CHAPTER SEVEN
OWEN sat back in his chair, letting the debate wash over him as two of his young design team warred over the best way to progress a new program they were working on. They had a meeting with the client in just an hour’s time and they had to decide before then. He watched disinterestedly as they both tried to secure his vote with impassioned speeches aimed in his direction. He wasn’t really listening.
He hadn’t seen Bella leave this morning. Figured she must be on an early shift at the café she was working at. The fairy dress that had haunted him all night was slung over one of the chairs so he knew she hadn’t skipped out on him already. Although he suspected she wanted to. He studied the fabric, saw her in it in his mind’s eye. The outfit was demure, no parents would object, and yet she looked so damn sexy, so edible. Like a silver-wrapped bon bon—one that he wanted to unpeel and devour in one big bite. No wonder she was asked if she did adult parties. He’d been awake all hours, still seeing her in it—and the curve of her breast almost not in it.
She had this whole slightly incompetent thing going—she had a car that looked as if it had a bad case of multicoloured measles and tyres so bald you could practically see your reflection in them. As for the hard-boiled eggs … He could still feel the mortification that had emanated from her in great waves. It hadn’t been hard not to laugh. Unlike her neighbours and the firefighters, he’d seen under the blushes to the hurt beneath, and the fear. The clarity of it all surprised him. He wasn’t usually one to tune into the deep feelings of others, but with her it had been so acute he’d almost felt it himself. And crazily he didn’t want her to feel alone. He didn’t want her to be alone. Alarming, when being alone was the one thing he liked best.
But she’d been faced with a situation where she’d been feeling desperate—desperate enough to come home with him, because he knew she hadn’t wanted to. And that, despite those occasional signs pointing the other way, made him keep the brakes on.
She hadn’t wanted to see him again—had deliberately given him the wrong number—and then had been forced to accept his assistance. Assistance he’d been careful to offer casually—knowing instinctively that if he’d come on strong she’d refuse and he hadn’t wanted that. Because he was certain there was still a strong attraction there—she might not like it, but the chemical reaction between them was undeniable.
Now, somehow, he was going to find out why she didn’t like it, and then he was going to get rid of it.
It slowly dawned on him that the room had descended into silence. They were all looking his way. And then he saw that the attention of his team wasn’t on him or the lack of conversation. They were all fixated on a spot over his shoulder.
He heard slightly laboured breathing and turned to look behind him. And he was glad he was sitting down. Because the zip on his trousers was instantly pulled really tight. If he were to stand it would be obvious to all the world what this woman did to him. As it was he might have given it away with his mouth hanging open for the last—how long was it already?
She was standing only a few paces into the room, the door to her bedroom open behind her. She was wearing an old, thin, white tee shirt. It was oversized, the sleeves coming to her elbows, the hem only just covering the tops of her thighs. Good thing it reached even that far because that, it seemed, was it. Her only other adornment was a thin white cord coming from each ear, in her hand the tiny MP3 player. Even from this distance, in the silence of his colleagues, he could hear the faint strains of the music playing in her ears.
He clawed back the ability to move and glanced at the table, catching the surreptitious smiles between his workers and saw Billy openly staring at her. He couldn’t blame him. He swung his face back towards her himself, unable to look away for long.
Her mouth had opened. She might have apologised but it wasn’t audible. He saw her take in another deep shuddering breath. And then she turned, and walked back into the bedroom. As she’d moved her breasts had moved too, making it more than clear that there was no bra on under there.
‘Excuse me.’ Her voice was louder that time, her profile fiery as she darted back into the bedroom.
Owen stared after her. She had surprisingly long legs for someone who really wasn’t that tall. He remembered them around his waist and wanted to wrap them there again—preferably now.
Instead he turned his head back to his team.
‘One sec, guys,’ he managed to mutter. He swivelled his chair right around before standing so his back was to them as he rose. Gritting his teeth and praying for self-control, he headed after her.
She was across the other side of the room, but turned back to the door as he entered. He glanced about for a moment to buy some more control time before looking at her again. The glance took in her rumpled bed. It didn’t help his focus.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled, cheeks still stop-sign red. ‘I was listening to my music and didn’t hear you all out there.’
‘I should have warned you, but I thought you’d gone. We have meetings up here every so often.’
