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‘And they still have the ability, when I hear that, to make me want to smack them,’ Cale said grimly. ‘How can they think that? You are so successful.’
‘At planning parties? “Darling, any two-bit socialite can do that.”’ Maddie imitated her mother’s crystal-clear diction. ‘“How do I explain to our friends, our colleagues, that our only child obtained a silly degree in Marketing? The shame, the horror!”’ Maddie shuddered theatrically and slumped in her seat. ‘I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m still looking for their love and approval.’
‘It’s a natural response. Habits that are formed in our childhood are the most difficult to break,’ Cale told her, idly toying with her fingers.
Maddie pulled in her breath when his thumb caressed the inside of her wrist.
Cale glanced at Maddie’s frustrated face, thinking he was glad he’d taken the risk to seek her company today. Her prickly attitude and fast mouth amused him. The vulnerability below her tough, business-girl exterior touched him. To throw in a body still slim, tanned and long-limbed was deeply unfair. Cale watched as she threw confused looks at him. Her amber eyes were dark with bewildered distrust, the colour of bold, old whisky.
Since leaving her the other night his mind had frequently drifted in her direction, so he’d done what he always did when a subject engaged his curiosity: he’d looked for more information.
He’d spent the last week reaching out to his extensive network of contacts and found out that she was much respected in her field and solidly stable financially. How could her fruitbat parents not be proud of her? They were, to him, a very clear case of too much education and not enough humanity and common sense.
Cale moved in his chair, unfamiliar with the strange sensation he felt just being in her presence. He eventually identified it as excitement. Excitement. He rolled the word around his head. He hadn’t felt it in a while.
The last two years had been a blur of grief, denial and self-recrimination, and he was still looking for himself… for the Cale he was supposed to be without the person who had shared his life before. Oliver had lived life on a knife-edge and Cale had been sent, he was convinced, to keep him from tumbling over. He had been Oliver’s voice of reason, his compass, his navigation system. While Oliver had been brilliant academically, he’d had the impulse control of a two-year-old.
A two-year-old with the destructive capabilities of a nuclear bomb.
Don’t think about that, Cale told himself. Don’t think about the chaos he created, the hurt he caused… Besides, being Ol’s voice of reason was what he’d done—except when Oliver had been at his most vulnerable and so sick he’d let him down. Cale swallowed, breathing deeply to keep the flickers of panic to a manageable level.
A slender hand slapping his jolted him from his thoughts. ‘What?’
‘You faded away on me—with your eyes on my chest.’
The flickers dissolved with one look at her startling eyes. Relieved, he grinned, probably unwisely, at her pinched face. He couldn’t help it. Prickly or not, it was good just to look at her. He was bemused by how fiercely compelling he found her. The wave of attraction he’d felt back then had morphed into a tsunami of lust. No woman—not even his ex-model ex-girlfriend, Gigi—had roused such thoughts. Candles. Silk sheets. A huge bed with her naked in it.
It had obviously been too long. It wasn’t because he was remembering how addicted he’d been to Maddie, how much he’d craved her. He was over her; he’d been over her the minute he’d realised that she’d disappeared for good a decade ago.
She was a very good-looking woman and he was just a man. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist…
Maddie was staring at his mouth. Damn, he wished she wouldn’t. It gave him ideas, and he needed those ideas like he needed an aneurysm. Naturally even the thought of kissing her had his blood rushing south. Superb, he thought sarcastically, how old was he? Thirty-five or fifteen?
He really had to get himself some action… this was ridiculous.
‘Excuse me?’
Oh, hell. Not another one. He sighed and turned his attention from Maddie’s visibly annoyed face to the blonde bunny looking down at him, with a far too adult promise in those admittedly startling blue eyes.
Maddie’s breath hissed as she swiftly leaned across the table and picked up his plate and coffee cup and handed it to the girl. Not knowing what else to do, the blonde took the crockery and lifted it, puzzled.
‘Thanks. Take this, too.’ Maddie put some bunched-up used serviettes on the plate and waved her away. The blonde, caught off-guard, turned on her heel and dumped the dirty crockery on an empty table.
Maddie ignored Cale’s wide grin, leaned back in her chair and hooked her arm over the back. ‘How is your family? Still boringly normal?’
