Anything for You
Anything for You
Sarah Mayberry
Since when was his best friend this hot?The world according to Sam Kirk has just turned upside down. His best friend and business partner, Delaney Michaels, has returned from vacation a new woman. . . a gorgeous, hot new woman. Suddenly Sam is thinking entirely inappropriate thoughts about his buddy. Worse, with Delaney's changed look, she's abandoning their friendship in pursuit of the picket-fence dream.It's a nightmare come true. Then one night finds them tangling in the sheets. It should feel wrong, wrong, wrong. . . instead, it feels very right. And now Sam knows exactly what he'd do to keep his best friend: absolutely anything.
ANYTHING FOR YOU
Sarah Mayberry
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • AMSTERDAM
PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM
ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
This one is especially for Chris. Thanks for
filling my life with love and laughter.
As usual, big thanks also to my reading buddies—
La La, Emms, Hanky Panky, Kirst, Caz and Satan.
And, of course, Wanda—
the best editor a girl could have.
Merci beaucoup!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Coming Next Month
1
SAM KIRK SAT BACK on his haunches and surveyed his handiwork. Not bad, even if he did say so himself. Smiling, he pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his hands on his jeans to clean the chalk dust off his fingers. The smile turned into an out-and-out grin as he admired the full result of his labors from a bird’s-eye viewpoint.
Outlined on the navy industrial carpet in front of him was a classic crime-scene body outline depicting a form sprawled halfway across his business-partner-cum-best-friend’s office. To add to the CSI look, he’d rifled through her filing cabinet, pulled a few books off her bookshelf and left all her desk drawers open. Highly satisfied with himself, he retreated to the doorway and began unrolling the police tape he’d wheedled from his mate in the force. Fixing one end to the doorframe, he stretched the tape to the opposite side and stuck it in place.
“Delaney is going to flip when she sees this,” their receptionist, Debbie, said from behind him.
“I know. It’s going to be great,” Sam said with relish.
Debbie shot him a look designed to let him know she thought he was weird. She’d only been with their extreme sports magazine, X-Pro, for a month, so she wasn’t up to speed yet on the office dynamic. When she’d been around a little longer, she’d understand that playing practical jokes on each other was just how he and Delaney operated. Every year when she went on holidays, he came up with some outrageous stunt to surprise her when she returned.
One year, it had been cajoling their printer to bind a single copy of the latest edition of the magazine inside out, then just casually leaving it on Delaney’s desk on her first day back. She’d gone ballistic when she found it, and it had taken him twenty minutes to convince her that the full 60,000 editions of the magazine hadn’t been mailed out to their subscribers in the same condition. Then there was the time he’d glued all her stationary accessories to her desk. Stapler, hole punch, computer mouse. Hell, he’d even stuck her wheelie chair to the carpet. Remembering the bewildered look on her face still brought a smile to his lips.
Stuffing the debris from his scene-setting into a carrier bag, Sam eyed his gathered staff of five.
“Remember, serious faces. She’ll only buy this if no one laughs,” he warned them.
“Sam, man, you’re so deluded. She’s going to know it was you the moment she sees it,” their layout artist, Rudy, said.
“But she can’t be sure. All I’m looking for is a moment of doubt,” Sam said.
Checking his watch, he crossed to his office and looked out the window to see if Delaney had arrived yet. Her parking space was still empty, and he frowned. She lived in the apartment beneath him, and he hadn’t heard her come home last night. But, he reminded himself, he didn’t always hear her door open and close, and her car had definitely been in the space allocated to her apartment when he left early this morning, keen to get in and prepare his little surprise.
It wasn’t like her to be late, especially on the first day back after two weeks off. Normally she was champing at the bit to get back in to it. That was one of the great things about owning their own business. Work wasn’t a burden or a drag—it was something they enjoyed, even if sometimes it could be stressful or boring.
He was about to call her on her cell phone when he caught himself. Feeling a little foolish, he dropped into the chair behind his desk. He was carrying on like a dog who’d been locked inside all day, waiting for his master to come home. Delaney had only been away two weeks, but the truth was, he’d missed her like crazy.
His gaze fell on the photo occupying the one clear space on his desk. Two teenagers filled the frame—one a tall, chestnut-haired lout, the other a slim, brown-haired girl who was sporting a shiny black eye. Both wore Lycra rash vests and baggy board shorts, and their faces were tanned from long days at the beach. The boy was grinning hugely, his arm slung around the girl’s shoulders, and the girl was looking furious and grumpy and determined. The picture had been taken when they were both sixteen, the summer he’d taught Delaney how to surf. She’d scored the black eye on the first day when her board flipped and clocked her in the face. She hadn’t even cried, he remembered—just took a moment to get her breath before she started paddling again.
That was the thing with Delaney—when she wanted something, she bloody well went for it, both barrels blazing. Perhaps it was why they’d hit it off the moment her family moved onto his street when he was just twelve years old. The moving vans had barely started disgorging their contents before a scrappy, skinny girl had gravitated to the game of cricket he and his buddies had been playing in the street. She’d waited until the ball came her way before catching it deftly and asking if she could join in. The other neighborhood kids hadn’t wanted to let her play, but she’d offered them a deal—if she could bowl them out, she was in. If not, she’d walk away without another word. She’d bowled a blindingly fast bouncer that almost took one kid’s arm off before it hit the wicket, and all the others had hastily passed on their turns to bat, readily conceding that she could play.
