Chapter Seventeen

LittleMissPerfect: I have to cancel our date. I’m sorry but I’ve met someone else…

Eden sat at her kitchen table the following morning with a steaming cup of coffee and a bowl of granola in front of her, staring at the message she’d tapped into her phone. Should she hit send? Then it would be done. HotAussie007 would remain a fantasy, someone who’d made her laugh, sure, but no more. She could say goodbye. No harm, no foul.

She crossed her satin robe more firmly around her waist and tightened the sash. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.

Yes, something had happened with Finn. More than a kiss. Oh yes. She squeezed her thighs together. It had been much more than a kiss but less than a relationship. So where did that leave her this morning? She had absolutely no idea.

After deleting the draft message, she let out a long, shaky breath. There was still time to think about it — no need to rush her decision.

She looked up and caught Felicity’s gaze. Her friend, who’d entered the kitchen in silence, stood on the opposite side of the table, dressed in Eden’s old UCSD sweatshirt and pajama shorts.

Felicity stared at Eden before flicking her eyes sideways to the coffee maker. Eden took the opportunity to study her. She looked like a disheveled clown who’d been stomped on by a horse and rolled around in the hay and muck at the end of a hard circus night. Or something.

Eden tipped her chin at her friend. “You’re looking better.” No point telling her that she looked like she needed to be hosed down.

Felicity rubbed a hand over her fluffy mop of blond hair, making a clump stick out sideways. “Thanks. I feel like the proverbial something the cat dragged in. If it dragged in a dead rat, half chewed, maybe with its eyeballs hanging out.”

Eden’s mouth twitched, but she held in her laugh. At least Felicity had her mental faculties mostly intact.

Felicity placed her hands on her slim hips. “So, Finn, huh? Told you he was hot. But you were all, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.’”

Eden sipped her coffee, taking a moment to compose some kind of defense. But nothing sprang to mind. Forget it. Her research assistant knew her too well.

“I changed my mind.” She placed her mug back on the table with a thunk and studied its design—a printed image of the periodic table with the slogan ‘Scientists do it periodically.’ It was true. But the period between the last time she ‘did it’ and now was quite long.

Of course, she and Finn hadn’t ‘done it.’ Not quite.

“You changed your mind? I thought you hated him?” Felicity narrowed her eyes, apparently trying to read Eden’s thoughts.

Eden shrugged. “We’ve spent a fair amount of time together, and we got talking. You know, the usual. I don’t hate him. I like him.” It was the first time she’d said that out loud.

She liked Finn. The idea needed some more consideration—later, when her friend wasn’t staring at her. She took another sip of coffee, glancing at Felicity over the rim of the mug.

Felicity smiled, a crooked, knowing smile, and turned to shuffle over to the coffee maker on the counter. Slowly, carefully, she poured herself a mug and added three heaping teaspoons of sugar. No artificial sweeteners for Felicity. She wouldn’t put on an ounce of fat either.

Felicity returned to the table, pulled out a chair, and gingerly lowered herself. She clutched her head between both hands and rested her elbows on the tabletop. “I’ve got a killer headache, so tell it to me straight. Are you in love with him?”

Eden’s stomach rolled over, and something throbbed inside her chest. It couldn’t be her heart; that would be too inconvenient. She couldn’t have fallen for Finn.

She worried at her lip and took her time before answering. “Of course not. It’s just a sex thing. Obviously. I haven’t had any action in who knows how long. Nothing that’s got my heart racing, anyway.”

Felicity tipped her head to one side. “But Finn did? He got your heart racing?”

Heavens, yes! Her heart, her mind. Also setting tingles racing to all the places he looked, let alone touched.

Felicity grinned, her blue eyes dancing. “No need to answer. I can tell what you’re thinking by the look on your face. You might want to close your mouth, by the way. Anyway, I heard the noises you were making last night.”

Oh. My. God.

Eden’s face flamed, the heat spreading up from her chest, burning like an out-of-control wildfire. She clunked her head onto the table, sending her hair tumbling around her face. Perhaps she’d just live here in her hair cave until her embarrassment died down.

Felicity giggled, then spoke more seriously. “It’s okay, you know, to fall in love.”

Love? The word had nothing to do with anything. Eden peered at her friend through the curtain of her own hair.

“And it’s okay to have sex occasionally, or whatever it was you two were doing,” Felicity said with a grin. “Give yourself a break. Let yourself cut loose once in a while.”

