Chapter Eleven
Ethan wasn’t asleep when he heard JJ creep into the room hours later. He’d been lying awake for what seemed an age, waiting for this moment. Willing himself not to be. Willing himself to sleep. Willing himself to miss it. To no avail.
Going over and over the ground rules.
The minutes had ticked by in a red digital glow, mocking him. He couldn’t decide what was worse—her avoiding him or joining him. He hadn’t shared this bed with any female—apart from Connie—and the thought that he was about to with a fully grown one, no matter how artificial the reason, was both strange and thrilling.
Strange because it was JJ.
Thrilling because underneath it all he was still a man. One who’d now had a tiny forbidden taste of her. And damn if she wasn’t one hundred per cent edible.
But that was bad. Thrilling was bad.
He’d assured her this would be fine. She hadn’t believed him and now he understood her reservations.
Which was why he’d deliberately positioned himself right on the edge of the mattress with his back to the door. But he could still hear her open it, sense her looking at him for long moments as the shaft of light from the hallway fell across his body.
“Ethan?”
The whisper was loud in the silence but he squeezed his eyes shut and feigned sleep. He figured it might be easier for her to get in if she thought he was asleep. They sure as hell couldn’t keep doing this—staying up late, going to bed separately, in an effort to spend as little time in the bed together as possible.
They’d both be zombies by week’s end.
Still it seemed an age before the mattress dipped behind him. And another before the sheet pulled against his body as she slid under it. If they’d been a conventional couple he’d have acknowledged her presence. Rolled over, reached for her, tucked her in close.
But they weren’t. So he kept his back firmly turned.
He could feel her eyes on him though, straight through the fabric of his T-shirt and coming to rest on his nape. She was close in the queen-size bed, he could sense it, her thoughts so loud in the stillness he could practically hear each one. Wondering what the hell they were doing.
His eyes flicked open, his heart pounding in his chest. It resonated through his ears as he held his breath, waiting. What for he had no idea—for another whisper? A touch? Finally she shifted and he slowly, silently, let the breath out, the heat from her gaze broken.
But the gap between them yawned ever wider as he sensed her turning away, no doubt clinging to her edge of the mattress as he was to his, teetering on the line somewhere between vertigo and temptation. One direction the cold, hard floor, the other direction soft, warm woman.
Both unwelcome in their own ways.
Ethan shut his eyes. He was never going to sleep like this.
Yet, surprisingly, he did.
With JJ beside him where she was supposed to be, his hyper-vigilant body finally relaxed. The situation was still fucked up, but subconsciously he knew both JJ and Connie were safe—they were home—and everything was right with his world.
And if that meant spending months in the same bed with JJ, looking at her across a divide as fraught as the freaking DMZ, well, so be it. It was enough to know she was here—that Shane couldn’t get to her. That his case for custody was stronger. He could live with the rather irrational urge to touch her.
This was JJ—he didn’t touch JJ.
Except, apparently, at five-thirty in the morning when he woke to great big handfuls of her.
A warm leg was flung across his upper thighs, the knee nestling very close to a part of his anatomy that was perky as hell for half-past-stupid o’clock. He was conscious of the bareness of her thigh and the smoothness of her calf as his hand meandered up and down the length of her leg.
His eyes blinked open as he came suddenly awake and his hand froze. He turned his head to look at the woman attached to the leg, ready to apologise, his hand already lifting off her. But his intentions shattered at first glimpse.
She was rolled on her side facing him now. Early morning light filtered in through the window above the bed and fell so gently against her beautiful face that he lost his breath for a moment. Sooty eyelashes swept down in two decadent fringes, a dark curl fell partially across one eye and the slope of a cheekbone, her mouth was slightly parted as if waiting to be kissed.
Without conscious control, his hand returned to the warm contours of her leg as he looked his fill—resoundingly breaking rules two and four. The straightness of her nose, the soft vulnerability of her neck and the thud of the pulse that bounded there, the even rise and fall of her chest, the slight swell of cleavage as her skew-whiff T-shirt pulled taut across unfettered breasts.
She was soft and female and relaxed and utterly, utterly desirable.
His hand tightened on her leg as he fought the urge to close the distance between them, lift that curl off her eye and drop a kiss on her mouth. It seemed the irrational urge to touch her hadn’t been magically quashed overnight. It was just a good thing her mouth was more distant than her leg.
While the bottom half of her body was snugly aligned with his, her pelvis angled towards him, the upper half had kept a respectable distance. Her head was firmly planted on her pillow, her torso half an arm’s-length away.
Still too close for his sanity though …
He should get up. He should take his hand off her leg.
