Australia: In Bed with a Bachelor: The Costarella Conquest / The Hot-Blooded Groom / Inherited: One Nanny

Showered, dressed and ready to leave, they were at the door of their hotel room when Jake turned and kissed her again, a long, passionate kiss that left Laura tingling with excitement on their elevator ride down to the foyer. Her mind swam with the hope he was going to ask her home with him instead of their going separate ways today.

A taxi was waiting outside the hotel entrance. Jake opened the passenger door for her and she got in, sliding along the back seat to make room for him. Instead of following her he leaned in to tell the driver Eddie’s address and hand him a twenty dollar note.

Startled, Laura blurted, ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

His dark eyes met hers, flat dark, almost black, devoid of any brilliance. ‘No. I have somewhere else to go, Laura,’ he stated decisively. He reached out and touched her cheek. ‘It’s been good. Thank you.’

Then the brief caress was withdrawn, as swiftly as Jake withdrew himself, shutting the passenger door and signalling the driver to take her away. Which he did, given no reason not to.

Laura was too stunned to protest the move. She sat in total shock, her hopes, her dreams, her expectations crashing around her. That was a goodbye! Not a see you next time. Jake hadn’t mentioned a next time. Her hand lifted and clapped her cheek, holding on to what a creeping tide of panic was telling her had been his farewell touch.

Her mind railed over why it should be so. Surely there was no reason to give up what had been good. He would call her during the week. This couldn’t be the end. Yet the more she thought about it, the more she felt he had been saying goodbye to her all last night. And this morning. Last dinner, last sex, last kiss, last touch!

But maybe she had it wrong. Maybe, maybe…

The taxi pulled up outside Eddie’s apartment. Laura pulled herself out of her mental torment enough to thank the driver and step out onto the pavement. A glance at her watch showed almost eleven o’clock. She hoped Eddie was having a Sunday brunch with his friends somewhere because she wasn’t up to chatting normally with him, not when her mind kept running on this awful emotional treadmill.

No such luck!

He was seated at his dining table in the living room, a cup of coffee to hand as he perused the newspapers. The moment she let herself into the apartment he looked up to shoot an opening line at her. ‘Hi! Had another great night with Dad’s golden boy?’

‘Yes. A great night.’ Even to her own ears it was a hollow echo of Eddie’s words. It was impossible to work any happy enthusiasm into her voice.

He looked at her quizzically. ‘Tetsuya’s up to your expectations?’

‘Yes. Absolutely.’ That was better, more emphatic.

‘Are you sick or something?’

‘No.’

He sat back in his chair and gave her his wise look. ‘Then why do you look like death warmed up, Laura?’

She sighed, accepting the fact there was very little she could hide from Eddie. He had a very shrewd talent for boring straight through any camouflage she put up. ‘I think Jake said goodbye to me this morning and I’m not ready to say goodbye to him,’ she said, shrugging in an attempt to minimise her dilemma.

Eddie grimaced and rose from his chair, waving her to the table. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll get you a cup of coffee. It might perk you up a bit.’

She slumped into a chair, feeling weirdly drained of energy.

‘Why do you think he said goodbye?’ Eddie asked as he poured coffee from the percolator.

Laura relived the scene in her mind. ‘He put me into the taxi at the hotel, touched my cheek and said, “It’s been good. Thank you.” Usually he shares the taxi with me and tells me where we’ll meet next week, but this morning he shut the door on me and waved me off.’

‘It’s been good,’ Eddie repeated, musing over the past tense. He shook his head as he brought her the shot of caffeine and resumed his seat across the table from her. ‘If he’d said was good…’

‘No, it was been good. I’m not mistaken about that, Eddie.’

He grimaced. ‘Got to say it sounds like a cut-off line to me. Do you have any idea why?’

‘No. None. Which is why I’m so…in a mess about it.’

‘No little niggles about how he was responding to you? Like maybe getting bored with the routine you’d established?’

‘I’m not stupid, Eddie. I’d know if he was bored,’ she cried, though right now she didn’t feel certain about anything.

‘Okay. He wasn’t bored but he was saying goodbye regardless of the pleasures you both shared. That only leaves one motive, Laura,’ Eddie said ruefully.

