For Better, For Worse, For Ever?

The first look, the first touch, the first kiss… Is there anything better than the beginning of a new relationship? Not for Caitlyn March—self-confessed relationship junkie. Now she’s sworn off “forever” for good. Three broken engagements make it clear that she—and her fickle heart—are not to be trusted….

Enter Dax Bainbridge—the most deliciously handsome man she has ever met! He’s a man with enough oomph to make her forget her vows to steer clear of romance, but luckily his rules of engagement are simple. There’s no ring on offer—all he’s interested in is one unbelievably hot fling.…

“Are you free?”

Free? But it had been a one-night stand. Hadn’t it? “For what purpose?”

“You want specifics?”

“Sure. Why not?”

When his voice slid through the phone, deep and slow, the vibrations sent tingles all over her skin.

“I was imagining we’d...” He paused. Long enough that she held her breath. “Eat. And later, much later, once I’ve loosened my tie, and you’ve kicked your shoes off under the table, and we’re both nicely pickled on some excellent wine, together we would do...dessert.”

Somehow she managed to keep her voice from cracking when she said, “So you’re asking me on a date.”

Laughter rolled through the phone. “I’m asking you to eat dinner with me, but if you’d prefer to call it that—”

“Nooo!” Not a date!

“No?” he repeated after several long beats.

Caitlyn bit her lip. Dax was a man she’d taken home from a bar. For sex. Not as some kind of Hail Mary that might lead to something more. Her strident rejection of the word date had given her an accidental out, if that’s what she wanted.

Was it what she wanted?

In her previous life, Australian author ALLY BLAKE was at times a cheerleader, a math tutor, a dental assistant and a shop assistant. In this life Ally is a bestselling, multi-award-winning novelist who has been published in more than twenty languages, with over two million books sold worldwide.

She married her gorgeous husband in Las Vegas—no Elvis in sight, though Tony Curtis did put in a special appearance—and now Ally and her family, including three rambunctious toddlers, share a property in the leafy western suburbs of Brisbane, with kookaburras, cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets and the occasional creepy-crawly. When not writing she makes coffees that never get consumed, eats too many M&M’s, attempts yoga, devours The West Wing reruns, reads every spare minute she can and cheers ardently for the Collingwood Magpies footy team.

You can find out more at her website, www.allyblake.com.

The Rules of Engagement

Ally Blake

~ It Starts with a Touch... ~

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one’s for fairy dust.

May it sparkle for you, too.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE Sand Bar, a cool little club in a tucked-away lane off Melbourne’s Chapel Street, was pumping that Saturday night.

‘He’s cute!’ said Franny, shouting to be heard.

Caitlyn played with her sparkly chandelier earrings as she stared dreamily at the buff Cutey Patootey in the T-shirt and jeans at the other end of the bar. ‘Isn’t he just? And for an outdoorsy-type guy he actually has really nice hands. I’m sure he plays the piano.’

Franny laughed into her cocktail sending the flamingo swizzle-stick spinning. ‘If he plays the piano then the doodles on the notepad beside my phone make me the next Picasso.’

Caitlyn dropped her hand to her drink and blinked at Franny. ‘Meaning?’

‘Only you would see husband potential in a first date.’

‘I never! I—’

‘You know you do!’ Franny said, cutting Caitlyn off. ‘You see hearts and flowers, when what you actually need is a guy who can keep you in line. Who doesn’t let you get away with the crap you usually do. One who dances to the beat of his own drum, not yours.’

Caitlyn glanced back at Cutey Patootey just as he sucked in his washboard stomach as a pair of bouncy blondes swayed past. Her mouth twitched. ‘Believe me, I’m not hearing wedding bells this time.’

Franny gave her a nudge, then out of the corner of her mouth said, ‘But have you heard bedsprings creaking?’

Caitlyn smacked her hard on the upper arm. ‘We met a week ago.’

Franny shook her head as if that was no kind of answer, which in Frannyland it wasn’t.

Caitlyn, on the other hand, wasn’t about to jump into bed with some random guy just because he gave her that sweet rush that came from meeting someone new. That had never been her bag. For her, the attraction was all about the delicious slow burn at the beginning of a relationship. The shy glances, and first touches and stolen kisses, and that build of delicious tension ’til they could no longer keep their hands off one another—what a thrill! So much better than the reality that always came later. So Cutey Patootey was going to have to wait.

He glanced back at the girls and grinned; big, brawny, honestly a little less erudite than she might have liked. But Franny was right; with the dimples and spiky blond hair he was ridiculously cute.

With a self-satisfied smile, Caitlyn motioned to Franny she was about to make a beeline for the ladies’ room for a freshen up. She sucked in her stomach and ducked and weaved her way through the heaving Saturday night club crowd.

Once through she let out her stomach and craned her neck to see which direction the rest rooms had gone, when she turned and smacked face first into a wall.

At least it felt like a wall. That was until she reached out and grabbed it and discovered it was warm, and slightly yielding, and wearing a suit.

She tried to push off it only to find the crowd pressing at her back.

‘Whoa,’ she said, half laughing, half hanging on for dear life as she righted herself using the wall as her guide.

And then she looked up. And up. And up.

Dark hair, dark eyes, dark expression. Hello Handsome.

She stood staring into those dark eyes for a long time. Seconds? Minutes?

‘So sorry,’ she finally said, as breathless as though she’d had the air knocked from her lungs.

Then just when she decided he wasn’t going to answer her back, a deep dark velvet voice said, ‘Whatever for?’

She swallowed. Tried to anyway. Turned out her mouth had dried up.

Shaking her fringe from her eyes and feigning a confidence that was feeling a tad shaky right about then, she looked right into his eyes, and said, ‘I don’t make a habit of throwing myself into the arms of passing strangers.’

‘Yet you’re so good at it.’

She laughed, and her breasts pressed against him. His hard warm chest. She felt a weakening at the backs of her knees. She curled her hands tighter around his lapels.

She wished she could see his eyes better. To see if he was smiling too. The club wasn’t exactly dark, but he somehow seemed to swallow the light around him.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘so it’s a move. Not an original one. A classic, really. And I’m sticking by it.’

‘Mmm. There’s a reason why classics become classics,’ he drawled, his rich velvety voice making her shoulders roll as though someone were running a slow finger right down her spine.

‘Why’s that?’

‘They work.’

She could feel the beat of the music in her stomach. Or perhaps it was her pulse, thumping hard and fast through her centre. Unless it was his pulse. His thumping. They were pressed close enough for it to be possible.

‘Caitlyn March,’ she said, figuring it impolite to be quite so plastered against the man and not at least introduce herself. She unpeeled a hand to shake his.

‘Dax Bainbridge.’

‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Likewise.’

The house lights flashed at that moment—on off on off—in time with an eighties dance hit and she finally saw his face. Gorgeous didn’t even begin to cut it. It was the kind of face she’d have immediately looked away from if caught staring for fear of public drooling.

And then he smiled.

It wasn’t a grin by any stretch of the imagination. But the serious cheek creased in the kind of way that set a girl’s heart to racing, and the dark eyes gleamed, but it was plenty enough to make Caitlyn feel as if she’d just been clubbed over the back of the head.

Her brain became a fog. She could see the wave and sway of dancing clubbers out of the corner of her eye, and it felt as though they were moving in slow motion. The steady thump of the music pulsed in her stomach. Lower. Boom, boom, boom.

Were the two of them swaying in time with the music now? If not, it felt as if they sure as heck should be.

‘Are you a dancer?’ she asked. But when she felt him take a breath to answer, she got in first. ‘I meant do you get your dance moves on at places like this? Not professionally, of course. I didn’t mean you look like a ballerina or anything. And I’m not sure it would be physically possible to achieve head-spins in that suit.’

No response, not that she blamed him. Though his chest rumbled deliciously against hers. Was he laughing? God, she was literally having to stop herself from breathing the guy in he smelled so delicious, and he was laughing.

She knew she ought to just let him be, to back away slowly and go...wherever it was she’d been planning to go when she stumbled upon him. Where was that again? But he smelled so good, felt so solid, gave her such an array of the most delicious goose bumps, she couldn’t.

Literally.

