Driving Her Crazy

TEN



Kent was still grinning as he left Sadie washing her hair in the shower fifteen minutes later. This really wasn’t how he thought this assignment was going to turn out.

He’d been prepared to tolerate it.

Tolerate her.

To have just pushed her against the shower tiles and had his way with her was not what he’d envisioned after their first not-so-promising shower incident in Cunnamulla.

Well, not seriously anyway.

His stomach growled and he remembered why he’d been kicked out of the shower. He picked up the room service menu off the bedside table and headed for the phone to order. He sat at the desk and dialed, shifting the open laptop to make room for the menu. Sadie’s discarded memory stick sat next to it and he picked it up as he said, ‘Hello,’ into the receiver.

He had a brief conversation as he flicked through the menu ordering wildly inappropriate things that would probably give Tabitha apoplexy when the bill came in.

Champagne. Strawberries. Oysters. Cheese platter.

The fancy chocolate pudding with a warm gooey centre. He had definite plans for that.

His gaze fell on the laptop screen as he absently turned the memory stick over in his hands while the call taker repeated his order. The header Kent Nelson, Mere Mortal caught his eye and his grin faded.

He read the two paragraphs on the screen, then dropped the stick as he scrolled down further, replying automatically to the woman on the other end of the phone and hanging up, not hearing or caring if the order was correct.

He read it all—all two thousand words—his heart beating faster, anger simmering with every one. Everything he’d said, everything that had happened between them, was there. And more. Her observations. Her opinions.

Her pop psychology.

Stuff that he hadn’t even begun to grapple with. Had shied from even thinking too hard about.

By the time he got to the end—Kent Nelson is an enigma but no man is an island—he was so mad he wanted to break things.

Sadie came out of the shower wrapped in a fluffy gown, towelling her hair. ‘Did you order something?’ she asked his back. ‘I’m starving.’

Kent stood and turned to face her. ‘You’re writing a story about me?’ he demanded.

Sadie frowned at the steel in his voice and the return of the hard lines of his face. She hadn’t seen them for a couple of days now and had forgotten how austere they could be. ‘No.’

He stepped aside and pointed to the laptop screen. ‘I think you are.’

Sadie gasped as she realised what she’d done. She shook her head as she walked towards him. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

Kent slashed his hand through the air, pulling her up short. ‘I told you my story was not for sale. This stuff is private.’

Sadie struggled to understand how the day had gone to hell so quickly. One moment they were in the shower and she was thinking she could get used to all that single-minded intensity of his, particularly when he was buried deep inside her, and the next he was looking at her with ice in his eyes.

Back to square one.

Sadie dropped the towel, her hair hanging in damp strips around her shoulders. ‘I’m not doing a story on you. I’m just...journalling.’

‘It sure as hell reads like a story,’ he snapped. ‘Did Tabitha put you up to this?’ he demanded. ‘She’s been trying to get me to do an exclusive for months.’

Sadie took another step towards him but halted as he held out his hand. ‘Tabitha has nothing to do with this. It’s just me putting my thoughts and feelings down. I have absolutely no intention of doing anything with it. You can delete it right now if you want.’

Kent turned, leant over the keyboard and hit Control A. The article highlighted before his eyes and he hit the delete button.

He only wished it felt as satisfying as it looked.

Sadie watched her work disappear in dismay. Those words might have come easily but no writer liked to lose work. Sure, she could write them again, but they’d never be as perfect as they had been.

She propped her hands on her hips. ‘Happy now?’

‘Do you have a backup?’ he asked.

Sadie nodded. ‘On the memory stick.’

Kent picked up the stick. He gave her a wide berth as he rounded her and headed for the bathroom. Once inside he avoided looking at the shower cubicle as the memories of their soapy encounter returned. He strode to the toilet, opened the lid, tossed the stick in and flushed it.

‘It’s okay,’ Sadie said derisively when he stormed out a moment later, his limp more obvious than it had been in days. ‘There wasn’t anything important on there.’

Kent ignored her as he hefted his bag onto the bed and pulled out some clothes. Her apparent lack of concern over the loss of the article hadn’t mollified him.

Had she been interviewing him all along? Was that what all the incessant questions had been about? Had she been taking notes the entire five days? Did she think that she could bat those incredible lashes at him and he wouldn’t mean what he’d said yesterday—God, was it only yesterday?—that it was no one’s damn business?

