s death was very difficult for my mother.’
Jeremy Sullivan had been an Australian sportsman who for a brief moment had held the world record for the men’s four-hundred-metre butterfly. Claudette Dupont, Finn’s mother, had been working at the French embassy in Canberra. They’d met, fallen in love and had moved to Europe where Jeremy had pursued a life of adventure and daring. Both of Finn’s grandfathers came from old money. They, along with the lucrative sponsorship deals Jeremy received, had funded his and Claudette’s lifestyle.
And from the outside it had been an enviable lifestyle—jetting around the world from one extreme sporting event to another—Jeremy taking part in whatever event was on offer while Claudette cheered him from the sidelines. And there’d apparently been everything from cliff diving to ice climbing, bobsledding to waterfall kayaking, and more.
But it had ended in tragedy with the caving accident that had claimed Jeremy’s life. Audra dragged in a breath. ‘She was too young to be a widow.’ And Finn had been too young to be left fatherless.
‘She gave up everything to follow him on his adventures—her job, a stable network of friends...a home. She was an only child and there weren’t many close relatives apart from her parents.’
Audra wondered how she’d cope in that same situation. ‘She had you.’
He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t enough.’
The pain in his eyes raked through her chest, thickened her throat. ‘What happened?’ She knew his mother had died, but nobody ever spoke of it.
‘She just...faded away. She developed a lot of mystery illnesses—spent a lot of time in hospital. When she was home she spent a lot of time in bed.’
‘That’s when your uncle Ned came to look after you?’ His father’s brother was still a big part of Finn’s life. He’d relocated to Europe to be with Finn and Claudette.
‘He moved in and looked after the both of us. I was eleven when my mother died, and the official verdict was an accidental overdose of painkillers.’ He met her gaze. ‘Nobody thought she did it deliberately.’
That was something at least. But it was so sad. Such a waste.
‘My uncle’s verdict was that she’d died of a broken heart.’
Audra’s verdict was that Claudette Sullivan had let her son down. Badly. But she kept that to herself. Her heart ached for the little boy she’d left behind and for all the loss he’d suffered.
‘Ned blamed my father.’
Wow. ‘It must’ve been hard for Ned,’ she offered. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost one of my siblings. And to then watch as your mother became sicker... He must’ve felt helpless.’
‘He claimed my father should never have married if he wasn’t going to settle down to raise a family properly.’
Finn’s face had become wooden and she tried not to wince. ‘Families aren’t one-size-fits-all entities. They don’t come in pretty cookie-cutter shapes.’
He remained silent. She moistened her lips. ‘What happened after your mother died?’
He straightened in his chair and took a long gulp of lime and soda. ‘That’s when Ned boarded me at the international school in Geneva. It was full of noisy, rowdy boys and activities specifically designed to keep us busy and out of mischief.’
It was an effort, but she laughed as he’d meant her to. ‘I’ve heard stories about some of the mischief you got up to. I think they need to redesign some of those activities.’
He grinned. ‘It was full of life. Ned came to every open day, took me somewhere every weekend we had leave. I didn’t feel abandoned.’
Not by Ned, no. But what about his mother? She swallowed. ‘And you met Rupert there.’
His grin widened. ‘And soon after found myself adopted by the entire Russel clan.’
‘For your sins.’ She smiled back, but none of it eased the throb in her heart.
‘I always found myself drawn to the riskier pastimes the school offered...and that only grew as I got older. There’s nothing like the thrill of paragliding down a mountain or surfing thirty-foot waves.’
‘Or throwing oneself off a ski jump with gay abandon,’ she added wryly, referencing his recent accident.
‘Accidents happen.’
But in the pastimes Finn pursued, such accidents could have fatal consequences. Didn’t that bother him? ‘Did Ned never try and clip your wings or divert your interests elsewhere?’ He’d lost a brother. He wouldn’t have wanted to lose a nephew as well.
‘He’s too smart for that. He knew it wouldn’t work, not once he realised how determined I was. Before I was of age, when I still needed a guardian’s signature, he just made sure I had the very best training available in whatever activity had taken my fancy before he’d sign the permission forms.’
‘It must’ve taken an enormous amount of courage on his behalf.’
‘Perhaps. But he’d seen the effect my grandfather’s refusals and vetoes had had on my father. He said it resulted in my father taking too many unnecessary chances. In his own way, Ned did his best to keep me safe.’
She nodded.
‘The way I live my life, the risks I take, they’re not conducive to family life, Audra. When I turned eighteen I promised my uncle to never take an unnecessary risk—to make sure I was always fully trained to perform whatever task I was attempting.’
Thinking about the risks he took made her temples ache.
‘I made a promise to myself at the same time.’ His eyes burned into hers. ‘I swore I’d never become involved in a long-term relationship until I’d given up extreme sports. It’s not fair to put any woman through what my father put my mother through.’
It was evident he thought hell had a better chance of freezing over than him ever giving up extreme sports. She eyed him for a moment. ‘Have you ever been tempted to break that contract with yourself?’