She realised then that his arms were around her. Not inappropriately in any way, shape or form. The song playing was the kind that always had half the nightclub trying to squeeze onto a dance floor three sizes too small and he was merely keeping her from smacking into any other nightclubbers. Or walls for that matter. It was a gentlemanly thing.

She was bumped, jostled, nudged closer. His arms tightened. The crowd moved away. His arm did not. And suddenly it didn’t feel so gentlemanly after all.

He shifted his weight. Or maybe she’d shifted hers. Either way when the shifting stopped they were closer again. Her thighs were introduced to the hardness of his. His belt buckle got to know the dent of her belly button. Her blood rushed so hard and fast through her, her head had begun to spin.

She felt as if the floor had dropped out from under her and she was balancing on the edge. Like if the guy moved the wrong way—or more specifically the right way—she might leap into his arms, wrap her legs around him and never let go. He was so strong, so warm, he had her wondering if there was a back alley to the place. A hard, private wall up against which he and she could—

And then she remembered the guy at the bar. The guy with whom she was on a date. Whatshisname? Seriously, what was his name?

Honestly, in the end, it was less that than the fact that her toes had begun to go numb from standing on them in some kind of effort not to feel completely swamped by the man’s height that she lowered shakily into her high heels, uncurled her clenched fingers from his jacket, peeled herself from his person, and took a slow and unsteady step away.

The dance song came to a halt. Something slower and softer moaned through the overworked speakers. The strobing lights disappeared and the room was lit with a soft even glow.

‘Well, thanks for not letting me fall,’ she said, still needing to half shout to be heard.

‘Thank you for letting me not let you fall.’

She managed to laugh despite the strange tumbling inside her stomach. Then his cheek did the sexy crease thing again, and she might even have said something like, Lovely. But no. She couldn’t have. That would be embarrassing along the lines of having her dress caught up in her undies.

She discreetly checked her dress. All good.

‘Right.’ She flapped her hands over her shoulders in the general direction of the bar. ‘I’d better get back to my friend before she thinks I’ve been abducted by little green men. Not that she’s some kind of rabid believer in UFOs, or those kinds of things. Though once, late one night, we did see something odd—’

Stop! Go! Now!

‘Okay, then. Bye!’ she said.

He acknowledged her with a bow of his head. A small smile. And a glint in his eyes that seemed a hell of a lot like the kind of shockingly hot attraction she was dealing very badly with herself at that very moment.

Caitlyn curtsied. Curtsied! Then stepped back, bumped into someone, spun on her heel, apologised profusely, smacked another dancer, turned to wave to Dax again so that his final impression of her wasn’t her elbowing a stranger in the head, to find he was gone.

She stood a moment in the middle of the dance floor, feeling a little adrift, actually.

When a group of grinning guys in matching ‘Pub Crawl’ T-shirts surrounded her, she came to quick smart. She ducked under their waving arms and aimed her unsteady feet in the direction of Franny.

As her knees shook she couldn’t remember having such an instantaneously intense response to meeting a man in, well, ever. All that from a bit of body contact, a smouldering gaze, and a five-minute almost-conversation. No shy glances, and cheeky first touches there. It had felt as if a bomb had gone off inside her. She held a hand to her stomach to quell the lingering ache.

Alas, intensity was the absolute last thing she wanted or needed. She’d lived through enough intensity to last her a lifetime during her latest break-up.

George hadn’t taken it well, poor love. No wonder, he’d been so sure of her he’d gone so far as to give her his grandmother’s engagement ring. But panic had set in, as it inevitably did, and she’d ended it.

She shook it off, literally shimmying away the discomfort of the whole incident, which was draping itself over her like an old shawl that smelled of mothballs. Things were different now. She was different. At least she was trying to be.

At first she’d tried swearing off men for good. But holing up on the couch every Saturday night had sent her nearly around the bend. Now she’d decided, with Franny’s encouragement, that what she needed wasn’t self-enforced sobriety, just some simple honest-to-goodness fun. A light, easy-going, melt-in-the-mouth kind of guy; sorbet to cleanse her romantic palate.

‘What was that?’ Franny asked, practically bouncing on the barstool.

Caitlyn slid onto her barstool and feigned fascination for her now lukewarm cocktail. ‘What was what?’

‘You and the Suit, that’s what. I thought you were going to tear one another’s clothes off right in the middle of the dance floor. Who is he?’

‘Dax...Somebody.’

‘Well, Cutey Patootey over there might be a cute guy. But that one was all Man.’

Caitlyn glanced at her date to find him sculling beer with the Pub Crawl guys. She winced, and turned back to Franny. ‘You say man like it needs a capital M.’

‘Go ahead and capitalise the whole word.’

When Franny was quiet for longer than Caitlyn thought possible, she looked up to find her friend staring across the room. Caitlyn couldn’t help but follow her lead.

And there he was, Dax...Somebody, standing in a group on the other side of the club. He watched in seeming bemusement as a woman about her age wearing fairy wings was waving her arms at him as if she were about to take off.

Taller than everyone else in sight. Broad too. Dark hair, dark suit. Serious expression. As if he secretly ran the whole world all on his own. As if he always got his way.

Franny was right, he was all Man. Caitlyn breathed in deep through her nose, looking for and finding the tang of his scent, which still lingered on her skin. And just like that the vibration was back, fizzing as potently inside her as it had the moment she’d recognised the heat in his eyes as a direct mirror of hers.

But no matter how much her body was telling her yes, her head knew he was too much for her. All that intensity and heat was a banquet when all she could stomach right then was sorbet.

Pity.

Dax...Somebody discreetly checked his watch, then glanced about the room, his gaze almost colliding with hers.

Cheeks as red and hot as sun-ripened tomatoes, Caitlyn spun away and grabbed Franny by the arm, pulling her friend from a trance.

‘Stop staring,’ Caitlyn hissed as though he might hear her. ‘You’ll get RSI.’

‘It’ll be worth it.’

* * *

It was after two a.m. at the hazy, noisy, malodorous nightclub when Dax decided he’d put in an appropriate amount of time at his sister Lauren’s birthday bash and was quietly working out the fastest route to the door.

His time was rarely his own. He still had a half dozen endowment proposals to which he needed to give the final stamp of approval and foreign markets to check before he could even think about sleep.

But his feet refused to budge. They were fixed to the floor as if they’d been bolted there, and it had nothing to do with the sticky remnants of a night’s worth of spilt booze. He only had a certain someone with dreamy brown eyes to blame.

Dreamy brown eyes that locked on and didn’t let go. And warm skin that had felt like velvet beneath his hands. Then there was that mouth. A soft pink mouth that was made for being kissed, and thoroughly.

Caitlyn...Something. Even her name had him shifting in his shoes. Shoes that remained stuck, while his eyes began to rove.

The crowd of loose sweaty bodies rolling with the beat of some obscure song shifted and swayed, revealing glimpses of faraway corners of the club, before swallowing them up in the writhing mass once more.

Dax ran a hand hard and fast up the back of his head, attempting to shake loose the tension coiling through him. A glimpse was all he wanted. A flash of auburn hair and pale skin and warm curves, a memory to take home to his

empty bed.

The crowd parted. And there she was. Perched on a stool at the bar. Hair shimmering in the down lights, legs crossed, high heel bouncing up and down, shoulders bare in that so-sweet-it-was-sexy little dress.

The next thing he noticed was the other half-dozen pairs of male eyes zeroed her way. Seedy eyes with one thing on the minds behind them. How a woman like her expected to make it out of a place like that alive was anyone’s guess.

Perhaps he ought to make sure she did. Now that he knew her name he felt a kind of responsibility over her. Especially when he knew how much trouble that brazen little mouth of hers could get her into.

That mouth...

His suit began to feel too snug. Too hot. He shifted uncomfortably but it didn’t help. If he was honest with himself he knew there was only one thing that would.

He’d never liked loose ends. Never believed some things were better left unsaid. If he wanted any kind of legacy it would be that he was a man who always finished what he started.

His shoes unstuck and he set off—

‘Man, you look like you have fleas,’ Rob, Lauren’s husband, said as he clapped a hand on Dax’s shoulder, yanking him back onto his heels.

Dax breathed out hard through his nostrils like a racehorse locked into the starting gate.