‘’Fraid so. All of us—parents, Megs, the twins—’
‘Whoah! Back up. You have kids?’
Cale grinned at Maddie’s shocked face. ‘No, you idiot. They are Ollie’s kids.’
More shock. ‘Oliver had twins? He got married?’
Cale nodded. ‘Briefly. The twins were a result of a brief fling and he thought he’d try to do the right thing. He lasted about three months. He tried to settled down with them… but you know Oliver.’
He didn’t need to spell it out. Oliver had had the attention span of a gnat.
‘Did he see the twins? Spend time with them?’
‘He was a great father.’
What else could he say? Certainly not the truth—that he’d been a great father when he’d remembered them and when he didn’t have something better to do. Not so great on the realities of fatherhood, like paying maintenance and attending PTA meetings.
To Oliver, the mundane tasks of life had had to be avoided at all costs. And when they couldn’t be avoided, normally his twin had stepped in to sort them out.
Maddie cocked her head. ‘Good for him.’
Her dry tone told him that he hadn’t completely convinced her. But that wasn’t his problem. He never openly criticised Oliver. Ever. His mixed-up contradictory feelings about his brother were his and his alone.
‘Anyway, to get back to the subject, my parents are fine, thank you. We all had supper together a couple of nights ago.’ Cale rested his cheek on his fist. ‘They’re talking about doing something in memory of Oliver. It’s two years in August.’
Maddie tipped her head, immediately interested. ‘Like what?’
‘My mom has this idea that we should do something to raise money for charity in his name.’
He thought the whole idea was mad, but if an event and some funds helped his mom work through her grief he’d be all over it.
‘Nice idea.’ Maddie thought for a minute. ‘Didn’t you and Oliver organise an informal triathlon while you were doing your PhD?’
Cale dropped his fist. ‘Yeah, we got all our racing friends together and did it for laughs.’
‘So, do it for Oliver. Do it for charity.’
‘It’s an idea.’ Cale took her hand again, his fingers sliding between hers. ‘Would you help?’
‘Cale… I can’t. My plate is so full,’ Maddie responded. ‘Besides, you and I working together? Not wise.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’d either end up killing each other or end up in bed.’
‘Or end up killing each other in bed, which sounds like an amazing way to go,’ Cale said on an easy grin.
‘Yeah… not. Anyway, play around with the idea and see what you come up with. I think it could work,’ Maddie suggested, before standing up and pulling her bag over her shoulder, she threw him a cheeky grin and buzzed her lips across his cheek. ‘Thanks for breakfast.’ She flicked a glance at the young women next to them. ‘If you take any of their numbers I will hunt you down and kill you. Too stupid and too young. Even for you, Slick.’
Maddie gently nipped his bottom lip before walking away. There was nothing wrong in her humble opinion, in leaving a man wanting more than she intended delivering. It was one of the perks of being a woman.
CHAPTER THREE
UNLIKE most people, Saturdays for Maddie were nearly always full work days and consistently crazy. They were family days: weddings, engagements, family reunions. It was her role to make sure that the emotional, sentimental stuff didn’t interfere with the logistics.
Today, she treated herself to a fifteen minute soak before stepping out of her ball-and-claw tub and reaching for a towel. Moving in the small bathroom was always a challenge, but she refused to sacrifice her precious cast-iron bath for a few inches of space. Turning towards the basin, she nudged the open door with her bottom and, as per usual, the slightest movement caused the door to swing itself closed. Maddie heard the usual click—and then a loud clank as something inside the door dropped. Frowning, she pulled the handle of the door. Although the handle moved, the door remained firmly in place.
Maddie looked at the door, absolutely nonplussed. She jerked the handle again, heard the rattle of parts in the mechanism, yet the door remained resolutely, stubbornly closed. After five minutes she came to the unhappy conclusion that she was locked in her own bathroom.
Maddie cursed, softly and creatively, before reaching for her mobile.
‘I love you, Mad, but not at six in the morning,’ Jim grumbled when he finally answered her call. ‘Especially on my weekend off.’
‘It’s seven, and I have a problem. I’ve managed to get myself stuck in my own bathroom.’ Maddie explained the situation. ‘I need you to come and rescue me.’
