The Last Guy She Should Call
That sounded even better.
‘What is the matter with me?’
Or at least that was what he thought he heard her say, but since she was muttering to the floor he couldn’t be sure.
What was cranking their sexual buzzers to a howl? Dial it down, dude; time to start acting as an adult. He dashed the rest of what was left in the tiny bottle of wine into her glass and tossed it back.
Think with your big head. It didn’t matter that she looked hot, or that he wanted to taste that very sexy mouth, this was Rowan. AKA trouble.
Seb put his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. ‘You ready to go?’
‘Where to? Where am I sleeping tonight?’
‘Awelfor.’
Awelfor... It meant sea breeze in Welsh, and was one of the few small holdings situated between the seaside villages of Scarborough and Misty Cliffs, practically on the doorstep of Table Mountain National Park. Her second home, Rowan thought.
The house had originally been an old school building, added to over the generations. The oldest part was made from timber and redbrick, and she could still feel the cool warmth of the Oregon pine floors beneath her bare feet. Nearly every room had a fireplace and a view of the Atlantic, with its huge rolling waves and its white beaches peppered by black-backed gulls.
She’d been raised next door, in the house that had been built by a Hollis forefather for—rumour had it—a favourite mistress. It had been sold off in the forties to her grandfather and separated from the Hollis house by a huge oak and a high, thick Eugenia hedge.
She knew Awelfor as well as she knew her own home: which floorboard creaked if you stood on it the middle of the night, that the drainpipe that ran past Callie’s window was strong enough to hold their combined weight, that Yasmeen the housekeeper hid her cigarettes in the flour canister at the back of the pantry. For most of her life she’d had two homes and then she’d had none; now she bounced from bed to bed in different accommodation establishments, depending on her cash flow. Once or twice she’d slept on beaches and on benches in railway stations, she remembered, even standing up.
Dots appeared behind her eyes.
Tired...so tired.
Rowan blinked furiously as the dots grew bigger and brighter and her vision started to blur. She reached out in Seb’s direction and cool and firm fingers clasped her clammy hand.
‘What’s the matter?’ Seb demanded as she abruptly sat down again.
‘Dizzy,’ Rowan muttered as she shoved her head between her knees. ‘Stood up too fast.’
Rowan opened her eyes and the floor rose and fell, so she closed them again.
‘Easy, Ro.’
Seb bent down in front of her and held up three fingers. ‘How many?’
‘Six thousand and fifty-two.’
Seb narrowed his eyes and Rowan gnawed the inside of her lip, ignored the squirming sensation down below and tried to act like a mature adult.
‘Sorry, I’m fine. Tired. I haven’t really eaten properly. Shouldn’t have had that wine.’ Rowan rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s just been a horrible couple of days.’
Seb let go of the hand he’d been holding and stood up, looking away from those slim thighs in old jeans, that mad hair and those deep, deep eyes. She had always been gorgeous—hadn’t all his friends told him that?—but for the first time in his life he saw her as something other than his sister’s friend.
That felt uncomfortable and...weird.
His eyes dropped lower. Full breasts under that white cotton shirt, long fingers that were made to stroke a man’s skin, long legs that could wrap around a man’s hips...
This was Rowan, he reminded himself harshly. She was not somebody he should find attractive. He’d known her for far too long and far too well. Seb frowned, irritated that he couldn’t break their eye contact. Her eyes had the impact of a fist slamming into his stomach. Those eyes—the marvellous deep dark of midnight—had amused, irritated and enthralled him. When he’d first met her he’d been a young, typical boy, and babies were deeply uncool but her eyes had captivated him. He remembered thinking they were the only redeeming feature of a demanding, squawking sprat.
Her face was thinner, her bottom rounder and her hair longer—halfway down her back. He imagined winding those curls around his fingers as he slipped inside her... Seb shook his head. They shared far too many memories, he reminded himself, a whole handful of which were bad, and they didn’t like each other much.
Have you totally lost your mind?
‘Let’s get you home and we can argue later, when you’re back to full strength.’ Seb bent down and easily lifted her rucksack with one hand, picking up her large leather tote with the other. ‘You okay to walk?’
Rowan stood up and pulled her bag over her shoulder. ‘Sure.’
