I shook my head. “What about a one night plan? Do you have any problems making a one night plan?”
“Are you offering me a one night plan, Gabrielle?” His low voice sent a rush of desire through me.
“Not yet,” I replied, surprising myself. “For now, I’m offering you dinner.”
***
Coq au vin wasn’t a dish that Alex was familiar with. He told me it was the best chicken stew he’d ever had. I could overlook his backward compliment because the rest of the conversation was wonderful.
He wasn’t the one-dimensional beach bum I’d expected him to be. He was witty, funny and charming. And I was in big trouble because of it.
I stood up and began to clear the table, mainly to stop myself looking at him. Alex followed me into the kitchen.
Obviously he wasn’t as enamoured as I was. His focus was on my kitchen cupboards. “Why is that door crooked?” he asked, stooping down to open it.
I placed the dishes on the edge of the sink. “It’s always been broken,” I replied.
Just as he stood up, I turned around. Bumping into him wasn’t intentional – but not moving out of the way was. Alex Blake was officially driving me crazy. I could feel my whole body seizing up.
“Do you have a screwdriver?” he mumbled, focusing on my mouth.
“Somewhere,” I stuttered.
A slow smile crept across his face. “Do you want to get it for me?” he asked quietly. “I’ll fix it.”
“I think you should leave it until the morning.”
I’d left him with two choices. He could either make a run for the door or read between the lines. I held my breath while he deliberated.
“What if I want an extension on the one night plan?” he asked, leaning in so close that I felt his words.
“I’m not renowned for giving extensions,” I whispered.
“At least give me the opportunity to change your mind.”
I didn’t ask how. I let him to show me. When he pushed the shoulder strap of my dress aside and pressed his warm lips against my décolletage, my legs began to fail me. I was now in really big trouble – and didn’t care one bit. I craned my neck as he kissed a long slow line toward my mouth.
“Ah, this probably isn’t appropriate behaviour considering we’re in a kitchen,” I mumbled.
“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” He hummed the words against my throat, sending a lovely shudder through me.
“A few people,” I breathed. “I don’t usually take any notice.”
He let out a low laugh. “Shut up, Gabrielle.”
“Make me shut up, Alex.”
Accepting the challenge, he silenced me with a long kiss, wandering hands and his magnificent body.
4. FUNNY WAYS
Waking up alone wasn’t a good sign. In fact, it was devastating. One-night stands weren’t usually my style, which probably explained why I felt so wretched. I hadn’t even heard him leave. I tried hard not to picture Alex creeping out of my bed at dawn, grateful for the escape. I had no right to be upset. The terms of our agreement had been very clear. It was a one-night deal.
I went to the café later that morning, just as I had almost every morning for the past year. I wasn’t expecting a full play-by-play of the night before, but I wasn’t expecting to be given the cold shoulder either.
Alex did a double-take as I walked in, and then asked Nicole to make my coffee. “I just need to check something out the back,” he muttered unconvincingly.
He was gone before I had a chance to speak. I ignored the overwhelming urge to hysterically cry and run out the door. I tried hard to make polite conversation with Nicole instead. I didn’t know the girl well. French wasn’t one of her classes.
“Where’s Charli today?” It was the best I could come up with. One was rarely seen without the other.
“With Mitchell Tate.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s leaving town soon and she’s making the most of having him around.”
“Are they romantically involved?” I asked.
I was used to the sly grins I received when speaking to teenagers. Alex wasn’t the first to point out that my choice of words were less than conventional.
“No,” she scoffed. “She just likes surfing with him because he can get her out past the break. She can’t go alone.”
“I see.”
I didn’t really. I had no clue what she meant.
“How will she get out there after he leaves?” I asked naively.
Nicole carelessly slid a cup of coffee across the counter. I put my hand on the edge of the counter, managing to save it from hitting the floor.
“She won’t,” she said bleakly. “But she’ll probably give it a crack anyway.”
***
I spent the rest of the day painting. It’s all I could think of doing to take my mind off the huge miss-step I’d taken the night before. Pushing it to the back of my mind became impossible when Alex Blake’s loutish red Ute pulled onto my driveway.
I kept jabbing away at the canvas in front of me, paying him no attention as he stepped up onto the veranda.
“Hello, Gabs,” he greeted.
In my twenty-five years on earth, no one had ever referred to me as Gabs. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.
I grunted out my reply. “Hello. What do you want?”
I could see him from the corner of my eye, leaning against a veranda post with his arms folded, smiling like he’d won something. For a quick moment, I considered turning around and painting a big L on his forehead.
“Are you mad at me?”
I spun around to face him and hit him with a slew of French insults that would’ve made my mother blush. It didn’t exactly have the desired effect. He stalked toward me smiling brightly. His arm snaked around my waist and I quickly struggled free.
“First you sneak out of my bed at dawn and then you ignore me. Of course I’m mad.”
“Firstly, I didn’t sneak out at dawn,” he explained. “I snuck out before midnight. You were sleeping. I guess I wore you out.”
