Saturday morning Finn punished himself with a run and AC/DC pumped up to eleven.
The evening before he’d been contacted by his legal firm yet again.
Finn’s father’s lawyers had sent another letter to Finn’s lawyer’s Melbourne office who had emailed a copy to their Sydney counterparts. Finn had then picked up an untraceable hard copy from them on his way home from work. It was a circuitous method of communication, which was entirely point. The partitions necessary to keep his father from tracking him down.
The second letter had been less dry than the first, attempting to play on Finn’s finer emotions. It spelled out a day in the life of his father whilst in prison. Listed injuries he’d sustained. Time spent in hospital. And it talked up his sobriety. The hours spent getting his high school equivalency. His work in the prison library, teaching others how to read. His true and honest regret about the things he had done.
It was carefully edited bullshit. “Honesty” and “service” were concepts Finn’s father, Cillian, had laughed at his entire life. The man was unreservedly selfish and dangerous.
And he wasn’t going away.
Asics pounding the pavement, Finn thought through his options as they now stood.
Help his father on the proviso the man left him be—not believing for a second it was a promise the man would keep. Or refuse his father, knowing that eventually Cillian would get out and come for him, bringing all the vengeance he’d had been saving up for the last fifteen years.
No matter which way his decision fell, the day his father was a free man Finn would be smoke.
Finn had no idea how long or far he’d run or where until the twin spires of Luna Park peeked over the top of the walls of the North Sydney pool. By then his legs were so knackered they shook and even as he switched off his mP3 player “Back in Black” resonated against the back of his skull.
He showed his membership at the gate and jogged inside.
The water of the main pool rippled, cool and inviting. The sky was an endless blue dome bar; the Harbour Bridge hovering like a great sweeping sculpture over one side. Eyes on the Olympic-sized pool, he tucked his headphones around his phone and tossed his gear onto a spare lounge.
Drenched in sweat his shirt made a shucking sound as he tore it over his head. He nudged his running shoes off with his toes. He stretched out his shoulder. It had felt like a trapped cluster of nerves the whole damn run. He knew it was psychosomatic. He’d healed. The letter had brought back memories of the day it had been injured, with them phantom pain.
Figuring fresh pain was the only way to block out the old, he went in search of a lap lane.
Then a familiar head popped out of the pool at his feet.
Wavy curls had gone sleek and dark in the water. Wet skin gleamed as slick as a dream. Star-shaped clips sparkled all over her head, and flowers had been painted onto the back of her hands. But the big grey eyes and wide pink mouth could only belong to April Swanson.
For the life of him, he couldn’t come up with any other reason why his feet had taken him all the way across the bridge at that time on that day except she’d told him she’d be there.
The knowledge that he’d felt pain and gone to her for solace shook him to the core.
He’d known her mere days. Had gone no further than to kiss her in a dodgy bar. Yet she had an unparalleled way of giving herself away that meant he knew more about her than he did about people he’d worked with for years.
Well, that was her doing. He’d never asked to be given such intimate insight. He could deny his father. He could keep Frank and his family safe. He could damn well handle a tricky, slippery redhead.
So he planted his feet and waited for her to show her face. Until the thought of handling the slippery redhead meant he had to discreetly rearrange himself before crouching at the edge of the pool.
“Well, if it isn’t my beloved. In the flesh.”
April looked up, shading her face from the sun. Her eyes grew comically wide before her hand slipped off the edge of the pool and she began to sink.
Coughing and spluttering she clawed her way back to the surface. She spat a clump of hair from her mouth before gaping up at him in comical surprise.
“Finn! What are you doing—Oh, The apartment contract. Have you drawn it up already?”
He had. Leaving nothing to chance, he’d had an in-house accountant and lawyer draft it to make sure April was covered for every eventuality – little old lady be hanged. He’d planned to courier it to her on Monday, from a great distance. Before his feet and his subconscious had brought him here.
“You’ll have it soon,” he said.
“Right. I mean, there’s hardly room for you in those shorts much less legal documents.” She blinked; her gaze going from dreamy to suspicious in a half second flat. “So what are you doing here?”
Finn dipped his hands in the cool water beside her and sluiced it over his hot skin. “Finished a run. Plan is to wash off the heat with a few laps.”