‘Or an itch needs scratching,’ Rob said, motioning towards the bar. Towards her. ‘Saw you two out there dancing before. Who is she?’

Caitlyn. Again her name slid through his mind like a siren song. He shoved his hand into the pockets of his suit trousers and levelled his gaze at his brother-in-law. ‘There was no dancing, merely a great deal of crowd jostling, and I made sure the lady didn’t get trampled.’

‘Right,’ Rob said, a grin spreading across his face. ‘Jostling.’

Dax realised too late that knowing who Rob was talking about had been his big mistake. He dragged his eyes back to the dance floor. ‘It was quite a crowd.’

‘Or quite a girl.’

Quite a girl? At the mere thought of the end result of the crowd-jostling, heat broke through him like a wildfire with a forest full of dry scrub in its path. Dax sought out a bunch of leg hairs and tugged, but it was to no avail.

Brutal honesty was.

She was a girl who clearly had a defective self-defence mechanism if the way she’d melted against him, a complete stranger, was anything to go by. She’d do better with the nice guy, the Robs of the world, not a hard-headed realist like him, despite the sexual attraction they no doubt shared.

It wasn’t enough to warrant pursuit. Especially when he knew nothing about her apart from the fact that she could get his blood boiling with a mere glance. The Bainbridge name brought with it certain advantages. But those same advantages attracted elements best left alone.

His eyes sought out Lauren, who was laughing and dancing. She’d been so young at the time of their parents’ accident. So disorientated by the avalanche of chaos they’d left behind and therefore a perfect target to the sharks who’d smelled blood in the water.

It felt so long ago now; he twenty-two, and saddled with not only a shell-shocked sixteen-year-old sister he’d barely known but the rotting carcass of his family’s hundred-year-old business. The future he’d imagined for himself gone in a puff of smoke.

He coughed, the haze before his eyes for real. Someone had gone overboard with the club’s smoke machine. Through the smog his eyes disobediently sought out the shapely outline of an auburn-haired spitfire.

His self-preservation instincts had been well honed. They’d had to be. Never again would he be as unsuspecting, as stunned to the very core, as he had been by the selfish and systematic fraud his parents had perpetrated so slyly before their deaths.

Though if Caitlyn was a shark in damsel’s clothing then he’d change his name to Susan.

Unlike plenty before her, she hadn’t looked at him as if he was the answer to her girlhood dreams of diamonds and furs. More like she was a diagnosed sweetaholic and he was the biggest doughnut she’d ever seen.

He felt hot, he felt tight, he felt wide awake. As turn-ons went it appeared her particular brand of upfront, in-your-face, sexual frankness was it.

Could he? Should he?

He glanced at his watch and frowned, unsure if that one move had been a mistake, or his saving grace. It was nearing half-past two. He had work to do. And it had been a long time since his time had been his own.

‘Right, I’m off,’ Dax said, overly loud to his own ears though the vigour was likely lost in the thump of the booming beat.

He patted Rob hard on the back and searched out his sister. He found her bouncing from one foot to the other, the antenna on her head and fairy wings on her back bobbing right along with her.

‘Hey, brother! Don’t tell me you’re off.’

‘I’m afraid I must. I have a conference call at six.’

‘So stay ’til then. Get your dancing feet on.’ She did a solo tango to illustrate.

‘Alas I left my tap shoes in my other car.’

Tango done, she levelled him with a stare. ‘At least promise me you had fun?’

‘More than I can possibly say.’ Having a nubile redhead wrapped about him a definite highlight, though he knew better than to let Lauren in on that score.

‘Fine,’ she said, sighing dramatically. ‘Go. Get your beauty sleep. It wouldn’t behove you, or the foundation, if you appeared anything less than implacable.’

After blowing him a kiss, she shimmied and boogied away into the crowd. Whatever things he might wish to change about his past, bringing her up wasn’t one of them.

Dax resisted the urge to look towards the bar one last time and turned towards the exit.

Something slithered down his neck. It felt as if it had legs long enough to belong to a bird-eating spider, so he flapped his suit jacket madly ’til whatever it was either flew away or was summarily squished.

He took a step, only to feel his foot slipping out from under him. He caught himself just in time, took a moment to find his breath, then lifted his shoe to find something twinkling at him from the dark wooden floor.

Braving the possibility of disease by letting his fingers stray that close to the layer of sticky ooze, Dax bent to pick it up.

It was long. It was shiny. And it was no bird-eating

spider.

* * *

‘What are you doing?’ Franny asked. ‘The cab’s waiting.’

Caitlyn, who was at that moment on her hands and knees—with paper napkins keeping all four from actually touching the precarious Sand Bar floor—blew a strand of hair from her mouth. ‘I’ve lost an earring.’

Franny threw out her hands in supplication. ‘It could be anywhere by now!’

‘Which is why I need to get a move on looking for it.’ With a shiver Caitlyn flicked a stray piece of random cocktail fruit from her wrist. ‘They were Gran’s. The chandeliers with the little flowers at the clasp.’

‘Oh,’ Franny said, looking suitably understanding. She knew the history those earrings had. Still she glanced longingly towards the door where the guy she’d spent half the last hour dirty dancing with was waiting to take her to heaven and back.

They’d promised to drop Caitlyn home on the way as her lift had evaporated once Cutey Patootey was no longer around to escort her. He’d disappeared into the wee hours after Caitlyn had made it clear, by not letting him stick his tongue in her ear, that she wasn’t going home with him that evening.

Caitlyn wasn’t all that disappointed. Not about that. Her gran’s earrings on the other hand... They meant something deeply. Her heart clenched hard at the thought of losing them for ever.

‘You go,’ she said, giving Franny a shove on the ankle, which was the only part she could reach from the floor. ‘I could be a while.’

Franny bit her lip, looked from Caitlyn’s no doubt pathetic position and back to the brooding blond in the leather jacket lounging mysteriously by the door.

‘Go!’

‘All right!’ Franny blushed furiously, then leant over the bar, getting the attention of the bartender. ‘Ivan! See to it our mate Cait makes it safely to a cab all right? And if anyone hands in an earring, it’s hers.’

Ivan peered at Caitlyn, grinned and nodded.

Franny said, ‘I won’t be home tonight. Usual place tomorrow for a warm down?’

‘If I must.’

Franny grinned, and took off at a sprint.

Caitlyn spent the next ten minutes peering at the floor and getting nowhere. Every minute down there had felt like an hour and the further she got, the more concerned she became.

She and her dad had picked out those earrings for her gran when she was eleven years old. No matter how short a stay he’d had at home between tours, he’d always made time for just the two of them, but she remembered that trip to the shops with him with such clarity. The next time he’d gone on tour he’d never come back.

Something glinted at her under a barstool! She pulled to a crouch, tucked herself into ball, peered underneath and—

‘Cait?’

At Ivan’s unexpected call, Caitlyn looked up so fast she bumped her head on the underside of the stool. Biting her lip to keep from swearing like a sailor, she rubbed her head and frowned up at him, only to find him holding a long glinting earring made of a dozen pieces of cut glass with a flower at the clasp.

She scrambled most ungracefully to her feet and grabbed the earring and held it to her chest, spinning around so that her hair slapped her in the face, but she didn’t care. ‘Oh, Ivan! My dear darling Ivan! I love you more than you could ever know!’

‘Love him,’ Ivan said with a grin, cocking his head to the right. ‘He found it.’

Caitlyn spun to a halt, spat a clump of hair from her mouth, and found herself looking into a pair of familiar dark eyes.

‘Dax,’ she said, his name a breathy sigh upon her lips.

Up close and personal he’d been impressive. At enough distance to get a load of the whole lot of him in one go he was...breathtaking. Dark, serious, cool, and with a face that got a girl to thinking she was wearing far too many clothes for comfort.

He seemed not to notice the feminine tremblings she’d resorted to, thank goodness. He just leaned comfortably against the bar, looking as if he’d been standing there watching her shuffle about on her hands and knees for some time and had been perfectly happy to do so.

‘You found it?’ she asked, somewhat redundantly. Though she was pretty impressed she’d been able to get any intelligible words out at all, considering the loudness of the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

‘I stood on it,’ he said, his deep voice reverberating inside her so that she might as well have been hollow. ‘If not for my natural grace you and your earring might have single-handedly laid me flat on my back.’

