Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (103 page)

She twisted the taps of the shower, peeled her soaking-wet clothes from her abused body, climbed under the spray, and let it wash the sweat away. It worked, and in about five minutes, she felt a little better. And in about ten minutes, she was realizing that if she didn’t get out now, she was going to stay in here until the water ran cold, and have to explain to everyone that Will’s grandmother had kicked her butt so badly in yoga that she’d fallen asleep in the shower.

She turned the water off with reluctance, toweled dry, dug her swimsuit out of the drawer, and started to put it on, then realized that the bedroom door wasn’t locked and ran hastily across the room to do it. She caught sight of herself dressed only in her black bikini bottom in the mirrored closet door and groaned a little. No question, Will wasn’t seeing her in this, boot camp or no, flirting or no. He’d signed up for the photo shoot because of Gretchen, she knew, and there was about twice as much of her as there was of Gretchen. She fastened the top, pulled on her robe, and headed downstairs to the spa. She was going to fall asleep in there for sure, but right now, that sounded great.

In Hot Water

Will lay back and let the heated water do its work. He opened his eyes when he heard the ranch slider moving in its track, and then he kept them open. Faith was standing there in her dressing gown, her hand still on the door, looking like she was about to turn around and go back upstairs.

“There you are,” his grandmother said from her spot across the spa pool from him. “Don’t just stand there getting cold again. Get in. We have company, you see. Isn’t that lucky.”

“Uh…yeh,” Will managed to say. “Get in. Please.”

He could see Faith swallowing hard, could sense her hesitation. Then she looked at him, took hold of the tie fastening her dressing gown, and tugged it loose. She shrugged out of its pale-blue folds and dropped it over a chair, and she was walking towards him, lowering herself to slide into the water, and coming to rest beside his grandmother.

She gasped. “Whoa. Hot.”

That was the understatement of the year.

Will was looking. He shouldn’t be, he knew, because that wasn’t going to do him any good at all, but he was looking anyway, because—because bloody hell. Her bikini was black, and it wasn’t that it was so small, it was just that it had to cover so much luscious territory. He wished she’d get out again. He wanted to watch her climb out. Except that he wanted her to stay in. With him. He very nearly groaned. He was in so much trouble.

He got his voice back, said, “Bubbles,” then twisted around, reached for the controls, and turned the jets on. He was going to need all the camouflage he could get. He turned the temperature down while he was at it. It was already too hot in here for him, and he wasn’t going to be able to get out for a while.

It got worse, too. “What are you doing all the way over there?” Kuia asked Faith. “That’s no way to greet your man after months apart from him. He doesn’t want to sit with his granny when he could be sitting with you.” She gave Faith a shove. “Go on.”

“That’s all right. I don’t—” Will began, then shut his mouth. What was he saying? He wanted her over here. True, it might kill him, but what a way to go.

Faith looked at him, took a deep breath that did interesting things to the black bikini, and slid around the square spa pool until she came to rest ten cautious centimeters away. She bounced in the rush of the jetting water, her knee bumped his, her elbow brushed his side, and she jumped and blushed, which all made him harden that much more. He was downright aching by now, and every encounter only made it worse.

“Don’t mind me,” his grandmother said cheerily.

“Did you—” Now he was the one swallowing. “Have a good time?”

She laughed, seeming to lose a little of the tension. “Not exactly. I’d tell you the truth, but I’d have to kill myself out of sheer humiliation. How was the gym?”

“Oh, you know,” he said. “It was the gym.” And then he sat there like a fool and perved at her, trying not to look down her top and failing utterly, and she stared across the water as if something extremely fascinating were going on in the garden.

Kuia rose from the water. “That’s enough for me. Enjoy yourselves.”

“I’ll get out, too,” Faith said, and all but levitated across the pool to scramble out.

“You were in there two minutes,” Kuia said in surprise.

“That was enough. I’m still really tired. I think I’d better go upstairs and lie down. I mean, take a nap,” Faith hurried on, wrapping herself in her dressing gown again. “I mean, I need a rest.”