When no response came he looked to April to find her watching the water trail over his skin, her huge eyes drinking him in. She pushed her hair out of her eyes to get a better look – most of it anyway. The rest stuck to her damp skin; threads and curls flowing down her neck like rusty ivy.
He tried not to remember what it was felt like to kiss her in that dodgy bar. To feel her melting in his arms. Her soft sighs playing over his lips. The clarity of her eyes as she’d said “I trust you.” He’d never be able to stand back up at this rate.
She shook her head, the lust clearing. A little. Then her eyes began darting about the pool as if in search of something. Or someone. “When I told you I’d be here it wasn’t some pathetic attempt at getting you here, you know?”
“Thanks for clearing that up.” A beat, then, “So why did you tell me?”
She blinked, wheels whirring behind her big, grey eyes as she tried to come up with a logical excuse. Meanwhile, he scratched his bicep as the sweat prickled. Her gaze followed. Trailing over his arm before snagging on his bare chest. Then her gaze moved to the sweat-soaked shorts clinging to his thighs.
She swallowed, hard.
Knowing hard would soon be the word of the day, he distracted her, reaching out and unhooking a stream of hair caught on her lip.
Her tongue followed. And a whole different kind of heat kicked and bucked inside of him.
Pull yourself together, you idiot. Where the hell did you leave your infamous cool?.
Finn looked off to the wayside, much the same way Pretty Boy had at the bar the other night, pretending to be in search of something better. Saw families. Lapsters, like him. A woman in a tutu, pigtails, and knee high boots trying to herd a group of kids around a picnic table.
Nothing better than the vision in the pool. Not even close.
His gaze slid back to April. “You mentioned you were coming here with your sister.”
She blinked. More than once. “I did? I did. Yeah, she’s around somewhere. Anyway, you have to go wash off all that sweat. And I have to get back to—” The words stopped.
“Get back to what?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Off you go.”
She was so ready to get rid of him he wasn’t going anywhere. The sparkly clips in her hair. The fact that she was so low in the water her chin was submerged. Something wasn’t right here. Even while it was in both of their best interests to take her at her word and leave, Finn felt a smile tug at his mouth.
April’s eyes scrunched, her mouth dipped down at the edges, her expression pleading mercy even as she said, “Fine! My sister Erica is the one in the tutu.”
Finn followed April’s gaze and found Erica easily enough.
“She needs to find a new career after blowing the last one. She’d thinking hosting kids’ birthday parties is the way to go.”
The redhead picked up a pool noodle and was using it like a cattle prod to keep a herd of kids at bay.
“I’m thinking she ought to think again.”
April laughed. Then some more, the sound now slightly hysterical. “You’re preaching to the choir. Her real skill is guilting me into helping her. If she could make a living at that she’d be set. Do you have a sister?”
Finn shook his head. His stomach clenched as he waited for the follow up – did he have a brother. Yes. No. Once upon a time.
But she didn’t go there. Too busy trying to keep afloat.
Then with an oath that belied the sparkly clips, she gave up. Leant back. And kicked out into the pool.
Whatever breath Finn had left in his overworked lungs burst out in a cough.
Beneath the clear shimmer of the water lurked a mermaid, ripped straight from the dreams of lonely sailors. Fake seaweed – and not much else – trailed from the pale pink edges of her swimmers. Shiny translucent scales covered her torso, all the way to her hips. From there, just before things got real interesting, in lieu of legs she wore a tail.
Finn glanced around to see if anyone else was seeing this. If he’d run himself so hard he was hallucinating. But the Harbour Bridge curved regally over one end of the sports complex. The tip of Luna Park peaked over the other. And around the pool kids squealed, swimmers swam, and people went about their business as if a siren wasn’t present among them.
“You’re a mermaid,” he blurted.
She twirled her tail behind her as she edged her way to the ladder. “I was a mermaid. But thank dog that duty is now done. Because this thing is heavy. Meaning I’d really like to get out of the pool now.”
“Need some help.”
“I’m good.”
From there she tried – and failed – to get herself out of the pool. And, in the process, offered up now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t glimpses of cleavage, curving out the top of pale pink togs that were all too close to the colour of her skin. It didn’t take much of an imagination to picture her without them. And Finn’s imagination was just fine.
