Until now. Until Rowan.
And she hadn’t even been back in his life for twenty-four hours. She had already tipped his world upside down and Seb shuddered when he thought of the chaos she could create in the immediate future.
* * *
He was still so annoying, Rowan thought as she went into the empty, cavernous hall of the supermarket and walked over to the fresh fruit section.
‘My Part A would slot into your Plot B—’
Seb’s words rattled around her brain. A stupid phrase that had lust whirling in her downstairs regions, that made her feel light-headed—oh, dear, that made her sound like a heroine from a historical romance, but it was the perfect word—and created an impulse to reach up and yank that sardonic mouth to hers.
She’d never felt the impulse to yank—yank?—any man’s mouth to hers, and that it was Seb’s that she now had the urge to taste went against all the laws of the universe.
She could not believe that she—cool, competent and street-smart—was acting like a horny teenager, about to collapse in a panting, wet, drippy, drooling heap at his feet.
It was humiliating. Really!
Rowan pushed a tendril of hair out of her eyes and blew air into her cheeks as her mobile chirped. Pulling it from the front pocket of her shorts, she did an excited wiggle when she saw the name in the display window.
‘Ro? Honey?’ The gravelly voice of her best friend boomed across the miles.
‘Why aren’t you in Cape Town, where I need you?’ Rowan demanded. ‘The one time I get back and you’re not here, Callie!’
‘Sorry, darling. I got delayed... He’s six-two and has soulful green eyes. And I need to see a designer in LA who can only see me next week. Or maybe the week after.’
‘Naff excuse,’ Rowan muttered.
‘So, how and why are you back home?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Rowan gave her a brief synopsis of her last couple of days. After thinking about and then refusing Callie’s offer of a loan, she sighed into the mobile.
‘Something else is wrong,’ Callie stated. ‘Come on—spit it out.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘In the last fifteen minutes I think you said Seb’s name once. Normally you would’ve insulted him at least ten times by now. What’s going on?’
And that was the problem with knowing someone for all your life. You couldn’t sneak stuff past them. ‘I don’t know if you want to know.’
‘I always want to know. Spill.’
‘I think I suddenly have the screaming hots for my best friend’s brother.’
When Callie stopped roaring with laughter Rowan put the mobile back to her ear.
‘Holy fishcakes,’ Callie said. ‘Sweetheart, when you muck it up, you do it properly.’
Rowan frowned at Callie’s uncharacteristically mild expletives. ‘Holy fishcakes? Muck it up?’
‘My temporary fling nearly had heart failure when I dropped the F-bomb yesterday; he’s a bit conservative. I’m cleaning up my potty mouth.’
Rowan laughed and winced at the same time. That would last as long as the fling did: until Callie got on the plane to come home.
‘Anyway, tell me about wanting to do my brother.’
Rowan grimaced. Do her brother? Eeew. Knowing that Callie wasn’t going to drop the subject without getting something out of her, she thought about what to say. ‘I’ve never had this reaction to anyone—ever! I just want to take a bite out of him.’
While she wasn’t a nun, she’d had some sex over the years. Sporadic, erratic, infrequent, but it had been sex. Two one-night stands, a few season-long relationships, and once a relationship that had lasted a year.
‘It’s about time you ran into someone who set you on fire. The fact that it’s Seb just makes we want to wet my pants with laughter.’
‘Glad you find it amusing. I don’t. I don’t know how to deal with it,’ Rowan muttered, leaning her hip against a display stand of orange sweet potatoes. Instead of discussing Seb further, she chose to shove her head in the sand. ‘So, tell me about your fling.’
‘Hot, conservative, sweet. And you’re changing the subject because you don’t want to deal with your sexy side!’
‘Bye, Cal, love you.’
‘Avoiding the issue isn’t going to change it—’
‘Miss you. Hurry home, okay? I need you!’ Rowan interrupted, before disconnecting.
Rowan rolled her shoulders in frustration, thinking about her ‘sexy side’. Sex had always just been nice and pleasant. Uncomplicated. It gave her a little buzz. But she could probably live without it if she had to. Just as she could live without having a permanent man in her life, being in a permanent place. She had never given her heart away—couldn’t, because she still hadn’t learnt not to look at a man and wonder if he she could trust him. She didn’t need sex and she definitely didn’t need love.