It had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that had survived every test thrown at it, from his insanely jealous girlfriend when he was in his early twenties, to the stress of starting a fledgling magazine on the smell of an oily rag. Delaney was the one constant in his life, the only person who got him—his jokes, his silences, his need to sometimes just get away and surf or skate or travel. Hell, she even shared the same address, since they’d bought warehouse apartments in the same building. She didn’t constantly ask him what he was thinking or how he was feeling. She didn’t need reassurance twenty times a day that she was an important part of his life. And she didn’t play games and sulk if she didn’t get her own way.
As though some all-knowing feminist deity had read his thoughts and decided to punish him, the phone on his desk buzzed.
“Sam, there’s a Coco here to see you,” Debbie said.
Sam groaned. “Could you tell her that—” he began to cajole, but Debbie cut him off.
“No, I couldn’t. Delaney said when she hired me that under no circumstances was I to ever make excuses for you to one of your girlfriends. It’s in my contract,” Debbie said brightly.
Before he could counter this argument, the line went dead. A moment later, a wave of cloying floral scent preceded Coco as she minced her way to his office doorway.
“Hiya, bub,” she said in her signature baby voice.
Sam barely controlled a cringe. How had he ever found that voice sexy? His eyes dropped to Coco’s two best assets, clearly defined by the skin-tight white tank top she was wearing.
Right. Now he remembered.
Sadly, however, the sight of her generous D cups no longer sparked an ounce of interest from Little Sam, the man in charge of social activities. Perhaps it was the squeaky voice. Or the fact that Coco had a highly manicured white poodle that he’d caught her kissing on the mouth recently. Or the way she had of calling him bub. Or maybe it was all of the above, combined with the fact that he’d yet to have a single conversation with her that hadn’t included the words “When I do a photo spread for your magazine.” She seemed to think he was the man who was going to launch her modeling career, despite the fact that he’d told her over and over again that X-Pro wasn’t that kind of publication. He’d been trying to ease his way out of their casual three-week relationship for the past few days, only returning every second call and manufacturing overtime at work to keep his nights unavailable. So far, so good—until now.
“Hey,” he said, trying to inject a note of welcome into his voice. He might be a feckless love rat—as Delaney had told him many a time—but he wasn’t a cruel, feckless love rat.
“Hey, yourself. I was just in the neighborhood, and I thought I would drop in and see if you were free for lunch.” Coco pouted.
Sam frowned and flicked a glance at his watch. “Um, it’s ten in the morning, Coco,” he said.
“So? You’re the boss, aren’t you?” she said, eyes busy scanning the front covers of X-Pro that covered one of his office walls. Her wide blue eyes darted from image to image with increasing rapidity, taking in the skate boarders, snow boarders, BMX bike riders and surfers who had graced the magazine’s cover over the past year.
“Is this the only magazine you publish?” she asked incredulously, the baby voice miraculously disappearing.
“Yep. Extreme sports, like I said,” Sam said.
“Triple X, you said,” Coco corrected him, eyes narrowing sharply.
Sam snorted his amusement. “X-Pro, Coco. I’m no Hugh Hefner. Although I wouldn’t mind a visit to the Bunny Palace.”
“But I thought…” Coco said, clearly disappointed.
“Like I said the other night—” the night he’d picked her up and she’d practically tongue-kissed her dog goodbye “—I’m more than happy to hook you up with a photographer friend of mine. I’m sure he could help you with your, um, ambitions.”
Sam held his breath as Coco frowned, obviously thinking things over. Slowly.
“Can you call him now?” she asked after a looooonnng pause.
Sam smiled. “Sure I can. Hell, he might even be free for lunch,” he added.
Without wasting another precious second of Coco’s time, he reached for the phone. That was the thing Delaney didn’t understand about his love life, Sam mused as he dialed. She thought he left a trail of brokenhearted women in his wake, but all the women he went out with were tailor-made for the kind of no-strings fun he specialized in.
As he waited for his photographer buddy to pick up, he registered that Delaney still hadn’t shown up for work. Where the hell was she, anyway?
DELANEY MICHAELS sat in her parked car, staring blankly out the windshield. If she drove around the corner, she’d see the bright aqua street sign that announced the offices of Mirk Publications in the inner-city Melbourne district of Fitzroy. She’d find her reserved parking spot, along with an office full of people waiting for her return from holidays.
And, of course, Sam.
The thought of facing Sam was what had made her pull over nearly half an hour ago. She’d been doing really well until then, staying focused on her end goal, reminding herself over and over that she’d made the right decision—the only decision. And then she had flashed forward to how his face would look when she told him, the confused, hurt, baffled expression he would get in his eyes. That was when she’d had to swerve to the curb and take half a dozen deep, calming breaths to stop the panic tightening her chest.
She didn’t think she could do this.
She had to do this.
Or she might as well sign up for the old spinsters club now and avoid the rush when she was sixty and grey and still ridiculously, besottedly, pathetically in love with Sam Kirk.
Gritting her teeth, Delaney scrunched her eyes shut and made an angry, frustrated growling sound in the back of her throat. She had been over and over and over this decision. The better part of the last week of her holiday had been spent facing the sad truth of her life and formulating a plan to change things. She wasn’t a coward. She had never backed away from a challenge in her life. And she wouldn’t back away from this. It was just…hard.