Cheeks pinking, lips pressing, she held up a hand. “I’m not good. Do me a favour – grab my hand. And don’t laugh.”
“That’s two favours.”
A muscle leapt in her jaw. “Finn—”
“What kind of fake boyfriend would I be if I refused?” He got her by both wrists and pulled her neatly from the pool.
She was as slippery as he’d imagined, though cool to the touch. But he could feel the warmth of her pulsing beneath. Erratically.
His wildly bucking pulse was a perfect match. And the last thing he felt like doing was laughing.
Once out, she fixed her seaweed, ran a hand over her hair and hitched her tail over her arm. Water droplets slunk from the ends of her hair and down her arms. Beneath the lank seaweed, her bikini top cupped her lean curves to perfection. Her sweet bellybutton showed through the glitter.
Looking down at her bare feet, she wriggled her toes, laughed, and said, “I look ridiculous.”
“You are incandescent.”
She glanced up. Frowned. Not sure whether to take him at face value.
He didn’t blame her. This... whatever this was, hadn’t started off on the most honest of footings. And it had continued in the same crooked vein.
The urge to tell her about his link to Hazel gathered thick and fast on his tongue. It wasn’t too late to do the right thing.
They were both grown-ups. Maybe she’d laugh it off. Maybe she’d also let him toss her over his shoulder and carry her home. Let him peel the costume from her sweet, wet body an inch at a time. Kissing away the goose bumps now tingling over her skin until they were both wet, and steamy and lost.
But it wouldn’t stop there. April had started chipping away at his shields the moment she sat down beside him at the bar and she hadn’t ceased since.
Some truths were living things. They tore through people leaving only desolation in their wake. And Finn’s greatest strength, most decisive asset, was in his containment.
He literally took a step back.
April didn’t miss a trick. She put more space between them. Then more again. “Ravishing as this thing is, it weighs a tonne. Enjoy your laps, Finn. I guess I’ll hear from you when the contract’s ready.”
He watched her walk away, a drum beat thumping against the back of his skull at the sway of her hips – ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom. And a thousand truths closed in on him like a trap.
He could tell himself it was wrong till the cows came home. Didn’t stop him wanting her with a ferocity that slayed him. And he was a man who knew what it was to want. To yearn. To covet. But he’d had never known anything like this. This dragging desire to seek out her warmth. Her energy. Her kooky, free-spirited, endearing simplicity.
Okay. So, he’d admitted how much she affected him but it didn’t change anything.
Did it?
Fifteen minutes later, April peeked around the corner of the change rooms. Finn had a supernatural way of showing up places she least expected him.
Not that it should have mattered that her hair hung lankly down her back. That her sundress clung to the bits of her the towel hadn’t been able to quite dry. Or that her freckles had darkened in the unforgiving sun. Finn was only her fake boyfriend. Meaning the fact that her crush ratcheted up a dozen levels every time she saw him was all on her.
And she knew better! At fourteen she’d been officially included in a study on facial recognition—furrowed brow meant fake thinking, looking up and to the left meant lie. Always one for efficiency, her mother had killed two birds with one stone – procure research fodder and educate daughter as to the ways and means of big, bad, tricksy men.
And Finn sure was a tricksy one. Something about him got her signals seriously scrambled.
She talked a good talk, telling herself his closed off nature, his uber cool, made him excellent practice for dealing with challenging men. That she’d been able to segue their strange non-relationship onto a more steady footing, what with the “business meeting” the other day.
But the night at The Burrow had actually been fun. He’d been funny and charming. He’d been really nice to her friends. And he’d been a total gentleman.
Until he’d kissed her.
That had not been the kiss of a gentleman. He’d taken her places dark and hot. Slippery and dangerous. He’d kissed her like he meant it, even though he claimed – with actual words and sentences – that he didn’t.
And now he was here. Quietly putting himself where she was. Again.
Growling, she dragged the huge garment bag containing her costume out into the pool area proper. Checking the lap lanes. Checking the pool side. And—
Crapola!
Erica sat on top of the picnic table, playing with a loose frill on her tutu, birthday kids running amok as parents tried to round them up and collect them. Finn stood beside her, a shirt draped over one shoulder, sneakers held together by the laces dangling over the other, his sweaty hair swept off his face by raking fingers.
