Joss Wood – Her Boss by Day... (страница 8)

‘Sorta … kinda…. yeah.’ She couldn’t tell her friend that she’d been having too much fun playing with Rob to think about her guests. ‘What am I going to doooooo?’

‘You are going to go and have a shower. Jessica will greet anyone who arrives and Amy will shoot to the shops and grab food and drink.’

The deep, masculine, made-for-sin voice floated down the stairs.

Willa watched as Jessica and Amy’s heads shot up and quickly turned to see Rob, his hair wet from his ultra-quick shower, dressed in his clothes from the night before, walking down the stairs, bare feet sticking out from the ragged hem of his jeans. Their surprise turned to feminine approval and she groaned as two sets of perfectly arched eyebrows lifted in a silent question.

‘Way to go, Wills.’

Willa threw her hands up in defeat at Amy’s mischievous murmur. ‘Ah … Rob. Rob stayed over …’

‘I can see that,’ Amy stated with a grin.

Willa caught Amy’s eye and saw the glint of sisterly pride in her eye. So, didja have fun? she could imagine her asking, if Jessica and Rob hadn’t been there.

So much fun.

Thought you would. He looks the type who knows what he’s doing.

You have no idea, old friend.

‘You two done with your telepathic conversation?’ Jessica demanded as she put out her hand and hauled Willa to her feet. ‘Go shower, Willa. Amy, let’s take a look and see what Willa has so that you know what to buy.’

‘Nothing,’ Willa said mournfully. ‘I have nothing.’

‘Why do I have to get the food?’ Amy wailed.

‘Because it was your idea to do this,’ Willa retorted, hand still on her head. ‘There’s a deli down the road. They have everything … Just buy them out and I’ll pay you back.’

Willa looked at Jessica and pointed to her left.

‘Kitchen that way. Through the French doors of the kitchen—and off all the rooms on that side of the house—is a covered patio and the pool. Chairs, tables—all outside. Outside kitchen … grill. Go wild.’

Amy whistled her appreciation. ‘As I said, Wills, it’s a helluva settlement.’

Yeah, Willa thought as she climbed the stairs to the second floor and her bedroom. All I had to do was put up with crap and be an aimless, thick trophy wife for eight years.

CHAPTER THREE

ROB TOOK A call on his mobile and thought that if he didn’t get coffee into his system in the next few minutes he’d find himself face-down on Willa’s expensive floor, whimpering like a little girl.

He’d thought he had stamina—he regularly took part in triathlons, ran eight miles five days out of seven, and hit the gym several times a week. Yet rolling around in the sheets with Willa had sucked every last atom of energy from him …

Rob grinned. Best fun he’d had—in or out of bed—for ages.

But now coffee … stat. He’d grab a cup, kiss Willa goodbye and move on out. It was what he did and he did it well … He should—he’d had a hell of lot of practice at it.

Shoving his mobile into the back pocket of his jeans, he walked across the hall towards the feminine voices drifting down the passage from what he presumed was the kitchen.

‘So, did you ever meet Willa’s husband?’

Rob slammed to a stop and cursed … She was married?

Crap, crap, crap. He didn’t do married women—it was one of his hell, no! rules. She didn’t wear a ring but … crap!

‘About to be ex-husband,’ Amy corrected, and he resumed breathing again. ‘They’ve been separated for about eight months.’

Good—that was good. Not perfect, but a helluva lot better than married.

‘What’s he like?’

Rob leaned his shoulder into the wall a couple of metres away from the kitchen door, knowing that if he went in Willa’s friends would stop talking. Girls tended not to dish the dirt on about-to-be-exes when the guy one of them had had a one-night stand with was in the room.

But he was curious.

He wanted more information on Willa, who interested him far more than she should for a one-night stand. That was something he needed to think about … but only when he’d had coffee and a solid eight hours’ sleep.

‘Wayne … Yeah, I was with Willa when they met for the first time.’ Amy’s voice had a faraway quality that suggested she was recalling memories from long ago.

‘And?’ Jessica’s voice sounded impatient.

Amy took a while to answer and Rob mentally urged her to get a move on.

