It’s going to be ever so hard to keep this secret!

David wants Lane and she wants him back. But to a known lothario like him, how will Lane ever measure up in the bedroom? With just one disastrous sexual encounter to her name, Lane knows she needs help in that department, and fast—before David loses interest.

So when Adam, her best mate’s brother (with his own impressive reputation), agrees to her bizarre proposal, she’s ready to learn everything he has to offer about how to please a guy in bed. But as she soon discovers, there is no textbook for love …

Kiss Don’t Tell

Avril Tremayne

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Excerpt

Copyright

AVRIL TREMAYNE

Avril Tremayne took the circuitous route to becoming a writer, via careers in nursing, teaching, public relations and – most recently – global aviation.

She hung up her corporate hat in 2013 after returning to her home city of Sydney, Australia, following a three-year stint in the Middle East, turned her mind to becoming a full time author, and has been writing madly ever since.

When she’s not reading or writing, Avril can generally be found dining to excess, drinking wine, talking about travel, and obsessing over shoes.

For Kya and Adam – who had the good sense to fall in love and give the world Matilda Rose

CHAPTER ONE

He was late.

Thirty minutes late.

Late enough for her to wonder if he’d changed his mind and wasn’t coming.

Lane tried to get her head around the fact that she may need to go back to the drawing board and find someone else for the job, but she couldn’t bring herself to face that possibility. It had seemed like fate, the way things had fallen so quickly into place and presented Adam Quinn as the answer to her dilemma; she couldn’t give up on fate yet.

Instead, she recalculated how long it would take him to drive from his house in super-cool Newtown to her house in not-quite-so-cool Mascot at this time of night. Maybe longer than the fifteen or twenty minutes she’d initially thought—especially if he’d got stuck in traffic. That happened sometimes, when people were driving to her place; it was one of the downsides of living near Sydney Airport.

Maybe he wasn’t even coming from home. Maybe he was coming from some far-flung construction site, where he’d been bricking a wall or laying concrete or … or whatever it was that builders did. There were lots of reasons he could be running late that had nothing to do with standing her up.

And anyway, she knew he’d turn up because his sister Sarah had said he would. Sarah could get any guy to do anything she asked—and she’d assured Lane that was doubly true of her big brother, who’d been like a one-man vigilante squad smoothing her path in life ever since she’d been born. Sarah had promised she’d laid it all out for Adam and that he not only knew the score, he’d already agreed to the score as well. Tonight was just a formality. Signatures on the page. Therefore he—would—turn—up!

‘So—stop—freaking—out!’ she ordered herself.

But despite the stern order, and the cool-headed reassurances she’d given Sarah and her other best friend Erica when she’d shared her grand plan with them last night, she was finding it almost impossible to subdue her roiling insides now the moment was upon her. As evidenced by her hands—always the most reliable clue to her state of mind—which were clenching and unclenching. She wiggled her fingers, trying to ease the coiling tension in them, but it seemed a lost cause.

She looked around her living room, checking one last time that nothing was out of place, taking a series of deep, silent breaths in an effort to calm herself down.

She hated being nervous. Hated nerves. Had perfected the art of not letting them show, because the dithery fluttering of them made her look like an unsettled flamingo.

Logical, rational financial economists weren’t supposed to look like fluttery flamingos. They weren’t supposed to pace floors. Or chew fingernails. Or clench their hands into fists. Logical, rational financial economists stayed unemotional and invulnerable as they crunched numbers and analysed data and predicted market trends with level-headed precision.

That was how she’d approached drawing up the contract for tonight, how she’d prepared the checklist for each of them to review before the contract was signed. Rationally, unemotionally, with a level, invulnerable head. Because she would not be vulnerable. Not ever, ever, ever again. And okay, that was two more evers than required, which didn’t suggest a lack of emotion, which meant she had to work harder to get herself under control. Like now.

Maybe taking one more look at the checklist would do the trick. Checklists always soothed her.

She walked swiftly to her briefcase and slid out the relevant paper-clipped pages. Three of them. Neat. Error-free. Black type on white paper.

She drew in another one of her silent, secret, calming breaths as she skimmed the introductory description of Adam Quinn she’d compiled from the details Sarah had provided, even though she already knew it by heart:

• twenty-nine years old

• works for AQHP, a small architectural construction company

• no unmanageable character flaws unless you consider ‘obscene’ (Sarah’s word) self-confidence a problem

• no disgusting habits

• obsessively clean

• attractive but with a few rough edges

• not a psychopath—underlined, because Erica and Sarah’s chief concern had been that Lane would end up with one of those.

Sarah had summed him up as ‘the quintessential alpha male’, with hordes of women making booty calls with impressive frequency. When Lane had told Sarah she didn’t really believe in the concept of a ‘quintessential’ alpha male, Sarah had laughed her head off and told Lane she’d change her mind within five minutes of meeting her brother.

‘Not that it matters how we describe him,’ Sarah had added. ‘All that matters is that Adam has all the credentials for the job. You don’t have to look at anyone else, because if he can’t do it, I promise you nobody can. So stop looking. As of now.’

And Lane had stopped looking—well, she hadn’t had time to even start looking, really, because Sarah had rushed the Adam solution at her first thing this morning.

It was too late now to start wondering why she’d never met Adam before given he and Sarah were so close. Too late to start worrying that she didn’t actually know him. Knowing him hadn’t seemed important as long as Sarah vouched for him. Looks were immaterial, too, which was why she’d been happy enough with the grainy, out-of-focus photo of him that Sarah had emailed to her, even though it was basically nothing more than a looming dark shape with a white slash where his teeth were.

But now that she was on the very verge, and she suddenly realized she had no idea what to say to him when he arrived …

Uh-oh, there went her hands, clenching again. For a moment, all she could do was stand there trying not to crumple the checklist in her convulsing fingers. What if she said something stupid? What if he hated her on sight? What if he didn’t hate her on sight but decided he didn’t like her after they signed the contract? Why hadn’t she put those questions on the checklist?

The checklist, focus on the checklist. Okay, deep breath, another, another … Better.

The checklist had everything that was important and nothing that wasn’t. It didn’t include anything about saying something stupid because it didn’t matter if she said something stupid—talking wasn’t required. Liking her wasn’t required either. They probably would like each other, though. Lane liked Sarah; Sarah liked Lane; Sarah liked Adam. Logic suggested there would be a mutuality of liking in there that would encompass Lane and Adam in some way. Especially since she knew Sarah had described her to Adam—looks and personality—and whatever she’d said apparently hadn’t scared him off.

Or had it?

Because he still wasn’t here.

She slid the checklist back into her briefcase, walked to the entrance hallway, and listened carefully at the door for sounds of arrival.

Nothing.

She checked her watch. She’d give him ten more minutes.

She caught sight of her face in the mirror above the glass-topped hall table. Pale—but that was normal. Blue eyes almost too calm—so deceptive. Lips very faintly smiling—nicely controlled. Hair pulled off her face—no stray wisps.

Perhaps the hair was too severe? She tugged a few strands free of the confining band and tried to arrange them around her face. Hmm. Messy. She removed the band completely and retied her hair into a ponytail at her nape. In the absence of her housemate Erica and her miraculous curling wand, Lane’s normal hairstyle would have to do, so she gave up on the mirror and ran her eyes, as best she could, over the rest of her.

She hadn’t had a clue what she should wear tonight and had ended up staying in the square-cut navy suit she’d worn to work. Plain. Businesslike. Possibly … boring?

Ugh. It was just so hard, the clothes thing. Especially in situations like tonight’s. How did you go about styling yourself to look attractive, but not flirtatious? Appealing, but not desperate? Like you weren’t trying too hard, even when you were? Why hadn’t she thought to ask Sarah what he was likely to be wearing? Not a suit, if he was coming from a building site—that seemed certain.

Oh God, didn’t that mean her own suit was a poor choice? He was going to take one look at her and realize she didn’t know how to dress, and he was going to run away before even getting inside the house, which would mean she’d failed before she’d even started.

All right, she officially hated this!

She was calling it off. He was too late. It was too late. The whole thing was too rushed. More planning time was required.

She walked purposefully back to her briefcase and this time she didn’t slide out the checklist, she wrenched it out. The two copies of the contract, too. She was going to get all ‘symbolic’ for once in her life, the way Erica was always telling her to do, and rip every page in half.

And then it came.

The sound.

A car pulling up.

Stay calm. Breathe.

Car door slamming.

Breathe. In—out—in—out. Maybe it’s not him.

Front gate squeaking.

Oh God, he’s here. He’s actually here.

Something was muttered—a curse, definitely a curse—outside the front door.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

The knock was loud and short. Two raps.

Lane closed her eyes, just for a moment, gathering her courage. To settle herself, she neatened the edges of the pages that were thankfully unripped and positioned them precisely on one end of her glass-topped coffee table …

And then she headed for the door. He wouldn’t notice the tremors in her fingers, she told herself, as she reached for the door handle. And next minute, the door was open, and there he was, but Lane found she wasn’t quite ready to look him in the face so she kept her eyes down. His feet were challenging enough —the size of them! In tough-looking work boots, so yes, he probably had been on a building site. Except that he smelled like soap. Clean. Obsessively clean. No disgusting habits. Tick and tick.

She heard him breathe. In—out. And at last she managed to start slowly raising her eyes. Blue jeans … long legs … slim hips … black shirt … broad chest, as in broad, with a tiny peep of dark hair showing where his top two shirt buttons were undone. Strong neck. Chin like granite beneath a five o’clock shadow. Hard mouth. Strong nose. Dark eyes … burning. Ohhhhhhh, God. She was looking up into his eyes—and she was five feet ten!

Her mind went blank. She was staring. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She took in his eyebrows now: bold, dark slashes, one bisected by a fine white scar. And his hair, which was black and close-cropped in a style that seemed to say, Don’t mess with me. He looked … he looked … good. Not conventionally handsome, and—yes—rough around the edges, but so good.

The whole package seemed to scream at her that the concept of a quintessential alpha male was real after all, and it was mesmerizing to have it personified and standing on her doorstep.

He waited for her to finish her perusal, unsmiling.

And then, feeling caught out, Lane said a breathless ‘Oh’ and thrust out her hand to shake. ‘You must be—’

‘Yes, I must,’ he said, and took her hand—not to shake it but to hold it. As she blinked up at him, he drew her close. Close enough that the soapy scent of his skin slid right into her nostrils. He smelled wonderful.

He drew her a little closer and she stumbled, catching her heel on the hallway rug. He reached out his other hand to steady her, gripping her arm. Two hands on her now, reeling her in. ‘Careful … Lane,’ he said softly.

Her heart lurched, then started thumping as their eyes locked. His eyes were so dark they looked black. Laugh lines fanned out from the corners. He must laugh all the time, Lane thought. But he wasn’t anywhere close to laughing now. He seemed about to pull her even closer—could she get any closer?—then stopped. Frowned as though he’d lost his train of thought. Released her and stepped inside, then kept walking without a backward glance, through the hallway and into the living room.

Lane rubbed at her arm just above the elbow where his hand had gripped her. He hadn’t hurt her, but she’d felt him right through the dermis and down to the bone.

Squaring her shoulders, she closed the door and followed him into the living room. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around without any indication he liked what he saw—which was basically her mother’s cast-off furniture.

Lane saw him glance at the canapés she’d arranged on a white oval platter, centred on the glass top of the coffee table. She fought a blush. It was obvious, now she’d seen him, that Adam Quinn wasn’t a canapé eater; he was the type to consume a whole wild boar thrown on a campfire. And suddenly she felt like she was pretending to be a grown-up. Blue suit. Canapés. What would he expect next? Scrabble board, lap rug, and cup of hot cocoa?

He turned and faced her. His lips were smiling but his eyes were not. ‘Now where were we? Ah, yes, I must be—’ The smile vanished. ‘Adam Quinn. Reporting for duty.’

Duty? Reporting for duty? Another deep breath. ‘I was hoping we could approach this situation with a degree of sensitivity.’

Adam looked down at the coffee table. ‘It will take more than smoked salmon on rye to achieve that.’

Lane felt her stomach dip. ‘Sarah said you were willing.’

‘I know what she said.’

His voice was almost a growl. Like he was angry. That couldn’t be right, could it, when he’d already agreed? She ran her eyes over him again trying to work out what was wrong, and her heartbeat, which hadn’t yet recovered from his entrance, kicked up an extra notch. He wasn’t only tall, he was incredibly big, too. He filled her living room the way an army tank might. The fact that he was watching her just as intently as she was watching him made a funny, jittery feeling that wasn’t exactly nerves erupt in her stomach.

What was he seeing? Was she the thing that was wrong? Could he tell just by looking at her what a massive job he had ahead of him? Was he regretting telling Sarah he’d do it? Was he going to ask to be let off the hook? Should she just give in and release him without being asked? Hadn’t she just been thinking more planning time would be good?