I turned around and dropped my brush into a jar of turpentine. The urge to brand him was growing stronger by the second.
“Before midnight?” I sounded appalled. “You really are a pig!”
“But I’m a responsible pig, Gabs,” he defended. “I’m not in the habit of leaving a sixteen-year-old kid to her own devices all night. I had to go home.”
It was a perfectly legitimate excuse but it did nothing to dissolve the chagrin I was feeling.
“You could’ve told me that last night,” I grumbled, looking to the floor.
Alex reached out, lightly pinching my chin between his thumb and forefinger. He tilted my head giving me no option but to look at him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”
“And why did you ignore me when I came to the café?”
Releasing his hold on me, he pulled a face as if I’d reminded him of something horrible. “I’m not quite sure how this is going to play out, Gabrielle,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to curse things. I think we have a better chance of making things work if we just keep it to ourselves for a while. This is new territory for me.”
A strange groan escaped me. “I don’t like secrets,” I spat. “I’m certainly not going to be one.”
Alex turned around and paced a few steps away from me, blowing out a long breath while he pieced his next sentence together. “I’m just asking for a little time. I like you Gabrielle, you have to believe that.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” I muttered.
He turned back to face me. “I have lots of funny ways. I have no choice. My situation is very complicated.”
I knew the situation he was speaking of. She was the demanding little diva whose bad attitude marred my every day. I found it incredibly unfair that he’d been lumbered with such baggage.
“I’m sure Charli wants you to be happy,” I reasoned.
“She does, and I am,” he insisted
. “But I’m not going to jump headfirst into anything until I can be sure you can deal with it. I’m not free and easy. I have responsibilities.”
“And if I can’t deal with it?”
“Then I will walk away and you’ll be thankful that no one ever knew we spent time together,” he said glumly.
“That’s it? You wouldn’t even try to make it work?”
He shook his head. “I can’t promise you everything, Gabrielle. I’m not capable of giving you everything right now.”
“Because of Charli?”
He cringed as I said it. Perhaps I’d put a sour spin on her name.
“You’re not going to want to hear it, but she comes first. It’s been that way for a long time.”
Part of me wanted to run inside and lock the door. Any man who put his life on hold for the sake of his bratty younger sister was a little off kilter. A bigger part of me wanted a repeat performance of the night before. There was something special about Alex Blake, and I wanted to hang in there long enough to find out what it was.
5. SICK DAY
For someone who’d claimed not to like secrets, I was enjoying ours far too much. I saw Alex every day, usually more than once. He was a creature of habit. I’d wake up every morning and make a beeline for the lounge room windows. Without fail, I’d see him hundreds of yards off shore chasing waves.
Despite the fact that it screamed stalker, I’d gone as far as buying binoculars so I could get a better look. I liked studying Alex. The man with a wildly complicated home life found complete solace in the ocean.
The evil sister did too. I liked to study Charli as well – when she was half a mile off shore and I couldn’t hear her.
Their routine was always the same. She’d trail behind her brother, paddling hard to get to where they needed to be. Eventually Alex would stop and let her catch up. He led her through the ocean the same way he led her through life, always stopping to let her catch up.
Alex’s take hadn’t been so poetic when I mentioned it to him. “She’s only small, Gabs,” he replied. “It’s a long way to paddle.”
As much as she grated on me, Charli really didn’t impede on the time I spent with Alex, probably because she knew nothing about it. We’d steal a moment in the mornings when I went to the café for coffee and thanks to Charli’s out of control social schedule, most weekends were our own.
Wednesdays were not usually our day so I was surprised when Alex turned up at my door just after eight o’clock.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, grabbing his hand and pulling him through the door.
Alex pulled me in and kissed me as if it had been weeks since we’d seen each other. “I have the whole day planned,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”
Breaking free of his hold on me, I giggled. “I have to be at school in twenty minutes.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, drawing out the words. “You don’t look very well.” He put his hand to my forehead. “You might be coming down with something.”
I brushed his hand away. “Really?” I asked, playing along.
“Yes. You should call in sick, just to be sure.”
I’d never faked a sick day in my life. I wasn’t even sure how. Alex obviously had a few ideas. He coached me through the phone call before I’d dialled the number.
Tiffany, the school’s admin assistant answered. I coughed a little bit, explained how ill I was and told her that my lessons were in a daily planner on my desk. She didn’t even question it. Instead she wished me well and told me to get better soon.
I felt horribly guilty, right up until Alex pulled me into his arms and promised me a wonderful day.
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to remain upright as he pressed his lips to the side of my neck.
He straightened up and smiled at me, doing nothing to help me hold my ground. “We’re going to the beach.”
I felt a little deflated. I loved to look at the beach – or paint the beach. Trudging along it and getting sand in my shoes held no appeal.
I linked my arms around his neck and gave my best pouty look. “We could just stay here for the day,” I suggested.
He swooped down and kissed me hard on the lips. “Nice try, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
A day at the beach was bad enough but what Alex had in mind was much worse. I knew it wasn’t going to be good when he started unloading gear from the tray of the Ute.
