‘Oh, look,’ Mavis said. ‘Here comes a nice man to help you with your bag.’
What nice man? There weren’t any nice men living in this street. None that she had met, anyway. It was full of little old ladies and cats. Clem looked to her right to see Alistair Hawthorne walking towards her as casually as you pleased. Her heart began to hammer. This could not be happening.
‘Going somewhere?’
Clem knew even her bottom had no hope of hiding her bag. ‘Just...erm...taking my washing to the laundromat.’
‘That looks like a lot of dirty linen to have out in public.’
You have no idea. ‘Why are you here?’ Clem said. ‘I thought the arrangement was for you to pick me up at the shop tomorrow.’
A knowing light shone in his eyes. ‘I thought we should get an early start.’
Her stomach dropped like a mallet on a block of wood. Clunk. She’d hoped to get off by herself. To conduct her own search without the disturbing company of a man she would do anything to avoid. ‘But I told you I wasn’t going with you.’
‘Which is why I’m here now to make sure you do.’
Clem threw him a gimlet glare. ‘You can’t kidnap me. It’s against the law.’
Something in his expression made the floor of her belly shiver like sand being trickled. ‘So is car and money theft.’
She swallowed a double knot of panic. Think. Think. Think. ‘How do you know you’re searching in the right place? You could travel all that way for nothing.’
‘My stepsister sent a text to a friend from a casino in Monte Carlo a couple of hours ago.’
Clem frowned. ‘Geez. How much money did she have on her? Monte Carlo isn’t exactly a backpacker’s destination.’
‘It’s not her money she’s spending.’
‘Your problem, not mine.’
His eyes never wavered from hers. ‘Our problem.’
Don’t remind me. Clem turned back to her bag, which was half in and half out of her car. She blew away the wisps of hair that had fallen around her face and gave the bag another hard shove.
‘Here. Let me.’
His body came up behind her, one of his hands reaching past her to take the handle of her bag. It was the most intimate contact she’d had with a man since...well, for a long time.
Clem tried to duck out of the way but somehow got tangled in his limbs. One of his arms blocked her escape on one side while the other held her bag on the other. She tried to step past his long legs but ended up doing a weird little dance with him. God knew what this looked like from Mavis’s window.
‘Is he your new man?’ Mavis called out loud enough for the neighbours to hear. In the next street. In the next borough. Possibly in America.
Clem stepped over Alistair’s long leg and tried to get her lungs to inflate. ‘No. He’s just a...someone I used to know.’
‘You can’t fool me,’ Mavis said with a teasing smile. ‘Look at you, blushing like a schoolgirl on her first date. It’s about time you got a nice man in your life. How long’s it been? Two, three years?’
Four. Clem wasn’t game enough to look in Alistair’s direction but she had a feeling he was smiling. Or smirking, more like. ‘It’s not what you think, Mavis. He’s like a brother to me. Our parents used to be in a relationship.’ She went for the knockout punch to wipe that smile off his face and added, ‘We were kind of like The Brady Bunch.’
Alistair’s body brushed Clem from behind. ‘Fess up, darling.’ He put his hands on the tops of her shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. ‘You’ve always been a little bit in love with me.’
So not true. Well, maybe she’d had a moment when she’d first met him, when she’d blushed to the roots of her hair and gone all starry-eyed. But it had only been a moment. Two seconds max. Trust him to remind her of it.
Clem put her heel on his toe and pressed down. Hard. She wished she were wearing stilettoes. Ballet flats didn’t quite cut it. He didn’t flinch at all. It was as if she had tried to flatten a flea with a feather. She was acutely aware of the wall of his firm body touching her, from her shoulder blades to her hips. Her bottom was way too close to his groin. It stirred all sorts of wicked imaginings inside her brain. And her body. Oh, dear God, what was happening to her body? It was leaning back against him like it had a mind of its own. Searching for the evidence of his arousal. Yikes! Finding it. ‘I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You,’ she said in an undertone, punctuating each word with another push down of her foot.
He leaned down and began to nuzzle the side of her neck, the sexy scrape of his late-in-the-day stubble sending a frisson down her spine. His warm breath smelt of mint and coffee. Not the cheap instant stuff she had in her flat but the good stuff. ‘I’m going to kill you right back. Slowly.’ His voice was a low, deep burr that reverberated deep in her core like a tuning fork struck and left to hum.
Mavis clasped her hands like a fairy godmother enormously satisfied with her day’s work. ‘Have a wonderful time, you gorgeous lovebirds. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
Clem pulled out of Alistair’s hold and turned and threw him a look that would have blistered paint. ‘You think you’ve won this, don’t you?’
His eyes had a determined glint that made every knob of her spine shudder. ‘Get in the car.’
Every cell in her body wanted to defy him. Every pore tightened with anger. Fury. Rage. She could barely stand still with the force of it thundering through her. But making a scene in front of her nosy neighbour was not something she was prepared to do. There were other ways to skin a cat, and Alistair Hawthorne’s pelt was one she wanted to take her time removing while inflicting as much excruciating pain as possible.
Clem slipped into the passenger seat, keeping her fake smile in place for the sake of Mavis until they were out of sight. ‘If you think I’m going to speak another word to you then you can think again,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxious, control-freaky man I’ve ever met. As if I’d ever imagine myself in love with you. What a joke. You’re the last man I’d ever be interested in. I hated you ten years ago and I hate you now. You’re a stuck-up snob who thinks you can order people about like puppets. Well, listen up, because my strings are not going to be pulled by you. No freaking way.’
The silence continued for three blocks.
Clem cast him a sideways glance. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
He flicked her an ironic look. ‘I thought you weren’t going to speak to me?’
Clem pinched her lips together and turned back to face the front. She waited another four blocks before speaking. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘The airport. I have a flight booked.’
She swung her gaze back to him. ‘You were that certain you’d get me to come?’ Ack. Probably not the best choice of words.