‘What?’

‘You’ve served your purpose.’

She shook her head in helpless confusion. ‘I don’t understand. What purpose?’

‘You can bet it’s something to do with dear old Dad.’

‘But we’ve kept our whole relationship away from him,’ she protested.

‘You have, but how can you possibly know that Jake has?’

‘He promised me…’

‘Laura, Laura…’ Eddie looked pained. ‘I warned you from the start that this is a guy who plays all the angles. He’s not our father’s right-hand man for nothing. He’s obviously worked at winning Dad’s trust. He’s worked at winning yours. But let me remind you, James Bond plays his own game and I think you’ve just been treated to one of them—love ’em and leave ’em.’

James Bond… She’d stopped connecting Jake to the legendary 007 character. He was the man she wanted, the man she loved, the man she’d dreamed of having for the rest of her life. Had she been an absolute fool, getting so caught up with him? Hadn’t Jake felt anything for her beyond the desire to take her to bed? How could the strong feelings he’d stirred in her be completely one-sided?

The intensity of his love-making last night and this morning had made her believe he felt a lot for her. Eddie had to be wrong. She couldn’t think of any purpose Jake could have in loving her and leaving her. He might very well have somewhere else he had to be this morning—somewhere he wished he didn’t have to go because of wanting to be with her—and that past tense he’d used could have been simply a slip of the tongue. Maybe she’d worked herself into a stew for nothing and he would call her during the week.

Eddie shook his head at her. ‘You don’t want to believe it, do you?’

‘I guess time will tell, Eddie,’ she said flatly. ‘Let’s leave it at that. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ He gave her a sympathetic look. ‘In the meantime, chalk up the positives. You’ve had the experience of dining in some of the finest restaurants, staying in very classy hotels, plus a fair chunk of great sex. Not a bad three months, Laura.’

She managed a wry smile. ‘No, not bad at all.’

But I want more.

Much more of Jake Freedman.

And I desperately hope I get more.

CHAPTER TEN

THE rest of Sunday went by without a call from Jake.

No contact from him on Monday, either.

It would probably come on Friday, Laura told herself, doing her best to concentrate on her uni lectures and not get too disturbed by the lack of the communication she needed. Regardless of the situation with Jake, she still had to move on with her life, get the qualifications necessary for her chosen career. Yet all her sensible reasoning couldn’t stop the sick yearning that gripped her stomach when her thoughts drifted to him. And telling herself he would call soon didn’t help.

It surprised her to see her father’s car parked in the driveway when she arrived home on Tuesday afternoon. He never left work early and it wasn’t even five o’clock. A scary thought hit her. Had something bad happened to her mother? An accident? Illness? She couldn’t imagine anything but an emergency bringing her father home at this hour.

She ran to the front door, her heart pumping with fear as she unlocked it and rushed into the hallway. ‘Mum? Dad?’ she called anxiously.

‘Get in here, Laura!’ her father’s voice thundered from the lounge room. ‘I’ve been waiting for you!’

She stood stock-still, her heart thumping even harder. He was in a rage. No distress in that tone. It was total fury. The only concern she need have for her mother was being subjected to his venom again.

The double doors from the hallway into the lounge room were open. Laura stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders and forced her feet forward, knowing that her mother would be spared the full-on brunt of savage remarks when he turned them onto her. It didn’t matter how much she hated these vicious scenes. Better for her to be here than not here.

On entering the war zone, she found her mother cowering in the corner of one of the sofas, white-faced and hugging herself tightly as though desperately trying to hold herself together. Her father was standing behind the bar, splashing Scotch into a glass of ice. His face was red and the bottle of Scotch was half-empty.

‘Are you still seeing Jake Freedman?’ he shot at her.

No point in trying any evasion when her father was in this mood. He’d dig and dig and dig.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly.

‘What do you mean “you don’t know”?’ he jeered, his eyes raking her with contempt. ‘Don’t pretend to be stupid, Laura.’

She shrugged. ‘I was with him on Saturday night but he made no plans for us to meet again.’

Her father snorted. ‘Had a last hurrah, screwing my daughter.’

