Adam’s Boys (15 page)

“God, the hell I must have put you through!” Adam almost groaned, a look of sheer agony on his face as he swallowed hard. “But it seems hell is all I bring to the lives of the women I love.”

Abbie wanted to say something to ease the million and one self-recriminations he was battling against. But then she couldn't, because his mouth had seized hers.

She could have pulled away—that was what her head was telling her to do—but it was too late. She was yielding to the need of his advancing hips against hers and slipping her arms inside his warm coat to draw him closer and let him explore her mouth at will, her lips parting beneath his to allow a passionate search within.

When Abbie felt and heard the moan rising in his chest she could hardly believe it was his, or that she was making him feel that way. And as his mouth broke away and he gazed at her, she knew there would be no resolution of their looming problems before they cast sense and reason to one side that night.

In a decisive act of possession, she slid her arms around his neck and he picked her up, allowing her legs to wrap tightly around his waist. With a shove with the toe of his boot, the front door slammed and the cottage shuddered as he carried her to the rug in front of the fire and lowered her to the floor.

Lying down next to her, he traced the line of her jaw and then her lips with his fingertips. With eyes like dark pools amidst the hard, male angles of his face he watched her with a distant, primitive hunger that both thrilled and disturbed her.

Trailing his fingers through her hair he kissed her again, slowly and tantalisingly, this time leaving her in no doubt about the level of sensuality he would offer her that night. At that moment Abbie knew her struggle was over. The stopper had finally been pulled on all those years of bottled-up longing for the man in her arms—nothing would stem the flow of her feelings for him that night.

Yet even as she surrendered willingly to the fever of desire between them, Abbie knew she was sipping at a dangerous cocktail of fear and love. For how could it be any other way when the bond between them was no less fragile than one of Pete and Henry's hastily thrown together sandcastles, likely to be wiped out without a trace under the first tidal surge.

“You're not Adam!” the woman at the front door of the cottage announced in obvious irritation.

“Evidently,” Abbie replied in stunned surprise to her visitor.

The clock hadn't yet ticked past seven and Abbie was still wrapped up in her dressing gown. She'd been making coffee and waiting for Adam to appear from his shower when she'd heard the peremptory knocking at the front door.

“Who
are
you then?”

“Abbie McCarthy. Who are you?”

The woman standing in front of Abbie was very tall—close to six feet—with an aristocratic air like Adam's, but much more cultivated. She also had a highly developed plum in the mouth, formidable within her rich mellifluous voice. Large brown eyes swept around the interior of the cottage as if she was on an information gathering exercise. There was also something oddly familiar about her that Abbie couldn't put her finger on.

“I'd like to see Adam,” she stated without answering Abbie's question. “Is he here?”

Abbie nodded. “He should be down any minute. Won't you come in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Abbie's visitor stooped to come through the front door, and because it led directly into the lounge it offered an immediate and comprehensive view of the clothes, pillows and blankets strewn licentiously about the room.

The visitor straightened herself and rested her hands on her hips like a strict boarding mistress, casting her eyes around the mess disapprovingly. She was clearly putting two and two together about the man she knew upstairs, the woman in front of her
and
the goings-on in that room the night before.

“Come through to the kitchen,” Abbie directed, picking her way through the mess and kicking herself for not telling the caller to come back later. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Milk, no sugar,” she replied crisply, following Abbie into the kitchen and towering in an imperious manner next to her as she poured it.

“Do we know each other?” Abbie asked handing her a mug. “You're very familiar to me.”

“No, we've never met,” the woman threw back in a bored voice, and wandering across the kitchen lowered herself onto the little window seat looking out onto the lane outside. She crossed her legs easily and then proceeded to look Abbie up and down.

The visitor didn't bother to reintroduce another topic of conversation and Abbie didn't feel motivated to fill the silence either. Instead she turned back to the kitchen bench to pour her own coffee, but then two warm, familiar arms were curling around her from behind and an unshaven cheek was brushing up against her own.