When he handed me a black wetsuit, I began to panic. “What do I need this for?”
He glanced back at me, grinning. “We’re going surfing,” he replied casually. “You keep telling me that you can’t see what all the fuss is about. I’m going to show you.”
“No, no, no.” I grabbed his arm in a plea for understanding. “I don’t surf.”
Perplexed by my panic, he stopped what he was doing, turned around and took my face in his hands. “I’ll teach you. The water’s perfectly calm and this will keep you warm.” He patted the wetsuit he’d given me.
Alex was nothing if not persistent. Despite my protests, we ended up at the water’s edge just a few minutes later. I looked to the sky, praying for a massive storm and then thought better of it. It would probably spur the adrenaline junkie on even more. When he started pulling on his wetsuit, I knew I’d reached the end of the line.
“Let’s go, Gabs.” He reached behind his back, dragging the zipper upward. “Chop, chop.”
I shook my head. “No. I refuse.”
Grinning slyly, he stalked through the sand toward me. “You refuse? I’m offering to let you in on the secret of universe and you refuse? I’m gutted.”
“What secret?” I scoffed.
“Peace,” he swooped his arm around me and pulled me in close, “love, harmony, all that good stuff.”
I was feeling perfectly peaceful until he’d dragged me to the beach.
“No. Let me go,” I demanded. “This very minute.”
Alex didn’t let me go. In a move I could never have predicted, he scooped me up and began carrying me toward the water. By the time we got there, I was rigid with fear.
“Stop,” I whimpered, “right now.”
Finally picking up on my terror, Alex stopped dead in his tracks. He lowered me to my feet and I crumpled in a heap on the sand, sobbing like a little girl.
He sat down beside me, pulling my head against his chest.
“What’s wrong?” He sounded as panicked as I felt. “Tell me.”
I swallowed hard, trying to get the words out. My first attempt sounded like gibberish so I tried again. “I can’t swim.”
Big masses of water that looked like they could swallow me whole incited immediate fear. It was irrational and embarrassing and something I’d never been able to conquer.
He pulled away from me and lifted my chin, chasing my eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked softly.
“It never came up,” I muttered, still struggling to pull myself together.
There was nothing I could do to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks. I felt pathetic.
“I am such a dick,” he muttered, brushing my cheeks with his thumbs. “I’m so sorry, Gabs. I had no idea.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I never told you.”
My secret was out. I wasn’t the fearless warrior princess a man like Alex probably wanted. I was a wimpy spoiled princess with a penchant for books about art and expensive shoes. If he’d dumped me back at my cottage and run for the hills, I wouldn’t have blamed him. But Alex didn’t run.
He took me back to the cottage and straight to bed, which is where we stayed for the rest of the day.
6.SOCIAL SUICIDE
I loved my job with the exception of one particular class. The rowdy group of year elevens I faced that morning were a motley bunch. A handful of students actually wanted to be there but the majority saw my class as somewhere to pass time – a bludge session, as they called it.
I walked in and quickly scanned the room. I could gauge how difficult the hour
was going to be based on who’d bothered to show up. Almost half of the class seemed to be missing. It didn’t even upset me anymore.
“Right,” I announced, slamming a book down on my desk. “Eyes to the front.”
Everyone twisted in their seats, giving me the impression I had control of the room. It was fleeting.
Charli Blake strolled in the door a minute later. I didn’t particularly care that she was late. What riled me was the fact that she said nothing by way of excuse or apology. She just ambled down the aisle between the rows of desks as if she was the queen of the whole world.
“Stop walking,” I ordered.
A pin drop could’ve been heard as she slowly turned back to face me.
“Why are you late?”
She shrugged. “No reason.”
“Well, considering that you have no respect for my time, I’ll assume that you’ll have no problem sharing some of yours with me this afternoon,” I told her. “See you in detention.”
Her already big brown eyes grew wider. “Today?”
“Yes, today.”
After thinking it through for a long moment, the obnoxious girl waved her hands, bowed down and curtsied. “As you wish, Mademoiselle.”
As expected, her juvenile display earned her a round of stifled giggles from her teammates.
I loudly shushed them, demanding silence.
Charli continued on her way, pulled out a chair at the desk farthest from mine and sat down. I braved her baleful glare for the rest of the hour. Never before had a student rattled me the way she did.
I never told Alex about her antics. It would only serve as more worry for him. He’d confided that the evil sister was wreaking more havoc than usual of late and he had no clue why. I certainly had no answers for him. As far as I was concerned, she’d always been an insolent witch.
***
When Charli failed to show up for detention, I knew I had no choice but to clue Alex in. I’d planned to tell him when he came for dinner the next night but the second I opened the door to him, I knew there probably wasn’t going to be a good time to broach the subject.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, grabbing his hand and pulling him inside. Alex looked completely broken. I expected to hear something truly dreadful. He didn’t even kiss me. He trudged across to the centre of the room, leaving me hanging.