All he wanted to do was slide his fingers under the hem of that ratty old shirt and find out for sure if her bottom truly was as bare as her legs were. Looking down, he could see the outline of her nipples. Her glorious, soft warm breasts that he longed to cup in his hands and kiss as he had that magical night on Waiheke.
He was twisting up inside with the effort of trying to control his want, knowing he had to get back to that meeting when all he wanted was to back her up against the bed and take her. The way he was feeling right now it wouldn’t take long. Just a few minutes. Fast and furious.
But he knew it wouldn’t be enough. He needed longer with her—he needed a whole night.
‘I’ll be on my way in a moment.’ She was still mumbling.
He looked into her face then and the hunger in it jolted him. She was staring—as if she hadn’t seen him before, her silvery blue eyes wide. He wondered if she knew how transparent they were. The desire shone in them, the dazed surprise as she looked him over. But at the back of them he could also see hesitation. And that was the bit he didn’t understand. What had happened that night? And how could he right it? Nothing could happen until he did. He wanted her as willing and as wild as she’d been at the beginning.
So with sheer force of will he turned away, and, acting as normally as he could, went back to his incredibly boring meeting.
When she emerged from the bedroom the next time she was clothed in the black trousers and shirt he figured was her work attire. He rose and walked her to the door, shielding her from the overly curious stares of his colleagues. He bet they’d be curious. They’d never seen a woman here before. He was glad she’d emerged from one of the spare rooms. He knew he had a reputation for short term, and that was a reputation and a reality that he wanted to keep. It was a good way of keeping gold-diggers at bay. But he wasn’t glad about the way Billy was still eyeing her up.
‘Are you going to the café?’ Of course she was, but he wanted to have some sort of conversation with her, wanted to hold her there for just a fraction longer.
She nodded, still not looking at him, clearly eager to escape.
‘But you haven’t had breakfast.’
‘I’ll have something at work.’
She’d slipped out the door before he could think of anything else stupid to say.
He usually worked most of the day up in his apartment, liking the light and the space to think freely—away from the phones and noise of his employees. But today, after the meeting, he stayed down on the second floor with them. Keeping away from the sight of that damn dress and the scent of her.
He was going to have to win her over again. How? Make her laugh? Do something nice for her? He had the suspicion he needed to be careful about that—she’d got huffy over his offer to take care of her car. So what, then?
Annoyed with himself for spending so long thinking about her, he forced himself to work longer and harder. And when that failed he went out and got physical.
Bella had had a long day. She was well used to working in a café but was more tired than usual from standing and smiling for so many hours. She’d spent the whole time seeing Owen looking the ultimate stud in that suit. Devastating, distracting, delicious—and totally beyond her reach.
Now she was sitting at his big table, desperately trying to sew the sleeve back onto the offending fairy dress. She’d had a call from one of the parents who’d been at yesterday’s party. She had a four-year-old niece who was having a party this weekend and would she be able to attend? Of course she would. She needed the money too badly to say no. She needed to get out of Owen’s apartment before she threw herself at him desperate-wench style.
Sighing, she tried to thread the needle again. She was having more luck with her party entertaining than she was with her serious acting. She’d phoned up one of the theatres and had felt totally psyched out when the artistic director started asking about what training she’d had and so on. She’d stumbled, like the amateur she was. He’d said they had nothing now but to keep an eye out in the paper for the next auditions call. She didn’t know what else she’d expected, but it was disheartening all the same.
Then Owen got home. She stared as he gave her a brief grin and headed to the kitchen. He’d been to the gym or for a run or something because he was in shorts and a light tee and trainers and there was bare brown skin on show. He was filmed in sweat and breathing hard. She was fascinated. Her own pulse skipped faster, forcing her to take in air quicker too.
He reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Seeing him swigging deeply like that, Bella totally lost her stitch. She struggled once more to rethread the needle.
He wandered closer, staring just as hard back at her with an expression she couldn’t define. The thread slipped again.
‘Repairs not going so well?’
Major understatement. She’d scrubbed so hard at the hem to get the wine stains out and had only partially succeeded. She was gutted because it was a one-in-a-million dress and if she didn’t get it sorted she wouldn’t be able to work. She couldn’t afford a new one and she couldn’t afford to get this one fixed. She was going to have to do it herself. She squared her shoulders. Determined to do it, refusing to send an SOS to her father, refusing to give up.