“I cannot find my belt in this messy house for love or money,” Adam murmured as Abbie felt his lips against her ear, but her heart was catapulting away as she twisted in his arms and laid her hands on his bare chest.

“Adam, you have a visitor,” she advised with a warning note in her voice.

He stared back at her in disbelief before casting his eyes around the kitchen and spotting the woman in the window box.

“Hello, Adam,” the visitor crooned, her eyes moving languorously over him. “Don't you look like sex on a stick!”

And that was exactly what he did look like.

Even Abbie gave out an audible gasp of stunned admiration as he took a step back from her.

He'd found his beltless jeans; they were sitting low and loose on his narrow hips, well below his midriff and the hard ridges of his flat stomach. But there was no shirt in sight, and the muscles in his powerful arms and chest were rippling in the cool of the kitchen after his hot shower. His hair was towel dried and unruly and his beard was well and truly at second day stage. Capped off with gorgeous olive-skin and the heart stopping flash of brilliant blue eyes, Alpha Male was standing in all his glory right before the women's eyes.

“Kate!” Adam barked, having a rare attack of disarmament. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Your two sons—I've come down to see them,” the visitor replied coolly, unperturbed by Adam's less-than-welcoming outburst.

“Rather out of your way, isn't it?” Adam replied in quick rejoinder, but then spying his shirt near the lounge room door walked over to retrieve it and tug it over his head.

Meanwhile, Abbie was on a mission to read the signals bouncing between the two people in front of her. She suspected they knew each other well, but she wasn't getting the feeling there was an old romance factor. It seemed more likely to be a barely tolerated family relationship.

“Not at all out of my way,” Kate tossed at him lightly. “I'm spending the day with Michael at school. This village is on my way there, as you know.”

“I can't imagine why you came to the cottage though,” Adam asked suspiciously, leaning back against the kitchen bench and crossing his arms across the broad chest that had doubled as Abbie's pillow for the little time they'd slept the night before. “You know I rarely stay here these days.”

“I saw smoke coming out of the chimney and took a chance.”

“Is that so?” Adam replied doubtfully.

“Adam, darling,” Kate purred, unperturbed by his accusatory tone. “You're so suspicious. When did that come on?”

“I've always had a high level of suspicion when it comes to your motives. Have you introduced yourself to Abbie yet or have you left her swinging in the breeze and wondering who you are?”

“I thought I'd leave the introductions to you.”

“Very well,” Adam grated and Abbie could hear the sharp irritation in his voice. “Abbie McCarthy, mother of Henry, I'd like you to meet Kate Blackwood, aunt of Pete and sister to Ellen.”

At that point Kate raised her eyebrows and watched Abbie closely for her reaction, but Abbie was steadfastly poker-faced. She was determined not to be daunted by the haughty manner of the woman in front of her, although she was reeling at the news she was meeting Ellen's sister.

“So
you
were the sight-seeing attraction in Sydney five years ago,” Kate declared, her eyes narrowing as she drove her gaze into Abbie's. “Adam obviously overlooked the chapter in the guide book directing him to the Opera House instead. And now here you are—featuring as an attraction in England as well! You do get around, don't you?” she finished with a cruel lilt to her voice.

“Kate!” Adam rebuked sternly.

“Adam, you know I don't mean any harm,” she shrugged slightly. “Ellen's been dead going on five years now. I'm not expecting you to live like a monk forever.”

And with that Abbie's blood began to boil. In her cryptic fashion, Kate Blackwood was treating her as though she was the trash who'd seduced her brother-in-law all those years ago. It was the very reaction she'd dreaded from Adam's family and friends in England, and yet she'd been welcomed with open arms—until then.

In a rare attack of self-restraint, Abbie thought about how difficult the encounter between the three of them was for Adam. And thinking only of him she bit down on her bottom lip to stop her right-hook comeback at Kate—something deliberately provocative about monks, and how Adam had borne absolutely no resemblance to one the night before in front of that log fire. Instead she offered in a conciliatory tone, “I know it's difficult for you, Kate, meeting me. If I were in your shoes I'd find it … very confronting …”

“Not at all,” Kate snapped in sharp interruption and sniffed in disgust before continuing. “After all, my sister and Adam were together for two years. You and Adam were together for how long? Two hours? Or is that an overstatement?”