When a woman had been in love with the same handsome, ne’er-do-well, charming, funny, sensitive, generous, incorrigible rogue for the better part of her life, it was probably only natural for her to feel a little…shaky about how she was going to cope once she’d pruned him out of her world. But that was all it was—stage fright, pre-match jitters. Nothing would stop her from going through with her plan, because there was too much at stake.
If she hadn’t decided to go on vacation with her sister’s family, she might have let a few more years slip away before she made the vital break. Watching her sister’s life from a prime, courtside seat, she’d had a cosmic revelation. She wanted a family. She wanted a husband and kids. She wanted snotty noses and tears for no reason and snuggling in bed with small, warm bodies. And she was never going to get any of it while she was in love with Sam.
How was she ever supposed to find someone she liked enough to marry while Sam filled her whole world? Even the fact that she thought in terms of liking someone, not loving them, was testament to how long Sam had been her everything.
It was pathetic. Especially since the big dope didn’t have a clue. Even when she’d been a doe-eyed teen, mooning around after him, he’d never gotten wise. Thank God. She’d swiftly learned what happened to the love interests in Sam’s life—a few blissful, heady moments in the warm sunshine of his attention, then a lifetime of exile in the land of shadows once he’d moved on. She’d soon worked out that it was far better to be his ever-present buddy and sidekick than to risk all for a few fleeting moments of perfection. And it was a compromise she’d been happy with the bulk of her adult life.
It wasn’t like she wasn’t getting any action of her own. She had needs, after all. And there were only so many Sam-fueled fantasy sessions a girl could host in the privacy of her lonely bedroom. She’d had lovers, off and on, over the years. None of them had so much as put a dent in her love for Sam, of course. And she’d hurt some of them, she knew, with her emotional unavailability. But she hadn’t been celibate, pining in a tower somewhere over her unrequited love.
In all honesty, she’d thought she had it worked out. Sex when she needed it, and Sam in her life forever. Perfect. Right?
Except now it was time to grow up and face the facts: if she wanted children and a husband, she had to get Sam out of her head and heart.
She knew herself well enough to know that that meant excising Sam from her life. Just the thought of it made tears well up in her eyes as she stared bleakly out her windshield. She couldn’t imagine her life without Sam in it. He was her best friend. Her business partner. The one who finished her sentences. He could always make her smile, and he could infuriate her like no one else on the planet. It would be like losing an arm or a leg.
Or a heart.
But there were no half measures with this thing, she could see that. She’d be cheating her future husband if she remained friends with Sam. She had to at least be open to the possibility of loving someone else.
She felt sick to her stomach. Their lives were impossibly intertwined. She lived beneath him, for Pete’s sake. She worked with him. No, not just worked—she owned half the business, he owned the other half. It really would be like lopping off a limb.
But she didn’t see that she had much choice. It wasn’t as though her love for Sam would just curl up and die of its own accord one day. It had been nearly sixteen years and it showed no signs of waning. So, she was faced with a choice—Sam, or a family of her own.
Sitting in her car, Delaney felt the panic rising again. She forced herself to think practically and push the panic away. It was nearly a quarter past ten. She needed to get in to work. At the very least, there would be a big pile of paperwork in her in-tray that needed to be dealt with.
Starting her car, she drove the remaining short distance to the office and parked in her spot. Taking a deep breath, she exited the car and beeped it shut. For the first time ever, the sight of her red-and-white MINI Cooper didn’t bring a smile to her face.
“That bad, huh?” she asked herself wryly as she turned toward the entrance to the building.
She blinked as a startling vision almost plowed in to her.
“Careful!” the woman said, pursing hot pink lips. Delaney’s gaze swept from the woman’s honey-blond mane of tangled hair past impossibly blue eyes, cute little ski-jump nose and neon mouth, only to come to a grinding halt on the woman’s truly spectacular breasts. Whoa! They were so large and so tightly outlined by a white tank top that Delaney could barely pull her gaze away. And she was a woman! She felt a small stab of pity for the male of species. Against breasts like these, most men were powerless.
“Sorry,” she muttered, stepping aside to let the other woman pass.
Jessica Rabbit flashed a tight little smile before strutting away, ass wiggling in her high stiletto heels and short leather miniskirt, despite the fact that there was no one but Delaney to notice.
A true professional, Delaney thought, always committed to the cause.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look like that and walk like that and behave like that. She and Jessica Rabbit might as well come from different planets. Delaney glanced down at her own slim, boyish figure. If the bra manufacturer was on the generous side with their measures, she was a B cup. But more often than not she was an A. And where the other woman’s waist swerved in and out again like the corner of a racetrack, her own body sort of ran straight down, sidestepping the need for such womanly accoutrements as an hourglass waist or childbearing hips. Narrowing her eyes, Delaney decided that she might rival the other woman in the legs department, however. She had a good four inches in height on Jessica, and much of that was leg. And she’d been told she had a nice ass, firm and small.
She sighed and pushed her bangs off her forehead. Why was she standing on the threshold of her business taking stock of herself like this?
Because you know what that woman was doing in this building, she told herself. Or, more accurately, who.
Steeling herself, Delaney pushed open the door and strode into the reception area of their small offices. Debbie looked up from her computer screen and broke into a welcoming smile.
