Out of Bounds (20 page)

She wrapped her arms around him in a much
better hug than he’d given her, forcing him to stop walking.

“Just chill for a minute—okay? There’s got to
be a way around it. Just got to be.”

“A couple of quick sales are the only way I
can see out of the mess—and they’re not a permanent fix.”

“Well, start with that.”

“Yes boss,” he said, managing a weak version
of his former dazzling smile.

“You might find the peat isn’t deep. Or isn’t
over the whole site.”

“And pigs might fly,” he said, lifting her
off her feet and swinging her round in a circle. “Feel like you’re
flying, Miss Piggy?”

He set her down and they walked on without
talking for the next few minutes. Jetta kept sneaking sideways
glances at him. What a difference one day had made to their
relationship. Not that it was a
relationship
, she reminded
herself. He was a friend—a good friend—and a wonderful lover until
Friday if she was lucky. She couldn’t expect anything more than
that.

But now, somewhere deep down near her heart,
warm powerful feelings pulsed. New feelings. Puzzling, hard to
ignore feelings. She wanted to look at him constantly. To touch him
and caress him and do anything that would make his life better. Or,
in this case, less worrying.

“There’s only one way you’re going to solve
this,” she said, catching his ferocious expression from the corner
of her eye. “Drill some experimental holes as soon as you can.”

“We’d need a proper drilling rig for that,”
he said. “Forget about the cost for a minute. Could be days before
I find anyone free. Right now the construction industry’s in
turmoil.”

Jetta raised her eyebrows. “So—do you know
anyone you can offer a Sunday cash job to? An owner/operator maybe?
I don’t suppose a staff member could just drive off in a huge truck
unnoticed?”

“Damn right. But...” He thought for a few
moments. “Crank—the driver you met yesterday—he has a brother in
the business.”

She smiled with quiet satisfaction as he
pulled out his phone and started the chain of calls that led to the
brother.

“Big brain for a little girl,” he teased once
he’d done the deal.

“It’s in my interests to help if I can,” she
said. “I have half a house on the line, too.”

“So you do,” he said with less warmth in his
voice. “How could I forget that?”

The momentary life evaporated from his face.
She’d just added another worry to his huge burden. “I didn’t mean
it like that.”

“What time does your drycleaner close?” he asked,
ignoring her reply.

An hour later, Jetta’s senses sprang alert as
Anton appeared in the dining room. She glanced up from the travel
documents she’d been sorting on the big oak table, and found a fine
navy pinstriped suit that echoed his blue eyes, and a snowy shirt
and red silk tie. “That’s a bit over the top for Saturday
afternoon,” she said, once again struck a visceral blow by his
physical beauty.

“Never going to sell fancy apartments wearing
old jeans,” he said, face grim as he turned and strode down the
long hallway. “I’ve made some room in the wardrobe for you,” he
yelled back over his shoulder as he scooped the car keys from their
customary perch on the narrow table. “Expect me when you see me.”
The front door slammed behind him, and the echo floated back to
mock her.

Slowly the butterflies in her tummy calmed
down and the thudding in her chest returned to its normal speed.
How did he do that to her?

Why of all the men in the world was it
him?

She’d seen him arrogant and angry, confident
and carefree, teasing and tender—and now ferociously worried.

He might be a blood relation.

He was definitely a lover with unlimited
patience and stamina, initiating her into true womanhood with
affection and care.

But he could still be a con man, with the
cunning to cheat her out of her inheritance.

Anton, who are you really? And how will I escape
from you now with my heart whole?”

He returned hours later, tie askew, hair on
end, whiskey on his breath.

“Yes?” she asked. “No?”

“Maybe,” was all he said. It was accompanied
by a shrug and a grimace that could have meant anything. She
sighed. Rumpled and slightly desperate looked good on him. Almost
better than the impeccable finish he’d left the house with.

She glanced at her watch; it was after nine.
“Have you eaten?”

“Not much. Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother to make you a quick
omelet.”

“I know what I’d rather have.”

She flicked her eyes up to his with more
attention. The husky timbre of his voice lifted all the tiny hairs
on her skin, and he surveyed her with something like
ownership...lids drooping a little, attention centered absolutely
on her.

