IT WAS after midnight when Daisy finally returned to her flat. Once inside the door, she leaned against it, flicked on the light and looked around at her familiar possessions and surroundings. Definitely her flat, her world, yet the ‘other-world’ sensation lingered.
For a start, she’d become so relaxed she’d actually felt all sexy and aroused when sitting in the spa with Julian, although the only physical touches between them had been accidental meeting of legs or toes as they’d shifted positions. In fact, if they’d sat there much longer, she might have launched herself at him, demanding they start work on ‘making babies’ right there and then.
Fortunately, he’d announced he was starving and had removed himself, and his most impressive body, from the spa to telephone Mickey’s and order dinner for two. He had paused to check if she had any food dislikes or preferences, then had decided for her, a totally new experience for Daisy.
The meal, lamb fillets with a ginger-orange sauce on a sweet potato mash, had been delicious, the wine, one of Graham’s fine cabernets, superb. But whether from the relaxing effects of the spa or the inhibition-loosening effects of the wine, the dinner conversation had been, to say the least, bizarre.
They had ranged over topics from toilet training—how young should parents start—to sexually transmitted diseases. Even now, Daisy felt heat in her cheeks as she remembered that part.
Julian had seemed more appreciative than shocked, though he’d roared with laughter when she’d first mentioned it, mainly because she’d stumbled into it, talking about Adrian and how, after finding he was gay, she’d taken herself off to be tested for every conceivable disease.
She hadn’t added that it hadn’t been an immediate decision, but one forced on her when she’d told Glen about her previous boyfriend and he’d insisted she be tested.
‘Me, too,’ Julian had admitted. ‘I did it as soon as I decided I wanted to have a child. I thought with my mother’s reference and a written declaration of my health, I’d have all bases covered.’
Daisy frowned as she remembered that bit of conversation—frowning over the mention of the reference, rather than his health certificate. His mother must have written it in fun. Maybe one day when he was spouting his theory that love was simply a name for the excessive amount of hormonal activity taking place in the bodies of adolescents—perhaps allied with the energy and idealism of youth.
But in Daisy’s case, she hadn’t stopped falling in love as she’d matured. In fact, she’d always fallen in love so easily—if disastrously—she’d virtually stopped dating after Glen for fear it might happen again.
So, wouldn’t a relationship based on convenience be the way for her to go? And being married to Julian would be much the same as not dating, only she’d be able to have the child she dearly wanted as a bonus.
She shook her head, startled to think she was seriously considering his proposition.
But it did make sense. It had a lot going for it…and children deserved two parents…
As long as she didn’t fall in love with Julian.
‘Stop right there!’
She said the words aloud to make sure she heard them, but still her mind strayed.
The tremors she’d felt in the spa had been definitely physical—so they didn’t count. Hadn’t she told ‘In Love’ about lust and attraction?
She pushed away from the door, feeling those same tremors once again, a tingling kind of anticipation in the deepest depths of her body, like an awakening of a part of her that had slept for too long.
The sensible Daisy shook her head at this fanciful nonsense.
‘Lust, pure and simple!’ she told herself, turning off the light and heading for her bedroom, where she didn’t bother turning on the computer because she’d promised to return to ‘twin duty’ at six the next morning, and if she didn’t get to sleep right now, she’d never get through the day.
‘Well, another day survived!’ Julian said, as once again, at seven-thirty in the evening, they were slumped in the living room, breathing quiet air and listening to silence.
‘Hypothetical question,’ Daisy said. ‘If an ultrasound were to show I was having twins, would you back away from the fatherhood deal? Perhaps jump off a cliff?’ She’d no sooner said it than she raised her fingers to her lips, shocked by her own assumption that their eventual union was a foregone conclusion.
Julian smiled at her.
‘I feel the same way,’ he admitted. ‘As if we’ve known each other for a hundred years and have already made the commitment to a joint future. I think it struck me when we were at the park and Shaun spread ice cream all down your top. You picked him up and kissed him better because he was upset he’d lost it, so of course it spread all over you as well, then you cleaned him up and didn’t bother that your lovely shirt had green stains all over it.’
‘You make it sound as if you’ve been looking for a messy woman all your life,’ Daisy said crossly, pulling her shirt out in front of her so she could see the stains—and the dirt that had collected on them! ‘You might have told me how bad this looked earlier. I’d have gone home and changed.’
‘And left me with the monsters? I’m not that crazy!’
He shifted from the chair to the couch, settled beside her and put one arm along the back of it.
‘Spa to clean up?’ he said, but his fingers touched her shoulder and the shiver that ricocheted through her body told her it suspected he intended more than simply getting clean.