Maybe she should look further afield and see who else was out there. Or maybe she could ditch her plan altogether and buy a book or a download a how-to documentary or try an online chat room. There had to be chat rooms for this kind of thing, didn’t there?

Adam moved his hand—impatient. It was only a small movement but enough to have her catch a waft of his soapy scent, and her nostrils flared as though by reflex. And her mind was made up at that instant.

She was not going to resort to the internet or a book or a documentary, and she was not going to find someone else. She had her bird in the hand and from the look of him, he was worth way more than two in any bush. He’d already agreed and she was holding him to it. He would just have to suck it up and make do, regardless of what he thought of her. She didn’t care what he thought of her; she wasn’t paying for his thoughts. So he was going nowhere, and she would make that very clear to him!

She set her jaw. ‘Adam, have you or have you not agreed to help me?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Good,’ she cut him off. ‘Regarding the smoked salmon, I was aware of the inconvenient hour I chose for this meeting, so I thought you might like some refreshments. But of course, you’re late, and I imagine you’ve eaten dinner, so I’m happy to get down to business immediately.’

Adam crossed his arms over his chest in what Lane assumed was a ‘quintessential alpha male’ pose. ‘By all means, Lane, let’s get down to business,’ he said. ‘Oh, sorry, should I call you Lane? Perhaps you’d prefer Miss Davis? Ms Davis? It’s not Dr Davis, is it? Because Sarah tells me you were some ace university student, so I guess a PhD isn’t out of the question.’

Lane did not allow even the flicker of one eyelid as she picked up her briefcase and retrieved the all-important paperwork off the coffee table. ‘It’s Ms, but Lane is fine.’

‘All right. Lane it is.’ He drew out the sound of her name until it was thick and honeyed and beautiful.

Lane caught her breath before it could hitch in her throat. Checklist. Checklist. Concentrate on the checklist. But her eyes didn’t seem to want to focus on that perfect document in her hand. ‘Then let’s move on,’ she said. ‘We can get away from the smoked salmon by sitting at the dining table. This way, please.’

She could feel him following, though he lagged several steps behind. The knowledge of him was as pervasive and intimate as a layer of musk oil on her skin.

She was about to contract Adam Quinn for three months of sex.

God help her.

CHAPTER TWO

His sister was dead meat. Chopped, minced, fricasseed, barbecued.

Adam nurtured the thought as he followed the uptight Ms Davis to her precious dining room table.

Why had he let Sarah talk him into this?

Adam sighed inwardly. Why? Because he was a sucker when it came to his sister and since she damn well knew it, she took shameless advantage of him. And because it had been sold to him as a fifteen-minute job. Walk in and unsettle her fast. Be unpleasantly intimidating. Not cruel, not disparaging, not nasty to innocent, awkward Lane—just intimidating enough to scare her out of her insane scheme. Enough that she’d be ripping up her contract and showing him the door.

Innocent? Awkward?

Did Sarah even know this woman who was supposed to be one of her best friends?

Sex lessons! Who in their right mind would contract a total stranger to teach them about sex? To actually show them how to do it, all gory details included? For all Lane knew, he could be some depraved murderer. A pervert. A weirdo.

Which of course explained Sarah’s plea to him, because God alone only knew what Lane would have ended up with if she’d done what she’d intended and got some stranger off a dating app. Any other man would have had her stripped and under him by now, skip the formalities.

Because hell, she may not radiate raw sex appeal, but the untouchable, unruffled calmness she exuded was somehow more seductive. An almost irresistible challenge, like a citadel daring you to breach its walls. And she was pretty enough, in a clear-cut, haughty way that would make any man want to mess her up a little. Yep, any other man in his place right now would—

No, he wasn’t going to think about it. For his own sanity, he was going to put it out of his mind.

He watched, narrow-eyed, as Lane placed her briefcase on the floor and the papers in her hand on the dining table. Surprise, surprise—the table was glass. Hall table, coffee table, and now the dining table—all glass.

He hated glass furniture. Was her bed made of glass too? It wouldn’t surprise him. Lane looked inscrutably cool enough to have a glass bed. Cool as a refrigerated cucumber. No, cooler. Three months, God help him! If he agreed to do this, they’d be able to cut up his body for ice cubes at the end of it.

Not that he was going to agree. Nope. No way.

She gestured with one hand to the opposite side of the table. She had to be annoyed with him after his graceless entry, but not by one dip of her auburn eyelashes did she show it. Everything was tightly controlled, even the precision of her next hand movement, which said: ‘Sit—and do it now.’

Adam sat.

Dammit, he thought immediately, he was obeying her, like a dutiful puppy. It was a foreign feeling, to be obeying someone—and he didn’t like it one bit.

Keeping Sarah’s firm instructions in mind, he tried out a glower. People had been known to run full pelt from one of his scowls—the eyebrow, courtesy of stepmother #1’s belt buckle, added a certain fierceness—so he figured it should at least give Lane a few second thoughts about what she was getting herself into.

‘Can’t find a man to provide the service free of charge?’ he asked, with his best attempt at surly belligerence.

‘I’m sure I could have, if all I wanted was a fun night out. But this is not about fun. It’s about knowledge and technique.’ Lane smoothed out her papers. ‘And I’ve been assured you’re highly skilled.’

What the—? Take a damn breath. ‘I’ve never had any complaints.’

‘Good. Then let’s get started.’

Adam felt his teeth grinding. ‘Let’s,’ he said, not knowing where the hell this was going to end up.

His teeth were still grinding half an hour later when Lane had painstakingly, without a blush, gone through the ins and outs of an exhaustive list of terms and conditions. It was an effort to match her detachment as she calmly discussed confidentiality, payment by direct deposit into an account of his choice (form included, to be filled out at his leisure), the minimum two/maximum four nights-per-week schedule, the fact that the lessons would be taught at her house, blood tests, contraception, the unlikely event of pregnancy, and so on and so forth and forth and forth.

And after it all, she folded her slender, pale hands together and waited.

Without a word, he tossed his copy of the contract onto the table.

Her hands tightened on each other for a fraction of a second. ‘Any questions?’

How would his sister expect him to respond to that? Actually I’m only here to scare you out of it? Surely Sarah knew that once Lane Davis made up her mind, nothing budged her. He’d only just met her and even he could see it. Just the effort she’d put into the contract told him he was going to have his work cut out for him. He was reluctantly impressed. It was a wonder every law firm in the country wasn’t beating her door down with an employment offer.

What the hell was he supposed to do? Sarah’s plan was failing dismally. Adam thought he’d done a good job of being unpleasantly intimidating, but Lane wasn’t daunted. Intrepid, that’s what she was. Which, in his book, was another word for reckless.

A Plan B would have been nice right about now. Except he didn’t have one.

He could just refuse to sign the contract, he supposed. Let Sarah look after the mess herself.

He opened his mouth to tell Lane the deal was off.

Then he saw her hands tighten again. Ah, so that was it. Right there. The tell. A sign of weakness. He looked up quickly, expecting to enjoy a moment of triumph. But something in her eyes pulled at him. Vulnerability, where he’d expected none. Surely he wasn’t imagining that glimmer of … what was it? Confusion … anxiety … distress …? No, he wasn’t imagining it. She masked it, lightning fast, but a split second too late.

Goddammit to hell!

He tried to tell himself to ignore that look, to tell himself that if he turned her down, she’d give up—but deep down he knew better. There would be no giving up. Lane Davis would do whatever it took to get the job done. Which in this case meant finding someone else. Someone who’d be only too delighted to make love to her for the prescribed two to four nights a week. He wouldn’t put it past her to write her name on the wall in the men’s toilet at the local pub if that was what it took.

A strange sense of protectiveness clawed its way through his normally impervious psyche. He looked at Lane again, trying to reject the feeling. Her lips were dauntingly calm, saying ‘I’m invincible,’ but he’d seen that look in her eyes and he couldn’t unsee it.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Adam asked.

She blinked. He saw her draw in a deep breath, even though he didn’t hear it. And then: ‘The truth?’

‘And nothing but.’

‘All right. It’s been borne in on me that I don’t do … this … well. And I like to do things well.’

‘Borne in on you by …?’ Adam prompted.

He was intrigued to see a blush work its way up from Lane’s neck up to her cheekbones—and the fact that it wasn’t an attractive blush made it all the more powerful, more honest. More … dangerous.

‘It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that he was right about my lack of expertise. That particular experience made me see that I need a teacher. A good teacher. A hired teacher, who can be bound by a confidentiality clause. Confidentiality is very important to me—I can’t stress that enough.’

‘So it all comes down to something one douchebag said. That’s what he is, Lane. A douchebag.’

‘Yes, I know that. Now, at least. But I’m sure he isn’t the only … er … douchebag … out there, so best to be prepared.’

Douchebag. That word didn’t exactly trip off her tongue.

‘What if I can’t perform to your satisfaction?’ he asked.

‘We can terminate the arrangement. It’s all in the contract.’ She looked him over, her eyes assessing. ‘But I don’t think it will come to that. You look like you’d be good at it.’

His eyebrows shot up. What the actual fuck? ‘Thanks for the compliment.’

She was still blushing. He enjoyed that at least. ‘Well,’ she said, and cleared her throat. ‘Well. I— Well.’

Oh, he was certainly enjoying this part. Discomfiting her. Finally, a bit of joy in an otherwise ghastly evening.

Then she snapped out of that momentary incoherence. Back to cool, calm, collected. ‘It’s your alleged experience that makes you so valuable to me. That’s what I’m paying for. I’ve found in the past that the right fee will usually attract the commensurate skill level.’

Alleged? Adam felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise—a sure sign his infamous temper was on the ascent. Good God! The look on her face. Questioning. A little uncertain. Was she wondering if he was going to be worth the outlay? Alleged? Alleged?

He half rose from his seat, longing to haul her uptight backside out of her chair and shake her. The thought that she’d still be giving him that ego-deflating look at the end of it, however, checked him.

He sat back and tried to calm the hell down.

Found that he couldn’t quite manage it.

And made a decision.

Lane Davis was going to get what she was asking for, but on his terms. She wasn’t the only one who knew how to write a list. By God, he was going to draw up a lesson plan that would get her so hot and bothered she’d end up begging for him. His jaw clenched. His nostrils flared. Very caveman, but what the hell—he felt very caveman.

‘When do we start?’ he asked, and could hear the quiet danger in his voice.

He saw an expression—something like fear—cross her face. Good, he thought savagely.

‘You have to sign first.’ Her voice was steady, but her fingers tightened. ‘Both copies.’

He held out his hand and she gave him her copy of the contract with what he considered a fine show of bravado. It had to be bravado; he was scaring himself, for God’s sake. He flipped to the last page, scrawled his heavy black signature without even glancing at it.

He reached for his own copy, and Lane cleared her throat again. ‘You understand about the blood tests, right? That you have to use—’

‘Yes, yes, condoms for two weeks,’ he said, cutting her off before she could even think of backing out. It was too late for that. ‘You’ll have the pill in hand by then, won’t you?’

‘I’ll have the prescription filled in the morning.’

‘Excellent work.’ He smiled—a dangerous, wolfish grin—even though he wasn’t remotely amused. ‘You know you’re blushing, right?’ He shook his head in exaggerated amazement. ‘I’m relieved to know something can get under your skin.’

Lane raised her chin and Adam couldn’t help a flash of admiration. She had a goal and she was going to tackle it. Embarrassed, uncertain, almost certainly nervous—because how could she not be?—but she was forging ahead. Amazing.

‘I’m very conscious of the fact that this is an unusual proposition,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to be easy for either of us, but if we keep things businesslike, I’m sure we’ll get through it.’

‘Ah, businesslike sex. Who wouldn’t want that?’

She raised one eyebrow, as though he wasn’t worth the effort of raising two. ‘I was under the impression you had more women flinging themselves at you than you could handle. Someone with a less desperate approach should be a welcome change. Certainly less exhausting.’

‘Oh, a change, definitely. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone like you. But less exhausting? I don’t think so, Lane.’

Another clear of her throat. ‘While we’re on the subject of desperate women flinging themselves at you, I should reiterate the importance of the fidelity clause. In the interests of health, you understand.’

His smile widened, but didn’t warm. ‘Reiterate away. Wouldn’t want to catch anything after going to the trouble of a blood test.’

He shot his signature across the second copy of the contract then looked at her. ‘But we’d better get you up to speed pretty quickly.’ No more smile. ‘A stud like me needs it pretty good and pretty regular.’

CHAPTER THREE

Lane stared at the forlorn-looking smoked salmon on the now-stale rounds of rye bread and groaned. Smoked salmon! Thank God she hadn’t ended up putting the bottle of champagne she’d bought for tonight on ice as well. Just thinking about the look on Adam’s face if he’d caught sight of a champagne bottle was enough to make her wince.

Ah, well, the evening may not have been a success exactly, but it wasn’t a total failure, either. Because he’d signed. That was all that was important for now.

