The final hooter went as the team disentangled themselves and then every Banshee parent ran onto the pitch, picking their kids up and throwing them on their shoulders and taking off with them around the perimeter of the pitch in a victory lap, each kid thanking Winnie—perched on her grandfather’s shoulders—using AUSLAN. She signed thank you back then high fived them as they passed her by.
The kids on the other team—who had won by a significant margin—stood silently, their expressions PC versions ofWTF?It probably wasn’t very fair to them, stealing their thunder, but Fin had little time to worry about the optics before he and Sweeney were also picked up by Banshee supporters and hoisted onto shoulders to join the team on their non-victory lap.
Sweeney looked momentarily startled as she clutched at the two heads belonging to the two shoulders she was balancing on, her camera swinging from her neck. But then she was laughing and soon after, obviously feeling more secure, she started snapping away again, catching the sheer and utter joy of the moment.
She looked radiant, totally swept up in the spontaneous parade as she clicked and laughed and high fived, and Fin couldn’t help but think she was exactly where she belonged.
On a pedestal, being idolised.
Twenty-Six
It was after eight o’clock before Sweeney opened the door to their room, Fin following close behind. The team and their entourage had stayed at the grounds to watch several more games that had stretched out over the afternoon before the adults had impulsively decided to take the kids to the beach.
Back home, the afternoon would already be too chilly for a jaunt to the seaside and the water far too cold. Not to mention the two-hour car trip. But not here—the afternoon sun was delightfully warm, the water was tolerable and, within a blink, Mai had arranged several taxi mini-vans in that organised way of hers, getting them to Surfers Paradise in fifteen minutes.
And it had been fun watching the kids, high on life, running hither and thither like Mexican jumping beans, messing around in the sand and surf for a couple of hours before it got dark. Then they’d all hit up an esplanade burger joint for dinner before bundling back into the vans, which had deposited them at the hotel, where everyone had immediately retired to their rooms, the kids still firing on all cylinders.
Where they got the energy, she did not know. These two days had been physically and mentally draining, and Sweeney was wrung out from all the herding and clapping and cheering and wrangling. Not to mention how much her quads were bitching at her from the constant up and down trying to get the perfect shot each and every time.
And that was just the physical stuff. There was the emotional stuff too. Winnie’s surprise exclamation. Michael’s birthday. Her confession. The goddamn snuggling.
The ever-present prospect of their king-sized bed.
It was the first thing her eyes fell on as the door clicked shut behind Fin. The room was in darkness apart from a muted bedside lamp, illuminating the bed in all its snowy white softness, looking pristine and goddamn freakingvirgin-like and beckoning to be utterly debauched.
Not what she wanted to be thinking about right now. But how could she not when her arm was still tingling from rubbing against Fin’s as they’d sat side by side on the bench seat of the van. When her thigh was still strangely heavy from the intimacy of being pressed to his, the movement of the van setting up a heady kind of friction. Not to mention how jittery she still felt in that moment when their eyes had locked as he’d held out his hand to help her down from the van.
But then, she’d been jittery with awareness of him all afternoon. Given how in demand he’d been, they’d barely spoken, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been conscious of where he was every single second. Conscious of how people clamoured for his attention as he moved around chatting to the kids and their parents, his laughter a soothing white noise amid the hubbub of multiple conversations.
As though he dealt with kids and their parents every day, not spreadsheets and formulas.
He’d been so animated and personable as he shot the breeze with the dozens of people who’d wanted to relive Winnie’s goal over and over.
They just adored him, these people. They were drawn to him and she totally understood why. She got it. Shereallyfreaking got it.
Because, even engaged in her own conversations, there’d been a frisson between them, a vibrating string of air connecting them, and every time he’d glanced her way and smiled, she’d felt it tug. And she could have sworn, by the way she sometimes felt his gaze lingering on her, that he’d felt it too.
Like just now at the door, when her trembling fingers had fumbled the card in the lock three times and he’d eased it out of her hand, heat from his body warming her back as he slid it in slowly, the soft whirr as it had opened as loud as the thud of her heart. And when neither of them had moved for a nanosecond and she’d had to shut her eyes to suppress the crazy need to lean back.
And now, here they were, alone once again with the internal tug of war between thefriendshipthey’d always known and the enforced intimacy of their very new, very fakerelationship.
And that great lunk of a bed. It was so intimidating, Sweeney’s step faltered.
She wasn’t sure she should get any closer to something that looked as if it had been made for orgies. Not the way she was feeling now, with the time to her eventual departure date trickling like water through her fingers mixed with a restless, needy ache twisting through her belly and stiffening her nipples into tight points.
‘Sweeney?’
His voice was low, a rumble right behind her. He was obviously waiting for her to move forward so he could move forward, but she wasn’t sure it was wise to take one step closer to the temptation—the possibilities—of that bed.
In a panic, she turned. Maybe if she didn’t have to look at it, she wouldn’t think about all the things that could be done in it? But now, of course, she was looking at him. And he was close.So close.Every cell in her body burst to life, lighting up like a Christmas tree, humming like a substation.
‘You okay?’ he asked, still low and gravelly.
She shook her head. She could barely breathe, let alone think or articulate, as his warmth and his aroma and the sheer rangy masculinity of him constricted her lungs. This was Fin and yet not Fin. Right now, he wasn’t the guy she’d known since birth. He was a man and he was looking at her like she was a woman.
She didn’t know if she’d ever be okay again.
‘That bed,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘it’s…’
