A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,5
sex, her mind suddenly filled with images of tangled limbs and a pillow-strewn bed and this man somewhere in the midst of it all—minus the towels …
And the pictures were so vivid and powerful that she forgot all about congratulating herself for making it this far. ‘I’m disturbing you,’ she managed to whisper. I’m disturbed. ‘I should come back.’
‘I warned you I wasn’t dressed for visitors.’ He let that sink in for just a moment. ‘You said you didn’t care what I was wearing.’
She nodded weakly. She did recall saying something like that. But never for one moment had she imagined he’d be wearing nothing more than a towel. She swallowed. ‘But you’re not … I mean … Maybe another time.’
His smile widened and her discomfort level ratcheted up with every tweak of his lips. He was enjoying himself. At her expense. ‘You said it was important. Something about Felipe?’
She blinked up at him and remembered why she was here. Remembered what she was about to propose and all the reasons it would never work. Added new reasons to the list—because the pictures she’d found hadn’t done him justice—he wasn’t just another good—looking man with a nice body, he was a veritable god-and because men who looked like gods married super-models and heiresses and princesses and not women who rocked up on their doorstep asking for favours.
And because nobody in their right mind would ever believe a man like him would hook up with a woman like her.
Oh God, what was she even doing here?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Coming here was a mistake.’ She was halfway to turning but he had hold of her forearm and, before she knew it, she was propelled inside his apartment with the promise of fresh coffee on his lips and the door closed firmly behind her.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered, gesturing towards a leather sofa twice the length of her flat at home and yet dwarfed here by the sheer dimensions of the long, high-ceilinged room that seemed to let the whole of the bay in through one expansive wall of glass. ‘Maybe now you could tell me what this is all about.’
She sat obediently, absently rubbing her arm where he’d touched her, the skin still tingling as if his touch had set nerve endings dancing under her skin. But then, why wouldn’t she be nervy when she didn’t know which way to look to avoid staring at his masculine perfection; when every time her eyes did stray too close to his toned, bronzed body, they wanted to lock and hold and drink him in?
How could she even start to explain when she didn’t know where to look and when her tongue seemed suddenly twice its size?
‘All right,’ she said, ‘if you insist. But I’ll give you a minute to get dressed first.’
‘No rush,’ he said, dashing her hopes of any relief while he poured coffee from a freshly brewed jug. He didn’t ask her how she wanted it or even if she wanted it, simply stirred in sugar and milk and handed it to her. She took it, careful to fix her gaze on the cup, equally careful to avoid brushing her fingers with his and all the while wondering why she’d ever been crazy enough to think this might work. ‘So tell me, what’s wrong with Felipe?’ he asked, reminding her again of the reason why she was here, and she wondered at his ability to make her forget what should be foremost in her mind.
Giving Felipe a reason to smile.
She’d made it this far. She owed it to Felipe to follow through. She’d return to Melbourne one day after all. The humiliation wouldn’t last for ever …
So much for wondering if she matched her husky voice. Instead she looked like a waif, he thought, lost and lonely, her grey-blue eyes too big and her mouth almost too wide for her thin heart-shaped face, while her cotton shirt bagged around her lean frame. She stared blankly at the cup in her hands, whatever fight she’d called upon to secure this interview seemingly gone. She looked tiny against the sofa. Exactly like that mouse he’d imagined her to be when she’d first spoken so hesitantly on the phone.
‘You said he was dying,’ he prompted. And suddenly her chin kicked up and she found that husky note that had captured his interest earlier.
‘The doctor said he has six months to live. Maybe twelve.’ Her voice cracked a little on the twelve and