He watched her unlock her door. He could see the acceleration of her breathing, the faint colour deepening in her cheeks and he felt his own response deepen—horrific in its intensity. For weeks now all he’d been able to think about was the heat of her on that mad day by the beach. The sweetness, the wildness, the total sexiness.
It was a nightmare distraction. He needed his focus back—because his training was a mess. But it was an attitude problem, not his knee. He had to clear his head and to do that he needed to get Kelsi out of it. Never had a woman interfered with his goals before. Never had he allowed another person to influence his schedule the way Kelsi had. Not that she knew it—or was going to know it. No, this was all about him getting rid of the fantasy for good because he was furious with himself for being this pathetic. He had not got as far as he had by letting personal needs or wants get in the way of competition prep—he wasn’t going to derail now. That gold medal was going to be his.
He just hoped this would do it. He’d see her again and realise it hadn’t been that spectacular—that memory had somehow magnified how amazing they’d been together.
But now he was here and now it was worse—all he wanted was to have her again, to know her, to make her laugh. She was every bit as cute as he remembered, every bit as crazy, every bit as breathtaking. She had the towering platform shoes on again that were probably killing her toes with narrowness and still he was burning up worse than a meteor in the atmosphere.
But he forced the rampaging lust down, needing to check her reaction some more. She was reserved and not looking him in the eyes and keeping her distance. A new thing for him.
Still, what had he expected? He hadn’t, of course—he’d been indulging in the wicked side of fantasy, not the realistic. To buy time he stared around her little flat. There was a lot to take in—it was completely crammed with stuff. Books were a main feature, all lined up along a wall. He skimmed the spines. Many he’d read but he didn’t keep them as she did. He passed them on, left them somewhere. But Kelsi was definitely a ‘keeper’ kind of person. Every inch of her apartment was filled—reflecting eclectic tastes and a very busy mind. There was enough confusion to cause a headache. The walls closed in on him—he didn’t keep ‘things’, he liked to travel so he could move fast and free.
He blinked at the visual cacophony, but slowly began to see some order in the chaos. Things weren’t tossed wherever, they were placed. And there was also the completely crazy. Like the Lilliputian-sized curling staircase in one corner of the lounge leading up to—the wall. Painted on the wall was not a doorway, as you’d expect, but a Japanese fan spread open.
‘Why?’ He pointed at it and looked at her.
She glanced at the mini-stairs. ‘Why not?’
OK, he grinned. He should have known. And, oh, man, her coolness was a temptation. He turned away from her, needing to get distracted again, else he’d just haul her to him caveman style and he really wanted to know he could be more controlled than a caveman. And her lack of super-obvious signals maybe meant she had some regrets. He hoped not—all he regretted was that he’d left. He should have taken her to his hotel until he’d blown her from his system completely.
So now he stopped by the wall where there was a giant picture frame hanging. A huge gilt number—it would be the focal point if he were sitting on the sofa. But it was empty—not even a blank canvas inside it, just the bare white wall. ‘Tell me about this.’
‘Watch.’ She flicked a switch and an image suddenly appeared in the frame.
He looked up—clamped to the ceiling was an old slide projector. He looked back to the frame and watched as she clicked through a series of slides—mostly modern paintings. Frankly weird ones.
‘You studied art,’ he said.
‘Art history, yes.’
‘But you did some yourself?’
She frowned. ‘Not formally, no. But I like to play around.’ She clicked through another couple of eyesore slides.
‘You don’t have any landscapes?’ he couldn’t help asking.
‘What, like mountain scenes?’
‘Yeah.’ He grinned.
‘No,’ she said flatly and put the remote down.
He chuckled and wandered around the room. On the table was a single flower—some big, beautiful bloom that looked delicate, as if the petals would fall if you so much as brushed it. Yet she’d put it in an antique glass bottle that had a worn ‘poison’ sticker on it. He grinned at the juxtaposition. He looked again at the stairway to nowhere, the paintings, the vases, the collection of kitsch knickknacks overflowing on one shelf while the shelf beside that one was completely bare. ‘You have a lot of weird things.’
‘Things that don’t readily make sense,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a way of freeing up my imagination. To encourage creativity.’