She stretched, as much to release tension as to ease the ache in her back after hunching over the paperwork all night, then she threw out the food, wiped down the glass tabletop, and headed for her bedroom.

Normally, preparation for bed involved a rapid undressing, a quick shower and vigorous towel-dry, moisturizer slapped on without looking, a scramble into pyjamas and a dive under the covers.

But tonight she was obsessed with her appearance, so she lingered, looking at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. At what Adam had seen. A tall, pale, pencil-thin woman. Oval face. Nondescript nose. A mouth that was neither full nor thin. Arctic blue eyes that looked too village-of-the-damned for comfort. No laugh lines. Not one.

Lane untied her hair and ruffled her fingers through it. The hair quality was good—thick and shiny, hanging in a straight curtain past her shoulders. But the colour belonged to someone altogether more fiery than she would ever be! It was like a confidence trick, her hair.

Last year, Lane’s mother had asked her to dye her hair any colour but red, because the memories of her dead husband—who’d shared his daughter’s unrelenting hair shade—became more painful for her to bear with each passing year. ‘Just a small thing to bring me some peace,’ her mother had said, and Lane would have gladly obliged her if Erica—her staunchest defender—hadn’t hit the roof.

Lane could still recall Erica’s scathing words, the fury in her voice, the merciless look on her face. ‘What the fuck will she expect next, Lane? That you cut twelve inches off your legs so you’re not the same height as he was? There’ll be something else; there always is. Well, you tell Jeanne-the-Martyr that you asked me what colour hair would suit you and I said red. Tell her that I’ll be ready to give her a piece of my mind, the nastiest piece, if you change it. So think about that before you reach for the L’Oréal because it won’t be pretty.’

To say Jeanne Davis’s mournful eyes and trembling bottom lip left Erica chronically unimpressed was an understatement, so Lane was pretty sure Erica wasn’t bluffing. So far, Erica hadn’t ‘Jeanne-the-Martyred’ Lane’s mother to her face, but the fear of her doing so was ever-present—and that was enough of an incentive for Lane to keep her hair red for the foreseeable future, even though her mother had taken to looking at Lane’s hair then biting the knuckle of her index finger in a very tragic fashion.

Ah well, Lane thought as she retied her ponytail, her hair colour was a problem for another day. At least she had one consolation prize she could offer Adam: her breasts. Their size was disproportionate to the skinniness of her frame, but guys liked breasts for their own sake, didn’t they? Not that Adam could have figured out she had breasts under her navy suit. She frowned as she remembered that he’d left two buttons of his own shirt undone, which was an incredibly sexy look. That had to be worth a try.

She unbuttoned her top two shirt buttons and checked the result in the mirror. Hmm. Nothing special to see there. She removed her jacket and undid one more button. She caught a hint of cleavage, but it didn’t seem an especially alluring inducement to her. Maybe the way she was frowning was detracting from the overall look.

Easily fixed. She smoothed out her forehead, raised her chin, added a half-pout to her lips, examined herself in the mirror again—and burst out laughing. There was a touch of booby-beanpole-meets-Bride-of-Frankenstein about that look. Maybe no pouting around Adam Quinn, then.

Okay, enough.

She turned her back on the mirror, undressed quickly and got under the shower.

She’d long ago accepted the fact that although she was attractive enough, her coolly patrician features gave her an untouchable air, characterized by a distinct lack of smoulder. All Erica’s determined artistry—and Erica was brilliant with make-up—had failed to put the sex in Lane’s appeal. It would be interesting, academically if nothing else, to see if Adam Quinn had enough skill to tease a hitherto hidden kernel of sensuality out of her despite her lack of obvious assets.

And academics aside, it would be such a relief to have an experience, any experience, to help put to rest the memory of what had happened with her ex-colleague DeWayne Callaghan four months ago. An utter, utter disaster. Clothes half-on, half-off. Inept fumbling. Pain. Bleeding. A rushed two-minute-forty-seconds—she’d counted every unpleasant second in her head—which had ended with DeWayne orgasming with a loud and somehow comical groan and collapsing on top of her; Lane, having gone nowhere near an orgasm, pinned beneath him.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, DeWayne had then had the insensitivity to post the experience on Facebook. That was when Lane had come face-to-face with the true meaning of the word ‘mortification’, as his friends had obligingly shared it with their friends, and so on, and on until it reached multi-friended Sarah Quinn, who’d not only told Lane what was going on behind Lane’s back but had also gone ballistic at DeWayne, threatening legal action and getting the whole mess taken down.

Sarah had a way with words that was simply masterful and she’d reduced DeWayne to a blubbering mess, but of course there was no putting that kind of evil genie back in the bottle. And so Lane had walked around the office like a semi-smiling automaton, determined to ride out the disaster with her usual coolness. But when sniggers still followed in her wake after two weeks, she could no longer pretend she was handling it and had subsequently changed jobs.

At least there’d been a hint of a silver lining. Leaving the consultancy and joining the bank had not only given her a better job and a much better salary package than DeWayne could ever dream of, but it had also brought her into the orbit of David Bennett, corporate banking executive and hunk extraordinaire, giving Lane a new goal, a new target. A man to try again with.

Lane thought about David as she ran the soap over her skin, which felt super-sensitive tonight. David—blond, blue-eyed, Hollywood handsome, smart, debonair, a little rakish, a lot experienced, divorced, a rising star at work. All the girls at the bank were in love with him, but it seemed to Lane that she was the one who’d caught his eye. Or at least she was the most recent one to catch his eye—a distinction that was fine by her.

David had made a few veiled suggestions that indicated he wouldn’t mind getting Lane into bed, and she’d been thrilled, no matter how many women had come before her, or how many women would come after her. The only problem as far as Lane was concerned was her own ineptitude.

She closed her eyes, remembering the unexpected encounter with David two weeks ago at the launch of one of the bank’s many art sponsorships. When he’d seen her across the room, his eyes had narrowed speculatively. He’d made his way over to her, brushing off the approaches of an assortment of people—mostly women—en route.

‘Are you into etchings?’ he’d asked. ‘Because I have quite a collection.’

Lane, elated at the unexpected attention, had decided to do her best to engage him in conversation. ‘Are you an experienced collector?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he’d said, an encouraging twinkle in his eye. ‘I’ve had years of experience.’

‘And what interests you most? I mean, what do you look for when you’re ready to add to your collection?’

‘Nudes. Most definitely, nudes.’

‘I’d love to see your nudes.’ Lane—absolutely clueless.

David had laughed and leaned closer. ‘My suspicions are correct, then. There’s fire under the ice.’ Then he’d touched her elbow—just her elbow, but it was clear he wanted to touch more.

And with just that touch, Lane had realized what she’d said, what he’d heard, that he’d liked the sexual banter she hadn’t even intended. And she’d known she had a lot—as in a lot—to learn if she was to avoid boring David to death in bed.

Oh God, she was twenty-three! How had she let herself get to such an advanced age with only one sexual experience? She was a freak, an anachronism. She was pathetic.

She turned off the shower and dried herself with no more recourse to the mirror because looking at herself was hardly teaching her anything—and nor was it helping her self-confidence.

As she got ready for bed, she worried that three months might not be long enough to learn everything she needed to learn. Experience was what seemed to make people sexy, but experience as in years, not months. People like David Bennett oozed sex appeal because he had a long track record of sexual encounters. Adam Quinn oozed it, too—same reason. Erica and Sarah both oozed it, having been out and about sexually for a good eight years apiece.

But unfortunately, Lane didn’t have the luxury of time. Even three months seemed an unconscionably long time to expect a man like David Bennett to wait for her, but she was, in effect, stuck between a rock and a hard place. If she jumped in too soon she risked her performance disappointing him; if she waited too long he might forget he was ever interested.

At least Lane knew she was an excellent student, and Adam looked like he’d turn out to be an equally excellent teacher. Seriously, after just one meeting she was ready to swear he could teach her things she’d never even imagined, so given all she really needed was to get the basics down with perhaps a couple of frills as optional extras …? Yes, three months should cover it perfectly! Think positively, Lane!

She slid under the quilt, determinedly bringing David’s face to mind, imagining him looking at her with longing three months from now.

‘Let’s make love,’ she whispered to her make-believe David—then sat bolt upright as butterflies swooped through her stomach. Because David’s face had disappeared, replaced by a different one. A swarthier one, with a scarred eyebrow and a five o’clock shadow and eyes that were dark as night.

It wasn’t blond, perfectly coiffed, pleasantly smiling David Bennett in her head; it was Adam Quinn with his short black hair and ferocious frown.

Lane ran a trembling hand over her belly, where the butterflies were rioting. ‘Stop it,’ she told them.

But they ignored her.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘You what?’ Sarah Quinn demanded, after a full thirty seconds of shocked silence.

‘I signed on,’ Adam repeated, sinking tiredly into his favourite green leather armchair with a freshly poured single malt Scotch—his preferred remedy in a crisis—within easy reach on the table beside him. A nice, warm, antique, wooden table.

Sarah slid into the armchair on the other side of the table and just sat there.

More silence.

At any other time, Adam would have been amused at his garrulous sister’s rare state of speechlessness. But not tonight, when he longed to have his library to himself to brood in peace. A man needed privacy to lick his wounds.

‘One job,’ Sarah said at last. ‘You had one job!’

Adam tossed back the full two fingers of his neat Scotch.

‘Seriously!’ Sarah went on. ‘What was so hard about it? Fifteen minutes, max—in, out, over. You’ve had entire affairs that have lasted longer than that.’

‘Shut up, Sarah.’

‘I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near her if I’d imagined, even for a second, it would turn out like this.’

‘Yeah, well if it was really that easy, why didn’t you talk her out of it yourself?’

Sarah grimaced. ‘I tried. Erica tried. Believe me. No luck.’

Adam poured more whisky into his cut crystal tumbler. ‘And who the hell is Erica?’

‘Lane’s housemate. Erica’s a flight attendant.’

‘Ah, a flight attendant. Now you’re talking. Where’s her contract? I’ll sign that one in a heartbeat.’

‘Dream on. They’ve known each other since they were kids—next-door neighbours, living in each other’s pockets, sleepovers, the works. Erica’s not going to whistle that history down the wind by stealing you out from under Lane’s nose. It’s a girl code thing; there’s no breaking the code.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Language!’

‘There’s no such thing as a girl code.’

‘Maybe not in your fast and loose world, but there most certainly is in ours. And in any case, Erica has a boyfriend, Jeremy, who isn’t insane enough to stand aside for you to have a crack at her. And she certainly doesn’t need to hire anyone for sex. She’s got enough raw material to write a regular blog on the subject.’

‘In your league, then. How many boyfriends are we up to for the year, Sarah? Remind me, will you?’

‘About on par with your excessive number of girlfriends, Casanova Quinn.’

‘They’re not my girlfriends.’

‘No they’re not, are they? Which makes my dating patterns more morally defensible than yours. At least I’m looking for love, not just shagging my way around the city of Sydney a street at a time.’

‘Who says I limit myself to Sydney?’

‘Ugh! You really are shameless. Brazen, blatant, debauched—’

‘Yada, yada, yada. Give the thesaurus a break and just think for a moment about your “morally defensible” crapola in light of the fact that you’re pimping me out to your friend.’

‘You weren’t supposed to sign,’ she said through her teeth.

‘And yet I did, and you set it up, therefore you are my pimp.’

‘Well someone had to step in.’

‘No, Sarah, they didn’t. At least not someone from this family. We’ve got enough problems with divorces and marriages happening like they’re on a spin cycle. We’re the last ones anyone should come to for sex therapy.’

‘Well that just goes to show that you know nothing, Adam Quinn, because it was Mum who suggested you for this job despite where she currently is in the spin cycle.’

He jerked upright. ‘What the—the fuck? You did not—tell me you did not!—talk to Mum about this.’

‘Well of course I did!’

‘I am going to murder you, Sarah.’

She opened her eyes at him. Wide, bright blue. Innocent. Like hell innocent. ‘I had to talk to someone!’

‘What about Erica the flight attendant? If she and Lane are so close, where was she when she was needed?’

‘Well duh! Thirty-five thousand feet in the air, that’s where! She was rostered on a flight to LA this morning, and that’s a four-day trip so she’s beside herself over what might happen while she’s gone. Which is probably why Lane chose last night to divulge her great plan. You know, get it out there and deal with the initial fallout knowing Erica wouldn’t have a lot of time to talk her out of it. So the end result is that I’m catapulted into the hot seat, with Erica begging me to come up with something to keep Lane safe in her absence. Damage control, that’s what Erica calls it. I’ve been nothing short of petrified, because Lane doesn’t see things the way the rest of us see them.’

‘Yeah, I’d say you’ve got that right. Jesus!’

‘Oh and I suppose you know everything about her, do you, after just one meeting? Because you don’t—that I can promise you!’

‘Okay, okay, so tell me: how does she see things?’