Dax, flat on his back. The image that created was a keeper. One she knew she’d be trotting out on long, cold, lonely winter nights.

‘It must have come loose when we...met.’ The guy made the word ‘met’ sound like a dirty word. Good dirty. Behind-closed-doors dirty.

Dax nodded to Ivan, who seemed to understand whatever signal he’d sent and moved away.

Something made Caitlyn almost call out for Ivan to stay. As if being left alone with this man without the aid of loud music, a tightly packed crowd, and low lighting was a kind of peril she knew she couldn’t withstand alone.

Dax pushed away from the bar and moved closer. Caitlyn curled her toes so as not to sway away. Even in her high heels she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact.

He reached out and took her hand. Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat. Then he turned her hand over and uncurled her fingers one by one.

Her gran’s gorgeously gaudy earring glinted back at her.

Relief poured through her, partly because she remembered why he was really there; not for some random seduction scene, but to return her lost property.

She took a deep breath, centred herself as best she could with his warm male scent curling about her, and turned the earring over in her now moist palm.

‘Is it okay?’ he asked.

The bar at the back was slightly bent, but other than that it was in perfect nick. ‘You’re light on your feet for a guy of your size. You could have mashed it completely. She’s barely bruised and with a little TLC she’ll be as good as gold.’

She risked looking at him. Her eyes locked to his. Hazel. Her new favourite colour in the whole world. Her breath came hard, for there was no hiding from the patent desire in his gaze. Desire for her.

The house lights slowly lifted, encouraging the dregs to stumble on home. Panic set in. Her hair would be a mess, her lipstick bitten away, her mascara ever so delightfully smudged. Yet his expression didn’t change. The glint in his eyes if anything grew. Scorched.

OH, GOD!

And for a girl who in the past had lived for the adrenalin brought on by the mere possibility of a new relationship, she felt as if she were free falling into those hot hazel eyes.

In the past being the most important part. She wasn’t looking for that brand of blistering intensity that could sweep a girl off her feet before she knew what was happening. She wanted fun and frivolity. She needed...

Sorbet.

All of a sudden parts of herself began to click and slide, like the tumbling open of a combination lock.

What she needed most was emotional catharsis.

What she wanted was to clear the bad taste in her mouth that her most recent failed engagement had left behind.

Sorbet sex.

What kind of sorbet sex she couldn’t be certain, since it was her first time going down that route. Sorbet came in a million different flavours, and if hers came in the guise of a tall, dark, handsome stranger she had no doubt could wipe away the memory of every man she’d ever met, well, then, who was she to argue?

‘Closing time,’ Ivan called out, dragging Caitlyn to the present.

Her breath shook as she wondered how exactly one went about picking up a sexy stranger in a bar by asking for no-strings sorbet sex.

‘Hungry?’ she asked, before she even felt the word coming.

‘Ravenous,’ Dax said without missing a single beat.

Well, she thought as he slid his hand around her waist, resting it possessively on her hip as he led her towards the door, even that gentle touch making her feel as if lava were sliding through her veins, that’s how.

CHAPTER TWO

CAITLYN stood in the long hall outside her apartment, hand shaking as she tried to slide her key into the door. It didn’t help that Dax was right behind her, his body heat doing crazy things to her nerves.

They hadn’t said a word after piling into the back seat of a taxi, where Caitlyn had barked out her address in a voice that made her sound as if she were impersonating a seal with laryngitis.

Their knees had almost bumped as the taxi rounded each corner, but not. Little fingers had almost touched on the rough fabric seat, but not. Gazes had clashed as they’d sought one another out again and again, threatening to entangle in such a way that had made Caitlyn’s heart feel as if it were about to burst from her chest, but not.

By the time they’d reached her South Yarra apartment block Caitlyn was so wired she was amazed she could walk in a straight line.

‘Let me,’ Dax’s deep voice rumbled behind her. He reached around, pried the key from her claw, and slid it into the lock as if the little hussy had just opened up for him with an easy sigh.

Any pretence at actual food being on offer went out the window when with a sigh Caitlyn spun in Dax’s arms, slid her hands into his gorgeous hair, pressed as high onto her tiptoes as humanly possible and kissed him for all she was worth.

* * *

Postponing gratification as she’d done so many times before had clearly been ass backwards. She’d had barely two conversations with the guy, didn’t even remember his last name, and had never been kissed so thoroughly in her whole life.

He was a pro, or at the very least gifted beyond the constraints of natural law. He did things with his tongue she hadn’t even imagined were possible. Her body didn’t care what was possible or not, it just melted and ached and craved all that and more. More than she possibly knew how to handle.

The intensity brought with it an ache that seemed to fill her very bones, leaving her feeling breathless, and wild with abandon.

Sorbet! she shouted in her head like a mantra when sense threatened to rear its unhelpful head. That was what he was. Sharp, cool, cleansing sorbet. And if by some alignment of the stars he’d had reason to choose her for a one-time thing right when she needed it most, then so be it.

His lips moved to the soft dent below her ear. To the shallow dip at the base of her neck. Nipping along the edge of her collarbone.

Her hands dug into the soft springy hair at the back of his neck, her teeth biting down on her lower lip. Every sense bar the places her body touched his had become so woolly she could no longer feel her extremities.

She only realised that his balance was affected too when they stumbled backwards and the doorknob, key still inside, wedged into her back.

That was when she realised they were still in the hall.

Unknown strength rose up within her and somehow she reached behind her, shoved the door open so hard it was a miracle the doorknob stayed on, and grabbed Dax by the lapels to yank him inside. The door shut behind him, plunging them into darkness. Only a thin vertical stripe of light peeked through the edge of the lounge-room curtains.

They stilled, her fingers curled into his suit jacket, his hot breaths lifting the hair from her shoulders.

The lack of sight made everything suddenly magnified. The whir and clank of her old fridge turning to life. The distant hum of riverside traffic below throbbing in time with her heart.

At the slow, deliberate slide of his hand as it found a happy place in the small of her back, her skin prickled and burned. She pressed deliciously into the hard planes of his body.

And as his lips landed upon hers, insistent and hot as hell, every sound near and far slipped away on a tide of liquid warmth.

He lost his jacket along the way, and his tie. She hoped her shoes had made it inside the apartment but she wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was an almost primal need to get horizontal.

They tumbled backwards through the dark apartment, bumping into couches, lamp tables, a fake potted plant. The folded edge of a twist pile rug almost tripped her up completely.

When something wobbled off some surface and crashed, Dax jerked in surprise, but Caitlyn just grabbed him by the chin and kissed him harder.

Not needing to be told twice, he wrapped his arms around her, lifted her bodily off the floor and found the way to her bedroom without bumping into anything, as though he had some kind of sexual GPS built in.

The moonlight pouring through the sheer curtains at her bedroom window was oh, so thankfully brighter, giving her a perfect view of Dax’s supreme male body. His shirt and trousers were gone leaving him in black cotton boxers. She felt herself smiling at how conservative his underwear was considering what they were about to do. Then he breathed deep through his nose, like a stallion sensing a mare in heat, and took a step her way and what they were about to do took precedence over every other thought.

He found the zip of her little cocktail dress, lowered it slowly, and her vertebrae collapsed in upon themselves in empathy.

Clothes off, protection on, the backs of her knees found the edge of her bed and she sank back, he moved with her. Big, strong, firm, confident, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Only he would not be breaking her heart. And she would most definitely not break his. As though that was the final permission she needed she reached up, slid her hand behind his neck and pulled him down to kiss her.

The slip and slide of skin on skin made her breathless, as if her body couldn’t process both oxygen and the mad tumble of sensations pummelling her at the same time. Maybe it was the heretofore untried naughtiness of a one-night stand. Maybe because it was a one-time deal she’d given herself permission to just let go.

Maybe it was Dax.

Then he was inside her. It was sudden, shocking, but she was more than ready. Her legs wrapped around him, she needed the feeling intensifying inside her more than she’d known she could. As if this was what she’d been waiting for her whole life. Not that romantic mushy stuff she’d lived on, but this.

His lips created havoc wherever they touched, ravaging her to the point of bonelessness. Making her feel defenceless, vulnerable—

No! This was about her taking back control over her emotional life.