Suddenly her breasts heated, and her belly
filled with fluttering wings and deep hot ripples.

No gentle seduction tonight
, she
thought. However lustful he might appear, she was right there with
him. Every bit as turned on. Utterly matching him in mood.

She shoved her chair aside and stood,
dragging in a long breath as she reached for the ends of his
loosened red tie. She spared him the briefest of glances and turned
away, tugging. Felt the tie tighten and then slacken as he
followed.

A flare of triumph raced through her. Her
braless nipples squirmed into tight buds, and her sex tingled—
soft, moist and full of anticipation.

Her super-sensitive lips hungered to taste
him again. The flavor of whiskey, the feel of his invading tongue.
If she had him for only a few more days, she’d take greedily and
regret nothing.

The bedroom door swung open with a protesting
creak. Everything had gone vivid—too bright, too loud, too strong.
In his case, too quiet.

Jetta turned. His eyes blazed hot and sexy,
then darkened as they latched onto the jutting nubs under her
T-shirt.

“No,” she said as he made a move towards her.
“My choice tonight.” She stepped away, intensely turned on by
having such a perfect man at her beck and call. “Lose the tie,” she
suggested.

Anton yanked at it and threw it onto the
bed—a scarlet streak of challenge against the white of the duvet
cover.

“And the jacket.”

He shouldered it off and she reached out for
it, making him wait by opening the wardrobe and searching for a
hanger. He stood silently, but waves of lust crashed and rolled
through the air behind her, landing on her nape and careering down
her spine.

She turned, and those same waves danced over
her nipples, slid past her belly and concentrated hotly between her
thighs. “I might just do the belt myself,” she murmured, pulling
his shirt out and taking her time. Brushing against his erection as
a small extra torture. She drew his zipper down as Anton popped
shirt buttons. “Off,” she said, indicating his trousers.

He slid them down his long legs. One corner
of his mouth quirked.

“And those.”

He toed off his shoes and peeled away his
briefs and socks.

“So—just the shirt,” she murmured, surveying
him with what she hoped was a confident gaze. She couldn’t resist a
glance south to his groin. To her nine-year-old eyes, Uncle Graham
had had an immense and ugly protrusion under his hairy, doughy gut.
Now, looking at Anton, she saw a tall taut penis standing firm and
proud against the lower sweep of his hard golden belly. The open
fronts of his white shirt framed it to perfection.

All those years I wasted! But without this
lovely man, I’d still be lost. Now I want, I
want.

“On your back,” she said, wondering if he’d
obey.

He met her eyes with a look that was part
lust, part disbelief, part acquiescence—and then threw himself down
across the bed like a waiting sacrifice.

Jetta stood looking at him for a few moments,
meeting the challenge in his eyes while her heart thumped and
thudded, and the heavy pulse echoed in her groin. She lowered one
knee onto the bed and stretched over him to pick up a condom packet
from his bedside chest. When he raised a hand to take it from her,
she sent him a stern ‘hands off’ glare. Biting the corner off the
bright little pack, she ripped it open by tiny degrees, then tossed
it onto the duvet cover for later.

“Put me out of my misery,” he groaned.

“You’re not in misery,” she taunted, as fire
and longing swept through her. “You’re getting what you deserve.
You kept me waiting last night.”

“And wasn’t it worth it?”

“Absolutely worth it,” she purred, standing
again to strip off her jeans. His eyes followed every movement of
her hands—the button, the zipper, the slow easing of the fabric
past her hips, down her thighs, past her knees. His gaze fastened
on today’s thong, the second in Bren and Hallie’s gift pack. A lacy
silver spider-web stretched from hipbone to hipbone, backed by a
scrap of black silk.

She kicked her jeans and sandals aside, and
sashayed around the end of the bed in a deliberate catwalk act,
stopping to tilt a hip in his direction, then turning her back on
him, knowing he’d get bare butt and minimal elastic. She smiled
over her shoulder, still posing.

“Get down here,” he growled.