Yet she nodded, and didn’t suggest going home to change.
His fingers caressed her shoulder and neck, feather-light touches that alerted all her nerve endings for further action.
‘Now?’ he said, and because a chaotic blend of nervousness and desire had strangled her vocal cords, she nodded again, while warning voices in her head reminded her of just what she was agreeing to.
But she did want a baby…
His genes would be good…
She had to start somewhere…
‘Naked?’
She turned and frowned at Julian, mainly because he was interrupting her internal argument and confusing her so much she no longer had any idea what she thought or felt.
‘Persistent, aren’t you? Do you have to keep asking questions? Bring it all out in the open like something that needs examining? Can’t we just do it?’
‘Do it as in sex?’ he demanded, sounding almost shocked.
‘Not necessarily,’ Daisy muttered, ‘but you must admit it could happen. I meant getting naked and having a spa—after all, if we decide to have a baby together, we have to see each other’s bodies some time, but let’s just do it and not talk about it. Not plan out every move.’
‘I only wanted to be sure you were ready,’ he said, removing the tantalising fingers from her shoulder and tucking both hands between his knees. ‘And after all we talked about last night, I thought we could discuss anything.’
Daisy pressed her hands to her cheeks as heat flooded her body.
‘Yes, well, that was last night. Right now, let’s just have a spa.’
Julian stood up, totally confused by where things were. He definitely wanted this woman—right now, physically—and he was reasonably certain she’d make a great mother for his children—so why did he feel he was on an out-of-control roller-coaster, hurtling into the unknown? What had happened to the rational, sensible part of his brain that ran his life so tidily?
Surely a couple of days with the twin demons couldn’t have short-circuited it!
He ran water into the spa, then started the jets, but when Daisy came in and began stripping, pulling off her shirt first to reveal lush full breasts enticing even in a sensible cotton bra, he excused himself— ‘Forgot the intercom’—and hurried out, hoping she’d take the hint and be in the water by the time he returned.
Though then he’d have to strip off in front of her…
Had he put on weight? Were his muscles losing definition? In London he’d tried to get to the gym at least once a week, simply to keep up a minimum level of fitness, but the last few weeks…
He checked the twins—sleeping soundly—found the remote listening device and returned to the spa room. Daisy had her head back on the rim of the tub, and her eyes closed.
Didn’t she want to see him naked?
Shaking his head at his own uncertainty, he stripped off and slid into the water.
‘Great, isn’t it?’ Daisy murmured, her eyes still closed, her body limp with relaxation. ‘I suppose if we had twins we could get a nanny.’
This practical remark, offered in a soft, sleepy, unconcerned kind of voice, had the strangest effect on Julian, an effect usually associated with far more erotic murmurings, so when Daisy’s toes brushed against his legs, his own toes wanted a piece of the action, finding her leg and using touch to explore it.
‘Mmm, that’s nice.’
It was all the encouragement he needed. So what if the roller-coaster was out of control? He could at least enjoy this bit of the ride.
He moved closer, and now his hands explored, though he had to bite back the urge to ask her if it was OK and whether she liked his touch here or here.
‘Can’t we just do it?’ she’d said earlier, and now he rather thought they might—before long anyway. Especially if she kept kissing him the way she was, and if her breasts kept brushing against his chest, so the sensation, intensified by the warmth of the water, was nearly driving him insane.
‘I’ve a nice comfortable queen-size bed out there if you’d prefer it,’ he whispered, when he realised their ‘getting to know each other’ was about to reach a whole new plane.
‘No, let’s try it here,’ she whispered back, further fuelling his desire with a mischievous smile and a nip of sharp teeth against his lower lip. ‘I wonder if a child conceived in water is more content and placid.’
The last remaining rational cell in Julian’s brain was glad she’d dropped the possibility of having twins and was back to talking about child, singular, then he kissed her deeply, using his hands to both excite and move her, adjusting their weightless bodies until they fitted together in the way human beings had been so carefully and excitingly designed for.
‘Oh!’ she said a little later, her face flushed but a funny little smile on her face suggesting the pleasure had surprised her. Then her legs wrapped around his waist, so they were more tightly meshed together and Julian found himself voicing his own pleasure, though his was more of a groaning ‘Ahh’.
They were still slumped together, replete yet not anxious to relinquish the closeness, when the phone rang.
‘Hell, that’ll wake the twins. I should have brought the remote in with me.’
Julian pulled away far too abruptly and was about to step out when the noise stopped and Daisy handed him a receiver.
‘I noticed it last night,’ she whispered as he said hello.