‘Straight like a ruler. Got a problem? Her brain tells her to fix it by going direct from A to B in the straightest line possible, no deviation. Whereas my brain goes all convoluted with curlicues and twists, via, F, G, and M, so I usually need someone to help me keep track of things, and when I woke up this morning and it all came flooding back to me and I realized there was nobody to help me and—’

‘Sarah, stop!’

Sarah stopped.

‘Draw breath, Sarah!’

Sarah, obligingly, drew breath. And then: ‘Whew, okay!’ she said more calmly. ‘So this morning, I popped into Mum’s for coffee, and I was talking to her about something that had nothing to do with Lane, something completely different, but she knew—’

‘She wormed the real story out of you the way she always does.’

‘Ha ha ha! I was going to say that she knew there was something seriously bothering me and …’ She threw up her hands. ‘And yes, all right, she wormed the story out of me. And I was glad, too, because she had the perfect solution. Only now, because you couldn’t do one simple thing, it’s turned out to be not so perfect after all.’

‘If you’d told me it was Mum’s idea, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.’

‘Which of course is why I didn’t tell you.’

‘And now I’m stuck in the hell of being pimped out not only by my sister but by my own mother as well! It’s fucking disgusting, Sarah.’

‘Language!’

‘You are on such thin ice, I suggest you step carefully with the “Language” stuff.’

‘Then perhaps I’ll just remind you, again, that you were supposed to talk Lane out of it. That was the basis of Mum’s suggestion. It was all supposed to be over and done with tonight. And let me tell you, I have no idea what Erica’s going to expect you to do when she gets back.’

‘So you and Mum and Erica-whoever-the-hell-she-is—’

‘Erica Wilder.’

‘—are basically a coven of fucking witches standing over a cauldron and controlling my moves. And do not say “Language!” to me, or I will pick you up bodily and throw you out of this fucking house.’

‘I weigh more than you think.’

‘You weigh about as much as a half-starved sparrow but every gram is packed with pure evil when you get a plan in your head.’

‘Sheesh, Adam, you signed the contract, not me!’

‘Sarah …’ Warningly.

‘How about if I promise not to discuss it with Mum again? I’ll tell her you did the job you were supposed to do, scared Lane silly, as you’d scare any girl with even half a brain let alone Lane with her one-and-a-half, and it’s all over, and her plan worked. Okay?’

‘Not okay! You know she’ll worm the truth out of you again.’

‘No she won’t. This morning was my one window of opportunity with her because tonight, Massimo raised the prospect of taking her on a Mediterranean cruise in a few weeks’ time and then home to Siena to meet his family, and now she’s not interested in anything else. She’s told me she’s going to be popping in and out of the house but staying with him until they depart. She is seriously goo-goo eyed over him, so forget getting any sense out of her for the foreseeable future.’

Adam shook his head in disgust. ‘She’s going away with Massimo before the divorce is even final?’

‘Yep,’ Sarah said, and sighed.

Adam examined his sister’s face, saw that she was blinking away an out-of-character tear, and his temper drained away. ‘Want a drink, squirt?’ he asked, all gruff, the way he always was when confronting emotion.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do,’ Sarah said.

‘Whisky?’

‘Why not?’

Adam got up to pour her a small measure of Scotch, and by the time he brought it to her, she had herself under control again.

‘How about we move you out of the granny flat while she’s gone?’ he asked. ‘Then you won’t have to deal with what I’m sure will be her new husband when they get back. If they ever get back, that is. She’s gone so far off the deep end about Italy lately I wouldn’t put it past her to move there.’

Sarah sniffed at her drink, wrinkling her nose. ‘Massimo’s okay, and I’m pretty isolated from the main house anyway.’

‘Yeah, well if he’s ever not okay, you know you only have to say the word.’

‘I think one attempt at stepfather-castration is enough for this lifetime.’

Adam poured more whisky for himself and took his seat again. ‘I castrate on a needs-must basis.’

Sarah giggled then, and reached across for his hand. She held it, then squeezed it, and Adam’s heart squeezed right along with it as he gripped her hand back. ‘I’m sorry she’s dumping Bertie,’ he said. ‘I know how much you love him.’

‘He’s the only decent step-parent in the bunch. I just wish I knew what she thinks is missing. Not that Dad’s any better. What are they looking for, Adam, and why can’t they find it?’

‘They’re looking for the same thing you keep looking for. Perfect love. And they can’t find it for the same reason you can’t find it—because it doesn’t exist.’

‘What if it does exist?’

‘Then we obviously don’t carry the gene for it—giving or receiving.’

Silence, and then Sarah sighed again and released his hand. ‘So okay, let’s talk about how we extricate you from the thing with Lane.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I can’t be extricated.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘I signed a contract, Sarah.’

‘Yes, but it’s not legally binding. It can’t be. It’s a sex contract. Like Fifty Shades of Grey. They’re not enforceable.’

‘It is not like Fifty Shades of Grey. Jesus, Sarah! Do you really think I have a red room?’

‘So you’ve read Fifty Shades have you?’

‘No I bloody well have not, but I haven’t been living under a rock, you know.’

‘Anyway, how would I know whether or not you have a red room?’

‘Because you’ve snooped all over this house, that’s how! And that’s not the point, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether the contract is legally enforceable or not. I signed and that’s it. You know how I feel about commitments. If you make them, you keep them.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. Which is why you don’t make them to women, as you’ve been at pains to point out ever since you hit puberty. So I just can’t work out why you did it. I mean Lane is a woman, isn’t she?’

Why had he done it? It was a question Adam had been asking himself ever since signing on the dotted line. He didn’t like the only answer he’d come up with: that Lane’s particular combination of defencelessness and intractability had goaded the self-control and common sense right out of him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to admit such a thing to his sister.

‘This isn’t a commitment to a woman—not as such,’ he said. ‘It’s a paid business proposition.’ Which was the truth—what was between him and Lane Davis was nothing like a normal relationship—but damn if he didn’t sound like a snake oil salesman saying it.

‘“Paid business proposition”?’ Sarah scoffed. ‘As if you need either the money or the proposition!’

‘And anyway, she’s more ice cube than woman.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Brr.’

‘Not funny.’

Another over-the-top shiver. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘As it happens Lane’s got fire under the ice—that’s what she’s been told.’

‘Who’d say such a dumb-ass thing?’

‘Someone who knows women very well. You’re not the only expert out there, you know.’

‘I hope you don’t mean Mum,’ Adam said, even though he knew from Sarah’s irritatingly smug smirk she meant nothing of the kind.

‘Not a female,’ she said.

Adam decided he needed more whisky and picked up his drink.

‘Although I’m sure Mum would agree,’ Sarah went on. ‘She keeps saying she sees Lane in the colour red, which is a hot-not-cold colour.’

Adam choked on his Scotch. ‘Hang the hell on! Are you saying Mum knows Lane?’

‘Hmm, she’s met her quite a few times, at least. And why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Trying to get my head around the fact that my mother met the girl I’m supposed to be having a sexual affair with before I did.’

‘Yes, well at the risk of repeating myself, you’re not supposed to be having a sexual affair with Lane, and I wasn’t intending for you to ever meet her, and I only let you meet her out of desperation. As I’ve told you and told you, I’m over introducing my friends to you. They always fall in love with you, you never reciprocate, and they end up hating me. And I do not want Lane to hate me.’

‘You’re safe in this instance. Lane isn’t going to fall in love with me—I’m not her type.’

‘Early days, Adam,’ Sarah said darkly.

‘Time won’t change the fact that she needs a man she can boss around and that ain’t me.’

‘You’d better make sure of it. You are not allowed to make her fall in love with you. Got it?’

‘I don’t “make” girls fall in love with me.’

‘You do something to them. Maybe you’re the one with the cauldron, cooking up spells.’

‘If I were going to cook up a spell, it would be to get you over your “be still my throbbing heart” one-true-love claptrap.’

‘My heart doesn’t throb.’

‘So stop trying to make it.’

‘Why? So I can be as miserable as you?’

‘I wasn’t miserable until my sister and my mother lumbered me with a frigid bed partner for three months.’

‘As I keep saying, you lumbered yourself.’ She sniffed at her glass again. ‘And she’s not frigid. Mum says she just has a little … complex.’

‘Yeah well last I heard Mum was an interior decorator, not a psychologist.’

‘She’s good at this stuff, Adam!’

‘She’s good at interior decorating.’

‘She says Lane’s problem is a lack of personal confidence, and that’s arisen because of her fractured relationship with her mother. A Mommie Dearest complex, Mum calls it.’

Adam stared at her. ‘Have I fallen through a portal into some parallel universe or something?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’

‘Mum diagnosing people’s psychoses? Jesus! And a Mommie Dearest complex? I’ve never heard of anything so bloody ridiculous.’

‘Erica agrees with her, and she knows all the background. Although she says calling it a complex is just a fancy way of saying Lane’s mother is an absolute cow—which happens to be an insult to cows if you ask me.’

Adam’s head was in his hands—not an unusual position to find himself in whenever he spoke at length with his sister. ‘And yet I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, well you can guess, can’t you? Just from the name of it! Lane is desperate to make her mother proud of her, to the point of being completely fixated on pleasing her, but her mother ignores her and focuses completely on Lane’s brother, Brad. The Brad obsession stems from him being a sickly kid. Leukaemia, so anyone could understand that. But I’m sorry to say that doting on him kind of stuck even after he was cured, and sadly—although I swear I can see glimmers of something good hidden in there—he’s basically turned into the biggest no-hoper you could ever meet. He’s lazy, idle, indolent, slothful, incompet—’

‘Spare me any more adjectives, for the love of God!’

‘Fine! He’s just abominable—there, one word. But the thing is, Lane keeps trying, and endlessly failing. Brad’s jealous as hell of her accomplishments and her mother therefore point blank refuses to be proud of her. It’s almost as though she makes a conscious choice to keep Lane at arm’s length.’ She looked at her glass again and gave the whisky a sad swirl. ‘You know, it’s hard to stand by and shut up when the three of them are together.’

‘Yes well that all sounds very sad and tortured and psychoanalysis-worthy, but it in no way explains the need for Lane to draw up a contract and pay someone for sex.’

‘Okay so think about this—it may help. She came dux of her school. She got into university a year before she should have and ended up with an Honours degree. She landed a job at a top consultancy straight out of university and within a month, nailed a promotion. When she moved on to the bank where she is now, she was placed in the exact area she wanted and her salary zoomed sky-high. All of this because she’s driven to succeed so her mother will say, “Well done, Lane.”

‘But instead, you know what her mother started saying to her three months ago? “Gee, Lane, how come you never go on any dates? I’m not getting any younger you know, and I’m going to want grandchildren one day.” Nice, huh? She can’t criticize Lane for anything she has achieved, so she’s starting on something she hasn’t. Thank you, Mommie dearest.’

‘Okay, I get it.’

‘So now, having had no time to even think about getting a boyfriend because she’s been working like a dog at school, then at university, taking extra classes on the side she thought would help her career, and nailing her career … Now she has to become some man magnet ASAP as well? Sheesh! And I promise you, we’re coming off a low base here when it comes to men. The night I first met her, at an orientation week event at uni, there was a guy trying to ask her out on a date and she had no idea! I remember thinking he’d need a flashing neon sign on his head before she realized it.’

‘So she’s not exactly desperate and dateless then. Or she wouldn’t be if she just loosened up and looked around. Any man would be up for a little experimentation.’

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Really? Because it seems to me you’re being dragged kicking and screaming in protest over your fate.’

‘I— That’s … different.’

‘Is it? Seems pretty similar to me. And just so you know, that guy didn’t ask her out in the end, he gave up. They always do, you know. They give up because they see what you saw tonight: the outer shell. The ice, not the fire.’

‘Yeah, well the fire’s got its work cut out for it—if it really is under that glacier-like coating of hers.’

‘You just wait and see. I know Lane. If she says she’s going to learn something, she’ll learn it. She’s never failed a course yet. She’s going to cram seven years of sexual experimentation into as short a time as she can get it done.’

‘I still say she could get laid seven nights out of seven by going to a bar and choosing a guy, any guy. She won’t even have to pay for a drink; she’ll be picked up before she even orders one.’

‘Ah, but she doesn’t look at her arrangement with you as paying for sex. What she’s really paying for is skills transference, and confidence in her abilities. It’s no different from when she signed up for private Mandarin lessons, you know. She decided to specialize in the Chinese economy and thought the lessons would help her. And they did, too. They clinched the job at the bank for her.’

‘So I’m the sexual equivalent of Mandarin classes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fucking fabulous.’

‘With you, she’ll get the lessons she needs, all private and confidential, using a timetable she’s set for herself, and it’s all under her control because she’s paying for it.’

Adam gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Ah, my secret fantasy—a control freak who doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘Yes, well if your initiation into sex had been as bad as hers and was broadcast to half your workplace besides, you might understand her need for control over subsequent experiences.’

Adam paused in the act of pouring more Scotch. ‘Initiation? You mean the douchebag was her first?’