He’d thought she’d been joking about her interviewing him. Obviously not.

Sadie watched as he dressed quickly in jeans and a T-shirt, the flash of a naked back and buttocks when he dropped the towel having a funny effect on her pulse despite their current state of animosity. ‘I’m not doing a story on you, Kent.’

Kent sat on the bed and stuffed his feet into his shoes. Whether she was or wasn’t just wasn’t the point any more. This debacle was a salient reminder of why he’d kept himself to himself.

He’d let Sadie Bliss and her treacherous curves get way too close. Her conjectures in the article had been searing and insightful and even now he shied from them.

He didn’t want or need her inside his head. What the hell did someone in their mid-twenties know about stuff like this?

He’d come out here to get his photographic mojo back. Not to lose his head over a woman and certainly not to get it head shrunk by one either.

There were things he had to come to terms with, he knew that. But he was doing that to his own timetable.

She was wrong—this man was an island.

The uninhabitable kind.

He stood and looked at her. ‘This was a mistake.’

Sadie blinked. ‘What was? This hotel room? Sex in the shower? Sex on the roof of your car? Our night under the stars? Making me believe that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my body? Talking about the accident? Or just the whole damn trip?’

Kent nodded, his jaw locked. ‘All of it.’ He should never have taken the assignment in the first place. He should have kept her at a distance.

His blunt admission rocked her back on her heels; she was surprised by how much it hurt. Okay, he was pissed at her. She got it. But did he really regret everything that had happened? Apart from this sticky end, which she would no doubt analyse ad nauseam in the coming months, she didn’t have a one. Kent had helped her think differently about herself—about her body and her art.

And for that she would be for ever grateful.

‘For the last time, I was not writing a story about you.’

Kent folded his arms across his chest. Okay, he believed her. But he doubted she was being honest with herself over her true reasons and that was cause for concern.

‘Well, who were you writing it for?’ he asked. ‘Because if it was just for you then I think you may be a little...fixated on me.’

The last thing he needed was Sadie Bliss making his life difficult after they parted ways with some obsessive girly crush.

The last thing he needed was Sadie Bliss full stop.

‘We had great sex, Sadie. But don’t delude yourself—there can be nothing else.’

Sadie was speechless for a moment at the sheer ego on the man. She wished she could tell him it wasn’t that good, but unfortunately she couldn’t.

She could however assure him he wasn’t the only man in the world. A girl had her pride.

‘I hate to be the one to break this to you but I’m pretty sure you do not own the only penis-of-amazing-powers in the world and I’m damn sure I can get on with my life without pining for it.’

Although she’d probably think about it a little more than was healthy.

‘Besides which,’ she added, ‘if you think all we had was sex, then maybe you’re a little deluded. You shared stuff with me I’m betting you’ve never told anyone else. I can get sex and, thanks to you, I’ll be sure to hold my future partners to a higher standard, but where are you going to find someone you can talk to, Kent? Because you really need to talk to someone.’

Kent glared at her, his face stony. He did not want to get into a conversation about his state of mind. That was especially none of her business. ‘This is not about me, Sadie.’

‘So you’re just going to have nightmares for the rest of your life?’ she demanded. ‘You’re going to hear poor Dwayne Johnson calling for his mother every time you shut your eyes?’

‘I’ll deal with my stuff,’ he snapped. ‘I just want to make sure you aren’t spinning castles in the air because of our physical...intimacy.’

Sadie snorted. Kent had opened up so much from the guy he’d been at the beginning of the trip, but right now he’d taken a huge slide backwards. He couldn’t even recognise they’d been more than just physically intimate. That there’d been emotional intimacy as well.

And he was running for the hills.

‘Why on earth would I want to be involved with a man who is so guarded, so...’ she floundered around looking for the most apt description that didn’t involve mentioning how far up his backside his head was jammed ‘...deep in his man cave, I feel like I need a miner’s lamp and pick whenever I talk to him? Relationships shouldn’t be that hard, Kent.’

He nodded, his lips terse. His work here was done.

‘Good,’ he said, brushing past her and heading for the door. ‘At least we agree on something.’

He was desperate to put as much distance as possible between him and her damn robe belt that was loosening and flashing glimpses of her cleavage. It made him want to throw her on the bed, which was not conducive to walking away.

To ending it.

Whatever it was.

Sadie turned and watched him limp away. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

He opened the door. ‘Out.’