‘Slick,’ Amy said eventually. ‘Slick as snot. A lot older than Willa—I think he was in his mid-thirties when they first met …’

‘You didn’t like him,’ Jessica stated.

‘Yeah, instinctively didn’t like him,’ Amy agreed. ‘I was just frustrated, I guess. Willa was a kid so desperately in need of fun, a good time, letting her hair down, and I was showing her how to do that … God, we were having a blast! Partying up a storm, flirting up a bigger storm … we ruled the resort.’

‘You mean you ruled and Willa was your sidekick,’ Jessica said, dryly.

Rob grinned at that.

‘Then she met Wayne and she … How do I explain this? She shrank in on herself and became the perfect girlfriend—cool, calm, collected. With him she was eighteen going on eighty. Crazy Willa left the building.’

‘Since she was slamming down those cocktails last night, I think crazy Willa is back,’ Jessica said, and Rob could hear the grin in her voice.

‘Not by a long shot. And she wasn’t anywhere near being drunk, trust me, that girl can hold her booze. When she’s really drunk she ends up singing eighties ballads and taking her clothes off.’

Rob’s eyebrows lifted with surprise. He’d like to see that.

‘She can be a wild woman,’ Amy added.

Rob had the nail-marks on his butt to prove that point.

‘But with Wayne she stopped having fun. I suspect that last night was the first time she’s had some real fun—proper fun—since she got married. She’s a little sad, scared, and a lot lonely. I feel sort of protective of her …’

So did he.

Huh?

Rob looked down at his bare feet and instead of heading for the kitchen—caffeine, shockingly, could now wait—he walked through the sun room and headed for the sunlight-dappled deck: expensive outdoor furniture, a pizza oven built into the wall and an island holding a gas stove and a fridge. A ten-seater wooden dining table with benches on either side dominated the kitchen end of the deck, and cane couches and chairs with blue and white striped cushions filled the rest of the space. The large, rectangular pool looked cool and inviting and he wished he could dive into its clear depths.

He loved to swim—did some of his best thinking in the water.

So Willa had been married … was still, technically, married … to a guy who was a lot older than her and obviously rich. Her eyes held shadows within them that suggested long-term unhappiness; he recognised those shadows—he’d seen them in his mum’s eyes every day she’d been married to Stefan.

Which was all on him. Because when she’d told him that Stefan had proposed, wondering what he thought, he’d said that she should take the plunge. Stefan had been his dad’s best friend—her friend. Their second dad. She’d liked him, they’d liked him … what could go wrong? He’d just wanted her to be happy again, and—he had to be honest here—he’d known he would feel a lot more comfortable going off to uni across the country if he knew that Stefan was looking after Mum and Gail.

That hadn’t worked out the way he’d thought it would.

When he’d finally got to the root of the problem—when his family had disintegrated around him for the second time—he’d felt his heart rip apart. It had been like losing his father all over again, and along with that he’d waved goodbye to his innocence and his faith in people.

And he’d kicked trust over a cliff.

Rob ran his hand along his scruffy jaw. Where was this coming from? He’d been thinking about Willa’s sad eyes and then he’d started thinking of his past and his failure in the interpersonal relationships department.

Huh …

But the fact remained that he didn’t like the idea of Willa feeling sad …

He’d slept with her once and he was already giving her more thought than he’d given all his past flings put together. Something was very wrong with this picture …

Because he didn’t play games with other people—and especially with himself. He had to admit that he kind of liked the fact that Willa was still married, if only legally. It was a minor barrier, but a barrier nonetheless—something to help him keep his emotional distance, to remind him not to become any more involved than he should be. Than he liked to be, wanted to be, could afford to be …

One friggin’ night and she’s turning your head upside down. Get a grip, Hanson! You just want to sleep with her again, his sensible side argued. There’s no need to go all dark and broody and—what was the word Gail had used the other day?—’emo’ about this. It’s just sex. You know that after a couple of days you’ll get bored and want to move on. So ask for another night, or two, or three, but just stop bloody brooding already. And get it into your thick block that she’s no different from the others …

Except that she is, he thought.