She resumed her little fashion parade,
holding his gaze, and spicing it up by drawing her T-shirt off as
she strutted. She paused, close to his head. The soft cotton
stroked her erect nipples as she pulled it higher and higher above
him. Finally she tossed it aside.

She felt fantastic. Powerful and female and
swollen and sexy.

She peeled the thong off and stood with her
legs parted, hoping he’d see she glistened with slippery
arousal.

He looked wonderfully uncivilized, lying in
wait on the big low bed. How could he be sexier in an unbuttoned
shirt than totally naked? Was it the illusion that he couldn’t
quite wait to be undressed for her?

She knelt, a knee either side of his face,
and he gave an earthy grunt as he grabbed her and pulled her down.
His mouth closed around her clit, his tongue pushed inside her, and
she bent low to clasp his hips and bury her face in his groin,
licking and sucking him in return, loving the mysterious scent of
him and the power she had now.

“Condom,” he insisted a little later, trying
to pull away.

Jetta released him with regret, and rolled
the condom on leisurely as he growled throaty curses and hurry-up
imprecations. Then she turned around and straddled him, taking him
in a hot, slow, smooth slide.

“I had such a good teacher,” she
whispered.

On Monday morning, Jetta stepped from the
Porsche, impatient to settle the true legal situation of number
fifteen. Anton seemed relaxed about it. Her suspicion that he was
some sort of conman had ebbed away to almost nothing.

He held the building’s door open. Her heels
tapped sharply as she walked across the intricate tiles of the
antique floor.

She still yearned to save the old house, but
feared today meant the end of everything. If the lawyer had
arranged to pay all of Gran’s household bills automatically, then
there’d be current insurance cover. The fire damage could be
repaired, and the door to the site office removed if the whole
house was hers.

But if it was, that would cast Anton deep
into debt from which he might not recover for many years. Her
loyalties swung in both directions; fight for her old family home
and let Anton sink? Or desert her dream, and help her lover
succeed?

She glanced across at him as the elevator
rose, remembering his tender seduction on Friday night, and their
sexy games on Saturday.

The drilling rig on Sunday had established
beyond doubt that the foundations for the apartments needed massive
extra ground works. That night’s lovemaking had been desperate
consolation more than anything else.

She stole another glance at his steely
expression. Maybe nothing could save him anyway if the money
situation was as grim as he claimed. Her heart constricted with
pain for him.

The elevator door slid open. This time,
Winters and Watersons’ premises were brightly lit, and the holiday
notice had gone from the glass door. Jetta sucked in a deep breath
for courage and preceded Anton into the reception area.

“Mr Haviland!” the forty-something
receptionist exclaimed with evident surprise and pleasure.

“Morning Sue. Is Horrie in yet?”

“Yes indeed. But he’s not expecting you.”

“He’ll see us, I promise. We have an
emergency, and he’ll want to know about it.”

Round eyed with curiosity, the woman led them
to one of several dark timber doors, knocked, and pushed it open.
“Mr Haviland to see you, Mr Winters,” she announced.

Jetta stood back as Anton strode toward a big
silver haired man seated at a gleaming mahogany desk. The air was
thick with pine fragrance.

“Anton, dear boy,” the lawyer said, rising
from a creaky chair. “Sorry about the smell. Sue decided the office
was musty after being closed up, but she’s gone overboard with the
air freshener.”

Anton managed a chuckle at that, although
Jetta knew he must feel wretched.

He shook Horrie’s hand, and said, “I’ve
brought someone to meet you. Someone who ought to know all about
you, but doesn’t. This is Jetta Rivers, Lucy Haviland’s
grand-daughter. Jetta, this is Horrie Winters.”

The lawyer turned in Jetta’s direction. “Miss
Rivers? At last we meet. I’m so sorry to hear Lucy’s gone. I didn’t
know until I returned from holiday. A dear, dear lady.”

She shook his proffered hand, murmuring
thanks for his sympathy.

He waved them both to green leather
armchairs.

“Jetta needs you to confirm the situation
with the house,” Anton said. “You thought she knew all about it,
but she hasn’t a clue. She thinks I’m trying to steal half of her
inheritance—putting it bluntly.”