‘Alex, it’s not Laura’s fault,’ her mother spoke up, showing more courage than she usually did. ‘You introduced him to her.’

It enraged him into yelling, ‘The bloody mole played his cards perfectly! Anyone would have been sucked in by him!’

‘Then don’t blame Laura,’ her mother pleaded weakly, wilting under the blast.

What had Jake done? Laura’s mind was in a whirl as she crossed the room to where her mother was scrunched into as small a space as possible and sat on the sofa’s wide armrest next to her. ‘What’s going on, Dad?’ she asked, needing to get to the crux of the problem.

He bared his teeth in a vicious snarl. ‘That bastard has taken all my business to the Companies’ Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Board and had me suspended from any further practice in the industry, pending further investigation.’

‘Suspended?’ This was why he was home, but… ‘Investigation of what?’

His hand sliced the air in savage dismissal. ‘You’ve never been interested in my work, Laura, so it’s none of your concern.’

‘I want to know what Jake is accusing you of.’

He shook a furious finger at her. ‘All you have to know is he was hell-bent on taking me down every minute he was supposedly working for me. Rolling you was icing on the cake for him.’

‘But why? You’re making it sound like a personal vendetta.’

‘It is a personal vendetta.’ His eyes bitterly raked her up and down. ‘How personal can you get with his hands all over you, exulting in taking every damned liberty he could.’

‘Alex!’ her mother cried in pained protest.

She was ignored.

‘And you let him, didn’t you? My daughter!’ her father thundered.

Laura refused to answer.

He sneered at her silence. ‘He would have revelled in every intimacy you gave up to him.’

‘This isn’t about me, Dad,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘I’m obviously a side issue. Why does Jake have a personal vendetta against you?’

‘Because of JQE!’ The words were spat out.

‘That doesn’t mean anything to me,’ Laura persisted.

He glared at her contemptuously as though her ignorance was another poisonous barb to his pride.

Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘I think I have the right to know what I’ve been a victim of.’

‘JQE was his stepfather’s company,’ he finally in formed her in a bitterly mocking tone. ‘He believes I could have saved it and chose not to. The man died of a heart attack soon after I secured the liquidator’s fee.’

Stepfather! ‘Was his surname different to Jake’s?’

‘Of course it was! If I’d had any idea they were related, he would never have been employed by me.’

‘How long has he been working in your company?’

‘Six years! Six damnable years of worming his way through my files, wanting to nail me to the wall!’

A man with a mission…James Bond… Dark and dangerous…

Her instincts had been right at their first meeting, but she hadn’t heeded them, hadn’t wanted to.

‘Could you have saved his stepfather’s company, Dad?’ she asked, wanting to know if the mission was for justice or some twisted form of vengeance. Jake had loved his stepfather, possibly the only father he had known.

‘The man was an idiot, getting in over his head,’ her father snarled. ‘Even with help he was in no state to rescue anything. His wife was dying of cancer. Trying to hang on was stupid.’

A judgement call. Had it been right or a deliberate choice for her father to make a profit out of it, charging huge fees to carry out the liquidation process?

What was the truth?

Laura knew she wouldn’t get it from her father. He would serve his own ends. Always had.

As for Jake, he must have been totally torn up with grief when the seeds of his mission had been sown—his mother dying of cancer, his stepfather driven into bankruptcy and dying of a heart attack. It must have been a terribly traumatic time, having to bury both parents in the midst of everything being sold up around him. She had sensed the darkness in him, seen signs of it, heard it in his voice that first day in the garden when he’d described the terrible downside of bankruptcy, but hadn’t known how deep it went, hadn’t known that she was connected to it by being her father’s daughter.

The bottle of Scotch took another hit. A furious finger stabbed at her again. ‘Don’t you dare take his side in this bloody whistle-blowing or you are out of this house, Laura! He used you. Used you to show me up as even more of a fool for trusting him with my daughter.’

Had that been Jake’s intention behind tempting her into an affair? An iron fist squeezed her heart. He’d controlled every aspect of their meetings, kept their involvement limited to Saturday nights. Had he been secretly revelling in having her whenever he called? Because of who she was?

‘What there was between us is over,’ she said flatly.