And then there was just Sadie left looking at a closing door, her heart beating wildly. She sank onto the end of the bed, her brain trying to catch up. Twenty minutes ago she’d had a screaming orgasm in the shower. Now Kent was gone and there was a heavy feeling in her chest and a growing urge to cry.

She stood. She would not cry. She’d cried over her father and cried over Leo.

She would not cry over a man she’d known for five days.

She walked on shaky legs to the telephone, ignoring the open laptop taunting her.

If only she’d shut the lid!

Maybe instead of scaring him off she and Kent would be talking right now about seeing each other some more. Because she hadn’t been ready to say goodbye just yet and she was pretty damn sure, after that shower, he wasn’t either.

She dialled the airport and changed her flight.


Six months later...

‘C’mon.’ Leila banged on the bathroom door. ‘It’s opening night and the gallery will be crowded.’

Sadie looked at herself one last time in the mirror. Why she was fussing she didn’t know. He never went to gallery events, he’d told her that.

In fact she wouldn’t normally be going either. Now she was a full-time student again she couldn’t afford the big ticket price—she’d even had to take on a flatmate, Leila, to make the rent. But when two tickets had mysteriously turned up and Leila, a photography major, had spied them, Sadie hadn’t had the heart to deny her.

And, truth be told, she was curious.

Sadie had already seen some of it, of course. The dozen photographs printed with her Leonard Pinto feature had been magnificent. But this exhibition, Centre Attraction, was the complete outback series and, being Kent’s first exhibition of new work, had garnered a true buzz in the art scene.

It had been billed as the show to see.

‘How do I look?’ she asked Leila as she opened the door, her fingers absently stroking down the front of her retro fire-engine red dress. It dipped at the cleavage, nipped at the waist, clung to the hips and flared around the calves in an elegant fishtail.

‘Woohoo, baby,’ Leila crowed. ‘I’d do you.’

Sadie laughed, the stress bunching her neck muscles instantly easing. Leila was out and proud and very much in a couple but her flattery was just what Sadie needed tonight. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s do this thing.’

Kent almost choked on his beer when he spotted Sadie sashay into the gallery. He hadn’t been sure she’d come even with the tickets he’d sent her. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to make such an entrance. The eyes of every straight man with a pulse tracked her path from the door to the bar area.

She’d come a long way since awful power suits and baggy T-shirts.

The gallery was crowded and he was stuck in a corner with some of Tabitha’s cronies, but he watched her as she did the rounds of the displays. She chatted to the woman she’d arrived with and seemed to make polite conversation with other patrons who were admiring the exhibits as well.

None of them shone as she did.

Watching her felt like coming out of a fog and he realised he’d missed her even more than he’d thought. He’d wanted to see her, to show her his work that she’d been so much a part of. Particularly the centrepiece. He was proud of it and wanted her to be proud of it too.

But he hadn’t expected everything to finally make sense by just looking at her.

Yes, he’d thought about her every day. Missed her every day. But this was more. So much more.

She was two exhibits away when he politely excused himself from the group of people he’d been barely paying attention to anyway.

Sadie stood in front of a photo of emus mid-dash across a western sky. The bounce of their soft feathers and the dust kicking up around their powerful legs gave the photograph a sense of motion and urgency. She remembered him taking the pictures. Telling her about his grandfather.

She studied it for a while as she waited for the crowd to clear from around the next piece. She’d been surreptitiously looking for him but he’d obviously been true to his word.

‘Oh, my God.’

Sadie turned at the urgent tug on her arm administered by Leila. She wasn’t too concerned though—Leila had been goggle-eyed all night, each photograph seemingly more fantastical through her rose-coloured glasses than the last.

‘Sadie, is that you?’

Sadie frowned at her friend’s face, then looked up at the photograph that had everyone’s interest. It took a few seconds to compute what she was looking at and then everything inside her seemed to crash to a halt.

Her brain synapses. Her cellular metabolism.

The beat of her heart, the breath in her lungs.

It was the one he’d taken of her the night of the campfire. Where she’d stood and he’d called her name and she had looked back over her shoulder at him. It was a stunningly visual shot. Her face in shadow, her semi-naked body silhouetted in soft yellow light against a starry sky.

The caption read—Sadie In The Sky With Diamonds.

Beside it, enlarged and framed, was her sketch. The byline proclaiming her as the artist.