‘I don’t break my promises.’
It wasn’t an answer. It was also an oblique reminder of the promise he’d made to Rupert. As if that were something she was likely to forget.
‘But wouldn’t you like a long-term relationship some day? Can’t you ever see a time when you’d give up extreme sports?’
His eyes suddenly gleamed. ‘Those are altogether separate questions. I believe I’ve answered your original one.’
Dammit! He had to know that only whetted her appetite for more.
None of your business.
It really wasn’t, but then wasn’t that the beauty, the temptation, of this game of ‘truth or dare’ questions—the danger?
Finn wanted to laugh at the quickened curiosity, the look of pique, in Audra’s face. He shouldn’t play this game. He should leave it all well enough alone, but...
He leaned towards her. ‘I’ll make a tit-for-tat deal with you.’
Ice-blue eyes shouldn’t leave a path of fire on his skin, but beneath her gaze he started to burn. She cocked her head to one side. ‘You mean a question-for-question, quid pro quo bargain?’
‘Yep.’
She leaned in and searched his face as if trying to decipher his agenda. He did his best to keep his face clear. Finally she eased back and he could breathe again.
‘You must be really bored.’
He wasn’t bored. Her company didn’t bore him. It never had. He didn’t want to examine that thought too closely, though. He didn’t want to admit it out loud either. ‘Life has been...quieter of late than usual.’
‘And you’re finding that a challenge?’
He had in Nice, but now...not really. Which didn’t make sense.
Can you inherit a risk-taking gene? He shied away from that question, from the deeper implications that lay beneath its surface. So what if some of his former pursuits had lost their glitter? That didn’t mean anything.
He set his jaw. ‘Let’s call it a new experience.’
Her lips pressed together into a prim line he wanted to mess up. He’d like to kiss those lips until they were plump and swollen and—Hell!
‘Are you up for my question challenge?’ He made his voice deliberately mocking in a way he knew would gall her.
‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’
He kinked an eyebrow, deliberately trying to inflame her competitive spirit. ‘What are you afraid of?’
She pushed her sunglasses further up her nose and readjusted her sunhat. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how every question now seems to take on a double edge?’
He didn’t pursue it. In all honesty letting sleeping dogs lie would probably be for the best.
Really?
He thrust out his jaw. And if not, then there was more than one way to find out what was troubling her. He just needed to turn his mind to it. Find another way.
Finn laughed when Audra pulled the two trays of croissants from the oven. Those tiny hard-looking lumps were supposed to be croissants? Her face, comical in its indignation, made him laugh harder.
‘How can you laugh about this? We spent hours on these and...and this is our reward?’
‘French pastry has a reputation for being notoriously difficult, hasn’t it?’ He poked a finger at the nearest hard lump and it disintegrated to ash beneath his touch. ‘Wow, I think we just took French cooking to a new all-time low.’
‘But...but you’re half French! That should’ve given us a head start.’
‘And you’re half Australian but I don’t see any particular evidence of that making you handy with either a cricket bat or a barbecue.’
Like Finn’s father, Audra’s mother had been Australian. Audra merely glowered at him, slammed the cookbook back to the bench top and studied its instructions once again. He hoped she wasn’t going to put him through the torture of working so closely beside her in the kitchen again. There’d been too much accidental brushing of arms, too much...heat. Try as he might, he couldn’t blame it all on the oven. Even over the smell of flour, yeast and milk, the scent of peaches and coconut had pounded at him, making him hungry.
But not for food.
He opened a cupboard and took out a plate, unwrapped the bakery bag he’d stowed in the pantry earlier and placed half a dozen croissants onto it. He slid the plate towards Audra.
She took a croissant without looking, bit into it and then pointed at the cookbook. ‘Here’s where we went wrong. We—’
She broke off to stare at the croissant in her hand, and then at the plate. ‘If you dare tell me here are some croissants you prepared earlier, I’ll—’
‘Here are some croissants I bought at the village bakery earlier.’
‘When earlier?’
‘Dawn. Before you were up.’
The croissant hurtled back to the plate and her hands slammed to her hips. He backed up a step. ‘I wasn’t casting aspersions on your croissant-making abilities. But I wanted a back-up plan because...because I wanted to eat croissants.’ Because she’d seemed so set on them.
Her glare didn’t abate. ‘What else have you been doing at the crack of dawn each morning?’
He shook his head, at a loss. ‘Nothing, why?’
‘Have you been running into the village and back every morning?’
He frowned. ‘I took the car.’ Anyway, he wasn’t up to running that distance yet. And he hadn’t felt like walking. Every day he felt a little stronger, but... It hadn’t occurred to him to run into the village. Or to run anywhere for that matter. Except with her on the beach, when it was his turn to choose their daily activities. Only then he didn’t make her jog anyway. They usually walked the length of the beach and then swam back.
‘Or...or throwing yourself off cliffs or...or kite surfing or—’
He crowded in close then, his own temper rising, and it made her eyes widen...and darken. ‘That wouldn’t be in the spirit of the deal we made, would it?’