Daisy moved quietly away from his body, not because she wanted to break the contact but so she could take a good look at the man who’d propelled her life so abruptly in a totally different direction.
And given her body some totally unexpected but enticingly delicious pleasure!
Don’t think about that. Think about the direction, which wasn’t really all that different to the one she’d planned—except that the father of the baby would play a permanent role in its life, which, from the child’s perspective, was good. And it had happened far sooner than she’d expected.
Her rambling thoughts were halted abruptly as Julian’s side of the conversation suddenly intruded.
‘Of course I’m managing. What do you think? I’d drown them both in the spa?’
He finished with more assurances, and a promise to see whoever it was in the morning, then hung up, reaching out to reclaim Daisy and draw her close again at the same time.
He kissed her wet shoulder, which caused an extremely agreeable tingly sensation in her toes, but he was frowning and Daisy could feel the tension in his body.
‘What’s wrong?’
He sighed deeply.
‘My mother’s coming!’ he said in such a direful tone that Daisy laughed. ‘I know. I knew that, but the reality of it hadn’t struck me.’
‘Why’s it so bad?’ she asked, though the mere thought of her mother visiting any time in the near future made her stomach cramp.
‘She’s overpowering. She’s so there, if you know what I mean.’ Julian nibbled at a bit of skin right near the base of Daisy’s neck, causing new tremors to start in her pleasure centres. ‘We get on well but, oh, she’s so tiring, Daisy. You’re such a placid, calming kind of person you probably can’t imagine someone like my mother. It’s like being in a cyclone that has no eye, no tiny interval of calm.’
He’d continued nibbling as he’d made this complaint, muffling the words against her skin and causing such jittery delight she had to move away, but only so she could lie on top of him and silence him with a kiss. Which led to fairly surprising developments, given what had happened only a little earlier.
But the doubt in his voice when he’d spoken of his mother lingered in Daisy’s mind, while the realisation that with his parents around there’d be no more togetherness in the spa caused a contrary pang of regret in her heart.
‘I don’t know about you, but all this exercise, fun though it’s been, has left me ravenous. I’ll organise food.’
He’d obviously stopped worrying about his mother, but as he stepped up out of the spa, she could see the long, strong line of his back, and the pang deepened into something like a pain.
‘And the water’s making me as wrinkled as a prune,’ Daisy told him, ignoring pangs and pains and pretending to be as practical about things as he was being.
Daisy took the towel he handed her, pleased he’d managed to wrap one around his waist because, no matter how intimate they’d been, getting used to nakedness was a bit daunting.
He left the room, returning with a towelling bathrobe.
‘If you give me your keys, I could slip down and get you some clean clothes,’ he offered, and she smiled at him.
‘So I’m not caught in the lift in a bathrobe?’ she teased, though once again she marvelled at his sensitivity. ‘That would start the neighbours talking. It doesn’t take much in a building as small as this. And with some of those same neighbours helping your mother with the twins…’
‘Oh,’ he said, and she smiled again at the stunned look on his face.
‘Think about it,’ she warned. ‘You keep telling me you wouldn’t rush me, now I’m telling you the same thing. It’s unlikely I’d be pregnant already, and if I am, we can handle it. But if we were to start seriously on the making-babies project, and I do get pregnant, and if you want to be an involved father, it means a lifetime commitment to the child, if not to me.’
‘But of course it’s to you as well,’ he said, wrapping the bathrobe around her and hugging her to his still half-naked body. ‘That’s the whole idea. I’d be happy to get married now, not wait until you’re pregnant.’
Daisy shook her head.
‘No, even if I agree to this marriage idea of yours, you want a child or children too badly for me to tie you up that way,’ she said, pushing away from him because saying the words had forced her heartbeats into a panicky rapidity and she didn’t want him feeling them tap-dancing against his chest.
She glanced his way, surprising a puzzled look on his easygoing countenance, then he shook his head and his ready smile reappeared, chasing away whatever thought had dimmed it for a moment.
‘I’ll pull on some clothes then get us something to eat. Would toast and eggs do you, or do you want something more substantial?’
Daisy picked up her watch and shook her head.
‘At ten-thirty? No, eggs and toast will be fine. But let me get them.’
‘Certainly not,’ Julian declared. ‘I’m an enlightened guy, and all for equal opportunity. Besides, if I bribe you with food, maybe you’ll look more kindly on my proposal.’
If she wasn’t in a parallel universe—and she was fairly certain she wasn’t—then she was somewhere in a fairground, possibly on bumper cars, so her life was being continually jolted around, this way and that, directions changing so swiftly she was reeling with confusion, although the overall sensation wasn’t at all unpleasant.
