this time and grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her in place as he stepped around her.
‘Goodnight,’ he said on his way out of the door.
Vic turned. ‘Lawson?’
He swung around. ‘Yes?’
‘I don’t suppose you have something I can take to cut the headache off at the pass?’
Lawson chuckled. ‘Sure. I’ll get it.’
Vic watched him leave, slipped out of her jeans and then lifted her top over her head. She pulled his bed covers back and gratefully crawled beneath. Lawson’s bed felt like a feather duvet floating on a cloud. But then anything that allowed her to recline would have felt as soft—even a bed of nails. The alcohol and a mere four hours’ sleep enveloped her and she shut her eyes surrendering to the bliss of being horizontal.
Not even her weird-o-meter, which was blaring loudly, was enough to rouse her. The vague feeling that being in Lawson’s bed was blurring their professional and friendship boundaries nagged at the peripheries of her rapidly dwindling consciousness, just out of her grasp. Hell, she’d never even been in his bedroom before. It was…intimate. Not something friends, colleagues, did. Certainly not something they did.
Lawson entered the darkened room a few minutes later with a glass of water and two headache pills. Some ambient light from the street outside filtered through his curtains and he looked down at her, the covers pulled up to her chin, her hair loose on his pillows.
‘Victoria?’
She stirred as his voice floated towards her. ‘Mmm?’
He sat on the side of the bed. ‘Here.’
Vic prised open an eye and saw the white tablets on the palm of his hand. Sleep clawed at her bones, making them heavy and resistant, but she pushed through it, sitting up. She drew her knees to her chest and downed the pills gratefully along with the entire glass of water.
‘Thanks, Lawson.’ She handed him back the glass. ‘For everything. For coming to my rescue with Ryan. And the company tonight. And the bed. And the tablets.’
Lawson watched as the sheet slipped a little to reveal a red bra strap before she hiked it back up again. He looked away quickly. ‘What are partners for?’
Vic smiled and stroked her cheek against the sheet covering her knees. ‘I like the smell of your sheets,’ she murmured.
He grimaced. ‘Sorry, I should change them.’
‘No, they’re fine,’ she dismissed. The bed was all she needed—sheets were a luxury. ‘They smell like you.’
Lawson’s breath caught in his chest. ‘Oh? And how do I smell?’
Vic sighed, closing her eyes, inhaling his essence again. ‘Like Matilda’s strawberry-shortcake soap I buy her every Christmas and that great aftershave you wear.’
Lawson’s belly clenched. She noticed his aftershave ?
‘And freshly cut grass.’
Lawson laughed as the tension inside him uncoiled a little. ‘Grass?’
‘Yeah, you know. Earthy. Male.’
‘Well, thank you. I think.’ And he laughed again.
Vic lifted her head off her knees. She liked hearing him laugh. He didn’t do it often enough. The light coming in through the window illuminated his face, emphasising his masculinity and highlighting his scar. Curiosity and no doubt the effects of alcohol had her crossing a line she’d never crossed before.
She lifted a hand and touched her finger to it, tracing it from just under his nose across his lips and down his chin. Lawson stopped laughing and pulled away from her as if she’d trekked a burning match across his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, dropping her hand. ‘I was just curious. You never talk about it and Dad’s warned me it’s a touchy subject but…I don’t know…blame the Shiraz…’
Lawson made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. ‘No. It’s okay. It happened a long time ago when I was in a different place in my life that I don’t like to dwell on.’
Vic nodded. ‘Of course.’ But she was curiously hurt by his reluctance to share it with her. They were partners and yet sometimes she felt as if she didn’t know him at all. God knew, he knew everything there was to know about her.
Lawson felt a spike of guilt lance him at her downcast face. ‘I was in an accident. When I was sixteen. My home life was…unhappy. We moved around a lot and my father liked to drink. One night some mates were going on a late-night high-speed joyride with some older guy they knew who had this souped-up car and I thought, Why not? The car crashed. The driver died. Everyone was seriously injured. I had facial and chest injuries and had to be cut out of the vehicle. I spent nearly three months in hospital.’
Vic gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Lawson shrugged. ‘I was trapped for two hours. This paramedic stayed with me the entire time. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘Is that why you became one?’
Lawson nodded. ‘If it hadn’t been for that crash, I don’t know where I would have ended up.’ He’d certainly been heading for a dead-end job and a chip on his shoulder.
Vic felt a rush of incredible tenderness for the man and heartache for the teenager he’d been. She’d always known her partner was a complex human being with a rough childhood, but this put him in a whole new light. She couldn’t bear that he’d been through so much pain.
She touched his scar again and this time, though he flinched, he allowed it. Then, she wasn’t sure why, maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the whole emotional upheaval of the day, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to it, the desire to kiss it better too powerful to resist. ‘Poor Lawson,’ she whispered.
Lawson sat very still, her lips at his chin. He shut his eyes as the fleeting press of her lips stirred desires he’d long ago forgotten existed. She was so close. Her warm breath wrapped his gut in seductive tendrils.
He only had to shift slightly and he could claim her mouth. He didn’t move as the battle raged within him. He wanted to kiss her so badly he was salivating. Like a starving man being led into a bakery. But she’d been drinking. And she was his partner. His much younger partner whom he’d known since she was in pigtails. And she was leaving.
Vic liked the spikiness of his stubble against her lips and this close to him she got to smell all those aromas she’d told him about but with the added mix of his warm male skin. The room was utterly silent except for their breath and even in her tipsy state she was hyperaware of a very weird vibe settling around them.
Lawson dragged in a breath. This was so screwed up and he wasn’t going to add to it by doing something totally unforgivable. With a mammoth effort he sat back from her.
‘Go to sleep, Victoria. It’s been a long day.’ He stood and reached over to pull the blind down. ‘When you wake up it’ll only be eighty-nine more sleeps.’
Vic