All broad shoulders, golden skin, muscles upon muscles – he looked less like a businessman and more like some kind of ancient god come to life.
Dragging the heavy bag over her shoulder, she hastened over to the picnic table. “Finn?”
He looked up. His blue eyes against the warm brown skin with the cerulean blue background stopped her in her tracks. God, but the guy was pretty.
Sometimes life was plain mean.
When she looked back at Erica, it was to find her sister all eagle-eyed. “You didn’t tell me lover boy was going to join us today.”
April gawped, clueless as to where to even begin. What had Erica said to him before April had caught up? What had Finn said to Erica? Would Finn imagine Erica – being her sister and all – was in on the “fake boyfriend” ruse? How to find out without giving herself away?
“It was a surprise,” Finn drawled, smiling.
It took every ounce of April’s self-protective instincts not to go all warm and fuzzy.
“Here,” Finn said, moving to her side in one long step.
His hand brushed hers as he took the handle on the heavy bag and electricity zinged up to her funny bone. He smiled into her eyes... and winked. Of course he knew. He saw through her like she was made of cellophane.
Helpless under the draw of his intense blue eyes she smiled back. Because... how could she not?
His voice lowered to the exact right note that made her insides twang as he said, “Let go, April. I’ve got this.”
And suddenly she was back in the Chaser bar, the only thing stopping her from falling on her head, Finn’s strong arms and a promise – I’ve got you.
Yeah, right in the palm of your big, beautiful hand.
He broke eye contact as he hooked the garment bag over his arm as if it weighed nothing and the spell was broken. But not the warm hum that had enveloped her. It hummed so hard she was sure the whole world could hear it.
“So you were saying you met at The Chaser,” Erica said, spidey-senses on full alert.
“We did,” Finn said, sliding a hand to April’s back.
“Funny that, because I’d bet my tutu April’s never been there before.”
“Then perhaps it was fate.”
Erica rolled her eyes. “You have been drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Finn smiled, his thumb making lazy runs up and down April’s lower spine making it seriously hard to keep her cool.
“How old are you, Finn?” Erica again. Little Miss Blunt.
“Thirty-two.”
“April’s twenty-six. Fair gap. Makes sense though. Girl’s got daddy issues.”
“Pfft,” April scoffed. “Pot meet kettle.”
“At least I admit I hate Dad. If you admitted the bastard broke you, even in some small way, you’d be much better off.”
“He didn’t break me.” April gritted out. Then turned to Finn. “He didn’t. Yes, my father left when I was pretty young. Now he drives a sports car and pretends he has no kids, which is pretty pissy really. But he had his reasons and I’m fine. I do not have ‘daddy issues’.”
“Glad to hear it,” Finn said, smiling down into her eyes.
Seemed Erica wasn’t finished yet. “Also, you’re not April’s usual type.”
“Erica. Stop it.”
“I’m your big sister. It’s my job to sort the men from the boys.”
April sighed. Now Erica chose to act like a big sister.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Erica said.
“Fine. You’re right. Finn’s not my type at all.”
“So she’s told me,” Finn murmured.
“Too tall,” Erica said, on a roll now. “Way too handsome. I mean, those cheekbones. That jaw. Those abs.”
“Totally too handsome,” April agreed, lifting her face to run her eyes over said cheekbones, said jaw.
Having a good close look at his perfectly imperfect nose. His eye crinkles. His dark lashes.
“And clean cut. Just way too ‘together’, don’t you think? With the perfectly finger-raked hair and the matchy-matchy shoes and running shorts.”
Finn frowned at the shoes hanging over his shoulder. “They’re black.”
“Exactly.” Erica nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly.
Finn turned slowly and pinned April with a look. “Yet I also seem to remember you also telling me I’m everyone’s type.”
Erica choked on a surprised laugh.
Feeling a little lightheaded now that Finn’s fingers had slid to a sweet spot at the base of her spine, April said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. You hardly need your ego stroked.”
“But you stroke it so well.”
“This from the man who told me I looked incandescent. Look at me.” April lifted a swath of bedraggled hair, letting it flop down her back with a splat.
“Truth,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “Always.”
April searched his face for another secret wink-wink. But all she found was humour and warmth and fathomless depth that drew her in like a hypnotist’s watch. Her toes turned numb as the blood rushed to her head.