She visibly swallowed. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘And I’m a man of my word.’
Her gaze momentarily lowered to his lips before lifting again. ‘You’re also a self-professed adrenaline junkie.’
Except the adrenaline flooding his body at the moment had nothing to do with extreme sports. It had to do with the perfect shape of Audra’s mouth and the burning need to know what she’d taste like. Would she taste of peaches and coconut? Coffee and croissant? Salty or sweet? His skin tightened, stretching itself across his frame in torturous tautness.
Her breathing grew shallow and a light flared to life in her eyes and he knew she’d recognised his hunger, his need, but she didn’t move away, didn’t retreat. Instead her gaze roved across his face and lingered for a beat too long on his mouth, and her lips parted with an answering hunger.
‘A man of his word?’ she murmured, swaying towards him.
Her words penetrated the fog surrounding his brain. What are you doing? You can’t kiss her!
He snapped away, his breathing harsh. Silence echoed off the walls for three heart-rending beats and then he heard her fussing around behind him...dumping the failed croissants in the bin, rinsing the oven trays. ‘Thank you for buying backup croissants, Finn.’
He closed his eyes and counted to three, before turning around. He found her surveying him, her tone nonchalant and untroubled—as if she hadn’t been about to reach up on her tiptoes and kiss him. He’d seen the temptation in her eyes, but somehow she’d bundled up her needs and desires and hidden them behind a prim wall of control and restraint. It had his back molars grinding together.
He didn’t know how he knew, but this was all related—her tight rein on her desires and needs, her refusal to let her hair down and have fun, the dogged determination to repress it all because...?
He had no idea! He had no answer for why she didn’t simply reach out and take what she wanted from life.
She bit into her croissant and it was all he could do then not to groan.
‘I have a “truth or dare” question for you, Finn.’
He tried to match her coolness and composure. ‘So you’ve decided to take me up on the quid pro quo bargain?’
She nodded and stuck out a hip. If he’d been wearing a tie he’d have had to loosen it. ‘If you’re still game,’ she purred.
In normal circumstances her snark would’ve had him fighting a grin. But nothing about today and this kitchen and Audra felt the least bit normal. Or the least bit familiar. ‘Ask your question.’
She eyed him for a moment, her eyes stormy. ‘Don’t you want something more out of life?’
‘More?’ He felt his eyes narrow. ‘Like what?’
‘I mean, you flit from adventure to adventure, but...’ That beautiful brow of hers creased. ‘Don’t you want something more worthwhile, more...lasting?’
His lips twisted. A man showed no interest in settling down—
‘I’m not talking about marriage and babies!’ she snapped as if reading his mind. ‘I’m talking about doing something good with your life, making a mark, leaving a legacy.’
Her innate and too familiar disapproval stung him in ways it never had before. Normally he’d have laughed it off, but...
He found himself leaning towards her. He had to fight the urge to loom. He wasn’t Thomas-blasted-Farquhar. He didn’t go in for physical intimidation. ‘Do you seriously think I just live off my trust fund while I go trekking through the Amazon and train for the London marathon, and—’
‘Look, I know you raise a lot of money for charity, but there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to your methods—no proper organisation. You simply bounce from one thing to the next.’
‘And what about my design company?’
Her hands went to her hips. ‘You don’t seem to spend a lot of time in the office.’
His mouth worked. ‘You think I treat my company like a...a toy?’
‘Well, don’t you? I mean, you never talk about it!’
‘You never ask me about it!’
She blinked. ‘From where I’m standing—’
‘With all the other workaholics,’ he shot back.
‘It simply looks as if you’re skiving off from the day job to have exciting adventures. Obviously that’s your prerogative, as you’re the boss, but—’
He raised his arms. ‘Okay, we’re going to play a game.’
She stared at him. Her eyes throbbed, and he knew that some of this anger came from what had almost happened between them—the physical frustration and emotional confusion. He wanted to lean across and pull her into his arms and hug her until they both felt better. But he had a feeling that solution would simply lead to more danger.
Her chin lifted. ‘And what about my question?’
‘By the end of the game you’ll have your answer. I promise.’ And in the process he meant to challenge her to explore the dreams she seemed so doggedly determined to bury.
Her eyes narrowed and she folded her arms. ‘What does this game involve?’
‘Sitting in the garden with a plate of croissants and my computer.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sitting?’
‘And eating...and talking.’
She unfolded her arms. ‘Fine. That I can do.’
What was it his uncle used to say? There’s more than one way to crack an egg. He might never discover the reasons Audra held herself back, but the one thing he could do was whet her appetite for the options life held, give her the push she perhaps needed to reach for her dreams. After all, temptation and adventure were his forte. He frowned as he went to retrieve his laptop. At least, they had been once. And he’d find his fire for them again soon enough.
And he couldn’t forget that once he’d answered her question, he’d have one of his own in the kitty. He might never use it—she was right, these questions could be dangerous—but it’d be there waiting just in case.