Page 48 of Tempting as Sin
It was all a bit surreal, exactly the way it had been in her shop. One thing on his mind, and trying to be cool all the same. He stood in the kitchen, ground beans, and made coffee while she reached for bowls on the open shelves, pulled things out of cupboards and refrigerator, and fixed a tray. He added two yellow mugs to it, hand-painted with butterflies and flowers, poured the coffee, and then put goat’s milk into a tiny pitcher. This one was pale blue, but it had flowers, too.
She really was the most feminine woman he’d ever met, from her pale-pink nails to her pink-and-green décor to that bra to her coffee mugs, not to mention the faint scent of flowers and more that he picked up every time she got close. Like when she was brushing behind his back, trailing her hand over the fabric of his T-shirt in a barely-there touch as she stepped around him like a dancer in the tiny kitchen, her bare feet not making a sound on the wood floor. She had him wound all the way up again, and all he’d done was make coffee.
Doesn’t matter what you want, mate. You don’t make these rules, and Jace is marrying Paige. You can’t move that bloke with artillery, which gives you exactly one option here. Harden the fuck up.He carried the tray out to the front porch, set it on a tiny purple café table, and sat down with her.
Conquering the inner man, one spoonful of yoghurt at a time.
It took Lily a long time to get her courage up. It wasn’t all that easy to eat, either, not with Rafe sitting opposite her, his beautiful hand resting on the handle of his coffee mug. How could a man’s hand look that good? That strong and capable, and that sensitive, too? Almost graceful. It reminded her of the way he’d stopped kissing her just this side of roughly and had started kissing her softly instead, once he’d reached her neck. Hungry, and so careful. Exactly how clever would his hands be? Exactly how slowly would he go?
You are so far gone, getting this turned on by a man’s hands.She asked, “How did you get that scar on your knuckle?”
Coward,half of her said.Easing into it,the other half argued.Conversation.She touched the white upside-down V on his first knuckle lightly with her fingertip and felt his whole body freeze. Even though hecouldn’tbe reacting as strongly as she was. He was a player. He was a lightweight. That was no secret. That was why this could work. If she’d learned anything in life, it was that you didn’t get everything.
Chuck was wandering around and peeing on trees, which was good. It would keep the deer and coyotes away. She thought it, and she forgot it, because Rafe said, “Snakebite.”
“What? No.” She forgot about Chuck, and about everything that had kept her awake last night, too. “Seriously? Or is it one of those things where you actually slammed your hand in a car door, but this is your story in the bar?”
“Excuse me?” He was laughing, though. “Nah. No worries, it wasn’t that sexy. A love bite from an Eastern Brown, back when Jace and I were kids, playing rugby in somebody’s back garden amongst the killer wildlife.”
“As one does.”
Those crinkles around his eyes were really more than a woman should have to resist. He wasn’t wearing his contacts yet, he’d taken off his sunglasses, and he’d slipped back into the Australian accent. It was disconcerting looking into his real eyes, hearing his real voice, and having him focus all that magnetic force of personality on her. She’d long since pulled her hand back, but she still felt him. His hand had been warm under her fingers, like he burned a little hotter than everybody else.
He said, “Well, yeah. If one’s a Queenslander, one does. I was trying to tackle Jace. When your brother’s three years older and a beast anyway, that isn’t easy, but an Aussie never says die. I was hanging onto him, and he was falling. I looked down, because that was where I was headed, straight for the turf. Jace was looking ahead, like always, stretching for the try line—which was the washing line. Imaginary try line, that is, under the washing line. But because I was looking down, I saw this bloody great snake with its body raised up the way they do, beside the post, starting to move. Aggressive fella, the Eastern Brown. It was going for Jace’s belly, and it was like I saw it on a photo. Freeze frame, even though it was anything but. I don’t know what I thought I’d do. Shove it away, something like that. Instinctive, I guess. Unfortunately, so was the snake. It bit me, the nasty bugger. Then it bit me again. Not the best day of my life.”
“It bit youagain?Where?”
He shifted sideways in his chair and lifted the sleeve of his gray T-shirt all the way to his shoulder. Which, as she’d happened to notice already, was just one part of a torso that would have made him a fortune selling underwear. A fortune he didn’t need.
She forgot that when she saw the other scar. On the back of his shoulder, a curving white line stretching along his tanned skin, fully four inches from end to end. “Got me good,” he said. “Second most venomous snake in the world, and as far as I’m concerned, the nastiest. Another snake sees four people walking along a track and slithers away. The Eastern Brown gets four for the price of one, bang-bang-bang-bang. It hurt like billy-o. Jace told me I cried like a little girl. There’s gratitude.”
“But how is that scar so bad from one bite? What happened?”
“What happened was that Jace finished scoring his try, finally noticed that I had a bloody great snake hanging off my body, pulled it off me and threw it into the bush, and somebody ran for their mum. The ambos came, and I got the antivenin. I scared my mum and spent a few days in hospital, having surgery on some bits of myself that had died from the poison and eating ice cream. They said I could have all the ice cream I wanted. Turns out I wanted heaps.” He’d let his sleeve fall again. “You don’t usually die from that bite unless you’re well out in the bush. In the Outback, hours from anywhere? Now, there, you can die. I’m being casual, you see, whilst secretly hoping like fury that you’re impressed by my accidentally acquired snakebites. Men never get much past thirteen, I reckon. Personally, I keep regressing.”
She laughed, but that scar…“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“I guess I know why you and Jace seem so protective of each other.”
He looked up fast. “You do?”
“It’s obvious. It could be I hated you when you were aiming that at Paige, but it wasn’t about Paige, was it? It was about Jace.”
Silence for a long moment, then Rafe said, “He’s got medals for things he can’t talk about. He made it back from that, and it wasn’t easy. I don’t know how much more hurt he can take.”
Her throat had tightened. Too much honesty there. Too much emotion. “I guess I’d know about that,” she said, knowing her voice was unsteady. “Since I feel exactly the same way about my sister.”
“You think she’s stronger than you are, even so,” he said. “Tougher than you. Braver than you. I think you’re wrong.”
“How do you…” Lily had to stop for a minute. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think? Could be because I’ve felt the same way. Let me ask you something, though, because I keep thinking it’s at the heart of you. Who’s paying your bills?”
What?This was so not where she’d intended to go. She was wearing herrobe.Her short,silkrobe. She was desperately out of practice at this. Or maybe it was just that she was thirty-one years old, with skin that absolutely couldn’t be described as “dewy” anymore, especially not to a man like Rafe, with all his opportunities for comparison. She kept forgetting that pesky fact. She said, “Nobody’s paying my bills but me. And that’s the way I want it.”
“And whatever Antonio says,” he said, “it isn’t the truth.”