“Well,” Erica muttered, “what do you know?”
What was that now? Oh, that was right. Erica was there too. And she looked suspiciously like she actually believed they were for real.
“Anyway,” Erica said, bored now that she hadn’t won the game, “we have to get going. Costumes need to be back at the shop by two or April’ll have to pay double.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the one holding me up, kid.” Erica heaved her own zebra-print bag over her shoulder, gave Finn a nod, and said, “When you two have stopped making goo-goo eyes at one another, can you shove her in the direction of the car park?” Then she was off.
Finn and April watched. Silence pinging between them, taut as a telephone wire.
“She’s a barrel of laughs,” Finn drawled, his voice low, close, all for her.
“You don’t say.” April wriggled free, ostensibly to wring some more water out of her hair while she took the chance to tug at her dress in order to dissipate the feeling of Finn’s hand still burned into her skin. “Thank you for going along with Erica’s assumption that we were...” She waved a hand between them, unable to put it into words. It felt unreal, and all too real all at once. “But it really wasn’t necessary.”
“Still, it felt like it was.”
Finn took his time, folding her garment bag over the picnic table before leaning his backside against the edge, facing April. His face level with hers for once.
“I’m clocking up the favours left and right today.”
“Not that you’re counting.”
He sniffed out a laugh, his striking blue eyes locked onto hers.
April’s imagination went a little wild, envisaging how she might repay him. Not particularly keen on him seeing such thoughts play out across her face, she scooted up onto the table beside him. Not too close. She wasn’t a complete sadomasochist.
He still managed to nudge her with his shoulder. “I’ll take one back now, if I may.”
“Okaaaay.”
“A truth.”
“That I can do.”
Finn nodded, believing her. A small thing that, a tiny symbol of faith. Yet April’s heart fluttered hopefully against her ribs.
“The other day, when me met to talk over your contract, why did you tell me where you’d be today?”
April might have found an unsuspected knack for skirting the edges of reality the past couple of weeks, but, in the end, honesty was always less complicated than the alternative. “It was – in fact – my pathetic way of asking you to come.”
His cheek lifted in a half smile. But those eyes didn’t let her go.
Not entirely sure she was ready for the answer, April asked, “Why did you come?”
“Because I knew you’d be here.” Not even a moment’s hesitation.
Finn’s truth felt far more like a dare.
He pressed up onto his feet, moving to stand in front of her. Shifting so his shadow blocked the sun. April’s mouth went dry as she took in the backlit Adonis before her.
“So this ‘fake boyfriend’ thing,” he said.
“Mmm?” April nibbled on a thumbnail—the skin around it all cool and pruney.
“By your sister’s reaction, I’m assuming interest hasn’t died down as yet.”
“Not... exactly. Though intra-office stats – otherwise known as Smith’s observations over the water cooler – showed we were out-trended by the new baby princess photos. So it’s heading in the right direction.”
Finn’s smile was a slow release. “Okay. And has it worked as your friend envisaged? Has your being... wanted, made you more wanted? Are your promotion prospects on the rise?”
Finn’s slight pause on the word “wanted” made April’s breath turn choppy, as if her lungs had forgotten how to expand. She nodded.
“Go us.” He pumped a subtle fist in the air.
Despite the tension swirling about inside of her, April laughed.
She liked this man.
No. She didn’t. She had a crush. Survival of the hottest—no, fittest, that was it—meant a man like Finn made an impact simply getting out of bed in the morning. But liking him was out of the question.
Finn was too self-contained for the likes of her. Too self-sufficient. Getting him to share the smallest morsel of himself was like digging for dragon bones. While she shared every innermost thought whether anyone wanted her to or not.
Nothing good could come from liking him. Nothing real. And fantasies weren’t her thing.
Try as she might, she couldn’t conjure up an image of him doing anything as simple as lying in bed, reading on a Sunday morning. Or as willing as letting her pick the movie because he didn’t really mind what he watched. Or asking her opinion when picking out a tie. Those were the kinds of men she liked. They were, for wont of a better word, easy.
Finn was anything but easy. He was exacting, enigmatic, hard-headed.
Yet she’d never wanted a man more.