“Hey, Delaney! Thank God you’re here—Sam has been driving us crazy, asking if anyone’s heard from you,” Debbie said.
Delaney’s treacherous heart leaped in her chest, but she barely gave it the time of day. She was used to the damned thing lurching around inside her whenever Sam was in the vicinity. Occupational hazard of having an unrequited crush on her best friend.
“He’s highly excitable,” she said, and Debbie blushed a little.
Delaney gave Debbie an intent look. Yep, all the signs were there—Debbie had a crush on Sam. The poor fool.
Great. Another receptionist bites the dust.
Delaney wondered how long it would take before Sam had to deliver the “I don’t dip my pen in the office ink” speech to Debbie, leading their receptionist to quit so he could go out with her. Judging by the depth of Debbie’s glow-on, not long.
“Your messages are in your office. Sam handled most things, but a few clients only wanted to speak to you and they said they would wait until you got back,” Debbie said.
Delaney nodded her acceptance of this. She was largely responsible for the advertising sales side of the business, while Sam supervised and wrote for the editorial half of the magazine. While he could step into her shoes on occasion and schmooze with the best of them, it wasn’t his natural element.
“About time, lazybones,” a deep male voice said from behind her, and all the small hairs on her forearms stood on end.
“Sam,” she said, bracing herself for the first sight of him after two weeks away.
As usual, absence had made the heart grow fonder. He looked taller, broader, sexier than ever in his worn, faded denims, crumpled T-shirt and scruffy skate shoes. His skin was always tanned thanks to his weekly surfing sessions, and he was still sporting the ridiculously clichéd dreadlocks that he’d been cultivating for the past year. A mixture of his natural chestnut and sun-bleached blond, they hung to his shoulders in thick, matted ropes. On any other thirty-year-old man dreadlocks might look like a pathetic attempt to cling to their youth, but Sam pulled it off with ease.
Bright blue eyes sparkling with pleasure, he stepped forward.
“Laney!” he said, scooping her into his embrace.
For a few heady seconds she was held tight against his hard, hot chest, and his smell swamped her—a mixture of sun and pine forest and spice. Probably soap and laundry detergent, knowing Sam. He famously decried aftershave as being “one step too close to being a she-male” for his tastes, and any scent he had was all his own.
If Calvin Klein bottled it, he could buy himself the World Bank, she figured.
“Sorry I’m late. I had some stuff to take care of,” she said evasively as she extracted herself from his embrace. She swallowed a lump of lust and forced a smile.
“How’re things? No problems while I was gone?” she asked.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Sam said.
He was wired about something, she noticed, studying him. A bit too perky, a little too shiny-eyed.
“Okay, what have you done this time?” she asked resignedly. She pretended to hate the practical jokes he played on her, but she secretly loved the trouble he took to amuse and annoy her.
“Nothing. Although there was an unfortunate incident while you were away….” Sam said, doing his best to sound solemn as he steered her toward her office.
She registered the Crime Scene, Do Not Cross tape across her door with a blink. Then she saw the chalk outline on the carpet, and her paperwork strewn all over her desk.
“We’re not sure how they got in, but it appears there was a falling-out between thieves, and there was a bit of a struggle….” Sam said with admirable composure.
Delaney rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease. As if you wouldn’t have called me on my cell phone if someone had bitten the big one in my office. And you’re tidying up my desk, mister,” she said, poking a finger into his chest.
He grinned, clearly proud of himself.
“Admit it—had you going for just a second,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re too transparent, Kirk. I can read you like a billboard.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Just like I can read you, Michaels—and when you saw that police tape, you had your doubts,” he said.
She quirked an eyebrow at him as she unceremoniously tugged the crime-scene tape loose and let it flop to the floor. Entering her office, she dumped her briefcase and turned to face him, propping her butt on the edge of her desk. He hooked his hands over the top of the door frame and grinned at her. God, it was good to see him. Unable to help herself, she fished to confirm her guess about the woman outside.
“So who was the pneumatic blonde?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light and disinterested. She had a Ph.D. in light and disinterested. It was almost an art form for her.
“Coco,” he said, waving a hand dismissively.
And that, thought Delaney, is the end of that. She almost pitied Coco, but the other woman hadn’t looked heartbroken in the least.
“How long this time? A week? Two weeks?” she asked.
“Three. With time out for bad behavior,” he said.
“Bad behavior?”
“Yeah. Caught her kissing her dog on the lips,” Sam explained with a grimace. “Had to wait for the cooties to settle.”
“Ew. That’s just plain wrong, as well as giving the dog false hope,” Delaney said.
Sam threw back his head and let out a crack of laughter, and she felt a warm surge of pleasure that she’d amused him.
She realized she was staring at the strong column of his throat, her eyes caressing the firm, muscled planes of his chest and shoulders, nicely defined by the soft material of his T-shirt and his hanging-off-the-doorframe posture. She could feel her nipples tightening, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Occupational hazard number two: unruly body parts that always seemed to be on the verge of betraying her.
But not for much longer, she promised herself.
“Coco wanted us to feature her in the magazine,” Sam said.
Delaney blinked. “Does she skate or something?” she asked, her mind boggling at the effect those D-cups would have on the boys down at the skate ramp.
“Not exactly. She must have misheard me when I told her the name of the magazine. She thought it was Triple X,” Sam said, deadpan.