‘DeWayne Callaghan. First and only, and the miracle is she’s willing to try again after him. She went out with him the day after her mother dropped the first “give me grandchildren” hint.’

Pause, as Sarah gave him a speculative look. ‘You know, I’d say I’m surprised she told you about him, because she really found the experience intensely humiliating … but oddly, I’m not surprised at all. She’s like that—she never hides from the truth. She’ll tell you whatever you need to know if it helps to get her where she needs to be.’ Another look. ‘Did she tell you that despite DeWayne only lasting two minutes and forty seconds, he had the nerve to score her performance?’

‘No.’

‘He gave her one point five out of ten. And obligingly posted it on Facebook for all their colleagues to see.’

‘Shit.’

‘I would have torn his heart out and fed it to the seagulls at Manly Beach along with a bag of hot chips, right after tweeting his premature ejaculatory effort to the world! But not Lane. She was so valiant in the face of what he did to her. Just took it on the chin and didn’t say a word. It was as though she thought she deserved it for not being good enough. So she just kept going to work, not rebuking DeWayne even when their paths crossed in the corridor, until she found a new job where she could start again with a clean slate.’

Adam found that he was shaking with fury. DeWayne. Douchebag. Fucking, fucking bastard. He tossed back his drink, reached for the whisky and repoured, just in case things got worse.

Sarah was looking intently at the liquid in her glass, still not drinking it. ‘I wanted to shake the calmness out of her, make her rage and curse and slap that mongrel down. But I knew deep down that that veneer of calmness was saving her, that it was only a veneer, that she wasn’t calm. She was mortified, devastated, and hiding it, the way she hides it when her mother and brother make her feel like she’s coming up short of their expectations. But never in a million years did I think she’d dream up the idea of a sex contract.’

She looked up. ‘Can you imagine how terrified I was when she announced that plan, as though she were announcing she was going to start taking a new vitamin supplement? I had nightmares last night, imagining her swiping right on some psychopath and ending up and being cut into little pieces!’ She lifted the whisky at last and threw it down her throat, and then shuddered, gasped, wheezed.

Adam reached over and gave her a few slaps on the back, laughing.

‘Not. Funny,’ she huffed.

‘I’m not laughing about the psychopath, I’m laughing at you,’ Adam said, still laughing. ‘I thought you were never going to shut up long enough to drink that.’

She was beating a hand on her chest, in time with his back slaps. ‘Needs Coke,’ she croaked.

Adam stopped slapping and tried to take the glass off her. ‘Coke? Heathen! Give that back. Let me get you something with an umbrella in it instead.’

‘Hit me again,’ she said, handing over her glass. ‘I mean the whisky. Not my back, because I’m probably bruised from that assault of yours. I just need another drink.’

Adam poured her another measure of whisky and passed it to her, and they sat and sipped in silence for a long moment.

And then, Sarah sighed. ‘I love her you know. And she … she needs people to love her, because she can’t see anything inside her that’s worth loving. So I’m going to trust you with her, on that basis. I know you’ll do the right thing.’

‘Hey, whoa, step back from the edge, Sarah. This isn’t a romance, or a psychology session, it’s a sex contract.’

‘Just promise me you’ll do better than DeWayne.’

‘I won’t be “doing better” than DeWayne; I’ll be wiping him out of existence.’

‘Hmm. Don’t overpromise until you know what you’re facing. Remember the fire under the ice—maybe that’s why DeWayne got there so fast. She was too hot for him!’

‘Talking about ice, the stuff you’re standing on is getting thinner, Sarah. A lot, lot thinner.’

‘I guess the contract will work just as well for you as it will for her, though,’ Sarah said, slanting an interested look at him. ‘Sex on tap for three months, no strings—gotta love that, right?’

‘I already have sex on tap, no strings.’

‘Well, this one comes with a nice, bloodless breakup at the end, which should suit you to a T, Mr Love-’em-and-leave-’em. No histrionics. No stalking. No drunk texting.’

‘Shut up, Sarah.’

‘I just hope I haven’t oversold your abilities.’

‘The ice is cracking,’ he warned.

‘Although I’m sure Lane has non-performance covered in that contract of hers.’

That startled a laugh out of him. ‘As a matter of fact, she does.’

‘Well don’t tarnish the family name, please. I’ll never be able to hold my head up if you don’t go the distance.’

Adam gave her a look of acute dislike.

She laughed, but then stopped and winced. ‘But God knows what Erica’s going to make of all this,’ she said.

Adam slammed his glass down on the table between them. ‘Okay, I think I’ve heard Erica’s name a time too many, and I also think it’s time for you to bow out of the business. Not one word on the subject from you, got it? Not to me. Not to Lane. Not to Mum. Not to bloody Erica. It’s going to be hard enough to get through it without being instructed from the sidelines by the fucking coven.’

‘Language!’

‘Fuck my language.’ He glared at Sarah. ‘From now on, what happens between Lane and me is none of your goddamn business. I’m bound by a confidentiality clause, thank God, and so is she!’ He stood, snagging the half-empty bottle of whisky from the table along with his glass, and prepared to storm out of the room. ‘And I don’t remember asking you to wait in my house.’

Sarah smiled, unperturbed. ‘She sure got under your skin, didn’t she?’

‘Leave your key behind on your way out,’ Adam ordered, striding past her.

‘You know you’ll just end up giving it back to me.’

‘Not for three months, at any rate,’ Adam said and slammed the library door after himself to drive home the you-are-barred-from-the-house message.

And then he realized he’d effectively banished himself from his favourite room, leaving the spoils to Sarah, and his satisfaction at getting in the last word vaporized. His sister was such a manipulative wretch; he wouldn’t put it past her to have masterminded the whole evening not to scare Lane off her idea but to get him to sign the contract. She needs people to love her … she can’t see anything inside her that’s worth loving … I’m going to trust you with her … I know you’ll do the right thing. Jesus wept!

Well, if his sister thought he was going to be jumping to anyone’s command when it came to implementing that damn contract, she had another think coming. Lane too. And should the flight attendant ever make an appearance, he’d be only too happy to show her who was boss while he was at it.

Poor vulnerable, valiant, complex-riddled Lane? His arse! Controlling and rigid and uptight is what she was. Surrounded by a force field that zapped out beams to repel any humans from approaching her personal space let alone invading it. He was even starting to disbelieve that he’d really seen that flash of vulnerability—because every other time she’d looked at him, it had been out of cool, assessing, icy eyes. Like he was an object. An ‘alleged’ expert who had to prove himself. And that contract, aimed at getting him to prove it, was so impersonal it was downright scary.

The contract. It all lay in the contract.

He was going to have to read it again, just to make sure he hadn’t imagined the offensiveness of it. He retrieved it from his back pocket where he’d folded and stuffed it into what he’d thought was submission, and took it, and his whisky, to the kitchen. He went through the pages once … and then once more … plus one last time to make one hundred per cent sure he wasn’t missing anything …

And then he smiled.

By the time he stumbled into bed an hour later, his mood had improved to the point where he was actually whistling to himself.

Nothing to do with the dent he’d put in the rest of the single malt.

Everything to do with the contract and his own devious mind.

Because one little detail Lane Davis had left out of her precious contract was what they’d actually spend their two to four nights per week doing. Imagine that! A contract, a three-page checklist—but no mention of an actual sex act!

An amazing oversight, but a fortuitous one. There was a lot he could teach her without actually consummating their relationship. An awful lot.

Tomorrow, he would call Lane Davis and start lesson number one on his agenda: who was the boss in this partnership.

‘And I can tell you one thing for sure, my icy new lover, it isn’t you,’ he said.

But as he lay back and closed his eyes, a sudden, sharp vision of Lane, naked, slammed into his head and stole his complacency so that he wanted to sit up, turn on the lights and banish the image. And yet he kept lying there in the dark, not only seeing her but almost … feeling her too. Tall, slender, pale except for the vivid hair. She was looking at him, and her eyes were hot with lust.

Fire under the ice.

He sucked in his breath as his skin tightened, listening to his pulse whooshing too loudly in his ears. Whisky, he told himself, fuddling his brain, messing with his self-control, turning her into some kind of mental reality. Well, what the hell? Let her stay there in his head tonight. But tomorrow, he’d be putting her exactly where he wanted her.

Tomorrow, the game would begin.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Lane?’

Lane’s heart leapt into her throat and strangled her vocal cords.

‘Lane? You there?’

She clutched the phone to her ear in a death grip, hoping Adam couldn’t hear either her heart pulsing in her throat or the slow, slow breath she eased past it and into her lungs. ‘I’m at work so I can’t talk right now,’ she said when she was sure her voice wouldn’t let her down. ‘Can I call you back?’

‘No. We need to talk now.’

Another please-be-silent slow breath, until Lane remembered she could mute the phone. She muted with a vengeance, and shot an apologetic smile at the analyst with whom she’d been discussing the consumer price index. ‘I have to take this, Rick. Just a minute, okay?’

She hurried away from Rick’s workstation to the closest empty meeting room she could find. She looked at her phone, contemplating disconnecting … but no. That would be unforgivably cowardly. She unmuted the phone before she could give in to temptation. ‘Adam, I thought I’d made it clear that all calls are to be made outside office hours,’ she said crisply. ‘I never take personal calls at work.’

‘You’re hiring me for my expertise, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘No buts. The first lesson is this—anywhere, any time. Starting with this phone call. So let’s schedule our first date, hmm?’

Date? It wasn’t a date. She opened her mouth to tell him so, to snap the words out, but stopped herself when she heard him laugh softly, as though he were reading her through the phone line. She took another breath. Calm, calm, calm. If this phone call turned out to be some kind of test, she didn’t want to stumble at the first hurdle.

Yes, she had hired Adam Quinn for his expertise; it was why she was paying him a small fortune. She therefore had to trust that he knew what he was doing—to do otherwise would mean she was wasting her money. The argument over calls at work would keep for another time, and as for the whole ‘date’ thing, what was the point of quibbling over semantics? If he wanted to call it a date, he could call it a date; as long as she knew the truth, what did it matter?

‘All right, then,’ she said in her best impersonally professional voice. ‘This week I’m free tomorrow night or any time Sunday.’

‘Tomorrow night’s fine with me. I’ll pick you up from work.’

‘Not at the office.’

‘Why not? It’s business, isn’t it?’

Lane couldn’t think of an appropriate answer—she wasn’t expecting such an early and flagrant flouting of the rules she’d set.

Not that Adam gave her a chance to respond.

‘Ah, I seeeee,’ he said, with way too much eeeelongation for it to be anything other than a dig. ‘You’re going to hide me away and only roll me out when you’re ready for a quick fu—’

‘No!’ Lane interjected, then hurried on. ‘I just feel a little … I don’t want the people here, the people I work with, to know … I mean …’ Lane squeezed her eyes closed in an agony of embarrassment.

‘Sorry but you’re going to have to deal with it,’ Adam said, before she could address her own incoherence. ‘Because I’m coming to your office at six o’clock tomorrow, and if you’re not ready to leave, I’ll have no qualms about using your desk as a bed. Anywhere, any time. Got it?’

Without waiting for Lane’s response, Adam disconnected, leaving Lane holding the phone to her ear, stunned into silence.

***

Adam looked at his phone and smiled.

Lane wasn’t sounding as controlled as she’d been last night.

Which meant yes! he was on the right track.

He’d figured a methodical, control-freak economist—a predictor of trends—would hate not knowing what was going to happen next. It stood to reason that wondering when or where he was going to pop up and what he was going to do with her when he did would crack that cold casing of hers. And with one short phone call, he’d proved it.

She’d be stewing now, all because he’d called her at the office when the contract clearly stated he should not. Because he’d gone one step further and arranged to visit her at her office when that was forbidden, too. She’d be regrouping. Strategizing. But no matter what she did, he was p-r-e-t-t-y certain she’d be nicely on edge tomorrow night.

So on edge, maybe she’d even end up calling the whole thing off. Sarah would be happy, his mother would be happy, Erica-the-unknown-quantity would no doubt be happy since she hadn’t sanctioned the plan in the first place.

But Adam, perversely, decided he would not be happy, and that therefore there would be no calling things off.

Not yet.

Not until he’d managed to get Lane Davis hot and bothered.

Making her lose her cool was the least he could do to pay her back for rocking his equilibrium so badly. He’d never considered himself a vain guy, but he sure as hell wasn’t used to women being totally unimpressed when they looked at him. So what was it that Lane wasn’t seeing in him that other women saw? That’s what he wanted to know. And was she not seeing it because he didn’t have it as far as she was concerned, or because she didn’t yet know he had it?

He supposed she might have expected someone who looked more like his sister, in which case—whoa!—he must have been a shock to her system! Sarah was a tiny, pretty, sparkly fairy, whereas Adam was … well, not exactly elegant. He was big, and dark, and brawny. Square-jawed, bold-nosed, hard-mouthed. Maybe a little long on frown and short on hair. A bit … intimidating. Maybe. But not hideous. Women liked looking at him. Women wanted him.