Sitting there, she had to physically restrain herself from sticking a finger in his shorts and tugging him towards her so she could run her hands over the undulations of his big, warm chest. From rubbing her cheek against his weekend stubble. Dragging her fingers through his hair and planting a kiss on his gorgeous mouth and making out till the pool police tossed them out for lewd behaviour.
April gripped the edge of the table as hard as she could. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll have us break up on Monday. Pretend to break up. I’ll probably get pity points, which will work even better in my favour than dating-a-hot-Viking points. And life will go on.”
His mouth quirked at the hot Viking bit. See, over-sharer.
“It tends to do that.”
“Mmm.”
Mouth still quirked into a half smile, Finn looked at her in that way of his, like he could see right to the bottom of her soul. She hoped it was a clear soul. Pure. True. Or at least that her slightly shady bits, the scars left by her occasional “little rebellions”, were small enough not to really count.
“To think you were sitting there, trying to have a quiet drink, when I landed on you, like a piano dropped from the sky. I’m truly sorry to have mixed you up in my crazy.”
His gaze was steady. Considering. So many thoughts going on behind those deep blue eyes that she had no chance at fathoming.
Colour her surprised when he said, “You’re forgiven.”
“That simple?”
“That simple.”
April felt a weight fall off her shoulders.
Then Finn went and said, “Now I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“For?”
He leaned toward her, placed his hands on the table either side of hers, his mouth hovering mere millimetres from hers. Her breath caught before a small shuddering sigh escaped her mouth. Then, with a knowing smile, he kissed her.
From the outside it was a PG kiss. A gentle touch of lips. There were families present after all. On the inside, she was a volcano; all roiling heat and spitting fire.
When he pulled away she whimpered. Out loud. And as she blinked back into the sunlight, the heat inside of her did what heat does and rose to the top, filling her cheeks, her ears, her scalp. Till her brain boiled over.
She smacked him in the chest. Her palm bounced off a wall of hard, hot muscle. When the urge to feel it again – slower this time, more thoroughly – took a hold, she curled her fingers into a fist. “You have to stop kissing me, Finn!”
“Then stop kissing me back.”
She threw her hands in the air. “You are driving me crazy!”
Finn stood back, pressed his hands into the pockets of his running shorts, drawing them across his...
April closed her eyes. Tight. Gripped the picnic table hard enough to get a splinter.
Through gritted teeth she said, “You are aware that you are sending major mixed signals, right?”
“Right back at you, kid.”
When she opened one eye it was to find him driving a hand through his hair. She felt a little better knowing he wasn’t as cool as he made out.
“I never give mixed signals. I’m honest to a fault.” That was her intention at least, which had to count for something. She put out her hands to steady herself. “What I mean is, I’m not into playing games, Finn. I’m straight up. What you see is what you get. Now what about you?”
She waved a hand at the guy, head to toe to find he was doing his statue impression. All gilded muscle and patrician beauty. It was lovely to look at, but it was hell on the nerves.
She threw her hands in the air and roared at the sky, scaring a child whose mother drew him close as they scurried past.
Finn, meanwhile, shot a hard breath through his nostrils. Like a thoroughbred forced into a stall.
It was one of God’s cruel jokes that the man was so damn sexy. Because he was also kind of messed up. His utter refusal to open up when she pried plus all that internet-silence... Something was going on. Something secret. Something big.
But despite all that he’d come to the pool knowing she’d be there. Why? If they were so very different, what about her kept drawing him back?
Her skin prickled from the slow burn of the sun as she tried to figure it out. Her back curled as a droplet trickled from her hair. She heard the squeal of a child. The gentle lapping of water against the side of the pool. A small plane flying a long way overhead.
Figuring him out was like trying to find an answer inside labyrinth without even knowing the question. But he was also a man. Which meant the best way to understand him was by going in a straight line.
And boom! In a blinding flash it hit her.
“You like me.”
He gave her his patented “keep off the grass” look. But she wasn’t buying it. Finally, all those body language studies her mother forced her to sit through were paying off.
“You weren’t just putting on a show for Erica. And you weren’t putting on a show for Jase. You have a little thing for me, Finn. Admit it!”
“April...” He growled.
“Listen to yourself! The way you say my name,” she said, shivering as his deep, silken drawl made her go all gooey. “Do you mean it – all that longing and lust? Or is it a genetic accident? One that makes my brain short circuit and my will dissolve.”