“That's enough, Kate!” Adam snapped. “Have some respect for Ellen's memory. And don't forget Pete and Henry are a part of this too.”

‘But it's okay to humiliate me,' Abbie breathed wordlessly as she stared at Adam in a sudden daze of disenchantment. Was that what his omission of her name had meant? Did he really look on her as nothing more than a two-hour blip in his life, as she'd always suspected he did?

“Quite right, Adam,” Kate purred in quick retreat, evidently satisfied with Adam's priorities that didn't appear to include Abbie. “We must concentrate on those boys—the next generation of Coopers.”

“There's no need for you to worry yourself about them,” Adam replied dismissively. “Abbie and I can manage things where Pete and Henry are concerned.”

But that was definitely the wrong thing to say to Kate Blackwood. She appeared to levitate out of the window seat, onto her feet, and up to her full height—her face turning cherry pink in the process.

“Abbie may have things under control as far as her boy is concerned,” Kate spat in seething fury. “But need I remind you that Pete is not her son?”

“As Pete's father you needn't remind me about anything to do with him.”

“Adam!” Abbie interjected urgently, sensing that full-scale war was about to erupt between the people in front of her. “Kate's right. Pete's not my son, and I have no intention of deciding his future.”

Adam switched his eyes towards her, white-hot with anger. But something in her expression must have reached him because the heat dissipated a little. He continued to stare at her for a few seconds as though using the anchor of her gaze to steady himself before he turned back to Kate. When he finally spoke again his voice was cool—icily so.

“This is getting us nowhere, Kate. You came to see Pete and that's what you should do. I'll take you up to the house now.”

“I'm not quite finished yet.” Her words rolled off her tongue like tiny hailstones as she drew herself up to her full height and rested her hands combatively on her hips. “You know that Ellen asked me to help you with Pete and you've always respected that. But lately I seem to have been cut out completely as you swing in confusion between Australia and the UK. Personally, I think the source of that confusion is clear,” she added with a marked glance towards Abbie and then the dishevelled lounge room beyond. “But if you're confused then you can bet your life that Pete is too, and Pete is my priority here.”

“Pete has never been happier or more secure in his life,” Adam grated in livid indignation at Kate's suggestion he was failing in his duties as a father.

“I don't think you have the perspective at this time to judge. See it from the point of view of an objective outsider,” Kate persisted unperturbed. “You've got law firms and charities in two countries, children in two countries, parents and career paths here, dead-end ex-girlfriends and career paths there. What exactly are your plans, Adam? I'd very much like to know.”

“My plan, Kate, for a start, is to tell you that if you had any clue then you wouldn't call the firm in Sydney a dead-end career path.”

And as Adam and Kate faced off against one another Abbie stood to their left, quietly absorbing the second body blow of Adam's betrayal. For by his silence he'd just confirmed Kate's dismissal of her as nothing more than a ‘dead-end ex-girlfriend'.

As Abbie watched him in horrified fascination she knew that he was oblivious to her feelings, and the promise he'd made just days ago to protect her from an attack like the one Kate was hurling at her. With a sick feeling of panic and heartache rising up within her she sensed that the tentative house of cards they'd made together over the last two weeks was toppling down—this time there would be no rebuild.

“Fiddlesticks!” Kate declared loudly, breaking into Abbie's ruminations. “When did you stop being a realist, Adam? How can you contemplate Australia as a future? What about the family estate? What about Pete's future? What about your career in politics? Do I have to remind you that you're expected back here in the next few months to prepare for candidacy? I know you planned to come back but now I'm not so sure you will because you're sending out mixed signals. One minute you're relocating Pete and yourself to Sydney, the next minute you're asking me to pick up Eton College application forms for Henry.”