‘Let me have a go.’ He went back to the kitchen, washed his hands, dried them and then reached for the fabric.
Stunned, she handed it over. ‘You really were some sort of Boy Scout?’
He glanced at her then, his eyes full of awareness, and she kicked herself for bringing the memory of that night out into the open. She flushed.
He looked back to the needle, lips twitching. ‘Actually, no, but I figure I can’t do as bad a job as you are.’
‘Thanks very much.’
He sat in the chair next to hers. Suddenly antsy, she moved and took a quick walk around the room before returning to stand over him. He’d been out running for over an hour. She could see the ‘68’ minutes frozen on his stopwatch where he’d recorded his time. Yet his breathing was now normal. Fit guy. But then she knew that already. She could feel the heat from him and all it did was make her uncomfortably hot and her breath came shorter and faster still—as if she were the one out marathon training.
He didn’t look too competent with the needle, though.
‘Damn.’
Sure enough he’d pricked his finger.
She felt mightily glad to see he was a little useless at something.
He looked up at her, his eyes suddenly all puppy-dog apologetic. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Tell you what, I’ll get my dry-cleaner to take it—they do mending as well.’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Bella, I have to. I’ve smeared blood on it now. I owe you.’
She looked at the dress; sure enough, there was a big spot right on the cute capped sleeve.
‘Oh.’ Her heart lurched.
‘It’s the least I can do.’ He really did look sorry. ‘I’m sure they’ll be able to fix it.’
She hadn’t got the wine stains out. She’d have no luck getting the blood mark either. Damn it, he’d put her in the position of having to accept his help again. ‘OK.’
He slung the dress back over the chair. ‘They’ll have it back in twenty-four hours.’
Just as he turned away she caught sight of his wicked grin and the suspicion that he’d done it deliberately flew at her. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words died on her tongue as she thought about it. She loved that dress. She needed that dress. She could pay him back after the party, couldn’t she? She really had no option.
‘I’m starving.’ He stretched. ‘Let’s do pizza.’
Take-out pizza she could handle. It was cheap; it was yummy. Her sense of independence surged. Hell, she could even buy it.
‘Just give me a couple of minutes to shower and change,’ he called as he headed to his room.
She was opening all the kitchen cupboards and drawers when he got back.
‘Looking for something?’
‘Phonebook,’ she muttered.
He stared at her quizzically for a moment. ‘Ever heard of the Internet? Anyway, we’re not ordering in, we’re going out.’
‘We are?’ Nonplussed, she stared at him. Since when? But he was halfway to the door already.
She called after him as he sped down the stairs. ‘Going out where?’
He grinned up at her as she descended the last few hundred steps. ‘My favourite.’
It was a colourful Italian restaurant about five doors down from his warehouse. Not quite the cheap and cheerful she’d imagined. More refined than relaxed, but they didn’t seem to mind his casual jeans and shirt and her charity shop special skirt.
Bella had kittens as she read the menu—and saw the prices.
Owen seemed to read her mind. ‘My treat. A further apology.’
That was the point where she finally baulked. ‘No.’ She was not going to have him call all the shots like this, and certainly not have him pay for everything. It made the situation sticky.
‘Pardon?’ He looked at her. The air almost crackled.
‘No, thank you,’ she enunciated clearly. ‘You’ve already done far too much for me, Owen.’
He’d frozen. Clearly he didn’t hear the word no very often. She was going to have to remedy that. ‘You don’t have any brothers or sisters, do you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, surprised. ‘How did you figure that?’
‘You’re too used to getting your own way.’
He stared at her; she met the scrutiny with a determined lift to her chin. ‘You think?’ He suddenly stood. ‘Let’s get out of here, then. We’ll do your precious takeaway.’
‘I’m paying.’ Assertiveness plus, that was the way.
‘Fine.’ His lips were twitching again.
The rooftop was as warm and seductive as the night before and Bella soon realised she would have been far safer in the overpriced restaurant. Desperately she went for small talk—anything to distract her from how hot he looked, how hot she felt. And to stop her from making a fool of herself. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Mum’s in Auckland, Dad’s in Australia.’