But not Lane. At least, not intrinsically. ‘You look like you’d be good at it.’ That’s what she’d said. But he hadn’t seen any evidence she thought she might actually enjoy what he was about to teach her. She’d sat across from him and talked about sex in the most unemotional, businesslike fashion, all blood tests and schedules and bank accounts, without giving him even one appreciative look. Not one!

Adam realized his temper was fraying again and pulled himself up. Did it really matter if she wanted to enjoy herself or not? Did it matter that she was only interested in the goals she wanted to reach and therefore had restrictions in place for how and where they connected? A contract, that’s what the two of them had. Lane knew his sister but she didn’t know him. She was right to be leery of parading him around her office—especially after what DeWayne the Douchebag had done to her.

But he was nothing like DeWayne the Douchebag, he told himself, rallying. He wasn’t going to shame her. It wasn’t an insult being seen with him. If he was going to make her look anything, his intention would be to make her look hot, not cold. And he wasn’t a trained seal who could be expected to perform when and where she wanted, begging for a treat when he came up to scratch.

Nope. No way. If anyone was going to be begging it was going to be Lane. And until she was begging, until she felt him like burning fever in her blood, he’d be damned if he was going to be giving over the goods all at once, either.

This was going to be a slow, sloow, slooow journey to the finish line.

And he was going to win.

***

The next morning, Lane dressed and undressed three times before deciding on the same square-cut navy suit she’d worn on Monday night on the basis that at least Adam hadn’t run screaming in the opposite direction at the sight of it. She then applied a full face of make-up only to scrub it all off when she realized her colleagues would know something was up if she turned up for work looking like that. In any case, she’d hate for Adam to think she’d taken any special care for their first … time.

Yes, ‘time’ was the correct word, not the ‘date’ he’d called it. It wasn’t a date, it was a time, a session, a meeting.

A lesson.

First lesson.

Whew. What that thought did to her insides!

Pull yourself together, Lane. She looked in the mirror—her new favourite pastime—and nodded, satisfied. No way would Adam guess she’d agonized over what to wear.

And then the implication of that hit home and her shoulders drooped. ‘And that’s a good thing, is it, to look like you didn’t spare a minute’s thought for how you look?’ she asked her reflection.

Eye roll. ‘Aaaaand you’re talking to yourself. Isn’t that the first sign of madness?’

***

If talking to herself was the first sign of madness, Lane figured that wandering around the office like she’d just woken from a coma and didn’t know where she was had to be the second.

So poor was her concentration, it was almost a relief to pack up her laptop and files and head out to the reception area to wait for Adam.

Or it would have been, if she’d known what to do when she got there five minutes ahead of their appointment.

She knew it was an unusual occurrence that she was leaving the office early, but she hadn’t expected it to be remarkable enough to warrant the receptionist’s constant semi-alarmed glances at her. Or perhaps it was her style of loitering that was making a spectacle of her—the way she sat, then stood, then sat, then stood. The receptionist kept on looking at her like she was a zoo exhibit, which made Lane send a silent prayer of thanks skywards that the area was more or less deserted. Some of her colleagues had left for the day, but most were out of sight, hunched over desks, and therefore not watching her.

She was even gladder of the lack of an audience when Adam emerged from the elevator at 6:05 p.m., because for sure he would have drawn every assessing eye. He was wearing blue jeans and a navy Henley T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Despite the swaggeringly casual attire, he looked perfectly in tune with his surroundings. It was as though he’d been walking onto her floor at 6:05 p.m. every evening for three full lifetimes. He looked more at home there than Lane herself did, even though he dressed nothing like a banker—certainly nothing like the impeccably tailored David Bennett.

As he turned in her direction, Lane noticed that the top two buttons of his T-shirt were open, which made Lane wonder if two undone buttons was the rule when you wanted to look ridiculously sexy. One look at him and her fingers itched to get at her own buttons, which were primly done up to the hilt.

But there was no time, because he was charging straight for her, glancing neither right nor left.

Lane knew it was going to be an awkward moment—how could it not be?—and cast around in her head for a suitably safe topic of conversation to break the ice and establish a nothing-to-see-here-folks vibe. Something that would prove to the receptionist that this was nothing more than a regular business meeting, regardless of Adam’s two undone buttons. He was a builder so … house prices maybe? Because she’d seen some research today that indicated a renewed boom, with house prices set to rise by—

Oof.

She was suddenly in Adam’s arms, looking up, and she couldn’t remember what she’d been thinking. Something to do with percentages … or was it—?

Ahh.

His mouth was on hers, his rock-hard chest plastered against her.

And her brain went dead.

His mouth was firm and soft at the same time. It was like he was … ohh … massaging her mouth with his. Insistent, nudging, nuzzling. She realized her breath was stuck somewhere in her chest, and she opened her mouth to drag in more air. Then his tongue—his tongue, God, God—was inside her mouth, pushing, licking at her own.

She felt his hands slide down her back, cup her bottom, pull her closer, adjust her pelvis to his. She heard a soft moan—where it had come from? He deepened the pressure on her mouth, his tongue sliding rhythmically, luxuriously, licking into her like she was full of warmed honey and he was searching out every last smear of it. Another moan. Oh, God, it had come from her. She was moaning. And she couldn’t seem to help it.

Lane’s hands crept up, clutching at Adam’s T-shirt as she held on to him, leaned into him. Dear Lord, what was happening to her? If not for her hands anchoring her to him, she’d keel over. The kiss was so … delicious. Smooth and rough at the same time. How could that be? Her legs felt unsteady. And there was a shivery sensation flowing down through her chest to tingle in her breasts, in her stomach, lower.

She should be concentrating. Trying to work out what it was about Adam’s technique that was making her feel like this. But his tongue was everywhere inside her mouth and she couldn’t think, could only feel, only drown …

At last he raised his head, slowly, so slowly, his breath a warm mist against her still-open lips. Don’t stop. The words were there, in her head, wanting to get out, but before Lane could form them with her mouth, Adam stepped back.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said softly, and smiled, and Lane’s mouth snapped shut because the smile was very definitely one of triumph.

She took an extra step back, recovering quickly now she was free of the intoxicating kiss and had put some extra space between them. She looked around, saw the receptionist staring at the two of them. This was not good. There would be gossip. Uptight Lane Davis kissing a hot guy in the reception area! How did boring old Lane get such a gorgeous guy? Lane Davis, the ice queen, getting into it with a man who anyone could tell was out of her league—way out!

Lane’s insides clenched. She didn’t want to be gossiped about, sniggered over, at work. Never again would she put herself in such a position. And she particularly didn’t want this little episode to find its way to David Bennett. God forbid David should think she was already taken. If David lost interest in her, it would ruin everything, negate the whole reason for the contract. Without David there would be no Adam Quinn as far as she was concerned.

If there’d been an actual purpose in telegraphing her relationship with Adam to her colleagues, it would be a different story, but it wasn’t as though ‘anywhere, any time’ was a real lesson. Adam had only kissed her here and now to make a point. He wanted to be the one in charge; he’d chosen her workplace deliberately, because she’d said not here. She’d read up on the alpha male in preparation for tonight; understanding them wasn’t exactly rocket science.

But if this was an indication of the way he anticipated their arrangement would proceed, she knew she had trouble on her hands. She was the one in charge; she had to be. So best get the derailed train back on the tracks immediately.

‘Sweetheart,’ she repeated the word, as though tasting it. Shook her head. ‘No. Not necessary, I think. No endearments.’ She straightened her jacket, frosted her eyes and raised her eyebrows at the receptionist, who quickly averted her rapt gaze. Turning back to Adam, she said, ‘Shall we go?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Adam said, and who knew a guy could drawl out a Southern style ma’am without any hint of softness? ‘I’m parked in the station across the street.’

‘How nice for you,’ Lane said. ‘My car, which I have every intention of driving home, is in the car park of this very building.’

She started walking towards the bank of elevators, but stopped when she sensed she was walking alone. She turned back to find Adam standing where she’d left him, rooted to the spot, his countenance dark.

It felt a little like pistols at dawn. Her at one end of the reception area; him at the other; both waiting for the goggle-eyed receptionist to drop a hanky to signal the start of a fight to the death. And suddenly, Lane wanted to giggle. She didn’t, though. She couldn’t, if she wanted the upper hand. The upper hand … and him. She wanted him. Because the kiss had been good. Very good. And that was part of the alpha male she’d read up on, too—the part she needed. The I-know-exactly-what-I’m-doing, take-no-prisoners part.

She needed to learn how to kiss like that, how to melt a guy using only her lips and tongue. So no giggling; no getting on her high horse, either. It was concession time, and she was happy to negotiate if it would get her the skills she needed, even though the contract had been signed and strictly speaking she didn’t have to.

Smoothing a hand over her tied-back hair, Lane walked swiftly back to him. ‘I’m sorry, Adam,’ she said, low and soft so the receptionist wouldn’t hear. ‘I know it can’t be easy for someone like to you to take …’ Hmm. She needed a word that wouldn’t set off his alpha temper. ‘To take …’

‘Orders?’ he supplied, not low and soft.

‘Yes. I mean no. Not … exactly.’ She grabbed his arm and steered him out of hearing range of the receptionist. ‘Everything’s covered in the contract, you know, to make sure neither of us does something the other hasn’t bargained on. The clause about the lessons being taught in my home is there for privacy reasons. Mine and yours. Now, there’s wiggle room in there—for example, I’m happy to come to your place sometimes, if it’s more convenient—but the office is completely out of bounds for me. You can understand that, can’t you? I’m sure you don’t want me popping up at building sites, or at family functions, or—well, you know what I mean.’

There, that was logical, reasonable. He’d have to see she was making sense.

‘I understand you want to call the shots,’ he said. ‘But I don’t work like that. So how much of that “wiggle room” am I going to get?’

‘That will depend how valuable you turn out to be.’

‘Oh, I’m worth the money, I promise you.’

She looked into his eyes and knew it was true. Suddenly the hand that was still on his arm started to tingle and burn; she hadn’t even realized she was still touching him. She sucked in a reactionary gasp, released her hold and took a step back. ‘The thing is, I generally don’t enjoy surprises.’

‘Sex is full of surprises, Lane.’

‘But the contract—’

‘Don’t make me tell you what to do with your contract before we’re even through our first date, Lane.’

It’s not a date, it’s a lesson, and I’m paying you to do what I say. The words trembled on Lane’s tongue, and she had to draw in a deep breath to stop herself saying them. She needed something placatory to stave off a public escalation of hostilities, but she couldn’t think of a replacement response. She didn’t have placatory skills. There was a terse moment as their eyes clashed. And then she gave up. ‘I’m going home,’ she said, simply said tightly. ‘We can discuss it in private if you’d care to join me there.’

‘Let’s not “discuss” it to death, Lane, let’s just suck it and see as we go along,’ Adam said. He gave her a cold-eyed smile and closed the distance between them, full of the promise of sex. ‘An expression you can think about while you drive home. In fact, why don’t you spend that drive imagining what I’ll do to you once we’re nice and private, since “discussion” isn’t high on my list?’ Another of those cold smiles. ‘Sweetheart.’

With a swallow and a nod—which was a ridiculous response, because what was there to nod at?—Lane headed again for the elevators.

She turned for one last look at him as the elevator doors opened and he—good God!—winked at her. Which discomposed her so much, she took a fraction too long entering the elevator and the doors semi-closed on her.

She heard him chuckle as she stepped fully in and the doors closed properly, and as the elevator commenced its descent to the car park, she leaned weakly against the wall. Great. It was just great to be laughed at because she was awkward and clumsy and incapable of taking the nuances of sexual attraction in her stride. She knew all about being a laughing-stock to your sexual partner—thank you, DeWayne Callaghan, for that lesson—and she didn’t like it. At all.

This was not the way things were supposed to unfold. Adam had barely glanced at the contract before signing it, and she’d just bet he hadn’t looked at it since. He seemed disinclined to listen to a word she said about the contract’s terms and conditions. And she was fairly certain what he’d threatened to tell her to do with the contract would be anatomically unpleasant, if not impossible.

This was not good.

On the other hand … on the drive home, she fired up her imagination as Adam had suggested, and the visions in her head were fairly eye-popping for a girl who was almost a virgin.

***

It took an hour for Adam to cool off enough to front up at Lane’s. And even then, it took every ounce of his self-control to knock not pound on the door of her super-neat house in her super-neat street, chosen pragmatically, he’d just bet, to be close to the airport for the flight attendant housemate.

Okay, he was honest enough to admit he deserved to be slapped down for forcing that office meeting on her. And he knew he wouldn’t be pleased if one of his lovers sauntered onto one of his building sites and planted her mouth on him in front of anyone who happened to be in the vicinity the way he’d done to Lane, so she’d hit that nail on the head.

