her own feelings. How could she possibly have liked what he had done? Yet she had—more than liked, actually. She’d thrilled to his forcefulness. Even now the heat he’d evoked was still charging through her veins. She tried to feel ashamed of what she’d just allowed and enjoyed. Tried to feel angry with him. But she couldn’t, and didn’t. How utterly and perversely amazing!
Suddenly he smiled, a warm, tender smile which confused her even more.
‘I don’t think you dislike me as much as you think you do,’ he said as he stepped forward to take her still-flushed face within the cradle of his large palms.
Before Laura could say a single word in her own defence, he was kissing her again, a much gentler kiss this time but still deep, his soft lips and less-savage tongue seducing her just as easily as the first time. Somehow her arms found themselves clamped around his waist as she rose up onto her toes, pressing herself harder against him.
‘Oh!’ a female voice exclaimed from somewhere near them.
‘Don’t move,’ Ryan muttered into her startled mouth before she could spring back from him.
With considerable savoir faire he casually dropped his hands to her hips and turned her round. Laura tried to match his nonchalant attitude at being caught kissing, but she could still feel her face flaming. Fortunately, however, Aunt Cynthia seemed to be worrying about her own embarrassment, not her niece’s.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she blurted out. ‘I just came to see what was keeping you. I didn’t mean to, er, um …’
‘It’s perfectly all right, Cynthia,’ Ryan said smoothly. ‘We’re the ones who should be saying sorry for keeping you waiting.’ And he gave Laura’s right hip an affectionate little squeeze.
Laura didn’t say a word; her throat was as dry as parchment and her thoughts in total disarray.
‘I fully understand,’ Cynthia said, gushing at him again. ‘But Jane is very anxious to meet you, as you can imagine.’
‘And I to meet her,’ Ryan returned. ‘Do please lead the way, and we’ll be hot on your heels.’
During the short walk from the front entrance hall to the back verandah of the house—during which Ryan took her hand firmly in his—Laura struggled to get her composure back.
It was difficult; her head was all over the shop.
Seeing her gran, however, sitting there on the back verandah in a wheelchair, was enough to push aside any worry over what had just happened. Laura’s heart contracted at how fragile she looked. Fragile and old.
‘Hello, Gran,’ she said softly, extracting her hand from Ryan’s as she bent to kiss her grandmother on the cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine, love, just fine. Now that you’re both safely here,’ she added, glancing up at Ryan. ‘So this is the young man you’ve been telling me about.’
Laura could not help feeling proud of Ryan as her grandmother’s still-sharp grey eyes raked over him, no doubt taking in everything from his face, to his clothes, to his impressively built body.
‘You’ve done well this time, granddaughter,’ she said, smiling with obvious approval. ‘How do you do, Mr Armstrong?’ she added, and held out one very thin, wrinkly hand towards him.
He cupped it gently within both of his. ‘I will do very well, ma’am, provided you call me Ryan and not Mr Armstrong.’
‘Of course … Ryan,’ she agreed, her smile turning a little coy. ‘But only if you promise to call me Jane. Now, sit down here next to me and tell me all about yourself.’
Ryan laughed, but he sat as ordered. ‘You must be planning on a long afternoon tea, Jane.’
‘I’m planning on finding out if your character matches your good looks,’ she shot back without missing a beat.
‘Gran!’ Laura exclaimed, slightly horrified at her grandmother’s directness.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ Ryan reassured her with a warm smile. ‘I have nothing to hide. Besides, if I know you, you’ve already told your gran everything about me.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I have.’
‘Then there’s nothing to worry about, is there?’
Nothing except that you just kissed me twice and reduced me to mush both times!
Don’t think about that, Laura, she lectured herself. Think of the reason you did this in the first place. Think of making Gran happy, even if only for this weekend.
It actually turned out to be rather interesting, listening to Ryan’s answers to her grandmother’s many questions. Laura soon realised that, whilst she knew about Ryan’s sporting and business successes, she knew very little about his family background, except that at some stage he’d been brought up by his grandmother. It turned out he was the only child of a single mother, born and bred in the Western suburbs of Sydney. His father had done a bunk before he was born and his mother had died of breast cancer when she’d been only thirty-four, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandmother who’d been a widow and lived on a pension.
‘She had very little but what she had she gave to me,’ he said with a slight catch in his voice. ‘She was a wonderful woman. I loved her to death.’
‘I presume she’s passed on now?’ her gran asked quietly.
‘Many years ago, actually. Before I began to earn big money. She never saw me play for any of the famous European teams, though she did see my local team win a few grand finals when I was a teenager. Not that she actually saw them,’ he said with a wry chuckle. ‘She used to get so nervous that she would walk around the fields watching other games rather than mine. Then, whenever a loud cheer went up, she’d race back to see if it was my team scoring or the other one.’
‘I used to get nervous watching Shane play soccer,’ Cynthia piped up as she offered Ryan a plate of lamingtons. ‘Shane’s my son. Did Laura tell you that he’s coming to dinner tonight just to see you? You’re one of his soccer heroes.’
Ryan smiled as he took one of the cakes. ‘She did mention it.’
‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’
And that was how the afternoon tea continued, with Ryan being charming in the extreme and Laura sitting there in the late-afternoon sunshine, basking in her grandmother’s approval.
She could not help looking at him all the time and thinking how incredibly handsome he was. Handsome and sexy.
Before long she started playing some crazy ‘if only’s in her head.
If only Ryan was her real Mr Right and not a pretend one.
If only his kisses from a while ago actually meant something to him.
If only he wasn’t the kind of two-timing womaniser who was obviously not beyond taking advantage of the situation to try to get into her pants.
Alison