She fled into the house, and his grandmother watched her go, then turned back to Will.

“I’d say,” she told him, “that you’ve got a bit of work to do there, in the girlfriend department.” And then she went inside, too, and Will was left alone again.

***

He sat down there for ten more long minutes, staying in the water until he could trust himself to get out again, then sitting on the side of the pool, keeping his feet in for warmth, giving Faith time to shower off and get dressed.

His mum came out to collect the washing. “You’ve been in there for ages,” she had to comment. “You and Faith having trouble already? She went up the stairs fast.”

“It’s a bit of an adjustment, that’s all,” he said.

“What adjustment?” She turned to face him, the washing basket still on her hip and the clothes on the line forgotten. “Having a holiday with you? If it isn’t working now, it isn’t going to work any better later, when the bloom is off the rose and you’re just another man. Drama isn’t excitement, it isn’t romance, and it isn’t true love. It’s just drama. I should know. Got five kids out of drama, out of breaking up and making up.”

Will winced inside. He hated to hear this. He’d been trying to make it better for ten years, and he never could, because it wasn’t something he could fix.

It had been a mistake not to tell the truth to his family, but he hadn’t trusted Mals and Talia not to spread the word, and to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to disappoint his mum again, either, have her look at him in that way that meant only one thing. That he was exactly like his dad.

It would have been all right if he and Faith could have kept their distance, the way he’d planned. The trouble was, Faith wasn’t a good enough actress to be able to spend a week with his family and pretend to love him.

He should have done what his agent had suggested and hired somebody to play the part of his girlfriend. When Ian had suggested Gretchen, though, it hadn’t just been her pregnancy that had had Will saying no. He’d seized on Faith from the beginning. If he were going to do it, he’d thought, he’d do it with somebody he liked. It looked like that had been a mistake, but then, this whole thing had been one giant mistake, and he just kept digging himself in deeper.

“Yeh, well,” he said, and then didn’t know how to go on. “Guess we’ll see how we go.” He stood up, collected his towel and wrapped it around his waist, then began to unclip clothes from the line. “I’ll do this.” He took the basket from her, set it on the wooden deck, and bent to kiss her cheek. “Go on in, Mum,” he said gently.

She put her arm around him, held him close for a moment, then stood straight, blinking a bit. “I’ll go finish dinner, then. Hope Faith will make it this time.”

“I hope so, too. But jet lag’s a bugger. And Mum,” he added impulsively, “no worries. She’ll be right. It’s a week’s suspension, that’s all, and then it’s all over.” She was worried, he could tell, and he understood the worry, a bit. But he hadn’t failed her yet, had he? At least not in that way. Not financially.

She opened her mouth to say something, probably that that was what his dad had always said too, and then closed it again. “Thanks,” she said instead, and walked into the house.

He folded the clothes, took them in to her, and then went upstairs. He didn’t need to worry about forgetting himself with Faith again, at least. He wasn’t feeling too cheerful just now.

He knocked softly at the bedroom door, glad nobody was around to see him do it. He hadn’t thought out the details of this thing nearly well enough.

“Come in,” he heard, and went inside. She was dressed, of course. Wearing the purple tunic and leggings, sitting on the bed, propped against the pillows with her laptop, although the lid was shut again, her hands held protectively over the cover.

“You can use the desk over there, if you like.” He indicated the built-in area under the windows. “I’m quite happy to shift myself downstairs.”

“Thanks. I will, but this is more comfortable right now.” She hid a yawn behind her hand. “Your grandmother really did kick my butt,” she confessed, and he smiled and felt better. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and she shifted over, but not in an avoiding way, even though he was wearing nothing but a towel. In a companionable way.

“A bit harder than we thought, all this,” he said.

“Yes. It is. I’m sorry that I’m not holding up my end of things better. I’m just not…used to, I mean, I haven’t…” She stopped. “I’m not good at pretending.”

“You didn’t even have to tell me that.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back. “I’m good at pretending,” he confessed. “Always have been.”

“And it doesn’t feel a little…” She hesitated. “A little empty?”