Jim cursed. ‘Sweetie, I told you—we’re away for the weekend. What about Kate? Nat?’
‘Kate is also away, and I tried Nat. His mobile is off.’
‘This is why you need a non-gay resident man in your life,’ Jim told her. ‘You know—someone to fix tyres, change lightbulbs, unscrew doors…’
Maddie knew what was coming.
‘There could even be some other benefits on the side…’
‘Supremely unhelpful, Jim,’ Maddie grumbled before disconnecting.
She glanced towards the open sash window and shivered at the gust of cool wind that swirled around her wet body. Who else could she call? Cale? She hadn’t spoken to him since the coffee shop, and was currently ducking his calls because she wasn’t quite sure how to handle him….
Ignoring the thought that Cale wasn’t the type of man to be ‘handled’ at the best of times, Maddie told herself that she dealt with people on a daily basis… she was never at a loss for words. But Cale made her feel tongue-tied and gawky… awkward. Mostly because she was pretty sure that her attraction to him was tattooed on her forehead.
If she were a dog then she’d be constantly panting….
Maddie glanced down at her skimpy towel and realised that calling him would be dangerous. She was practically naked, and she suspected that she had a good chance of ending up flat on her back if Cale saw her like this.
She’d loved him as a teenager, had burned up the sheets with him—when they weren’t fighting—but she’d never experienced this soul-jumping, crotch-squirming reaction that swept over her every time he was within a hundred-foot radius of her.
Lust. So this is what it really feels like, huh? It had to be lust. What else could it possibly be? Feeling like this, she assured herself, was a very normal, natural reaction when you hadn’t had sex for more than… roughly four hundred days times four—one thousand, two hundred days!
Or thereabouts.
She was allowed to feel all jumbled up.
She made a couple of calls: one to Thandi to cover for her, and a request to her mobile service provider for a list of locksmiths in her area. As she started to dial the first, her mobile rang. It was an unfamiliar landline number and she answered it cautiously.
‘Maddie, it’s Cale.’
She really had to save all his numbers into her phone, she decided.
When she didn’t reply, Cale continued speaking. ‘Hello? Maddie?’
‘Cale… um—hi.’
‘Are you okay? You sound funny.’
‘I’m—I’m fine.’ Maddie heard the note of hysteria in her words and hoped that Cale missed it.
No chance. ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded.
Maddie heaved in a breath. ‘I’m locked in my bathroom.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m trapped—I can’t get out of my bathroom. There’s something wrong with the door,’ Maddie said, trying for cheerful but hearing misery in her voice.
‘Right. Are the hinges on your side of the door?’
Maddie wondered if she’d really heard the faint thread of laughter in his steady voice. ‘You’d better not be finding this funny, Cale! And the door swings out, into the dressing room. So the hinges are on that side.’
‘Good. That makes it easier. I’ll be there in… say, twenty minutes. But how do I get into the block?’
‘Keypad. My code is 6541. And my front door is open,’ Maddie replied, and put the heel of her hand into her eye socket. ‘Look, Cale, if it’s a hassle I’ll call a locksmith—although they’ll cost their weight in gold to do a call-out on a Saturday,’ she added glumly. ‘And I’ll be so late for my functions.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Twenty minutes,’ Cale said, before disconnecting.
Maddie placed her mobile on the windowsill, watched the walls recede a little and, feeling like an idiot, almost wept with relief.
Twenty-five minutes later, Cale parked in a visitor’s parking bay and looked at the small brick block of flats encircled by a wrought-iron fence.
He hopped out of his car, re-adjusted his grip on his toolbox and walked up the front steps. As Maddie had said, the front door opened to her code and he walked up the stairs and straight through her front door. Her flat smelled like its owner: light, fresh, slightly intoxicating. She’d used the open space well, filling the living area with comfortable-looking furniture, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase took up one wall. The room looked restful and lived in, although he wasn’t sure about the red walls.
Cale turned into the passage and opened the first of three closed doors. He grinned at the mess. An unmade bed, a hot pink T-shirt over the back of a wingback chair and a violet bra on the duck-egg-blue duvet. Putting the toolbox down, he put his hands on his hips and looked around, taking in the details. Like the fact that the wall above the bed was dominated by an abstract painting in creams and browns. Cale nearly dismissed the painting, but something made him look at it again. It was a massive swirl of neutral colours, fluid, filled with emotion and… sex.
