“Yes. I was. For a while.” Nick is leaning back on his elbows, legs stretched out in front of him, shirtless but at least dry now. The poster boy for stress reduction right there. With his bitter chocolate hair rumpled by the breeze and a pair of Ray-Bans hiding those piercing eyes, he seems much younger—and more approachable—than he does in the office. This is bad. Not only have I found out he’s not the jerk I first thought, but we have a surprising number of things in common. Crap. I don’t want to like him, but I can’t seem to help it. It occurs to me that maybe it’s not Nick I don’t like, but the way he makes me feel.
“You should ask Will and Nick to bring you out on the boat one weekend. I think you’d love it. You haven’t lived until you’ve slept the night on a boat. It’s even better than a train for rocking you to sleep. And the early morning mist on the water is beautiful. Very inspirational for an artist, I’d think.” Stella nudges Will for a top-up of her drink.
I can feel Nick’s scrutiny on me from behind his sunglasses, but he makes no comment.
After lunch, I change out of my damp swimmers into the spare underwear I brought with me, and we sail for a while, taking advantage of the freshening afternoon breeze. I welcome the break this gives me from having to talk to Nick, although his presence as he moves around the boat adjusting sails and tightening ropes is still a magnet for my eyes.
The sun is low in the sky by the time we berth at the yacht club. The partners and their staff waste no time in making themselves scarce, leaving Nick and Will to clean up the boat on their own. I offer to help, but Stella insists on leaving ‘the boys’ to it and we take a seat with Harry in the yacht club bar to wait for them. A day in the sun has me feeling a little light-headed, and I would be happy to head straight home, but refusing Harry and Stella proves impossible. By the time Nick and Will join us, there’s a bottle upside down in the ice bucket and Harry is ordering a platter of nibbles to ‘soak up the bubbles’ he and Stella have knocked back.
Another bottle down, and I know it’s past time I took myself home. Harry and Stella—who were my lift—appear settled in for the duration, having run into some old friends.
“That’s fine. I’ll call an Uber,” I tell them.
“Nonsense. You’ll have to wait hours all the way out here, and it will cost you a fortune. Nick is heading back to the city now. He can give you a lift. Can’t you, Nick?” Nick looks like he might object, but Harry gives him a look, almost daring him to refuse.
“Of course,” Nick replies. But his tone suggests ‘I would rather eat slugs’.
By now, Harry has an arm around each of us and is guiding us towards the door. “Excellent. Excellent. Have a safe trip.”
And that’s how I end up alone with Nick on the soft leather seat of his Tesla. Ugh. Of course, he had to drive an environmentally efficient car. Why couldn’t he drive a great big gas-guzzling truck? Nick Pierce is turning out to be someone I could actually like.
Chapter Thirteen
Nick
Ispendthefirsttwenty minutes of the drive back to the city giving myself a stern talking to. Who knew Lulu’s wildflower scent, when mixed with salt water, would smell like sex in a bottle? Great sex in a bottle. And now, thanks to Harry, I’m stuck in a car with her for upwards of an hour courtesy of Friday evening traffic gridlock. Reliving something I should be forgetting.
Not to mention the ‘moment’ we had in the water. I don’t think I’m imagining it. Like I didn’t imagine the moment in my office either. Or even the one in the executive washroom. I need to find a way to get control of myself. Fast.
When I saw her waltzing down the dock this morning, I almost swallowed my tongue. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have to see her in shorts, she took them off and went for a swim. I’d have picked her for a bikini girl, but she wore a sleek, low-cut black one-piece with little bits cut out unexpectedly all over. It made her tits look amazing. And her arse. And did I mention her legs?
Legs which are now crossed temptingly on my passenger seat, slightly pink from the day in the sun. This train of thought is not like me. I’m not one to objectify women, but bloody hell. She makes it so hard not to notice. I’d be ashamed of myself if there were any room left in my overheated brain for thoughts or feelings other than this unwanted lust.
Once I’d recovered from the shock of seeing her with Harry and Stella, I managed to convince myself I could avoid her for the day. How I was going to do that on an eighty-foot yacht, I had no idea. And, of course, it didn’t work out that way. I couldn’t take my damn eyes off her. Thank God for reflective sunglasses because, like a cartoon character, I felt like my eyeballs were out on stalks, following her everywhere. By the time we dropped anchor, it was either jump in the water to cool off or embarrass myself—and Lulu—in front of a boat full of my colleagues.
And then she had to go and jump in too. I must have been in a lust-induced coma the night we had sex, because although I think I can remember every detail, her body in a swimming costume was a revelation. She’s all sleek muscles and smooth skin and slender curves. And so strong and graceful in the water. Who knew that would be such an incredible turn-on? It seems like everything she does is designed to reduce me to a skinful of raging hormones.
Something has to give. I don’t know what I was thinking, assuming we could have the sort of sex we did and then walk away. Because I can’t stop thinking about her. And I know it’s not one sided. When we’re near each other, it feels like all the cells in our bodies align, drawing towards one another in some weird gravitational pull. One way or another, we have to sort this shit out.
The silence has built to a deafening roar by the time we reach the Spit Bridge. I can’t think of a single thing to say other than ‘I’m taking you home to fuck you senseless’. Which, of course, I can’t do. Can I?
I slide a surreptitious look at her as she stares out the window. Maybe it would lessen the tension. Perhaps we need closure after the last time. That might solve the problem. Perhaps I have built the whole thing up in my head. It couldn’t possibly have been as good as I think I remember. Fuck. This is self-justification at its worst.
I’m so deep in my thoughts I nearly miss it when Lulu clears her throat.
“You can drop me anywhere along here. I can grab an Uber or a taxi, no problem,” she says, careful not to look at me.
And that does it. Her whisky voice pushes me over the edge. I need to silence this noise in my head, or I’ll go crazy. Without a moment’s thought, I’m swapping lanes and heading straight for my apartment at Milsons Point. There is no way I’m letting her out of my sight until we have resolved this once and for all.
“Where are we …?” I hear the moment the penny drops and she understands where we’re going. She says nothing more, but I can feel her watching me and hear the hitch in her breathing.
“I know what I’d have bet.” That’s what I say, but the words sound more like ‘I need to fuck you’.Which is, of course, what I actually mean.
“Bet?” She looks momentarily puzzled. “Oh, you mean, in the water?”
I nod. “Another opportunity to be inside you.” I flick my gaze quickly to her face. She’s blushing and her eyes are burning. It could be embarrassment, but it feels more like lust. I recognise it because it’s exactly what I’m feeling. She takes a few moments to answer.
“But you didn’t win.” Her words might be light, but the look she gives me is something else altogether.