But it just galled him that she hadn’t slapped him down so much as ‘managed’ him like he was a naughty boy. He would have preferred it if she’d lost her temper, flamed up at him, stomped off without even speaking to him. But no, never in public of course—as he should have known.

All his hopes now were pinned on her losing her cool the moment she opened the door and they were ‘in private’. It would be a sign she was human, at least. The closer he’d got to her house, the keener he was to see how her temper manifested itself. Nothing short of a rage-filled ‘How dare you do that to me!?!’ would do.

But when she opened the door …?

Nope.

No temper.

Just that barely there smile that he was starting to believe was her habitual expression and not applied deliberately to one-up him. Not bothering to comment on his lateness—not even giving him the satisfaction of a subtle glimpse at her wristwatch.

Impressive. And infuriating.

She held the door open for him.

He stepped in, walked past her, through the short hallway and into the living room. He looked around. No canapés this time. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be seeing smoked salmon in this house again any time soon. She’d learned her lesson, like the good student she was.

‘All right, I’ve been imagining, as instructed, and I’m ready,’ she said. ‘So—here or in the bedroom?’

Adam’s temper evaporated with the shock of that. He shook his head to clear it. Had he heard right? Surely not. It would be taking cool, calm, and collected way too far, even for her. But she was waiting for his answer, and there was no hint that she felt anything except interest in his answer—no, his instruction.

‘The bedroom,’ he said, a little awed, a lot intrigued. How far would she go?

‘Through here,’ she said.

Was that a tremble in her voice or did he only hope it was?

She led the way to her room and turned to face him. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Shall we get undressed?’

She’d already removed her jacket. Now her hands went to the buttons on her shirt.

CHAPTER SIX

There was no doubt who was calling the shots tonight, and it wasn’t Adam Quinn.

Was he gaping? Adam thought he must be. But Lane just kept unbuttoning.

She managed to get half her buttons undone before Adam could find enough of a voice to say, ‘Keep your clothes on.’

That stopped her. ‘Is it a … a turn-off, to do that without being asked?’

Turn-off? She sounded so uncomfortable saying that. He recalled how she’d tripped over the word ‘douchebag’. Weirdly, it cheered him up, that she couldn’t say those things easily.

‘Is it a what?’ he asked, hoping she’d repeat it.

‘I mean, is it unappealing?’ she clarified. ‘When a woman takes the initiative and starts … you know … the ball rolling?’

Starts the ball rolling? Adam swallowed a laugh. She was brazen enough to pay a man for sex but couldn’t actually talk about it without sounding like a prude. Ball rolling? It was kind of adorable.

‘Well is it unappealing?’ she asked again, a little impatient now.

Adam knew exactly what the early stages of arousal felt like, and figured Lane was certainly appealing to something in him, because the half-moon of bra he could see through the slackened opening of her shirt was pushing him into it—and God only knew why, since that bra was the most utilitarian undergarment he’d ever seen on a woman. Maybe seeing Lane even slightly dishevelled was as forceful as seeing another woman butt-naked. Especially coming on top of that kiss earlier, which had been so much hotter than he’d expected it to be.

‘I like women who take the initiative,’ he said, and somehow managed to sound like he was talking about the weather. He was going to match her cool for cool if it killed him.

Lane’s shoulders seemed to slump—yet they didn’t actually move. ‘Then what is it?’ she asked, rebuttoning herself briskly.

‘There’s just no need to hurry.’

‘But there is,’ Lane burst out, then seemed to catch herself. ‘Look, please understand, I’m not giving you an order, or trying to coerce you, or telling you what you should be doing. This isn’t … isn’t personal.’

‘Not personal?’ It was news to him that sex wasn’t personal. He waited, fascinated, for what would come next.

‘No. It’s just that I’m giving a presentation on economic indicators in the morning and I therefore need to be in the office early. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to step things up, so I can … um … check … my slide deck … um … before … er … What are you doing?’ Because Adam, one slow step at a time, had come right up to her.

‘This,’ he said, and reached out a finger to run the tip of it around the edge of her lips. ‘One of the first things to learn is that you don’t have to do everything all at once.’ He circled his fingertip inwards. ‘Waiting can be extremely … exciting. Lesson … Number … Two.’

Oh, God, her lips were soft. He moved his finger again, running it down her chin to the top of her collar, dipping it just below the stiff white fabric to rest where her clavicle dipped in the centre, at the base of her neck. He had to pause there because his breathing was becoming erratic. And he was supposed to be the experienced one! His finger still hooked in her shirt, he kissed near one eye, then the other, until her eyes closed, then he softly kissed her eyelids.

He moved back again, but Lane’s eyes stayed closed. She was leaning forward, lips parted, showing him that he was her guide in this, that she was willing to be led. It was as though that uncomfortable scene at the office had never happened, as though she was giving herself to him, putting her trust in him. It set off a strange feeling inside him. A shivery feeling that he wanted to understand for both their sakes before he went any further. It was something to do with how she could be both tough and soft at the same time.

No, it was more than that. A surprising jumble of things was making him uneasy.

She was super smart, but intuitively as well as academically—she’d had him pegged at the office, despite her woeful lack of experience with men on the prowl, making him wonder how she could know what he was doing and yet … and yet not know him.

She was clearly not a sulker—because here she was, ceding control to him despite the way he’d behaved.

She was driven to succeed—and yes, Sarah had told him she was like that, but it was startling to see her so absolutely focused on the goal at hand; she’d set aside the embarrassment he’d caused her without going over it endlessly and making him grovel, because she just wanted to move on.

He had to admit the whole Lane Davis package at that particular moment was pretty damn classy, which made her anything but unappealing. He wanted to touch her, and touch her, and keep touching her, and—

Stop now! Adam’s brain ordered. But somehow, his finger moved again. Then both his hands were moving. One button … two … a third … a fourth, undone. One more.

Adam watched the rise and fall of her chest. The plain white cotton bra was bared to his gaze, the hint of her shockingly full breasts visible over the tops of the cups. The freckles meandering down her cleavage were a sweet imperfection on her otherwise perfect skin. His finger couldn’t seem to help sliding along their path. He wanted to kiss them, one by one.

Danger ahead, he could feel it.

***

Lane’s breath caught as his finger circled each dot in the row of freckles she’d always thought she hated … until now. His touch was so strange—his calloused fingertips like a raspy whisper against her skin. She could feel a spinning sensation inside her, but didn’t know if it was in her head or somewhere else. She wanted to open her eyes, watch what he was doing, learn what he was doing, see his face, but her eyelids felt so heavy. Her arms felt heavy, too. Even her breasts—especially her breasts—felt heavy, the tips so sensitive she wished his questing finger would touch her there and relieve the pressure.

But he didn’t. His finger dragged upwards, making a slow retreat along the same path, and Lane knew instinctively he would do no more that night. She opened her eyes then, biting down on a sigh of disappointment. Men weren’t supposed to pull away from you when you were making it so easy. Even she knew that.

Adam’s fingers moved against Lane’s flesh. He was refastening her buttons.

She sucked in her breath as his hands brushed the tops of her breasts. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand he do what she was paying him for, but the words jammed in her throat. She’d embarrassed herself enough for one night, oozing at him like an overripe Camembert cheese. And she suddenly couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought that she was forcing him to touch her when he clearly didn’t want to.

‘Please don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I can do it.’

She turned her back to him, her own hands moving into action. She was forcing the last button through its opening when Adam’s hands on her shoulders stopped her.

He turned her around and very deliberately undid the same five buttons. ‘I want to do it,’ he said huskily, and started doing the buttons up again while she stood rigid. ‘Just so you know, at the end of three months, I’m going to know every button of yours intimately. This is just the start.’

But Lane wasn’t fooled by the sexy voice. The buttoning/unbuttoning was nothing but a lesson in who was the boss. A mechanical lesson, putting her—the student who knew nothing—in her place. A lesson she’d bought and therefore had to value.

On that basis, she concentrated on not swooning towards him again and tried instead to analyse what it was about the way he smelled, the way his roughened fingertips felt, that made her feel so restless, so … edgy. She came up with nothing. She was clearly going to have to work harder, think more, feel less, divorce her body from her brain, if she was to make these lessons work for her.

Adam was frowning, his hands sliding up and down her arms as though he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. And then, abruptly, he stepped away, jamming his hands in his pockets.

‘I can’t make Sunday,’ he said. ‘If you want to uphold your two-night minimum, you’ll have to reorganize your weekend and meet me on Saturday.’

Lane said nothing. She was trying to work out why his voice sounded so sexy. It wasn’t as though he was saying anything seductive. It was nothing more than a calendar entry.

‘Okay, Lane?’ he asked.

The way he said her name was slow and husky. Sexy, even when he wasn’t saying anything specifically associated with sex.

‘Lane? I’ll come to you, okay? No surprises.’

It was always kind of gruff, his voice. Even when he was talking softly, like now. No surprises. Sweet of him to reassure her, since she’d told him she didn’t like surprises. Sweet. And sexy. And dark. She wondered if she could get the timbre of her own voice a little lower. Would that automatically make her sexier?

‘Lane?’

And now it was kind of urgent.

‘Lane!’

She blinked. Refocused. Blinked again. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of …’ How your voice will sound up close against my ear, how my voice will sound in your ear, when we— ‘Never mind. Just … thinking.’

Adam looked at her for a long moment. ‘You need to think less,’ he said.

‘Think less, feel more,’ she said. ‘Yes, I got that.’

‘So … Saturday?’

‘Saturday, yes, all right,’ she said.

Another long look from Adam. A half-step towards her, and then he said something under his breath, spun on his heel, and strode out of the room.

Lane heard the front door open … then close.

‘Saturday,’ she said, and looked down at herself—at her perfectly buttoned shirt, at her navy blue skirt, at her flat black shoes—and groaned. ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to go shopping.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Surely the green dress that had just been thrown over the top of the fitting room door was the only remaining untried outfit in the metropolis.

But apparently not, because two other dresses, a skirt and a satin top followed in quick succession.

Lane stifled a little scream. She only had herself to blame for this girly shopping trip. She’d thrown herself at Erica the minute Erica had arrived home from Los Angeles last night, garbled out what had happened in her absence and begged for her help choosing an appropriate wardrobe for her sex classes. Erica, with a martial look in her eye, had insisted on inviting Sarah along too, since Sarah had ‘already been so helpful’ in persuading Adam to take Lane on as his private student, and now …

Well, now, having spent three hours being pelted with assorted items of clothing, with only a black cocktail frock to show for the girls’ combined efforts, Lane was thinking longingly of her navy blue suit. And the fact that Erica and Sarah were whispering furiously to each other every time they banished Lane to a fitting room wasn’t helping to reconcile her to the prospect of any more shopping.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put together the mishmash of phrases Lane managed to overhear and conclude that she was the topic under discussion. Well, her and Adam Quinn and their ‘ridiculous contract’.

‘I can’t take much more of this,’ Lane called out to the girls, who answered her by lobbing a leather jacket into the room.

Dispiritedly, Lane slipped the green dress over her head and stretched it into place. She looked at herself in the mirror and had to stifle another little scream. Awful. Scary, even. She looked like a green bean with breasts.

How did Erica and Sarah both manage to consistently look like they’d walked off a high fashion runway no matter what they were wearing? Lane was closer to a model shape than either of her friends—Erica being more voluptuous and Sarah being almost too tiny to be real—so why did everything she tried on look silly on her?

She slipped the leather jacket on over the dress. It didn’t improve the look.

Time to admit this was a waste of time. When she thought about it logically, it wasn’t as though David Bennett had ever appeared to be turned off by the suits she wore to work; he saw her in them practically every day and still managed to flirt with her! So if she packed away the momentary panic engendered on Wednesday night by Adam and his two undone buttons, wouldn’t she be better served by buying a couple of negligees to replace her white cotton nightgowns and leaving it at that? Things for going to bed?

She couldn’t wear that black cocktail dress to bed! She didn’t need that black cocktail dress at all—and certainly not for the next three months. It wasn’t as though she’d be going to a cocktail party with Adam Quinn!

So she would go out there, show the girls this current fashion disaster, then she’d insist on going home. After one last disgusted look at herself in the mirror, she exited the fitting room without even bothering to brace for the verdict.

Erica’s hastily bitten lip did not suggest anything complimentary would be forthcoming. ‘Maybe take off the jacket …?’ Erica suggested.

Lane took off the jacket.

‘The colour’s nice,’ Sarah ventured, ever the optimist.

Lane raised disbelieving eyebrows.

‘Well, it is,’ Sarah insisted.

‘We’re making a mistake with the tight sheaths,’ Erica said. ‘You’ve got the boobs for them but the leanness everywhere else isn’t screaming sex.’

‘Who said I wanted to scream sex?’ Lane asked, a little alarmed. ‘I don’t want to scream sex. I don’t want to scream anything. I don’t want to scream.’

‘Then what was the point of hiring Adam Quinn?’ Erica asked.

‘Not to … to scream,’ Lane said.

‘Oh God help us all, do we have to do this?’ Sarah, covering her eyes with a hand.