OK—by having a collection of plastic animals walking up the wall? He lifted his brow at the rhino that had a miniature bottle opener hanging from its horn.
‘Mystery is always present,’ she said softly. ‘That’s the point.’
He looked at her. Yeah, the mystery was right in front of him. Adrenaline rushed, the precursor to fight, to drive for success. In that instant he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
Jack was staring at her. Just staring. Making her feel so self-conscious and so hot it was a wonder her skin wasn’t curling and crisping like bacon under a grill.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked before thinking.
‘I’m deciding whether you’re real or whether this is jet lag causing a hallucination.’
Jet lag? Had he only just got back from Canada?
‘How are you going to find out?’ She could barely breathe.
He smiled lazily and she blinked in the face of its brilliance. Oh, he was so smooth, wasn’t he? She couldn’t be felled again by just a look like that.
She leaned forward—dangerously close. ‘I’m an illusion,’ she whispered. ‘Not real at all.’ He chuckled.
‘How was your trip?’ She stepped back and busied her hands by going into the kitchen and getting cups from the shelf. ‘Did the training go OK?’
‘Not as good as it could have.’ He followed her, leaning against the door frame.
‘No?’
His grimace said it all. ‘My knee is going to take a little longer than we first thought. I’m back for more physio. No point getting frustrated by being surrounded by snow and doing something stupid.’
‘Oh.’ She’d thought he’d handled the stairs no problem and was moving as lithe as a panther. But it must still bother him on those death-defying jumps.
‘What about you—you’re OK?’ He moved to where she was by the bench. Mind-blowingly, pheromone-dizzying close.
She stared at the seam of his shirt and reminded herself to breathe again. She had to keep it light. Didn’t want him to know how much he affected her—that was just embarrassing. The guy was a pro—but in sport and sex. And she was just another in that long line. So she had to get them laughing again as if none of this had ever mattered.
‘Actually, no,’ she said firmly. ‘Life’s not been the same since I last saw you.’
He stilled. ‘It hasn’t?’
‘No,’ she said sombrely. ‘Thanks to you I’m scarred for life.’ With a theatrical flourish, she pointed to her nose. ‘I got three new freckles.’
‘Freckles,’ he said blankly. ‘You got freckles.’
‘Three.’ She nodded. ‘From the sun.’
He snorted and leaned back on the bench, his smile crocodile wide.
She grinned back. ‘You obviously aren’t aware of how serious this is.’
He laughed—too long, too infectiously. Then he suddenly sobered, half groaning and rubbing his chest with the heel of his hand. ‘Hell, for a moment there I thought you were going to tell me something far worse.’
‘What could be worse?’ she asked mock-incredulously.
‘That there might have been some long-term consequences from that
day.’
‘Freckles are long term,’ she said. ‘You can’t get rid of them. At all. Believe me, I’ve tried.’
‘But kids have much more of an impact.’ He shook his head and laughed again. ‘I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant.’
Pregnant?
Kelsi laughed, too—giggled like a silly schoolgirl.
But as their amusement filled her ears her brain ticked over slowly. Her giggle went into cardiac arrest. ‘Kelsi?’
She shook her head and turned away from him slightly as she tried to think harder. Pregnant. No. She’d had a period—hadn’t she?
‘It’s been a month, Kelsi. Shouldn’t you know by now?’
She should if she’d been paying attention to anything like that. But she’d been working even crazier hours than usual because of an account she’d won. Because she’d been trying to distract herself so much.
So she really hadn’t been thinking about her cycle or anything. Hell, she hadn’t even had the time to dye her hair again, which was why she was going for the assortment of hats at the moment.
‘Kelsi?’
Stupid, irrelevant thoughts tumbled over and over in her head. When had her last period been? But all she came up with was an empty feeling. A blankness that just couldn’t be good.
‘I used a condom.’ Clearly he was thinking the same thing.
‘Yes.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You checked it after, right?’
He stared at her but wasn’t really seeing her. She knew he, too, was thinking back on those cataclysmic moments when they’d been in the water. Waist deep, they’d rolled and swapped positions again and again and pushed it every which way.