It looked like a cream and brown orgy.
Or it might just be an abstract cream and brown painting and he’d see sex in a tub of margarine.
Dragging his gaze away, Cale looked around the room. Deep brown curtains and an antique dressing table dominated the room, groaning under the weight of all the junk he’d come to expect from the female of the species. Necklaces and beads spilt out of copper woven baskets, perfume bottles vied for space, and lipstick tubes, scraps of paper and small change littered the rest of the wooden surface.
‘Cale? That you?’ Maddie called.
Cale walked into the dressing room. He presumed beyond the shut door was the bathroom. ‘Yeah. How you doing in there?’
‘Getting a bit cold.’
‘Hang in there. Not long now.’ Cale looked around her dressing room; in such an intimate space he felt surrounded by her.
‘I see that you still keep the retail sector of the city in champagne and caviar,’ Cale told her through the door.
‘What are you on about?’
‘Your immense selection of clothes. How can you possibly need so many shoes?’ Cale asked as he bumped his thigh against an open drawer and glanced down. Naturally it was her lingerie drawer. Cale swallowed, unable to resist lifting a semi-transparent candy-pink thong that was hardly bigger than dental floss.
‘It’s a girl thing,’ Maddie grumbled. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I won’t even try to,’ Cale assured her.
‘Stay out of my lingerie drawer,’ Maddie warned him.
Cale quickly dropped the non-offending article. How could she know he was… Did she have X-ray eyes?
‘Nothing would fit me,’ Cale joked as he put down his toolbox and placed his hand against the door.
‘Ha-ha. Can you hurry up? I’m getting really cold.’
Cale looked at the hinges on the door and sighed. The hinges were covered in paint—many layers of paint—which would make them difficult to unscrew. He tested the handle on the door, just in case, and heard the click-clack of the faulty mechanism. He thought he heard Maddie’s snort of impatience and didn’t blame her. Crouching again, he assembled his drill and, with plug in hand, stood up to find an electrical outlet. He disconnected the hairdryer and plugged the drill in. Placing himself between the door and the edge of the closet, he felt for the creases that indicated where the screws were and in a few minutes had them in his hand.
Grabbing hold of the wrong side of the door, he pulled it away from the frame and saw Maddie, wet-haired and shivering, a small towel barely covering her from collarbone to crotch.
With her makeup-free face and wide eyes she looked about seventeen.
‘It’s like a fridge in here!’ Cale exclaimed as he stepped inside.
Maddie clutched the top of her towel, her hands white and her bottom lip almost blue. Being so close to her in the tiny bathroom, he could see the fine shivers trembling through her. Cale looked towards the sash window Maddie gestured to.
‘Tell me about it. The cord got jammed ages ago. I’ll have to get it fixed soon.’
‘Why didn’t you get back into the warm bath?’
‘Hot water ran out.’ Maddie shrugged
‘Get dressed,’ Cale ordered. ‘You’re going to get sick.’
Maddie looked towards the door that half stood, half hung in the doorway. She clenched the top of her towel tighter and stepped around him. Yanking some clothes off a hanger, and some underwear from the drawer, she moved into the bedroom.
Cale took a deep breath and looked down through the dressing room into Maddie’s room. In her haste to get warm and out of his sight she’d started dressing in the far corner of the room and he could see her reflection in the dressing table mirror. Unable to pull his eyes away, he watched as she dropped her towel and gracefully pulled on a pair of low-cut panties. Her stomach was gently rounded, her legs long, her hips slim. Cale swallowed as she slid trousers up her legs and reached for a gauzy cream bra and snapped it into place, doing that weird jiggly thing woman did to make sure it fitted exactly right.
Cale swallowed a moan. Since he hadn’t had any action for a while he was surprised that moaning was all he did.
As opposed to lying her on that bed…
‘Cale?’
Cale blinked. She was shoving her arms into a shirt and turning to look at her reflection in the mirror. Stepping back just in time, he leaned against the open sash window.
‘Yeah?’
Maddie appeared in the small area between the hanging door and the frame. ‘Thanks. It was turning out to be a long, cold morning.’