‘Enough!’ she told herself. ‘Forget the fantasy and think sensibly.’
She knotted the robe and walked out to join Julian in the kitchen, but ‘sensibly’ just wasn’t possible as she watched him industriously whisking eggs, and realised this could be the new pattern of her life. The thought brought a shiver that was more excitement than apprehension—which was just as well considering how far things had progressed between them in such a short time.
‘You were saying you’d worked with Dr Clement once before. Did you get sick of face-to-face work that you left, or was the offer of a radio show too good to resist?’
Daisy smiled. She was thinking sex and marriage, and he was thinking work. Men and women sure were wired differently. But her smile faded as she considered how to respond to his question. After her experience with Glen, she’d known she wasn’t up to helping others through their pain—any heartbreak story immediately reducing her to tears. So the talk-back show and the web-site had been her way of continuing to do what she loved, without anyone realising how emotionally fragile she herself had been.
‘It was a combination of things,’ she said, neatly avoiding a definitive answer.
‘But you’re ready to go back to it now?’
She shook her head, but smiled at the same time.
‘You really are persistent, aren’t you?’
‘You’d better believe it!’ Julian turned and she saw the challenge in his eyes. ‘So?’
He poured the foaming eggs into a pan and continued to whisk.
‘It’s only a six-month job,’ she said, ‘and I hadn’t planned to do it, but Chelsea has been very sick during the early stages of her pregnancy and decided she’d have to stop work for the duration. It was because I had worked there and knew the office and the way it works that she asked me to take over.’
He grinned at her.
‘None of which really answers my question,’ he said, ‘but I’ll let it go for now. Let’s think instead about my mother. Like your fellow tenants in the building, my mother can suss out a relationship as easily as a mouse can find cheese. Will you be OK with that?’
Daisy could feel her frown forming.
‘I don’t know,’ she said crossly. ‘I mean, we don’t really have a relationship, do we?’
He raised his eyebrows and she felt heat flood her body.
‘Well, you might be happy to think we have,’ Daisy continued determinedly, ‘but I’m still not certain. Besides, you’ve only just arrived back in Australia. How could we possibly be having a relationship?’
‘Instant attraction? Love at first sight? A lot of people believe all that twaddle.’
He was looking at her with such a teasing smile she had to respond—to laugh—though she’d have preferred to argue over his dismissal of love as ‘twaddle’.
‘What about your web-site and the internet?’ Julian was obviously unperturbed by her laughter. ‘Unknown to the various busybodies in my family, and even, if you’d like to adopt the idea, to your friends, you and I have been corresponding for some time. We met and fell in love over the internet. Everyone’s doing it these days.’
Once again Daisy felt the peculiar acceleration of heartbeats she’d experienced earlier.
Hunger, she told herself, then pointed out the flaws in his fairy-tale.
‘But doesn’t your mother know you don’t believe in love? Do we have to have the love scenario? Wouldn’t she accept the marriage of convenience—two sensible people attracted to each other, deciding to have a child or children together?’
He stopped whisking to stare at her in horror.
‘Not my mother!’ he said firmly. ‘She’s the world’s greatest advocate of Love, with a capital L. As far as she’s concerned, it not only makes the world go round, but I think she’d view a child conceived any other way but through love as an impossibility.’
He turned away, mainly because the eggs were catching on the bottom of the pan, then he put bread into the toaster and generally busied himself as if everything that needed to be said had been said.
But it hadn’t—not as far as Daisy was concerned.
‘I don’t think we should pretend to something we don’t feel and make up stories to give it credibility,’ she said. ‘But if we go ahead with this business, if we start seeing each other socially, she’d know about it, being on the spot, so to speak. So if I got pregnant and we decided to get married, it wouldn’t come as a total shock to your mother. That way, she’ll assume we met, got to know each other and fell in love without us actually telling her we are, or telling her we’re not.’
‘There are a lot of “ifs” in that sentence,’ Julian said, and the serious look on his face as he served the eggs then handed her a plate made her wonder if he was having second thoughts about the project. ‘Important “ifs”, Daisy. “Ifs” that should be resolved before we continue a physical relationship.’
She looked at the eggs while her stomach tightened, then looked up into the deep-ocean-coloured eyes.
‘Can I have a week to think about it?’ she said, while her heart hammered a protest and her head told her she was mad to even consider it, reminding her of all the reasons that had led to her single-parenthood decision.
‘A week,’ he agreed, and for the first time since she’d met him, she couldn’t see even a hint of a smile.