‘It had better be, my girl!’ Threat seethed through every word. ‘If he contacts you…’

‘He won’t.’ Laura was certain of it. He had been saying goodbye on Sunday morning.

‘Don’t bet on it! It would be an extra feather in his cap if he sucked you in again.’

‘He won’t,’ she repeated, sick to her soul. She’d loved him, truly deeply loved him, and the thought of having been used to drive a dagger further into her father was devastating.

‘You be damned sure of it, Laura, because if I ever find out otherwise, you’ll pay for it!’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You’re looking sick around the gills. He got to you all right.’

The savage mutter was followed by another hefty swig of Scotch.

‘I’m not feeling well,’ her mother said shakily. ‘Will you help me up to my bedroom, Laura?’

‘’Course I will.’ She quickly moved off the arm-rest to give support.

‘Running away as usual,’ her father said scathingly. ‘We’ll be living with this hanging over our heads for months, Alicia. No escaping it.’

‘It’s just the shock, Dad,’ Laura threw back at him. ‘Mum needs some recovery time.’

‘Recovery! I’ll never recover from this! Never! That bastard has me hamstrung!’

Not for nothing, Laura thought as she helped her mother from the room. Jake must have presented a considerable body of hard evidence against her father for him to be suspended from practice. And had still been gathering it while he was seeing her on the side.

She needed recovery time, too.

Her mother felt terribly frail. Laura put her to bed and tucked the doona around her. ‘It’s not your fault, either, Mum,’ she said gently.

The pale blue eyes were teary and fearful. She grasped Laura’s hand. ‘I don’t think I can bear it if your father is home every day.’

‘You don’t have to. Eddie would take you in. You have only to ask.’

She shook her head fretfully. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on him. You don’t understand, Laura. Your father wouldn’t tolerate my leaving him. He’d…do something.’

Laura hated the fear but she knew there was no reasoning against it. She and Eddie had tried many times. ‘Well, I don’t think Dad will be at home all the time. He’ll be out networking with people, fighting this situation with everything in his power.’

‘Yes. Yes, he will. Thank you, Laura. I’m sorry…sorry that Jake…’

‘Let’s not talk about him. You just rest, Mum.’

She kissed the slightly damp forehead and left the room before her own tears welled up and spilled over—tears of hurt and shock and grief that pride had insisted she hold back in front of her father. And her mother.

In the safe haven of her bedroom she wept until she was totally drained of tears. Her mind was wiped blank for a long time as she lay in limp misery, but gradually it began to turn over everything that had happened between her and Jake in the light of what she now knew and it kept coming back to the one line that felt critically important—the line he’d spoken after their first kiss in the garden.

I don’t want to want you.

But he had.

He most definitely had wanted her, and quite possibly not because of who she was but in spite of who she was.

Which made a huge difference to her father’s interpretation of Jake’s conduct where she was concerned.

It meant she was not part of his vengeance plot.

She was an innocent connection to the man whom he saw as the prime cause of the darkest time of his life. The words he’d used describing bankruptcy came back to her—lives crumbling, futures shattered, depression so dark there is no light. The emotional intensity that had surprised her in that forceful little speech had obviously erupted from personal experience.

Looking back, she began to make much more sense of how Jake had run their affair, always keeping the end in sight, ensuring their involvement was limited, not escalating into something too serious. He’d known it was ill-fated from the start, but he’d found her as irresistible as she’d found him and he’d taken the small window of opportunity for them to enjoy each other before circumstances made it impossible.

It’s been good. Thank you.

He hadn’t been using her.

They’d both chosen to give themselves the pleasure of mutual desire and it had been good. The more Laura reasoned it out, the more she believed the journey they’d taken together was completely separate from the road Jake had been travelling to put her father out of business.

She remembered the intensity of his love-making on Saturday night, the long passionate kiss before they left the hotel room, the flat darkness—no…light—of his eyes as he touched her cheek in the taxi.

Maybe he hadn’t wanted to say goodbye.

Maybe he loved her as deeply as she loved him.

Maybe he just couldn’t see a future for them, given what he was about to do.

That might be true…or it might not.

It depended on how much he felt for her.