So they’d split up. Somehow it didn’t surprise her. ‘Were you very old when they busted up?’
He looked cynically amused, as if he knew how she was analysing him. ‘I was nineteen.’
‘Really?’
Owen smiled at her surprise. ‘Twenty-three years of marriage gone. Just like that.’
‘Did one of them have an affair?’
‘No,’ he answered. Not to his knowledge. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He hadn’t known about any of it. He’d been so obtuse. Maybe it would have been easier if one of them had. ‘They just grew apart.’
She was frowning. ‘So what, they just woke up one day and decided to call it quits?’
That was how it had seemed to him at first. A bolt from the blue. Utterly unexpected, unforeseen. But if he’d had an ounce of awareness, he would have known. It still pained him that two of the most important people in his life had been slowly imploding and he hadn’t even noticed. He’d been too preoccupied with himself and his work and all his great plans.
‘They were unhappy for a long time. I never knew. I was too busy with school and sport and socialising to notice. But they agreed to stick together until I was through school and then separate. In those teen years it seemed every other mate’s parents were busting up. I thought mine were the shining example of success. Turns out they just wanted to protect me—stop me going off the rails like so many of those mates then did.’
He didn’t want to know that level of ignorance again. Part of him was angry with them for not being honest with him sooner, part of him respected them for the way they’d loved him. More of him was angry with himself for being so blind. And he couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t be that blind again, so he wasn’t up for that kind of risk.
She’d stopped eating her pizza and was staring at him with such expressive eyes, it jabbed him inside to look into them. He stared at the box between them instead and kept on talking to cover it.
‘I think they got bored with each other. They had different interests. The only thing holding them together was me.’ Together forever just wasn’t a reality—not for anyone. If his parents couldn’t make it, no one could. He cleared his throat. ‘It wasn’t acrimonious or anything. Don’t think it left me scarred or anything. We can all get together and do dinner. They were both totally supportive when I decided to quit university to concentrate on developing my company.’
Not scarred? Bella doubted that. This was the man who swore never to marry. Who said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. While many men could claim commitment-phobia, his seemed more vehement than most. If that wasn’t scarred she didn’t know what was. But maybe there was more to it. Her newly assertive, independent persona took a bite of pizza and went for it.
‘And so you’ve just been working on your company ever since? No serious girlfriend?’
‘What is this?’ Irritation flashed. ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’
So there was someone. ‘Just answer.’ She pointed her pizza at him. ‘Has there really been no one serious in your life?’
‘All right.’ He took a huge bite of pizza and answered out the side of his mouth. ‘I had a girlfriend. A long time ago.’ Then he shut his lips and chomped hard.
‘What happened?’
He shrugged, eventually swallowed. ‘Nothing much.’
‘Did you live together?’ Why did she need all the details?
She couldn’t help but want all the details.
‘For a while.’
The niggle of jealousy was bigger than she expected. ‘What happened?’
‘She met someone else. They’re married now. Has a kid—two maybe.’
She stared at him, shocked. ‘She left you?’
He looked levelly at her. ‘I’m not a good companion, Bella.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Good grief, the guy was gorgeous.
‘When I’m working on a project, that’s my world, that’s all there is. For those weeks, months, whatever, other things pass me by.’
She frowned. ‘Are you working on something now?’
‘Yes.’
Yet it seemed to her that nothing much passed him by. ‘You don’t think you’re being a little hard on yourself?’
‘I didn’t notice my folks falling apart. I didn’t notice her falling apart.’ His face hardened. ‘I’m selfish, Bella, remember?’
She stared, her mental picture elsewhere, thinking. From what she’d seen of him, it didn’t quite ring true—yes, he did what he wanted, but he did what others wanted too. But he’d totally closed over now, moodily staring at the half-eaten pizza.
She wanted to lighten the mood. ‘So what, you just lock yourself away and do geeky boy hacker things?’
His blue eyes met hers and sparked again. ‘I have programmers who build the software, Bella. Then I use the programs to do the work that needs doing.’
‘I’m surprised you need the programmers, Owen,’ she teased, pleased to have his humour back. ‘Why don’t you get all your precious computers to do it all for you?’