When she’d got home from Darwin she’d realised she’d left her sketch book in his car but hadn’t bothered to contact him about it. A part of her had wanted him to have it, to have a tangible reminder of what they’d shared—emotionally, not physically.

Sadie could feel heat rising in her cheeks as she looked at it now. How could he share something so personal? How could he?

She’d believed him when he’d told her how very much he hadn’t wanted Mortality to be shared. Had he not thought she’d feel the same way about this?

‘You like?’

Sadie started at the oh-so-familiar tone. She turned to find him standing behind her, his mouth, beautiful as ever, so very, very close.

Her heart started again at the sight of him. It had been so long and he looked so good. Just as she remembered from the last long six months of thinking about him. Of sketching him.

Only better.

The dark suit blunted his he-man edge to a different kind of sexy and her belly clenched.

But it didn’t change what he’d done or the sudden block of emotion welling in her chest. Her heart pounded in her ears as she shook her head. ‘How could you?’ she whispered, then pushed past him.

Away, she had to get away.

It was much harder for Kent to make his escape from the gallery than it had been for Sadie. He’d just caught a glimpse of her climbing into a taxi before someone blocked his view and it had been another twenty minutes before he’d managed to get away.

He guessed running out on your own exhibition was pretty poor form, but he’d only been there tonight hoping she’d show up.

And now she was gone, he didn’t want to be there either.

He just wanted to be with her.

Luckily he knew the way to her flat and by the time he’d parked an hour had elapsed since she’d run from him.

‘Sadie,’ he called, knocking on her door. ‘I know you’re in there. Open up!’

Sadie, sitting in her daggy track pants and shirt, jumped at the harsh command. Her hand shook as she raised the glass of red wine to her lips.

Kent belted louder this time. ‘I’m going to knock all night if I have to, Sadie!’

Sadie glared at the door. It was tempting to let him go for it. Mrs Arbuthnot from next door called the police if a cat meowed too loudly outside her door at night.

But she was pretty mad at him. And she did need to talk to him about pulling the photo from the exhibition. She stormed over to the door and pulled it open. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve,’ she said, turning on her heel and stomping back into the lounge room, leaving him standing on the doorstep.

Kent shut the door after him and followed her at a more sedate pace, finding her waiting for him, arms crossed, grey eyes stormy, spoiling for a fight.

‘I want it pulled,’ she said straight up.

‘Sadie—’

‘No. You were supposed to delete those pictures. I did not give you my permission to use a half-naked picture of me in an exhibition that thousands of people will see.’

Kent undid his jacket buttons and thrust his hands on his hips. ‘But a fully naked portrait is perfectly fine?’

‘What other ones have you used?’ she demanded, ignoring his jibe. The portraits were consensual and he knew it. ‘Have you uploaded them somewhere? Damn it, Kent, they’re private and I want them back.’ The words were familiar and a thought suddenly hit her. ‘Oh, my God, that’s what this is about, isn’t it? This is payback for that stuff I wrote. For the last time, Kent, it was not a story!’

‘Sadie,’ Kent said, holding up a placating hand, trying not to be turned on by how gorgeous she was all het up, her hair flying around her head, her eyes burning, her chest rising and falling in an agitated rhythm.

‘They’re burned to a disc. I kept meaning to send them to you but I couldn’t bring myself to part with them. I wouldn’t share them with anyone.’

Sadie snorted. ‘Just half of Sydney!’

‘It’s one photo, Sadie. No one knows it’s you.’

‘I know it’s me!’ she snapped. ‘And let’s not even mention the fact that you reproduced and displayed my artwork, without my permission!’

‘The two pieces belong together.’

Sadie gaped. He didn’t even look a little contrite, standing in her lounge room oozing sex and confidence in his important artist suit. She hadn’t really expected to see him tonight and she resented how damn good he looked.

And how her traitorous body didn’t seem to care that he’d just exposed something between them that had been intimate and private. He might as well have stripped her naked in front of everyone at the gallery.

‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘Because it’s a stunning image. The pick of all the photos I took on our road trip. Maybe one of the best of my career. And to apologise.’

Sadie blinked. ‘Apologise?’

‘For being such a prat in Darwin.’

‘By being an even bigger prat now?’ She gaped.

Kent saw the two spots of colour up high on her cheekbones and wanted to drag her into his arms so badly he had to grind his feet into the floor to stop himself from following through.

Sadie didn’t look as if she was quite there yet.

