Second Chance with the Single Dad, page 10
Georgia stayed where she was. ‘You sure know how to tug on the emotional heartstrings. After hearing that, how on earth can I possibly disillusion your lovely mum if the thought of you being happily engaged is sustaining her in a struggle with cancer?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t mean to do that, Georgie. Just stating facts. I don’t regret using the engagement tactic with Sharyn.’ She’d puzzled over that at the time; now she knew where he got his fear of the welfare system. ‘However, I do regret my parents finding out the way they did. I never dreamed they’d contact her.’
‘Guess that’s the type of kind, well-mannered people they are.’
‘You’re right about that,’ he said.
‘How long did you say they’re staying?’
‘Just until Wednesday. Then they take off for Italy to resume their holiday.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose we could fake it until then. While they’re in Italy, you can tell them it didn’t work out.’
‘Which wouldn’t surprise them at all, with my history,’ he said with a downward twist to his mouth.
Georgia ached to find out just what had gone wrong with Angie, but now wasn’t the time to ask. ‘They’ll still have Nina, remember.’
‘Yeah. And maybe we should leave it at that. You’re right about the deception. I don’t like lying.’
‘I’ll lie too if you think it’s that important to your mum.’
‘Really?’ He looked down into her face and she could see more than weariness in his eyes. He had had it so much tougher than she had ever imagined. He’d masked it so well during the years they had been friends. And she had the feeling that she still didn’t know the whole story. ‘You’d do that for me?’ he said.
She nodded, finding it difficult to keep up a cool façade when inside she was crying at what Wil had gone through, at what he hadn’t said about his time in the welfare system. During her training she’d taught in some disadvantaged areas around the state. She’d heard the horror stories. She’d seen some of the sad outcomes in her classrooms. Heaven knew what fate Jackie and Dave had saved Wil from. ‘I couldn’t bear it if some action of mine compromised your mother’s recovery.’
‘I’ll really owe you after this, Georgie.’
‘Yeah. You will. I’ll need time to think about how you can repay me.’ Her attempt at light-hearted humour fell flat.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply. He briefly put his hand on her shoulder. Touch number four. Then took a step towards the car. ‘Okay. So let me get your things from the car so I can take them to our room.’
Georgia stared at him. ‘Stop right there. What do you mean our room?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
WIL THOUGHT HE had stunned Georgia into a total state of shock she stared at him for so long, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. He wished he’d had time to talk this through properly with her.
She put up her hand. He noticed it was trembling. From anger? Fear? He doubted it was from excitement at the prospect of sharing a bedroom with him. Not now.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ she said, ‘but wasn’t it our agreement that I have my own bedroom and bathroom? With just me sleeping in it?’
‘That was our agreement,’ he said. ‘Our housemate agreement. Of course, things would be different for an engaged couple agreement. My parents would think it odd if my fiancée didn’t sleep in my room with me.’
‘Your fake fiancée, you mean,’ she hissed. ‘Whom you have never even kissed, let alone...let alone done things engaged people might do in...in bed.’ She cursed under her breath, which shocked him more than anything else she might have done. Georgia rarely swore.
‘You wouldn’t have to share my bed.’ The sudden vision of a naked Georgia in his bed smiling, teasing, inviting him to join her on his cool sheets, made him catch his breath. And force his body not to react. ‘If you don’t want to, that is.’
Her eyes flared. He wondered if she might have had the same thought of how it might be in his bed with him. There was a sensual heat flaming within her righteous anger. He couldn’t help but observe that the cotton sundress she wore, all splashes of orange and yellow, wrapped around her waist. It would be easy to untie it and have it slide down her body. What underwear did Georgia wear? Plain and practical, he surmised. Not that it would stay on for long if—Stop!
‘Of course I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘You can sleep on the floor.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘There’s a sofa I can bunk down on. Alternatively, once the lights were out, I could head on down to the stables and take your place with the cat.’
‘What?’ Her reaction was half stifled laugh, half disbelief.
‘I know. The cat will be disappointed I’m not you. It hates me. He’ll stalk off and I’ll have the straw to myself. Bit scratchy, probably.’
‘This is serious, Wil.’ She reprimanded him with her best schoolteacher manner. He wondered if any of the lads in her class had crushes on her. He certainly would have.
‘Sorry,’ he said, not in the slightest bit sorry at raising a laugh from her.
‘You’re assuming I will agree to this revised arrangement. I’d rather have a room on my own. After all, we’re only meant to be engaged. Not married. Your parents might actually approve that we’re in separate rooms.’
‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘They’re very broad-minded. But the room-of-your-own thing isn’t going to happen anyway. Not while my parents are here. There are six bedrooms but they’re not all set up as actual bedrooms with beds in them. There’s mine, of course; the room that’s now Nina’s nursery; and the one I’d earmarked for you. Mum and Dad have taken that one as they always use it. In fact, Mum decorated it for her taste.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘She’s an interior designer. Mum is responsible for all the interiors in this house. Many years ago she was employed to go up from Melbourne to redecorate at Five and a Half Mile Creek after Dad inherited. She fell in love with the client and never left.’