Cale shrugged off her thanks and gestured to the window. He spoke brusquely. ‘You need to get this fixed or else you’ll freeze.’
‘I keep meaning to and I don’t seem to get it done.’ Maddie nibbled at her bottom lip. ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to inconvenience you like this—and on a Saturday morning, too.’
‘Maddie, it’s fine. No worries.’ Cale practically spat the words like bullets.
Her eyes heated and her mouth firmed. ‘Then the least you can do is be gracious about helping me instead of a doing a great impression of a bear with a thorn in its paw!’
Cale closed his eyes as if seeking patience. ‘Can we drop this, please? It’s a stupid conversation.’
Her eyes lightened with frustration. ‘But—’
‘You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?’ Cale burst out, his breath ragged. He stood up and took two steps to reach her. He looked into her desperately pretty eyes and grimaced. ‘Okay, Maddie, see if you can handle this. Pretty, feminine room. Sexy painting. Lingerie. Wet woman in towel. Wet woman getting dressed around the corner. Keep thinking about what I want to do to you in that bed. I want to do you in the worst way possible. Getting the picture yet?’
It almost amused him to see how the tips of her ears and then her cheeks blushed. ‘Oh…’
‘Yeah. Oh.’
Maddie stepped back into the dressing room and leaned against the shelves—yet he still managed to connect most of his body with hers as he slid past. On a low curse, he turned and cupped her face with his big hands.
‘Maddie, look at me,’ Cale commanded.
Maddie curled her hand around his strong wrist and looked up. He saw his desire reflected in her eyes, could feel her jumping pulse in the tips of her fingers.
‘It would be so easy…’
‘I don’t do easy,’ Maddie muttered.
Cale heard her words but they didn’t make any sense. Why was she hedging when there was this heat between them? Didn’t she understand that this was important—all that was important? Cale dropped his hands to her waist. He just had to touch her, had to move closer. Just for one minute…
‘I’m sorry, I just have to,’ Cale said, stepping forward, his hands on her supple back.
Cale heard her groan as she welcomed him into her space, heard her breath hitch and felt her nipples pucker against his chest. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘In your arms or in your house?’
‘Either. Both. This is wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘We’re practically strangers. I don’t know you any more.’
But her eyes said that she had an empty flat, that she wanted to get naked, that she needed him as much as he needed her. How exactly was he supposed to resist?
‘Maddie…’ He drawled out her name. ‘Your mouth is saying one thing and your body another. Which do I listen to?’
Maddie shoved a trembling hand into her hair.
‘What do you want me to say? That I just look at you and all I want to do is strip you naked and throw caution to the wind?’ she said, her voice hoarse.
He frightens me, Maddie thought wildly, her eyes on his. The way he makes me feel terrifies me. He just touches me and I feel complete… I feel him everywhere… Every cell in my body is yelling for him to take me… He feels like… God, he feels like home.
That couldn’t be good.
Cale took a step towards her and placed his finger on the beating pulse-point below her throat. ‘Don’t make me beg, Mad.’
Cale slowly undid the buttons of her shirt and pushed the fabric down her arms to reveal creamy shoulders. He let the shirt drop and she stood there in her semi-transparent bra. After watching her for a long, long minute, Cale stepped towards her and yanked her to him. His mouth slanted over hers as his hands grabbed her bottom and pulled her closer, allowing her to feel the hard erection he could no longer hide. He felt Maddie burrowing her hands under his clothing until she eventually found his skin.
Cale stepped backwards and cursed as he slammed into the doorway. He lifted his head to quickly scan his surroundings and bent his head again, kissing her as he walked her into her bedroom. His mouth nibbled her neck before he turned around, sat down on the bed and pulled her so that she sat across his thighs.
One strong arm banded around her waist, he half lifted her off him to take his car keys and his BlackBerry out of his jeans pocket and place them on the bed next to him. He yanked Maddie back onto his lap and lifted his hands to hold her face. He pushed a strand of hair that kept falling in her eyes behind her ear and traced her mouth with a callused thumb.
His eyes, when they met hers, were serious. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
Maddie closed her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t, but…’
Cale’s palm drifted over her back and his tongue thrust deeper to explore her mouth.