Finding a last vestige of strength, she spun him around until she was on top. His hands found her hips, his thumbs sliding across her hipbone, the tremors shuddering through her all but cutting off any kind of ascendancy she might have had.

She ran her fingernails down his chest, over the solid undulation of slick brown skin. And when his desire-filled eyes closed, and he needed to open his mouth to take in enough breath, she felt formidable. Renewed.

Sensations built, cutting off all thought and feeling bar the desire flooding through her, hot and relentless.

Then all sensation contracted to the size of a pin-head. To some tiny point deep in her core. As swirls of blood-red heat crashed through her mind, through her body, bombarding her senses with more pleasure than she could process, the only vaguely coherent thought was that in her whole short life she’d never known it could feel like that.

Never.

This from the first guy she’d ever looked at and said, This is a one-time deal.

Frankly, considering why she’d gone looking for sorbet sex in the first place, it was more than she deserved.

* * *

Caitlyn sat back in the big leather chair, eyes closed as it hummed blissfully beneath her. A thump to her right told her Franny had finally arrived at their regular Sunday morning date at the Shangri-Lovely Nail Bar.

‘Good morning, sunshine!’ Caitlyn bubbled.

‘How could you start without me?’ Franny grumbled.

Caitlyn opened her eyes to find Franny hunched down in dark sunglasses, her hair pulled back into a scraggy ponytail, grunting as she jabbed in her favourite settings on the massage chair. ‘You weren’t even home when I left; I thought I might have to go solo today.’

Franny gave a double thumbs-up to her usual pedicurist indicating a double espresso, in a mug, before glancing pointedly at the half-eaten packet of biscuits Caitlyn had resting atop the glossy magazine she hadn’t yet found a chance between daydreams to open.

‘Chocolate chip? At this time of the morning? It’s not as though you worked up an appetite after I left.’ Her eyes swung slowly back to Caitlyn. ‘Or did you?’

Caitlyn licked a smudge of chocolate from her finger, images of the night before skipping and tripping through her mind like an old silent film. A slideshow of muscled arms, and broad shoulders, and acres of beautiful warm skin turning red beneath her grasping fingernails as she—

A hot flush landed hard and fast upon her cheeks. ‘Don’t change the subject. We’re here to talk about you and the Leather Jacket.’

But Franny was pointing at the pretty pink polish the pedicurist was sliding onto Caitlyn’s toenails. ‘Look! You did! You got lucky, you dog!’

‘What on earth does my toenail polish have to do with anything?’

‘All last week you were red. Sex-starved, man-eater red. And today you pick this tiptoeing-through-daisies pink? Something happened between last night and this morning.’

Caitlyn blinked, stumped that she’d given herself away so easily. ‘Moody-looking dude in leather jacket first.’

‘Fine. As it turns out all that bad-ass leather stopped at the door. His name’s Eugene and he lives with his mother. They breed ferrets. Inside the lounge room. None of which I realised until I did the walk of shame this morning. Past his mum. Who had folded my clothes into a neat pile on the chesterfield in the lounge room—’

Franny waved both hands madly over her face. ‘I just want to forget the whole thing. Now. Your turn. Did Cutey Patootey come back?’

‘No-o-o!’

‘Who, then? Not Ivan?’

‘The bartender?’ For that Franny deserved no more than a blank stare.

Franny frowned, clearly stumped.

Caitlyn hoped she’d stay that way. Hoped she could hang onto the mild buzz she was still wearing like a cloud of exotic perfume all those hours later a little longer before Franny dissected it to death.

Then Franny’s foggy morning-after eyes focused fully for the first time.

‘The Suit! You hooked up with the Suit! You sly dog!’ Franny squealed loud enough the traffic outside the salon would have heard every word.

‘Shh. I’m sure everyone else here could care less about the intimate details of my nightscapades.’

Franny glanced around. ‘Are you kidding me? Why else do you think women come to places like this? It’s hardly rocket science to slap on a dash of nail polish at home. Details. Please. Before I give up men for good.’

Franny leant so far forward on her chair she almost landed in the tub of water at her feet. Her pedicurist arrived in time, shoved her feet in the water and gave her a quelling stare. Franny looked dutifully chastised. ‘So who is he? Did he live up to all that glorious potential? Are you seeing him again?’

Caitlyn breathed out long and slow. She wasn’t going to get a moment’s peace until she gave Franny something. Then, staring hard at her toes, she said, ‘Fine. His name was Dax. Dax Something Starting With B. Banner? Bale? He looks even better out of the suit than in it. And, no, we didn’t make plans to catch up again. Happy?’

Franny grinned as she shook her head and slipped her smart phone from her purse and plugged in a few letters. ‘Dax Something Starting With B? Miss March, you sit there with your cute freckles on your little nose looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, but you are so full of surprises.’

Caitlyn knew exactly what she was about to do. She tried to grab the phone but Franny was quicker than she looked.

‘Still!’ her pedicurist demanded.

‘This is important,’ Franny said, glaring right on back.

The pedicurist shrugged and set to sloughing away the dead skin on Franny’s soles.

‘Please don’t Google the guy, for Pete’s sake!’ Caitlyn begged.

Franny snorted. ‘Are you kidding me? In this day and age it’s the first thing you should do the second you learn a guy’s name. Heck, if I’d been smart enough to Google Mr Lame from last night I’d have avoided ever knowing what ferret poo smells like. Trust me. I’m doing you a favour.’

Caitlyn set her teeth and stared blindly at the small golden cat with its bobbing head on the cashier’s counter. She knew trying to stop Franny was a waste of time. And while she knew it was unlikely she’d ever see the guy again, no small part of her did wonder how a guy who looked like that, and kissed like that, and who’d learnt how to do the things he’d done to her the night before, had managed to get so far in life without being hogtied and hitched at gunpoint.

When Franny had been quiet for all too long Caitlyn glanced at her to find her eyes growing larger and larger until they looked as if they were about to pop out of her head.

‘I knew it!’ Franny blurted.

‘What?’ Caitlyn asked despite herself. ‘He’s married. Of course he’s married. Oh, God. How could I have been so—?’

‘He’s not married.’

Caitlyn’s rant came to a halt. The relief flowing through her was totally misguided. Especially since it wasn’t relief that he hadn’t cheated on his non-existent wife. It was relief that he was actually on the market.

She wasn’t. Sure it had been six months since she’d broken up with George. Not just broken up, she reminded herself, called off her engagement. But she was done with all that: relationships, and dating, and blah blah blah.

Yet she found herself leaning towards Franny and saying, ‘Then what?’

‘Your Dax Something Starting With B was Dax Bainbridge, as in CEO of the Bainbridge Foundation. Heard of them?’

Caitlyn blinked. Several times. ‘Them yes. A representative of the Bainbridge Foundation is a no-brainer on any launch list, though they never accept. They’re less A-list party-hard types, more old money, right?’

‘You should know your guest lists better.’

Caitlyn crossed her arms. ‘I know everyone who buys sports cars, and everyone who wishes they could buy sports cars. Everyone else is a blur.’

Franny eyeballed her. ‘You’re really sitting there and saying this guy is a blur?’ Franny turned her phone around and shoved it at her. And Caitlyn found herself staring at a picture of the man who’d driven her wild in bed the night before.

Dark hair, straight eyebrows, hooded hazel eyes, a haughty nose straight out of a Jane Austen novel, a jaw line that would have sent Michelangelo shopping for marble. God, he really was as gorgeous as she remembered him.

Her hormones went on such a sudden spree it caused her heart to leap into her throat and stay there. If she’d been wearing a tie she would have loosened it.

Franny shoved her phone into her massive bag, apologising to her pedicurist with a smile for having dared move. ‘His place?’ she asked.

‘Ours.’

‘Of course. Home-ground advantage.’

Franny probably didn’t know how right she was. The thought of having to creep out of bed and get dressed in the same clothes as the night before would have put her in far too fragile a position, and the night before had been about getting control back over her life. Her place had been the right place for sorbet sex. She couldn’t get any funny ideas about possible permanence if it was up to her to kick the guy out.

‘So is he the next almost Mrs Caitlyn March?’

Caitlyn shook her head so hard it hurt. ‘It was—’

Exhilarating, euphoric, erotic, she thought.

