reason he hadn’t made the circuits at full tilt.
It was damned hard to run when your tackle was poking you in the belly button.
‘This just about a thwarted orgasm, or has something else got your panties in a wad?’
Ric ignored him and kept up the forwards motion. His teeth were clenched. Whatever it was that had narked him, he was determined to keep it locked up.
‘Me, did I say something?’
Zach didn’t think he was to blame for this, but people didn’t always make it obvious when you’d fucked up.
Ric stopped abruptly by a stile. Instead of climbing the jagged rungs over the mossy wall, he squared off against Zach.
‘Why do you always think it’s about you?’
‘I don’t,’ Zach replied, raising his hands and backing up. ‘I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something I could say sorry for, given that whatever it is has seriously rattled you.’
Ric’s blue-grey eyes fixed on an indeterminate spot over Zach’s shoulder. ‘Maybe I’m just pissed off at being interrupted.’
‘So let’s go home and do something about it.’
Ric threaded his fingers through his long hair. ‘If I go home, it’ll be to work.’ The unspoken assertion was that if Zach wanted to do something to ease Ric’s frustration, it had to be here, and while normally Zach wouldn’t think twice about wrenching those ridiculously low-slung jeans off Ric’s hips and getting down on his knees, or hell, even splaying himself out like a sacrificial offering on the table-like slab of rock a few yards away, he balked at the possibility of being chastised for the third time in the day over his sexual antics.
Unlike Ric, he did give a fuck what people thought of him. Plus, he had a restaurant to run. He didn’t want to scare the customers off, or attract them so they could gawp and discuss his sex life rather than compliment him on his mouth-watering food.
That left them standing, eyeing one another uneasily, as if they were sizing one another up before a boxing match.
‘Need me to pose?’
‘Yeah.’
Once they’d rattled off a few hundred digital shots, maybe Ric would allow him to soothe his frustration. That’s what he thought this was – one too many thwarted orgasms. He’d been on the point of going over when Kara’s brother had barged in. There was no way they could have recaptured that moment, which was presumably what walking out had been about. Another time, another place, they could do the scene over and hopefully get a better outcome, but the mood had been shattered by Chris’s presence.
If Zach hoped that there was a deeper emotional significance to Ric’s agitation, then he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. He knew better than to tread that path. Ric would never admit it, and he was done with tying himself in knots about things he would never get this man to admit. Leastways, he told himself he was.
‘Come on,’ Zach urged, turning towards the fort. ‘How do you want me? Is it more water shots you’re after?’
The theme of Ric’s current collection – destined for some highfalutin gallery exhibition – was based around sex and the six elements of the Chinese Zodiac. Zach couldn’t help thinking they ought to have given Ric wood. That way he could have taken a few dozen erection shots and been done with. Water was apparently a much harder medium to get right. You had to control the lighting and the refraction off the droplets. Rivulets had to course over the skin the right way, and sweat had to look sexy, not clammy, the skin beneath holding a glow without seeming unduly reddened by exertion.
‘Did you know about him?’ Ric asked, ignoring Zach’s question.
‘Him? You mean Kara’s brother? I knew she had a brother. She has a sister too. It’d escaped my mind that he might arrive home at some point. You knew too, though. I mean, the guy’s paying you ground rent. You sold the barn to him.’
Ric sucked his teeth. ‘You do realise his being here is going to fuck everything up.’
‘Why? Just because we shocked the hell out of the guy doesn’t mean he’s going to cause problems. It’s not what you expect your nearest and dearest to be doing when they’re house-sitting for you. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t freak if you came home and found your cousin –’ Ric didn’t have any siblings ‘– getting it on with a couple of people you didn’t know, in your bed.’
Ric snorted. ‘Get real.’
Yeah, OK, bad example, given Ric’s closest cousin was a rock star with a well-publicised sexual appetite.
‘All right, you’d freak if it was me.’
‘You’d better not even think about inviting anyone into my bed. And that’s a shockingly poor comparison. That’d be cheating. Kara’s brother is just making a moral judgement.’
‘I expect he’ll calm down. Probably already has, and they’ll be laughing about it now.’ Awkwardly, maybe, but what else could you do but laugh it off. It’s what he hoped would happen if he ever found himself in that situation. Not that he ever intended to get caught out by a member of his family. Lovely as they all were, with the exception of Heather, whom he employed, Zach preferred to keep them off the island and out of his hair. ‘Quit worrying, will you? Nothing needs to change just because her brother’s around. We’re still solid.’
‘Are we?’ Ric remarked, which was how Zach knew this was definitely about more than Chris and one thwarted orgasm. Still, if Ric wanted to say something, he’d do it in his own time, same as always.
Kara did the only sensible thing she could think of after Ric and Zach left. She stripped the bed, then got in the shower. Her brother was home and would no doubt want his room back, which meant she’d be kipping on the couch, unless she could find a more appealing place to sleep. Beachcomber’s Barn lacked a spare room.
However, it wasn’t the prospect of backache from the battered old leather couch that had her stomach in knots. That was down to having to face Chris. Somehow she suspected no matter how long she hid upstairs it wouldn’t be long enough.
God, just find your sense of humour and see the funny side, please.
When she crept down the stairs forty minutes later, smelling of talc and her favourite perfume, she was still trying to concoct ways to avoid a confrontation. Maybe she could sneak out of the back door and join Ric and Zach at the fort for the night. Sharing a bed with her lovers was certainly preferable to defusing the bomb that was her brother’s temper. She’d even overlook the fact the two of them had run off and left her to deal with this alone – cowards.
Actually, the fact that they’d left her smarted more than she wanted to admit. They’d only gone and given roots to the doubts Chris had seeded.
I’m not an interloper.
I’m the link holding this together.
Prior
