The Bad Boy's Redemption. Joss Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ by the open front door, dressed in a similar outfit to the one she’d changed into in his hotel room—a pair of white cotton shorts and a teal tank top with thin straps that showed off an inch of her flat belly? He lifted his hand as he left the car and patted two dogs of indeterminate breed, sliding a hot glance at those long, tanned legs and bare feet tipped with fire red toenails.

      Friends. New approach. Don’t let your libido distract you. It had, as he well remembered, led him into far too much trouble before.

      ‘Hi.’ Lu lifted her glass. ‘I started without you. Want one?’

      ‘Hi, back.’ Will waved the bottle he held in his hand as he walked up the two stone steps to the door. He brushed past a pot plant and his nose was filled with the scent of sweet lemons. The bigger of the dogs nudged his hand and Lu grinned. ‘Harry, stop it!’

      ‘Harry?’

      ‘Potter’s behind you. The cat’s are Dumbel and Dore.’

      Nice place, Will thought as he stepped into a huge hall and Lu closed the door behind him. She took the bottle he held out. He searched her face, happy to see some colour in her cheeks, less blue under her eyes. Lu dropped her eyes from his and Will looked around. A coat rack stood next to the door and a large antique credenza squatted next to the wall, photographs in silver frames crowding its surface. A massive vase of haphazard flowers stood on a narrow high table, and the wall in front of him was dominated by two oversized canvas photographs of two young boys, their faces a chocolate smear.

      ‘My brothers,’ Lu explained as he stepped up to look at the photographs. ‘Come through this way. I thought we’d eat on the veranda.’

      Will followed Lu through a huge kitchen and his mouth started to water at the smell of garlicky, herby, meaty pasta. The kitchen flowed into a large, messy lounge with battered leather couches, a laptop on a big coffee table and a large screen television. Oversized glass and wooden doors led onto a wraparound veranda, which had its own set of couches, a casual dining table and an incredible view over the city to the Indian Ocean.

      ‘I want to live here,’ Will muttered, placing the bottle on the table and dropping his mobile and keys next to it.

      ‘Yeah, the view is pretty impressive.’ Lu deftly poured wine into the empty glass on the table and handed it over.

      Will sat down in the closest chair and tried to ignore the buzz in his pants when Lu sat down opposite him and folded her legs up under her butt. He pulled his eyes from that expanse of bare leg, looked around and liked what he saw. The house was huge, filled with old, once expensive furniture and eclectic art.

      ‘I love your house,’ Will said, after sipping his wine. ‘I’m crazy about buildings. Built in the thirties?’

      ‘1931 and inspired by the times: Art Deco rules. It was my grandparents’ and then my father’s,’ Lu explained. ‘My grandmother did all the stained-glass panels above the windows and next to the front door. My grandfather collected the furniture.’

      He’d noticed the furniture on his walk-through, and now glanced through the open veranda doors into the lounge. He saw another set of canvas photographs: black and white, like the others in the hall, and brimming with emotion and energy. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

      Lu shrugged. ‘Go ahead.’

      The first canvas was of a fantastically, lushly beautiful woman, dressed in a corset and fishnet stockings, a walking cane across her ample chest. She had more curves than a mountain pass and, while her face was partially covered by the brim of a top hat, her expression radiated fun and excitement and raw sensuality.

      He moved to the other photograph: a long, lanky man, lying in a hammock, a beer bottle in his hand and his eyes—Lu’s eyes—half closed. A golfing magazine lay face-down on his stomach.

      * * *

      Sexy, successful, attractive. Everything she wasn’t right now, Lu thought as she watched Will take a closer look at the photographs.

      Everything she’d ever wanted to be but didn’t know how. The embodiment of what a successful life looked like.

      His looks were an added bonus, she thought, but his success and the material wealth that came along with it was all his own, created by hard work. His hard work and dedication. How she envied him that—envied the fact that whatever he had, and she knew it was a lot, he could say that he’d earned it. Unlike her every possession, including her photography equipment, which came from the massive inheritance her parents had left behind.

      An inheritance that would have been non-existent if her parents had died a couple of weeks later than they had. It had been a standard joke between them that there were many millions of reasons to bump the other off...and it was fascinatingly ironic that they’d died together, victims of an out-of-control articulated vehicle.

      If they’d lived this house would have been a distant memory for her—sold to pay off the overdraft, the credit cards, the personal loans. At the time of their death they’d been, as Lu had later discovered, living on fresh air and the last couple of thousand on her father’s credit cards. The car and credit card payments hadn’t been made in months; the utilities bills had been late.

      Sorting through the financial mess had been a nightmare on top of the horror of losing them. It was probably the biggest secret she’d kept from the twins: that they wouldn’t be enjoying such a privileged lifestyle if their parents had lived.

      But her parents’ secret remained exactly that; she’d never told a living soul and would never tell the twins. One person feeling guilty and conflicted about the lifestyle of their family was enough. She didn’t need to burden them with that information; it was, as she well knew, a heavy load to carry.

      The flip and very selfish side of that coin was that if her parents were still around they might not have anything like the material wealth surrounding them now, but she’d be supporting herself—working...contributing. She would be on a career path, settled and established. Maybe not rich, like Will, but comfortable, secure. Fulfilled because her security came from the sweat of her own brow and not because her parents had rushed off to a meeting with their bank manager and ended up under the chassis of a ten-ton truck.

      So she was ten years behind? It wasn’t as if she was old and past her prime. She was young and fit and determined...and she had time. So what if most women her age were thinking about moving onto the next stage of their lives—marriage and babies? That was their life, not hers.

      She’d catch up...she had to. In the couple of weeks since the boys had left she’d been clubbing—she was deliberately ignoring the issue of the spiked drink—she’d worked on her website, sorted out her studio and looked into dance classes.

      She’d even invited a man around for dinner.

      That was progress, wasn’t it?

      Will walked back onto the veranda and leaned against the balcony. ‘Your parents?’

      Lu nodded and sipped her wine. ‘My mother was a cabaret artiste and performer, my father a golf pro.’

      ‘Was?’

      ‘They’re dead. Car accident. Ten years ago,’ Lu said in a monotone, and she didn’t know that pain flickered in and out of her eyes.

      Will winced. ‘Damn, I’m sorry about that. СКАЧАТЬ