Delaney’s mouth dropped open. “As in…?”
“Yep.”
Delaney broke into giggles. “That’s why she was looking so pissed off outside,” she said.
“Was she?” Sam looked a little piqued. “It’s not as though we didn’t have some fun. What is it with women these days? Multiple orgasms not enough anymore?”
Delaney suddenly got very interested in tidying up her desk. Multiple orgasms with Sam Kirk. It was enough to set her underwear on fire.
“How was the holiday? Did those horrible brats of Claire’s drive you around the bend?” Sam asked, dropping onto the visitors’ couch.
“The holiday was great. And they weren’t brats. They were…perfect,” she said, her voice softening as she remembered all the special little moments from the last two weeks: Travis’s pencil drawing to say goodbye, Callum’s nightly insistence that she be the one to read his bedtime story, Alana’s repeated intrusion into her suitcase to play dress-up—a high compliment, her sister assured her.
“You catch any waves? Heard Gunnamatta was going off,” Sam said, naming a famous surf beach a few minutes drive from where they’d been staying.
“Not really. Just paddled around on the bay with the boys. Travis wants to learn how to surf,” she reported.
“Excellent. Another little grommet to clog up the waterways,” Sam said wryly.
“You were a grommet once. A particularly annoying one, as I recall, always dropping in on other surfer’s waves,” she reminded him.
“I was precocious. Oozing natural talent,” he said.
“Oozing something, that’s for sure.”
Sam just grinned at her. “Missed you, Laney,” he said, sliding a hand casually beneath his T-shirt to scratch his stomach.
She was treated to a flash of taut, muscled belly, the tanned skin sprinkled with crisp, caramel-colored curls that tapered down toward the waistband of his favorite jeans.
She snatched her eyes away and took a deep breath. Do it now, she told herself. Before you spend too much time with him and lose your nerve.
“Um, I need to speak to you sometime, too,” she forced herself to say, eyes fixed on the stack of papers she was shuffling together.
“Sure. What’s up?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t mean now,” Delaney said, panicking.
“No time like the present,” Sam said easily.
He was right, even if he didn’t know exactly how right. Suck it up, Michaels, she told herself.
Crossing to the door, she kicked it shut. Sam raised an eyebrow.
“A closed door conversation. My, my—I must have been really naughty this time,” he said lightly.
Delaney moved back to her desk and sank into her chair. Then she just stared at him for a moment, her eyes lovingly cataloguing his handsome, open face. This would be the last time she saw him without anger or confusion or resentment clouding their relationship. The last time that he would be her old, much-loved friend, no strings attached, no issues between them.
The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled nervously. “Okay, you’re freaking me out now. What’s going on?” he asked. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Talk to me, Laney,” he said.
Delaney closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath, then opened them.
“I want to sell you my half of the business,” she said in a rush.
Sam shook his head in confusion. “Sorry? Do you need money or something, Laney? Because you should have said—”
It was her turn to shake her head.
“No. I want out. I want out from the magazine, Sam.”
2
SAM FELT AS THOUGH he’d been punched in the gut. Delaney wanted to sell her half of the magazine? It just didn’t make sense to him. He shook his head again, frowning.
“I don’t get it. What’s changed all of a sudden?” he asked.
She was staring at the carpet, but she lifted her eyes to meet his before she spoke.
“I’ve had enough. I realized while I was away that I wanted to do something different. Maybe travel. I don’t know,” she said.
She was lying. He knew her better than he knew himself, and there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“Bull. Tell me what’s really going on,” he demanded, starting to feel angry and a little threatened.
Delaney couldn’t just walk out on him. They were a team, a tight little duo. He’d barely survived her annual two-week vacation with his sanity intact, for Pete’s sake.
“Sam,” she said, then she sighed heavily and put her head in her hands.
After a shocked second he saw that she was crying. Delaney never cried. Ever.
“Hey,” he said, shooting to his feet and moving to stand by her chair. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he held her tight. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out,” he said.
He felt her body stiffen under his arm, and she sat up straighter. He got the message—she didn’t want his comfort. Feeling doubly rejected, he returned to the couch.
There was a long silence as they stared at each other across the small space that separated them. He studied her closely, trying to find some clue as to what was really going on. But she looked the same as ever—her long mid-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, the fringe sitting straight across her brow. Her hazel eyes were clear and bright, not a skerrick of makeup in sight, as usual. Her nose was a little red on the end, true, but that was from the crying, he guessed. And she was biting her lower lip, her teeth nibbling at the full curve. She had a small mouth, but her lips were full, the lower one particularly so. A Cupid’s bow, Delaney’s mother always called it, to which Delaney inevitably rolled her eyes.
She looked the same as she always had—like Laney. His best friend.
“Come on, spill,” he said softly.
She sniffed inelegantly and he leaned over to grab the box of tissues off her bookshelf.
She waited until she’d blown her nose before speaking.
“I want children, Sam. I want a husband. A family,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.
Sam frowned. Laney never talked about her love life. He was always a little bit surprised when he caught sight of a guy leaving her apartment. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d been introduced to a man she was dating. She’d always been very private about it, and he’d respected that. Truth was, he didn’t really want to know, he suddenly acknowledged. Probably that made him a selfish bastard for not wanting her to be happy. Deep down inside he’d always feared that if she met Mr. Right, their friendship would change irrevocably. Sam would be number two in her life. And when children came, he’d be shuffled even further down the food chain. It didn’t say much for his nobility as a human being that the thought of Delaney with a family made him feel scared and lonely and threatened. But there it was.