Just as the thought formed, a tiny frown furrowed her brow and he held his breath as she squirmed a little in her sleep, shifting a fraction closer, tucking her hand under her chin, bending her knee before relaxing again.
Ethan swallowed, every muscle fibre he owned balled tight, as JJ’s knee and lower leg now pressed high and hard against his full-blown erection, trapping it in exquisite agony between her and his belly. Her leg was solid along the length of him and he fought the urge to push himself into it.
He should get up. He should take his hand off her leg.
Right now.
He should get the hell up, right this minute!
But he didn’t. Instead his hand trekked along her leg towards her knee, pressing it firmly against his hard aching flesh. He lifted his hips slightly, rocked a little, the friction easing and stoking all at once.
His husky breath sounded loud in the dawn stillness and he shut his eyes, trying to regulate it. But images of flipping her on her back and plunging straight into her taunted him with their anatomical accuracy.
He almost groaned out loud at the technicolour realism of his dirty little fantasy.
He opened his eyes again, trying to drag himself away from it, to quell the images.
His heart raced, his breath sawed in and out.
He should get up. He should take his hand off her leg. Right now. He should get the hell up, right this minute!
This was wrong. He was going to hell. Directly to hell.
He turned his head to look at her, the real JJ, not the woman in his head who clung and begged and needed. To ground himself in reality, to gain some perspective.
Two hazel eyes stared back at him, long sleepy blinks fluttering her lashes open and closed. His hands stilled. His breath stuttered to a halt. His heart stopped its mad race in one decisive boom, before re-starting in a thick, slow pound inside his chest. He watched as sleep slipped away and clarity dawned.
Oh God, he was going to hell right this minute.
But he watched as something else dawned too—awareness. She didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything—didn’t withdraw her leg, didn’t purse her lips in disapproval, or scramble out of bed.
Didn’t slap his face.
She just looked at him, her mouth parted. Just lay there as if she hadn’t woken to him in a very compromising position, breaking the rules they’d diligently put in place. But she knew. He could see it in her eyes. The way they went a little smoky, the way they drifted to his mouth. The way they lingered.
And then her gaze locke
d with his as she moved her knee slightly, pressed it into him a little harder. Ethan sucked in a breath as his erection surged against the pressure. His heart took off again, his hand convulsively gripped her leg. Then she rubbed it up and down the length of him, a long slow torturous friction, her eyes never leaving his.
Ethan swallowed, torn between rolling away and reaching for her. He couldn’t believe he was faltering at their first test.
Couldn’t believe he didn’t care.
Lust bubbled thick as lava in his blood, desire chanted in his ears. Yanked at his groin. Tugged at his resistance.
Screw it. “JJ—”
But that was as far as he got before the door flung open with a bang and in a flash a bereted bundle of gangly arms and legs landed between them. JJ withdrew her leg just in time, saving it from imminent breakage.
“Daddy!”
It took Ethan a second or two to compute the rapid-fire change in situation as a pair of little arms around his neck practically constricted the blood flow to his brain. “Since when are you up with the chooks, especially on Sunday?” he asked his daughter as he dragged his eyes off an equally nonplussed JJ to look at Connie.
Somehow the beret had survived the leap, but she looked far from Parisian with it crammed atop her horrendous bed hair, which gave even bird’s nests a bad name. Ethan’s chest filled up with love for his hopelessly unstylish daughter.
She was fourteen years old for crying out loud—plenty of time for berets and bob cuts!
Connie gave a dramatic sigh. “It’s the jet lag.”
Ethan laughed. “Oh, so we have the jet lag now, do we?”
Connie nodded. “It’s sneaky like that.” She turned to JJ, who was still lying on her side, elbow bent, head propped up on her flattened hand. She looked a little flustered still, like she was also having a hard time coming back from the edge. “It’s going to be the best having you here every morning,” Connie said.
Then she burrowed down, next to her, her back to JJ’s front. On what seemed like automatic pilot, JJ drew her knees up and slung her arm around Connie’s waist until they were spooning comfortably. “The best,” JJ agreed, dropping a kiss on Connie’s forehead.
Ethan sucked in a breath at the picture. Anyone looking in from outside could surely not doubt for a moment that they were a family. The thought paralysed him. Why the hell hadn’t he fallen for JJ all those years ago instead of Delia? Someone solid and reliable and dependable instead of someone flighty and fickle and irresponsible.
The thought was confusing—completely out of the realm of anything he’d ever thought before and he just didn’t know how to process it.
JJ was his friend for crying out loud.
“Huh,” he joked to hide his turmoil. “I thought I was the best?”