Seb briefly closed his eyes. It was a struggle not to drop her bags and bring her mouth to his.
‘What’s the problem now?’ Rowan demanded, her tone pure acid.
He stared at the ceiling before dropping rueful eyes back to her face. ‘I keep thinking that it would’ve been easier if you’d just stayed away.’
‘Loan me the cash and I’m out of here,’ she pleaded.
‘I could...’
Rowan held her breath, but then Seb’s eyes turned determined and the muscle in his jaw tightened. ‘No. Not this time, Ro. You don’t get to run.’
THREE
Rowan sat in the passenger seat of Seb’s Audi Quattro SUV as he sped down the motorway towards Cape Town. Although it was a little before eight in the evening, the sun was only just starting to drop in the sky and the motorway was buzzing with taxi drivers weaving between cars with inches to spare and shooting out the other side with toothy grins and mobiles slapped against ears.
Cape Town traffic was murder, no matter what the time of day. It came from having a freaking big mountain in the middle of the city, Seb thought. He glanced at his watch; they’d been travelling for fifteen minutes and neither of them had initiated conversation. They had another half-hour until they reached Awelfor and the silence was oppressive.
Seb braked and cursed as the traffic slowed and then came to a dead stop. Just what he needed. A traffic jam and more time in the car not speaking to each other. At the best of times he wasn’t good at small talk, and it seemed stupid, and superfluous to try to discuss the weather or books, movies and music with Rowan.
And on that point, since it was the first time that Rowan had been in the same time zone as her parents for nearly a decade, he felt he owed it to them to keep her in the country until they got a chance to see her, hold her. Like him, they didn’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, but he knew that they had to miss her, had to want her to come back. He could sympathise. He knew what it felt like, waiting for a loved one to come home.
He had never been able to understand why she didn’t value her family more, why she rebelled so much. She had parents who took their jobs seriously; he and Callie had a runaway fickle mother and...Patch. As charming and entertaining as Patch was, he was more friend than father.
Rowan’s parents, Heidi and Stan, had always been a solid adult presence right next door. Conservative, sure, but reliable. Intelligent, serious, responsible. On a totally different wavelength from their crazy daughter. Then again, it sounded as if Rowan operated on a completely different wavelength to most people, and he had enough curiosity to wonder what made her tick.
Since this traffic was going nowhere they had time to kill and nothing else to talk about, so he would take the opportunity to satisfy his nosiness.
He and Ro had never danced around each other, so he jumped straight in.
‘I want to know why you’re broke. I know that you consider yourself a free spirit, too cool to gather material possessions, but surely a woman your age should have more to her name than a hundred pounds?’
She’d known this was coming—had been bracing herself for the lecture. Because Cape Town was synonymous, in her mind, with being preached to.
Rowan pursed her lips as she looked straight ahead. Seb hadn’t lost his ability to cut straight through the waffle to what he thought was important. Lord, she was too tired to tangle with that overly smart brain of his. Too weirded out by the fact that he made her ovaries want to dance the tango. What to say without sounding like a complete idiot?
Keep it simple, stupid.
‘I was doing a deal and I was supposed to get paid for delivering the...the order when I got into Oz.’
‘What were you peddling, Rowan?’
Seb’s eyes turned to dark ice and his face hardened when she didn’t answer. Of course he couldn’t take that statement at face value. He needed more and naturally he assumed the worst. She knew what he was thinking...
Here we go again, Rowan thought, back where I started. As the memories rolled back her palms started to sweat and she felt her breath hitch. Even after so many years Seb still instinctively assumed the worst-case scenario. As her parents would... And they wondered why she hadn’t wanted to come home.
‘It wasn’t anything illegal, Seb!’
‘I never said it was.’
‘I’m not an idiot or a criminal! And, while I might be unconventional, I’m not stupid. I do not traffic, carry or use drugs.’ Rowan raised her voice in an effort to get him to understand.
‘Calm down, Ro. For the record, back then I never believed you should have been arrested,’ Seb stated, and his words finally sank in.
Rowan frowned at him as his words tumbled around her brain. ‘You didn’t? Why not?’
‘Because while you were spoilt and vain and shallow—and you made some very bad decisions—you were never stupid.’
She couldn’t argue with that—and why did it feel so good that Seb believed she was better than the way she was portrayed? Just another thing that didn’t make any sense today.