What she said was, ‘It was a one-time deal.’

‘Good,’ Franny said. ‘For the best if it stays that way.’

Caitlyn nodded absent-mindedly as her leather massage chair began its sequence of thumping rolls down her back.

They’d had that same discussion a dozen or more times in the weeks since poor George’s ignominious departure from their lives. Franny had even come up with a mantra she was sure Caitlyn ought to have stamped on her forehead, at least for the next little while: Men can be for fun, not only for for ever.

Which was partly why she didn’t tell Franny that at the last second she’d given Dax her number, scribbling it down on the back of a grocery receipt and shoving it into his jacket pocket as they’d made out like teenagers in her apartment doorway at some ungodly hour of the morning.

‘Stop,’ Franny said.

The pedicurist looked up with a frown. Franny rolled her eyes at her before pointing a thumb at Caitlyn. The pedicurist gave her a knowing nod before heading back to her manic buffing.

‘Stop thinking about him. It’s dangerous.’

‘Are you kidding me? I can’t move without being reminded of my midnight acrobatics,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘I can still smell his cologne on my hair. Trust me, it’s not that easy to just turn it off.’

Franny spun on her big massage chair and looked Caitlyn in the eye, grabbing her by both hands. This time the pedicurist didn’t complain. She looked up at Caitlyn too, eyes questioning, buffer poised over Franny’s toes.

‘Cait, my sweet,’ Franny said, ‘listen to me this once. You don’t smoke. The hardest drug I’ve ever seen you take is really strong caffeine. You don’t pick your nose in public. But your one true vice is romance. You get so caught up in it I could dance naked in front of you right now and you wouldn’t see it for the stars in your eyes. You, my friend, are addicted to love. It’s your one and only failing. But as failings go it has potential to be a doozie. It’s a failing that can and has dragged chaos and catastrophe in its wake.’

Caitlyn squeezed Franny’s hand. ‘I can handle this. He’s not... It was nothing like the others. I promise.’

‘If you say so.’ With that Franny slid on her dark sunglasses and proceeded to fall asleep in her chair.

The pedicurist shrugged, clearly disappointed, and got back to work.

While Caitlyn picked up her magazine, and pretended to read it while the words chaos and catastrophe swam in front of her eyes. That and the look on George’s face when she’d tried to give back the ring. No shock. No anger. Just resignation, as if he’d seen it coming before she had. Her chest compressed, masking for a moment Dax’s spicy scent lingering on her skin.

Because the truth was, George wasn’t her first.

Caitlyn had been engaged more than once.

Three times in fact.

Franny might have thought it an endearing character quirk, but she was probably the only one. Caitlyn was fairly sure her mother thought her a strumpet, and that was when she wasn’t thinking her a grave disappointment. Not that she’d ever been given a hint as to what she could have done right on that score.

She shook off the sense of dejection her mother’s particular lack of affection had always engendered. If ever she needed a trigger to send her running into the arms of the first guy who smiled her way, her mum’s cold shoulder was a good one.

Sometimes that was all it took—a sexy smile, a second glance, a fleeting nod across a crowded bar—and suddenly weeks had gone by and she was hurtling along the same old path. High on the rush of feeling adored.

And if someone adored her enough to ask her to marry them? God... Was there any way to feel more cherished?

Problem was, that was when she realised the view from the top wasn’t what she’d imagined it would be. And there was no way to go but down, the weight of a ring hanging uncomfortably on her finger making the descent all the faster.

Caitlyn flipped the magazine shut and closed her eyes, wriggling her toes under the fan drying her toenail polish as she tried to take the edge off the chill that had wrapped itself around her.

That little bit of heat was enough to rip her from the highs and lows of her past and right smack bang into last night.

To Dax. His name shifted through her on a heady sigh.

Everything about Dax had been different. He hadn’t looked at her once as if she was all his dreams come true. He was assertive. Yet elusive. All outer cool and inner heat.

She wriggled in her chair as the familiar slip and slide of desire began to sizzle inside her. Whoever said you needed to love a guy to enjoy sex had either never had great sex with a stranger before, or was justly using the myth to convince teenage girls of that fact.

And by jumping straight into bed with him she’d missed some of the most addictive steps in the process—the long walks holding hands, the casual touches that heralded so much more, all the intimate stuff she seemed to mistake for love every time.

Did that mean she had a string of one-night stands with random guys to look forward to in her future?

She scrunched up her nose and decided not to think about how disquieted that made her feel. Better to just enjoy the gorgeous warm loose feeling she’d been indulging all morning.

She’d earned it. For she was on the right track to not getting caught in the same emotional trap again.

* * *

Dax tossed a Berocca into a glass of water—his third of the day. As he watched the orange tablet fizzing giddily to the bottom of the glass as it dissolved he ran a hand up the back of his neck, ’til his fingers hit hard plastic.

He took off the baseball cap and held it in his hands, bending the brim. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone into the office in jeans and a baseball cap. If ever.

What had Lauren said? Something about him never wanting to appear anything less than implacable?

If so it was only because he knew he needed to exude confidence and above all trust. They needed to trust he could do the job. Those qualities that the Bainbridge name alone had once evoked he’d had to work damn hard to rekindle after his parents had thrown it all away in the name of hard and fast living.

But the thought of throwing on a suit that Sunday morning and controlling the unruly spikes of his hair had been beyond even him.

He’d yet to go to sleep. How could he? Every time he’d closed his eyes he’d been bombarded with images of a lissom redhead. Her head falling back, gasping for breath as she closed tight around him. Then the dense blur that had set in around him before scattering to the very edges of his consciousness, taking with it every thought, every ‘to do’ list, every agenda until all was quiet for a moment. Which was a moment more than he’d had in a long time.

The clouds outside his tenth-storey window parted, sending a shaft of painfully bright spring sunshine right onto the papers scattered across his desk, the whiteness giving him an instant headache. He closed his eyes and skulled the fizzy drink, wiping away with it all thoughts of the night before.

There were papers he had to get a handle on before open of business Monday. Memos from a forensic accountant he’d hired on a hunch that so far did not herald good news. Far from it. He might have been blind to the depths of his parents’ transgressions, but his instincts had never seen him wrong since.

If following those instincts meant putting aside far more pleasant thoughts in order to maintain the distinction of credibility, then that was what he’d do.

Implacable? He’d been called far worse, but that was what the foundation had needed when he’d been forced to take it over. The choice then had been ruthlessness or ruin. The success he’d wrested from near-disaster had given him no reason, no chance, no option, to change.

He slid the cap back onto his head, the narrow brim thankfully blocking out the harshest hit of sunlight.

When there was work to be done, daydreams of sweet-lipped redheads would simply have to wait their turn, along with everything else in his life.

* * *

Caitlyn’s excuse for spending way too much time on the factory floor Monday morning was that she was in charge of throwing a massive bash to launch the product kept under tight wraps down there. The fact that it also meant she had the opportunity to drool over the first Pegasus Z9 sports car fresh off the production line might have had a little to do with it too.

Like something out of an original James Bond movie, the Z9 was all soft leather interior, glinting spoked wheels, warm deep-set headlights, and curves luscious enough to take on the most buxom cheesecake pin-up of the same era.

It was beautiful, brilliant and built to last, just as anything well designed ought to be.

‘Honestly, Doug,’ she said to the mechanical engineer who, computer tablet in hand, was giving his beloved creation the third once-over that day, ‘she’s delectable. The second sexiest thing I’ve seen all year.’

Doug’s bushy red eyebrows rose in question.

Caitlyn grinned. ‘It’s been quite a week.’

Doug glanced at her hands for about the eighth time, making sure she wore the requisite white cotton gloves, and then he went back to the object of his desire, leaving Caitlyn free to daydream at leisure about hers.

She ran a gloved finger over the voluptuously rounded fender of the Z9 until her fingers tingled with the sense memory of springy dark hair sliding through them and she had to bite her fingertips into her palms to stop from moaning out loud.

She’d had to have gone and given Dax her phone number, hadn’t she? Rookie mistake. One she ought not to be punishing herself for, except she kept jumping out of her skin every time her phone rang.