Connie giggled. “You are. But you’re Daddy. JJ’s going to be my second Mummy.”
Ethan felt lower than a slug at his daughter’s obvious excitement. He glanced at JJ—if possible, she looked like she felt even lower. Ethan didn’t know what to do to make it better, so he did the one thing that every red-blooded male he knew did when faced with the hard emotional stuff—he prepared to flee.
He smiled at Connie. “Well, now we’ve been so rudely awoken …”
He glanced at JJ and their gazes meshed. Neither of them needed to state the obvious—they’d both been wide awake. And a heartbeat from tearing each other’s clothes off. “I’ll put some coffee on.”
He rolled up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He needed his body in order and his head on straight. Coffee was essential. And both Connie and JJ looked perfectly at home snuggled up together.
The thought spurred him out the door with inordinate haste.
What followed was the hardest week of JJ’s life. Days where everything carried on as normal. Running the pub, serving up beer and advice and chatting to the locals. Same as always. Then the nights would swing around and things were far from normal.
She was living in Ethan Weston’s house as Ethan Weston’s fiancée. She was sleeping in Ethan Weston’s bed. Except everything was depressingly aboveboard and painstakingly platonic.
Apart from those early mornings where invariably—no matter how separate they started off—they ended up closer. Their bodies a whisper from contact—even touching sometimes. Her hand on his chest, his hand on her hip. Actually spooning one morning—his erection hard and urgent between her ass cheeks, both awake and both trying not to move. Both aware they were treading dangerous waters.
Thank goodness for Connie’s early morning visits saving the day. Saving them from each other.
But the build-up of frustration was slow and inexorable. Inevitable many would have said. There were only so many early morning clinches a healthy adult woman could stand. Only so many times she could wake with his firm muscles beneath her hand, or his face close to hers or his arm heavy on her waist.
Only so many times she could play happy families—share meals, help with homework, do school drop off—without going there in her head. Without imagining things. Hoping. Wishing. Dreaming.
By the time Friday rolled around, JJ’s libido was at screaming point. She certainly wasn’t in any mood to suffer fools. Which was unfortunate given the two people who chose that day to come calling.
Shane was first cab off the rank.
She’d not long opened the doors for the day and there was only her and three locals for company. Given that December had rocked around she’d been stringing tinsel along the bar and was out the back going through a box of Christmas decorations when she heard. “Beer please, bar-keep.”
She knew the voice instantly. She’d know it anywhere. He’d whispered I know you want me, bar-keep in her ear that night, just before he’d attacked her, as she’d dragged herself through layers of deep sleep to find him on top of her.
A part of her wanted to stay right where she was. To hide from him and all he represented. Her past. Her rage and her helplessness. But she refused to cower. She didn’t want him to know she was vulnerable or frightened.
And she wasn’t alone. She doubted that he was here to attack her in broad daylight with Mrs Durrum and two of the other ladies from the Country Women’s Association at a booth sipping lemon, lime and bitters not ten metres away.
She took a calming breath and went out to face her demons. He was leaning on the bar like he owned it and she hated him a little bit more. “I think you need to go and find a beer elsewhere,” she said.
What she wanted to say—we don’t serve your type here, she wisely kept to herself. There was no point in aggravating a man who had shown over and over his boiling point was way below average.
He smiled at her. The type of smile that said I’ve seen you naked and her skin literally crawled. Where the hell had her brain been when she’d hooked up with him? “Don’t be like that, JJ.”
“I think Ethan, my fiancé, was very clear about boundaries,” she said, trying to stay calm as she fought a wave of nausea.
“You going to tattle?”
JJ never flinched. “Absolutely.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t need to be like this. I’m very sorry about everything that happened. Let me prove it to you. Let me buy you a drink and make up for it.”
JJ almost choked on the bile rising in her throat. Did he think that a drink could repair the damage he’d done? “You can prove it by going down to Joe’s for your beer.”
Shane didn’t budge. “You know what I was thinking about yesterday when the crew and I drove out to the Simpson property?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “We passed that rickety old sign to Baffle Caves. Do you remember that?”
JJ remembered. Their honeymoon. Back in the beginning before his possessiveness had reared its ugly head—they’d been happy then. They’d been all alone at the off-the-beaten-track camp site, a three-hour drive west. They’d explored the caves by day, slept under the stars at night.
“We could have that again,” he said.
br /> JJ opened her mouth to tell him to get out when Mrs Durrum and her two friends came right up and stood next to Shane at the bar. “You okay, dear?” she enquired.
“It’s okay” Shane said. “We were just reminiscing about our honeymoon at Baffle Caves, weren’t we, love?”