Struggling to contain his messed-up emotions, Sam smoothed his hands down his thighs, then clasped his knees, bracing himself to be a grown-up.
“Of course you want kids,” he finally managed to say.
Delaney laughed, a watery, reluctant chuckle.
“You are the worst actor in the world, Kirk,” she said.
He shrugged sheepishly. “Okay,” he conceded. “You know I’ll be jealous as hell when you get married and have kids,” he admitted.
She looked startled. “Jealous?”
“You know—’cause things won’t be the same anymore,” he explained awkwardly.
Delaney’s eyes dropped to the carpet and she hunched a shoulder. “No, they won’t.”
“But I don’t see what any of that has to do with leaving the business,” Sam said. He might be about to lose most of Delaney, but he would cling to what little he had left. If she stayed in the business, she would always be a part of his life, no matter what.
“It’s too all-consuming, Sam,” she said. “We live for this place. How am I ever supposed to meet someone when all I do is eat, sleep, breathe Mirk Publications?”
“Then we’ll get a sales assistant. You can do half days. Whatever it takes,” he countered.
“No. It wouldn’t work. I’m a control freak, you know I am. And it’s thinking about the business when I’m not here that’s part of it, as well. I’d still be doing that if I owned half of it. I need a complete break,” she said.
There was a determination in her tone, a firmness that he recognized. Delaney had made her decision. Without talking it over with him. Without consulting him in any way. She’d simply gone away, and come back determined to do her own thing.
He started to get angry. “And where does that leave me?” he asked. He hated the fact that he sounded like a sulky kid, but that was how he felt, so he might as well own up to it.
“Sam, you can easily afford to buy me out. You know you can. Or you can get in another partner. Or go into partnership with another small publisher. God knows, we’ve had enough of them sniffing around over the years,” she said.
Sam stared at her. She was serious about this. Completely serious. He wanted to yell at her. To tell her in no uncertain terms how stupid and selfish and wrong all this was. But he didn’t. He bit his tongue and fought for control.
“When do you want out?” he managed to ask.
“As soon as possible,” she said baldly.
Unbelievably, in light of their conversation to date, her words still stung. He rocketed to his feet.
“I’ll talk to the bank,” he said, and then he pulled her office door open, slamming it behind him as he exited. Their entire staff turned his way, but he ignored them all, crossing next door to his own office and slamming that door, too.
Then he threw himself into his office chair and dropped his head into his hands.
What in the world was he going to do without her?
DELANEY TOOK A LONG, shuddery breath and then let it out. She’d just had the hardest conversation of her life, hands down. Swiveling in her chair, she leaned forward and rested her forehead on her desk.
The look in Sam’s eyes. The hurt. The lack of comprehension. She hated causing him pain, but she had no choice.
Unless she was prepared to tell him the real reason she had to go.
Which was never going to happen.
Which left her back at square one. Although, technically, she was at square two now. She’d delivered the big blow. Now she just had to live through the next little while before she could walk away from the business. And Sam.
Her heart wrenched painfully in her chest at the thought. But she had to face up to it. One day soon, in a month or two’s time, she would walk out the double doors of this building and out of Sam’s life forever.
She lifted her head off the desk, then dropped it down again, banging her forehead. It felt like an appropriate punishment for the mess she’d created, and she did it several more times—bang, bang, bang, bang—until it suddenly occurred to her that she might bruise her forehead. Good luck explaining that one to sane, ordinary people—I’d just screwed up my entire life, so I thought I’d add brain damage to the mix.
Lifting her head, she stared blindly at the wall planner in front of her. Absolute honesty time—there had been a part of her that had hoped that when Sam heard her big news he’d break down and say something to give her hope. She figured that the exact same part of her twisted female psyche was responsible for believing in unicorns when she was five and Santa Claus until she was eight, but it didn’t make the realization any easier to bear. How sad could she get? Even at the eleventh hour, she was hoping for a reprieve, that he’d tell her he was mad about her, he couldn’t stand the thought of life without her. As if Sam wouldn’t have found some time over the past, say, sixteen years to recognize that his brotherly affection was actually repressed lust for her slim, boyish body, if that were actually the case.
A knock sounded on the door behind her.
“Yes?” she called out.
The door opened a crack and their desktop artist, Rudy, poked his head in. “You okay?” he asked cautiously. With his flamboyant red-and-blue-dyed hair and multiple piercings, coupled with his tendency to dress in brightly colored rave club wear, Rudy looked like a demented elf.
Delaney summoned a smile for him. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“Right. I’ve been with you guys for five years, Delaney. You and Sam have never slammed doors before,” Rudy said.
“Sam slammed the door,” Delaney pointed out.
Rudy rolled his eyes as if to say it was the same difference. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
Delaney opened her mouth to offer up another soothing platitude, but she realized that she might as well just tell him the truth. The sooner it became an accepted fact, the sooner she could move on.
“I’ve asked Sam to buy out my share of the magazine,” she said. “I’m leaving the business.”
Rudy’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “No way!” he said.
Delaney just held his eye until the incredulous expression faded from his face.