Eden lifted her head and nodded once. Firmly. “You’re right. We didn’t even sleep together, anyway.” Not yet. Her body tightened, and every molecule screamed with frustration at the fact. “But he said he’d call me today, so it’s all good. We need to talk. I can tell him that nothing should happen between us on a personal level. Right?”

Felicity sipped her coffee, her eyes filled with that annoying, knowing look Faith got sometimes. It said: You’re a naïve fool, but I like you anyway.

A weird buzzing had Eden crinkling her nose. Her phone vibrated, still set to silent, and it danced across the table. Eden stared at it, unsure whether to freak out about her phone being psychic. Not that she believed in such things. She did, however, believe there was such a thing as an overeager almost lover calling at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. The morning after the night before. Although she didn’t recognize the number on the display.

She sighed and took the call. “Hello?”

“Eden?” There was a pause. Long enough for her to register that the deep male voice was Finn’s, but it sounded weird. Thick and heavy, as if he were talking underwater. “Sorry to call so early, but I wanted to let you know I’m on a flight to Australia.”

“Finn? You’re where? What flight to Australia?” Babbling. She was babbling like a loon, but she thought they’d discussed this last night. As much as they’d discussed anything, in between all the kissing and touching…

“I’m calling you on the in-flight phone. Flew out of LAX a couple of hours ago. I wanted to tell you where I was so you didn’t jump to conclusions. I haven’t done a runner. After last night… you know.”

She sure did. And the memory of it made all the blood rush to her cheeks and relevant pulse points around her body. She glanced up at Felicity and froze. Her friend was studying her expression, her no doubt strange, tense expression.

Eden closed her eyes for a moment. “I thought you’d decided. You told me you wanted to stay here in San Diego.”

With me. You said I’d given you a reason to stay here.

The words perched there on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to hold them back. She didn’t want him thinking she was the worst type of clingy woman, falling head over heels whenever shown the slightest affection.

Finn lowered his voice. “I do want to stay, like I said. But I called Mum again last night after leaving your place, and Dad’s not too good. I need to see him ASAP, in case he takes a turn for the worse. I’ll be back soon, though. Probably in a week.”

Eden’s hand covered her mouth. She spoke through her fingers. “Are you sure? Your poor mother, she must be out of her head with worry. Take your time. I can talk to McTavish if you like.”

She could? Why she’d volunteered to talk to their boss about his personal issues was beyond her. Except, she had a tendency to take on other people’s problems as her own, especially when it was someone she cared deeply about.

Eden rubbed her hand across her hot forehead and took a calming breath. How had her attitude to Finn changed so quickly? Just because he’d given her an orgasm? A mind-melting, spine-tingling orgasm, admittedly. But even so, she was an intelligent, self-sufficient woman who didn’t want to feel like she couldn’t breathe because the man she wanted to sleep with was flying to the other side of the planet.

Firetrucking feelings.

“No worries, I’ll email McTavish. But it’s sweet of you to offer.” She heard his smile, the cheeky emphasis on the word sweet. As if she was sweet on him. “But you could wish me luck. And a safe journey. Or say you’ll miss me, or you want to kiss me again. Or something more.” He exhaled in her ear.

Eden wanted to breathe him in. Hug him close and kiss him goodbye, then ask him to come back soon. She wanted to tell him no one had ever kissed her like he had. Like he meant it.

“Of course. Good luck. Have a safe journey.” I’ll miss you. Pesky tip of the tongue. She tucked the words away for later. “Talk soon.”

Finn chuckled. “I hope so, Doctor Eden.”

With that, he ended the call, and Eden placed her phone on the laminate tabletop, staring at it for a few seconds.

Felicity cleared her throat, loudly. “That totally sounded like just a sex thing. No subtext hanging in the air or anything. Much.”

Eden slid her eyes up to meet Felicity’s and bit her lip before responding. “Am I really so transparent?”

Her friend nodded, her mouth tipping up in a smile. “As a pane of glass. But it’s okay, it’s different for you. It’s kind of…”

“Sweet?” Eden winced. She was a lot of things, but sweet wasn’t one of them. Not usually.

“Yeah, sweet. Like you’re in luuurve.” Felicity rolled her eyes and clutched her chest dramatically.

Not the ‘L’ word again. She’d been avoiding it in her own brain, ducking and weaving like she was back in high school playing dodgeball, trying not to get hit. Or if she did get hit, trying to minimize the damage. Minor bruising, she could deal with, as opposed to a smack in the face and a broken nose. She’d always sucked at dodgeball.

Eden threw her hands in the air. “What the hell am I doing? Finn’s my colleague—we’re competing against each other. I can’t afford to be ‘in like’ with him, let alone the other thing. It’s a crush. Nothing more. It has to be.”