‘Jackie is very talented. I love everything she’s done. And that’s a very romantic story. But I still don’t want to share a room with you. No matter how beautifully decorated. Why don’t we get some bedroom furniture delivered from a furniture store in time for tonight? Problem solved.’
‘Do you seriously think that’s going to happen between now and bedtime?’
‘Throw money at the shop and it might.’
Did she hate the idea of sharing a room with him so much? ‘We’ve shared a room before, Georgie.’
She scuffed the gravel with the toe of her espadrille. The shoe laced around her ankles with wide, white ribbons. She was all wrapped up like a beautiful gift. ‘It was different then...’ She cleared her throat and looked up at him. Her cheeks were flushed. Just as they’d flushed in his fantasy of her naked in his bed.
‘I know,’ was all the response he could come up with. Sharing a room with Georgia without wanting her in his bed for real would be a challenge. The stable was looking more and more like a viable option.
‘The last room I remember sharing with you was the back of a horse trailer parked at a rural showground,’ she said. ‘We were both wearing riding breeches and boots and had our sleeping bags laid out on the top of the horses’ straw.’
‘I still remember. We had leased those good horses we competed on. How could I ever forget the aroma of our sleeping quarters?’
She wrinkled up her nose. ‘The smell of horse lingered. No matter how carefully we’d swept the floor.’
‘But we wanted our horses nearby and we figured the trailer would be more comfortable than a tent.’
He’d never forgotten waking before Georgia had. She’d been lying on her back with her arms flung behind her head, the sleeping bag tucked right up to her chin. It had been so cold in the trailer she’d been wearing her riding gloves and he’d been able to see her breath in tiny puffs of white vapour. During the night, her wavy hair had come loose and a shaft of early morning sun had illuminated her face and picked up auburn glints that had shone in the gloom of the trailer. Her expression had been peaceful, her lips slightly parted. She had trusted him and felt totally safe. That was how she had to feel with him now.
Back then, he’d had to fight the urge to trace her features with his fingers, learning the shape of her pretty ears, her nose she despaired of because it wasn’t quite straight, her mouth with the slightly irregular cupid’s bow. Then to kiss her, the way he’d fantasised about so many times. There’d been a long piece of straw caught up in the wisps of hair around her temple. Gently, being careful not to wake her, he’d reached over to lift it out.
But he hadn’t been careful enough. Her eyes had opened and slowly focused on him. For a long moment her gaze had connected with his. Then she’d smiled, a slow, lazy, sweet smile. ‘Thank you,’ she’d murmured. Then she’d closed her eyes again and within seconds had resumed her rhythmic breathing. Whether or not she actually went back to sleep, Wil had never known. Or that she’d even remembered waking to see him so close. Nor did he ever know whether the ‘thank you’ had been for him taking the straw from her hair, or for not kissing her and complicating their easy friendship.
He’d kept that piece of straw in the pocket of his riding jacket for a long time afterwards, only losing it because he’d once forgotten to remove it before he’d sent the jacket to the dry cleaner.
There’d been a few of those type of ‘maybe’ moments throughout the years of their friendship. The mutual, unspoken acknowledgment that there could be something more between them. The ‘one day’ promise he had perhaps been guilty of hanging on to. Until the day, with eyes sparkling, she’d told him she thought she’d met ‘The One’ she might marry. Friendly, fun Toby, who had doted on her and let it be known in a not unsubtle male way that any other guy had better back right off. Even a so-called platonic ‘friend’. Not long after that, Wil had met Angie.
‘You’d better hope your sofa is more comfortable than the floor of that horse trailer,’ Georgia said now.
She turned and started to stomp back towards the house. Wil caught her arm and pulled her back to face him. He grinned. ‘I suggest you ditch that scowl if you’re going to make our engagement seem believable.’
‘Hmmph,’ she muttered.
‘In fact you might want to look friendly, affectionate and even, dare I say it, loving.’
‘Loving, Wil? That particular emotion might be rather difficult to conjure up, considering the situation you’ve shoved me into.’
‘Maybe a touch of passion might be in order.’
‘Passion?’ That would not be difficult for him to feign. The sudden flare in her eyes told him it might not be impossible for her either.
‘The only passion I’m feeling towards you at the moment, Wil Hudson, is of the angry kind. Anger for putting me in this position. When I was trying to do you and your mum a good deed. Sharing a room was not part of the deal.’
‘But pretending we’re crazy about each other enough to want to get married is.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Time for a new rule that has nothing to do with the language we use with Nina. I’m talking about PDA only while in the direct presence of your parents.’
‘You mean Public Displays of Affection?’ he said.
‘Correct.’ He liked the way she said correct like the schoolteacher she was. She’d always been a little bossy, and he’d always liked it. ‘And there’s to be none of the other type of PDA.’
‘Other type?’
‘Private Displays of Affection. I mean, there can’t be any. We really do have to return to the status quo when we’re alone.’
