Just One Last Night.... Amy Andrews

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СКАЧАТЬ like that. Salt of the earth but takes fanatical pride in her floors. Does not like having them besmirched, and these damn shoes always leave horrible marks.’

      As Grace watched he moved on to the next black smudge. She stared at his shoes. They looked expensive—a far cry from the tatty sneakers he’d worn when they’d been young and in love.

      ‘I don’t usually wear them, except of course I had the interview today. She’ll give me a terrible tongue lashing,’ he groaned, the sole of his shoe erasing the marks.

      Grace smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Brent Cartwright terrified of a little old lady. She laughed then, unable to stop herself. Twenty years fell away and she was back at uni with him, goofing around.

      He looked up at her laughing face and it took his breath away. She was looking at him like she had back then, like the intervening years had never happened. Like they were still lovers.

      ‘Oh, you think it’s funny?’ He grinned at her, letting the years disappear. ‘Just you wait. Trust me, no one wants to be on Sophia’s bad side.’

      She laughed again as he smiled and his foot scrubbed at the floor. Another ‘I vill find you, Dokator Brent’ came from very close by.

      Brent stopped what he was doing, grabbed Grace by the hand. ‘Quick,’ he whispered, and pushed her through a nearby door, pulling it closed after them.

      Grace didn’t register the small confines of the room or the fact that it stank of the cleaning products that weighed down its three rows of shelves. It seemed to be a supply room. Not much bigger than a cupboard really. She was laughing too hard to even notice how close they were standing.

      ‘Shh,’ Brent whispered.

      Just then the door opened abruptly, pushing them even closer together as they huddled behind it to stay obscured. He put his hand over Grace’s mouth to help stifle her laughter. He felt the texture of her lip gloss as a waft of vanilla and honey drifted his way.

      What was it called again? Honey something …

      Sophia called out, ‘I know you here somawhere, Dokator Brent.’

      The door shut again but not before Grace heard Sophia muttering under her breath in some strange tongue.

      Grace pulled his hand aside and burst out laughing again. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Brent.’ She grabbed his shirt as she leant forward a little, trying to catch her breath and laugh at the same time.

      ‘You should see your face. I can’t believe that the big important Dokator is afraid of a sweet little old lady.’

      ‘She isn’t so sweet when she’s pointing a mop at you.’

      He grinned down her. She was so … familiar, so … Gracie it was impossible not to.

      Impossible also not to be aware that her hand was warm on his chest and her breasts kept grazing the front of his shirt as laughter spasmed through her rib cage. Or the vanilla aroma of her lips, which somehow overpowered the smell of bleach and hospital-grade disinfectant. Or that his hand was firmly planted on one of her hips and all he needed to do was exert minimum pressure and she’d be pushed against him completely.

      Grace slowly became aware of his fading smile and his growing silence and the fact that she was scrunching his shirt in her hand. He felt tense beneath her grip and he was staring at her mouth. He was big and warm and so very near.

       So very Brent.

      She eased her hold on his shirt and absently smoothed it with her palm. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, as she became aware of the heavy thud of his heart beneath her fingers.

      ‘I needed that,’ she said, to ease the growing silence.

      Today had been stressful, and this unexpected laughter had been the perfect release. Still, the fact remained that she was in a cupboard with Brent, giggling like a teenager.

      It was insane.

      She straightened slightly and put her hand on his chest, levering some distance between them.

      ‘Pleased me and my shoes could be of assistance,’ he said, moving back, as much as he was able in the confined area, placing temptation further out of reach.

      Grace smiled at his joke. ‘I think it’s safe to go out now.’ She checked her watch. ‘And my plane leaves in a couple of hours.’

      ‘That’s a flying visit. Are you not even dropping in on your parents?’

      Grace shook her head. She hadn’t told her family. She didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. ‘I saw them a couple of weeks ago,’ she lied. ‘I have to get home to the kids.’

      There was Tash to deal with. And Benji hadn’t coped well with changed plans since his parents’ accident.

      The kids. Brent still couldn’t wrap his head around that one. ‘Who’s looking after them now?’

      ‘The nanny.’

      ‘Very suburban mum,’ he murmured, as an incredible surge of something potent—jealousy, longing—clawed at his gut.

      Grace felt the husky edge to his voice all the way to her toes. And all the places in between.

      She straightened her clothes, finger-combed her hair, adjusted her glasses. ‘I have to go.’

      Brent nodded as he watched her reach for the doorknob. ‘It was … nice … seeing you again, Grace,’ he murmured. His chest bubbled with absurd laughter at the irony of his understatement.

      Grace’s hand stilled in mid-twist. ‘Yes. You too.’

      Then she opened the door and walked out without looking back.

      ‘I hate you,’ Natasha said as the plane touched down at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport six weeks later.

      Grace sighed. ‘Yes. I got that.’

      They’d been over and over her decision to move them all back to Melbourne. She wasn’t about to have the same conversation in front of a couple of hundred strangers.

      ‘I love Jayden. He loves me. How could you rip us apart like this?’

      Grace looked into Tash’s tear-stained face. Her heavily kohled eyes, the same colour as her hair, looked raccoonlike as her mascara ran. The twinkle of a shiny stone chip in her niece’s previously perfect nose winked cheerfully amidst all the teenage angst.

      Somehow, it managed to look even more ridiculous.

      Grace was sorely tempted to roll her eyes and tell her niece to stop being so melodramatic. That being in love at the grand old age of fifteen was absurd and, contrary to popular romantic myths, the world would not end.

       Even though she’d been a scant few years older and had, in actual fact, felt exactly like the world was going to end when she’d walked away from the only man she’d ever loved.

      But she just looked at Tash and said, ‘If he truly СКАЧАТЬ