A Night with the Society Playboy

‘I’ll say. I figure if I stay out of sight she’ll find some other poor sap to coerce.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Caleb wondered why she hadn’t just told Aunt Gladys she was with someone. The image of the lanky grey-bearded professor, who no doubt thanked his lucky stars daily for whichever man in her past had sent her into the arms of someone of his ilk, popped unwittingly into his mind. He mentally stuck out his foot and smiled inwardly as the figure tripped over his large shoes and fell face flat on the floor.

After that diverting little thought he figured now seemed as good a time as any to find out what the situation was.

‘You didn’t think to bring a date along to ward off randy family members?’ he asked. ‘Just in case I run into Aunt Gladys I’d love to be fully informed so that I can help you out any way I can.’

Ava blinked and her eyes suddenly seemed darker. ‘I only arrived this morning. Not much time to rustle up a date. There was a guy washing windows at an intersection on the way from the airport. If only I’d been more on the ball.’

‘If only.’

If only she would give him a straight answer.

Maybe what she needed was a straight question.

‘So where’s this professor of yours Damien told me so little about? Back at the hotel? Past his bedtime? Or did he not want to give up his nightly malted milk by the fire with his cat at his feet to come across the pond?’

‘Yep,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Something like that.’

She lifted herself off the step and wobbled a tad. Caleb wondered if that had been her first beer.

‘So,’ she said, head down, hair falling in a waterfall over her face as she scuffed her shoe against the step, ‘which of the bevy of beautiful blondes out there under the stars is your arm candy for the evening?’

‘Who says I have any interest in arm candy?’

She lifted her chin, her mouth twisted as she pinned him with her trademark flat, discerning, too-smart-for-her-own- good gaze. ‘There is such a thing as email, you know. And from what I hear from those who’ve used said email to tell me things about home, these days you’re a regular hound dog.’

Caleb laughed. The sudden explosive release of tension was such a surprise he let it rumble through him a good deal longer than he’d normally bother.

And it felt good. Really good.

It was enough to make him glad he’d sought her out again. For one thing she didn’t seem to have an inordinate interest in Roman blinds. And for another he was definitely enjoying her attempt at being sassy. She honestly had no idea she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

‘And what makes you think you can trust such stories?’ he asked.

‘The source.’

He glanced her way, eyebrow raised.

‘My brother.’

Caleb laughed again. ‘You can’t be quoting your brother, I’m sure.’ Damien would have used far less ambiguous language.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Or I think I am. He may have put things another way and I simply extrapolated that meaning. So you’re not a hound dog?’

The minx actually looked disappointed.

‘Honey, I’m not sure any man has been a “hound dog” since the nineteen fifties.’

‘But—’

‘But I understand your meaning. And he was quite wrong. I’m perfectly discriminating,’ he said with a devilish smile.

‘How’s that? No blondes after Labour Day?’

‘I said I was discriminating, not an imbecile.’

This time Ava laughed. Her eyes brightened, her hair shimmied, and those lips… Damn, but she was one gorgeous creature.

Caleb’s extremities stirred as he wondered how long it might take for butter to melt anywhere else on her body.

‘So anyway,’ Ava said, before he could sink too deeply into that fantasy, ‘I was thinking of heading up to my old bedroom for a nose around. See if my mother turned it into an aquarium, or a gift-wrapping room, or a yoga studio. What do you reckon?’

‘Knowing your mother I’d say…trophy room.’

Ava clicked her fingers. ‘Right. Of course it is. So, do you want to come see if you’re right?’

Caleb waited for the other shoe to drop, but she merely blinked at him, all ingenuous blue eyes.

Ava was inviting him up to her old bedroom.

It didn’t mean what the sudden surge of adrenalin throughout his body indicated it meant. Or did it?

Only one way to find out for sure…

He placed his right foot on the bottom step and leaned in towards her, thus crowding her personal space to the point where he could see flecks of silver and navy in her irises.

And he waited for her to lean away. Or frown. Or run as she had run before.

But she didn’t move an inch. She just blinked back at him until he could tell that an extensive array of wheels whirred madly in her head.

Every look, every move, every word that had come out of her mouth had been entirely deliberate. She knew exactly what she was doing. She’d done it all before…

Her arms in the air, so trusting, as he slid her Greenpeace-emblazoned T-shirt over her head. Her small hands tugging his T-shirt from his jeans. Her soft hands sliding around his waist…

Caleb’s temperature began to soar.

Ava reached out and ran a hand over the carved sphere balanced on the end of the banister and said, ‘You coming?’

He had never in his life wanted to be an inanimate lump of wood more. He waved a hand up the stairs. ‘After you.’

Damien had asked him to play nice, after all.

Damien…

He shunted that particular name from his mind. This had nothing to do with his best friend and business partner. Nothing to do with the guy who’d taken him in and made him feel a part of a family the moment he’d realised Caleb’s own family were as warm as a meat locker.