‘The old “no touching” way? Forget the friendly hugs?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice broke. ‘I won’t be able to deal with it otherwise. Last night we both admitted we had used the old way as protection. I... I still need that protection. The hug... Well, it seemed more than friendly to me. We have to be platonic in private when we’re pretending to be engaged. If those first kind of PDAs spill over and become the second kind, we won’t know where we stand and it could get very awkward and...and hurtful.’
‘You’re scared,’ he said slowly.
‘I told you that last night,’ she said a little stiffly. ‘I really value you as a friend. We’ve only just found each other again and I don’t want to mess it up. This fake-fiancée thing complicates everything.’
‘Yeah. It does.’ Adjusting to his new life with Nina was change enough on a momentous scale. After his disastrous marriage, he certainly couldn’t see himself rushing into another permanent relationship, especially considering what that might mean to Nina. And a no-strings fling with Georgia where he kissed her goodbye when it ended was unthinkable. The friend zone was still the best place for them. The safe zone.
‘I’m glad we’re thinking the same way,’ she said.
He looked back to Georgia. ‘While this is theoretically a private moment. Perhaps we should think about the public moments. About how we handle it when—’
She screwed up her face and, for an alarming moment, he thought she might cry. ‘This is crazy, Wil. Pretend engagement. Fake fiancée. Mapping out fake shows of affection. We’re not those people out of some...some rom-com. We’re straight-talking horse people.’ Her voice broke on a half sob and she buried her face in her hands. ‘I want to walk inside and tell your parents that Sharyn mistook fiancée for friend. Then I think how frail your mum looks, how the thought of you finding love gives her something to live for and—’
‘Georgie, look at me.’
She dropped her hands from her face and looked up at him. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears, an intense shade of blue like the summer sky at noon. He reached down and smoothed a wispy lock of her hair that was falling into her eyes. ‘This is stressing you. It is a crazy idea and I’m a crazy man for having dropped you in it.’
She sniffed. ‘Now I understand why you did it in the first place. And how very special your mother is to you, so you want to keep it going. It’s just I—’
‘I would never force you into something you didn’t want to do. Ever.’
‘I know. And it’s because of that I really do want to help you. I also want to be your housemate and help you with Nina. If I tell the truth now, I’ll have to go back to my parents’ place. Otherwise, it would be incredibly awkward staying here under the scrutiny of your disappointed parents.’
‘Now’s your chance to back out. Seriously. I’ll still be your friend even if you break off our “engagement”.’
That brought a watery smile from her. ‘I’m in. I’m your fiancée until Wednesday.’
He stepped closer. Took both her hands in his. She looked down to their joined hands and back up to him, alarmed. ‘It’s only pretend, remember,’ he said. ‘But we need to be convincing. As you reminded me, I’ve never kissed you. Engaged people should probably have some knowledge of what it’s like to kiss each other.’
Georgia looked up at him, her eyes wide and wary, but still with a trace of smile lingering at the corners of her lips. She usually didn’t wear much make-up, but today she’d put something on her eyes that emphasised their blue and the thickness of her dark lashes. Her mouth was slicked with cherry-red gloss and it looked eminently kissable. He’d always found that slight unevenness of her top lip very appealing—now he wanted to know how it felt under his lips, how she tasted, how she felt in his arms.
‘Okay, so we kiss,’ she said.
‘Right,’ he said, taken aback by her practical approach.
‘Shall I be the first?’
‘What do you mea—?’
Before he could finish his question, Georgia had tugged on their linked hands to pull him close and pressed her mouth against his, soft and warm and, to his surprise, hesitant. For all her show of bravado, she was nervous.
Wil wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. More like exultant that he had her so close. Kissing Georgia at last. He took command of the kiss, being careful to keep his lips on hers tender and undemanding. A shiver of surrender ran through her as she relaxed into the kiss. He tightened his grip on her hands. She parted her lips to welcome his tongue with a little murmur of what he couldn’t be sure was pleasure or trepidation. He vowed, with a fierce surge of protectiveness, he would make sure she felt only pleasure from his touch.
Her curves were soft and yielding against his chest. He slid his hands around to grasp her waist and pull her even closer. The wrap skirt of her dress had swung open to the top of her taut, toned thighs and her legs were bare against his. When her tongue met his, tentative at first and then meeting his in a sensual tangle, he was stunned by the sudden and intense shock waves of pleasure that rippled through his body—and his heart.
* * *
Her first kiss with Wil. It was so much more than Georgia could ever have imagined. She was almost overwhelmed by excitement. This isn’t real, she tried to remind herself, but she couldn’t think logically when she was so overwhelmed by sensation. This was Wil, familiar, yet, oh, so unfamiliar. His mouth, tasting of coffee and his favourite chocolate cookie. His scent, citrus shower gel with a heady touch of fresh, manly sweat. His hard, perfect male body in such intimate contact with hers.
What had started as a harmless practice kiss had flamed into something else altogether and escalated to a passionate exchange that surprised the heck out of her. Her heart hammered, her body pulsed with want. They’d always had a connection, mental, spiritual, now it was physical. The difference between friend and potential lover. Her heart gave a huge jolt. She broke away from the kiss to catch her breath, to find her balance. If she didn’t pull away from him, she’d be dragging him behind the house and pushing him up against the wall.