Felicity’s expression turned serious. “Sure, if you say so. Tell me, does he have a nickname for you? Not your proper name, something else?”

“He calls me Doctor Eden. Sometimes Doc.” Then, last night, he’d called her sweetheart. And she’d liked it.

“Then I’d say, in my totally unprofessional opinion but as somewhat of an expert in the Southern Californian dating scene, you’re in trouble.”

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, Doc, you are.”

Firetruck. Eden let her head bang straight down on the table.

Midwinter Melbourne was cold, way colder than he remembered. The moment he got out of the taxi he’d grabbed at the airport, a gasp of bitter wind whipped around Finn’s face. Now he stood on a leafy suburban street in front of the place he’d once called home.

Everything looked the same, like he’d traveled back in time twenty years instead of sixteen hours by plane across the Pacific. His parents’ house was still solid, immovable red double brick with white-painted windowsills. And the garden—with its oak tree, green lawn, clipped hedges, and rosebushes—was still perfectly maintained.

He tugged his coat collar up around his neck to protect himself from a fraction of the wind chill and walked around the back of the taxi to haul his case from the trunk. The boot. His Aussie dialect and speech patterns had drifted away over the past few years of living in the States. Unless he actively forced himself to remember. He tried now.

As Finn clunked his case up onto the concrete driveway, he spotted a familiar sight that made his chest tighten. Mum.

She leaned halfway out of the screen door, checking to make sure it was him. For some reason, she rarely stepped all the way outside when a visitor arrived—until she was certain it was someone she knew. He walked toward her, the tightness in his chest easing a little when she stepped another two paces out the door and reached for him.

With his arms wrapped around his mother’s slight frame, towering over her by a good foot of height, he hugged her close. He inhaled the comforting scent of her floral perfume and the hairspray she’d used since he was a kid. They meant he was home.

She pulled back and smoothed her palms down his rumpled jacket sleeves. Her green eyes, so like his own, still sparkled. “Finn. So nice to have you home.”

“I know, Mum.” He kissed her cheek, noticing the thin texture of her skin. At close to sixty, she was aging faster than he cared to admit. As was his father. A sharp pain sliced through his gut. “How’s Dad?”

Her long sigh said more than any words could. “Improving. Out of surgery but not out of the woods yet. The doctor told me to go home and get some sleep. Fat lot of good that advice did me. I can’t sleep during the day at the best of times. Bloody doctor. Arrogant bossy boots, if you ask me.”

He laughed. At least his mother still had her spunk and sense of humor intact.

She ushered him inside, down the hallway with its sideboard and hat stand, past the painting of a sailboat at the beach, then pushed him into his old bedroom and told him to settle in while she put the kettle on.

Finn stood there, taking a moment to check out the changes around him. His football trophies were no longer on display, no more posters of pop stars and muscle cars stuck on the walls, but more framed beach scenes instead. The decor was neutral, not the red and black of his teenage years, and there was a double bed with a dark blue quilt and white sheets. Nice, comfortable looking, but nowhere near as cool as the prized Ferrari quilt cover he’d saved up his pocket money to buy.

After dumping his suitcase by the bed and his jacket on the nearby chair, he strolled into the kitchen to find his mother making tea. White with one, just the way he liked it. These days, he was all about the coffee, but not if Mum was making tea the old-fashioned way. He hoisted himself onto the kitchen counter and nearly hit his head on the top cabinet with the china cups.

“So, when can we go and see Dad?” he forced himself to ask, despite wanting to delay going to the hospital for as long as humanly possible.

There was something disturbing about the idea of seeing his formerly strong, independent father lying in a hospital bed in the cardiac ward. It made his own heart squeeze tight in his chest.

Mum leaned back on the counter with a sigh and sipped her tea before answering. “Visiting hours start in about three hours, but they’re pretty flexible for immediate family. We can go whenever you’re ready.”

“Right. Okay, I might grab a quick nap first—the flight was a killer. But after my tea. Don’t suppose there are any Tim Tams to go with this cuppa?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

His question earned him a laugh from this mother, as he’d hoped it might, and she went searching in the pig-shaped ceramic biscuit barrel for the best chocolate cookies—biscuits—in the world.

“I don’t think you should nap now, or it’ll mess up your whole schedule,” his mum advised as she found the biscuit she was looking for and passed it to him.

Although it had been a while since he’d had one, as he dunked the Tim Tam into his steaming mug of tea, it felt like no time at all. The chocolate coating immediately began to melt, then he lifted the biscuit to his lips and sucked the soft chocolate filling from between the crumbly layers.

