Wear My Ring. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_a41e1d9d-77d4-50af-ae8a-006ab6abf232">CHAPTER FOUR

      PAIGE’S phone rang, but no matter how hard she reached, how hard she tried, it was never enough. She couldn’t connect.

      She woke up with a start, her heart thumping in her chest, her legs entangled in a mess of sheets, to find light pouring through her bedroom window. A quick glance at her bedside clock told her it was after ten. Once she realised it was a Sunday she relaxed. Wow, she hadn’t slept in that late in—

      The buzzing of her landline told her she hadn’t dreamt that part at least.

      She reached out, grabbed the phone, lay back on her bed with the back of her hand over her eyes to block out the light. Expecting it to be her mum, she sighed, ‘Hiya.’

      ‘Sleep well?’

      Words became impossible as her mouth fell wide open. She had to swallow, twice, before saying, ‘Gabe?’

      ‘Making sure you got home okay last night.’

      Her head was spinning. How did he get her number? She hadn’t given it to him. He’d looked her up? He’d looked her up! Oh, calm down. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s just being gentlemanly. Though what he’d done to her up against the doorjamb the night before was so far from gentlemanly she had to cross her legs to keep from suffering a relapse.

      ‘Paige?’

      ‘I hardly had to brave the night. I’m four floors down.’

      ‘As I well know.’ The heat in Gabe’s voice had Paige sliding deeper under her sheets. Until he added, ‘By way of a lift that, according to you, is contrary.’

      ‘You still think I’m making it up, don’t you?’

      ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. In fact I’ve developed a soft spot for the thing.’

      She could all but see his seductive smile down the phone. Feel his warm breath on her neck. His hot hands on her skin. How had she convinced herself a night with Gabe Hamilton would be enough? Maybe it would have been, if either of them had come with protection. And maybe she’d turn into a monkey at the next full moon.

      Whatever might have been, after last night he’d been left wanting, and she was left wanting more. And not just getting out there and dating again more. Him more. Big dark Gabe Hamilton more. That was what came of diving in head first when she’d meant to test the water with a tentative toe. But it was too late to think about what she should have done. She was in this thing now. Why not make the most of it?

      ‘Where are you?’ she asked. Her body began to feel hot and soft by turns at the hope he would say he was outside her door.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘No reason.’

      ‘Liar,’ he rumbled. Not only did the man have a voice that could send a nun into a fit of hot trembles, he knew what to do with it. ‘I’m at Customs. Tearing the place down in search of my bed.’

      ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

      ‘Not so much. You?’

      ‘I slept fine.’ Deep, dreamy, delicious.

      The low notes of Gabe’s laughter vibrated down the phone. And Paige bit her lip so as not to say anything else incriminating.

      ‘Glad to hear you’re safe and sound. And well slept. Now I’ve gotta see a man about a bed. See you ‘round, Eighth Floor.’ And then he was gone.

      Paige pressed the phone to her hot ear a moment longer before she let her arm flop sideways, the phone dangling from her hand. She stared at the ceiling, at the bouncing blobs of sunlight reflecting off the prism dangling from the corner of her dressing-table mirror.

      He’d checked to see if she made it home. Which was actually quite lovely. Kind of a good guy thing to do, in fact. But then he’d made no noise about when, or even if, she’d see him again before Friday’s party. Which was a decidedly bad boy thing to do.

      She rolled onto her tummy and pressed her face into her pillow. If only he were outside her door with a condom tucked in the back pocket of his old jeans. Then he could have his wicked way with her, and they’d be even, and that would be that. Perhaps. Probably not.

      It was a Sunday, she had nowhere else to be, so she closed her eyes and pictured herself flinging open her front door to find him standing there after all, though this time in her head he wore black leather trousers, a loose white shirt open to the navel, an eye-patch. He was so big and tall he’d fill her small kitchen—

      Her eyes flew open and she sat up with a start as she remembered the wedding dress in its fluorescent bag still hanging over her dining chair.

      She rubbed the heels of her palms against her eye socket and breathed out hard. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror. Her eyes were smudged with old eyeliner, her hair a scrambled mess. And her mouth? It tasted like three-week-old bread.

      Looking as she looked, with a wedding dress in her kitchen, hearing one note of that voice and she would still have let him into her apartment in half a second flat. No, she would have dragged him in. Had she completely lost her self-control?

      That was that. Until his party Friday she was using the stairs.

      As Gabe leaned against the wall of the lift transporting him silently to the fifteenth floor offices of BonaVenture Capital he couldn’t help comparing it with the one at the Botany Apartments. Light, bright, luxuriously spacious and prompt as this one was, it hadn’t the added benefit of having deposited pure temptation in the shape of a leggy blonde at his door two nights before. He knew which he preferred, hands down.

      He was quite sure this casual dalliance would end up being a most welcome postscript to the unwelcome trip. Casual being the key word.

      He liked women. Downright adored some of them. He’d been raised by a strong woman—his gran, after his parents died a week before his tenth birthday—so he respected the hell out of them. But his work kept him on the move, which made casual more workable. That, and the fact that the one and only time he’d attempted a hearts and roses relationship he’d been burned to a crisp.

      He shifted his stance, but the discomfort that had settled over him remained. He preferred not to look back to that time. It was a big black hole in his past with the capability to suck him in if he gave it half a chance. Being back in Melbourne, heading into the BonaVenture offices where it had all come to a head made it nearby impossible not to remember, but he was determined to try.

      And if losing himself in the warm, willing arms of Paige Danforth every now and then helped, then who was he to argue?

      He was rubbing at the bite marks she’d left on his shoulder when the lift dinged. He pressed his feet into the floor and held his breath, only to lose it in a rush when the doors opened to an expansive foyer with a shining dark wooden floor, blood-red walls, and sunlight seeming to pour from every corner of the place even though he couldn’t see a single window.

      He glanced back at the floor number to make sure lifts all over the city hadn’t suddenly gone mad.

      It was only when he looked up that he saw СКАЧАТЬ