Brides, Babies And Billionaires. Rebecca Winters
shook her head and he smiled at her. But his smile was a wicked one, as though he knew exactly what her mind had jumped to as he’d slipped her shoe on.
He straightened and held out a hand to her. ‘Shall we?’
She exhaled shakily and took his hand. ‘Yes.’
BLAKE OPENED THE car door for Callie and felt his body tighten when she brushed past him to get in. He supposed he hadn’t recovered from their interactions earlier today. That kiss at the restaurant... Whatever it was that had happened in her office...
He didn’t know what had possessed him to put her shoe on for her, but he was glad that he had. If he hadn’t he wouldn’t have seen the way her eyes had sparked with a desire that matched his. She might not know if she had feelings for him, but she definitely wanted him. And that meant they were on the same page.
He watched as she typed her address into the GPS on his dashboard, and when the voice gave him his first direction he followed it. He glanced over at her, and frowned when he saw that her arms were crossed.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, almost immediately, and then she sighed. ‘Everything. I’m just not used to this.’
‘To...us?’
She ran a hand through her hair. ‘To any of it. This is all new territory for me. Worrying about work. About whatever’s going on between the two of us. I don’t know—I guess I just feel...raw.’
Blake forced himself to keep focusing on the road, even though he wanted to pull over and hold her in his arms. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Instead he settled for saying the one thing he thought she might need to hear right now.
‘You’re not alone, Callie.’
He took a right and didn’t look at her, even though he knew her eyes were on him.
‘I worry about what’s going on between us, too. But you don’t have to worry about work, okay? Everything is going to be fine.’
He wanted to ask her if he’d made her feel worse—about her worries over them, about the things she had just told him—but he forced himself to wait. She was opening up to him again and he wanted to earn it. So he just said it again.
‘You’re not alone.’
The rest of their trip was quiet. Blake didn’t know what she was thinking about, but her hands now lay on her lap, and he took it as a sign that maybe she didn’t feel so vulnerable any more. He wanted to kick himself for making her feel that way in the first place, but there was nothing he could do about the past. When he’d realised he’d made a mistake about Callie—when he’d realised that the failure of his relationship with Julia had had very little to do with them working together—he had wanted to call her immediately and tell her that he was sorry, that he wanted to make it up to her.
But his words wouldn’t have meant anything at that point, he had reasoned, and so instead he’d tried to show her through his actions. He’d made an effort not to keep up the act of being the boss she expected—the hard, cold act he had clung to in order to keep his professionalism with her. Instead he’d acted as he did with every other employee. Well, perhaps not exactly the same way, but he figured she’d earned some preferential treatment since her standard of work was higher than most he’d encountered.
He’d also enjoyed the way her eyes widened every time he engaged with her without the cold formality that had coloured his interactions with her before.
When his GPS announced that their destination was on the left, Blake pulled up in front of a light-coloured house with a rush of flowers planted in flower beds along the pathway.
‘I’m not sure who to compliment on your garden. You for choosing the flowers, or your gardener for planting them.’
She laughed and unlocked the door. ‘Both, I suppose. Thank you. I’ll pass the message on to Ernesto.’
He frowned. ‘Your gardener’s name is Ernesto?’
‘Yes. He’s from Italy. What are the chances of finding a young, attractive male from another country to do your garden for you?’
He couldn’t quite keep his face neutral when he thought about it, and she took one look at him before bursting out into laughter.
‘I’m just kidding, Blake. My gardener is a lovely man in his fifties called George.’
Her eyes twinkled, and he felt himself relax. And then she gestured to the door.
‘Do you want to come inside?’
He barely took a second before saying, ‘Sure.’
Her house was spacious, filled with light and bright flowers from her garden. The open plan meant that the lounge, dining room and kitchen led from one room to the other, and all the furniture complemented the warm and rustic theme of her house.
‘Did you do the interior of the house?’ he asked, walking past a shelf that held pictures of the McKenzie family.
His eyes were drawn to a picture of Callie and Connor, standing next to a woman and a man who looked so much like them he thought that if he’d met them on the street he would have recognised them as Connor and Callie’s parents. They looked so happy, he thought, and his heart broke for reasons he couldn’t describe. Somehow it made him think of his own family, and the fact that Callie wouldn’t ever see a picture like this anywhere in his place.
‘Some of it.’
He turned when she answered him, and the compassion in her eyes tugged at his heart. How did she continue to see through him?
‘But mostly I’ve kept it as it was when my parents were alive,’ she pressed on, and took off her jersey, throwing it over one arm. ‘My mom had great taste.’
‘Yeah, she did.’
He was still thinking about her family when she said, ‘I’m going to change. It shouldn’t take too long, but feel free to make yourself comfortable.’
She walked through a doorway in the kitchen and he heard her footsteps on the floor and a door closing. He turned back to the shelf with the pictures and tried to keep his mind off the thought of her changing in the next room. But his thoughts kept shifting back to how she would be slipping off those heels that made her legs look as if they never ended. And she was probably taking off that dress that had done nothing to hide the curves that had been in his thoughts ever since he’d touched them.
He swallowed, and walked to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.
There was an empty glass in the sink, and he rinsed it and filled it with water from the tap. As he drank he looked up through the window that was just above the L-shaped kitchen counter. It overlooked a tidy little yard which was completely free of flowers, but had a large palm tree that shadowed a swing seat just beneath it. But the real view was of the mountain just above it.
‘That’s Lion’s Head.’
He turned back to see Callie looking past him through the window. She had changed into a long floral skirt and a mint-green T-shirt, and had loosened her hair so that it fell in waves down her back. She looked so effortlessly beautiful that his heart stopped for a few minutes just looking at her. She walked towards him until she was next to him and then pointed to the right of the mountain he’d seen.
‘Table Mountain is over there.’
But he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and her proximity overwhelmed his senses. When she looked back to him her eyes widened in that way they did whenever something she hadn’t