and right now Sadie wouldn’t have swapped it for the Waldorf Astoria.
‘I bags the shower,’ she said as she threw her backpack on the bed closest to the bathroom and delved through it for some clean clothes.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ Kent asked plonking himself on the other bed and flipping through the information folder placed next to the fluffy towel folded into a fan with a wrapped bar of soap strategically placed in the centre. ‘They serve bar meals until eight.’
Sadie was starving. But not as much as she was sleepy. She was used to denying herself food. Sleep not so much. Sleep was as vital to her as air.
And woe betide anyone who deprived her.
‘Nope,’ she said, picking up her towel.
‘Celery again?’ Kent asked.
He wasn’t sure how much she’d brought in that fridge bag but there seemed to be an endless supply of it today. Every time he opened a packet of something or rustled a wrapper more appeared.
Sadie was too exhausted to make a pithy comeback. ‘Too tired. Need to sleep,’ she muttered, closing the bathroom door even before the last word was out of her mouth.
Kent heard the shower turn on and fell back against the bed. It felt like a rock and he literally bounced a little. The back seat of his vehicle would have been softer. But then it wouldn’t have had a hot, busty, naked woman just three metres and a wall away.
Getting wet. Getting soapy.
He felt heat bloom in his loins and placed the open information folder over his face.
Sadie Bliss was a bad idea. No matter what her body, her delectable smart mouth, her quick wit or her name might suggest.
He didn’t need a psych consult to know he was still pretty messed up. He’d had nearly two years of being held ransom by his body and the surgeons and physios had pronounced him cured—or as cured as he was going to get. But it was pretty dark inside his head still. He’d put off tackling the psychological fallout from the accident, thinking and hoping that time would heal as it had his physical ailments.
But it hadn’t.
So, he really didn’t need a fling with Sadie Bliss. Or, more importantly, she didn’t need a fling with him.
He wasn’t in a good headspace.
And she was too chatty, too pushy.
Too young.
He didn’t have a right to screw with that.
What he needed to do was get back to what he was good at—taking pictures. Use his art as therapy. As a way back to the rest of his life. Then he could worry about the Sadie Blisses of the world.
He heard the taps shut off.
Pictured her reaching for her towel...
He sat up and pulled his shirt off. The room was stuffy and he suddenly felt very hot. He wondered over to the air-con panel and flicked it on. Then he picked up the phone on his bedside table and placed an order with the woman at the desk. He prowled to the bar fridge, pulled out a bottle of beer, parked his butt against the cabinet, cracked the lid and took a fortifying gulp.
The harsh metallic rattle from the shower curtain being pulled back rang like chimes of doom around the room.
Lord. Just how thin were these walls?
And then came a blood-curdling scream.
Sadie had never seen a spider so huge in all her life. She saw the odd tiny creature scurrying around her flat but she was pretty adept at wielding a can of insect spray, and it seemed the local population of creepy crawlies had put the word out to avoid Sadie’s abode at all costs.
But this thing, hanging on the back of the door as if it were the mother ship, was a monster. It was big, and hairy and very, very ugly.
There was a belting on the door followed by, ‘Sadie!’
The spider didn’t even move at the noise so near its epicentre—yes, it was big enough to have an epicentre—and nor did Sadie. ‘Kent!’
‘Are you okay?’ he demanded through the door.
‘Big, big, big spider,’ she called.
Kent looked at the door in disbelief. A spider? Her horror-flick scream had scared ten years off his life. Did she have a clue how very trivial a spider was in the grand scheme of things?
Now, some of the things he’d seen—they were worth screaming about.
‘Bloody hell Sadie, I thought you were being murdered.’
‘If this thing gets hold of me, I’m sure it’ll have a good go,’ she yelled.
‘It can’t be that big.’
‘It is,’ she said,