“But you and Sam are like bread and butter. Or strawberries and cream. Or…or…peanuts and bananas. You never have one without the other,” Rudy said.
“Peanuts and bananas, Rudy?” she queried.
“Try it sometime,” he said. Then he stared at Delaney as if he were a lost puppy.
She tried her best to be reassuring.
“It’s not going to change anything for you guys. Sam will still be here. The magazine will be exactly the same,” she said.
“No, it won’t. It’s not the same without you around. If you’d been here for the past two weeks you’d know that. Sam can’t do all the things you do. Just like you can’t do all the things he does. That’s why you make a great team. Like peanuts—”
“And bananas. I got it,” Delaney said. “I’m sorry, Rudy, but it’s just the way it is. It’ll all work out okay, you’ll see.”
If only she could believe her own advice. Shooting her one last bewildered look, Rudy slipped back out into the main office. Within seconds, their remaining four employees would be up to speed, Delaney guessed. Which would save her having to conduct the same difficult, uncomfortable conversation four more times.
Working on autopilot, she turned her computer on and began to organize her desk. Sam’s practical joke had left her normally neat and tidy work surface a mess of disordered paper. She spent the next twenty minutes mindlessly filing and straightening things, then she worked her way through her phone messages. By the time she’d dealt with the more urgent ones, it was lunchtime.
She usually ate lunch with Sam. They’d walk to a local café, or jump in the car and go somewhere farther afield, just to clear their heads. Once or twice a year, when the weather was too damned irresistible and the surf report was too enticing, they’d bail on work completely for the whole afternoon and take off for the nearest surf beach.
She could just imagine his expression if she sauntered next door and suggested they grab a bite. She hadn’t heard a peep from him since he’d barreled out of her office and into his own—no low murmur of phone conversation, no chatting with the other employees. Like her, Sam was probably staying put in his office, reeling from her announcement.
For a second she was gripped with a wild impulse to tell him it had all been a big, stupid joke. That she’d just been yanking his chain, the ultimate practical gag.
The urge was so strong she forced herself to scoop up her car keys and purse before she could give in to it. Striding to the front door, she told Debbie that she’d be back in an hour.
The mall was probably not the best place to go when she was feeling down, but somehow she wound up there. Fluorescent lighting, neon signs, crowds of dull-eyed shoppers—she fit right in as she walked around aimlessly, staring blankly at clothes racks, sorting pointlessly through sales bins. It wasn’t until she caught herself burrowing furiously through a bargain bin, trying to find a complete set of Christmas-themed napkin rings, that she snapped out of it.
Not only did she not own napkins, she hated knick-knacky home decor items with a passion. Dropping the offending objects like hot potatoes, she exited the store and sat on the nearest bench. Pulling a notebook from her handbag, she forced herself to focus.
Yes, she was a little off balance after making such a life-changing decision and then following through on it by telling Sam her intentions, but it was no excuse to wig out completely. She had to keep moving toward her end goal—find a husband, build a family.
She wrote both things down in her notebook, then groaned and tore the page out, throwing it into the nearby bin. Who was she kidding? She didn’t need a to-do list—she knew what had to be done.
First, she had to stop comparing every man she met to Sam Kirk. Second, she had to actually start taking more men up on their offers to take her to dinner/the movies/bed. With Sam out of her life, hopefully the rest would simply fall into place.
Wig-out over, she stood and smoothed the creases from her tailored slim-line trousers. Her hands stilled on her thighs as she stared down at her sensible, businesslike outfit. She always wore pants to work. And she almost always wore a shirt, or some other kind of sensible, tailored top. She wasn’t a fussy, frills-and-flowers kind of woman, never had been. But still…
Scanning the mall, her eye was drawn to the glint of a mirror, and she crossed to stand in front of it. The woman staring back at her was plain-looking, with long straight mid-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing navy linen pants and a cream cotton shirt, and while both were of good quality and well-cut, there was no escaping the fact that she looked a little like a military nurse. Or a postal worker.
Her mind flashed to the eye-popping blonde she’d encountered outside the office that morning. No one would ever mistake Coco for a postal worker, that was for sure. And while Delaney knew she could never even begin to play in the same league as the epically endowed Coco, there was no reason why she shouldn’t make the best of her assets.
That’s what it was all about, after all, wasn’t it? Using what you had to attract the opposite sex. Then it was down to personality and compatibility and chemistry.
Once again she scanned the mall, this time looking for a hair salon. There were three to choose from, all situated close to one another. She spent a few minutes analyzing the cuts of the hairstylists in each establishment, as well as those of their clients, then she simply picked the one that looked the most expensive. She hadn’t had a haircut in months. Normally she tidied up her own bangs with the kitchen scissors, and just had the spilt ends cut off the back every now and then.
Approaching the counter, she smiled nervously at the receptionist.
“Hi. I’d like to get a haircut,” she said.
“Of course. We actually have an opening now, if you’re interested,” the girl said smoothly. “Someone canceled at the last minute.” She flicked a strand of perfect hair over her shoulder, and Delaney found herself following the silky fall of the woman’s multihued locks. Eyes narrowing, she assessed the receptionist’s haircut: shorter at the front, it gradually became longer toward the back, just skimming her shoulders. The choppy texture of the cut was emphasized by a mixture of brown streaks, ranging from darkest chocolate to cinnamon to a golden bronze. It was sexy hair, alluring hair. Nothing postal or military about it at all.
