He arches a brow. ‘You weren’t keen?’
‘I wasn’t not keen; it just hadn’t occurred to me before. But that’s me—and that’s so very Penny.’ I shake my head. ‘If I hadn’t met her, I suspect I’d be running my life on a very narrow, very straight line.’
He nods thoughtfully, and his silence encourages me to continue.
‘I guess I’m born with more than my fair share of the conservative in my blood.’ His expression flickers with something I recognise: curiosity.
‘Is that a bad thing?’
I’m confused for a moment—the curiosity or the conservative tendencies?
‘Being conservative,’ he prompts, as though he’s read my mind.
I shake my head, compressing my lips. ‘It’s almost a prerequisite in my family,’ I say simply. ‘Mum and Dad have had the same jobs all their lives—good, reliable government jobs. Civil servant salaries and pensions, guaranteed security. My brother and sister followed suit.’
‘It wasn’t for you?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope.’ I look towards the window, my eyes sweeping over the high-rises beyond the small window of his hotel room. ‘I always wanted to come down here. Growing up in a small town is—I guess I see it differently now, but, as a kid and a teenager, I hated it. I just wanted to travel and see the world, and not to have everyone I bump into know everything about me.’ I pull a face of distaste. ‘Sydney seemed like some shimmering oasis on my horizon. I couldn’t believe it when I got accepted to uni here.’
‘So you’re conservative in a different way,’ he hedges, and again I feel like he’s weighing me up, analysing me cell by cell.
&n
bsp; ‘Yes and no. My ex and I started our business from scratch. We were broke as a joke for the first six months, and my parents thought I’d lost the plot. There’s no job security when you’re running the show.’ I shrug. ‘But the rewards are also potentially so much greater.’
‘You went into business with your ex?’
‘He wasn’t my ex at the time,’ I say with a droll shake of my head. ‘My crystal ball wasn’t working the day we signed the papers.’
He opens his mouth to say something, but I shake my head, my eyes sparking when they meet his. ‘I don’t really want to think about him right now,’ I say honestly. ‘Tomorrow will be for that, him, the real world out there. Tonight’s just this...’
CHAPTER FOUR
I WAKE WITH a start.
Where am I? My phone is buzzing. And there’s a body beside me. A warm, powerful, tanned body with tattoos on his hips and chest.
I lift a hand to my forehead as the events of last night—no!—I check the time—it’s just before midnight—the last few hours—come rushing back to me.
Jagger.
I sigh his name in my mind, my eyes devouring him in this unobserved moment. For he sleeps deeply, exhausted by all the sex.
And I mean all the sex. We ate together, a mountain of food, and then one thing led to another and we were in bed again, and somewhere after that we must have drifted off to sleep. The lights are still on.
I grab my phone off the table, my eyes bleary, and squint at the screen.
Penny’s face smiles back at me.
Frowning, I push my feet out of bed, stumbling towards the bathroom and shutting the door behind me. I push the toilet lid down gently then sit on top of it, swiping my phone to answer at the same time.
‘Penny?’ My voice is a hoarse whisper.
‘Gracie?’ She imitates it.
‘Why are you calling so late?’
‘I promised I’d get you home by midnight, didn’t I?’