But she knew that Seb’s opinion was one that her parents wouldn’t share.
‘But, Rowan, this lifestyle of yours is crazy. You’re an adult. You should not be getting kicked out of countries. You should have more than a backpack to your name. Most women your age have established a career, are considering marriage and babies...’
Shoot me now, Rowan thought. Or shove a hot stick in my eye. This was why she hadn’t wanted to come home, why she didn’t want to face the judgment of her family, friends and whatever Seb was. They’d always seen what they wanted to see and, like Seb, wouldn’t question the assumption that she was terminally broke and irreversibly irresponsible.
Rowan’s eyes sparked like lightning through a midnight sky. ‘What a stupid thing to say! You don’t know anything about me!’
‘And whose fault is that? You were the one who ran out of here like your head was on fire!’
‘I didn’t run!’ Okay, that lie sounded hollow even to her.
‘Within days of writing your finals you were on a plane out of the country. You didn’t discuss your plans with anybody. That’s running—fast and hard.’ Seb’s finger tapped the steering wheel as the car rolled forward. ‘What really happened that night?’
Rowan lifted her chin. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He couldn’t know, could he? Callie might have told him... No, she’d sworn that she wouldn’t, and Callie would never, ever break her word. Seb had to be talking about her life in general and not that night she’d got arrested in particular.
That stupid, crazy, change-her-life evening, when she’d fallen from heaven to hell in a few short hours.
‘Sure you do.’ Seb scanned the road ahead, saw that the traffic wasn’t moving and sighed. ‘Something in you changed that night you were arrested... You were rebellious before, but you were never spiteful or malicious or super-sarcastic.’
Her attitude had been that of a rabid dog. In the space of one night she’d gone from being wildly in love and indescribably happy to being heartbroken, disparaged and disbelieved. That night had changed her life. After all, not everybody could say that they’d lost their virginity, got dumped and framed by their lover, then arrested all in the same night. And her weekend in jail had been a nightmare of epic proportions.
Was it any wonder that she equated love with the bars of a jail?
‘You were never that hard before, Rowan.’ Seb quietly interrupted her thoughts. ‘Those last six months you fought constantly with your parents, with me, with the world.’
Rowan clenched her jaw together. Every night she’d cried herself to sleep, sick, heartsore, humiliated, and every day she’d got up to fight—literally—another day.
‘Maybe I was crying because my parents, my sibling and everyone close to me left me to spend the weekend in jail when they could’ve bailed me out any time during the day on Friday. The party was on a Thursday night.’
‘Your parents wanted to teach you a lesson,’ Seb replied, his voice steady.
Rowan stared at the electronic boards above his head. ‘Yeah, well, I learnt it. I learnt that I can only rely on myself, trust myself.’
When she dared to look at him again she saw that his eyes were now glinting with suppressed sympathy. Then amusement crept across his face. ‘Yet here you are relying on me.’
‘Well, all good things have to come to an end,’ Rowan snapped back.
She was so done with being interrogated, and it had been a long time since she’d taken this amount of crap from anyone.
‘So...’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Hooked up with any gold-diggers lately?’
Annoyance replaced sympathy in the blink of an eye. ‘Sending me those sunglasses when you heard that we’d split was a very unnecessary gesture,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘I know, but I thought you might need them since you finally saw the light. It took you long enough.’
‘Very droll.’ Seb’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
‘Still annoyed that flighty, fey Rowan pegged your ex’s true characteristics and you didn’t?’ Rowan mocked, happy to shift the focus of their conversation to him.
‘Remind me again as to why I didn’t leave you to beg in Jo’burg?’
‘You wanted to torture me. So, are we done biting each other?’
‘For now.’
* * *
As the traffic began to move Rowan watched Seb weave his way through the slower-moving vehicles to speed down the fast lane.
‘Has the traffic got worse?’ she asked when Seb slammed on his brakes and ducked around a truck. Her hand shot out and slammed against the dashboard. The last vestiges of colour drained from her face. ‘Sebastian! Dammit, you lunatic!’
Seb flipped her a glance and then returned his attention to the road, his right hand loosely draped over the steering wheel. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that you missed the bumper of that car by inches!’ Rowan retorted, dropping her hand. ‘The traffic hasn’t got worse—your driving has!’