He chuckled. ‘There’s one thing that computers can’t do. Something that I can do really, really well.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Imagine,’ he answered softly. ‘I have a really, really good imagination, Bella.’
She stared at him, reading everything she wanted to read in his expression—heat. She was a dreamer—her father had told her off for it. That she wouldn’t get anywhere sitting in a daydream all day …
‘Someone has to dream it up.’
Someone like him. He was so enticing. Did he know what she was imagining right now? She suspected he might because that look in his eye was back.
Confusion made her run for deflection. ‘I could never sit at a computer all day.’
‘I could never stand on my feet slaving after people all day in a ton of noise.’
‘I like the noise of the café. I like watching the customers as they sit and people-watch. I like the face-to-face contact.’
‘I like face to face.’
‘Really?’ She didn’t quite believe him. She had the feeling he holed himself away in that big apartment and thought up things her brain wasn’t even capable of comprehending. And then he sold them. She’d been wrong—he was more entrepreneur than anything.
His grin turned wicked. ‘And body to body.’ He leaned closer, his voice lower, his eyes more intense. ‘Skin to skin.’
Owen grinned as he saw the change in her eyes again. The sparkle went sultry. When he stepped close to her, when he spoke low to her, she coloured, flustered. But he wanted her more than flustered, he wanted her hot—and wild. And now he saw the way to that was so much simpler than he’d thought. All he had to do was get close to her. And she wanted to know about him? He’d tell her about him.
‘A couple of years ago I sold the business to a conglomerate for many millions of dollars.’ He was upfront, knowing money wasn’t something that rang her bell. She seemed to take a strange joy in being broke; it was almost as if she deliberately mucked up—as if it was some sort of ‘screw you’ signal to her dad.
‘So what did you do with all your millions?’ she asked, her tone utterly astringent.
There, see? He’d known it would go down like the proverbial lead balloon. ‘What do you think I did with it?’
‘Bought yourself a Ferrari,’ she snapped, ‘and a few other boy toys. A plush pad in the centre of the city. An easy, playboy lifestyle.’ Her eyes were like poisoned arrows pointing straight at him.
He batted them away. ‘Yes to the Ferrari—it was my one big indulgence. But not so many other toys. As you’ve already seen the plush pad in the city isn’t so plush—half of it still has to be plushed up.’
He paused, took in her focused attention. Good, it was time his little fairy saw things the way they actually were.
‘I put half into a charitable trust and built a think tank with the other. The people you saw in that meeting yesterday have some of the brightest and best minds you’ll find anywhere. Total computer geeks.’ He winked at her. ‘I get them together and they work through problems, building new programs.’
‘That you can sell and make lots of money with.’
‘That’s right. We take the money, give half away and get on with the next idea. I like ideas, Bella. I like to think them up and get them working and then I like to move on to the next big one.’
‘You don’t want to see them all the way through?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t like to get bored.’ He didn’t like to be complacent. He didn’t like to be around long enough to ‘miss’ anything. It was better for him to keep his mind moving. ‘As for the easy, playboy lifestyle—sure, occasionally. But for the most part I work very long, very hard.’
‘Why? When you’re wealthy enough to retire tomorrow?’
‘Because I like it.’ Because he couldn’t not. Because he needed something to occupy his mind and his time. Because he was driven. Because he couldn’t face the void inside him that he knew couldn’t be filled. Because he was missing something that everyone else had—the compassion, the consideration, the plain awareness and empathy towards others. His relationship with Liz had made him feel claustrophobic. The family she’d threatened him with had proved to him he wasn’t built for it and he had bitterly resented her for trying to force him into it. He would not allow that pressure to be put on him again. But he’d have a woman the way he wanted—he’d have Bella the way he wanted.
‘For all that success—’ he underlined the word, knowing the concept annoyed her ‘—I’m still the guy who made you laugh that night.’ He tossed the pizza crust into the box and stood. ‘I’m still the guy who made your legs so weak you couldn’t stand.’ He took a step back, determined to walk away now. He spoke softer. ‘I’m still the guy who made you alternately sigh then scream with pleasure.’ He paused. He’d leave her knowing exactly what his intentions were—plain and simple. He spoke softer still. ‘And I’m the guy who’s going to do it all again.’