She had to see him, talk to him, find out the truth.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LAURA wished she could have borrowed Eddie’s car to tour the streets of Woollahra, looking for the houses that were being renovated, noting them down for further investigation. It would have been the most time efficient way of searching for Jake’s current home, but she knew her brother would not have been sympathetic to her quest. Better not to ask. Better to go on foot, however long it took.

When she’d broken the news to Eddie, he’d leapt to the same interpretation of Jake’s interest in her as her father, being quite smug about having been right that Laura should never have gone there, right about Jake having a mission, too. The latter was impossible to deny, but Laura could not set aside the need to go there again.

At least Eddie had taken their mother out today, giving her a break from the wretched tensions at home. It left Laura enough free time to cover a fair bit of ground in her search, though it was now Sunday—no tradesmen’s trucks around to mark possibilities. After three hours of walking one street after another, and feeling somewhat dispirited at her lack of success, she decided to take a break for lunch and give her feet a rest.

Heading up another street that led to a public park where she could sit and eat her home-made sandwiches, Laura could hardly believe her eyes when she actually spotted Jake. He was on the upstairs balcony of a terrace house, painting the iron-lace railings—the same shade of green as the front door and the window frames. It was a rich forest green that looked really good against the old red bricks of the house.

He looked good, too, a fact her heart was registering by thumping painfully. She stood still, staring up at him, wracked by a terrible uncertainty now that the moment of truth was at hand. Was she being an utter fool, coming to him like this? So what if she was, she fiercely argued to herself. A sharp dose of humiliation wouldn’t kill her. And she wasn’t about to die wondering, either.

His head lifted, his gaze suddenly swinging to her as though some invisible force had drawn it. ‘Laura!’ He spoke her name in a tone of angst, jerking up from his crouched position on the balcony, frowning down at her. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ she blurted out.

He shook his head. ‘It won’t do you any good.’ His gaze shot to a van parked on the other side of the street. ‘That’s been here since Wednesday. I’d say your father has me under surveillance and he won’t like getting a report of your coming to me. Just keep walking and maybe nothing will come of it.’

Her father’s threat jangled through her mind—you’ll pay for it.

Right now Laura didn’t care. Jake had just proved his caring for her. That was more important than anything else. Or was he just trying to get her out of his life again as fast as possible?

‘I have to know,’ she said with immovable determination. ‘I won’t go until you lay out the truth to me.’

A pained grimace twisted his mouth as his hand waved in a sharp, dismissive gesture. ‘You already know it had to come to an end. Remember it for what it was and move on.’

‘What was it, Jake?’

‘You know that, too,’ he shot back at her.

‘No, I don’t. You kept me in the dark about what meant most to you. I don’t know if it gave you a thrill to have me while plotting to bring my father down, if I was some kind of sweet icing on the cake for you. I want to know that before I move on.’

Jake stared at the woman he should never have touched, his mind torn by the deep hurt emanating from her. She was still the most beautiful, most desirable woman he’d ever known, quite possibly would ever know, and he hated having to part from her. It had to be done, but did it have to be done with her mind poisoned against what they’d shared?

He wanted her to have a good memory of him, not a bitter one. Yet how was he to soothe the hurt and protect her from her father’s wrath at the same time? The surveillance man was surely watching, taking note of this encounter. The longer it went on, the worse it would be for Laura at home.

‘There’s a public park at the end of this street,’ he said, pointing the direction as though she had asked for it.

‘I know!’ she cried in exasperation. ‘Can’t you just answer me?’

He shot a warning look at the van. ‘I’ll meet you there when I’ve finished this painting. Go, Laura. Go now.’

He turned his attention to the work in hand, bending down to the tin of paint again, hoping the intense urgency in his voice would spur her into moving away from him. After a few moments’ hesitation that tied his gut into knots, she did walk on, hopefully proving there was nothing in this meeting worth reporting.

He maintained a steady pace with the brushwork, exhibiting no haste to finish the job. It gave him time to think, time to reason out he should keep his answers to Laura short, avoid the tempting impulse to take her in his arms and prove his passion for her had been real, was still real. The ache in his groin had to be ignored. This meeting had to be limited to setting her straight, then letting her go. Anything else could not be sustained in the climate of her father’s venomous animosity.