He glared at her, a muscle working in his jaw. Then he ran his hand through his hair again before bringing his palm down over his face. She saw frustration in his gaze. Frustration she’d put there. A heady bit of knowledge that.
She sat forward, palms open, conciliatory. “You seem like a plan kind of guy to me, Finn. So what’s your plan for me? Keep ‘accidentally’ on purpose running into me? Or hope your little thing for me simply goes away?”
He flinched at her “little thing” comment. Then gave her a hot, hard, sideways glance. “I’m not sure you’re ready to hear my plan.”
April’s voice was all husk, no substance. “Try me.”
Finn’s dark gaze slid to her mouth. She licked her lips. A muscle worked in his jaw.
“It’s a selfish plan.”
“Does that mean I’m not invited?”
His eyes lifted to hers. Dark, intense. Not a hint of a smile. “It means that my interests are self-motivated. They have to be. My life is complicated right now. A side effect of simplifying means I might not be around much longer.”
“Oh.” Well, that she hadn’t seen coming. Was that why it felt so strangely personal? “You’re going somewhere? Where? How long?”
He shook his head. Infinitesimally. That was all she was going to get. Nevertheless Finn had told her more about his life in ten seconds than he had in their entire short history.
“All you need to know is that I don’t need my hand held. I don’t want to talk about my problems. I’m not a relationship waiting to happen.”
Thing was, April was feeling pretty self-serving in that moment herself. “You’ve told me a lot about what you don’t want from me, Finn. What do you want?”
Finn moved in then, lifted a hand to her cheek, made sure her eyes were on his when he said, “One night. All night. You and me.”
April found herself nodding, even though she could no longer feel any part of herself below her neck.
“Knowing how things are going to end before they begin is the smart move.” His hot gaze traced the contours of her face. “One night. I can’t promise anything more.”
She placed a hand over his, waited until his dark eyes slid back to hers, and said, “Okay then.”
She waited for some kind of spark of excitement that they’d just agreed to spend the night together! But Mr. Serious had settled in. In fact he looked the way he had the night she’d found him hovering over an empty glass of scotch alone.
A frisson of concern shot through April and with it came the sense that her foundations were tipping out from under her.
A little voice in the back of her head told her to say, “Actually, thanks, but no thanks”. To walk away, right now, before she did something really stupid, like develop actual feelings for this serious, impossible, unshakeable man whose limits were hard set and irrelevant of hers.
But he’d offered her the chance to leap into something big and wonderful and exciting. Short-lived. The impulse had her in its grip, there was no turning back now.
“How’s tonight?”
A flicker of humour seeped back into his eyes. “Wide open.”
Gulp. “Eight suit you?”
A nod.
Feeling like she’d pushed her luck far enough, April wriggled down from the table. Tried not to moan as her breasts brushed against Finn’s chest.
She gathered up the heavy garment bag, hooked it over her arm, and backed away; the sight of shirtless, sun-drenched Finn sure to get her through the rest of her day.
“Finn?”
“Yes, April.”
“Can I ask one more favour?”
“They’re adding up.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to call in your chips.”
A glint shone deep within Mr. Serious’s heavenly blue eyes. “What is it?”
“Put a shirt on before someone ravages you on the spot. Not me, of course. You’re not my type.”
With Finn’s laughter peppering her back, April floated out of the pool grounds and towards her Fiat as fast as her legs—and the bloody heavy garment bag—would let her.
“About time,” Erica said from her position leaning against the hood.
“Busy making plans,” April said, and meant it.
“Of mice and men,” Erica muttered before taking her place in the passenger seat. “So, when are you seeing lover boy again?”
“Tonight, actually.”
“Where?”
“His place.”
Coughing into a fist Erica muttered, “Booty call,” then stuck her headphones in her ears.
But April could not be brought down by her sister that day. Ho no!
She was about to have a real, live date with her pretend boyfriend! A real man, darling. A man with experience, hubris, ambition, backbone, and raging sex appeal, no less. A man who’d made it very clear that whatever was happening between them was over before it had even begun.
Which was perfect, really. No room for feelings. No chance she’d mistake it for anything other than what it was – a chance to indulge a big, crazy impulse without anyone getting hurt.
The twisty-turniness of her logic hardly made her stomach clench.
Hardly at all.