Seb grinned. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit early in our relationship to start nagging?’
‘Bite me.’
Seb flipped the indicator up and made a production of checking his side and rearview mirrors. He gestured to a sedan in front of him. ‘Okay, brace yourself. I’m going to overtake now. Here we go.’
Rowan sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘You are such a moron.’
Seb ducked around another sedan, and flew across two lanes of traffic to take the exit. Rowan leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes and thought it was ironic that she’d crossed seven lanes of motorbikes in Beijing, a solid stream of tuk-tuks in Bangalore and horrific traffic in Mexico to die in a luxury car in her home country at the hands of a crazy person.
Rowan sat up and looked around as they drove into a more upscale neighbourhood and she recognised where she was. ‘Nearly ho... there.’
‘Yep, nearly home. And, despite your inability to say the word, this is still your home, Ro.’
‘It hasn’t been my home for a third of my life,’ Rowan corrected, thinking that she had a twitchy heart, a spirit that was restless, a need to keep moving. Coming back to Cape Town broke made her feel panicky, scared, not in charge of her own destiny. She felt panic well up in her throat and her vocal cords tighten.
Seb’s broad hand squeezing her knee had her sucking in air. When she felt she had enough to breathe she looked at his hand and raised her eyebrows. Then she pulled her eyebrows closer together when she clocked the gleam in his eyes, the obvious glint of masculine appreciation.
‘You’ve grown up well, Brat.’
Bemused by the sexual heat simmering between them, she tried to take refuge in being prosaic. ‘I haven’t grown at all. I’m the same size I was at eighteen—and don’t call me Brat. And take your hand off my knee.’
The corners of his eyes crinkled. ‘It worked to take your mind off whatever you were panicking about. You always did prefer being angry to being scared.’
Seb snorted a laugh when she picked up his hand and dropped it back onto the gearstick.
‘Have you developed any other serious delusions while I’ve been away?’
‘At eighteen...’ Seb carried on talking in that lazy voice that lifted the hair on her arms ‘...you wore ugly make-up, awful clothes and you were off the scale off-limits.’
Rowan, because she didn’t even want to attempt to work out what he meant by that comment, bared her teeth at him. ‘I’m still off-limits.’
Seb ignored that comment. ‘Is that why you are still single at twenty-eight...nine... What? How old are you?’
‘Old enough to say that my relationship status has nothing to do with you.’
‘Relationship status? What are you? A promo person for Facebook?’ Seb grimaced. ‘You’re either married, involved, gay or single. Pick one.’
Rowan snorted her indignation. ‘Gay? For your information, I like what men have. I just frequently don’t like what it is attached to!’
‘So—single, then?’
‘I’d forgotten what an enormous pain in the ass you could be, but it’s all coming back.’ Rowan turned and tucked herself into the corner between the door and seat. At least sparring with Seb was keeping her awake. ‘And you? Any more close calls with Satan’s Skanks?’
She hoped the subject of his ex-fiancée would be enough of a mood-killer to get him off the subject of her non-existent love-life.
‘You really didn’t like her.’ Seb twisted his lips. ‘Was it a general dislike or something more specific?’
There wouldn’t be any harm in telling him now, Rowan thought. ‘She was seriously mean to Callie. I mean, off the scale malicious.’
Seb’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought they got along well.’
‘That’s what she wanted you to think. She was a nasty piece of work,’ Rowan said, staring at the bank of dials on the dashboard. ‘I really didn’t like her.’
‘I would never have guessed,’ Seb said dryly.
‘My “money-grabbing” comment didn’t clue you in?’
‘It was a bit restrained.’ Seb’s tone was equally sarcastic. ‘Your efforts to sabotage our engagement party were a bit subtle too.’
‘What did I do?’ she demanded, thinking that attack was the best form of defence. ‘And why would I do it since I was looking forward to you being miserable for the rest of your life?’
Seb slid her an ironic glance. ‘Apart from spiking the punch with rum? And turning the pool that violent green that totally clashed with the puke-orange colour scheme? And placing a condom on every side plate? Anything I’ve missed?’
Rowan dropped her head back on the headrest. ‘You knew about that?’
‘I had a good idea it was you.’ Seb’s lips twitched. ‘Okay, hit me. What else did you do?’