JJ’s skin crawled at the endearment and she swallowed against the undercurrent of fear and panic that Shane’s presence had stirred.
She would not be intimidated by him.
“Actually, Shane was just leaving,” she said and was pleased to hear the steel in her voice.
“What about that beer?” he protested.
Mrs Durrum gave Shane an uncompromising look. Her friends followed suit. “You heard what the publican said, young man.”
To say Shane looked pissed off was an understatement, but even he was smart enough to understand the implied protection—even if it was from three of the town’s octogenarians.
He nodded at the grey-haired gang. “Ladies,” he muttered as he took his leave.
JJ and her saviours watched him go. When the door shut behind him she turned to Mrs Durrum, relief surging through her system and said, “What can I get you, ladies? On the house.”
“Oh, lovely,” Mrs Durrum smiled. “I suppose it’s still a little early for a G and T?”
JJ disagreed. “I think now’s the perfect time,” she grinned. In fact, she joined them.
Her second visitor came during the afternoon lull and was just as unwelcome.
“So,” Delia said after approaching the bar, no preamble required, no polite chitchat. “You and Ethan are engaged, I hear.”
JJ blinked. The woman still had claws. And balls the size of Brisbane. “Yes.”
She flicked a disparaging glance at JJ’s bare left hand. “Really? And yet no ring?”
JJ looked down at the finger in question. In all the ups and downs and turmoil of the last few weeks, an engagement ring had been the least of her worries. Which was exactly the difference between her and Delia. She didn’t give a fig about some bauble on her finger.
“Ethan bought me a one-carat diamond—do you remember?”
JJ nodded. She remembered. He’d gotten a loan to cover the cost. “Fancy jewellery’s never been my style,” she dismissed.
JJ was still feeling edgy from her confrontation with Shane—Delia really didn’t want to mess with her today.
Delia sniffed. “Indeed,” she said and JJ was left in no doubt that she was somehow severely lacking in the feminine stakes. Then suddenly Delia switched track, her blue gaze glittering cold and hard. “It won’t work you know,” she said.
JJ frowned, trying to keep up. “I’m sorry?”
Delia laughed and there was a brittle desperateness to it that was kind of sad. “You think I don’t know what’s happening here? Ethan takes on a poor suffering fool, who’s been in love with him since high school like some sick puppy dog, so he can look good in front of the court.”
Her spite was almost as palpable as Shane’s passive aggression had been a few hours earlier. “I’ll make sure the judge knows all about it,” Delia continued. “He won’t win. And you? You’re going to lose doubly because no-one’s ever going to be able to replace me, JJ. Certainly not a plain Jane like you. I’m his one great love. Sure,” she dismissed, “you’re everything I wasn’t—dependable and reliable—but that’s it. You’re always going to be living in my shadow, JJ.”
JJ felt heat rise in her face as the sting of Delia’s words found their mark. She may hate Ethan’s ex with all her heart but she knew the woman spoke the truth. Ethan had been besotted with Delia forever—what hope did she have?
The urge to strangle her with tinsel rose along with about a hundred vile home truths, pushing at her larynx, eager to find voice. Eager to crush the smug woman who stood in front of her. But JJ was determined to take the moral high ground if it killed her. She was Connie’s mother and that was what mattered.
“Have you ever stopped to think about what Connie wants, Delia? You think she’s going to just take this sitting down?”
“Connie needs her mother,” Delia said waspishly. “I’m here now—you can back off.”
“You think a trip to Paris makes you a mother? Makes up for years of neglect?” JJ shook her head. “If you really loved your daughter, you wouldn’t do this to her. And you wouldn’t do it to the man who has more of her love and loyalty than any person on Earth. Don’t be fooled that just because she’s a kid she’s easily duped. You don’t know her, Delia. Not like Ethan. Not like me. She will hate you if force this issue.”
It gave JJ some small satisfaction to see Delia’s confidence wane slightly. “She’ll come round.”
JJ shook her head. “She won’t.”
“She’s fourteen,” Delia bristled. “She doesn’t know what’s good for her. She needs me.”
JJ nodded. She didn’t bother to point out the flip side—that Delia needed Connie more. “Yes. She’s always needed you. But you weren’t around and Ethan picked up the slack. Don’t underestimate that bond.”
Delia glared. “Too bad—the process is in motion. Ethan can’t have her all to himself any more. Tell him that from me.”
And before JJ could say another word, Delia had swept out of the bar with all the grace and elegance of a movie star.
JJ, in her beer splattered jeans and T, felt positively dowdy in comparison.