He probably wouldn’t call at all. Probably didn’t have the time. According to those in the know, and Wikipedia, he was something of a workaholic corporate wunderkind who’d taken over the family biz when his parents died in a light plane crash in Aspen or some such rich person playground.

But if he did call, she wondered when that might be. Midweek? Weekend? In Franny’s considered opinion the difference between those two times told a girl everything. Midweek meant date. End of the week meant booty call. If that was true then it was certainly in Caitlyn’s best interest to just stop thinking about it any more until Friday—

Her phone shrilled in her back pocket. Pulling off the gloves, she drew it out between two fingers, as if it might burn, only to find a private number on the display. Likely press. They liked to get the jump on people.

Nevertheless her voice was husky when she answered with a distracted, ‘Caitlyn March.’

‘Good morning,’ said the deep male voice that had been whispering sweet nothings in her imagination all morning.

Caitlyn’s knees gave way and luckily the Z9 was at hand. She grabbed the side mirror so as not to land on her backside. Doug frowned at her. She quickly let go, wiped off the sweat-prints with the hem of her soft jacket, and mouthed an apology.

‘To whom am I speaking?’ she asked, her voice now an example in cool in the hopes of convincing the man on the other end he hadn’t made her blush with a simple good morning.

And on a Monday. She frowned, clueless as to what that could mean.

‘Dax,’ the voice said. Then, ‘Bainbridge,’ was added as an afterthought, the dryness of his voice giving her some indication that he was quietly sure she knew exactly who it was.

‘Oh, Da-a-ax. Hi! How’s tricks?’

She slapped a hand over her eyes. That was definitely too chirpy. But that voice of his did things to her so that she forgot all self-control.

From the other side of the Z9 Doug cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow. Caitlyn nodded. Yep, the number-one sexiest thing she’d seen all week was on the phone.

To Dax she said, ‘What can I do for you on this fine Monday morning?’

He’d called her on a Monday. Maybe he’d left something at her apartment. Or wanted to know the name of a good mechanic. Or—

‘You can make my day by telling me that you’re free tonight.’

‘I’m sorry—pardon?’ Caitlyn said.

‘Tonight,’ he said, more slowly this time. ‘Are you free?’

Free? But it had been a one-night stand. Sorbet sex. Hadn’t it? ‘For what purpose?’

‘You want specifics?’

Caitlyn looked around. Doug had shooed off elsewhere leaving her, and the Z9, all on their lonesome. She wriggled her toes to keep the blood from assembling in the one hot spot and said, ‘Sure. Why not?’

Through the phone she heard a shuffle and a squeak, and imagined him in a dark suit and tie, up in some lofty city tower, leaning back in a super-comfy leather office chair, looking out of his thousand-storey window, with glorious Melbourne spread out beneath him.

When his voice slid through the phone, deep and slow, the vibrations sent tingles all over her skin.

‘I was imagining we’d...’ He paused. Long enough she held her breath. Then, ‘...eat. We could enjoy a little...soft music. No doubt we would...talk. And later, much later, once I’ve loosened my tie, and you’ve kicked your shoes off under the table, and we’re both nicely pickled in some excellent wine, together we would do...dessert.’

By the time he’d finished she was leaning back hard against the Z9, the cold metal doing nothing to take the edge off her temperature. Somehow she managed to keep her voice from cracking when she said, ‘So you’re asking me on a date.’

Laughter rolled through the phone. ‘I’m asking you to eat dinner with me, but if you’d prefer to call it that—’

‘No-o-o!’ Not a date!

‘No?’ he repeated after several long beats.

Caitlyn bit her lip. Dax was a man she’d taken home from a bar. For sex. Not as some kind of Hail Mary that it might lead to something more. Her strident rejection of the word ‘date’ had given her an accidental out if that was what she wanted.

Was it what she wanted?

What she wanted was to see him again. So badly her whole body ached. The want throbbed in time with her pulse—whoomp, whoomp, whoomp—from the soles of her feet to the soft depression at the base of her throat.

Other people, people who weren’t relationship junkies, did that kind of thing all the time. Had dinner. Had sex. Didn’t get engaged to every guy they met. So long as expectations didn’t exceed reality, then nobody needed to get hurt.

‘Caitlyn?’

‘I meant no, I don’t need to call it anything.’

‘Okay.’ His voice slid deep and delicious down the phone. Her shoulders lifted in compensation for the sudden shivers running down her neck.

‘I’m working late,’ she said, ‘so how about we meet up for a drink around nine?’ There, a drink. Casual as could be. She named the bar, a fancy hole in the wall she’d glimpsed on occasion down one of Melbourne’s many cool quirky alleyways. The kind of place tourists missed, and city-workers flocked to.

‘Looking forward to it,’ Dax said, and then he was gone.

She took her phone away to find her ear hot and sore from having the phone pressed against it so hard.

‘That must have been some phone call.’

Caitlyn jumped, hand slapping against her heart. She turned to find Doug standing about three feet away.

‘I’ve never seen a woman’s ankles blush before,’ he said.

‘My ankles are doing no such thing.’

‘If you say so.’

Caitlyn couldn’t help it. She glanced at her ankles, bare between her fitted capris and her glossy high-heeled pumps, to find he wasn’t kidding. ‘Well,’ she spluttered, ‘then you clearly have a lot to learn about women.’

Doug smiled knowingly back as his eyes slid to the phone she had clasped hard in her sweaty little palm. ‘So it seems.’

‘Oh, go suck a squeegee.’

Doug’s laughter rang through the lofty room while Caitlyn spun away and headed back to the lift before she started laughing too, her high heels all but dancing on the concrete floor.

CHAPTER THREE

DAX sat in a quiet corner of Echoes, nursing a Scotch, and stretching out the rigid muscles of his shoulders. It had been a long and frustrating day. The kind of day that lived down to the very worst of his disillusions. That nobody could be trusted, that life was every man for himself.

He cricked his neck. The only reason he was upright, and not prostrate at the chiropractor, was the five-minute phone call he’d squeezed in to Caitlyn mid-morning. The knowledge that he’d be within touching distance of that soft skin, that silken hair, those warm arms at the end of that day had made the rest tolerable.

A rush of air slid through the bar bringing with it the scent of outdoors. His eyes cut to the door. A posse of twenty-something men in matching grey suits jostled noisily inside.

His fingers clenched harder on the glass, and a muscle in his cheek twitched, as he searched for will power, which was something he usually possessed in spades. His ability to remove himself emotionally from actions and decisions was necessary in the position he held. Stick a soft touch in charge and the foundation’s coffers would be empty in a week.

Another rush of air tickled his hair, and his eyes snapped to the door once more. More men, more grey suits.

Will power? What will power? With his skills at compartmentalising, the morning’s phone call ought to have been enough to put thoughts of her aside ’til this evening. But it had been something else, something more than just soft skin and silken hair, that had him so gripped with sexual tension if she was another five minutes late the glass was in danger of shattering in his grasp.

The door opened. He felt the breeze, heard the swoosh of traffic, watched the gentle lift of the napkin bedside his glass. He unpeeled his fingers from the now warm glass, one by one; then and only then did he look towards the door.

And there she was, in tight black ankle-skimming pants, a frilled white top and a matching jacket as soft and shimmering as fresh snow. Her hands clutched tight around a tiny beaded purse and her hair was up, soft strands escaping from a low twist. Shafts of silver glinted at her ears. Big eyes the colour of honey scanned the room.

He’d been fully prepared for his memory of her—or more specifically their scorching chemistry—to have been somewhat exaggerated by his euphoric hormones. He’d met her in near darkness, stumbled back to her place in much the same, burned up the bed sheets, and she’d been perfectly content for him to leave while the sun was still warming the other side of the planet. It had been great. Worth repeating. But enough to have him feeling this surge of heat just looking at her?

She licked her lips, and squirmed a little when she couldn’t see him, then jutted out a hip in defiance when it appeared to occur to her he might not be there.

Then, just as her mouth began to turn down at the edges, her eyes finally found his: feisty and wholly corrupting. As a secret smile spread to her lips the heat in her eyes softened to a subtle warmth, and it rocketed him right back to how luminous she’d been in his arms.

He hadn’t been recalling wrong. She was dazzling. As for their chemistry, she was on the other side of the room, a plethora of blustery city types between them, each trying to suck all the energy from the room, yet his skin contracted as if her fingernails were scraping down his bare chest.