He took a steadying breath. ‘If you don’t like it I’ll have it withdrawn.’

Sadie sat down and took a gulp of her wine. She needed fortification. ‘It’s got nothing to do with not liking it,’ she said slowly through clenched teeth.

‘Okay,’ he said, hands still on his hips as he looked down at her. ‘Explain it to me. It’s not like you haven’t posed nude before, Sadie.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’ She glared up at him. ‘That picture represents a very personal moment you and I shared. And I know you’re Mr I-don’t-need-anybody and no doubt he-men pander to women with poor self-image every day, but it means something to me. I feel about it the way you feel about Mortality. That photo is an intensely private moment. Not for public viewing. It’s not my body I want to protect. It’s the moment.’

Kent sat down on the coffee table behind him, his legs stretching out, almost touching hers. He was encouraged when she didn’t attempt to move away. ‘I’ll have it withdrawn first thing tomorrow,’ he murmured.

Sadie looked into the multi-hues of brown that made up his eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Kent nodded, his heart thudding as her gaze locked with his. ‘It’s good to see you, Sadie Bliss.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t.’

He half smiled. ‘Don’t what?’

‘I’m not going to fall into bed with you because you turn up on my doorstep all sexy and apologetic. I’m still mad.’

He chuckled then. ‘I missed you.’

Sadie sipped at her wine, determined not to give him an inch. ‘Yeh, well, I haven’t missed you,’ she lied.

‘I’ve thought about you every day, Sadie. And I’ve pretended that’s a lot of things—fond memories, lust, friendship—but I saw you tonight and I knew it was more than that.’ He dropped his gaze to her full mouth that had parted as she listened. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could almost taste her. ‘You’re under my skin, Sadie Bliss.’

Sadie’s internal muscles undulated deep down inside her at his words and his sudden intense look. It would be so easy to just throw caution to the wind and hurl herself at him, but after six months apart she knew two things.

She was head first in love with him. And the Kent she knew couldn’t handle that.

‘I’m back at art school,’ she said as his gaze returned to her face. ‘I’m loving it. For the first time in my life I really know what I want to do. I’m actually my own person. I love you, Kent. I think I have from the moment you let me drive the Land Rover.’

She paused. Her pulse was beating triple time but the admission had been surprisingly easy to make.

‘But I can’t take on your stuff. I need to be in a relationship where I can talk with the other person, where no subject is off limits, no words are left unsaid. Where I can talk whenever I want to. I have a lot to say.’ She smiled at her own joke. ‘I’m prepared to do some hard yards but I need to know that you’re going to meet me halfway.’

Kent knew what she was saying was true. ‘How did you get to be so wise so young?’ he asked.

Sadie smiled around her wine glass. ‘Misspent youth.’

Kent placed his hands on his knees. ‘I’ve been seeing a psychologist for the last four months. It’s been...hard at times. But it’s helped. I’ve started to write a memoir about the time I was embedded. I even went on a commercial flight just recently. The dream doesn’t come so much any more.’

He paused. Smiled at her. ‘Now all I usually dream about is you.’ She smiled back at him and he felt encouraged. ‘I can’t promise I’m going to be happiness and light twenty-four seven but my life didn’t make sense for a long time and then you came along and, briefly, it did. I don’t know how our future is going to pan out, Sadie—I’m so happy that you’re pursuing your art dream and at some stage I’m going to want to take another overseas assignment—but I know that whatever happens I want you in it. I love you, Sadie.’

Sadie considered him over the rim of the glass, her heart beating frantically at words that were like music to her ears. The man who had taught her to embrace who she was, to glory in it, was telling her he loved her.

‘That’s all I need,’ she murmured.

Kent held her gaze. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Or whose move it was.

Sadie sat forward, placing her wine glass on the table beside him. ‘So,’ she said, resting her bent elbow on her knee and propping her chin on her palm, ‘these dreams? Do I have my clothes on?’

Okay, Sadie’s move. He grinned. ‘Not often.’

‘Are they...graphic?’

Kent nodded. ‘Usually.’

She reached for his tie and started to untie the knot. ‘I think you’re going to have to demonstrate,’ she murmured.

Kent nuzzled her temple, her ear, her neck. ‘I’m good at demonstrating.’

Sadie slid the tie out from the collar with a loud zip. She stood, his tie dangling from her finger. ‘Well come on then, let’s get started.’

She held out her hand and he took it.