Finn groaned. “Yum. This is so damned good. I’ll have to take a packet back to San Diego for a friend of mine.”

An image of Eden popped into his head, sitting on top of her desk, dunking a Tim Tam in her coffee before sucking out its gooey chocolate center. Slowly. Seductively. A woman who enjoyed cupcakes and churros as much as she did was bound to be impressed by the triple chocolate treat.

There must have been some note in his voice when he said friend or a weird look on his face because his mum narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you have a girlfriend over there in San Diego?”

Finn almost choked on his mouthful of Tim Tam as he tried to figure out what to say. Eden was probably a friend now, most definitely a girl, although she’d demand to be called a woman. Fair enough with those brains and curves.

He fixed his gaze on his tea, his face warming. “It’s complicated.”

“I worry about you, all alone over there in America.” Her voice came out soft, her concern obvious. “Sometimes I wonder… Do you ever think about what your life would have been like if Matthew was still with us? Would you have done things differently?” She touched his arm.

He flinched. But then he let the tension drain from his body and sipped his tea. Finn nodded. Did he miss Matt? Every single day. If his older brother hadn’t died, would he have stayed in Melbourne? Probably. Maybe he’d have found a senior marketing job in his home city with a football club, as he’d once dreamed.

In an alternate universe, Finn might have settled down, bought a house with a special woman, and had a couple of kids by now. Matt might have too. They could have been best mates for life. Finn might have been settled in a lot of ways. Happier. More content.

He caught his mother’s eye. “Yeah, sometimes. But I’ve achieved something, and I’m still on my way up. This project I’m working on now could mean big things for the way heart patients receive their treatment. It could make a difference.”

And it could. Maybe. If the project continued, if they received ongoing funding, if the company saw the benefit in dollar terms. If he didn’t stuff up the tricky, secretive side of his current work. It made him sick to his stomach with worry. There were so many ifs.

She sighed. “I know, darling. It’s just when I talk to you, you never mention any personal life. No hot Californian babes burning up your sheets?”

“Mum, gross!” How old was he again? He put his mug down on the countertop with a clink. “Actually, there is someone, but it’s early days. She’s a scientist from work. Smart and, I don’t know, beautiful like a movie star. There’s something between us. It could turn into more. I hope so.”

It was possible. The way Eden sounded on the phone during his flight, the softness, the slight edge to her voice he recognized as desire. It all spoke of possibilities.

“Good. That’s all I need to hear. For now. It gives me hope.”

“Hope of what, exactly?”

“Grandbabies. Gorgeous mini Donohues to bounce on my knee and cuddle and kiss. Before I’m too old, please.”

Finn laughed. “Jeez, Mum. Put the pressure on, why don’t you?”

He acted annoyed, but for the second time, he imagined a child of Eden’s. This time, he pictured a child half hers and half his. A little girl with Eden’s dark hair and his green eyes. It was a pretty picture.

His mum slapped a hand over her mouth and giggled, sounding about thirty years younger than her actual age. “I wouldn’t have believed it. Finn, I do believe you’re getting clucky.”

Finn’s mouth popped open, and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from telling his own mother to stick her opinion where the sun don’t shine. He wasn’t really annoyed, but the choice of word was something. Clucky, like a broody hen. That label was slapped on single women in their thirties, not men. It was offensive either way.

He shook his head again and hopped down off the counter. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “Yeah, right. Whatever.” As his mother laughed, he glanced toward the hallway. “I have to make a call.”

He excused himself and took his tea into his bedroom, unable to wait another second to phone her. Eden was on his mind, and while it might not have been the best idea given the thoughts Mum had put in his head, he had to call. He needed to hear her voice.

Having deposited his flowery mug of tea on the dark wooden bedside table, Finn flung himself onto his back and rested his head on a pillow. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and blinked at the screen.

There was a message notification from LittleMissPerfect. For a moment, he suffered a massive case of the guilts, his guts clenching with the unpleasant thought he was cheating on Eden with his online girl. Which was ridiculous on so many levels.

First up, he and Eden weren’t exactly dating. Sure, they’d got hot and heavy, enough to get his motor running. But they hadn’t even been on a proper date and things were left undecided. HotAussie007 and LittleMissPerfect couldn’t seem to get it together either.

Second, Eden and LittleMissPerfect were one and the same. As were he and HotAussie007. Both with their online alter egos. It was all too confusing for his poor jet-lagged brain.

He read LittleMissPerfect’s message and immediately wished he hadn’t.