As she walked towards him he felt himself rising off the stool as if some ethereal force were pulling them together.

‘Hi,’ she said breathily.

His hand moved to her waist as she leant in, the fabric of her jacket giving slightly, turning his mind instantly to soft, warm skin beneath. Her scent wafted past his nose, fresh and sweet, as his lips brushed her proffered cheek. The urge to slide a hand around her small waist and graze his teeth across her neck was consuming.

‘So, so sorry I’m late.’ Her backside landed on the stool beside his with a thump. ‘We’re crazy swamped at work at the moment with the launch of the Z9 looming.’

She looked at him as though he ought to be impressed, but he had no idea what she was talking about. ‘The Z9?’

‘The new production sports model for Pegasus Motors? I work in their PR department and am heading up the big launch in a few months’ time, remember?’ Her mouth quirked, though her eyes remained locked on his. ‘We never quite got to all that, did we?’

‘No,’ he agreed in a voice so rugged it would have done a pirate proud. ‘So I take it the Z9’s a car.’

She laughed, tossed her purse onto the bar and motioned to the bartender for a cocktail. ‘It’s not just “a car”. It’s a work of art. Poetry in motion. I’ve seen grown men drool just looking at it, and that’s just the engineers who built the thing.’

‘Have a picture on you?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, ho, no. You’ll have to wait for the big reveal like everyone else.’

Then she snapped her mouth shut and slowly spun on the stool ’til one of her knees slid against one of his. When her eyes grew dark and she puffed out a short sharp breath, he knew she’d felt the same jolt of electricity shoot through her leg that had burned into his.

She said, ‘You’re mocking me, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And why?’

‘Poetry in motion? It’s a car.’

One corner of her lovely mouth lifted as her eyes narrowed. ‘Were you this cheeky on Saturday? I’m almost certain I wouldn’t have taken you home if you were.’

She finished with a shrug, and a small smile, her eyes skimming over him before sliding away. The subsequent roll of her shoulders was akin to saying, I’m struggling not to picture you naked. No, not imagine. Remember.

And there it was, the thing that had imprinted the hours spent with her deeper onto his mind than usual—her candour.

The way she’d not hidden her attraction to him for a second. The way she’d asked him home simply because she’d wanted to. The way she’d given herself over to him in bed with an abandon he envied. It had all the appearance of being genuine. Even he, the king of the cynics, found himself believing it. Or maybe, that day, he simply wanted to.

He’d spent the morning laying off a guy who’d systematically, over many months, made the foundation’s funds his own. A man he’d hired. He’d vetted. He’d respected and liked. And if there was anything still able to chink his well-buffed armour, it was the bitter indignation of being played. If his inept parents had taught him one thing it was that he never wanted to be blindsided like that again.

So having someone look him in the eye and tell it like it was, was akin to waving a glass of water in front of a man who’d woken up to realise he was alone in the desert.

Gazing at her profile—her slightly dishevelled hair, her thick sooty lashes, her soft pink lips—he took a punt. ‘Hungry?’

At the use of her own come-on line from two nights earlier, she blinked. Fast. Her nostrils flared and pink flooded her cheeks. Desire and doubt warring in her ingenuous eyes. But when he smiled her pupils dilated and he could barely see the honey-coloured circle framing them.

Realising it wouldn’t take much, he said, ‘I know you said drinks, but I missed lunch and could do with a bite.’

Her mouth quirked. ‘I was trying to be all cool and nonchalant, if you hadn’t noticed.’

‘I noticed. You did a commendable job.’

She glanced at the restaurant, and said, ‘Sod it. I’m starving. Let’s eat.’

‘Good. Because I went ahead and reserved a table.’

Her now glinting eyes swung back to him. ‘Sure of yourself much?’

‘Just enough it would seem. And hungry enough if you’d said no I might have left you here while I ate by myself.’

Her eyebrows shot up a half-second before she burst out laughing. ‘Way to make a girl feel special!’

Dax motioned to the maître d’, then turned back to her as he said, ‘I think we both know I have other ways.’

The pink in her cheeks flooded to her neck, creeping across her collar bone. He ached to feel the heat of her skin, the blood surging so near the surface. He wished he’d never brought up dinner and asked another question instead.

But by then the maître d’ was there, and Caitlyn had grabbed her tiny bag and slid off the stool.

He placed his hand in the small of her back and they wove through the growing crowd towards the small table in a low-lit corner of the restaurant, her skin feeling as if it were burning hot against his hand even though the many cruel layers between them meant it was physically impossible.

* * *

After five minutes of watching Caitlyn eat her bruschetta, slipping slivers of tomato from the top and sliding them into her mouth, then slowly licking the olive oil from the tips of her finger, Dax knew he needed a new focus or they’d never make it past the entrée. Hell, it wouldn’t have mattered to him if they didn’t but she’d seemed so excited about dessert.

‘So tell me about yourself,’ he said, his throat tight.

Caitlyn frowned at him as if he’d said something objectionable, then lifted her shoulders and said, ‘What you see is what you get.’

‘Really?’ He leant forward, enjoying very much the way her breaths hitched every time he did so. ‘Then I’m thinking only child. Grew up on a goat farm. Captain of the high-school girls’ lacrosse team until you were suspended for ball tampering.’

Her tongue did a sweep of her bottom lip, which made him lose his train of thought, but he picked himself up ably.

‘But you went on to complete your schooling in the end, and thank goodness, otherwise you would have missed out on all those lingerie pillow fights with your university roommates.’

Her eyes sparkled deliciously as she licked a stray speck of oregano from her finger. ‘You done?’

‘My powers of deduction have reached their limits. Though if I missed any of the highlights, or the sordid juicy lowlights for that matter, now’s the time to tell me.’

She stilled, her eyes dancing between his, a furrow appearing between her brows. ‘You really want to know?’

‘You’re the one who ordered the soufflé, remember,’ he said, sitting back, giving her space. ‘We have time to fill.’

When he waited for her to fill the silence, she slowly released her breath, like a balloon losing air through a tiny hole, then said, ‘Fine. Only child, yes. Never played lacrosse though. Dancing in front of my bedroom mirror with a hairbrush was about as athletic as I got in high school. And...I grew up on the Central Coast and have never even seen a goat in the flesh.’ She frowned at her fingernails. ‘My mum lives there still. Same place. Same house. If we didn’t have the same knocked knees I’m not sure either of us would believe ourselves related.’

She shook her head, then sat on her hands as if they were the ones she was upset with.

‘And your father?’ Dax asked, surprising himself at wanting to know when before it had been just conversation.

She gave him a blank stare. ‘He didn’t have knocked knees.’

His silence stretched again.

She rolled her shoulders, and her eyes for good measure, before saying, ‘Mum always said I got my dad’s elbows and his nerve. I reckon I look just like him, in fact. He was the complete opposite to her. All spirit and fire. Couldn’t stay still even if you sat on him. He travelled constantly. He was a pro rally-car driver actually. A really good one. Did the Dakar rally a few times. He died on the job when I was eleven.’

The speed with which she got out the words and the soft, sad little shrug told him more about her relationship with her dad than even her words had. They’d been close. She missed him still. It was the complete antithesis of the relationship he’d had with his parents, then and now.

‘And the pillow fights?’ Dax asked, his voice unusually deep.

She slowly looked up at him under her long auburn lashes and the revival of the sparkle in her eyes wiped every other thought from his mind. ‘Well, they were way more fun than you could ever imagine. Your turn.’

Dax was still trying to get his head around the image of Caitlyn bouncing about in her underwear, when he heard himself saying, ‘Grew up here. Still live here. My parents are both gone.’

Gone. It felt so impersonal. So contrary to the very personal way the event had knocked his values inside out and turned his life upside down.

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I—’

‘Don’t be. It was a long time ago. I have one sister. Younger. Lauren. A semi-reformed hell-raiser. In fact the reason I was at the club the other night was for her birthday. It didn’t occur to her that turning thirty might call for something more civilised.’

Caitlyn laughed. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’d like her?’

Dax shook his head. ‘I’m fairly terrified what might be accomplished if I put the two of you in the same room at the same time.’

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