‘The thing is, Lane, there’s screaming and then there’s screaming,’ Erica said, giving the hem of the green dress a slight tug. ‘And I thought this little fashion expedition was about putting you in the hands of Adam Quinn to entice a certain type of scream out of you.’ She stood back and looked Lane up and down again. ‘But this definitely isn’t going to do the trick, so try the pale pink silk dress Sarah chose for you instead. It’s kind of floaty and romantic, and if you cinch it with this—’ she handed over a thick, dark gold belt ‘—we might be onto something.’

‘Pink?’ Lane asked doubtfully. ‘With carrot hair?’

Erica shook a finger at her. ‘Stop channelling Jeanne-the-Martyr! I keep telling you, your hair isn’t carrot, it’s scarlet. Girls spend a fortune at the hairdresser trying to get that exact shade of red. And you will be very surprised how lovely pale pink will look with it. Now, in!’

‘All right, but if I try it on, can we go home?’ Lane asked.

‘No. But if I like it and you buy it, we can drink margaritas. And I will even consent to going that hellhole bar you and Sarah like—especially if we can talk more about the elusive Mr Quinn.’

‘He’s not elusive,’ Sarah said reproachfully. ‘He’s just my brother, and not, as I keep telling you, a psychopath.’

‘Be that as it may, he’s still an unknown quantity and—as far as I’m concerned—and unmet quantity, so if I’m trusting my best friend’s tender heart to him, I need reassurance.’ She gave Lane a little push towards the fitting room. ‘So in please, margaritas and conversation await.’

Lane stood her ground. ‘As long as you understand I’m not dressing myself to please Adam.’

Another push. ‘In, Lane.’

Lane reluctantly re-entered the fitting room, and as she closed the door she heard Sarah whisper, ‘What are you doing, Erica? Don’t talk about hearts. Adam’s a commitment-phobe; he’s not interested in hearts!’

‘Shh!’ A hiss from Erica.

‘Well, to listen to you talk, anyone would think he was …’ But Sarah’s voice dropped so low at that intriguing point that strain though Lane did, she could only hear a snatched word or two after that.

Anyone would think he was what? How she wished she knew. Maybe if she knew, she would have found a way to entice him into having sex with her on Wednesday night instead of being left like a wilting wallflower.

Lane stripped off the diabolical green sheath and yanked the pink dress down over her head. Really, who cared what he was? This was a paid job for him. She didn’t have to entice him; the onus was on him to teach her to entice him. So he’d better find a way to get the lessons underway quick smart so they could all relax.

She glanced in the mirror, preparing for a shudder, and surprised herself with a spontaneous smile instead. She looked more closely. The pink really did suit her! She reached for the zipper at the back and tugged it up, only for it to jam halfway. She jiggled it, then tugged it, then jiggled it again, trying to ease it up, then down, then up. No joy; it wouldn’t budge.

At that moment she saw the dress as a metaphor for her life. The dress was Adam, chosen for her but not by her, and although it seemed to suit her at first glance, something was derailing her attempt to wear it. She couldn’t reverse the zipper, but she couldn’t move forward with it either, and she was stuck on her own with the problem while her friends tried to find other options for her. Damn zipper!

Just as she thought she was going to have to call Erica and Sarah in to help her, the zip unjammed and she managed to slide it all the way up. Victory was hers. She smiled to herself. Yes, victory was hers, just as it would be in three months’ time, without her friends having to step in to save her.

She grabbed the gold belt Erica had insisted on and positioned it around her waist. Instantly, she imagined Adam’s big hands there and shivered deliciously. It was a short step to thinking about his hands under the belt, under the dress. On her naked flesh. That was what she wanted: his hands, on her. And his mouth, she wanted his mouth sending her mindless as he kissed her. And she just had this feeling … this feeling that if she couldn’t find her way with Adam, she’d never find it.

On that basis, she couldn’t let her friends’ misgivings stop her. She wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from doing this. She was unsticking the zip that was her stalled sex life on her own and going all the way up with it.

She gave the belt tug, tightening it so enthusiastically an ‘Ouch’ flew out of her mouth.

The whispering outside stopped abruptly.

‘Laney?’ Erica. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she called back, loosening the belt a notch. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll be out to show you.’ She looked at herself in the mirror and nodded. ‘Coming out now.’

There was a moment of silence as she walked out and favoured the girls with a slow twirl. But she found, for once, she didn’t need their approval. She liked the dress without needing anyone else’s opinion.

Still, it was nice to see Sarah and Erica smiling conspiratorially at each other like proud parents. Better than the tension-fuelled whisper-fest they’d been indulging in all day.

Erica came up behind her, ripped out her hair elastic and turned her to the larger mirror. She smoothed the straight fall of Lane’s hair. ‘Darling, if you wear this with my chocolate suede high heels, I’m going to want to do you,’ she said. ‘If only I could be there tonight to make sure Adam’s worth the transformation. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to let me stay?’

‘Very sure.’

‘Damn!’

‘And just to be one hundred per cent clear, I’m buying this dress for me, not Adam,’ Lane added.

‘Aha,’ Erica said, patently unconvinced.

‘I mean it.’

‘Aha.’

‘Erica!’

‘All right, all right. Go. Change. Pay. Margaritas. Talk.’

***

Erica barely waited until she’d ordered a double round of drinks (to avoid re-order interruptions) from Glory, the barmaid who was practically a fixture at Midnight Madness, before fixing Lane with a laser stare. ‘If you say one more time you’re not dressing to please Adam, I’m going to cut up every white shirt in your wardrobe. You’re deflecting.’

‘I’m not deflecting!’ Lane insisted. ‘I’m really not dressing to please him.’

‘Hide the scissors tonight, Lane!’ Erica sing-songed.

‘I mean not … not as such. Of course I’m interested in Adam’s reaction to the pink dress, but only as a means of comparing it to his reaction the other two times he’s seen me. It will be instructional to note if there’s more of a spark there.’

‘Oh instructional,’ Erica said, with an eye roll. ‘In that case—’

‘Hang on,’ Sarah interrupted her, reaching out a refocusing hand to grip Erica’s wrist. ‘Are you saying there hasn’t been a spark, Lane?’

‘Not on his part, no.’

‘Not on his part,’ Sarah repeated, ‘but what about on your part?’

And—bang!—into Lane’s head popped an image of Adam tracing a fingertip around her lips. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, as her own fingers came up to press against her lips, which had started to tingle at the memory. The memory kept going … his fingers moving down over her chin … to her collarbone … to her buttons … undoing them … that line of freckles. ‘Oh,’ she breathed again. Would the pink silk dress have made a difference? If she’d been wearing it on Wednesday, would he have pulled down the zip and dragged it off her body? Put his hands on her skin? His mouth? God. Oh, my God.

‘Okay you’re scaring me, Lane,’ Sarah said, and she really did sound fearful. ‘What’s the “God-oh-my-God” about?’

Lane snapped back to the present. ‘Did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean to.’

‘Well you did,’ Sarah said. ‘And I don’t want you to “God-oh-my-God” like that about Adam. I warned him, I really did, not to do this to you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever it is that makes girls say “God-oh-my-God” about him.’

‘Do all girls say that about him?’

‘As far as I can tell.’

‘Oh! It’s just that he … he … he …’

‘He …’ Sarah’s eyes were wide with burgeoning dread.

‘He …?’ Erica’s were wide with unholy joy. ‘Don’t make me beg, Laney.’

‘It’s nothing, really. Just that the other night I started taking off my clothes—’

‘Oh my G-o-o-o-o-d.’ Sarah, melting down, covered her face with her hands. ‘No, no! I don’t need to hear this.’

‘—and he stopped me—’

‘Really don’t need to hear this.’

‘—so I did the buttons back up.’

Sarah peeked between her fingers. ‘Okay, I’m recovering.’

‘And he undid them again.’

‘Gah!’ Sarah’s fingers closed up again, eyes shielded. ‘I can’t take it.’

Glory chose that moment to deposit six margaritas on the bar in front of them.

‘Ah, thank you, Glory, what a sense of timing you have,’ Erica said, with a travesty of a smile.

Glory half tossed her head, as though they weren’t worth a full toss, grunted something unintelligible, and left them to it.

‘Okay, hold that thought, Lane, and stop moaning, Sarah,’ Erica said, looking around. She nodded at a table by the window. ‘Let’s grab that table over there—that one with the two stools. We can gaze out at the hustle and bustle of grungy old King Street while we contemplate why we keep coming to this bar when the cocktails are so bad and the service is worse.’

‘It’s our old uni hangout,’ Lane said.

‘And if either of you was still at university, I might—but only might—understand,’ Erica said. And then she grinned at Sarah. ‘But maybe it’s serendipity. Adam lives here in Newtown, doesn’t he, Sarah? Maybe he’ll walk in off the street.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Not a chance. He hates this place.’

‘Then maybe we can go and call on him.’

‘No!’ Sarah and Lane burst out together.

Erica sighed. ‘I’ll meet him one day, might as well get it over with.’

‘Why is there any need for you to meet him?’ Lane said.

Erica blinked at her. ‘Um … because he’s going to be an important fixture in your life for three full months.’

‘So was Chao, and for way longer than three months.’

‘And who the hell is Chao that I should want to meet him? Or is Chao a her?’

‘He’s a him. My Mandarin teacher. Who you never insisted on meeting.’

Erica opened her mouth … then closed it. She looked at Sarah. ‘I’m not sure what to say to that,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure what to say to anything at this point,’ Sarah said, and slinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder, picked up her two drinks and made her way to their chosen table.

Lane and Sarah took the two stools that were already there while Erica snagged a third from a group of guys nearby with a swing of her hair and a come-hither smile that managed to charm them out of the stool without being quite come-hither enough to make them actually come hither.

‘Now you see, I need to be able to replicate that,’ Lane said, and flung her head in a circle in a poor facsimile of Eric’s stylish swish.

‘To start with, you’ll have to get rid of that elastic band,’ Erica told her.

Lane reached a defensive hand up to her ponytail, and Erica laughed, then sighed. ‘If you won’t even take out the band, I’m not sure what the point of the pink silk is,’ she said. ‘But let’s get back to the undone buttons anyway.’

‘Do we have to?’ Sarah asked.

‘You started all this,’ Erica pointed out.

Lane took a sip of her margarita. ‘I’m afraid the undone buttons were done straight up again, so it’s not a very exciting finale.’

‘By him?’ Erica asked.

‘By him. And the lesson was over.’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘My navy blue suit.’

‘And the other time?’

‘My navy blue suit.’

Erica pantomimed banging her head on the table. ‘So. Much. Becomes. Clear.’

‘Clothing is incidental in our case,’ Lane said, in her own defence. ‘I’m paying him, remember?’

‘If you really believe clothing is incidental,’ Erica said, ‘I want to know why we’ve spent the past three hours looking for something for you to wear tonight. At your instigation I might add.’

‘It’s … complicated.’

‘You’re a smart girl, Lane. I’m sure you can find the words.’

Lane took another sip of margarita. ‘Because the button-unbutton episode got me thinking, which is what a lesson is supposed to do.’

‘Thinking about …?’ Erica asked.

‘David Bennett.’

‘Did you know we all have a tell when we lie? Sarah’s is easy—she blushes. Yours is more subtle. Your eyes flick to the left.’

‘My eyes aren’t flicking,’ Lane said.

‘No?’

‘No!’ Lane insisted, and tried hard to keep them still.

‘Okaaay, keep going and I will ignore that little twitch of your right eyelid as it struggles under the pressure of not flicking.’

Lane took a deep breath. ‘The point is, clothing won’t be incidental when it comes to David, but with Adam … Well, with Adam practice will make perfect, so I might as well practise.’

‘Practise,’ Erica said, and licked a patch of salt off the rim of her glass. ‘So we went shopping for three hours because in three months’ time, when we will be in an entirely different season, you want to look good for David Bennett. It has nothing to do with seeing Adam Quinn tonight.’ She smiled. ‘Well, good to know the legendary David Bennett is still in the picture, anyway. I was starting to wonder. You know, since the only guy’s name I’ve heard since I got back is Adam Quinn.’

Lane frowned. ‘Of course David’s still in the picture. It’s just …’

Erica cocked an eyebrow. ‘Just …?’

‘Well you only got back last night. And ever since I told you about Adam, all your questions have been about him, so of course it’s his name you’re hearing. That’s all.’ She forced out a laugh. ‘There’s no mystery.’

‘No mystery. Got it. Just a job. Got it. Nothing more than a practice run. Got it. And you may or may not decide to wear your blue suit tonight and maybe just show Adam the dress because it doesn’t matter if he likes it or not and it’s no big deal if he doesn’t undo your buttons.’

‘Zipper.’

‘Zipper?’

‘The dress has a zipper, not buttons.’

‘Ah, I see. You’ve thought it all out.’

‘No. I mean yes. I mean … no? I mean of course I’ll care

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