“Yeh,” he said, sobered again. “It does, at times.” He shoved himself off the bed. “I’ll go take a shower, eh, get dressed.”

“Good idea. It’s easier for me to pretend when you’re dressed.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. So he went in and took his shower instead.

***

He was knocking on the door again an hour later, but didn’t get an answer this time, so he opened the door a crack and peered cautiously inside.

Her hands weren’t busy over her laptop this time. They were still on the keys, but she was asleep.

“Faith,” he said softly. “Dinner.”

She didn’t respond. He went to stand beside her, reached out to touch on the shoulder, then changed his mind and lifted his hand again. Instead, he slid the computer out from under her hands, and, when she still didn’t stir, closed the lid and set it on the bedside table.

He considered her clothes, and decided to leave them. If she woke up to find him undressing her…that wasn’t going to go over well. Instead, he went to the closet, found an extra duvet, and covered her with it. She sighed, murmured, rolled over, and snuggled in, and he smiled, gave in to temptation, and bent to kiss her cheek.

“Night, baby,” he said softly, then was startled to hear himself say it. But he needed to practice, didn’t he? He needed to pretend.

Flying High

Faith woke to another much-too-early morning after another much-too-early night, and how Will managed to fly from one continent, even one hemisphere to the next and play rugby, she couldn’t imagine. She couldn’t even stay awake past six o’clock.

At least this time she’d slept until five-thirty, so who knew? Maybe tonight she’d manage to have dinner with Will’s family before she collapsed. As long as she didn’t go to yoga.

She’d had her phone by the bed this morning, anyway, and had been able to use the flashlight to get out of the bedroom without waking Will up. Of course, that was because she hadn’t had to get dressed. She’d fallen asleep in her clothes, and he’d covered her up, obviously, which was so…so sweet. But then, he was sweet. She’d always known that.

Another nagging splinter of guilt stabbed her as she propped herself at the end of yet another leather couch—brown this time, for a little variety—in the expanse of space that was the great room of this comfortable family home. He wouldn’t like it if he knew what she was doing, she thought even as she was opening her laptop. He wouldn’t like it at all.

But it wasn’t up to him, and they weren’t even involved, so what did she have to feel guilty about? Besides, he wouldn’t find out, would he? Her relationship with him wasn’t real, and anyway, she had to do this.

The decision to take her story beyond Calvin’s site, to publish the episodes in serial form on all the online bookstores, had been the scariest one she’d ever made—and the best. For the first time in her life, she was loving her work, and to her astonishment, she was making more money doing it than at all her jobs combined. Her bank account was growing every month. She had to keep going, because this was her future. And anyway, she didn’t have a choice. People wanted to hear the rest of her story. They were writing to her and telling her so. And she wanted to tell it. So she opened her document and started to type.

From the moment Hope walked into the office on Thursday morning after her return from New Zealand, she sensed that something was wrong.

She was more than half an hour late, but then, Hemi’s jet had touched down in New York only two hours earlier, and traffic had been heavy. Even with Hemi’s driver dropping her a block from the office, she hadn’t been able to make it in on time.

Hemi had told her not to worry, but it was impossible not to. The tension in the Publicity department hung in the air like an invisible gray cloud. Hope had only been gone for three workdays. What could have happened? Her relationship with Hemi was still a secret, so it couldn’t be that. It couldn’t.

“Panic stations,” Nathan, the other Publicity Assistant, muttered as he passed, ostentatiously studying a pile of papers. “It’s you.”

Hope made it to her cubicle, but she had barely rid herself of her coat before Martine was gliding towards her on her stratospheric heels, the soles flashing Manolo Blahnik red, her entire sleek form radiating feminine power.

“I’d like to see you in the conference room, please,” she told Hope.

Hope grabbed her laptop case again in the hope that this might be work-related, but then, what else could it be? It
couldn’t
be anything else. Nobody knew. Did they?

Her heart beat out an apprehensive tattoo as she followed the elegant back of the Publicity Manager to the glass-walled room at one end of the cubicle warren. Could she have done something wrong?