‘Nothing,’ Rowan replied, far too quickly.
‘Come on, ’fess up.’
Well, he couldn’t kill her now. She didn’t think...
‘I put itching powder in your bed.’
Rowan felt as if she wanted to dance to the sound of Seb’s laughter. Despite her now overwhelming fatigue, she noticed the scar bisecting his eyebrow, the length of his blond eyelashes. Man, she wanted to link her arms around him, curl up against him and drift off.
‘Ro, I knew about that too.’
He spoke softly and Rowan felt both warm and chilled, her nerve-endings on fire.
‘Luckily we had a fight after the party and I chose to sleep in the spare room...she itched for days.’
‘Good.’ Rowan grinned and fought an enormous yawn. ‘You had really bad taste in women, Seb.’
‘She wasn’t so bad. And if I didn’t know any better I’d say you sound like a jealous shrew.’
‘You really should give up whatever you’re smoking.’
Rowan lifted her nose. As if she’d be jealous of that waste of a womb. Seb might be a thorn in her side but he was her thorn in the side—and Callie’s, obviously. Nobody else was allowed to treat him badly. Especially not some lazy, stupid... Oh, dear God, the old oak tree was still on the corner of their road.
And there¸ through the trees, she could see the redbrick corner of Awelfor.
‘No, don’t panic. Just breathe. It’s only a house, Ro.’
His house. And next door was her old home. And a life she didn’t want to go back to—a life she’d outgrown a long time ago.
Seb turned into his driveway and parked in front of a new rectangular automated gate. While he waited for the gate to slide open he looked at Rowan, his blue eyes serious. ‘Stay the three weeks, spend some time with your parents, and then I’ll loan you the money to fly anywhere in the world.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think it’s long overdue.’
Rowan shook her head, suspicious. ‘How much time, exactly, must I spend with them?’
Seb looked frustrated. ‘I don’t know! Make an effort to see them—have dinner with them—talk to them and we’ll have a deal.’
It was too good an offer to pass up. It wasn’t ideal but it was a solid plan of action. If she got some money together before that she’d go sooner... No, she couldn’t do that. She was here. She had to see them. To leave without saying hello would be cruel, and she wasn’t by nature cruel. Three weeks. What was twenty-one days in the scheme of things?
Twenty days too long in this city, her sarcastic twin said from her shoulder.
‘I’ll pay you back.’
Seb grinned. ‘Yeah, you will. Yasmeen is on holiday and we’re short of a housekeeper. You can start tomorrow: shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking. You know what Yas does.’
‘Are you mad? I’m not going to housekeep for you!’ Rowan protested.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t—she’d worked as a maid before—but she wasn’t going to pick up after Seb and his ‘we’.
‘We’re? You said we’re short of a housekeeper? Who else lives here?’ Rowan demanded. If he had a live in lover/partner/girlfriend then she’d just go and sleep on the beach.
Seb steered the car up to his elegant house. ‘Patch has hit a hiccup with his current girlfriend and has moved back into the second floor of the cottage.’
Oh, thank goodness. She didn’t know if she could cope with Seb and any ‘significant other’.
‘So, housekeeping in exchange for your bed and food?’
‘S’pose,’ Rowan reluctantly agreed, thinking that she was jumping from the frying pan into... Well, the third level of the hot place.
* * *
After lugging Rowan’s luggage up to Callie’s old bedroom Seb finally made it to his office—the bottom floor of the two-bedroomed cottage Patch had moved into—temporarily he hoped! His workaholic staff worked flexible hours, so he was accustomed to seeing them at work at odd times, and Carl, his assistant/admin manager, like his hackers, was still around.
Seb listened to Carl’s update and accompanied him into what they called the ‘War Room’. The huge room was windowless, and a massive plasma TV attached to the far wall was tuned to MTV at a volume level that made his ears bleed. He picked up the TV remote that stood in its cradle on the wall and muted the volume. Two male heads and one female head shot up and looked in his direction.
His hackers needed junk food, tons of coffee and music. Deprive them of one of the three and he had their immediate attention. Seb walked into the centre of the room and rapidly scanned the long row of screens where computer code rolled in an unending stream. He read it as easily as he did English, and nodded when he didn’t immediately pick up any problems.