“Do you think they could cut my hair like that?” Delaney asked impulsively.
The receptionist tilted her head to one side and considered her. “Absolutely. Let me get Volker. He’s the expert,” she said.
Delaney found herself being ushered into a seat by a lanky hairstylist with a pronounced German accent.
“Oh, yes, we can do something with this,” he said approvingly as he freed her hair from its tie.
“It needs to be like hers,” Delaney said, pointing toward the receptionist who had once again resumed her station at the front of the store.
“It will be better,” Volker announced, no hint of ego or boasting in his voice—he was simply stating a fact.
Two hours later, Delaney decided he was right on the money. The woman staring back from the salon mirror was a stranger. Gone was her straight, no-nonsense fringe. Now her hair swept gracefully to one side of her face to fall in graduated layers onto her shoulders. Each layer was made up of a myriad of colors—russet, chocolate, ginger—so that when she ran her hand through it or shook it, her hair shimmered with light and movement.
“Wow,” the receptionist said when Delaney stepped up to the counter to pay her bill. The girl’s gaze flicked doubtfully to her own reflection in a nearby mirror and Delaney felt a dart of feminine pride. She had hair that other women envied! How good was that!
Her euphoria lasted for all of the five seconds it took for her mind to default to wondering what Sam would think of her new cut.
Stupid stupid stupid, she told herself, but it didn’t make any difference. He had been the sun her world orbited around for so long, it was going to take time to wean herself away from using him as her touchstone.
The realization drove her into the nearest David Jones department store, her step determined.
Another hour and a half later, she stuffed a dozen rustling shopping bags into the back seat of the MINI. She’d gone berserk. There was no other word for it. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman had nothing on Delaney. She’d practically handed her credit card over to the sympathetic sales assistant and told her to go crazy. New makeup, perfume and underwear, six pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, three pairs of figure-hugging jeans in black, red and dark denim, and a host of skirts, dresses, tank tops, T-shirts…She honestly had no idea exactly what she’d bought. But it was all fitted. Tight, even. The skirts were either short and flirty, or short and figure-hugging. The dresses were triumphs of design, with minuscule straps and cinching belts and draping skirts that made her look willowy and elegant and mysterious. And the bras…Who would have thought that a bra could make such a difference? She refused to wear a padded bra, but the underwire balconette bra the saleswoman had shown her actually gave her cleavage. And the colors! She had a rainbow of silk and lace in her shopping bags. She’d oohed and ahhed so much she was sure the saleswoman must have thought she’d just escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. But the truth was, Delaney hadn’t spent this much time thinking about her appearance since she was a teenager and she’d made a single pathetic, misguided attempt to make Sam look at her as a woman. He’d laughed at her too-bright lipstick and her sister’s clothes and asked if she was going to a fancy dress, and she’d gone home and scrubbed at her face until it was red raw.
Since she’d long ago given up on Sam loving her, she’d relegated the art of allure and seduction to the dustbin. If a man was interested in plain old Delaney, she’d give him a whirl. But she had never gone out of her way to be sexy before. And this new wardrobe of hers was undeniably provocative.
Good, she told herself firmly. She was thirty years old. She only had a limited amount of time to meet a decent man, fall in love and start making babies.
She’d called Debbie from the hair salon to explain her long absence, and she stopped at the other woman’s desk to collect her messages on the way in to her office.
“Just three calls. Everyone still thinks you’re on holiday,” Debbie said absently, passing the chits over without looking up from her computer monitor.
“Thanks,” Delaney said, turning away.
“Get out of town!” Debbie suddenly squealed from behind her. “Delaney, what have you done?”
Delaney felt a stab of apprehension. She’d changed into the black jeans at the shop, matching them with a bright aqua tank top that made the most of her newly upthrust bosom. It was just like the time she’d dressed up for Sam—clearly she’d got it all wrong again. She closed her eyes for a second, then braced herself and turned back to face Debbie.
“Not good, huh?” she asked flatly.
“Are you kidding?! You look amazing. Astonishing. Stunning!” Debbie babbled. “Rudy, come and check Delaney out!”
Of course, that meant everyone else came as well, Amanda and Justin and Sukie trailing Rudy out into the reception area. They all circled around her oohing and ahhing.
“Your hair is so gorgeous. I want to eat it,” Rudy said worryingly.
“Those jeans, Delaney. Wow,” Justin said admiringly. Delaney noticed he was having a hard time taking his eyes off her ass.
Sukie was staring at Delaney’s chest, and she winked knowingly. “Mademoiselle FiFi,” she said, naming the brand of Delaney’s new bra. Sukie patted her own perky chest with satisfaction. “I love her work.”
It was all salve for her ego, and she felt her confidence blooming. She should have done this ages ago. She’d always taken the line that what people saw with her was what they got, but she realized now she’d been missing out on a lot of fun. She’d liked putting on lipstick and a touch of mascara and eye shadow with the expert guidance of the woman in the beauty section of the department store. And testing the perfumes had been a hoot. It was nice to feel desirable and attractive for a change.
Her gaze kept flicking toward Sam’s closed door, but Debbie answered her unspoken question before she had to ask it.
“Sam left not long after you,” the receptionist said.
Delaney stomped on the absurd sense of disappointment she felt at Sam not being there to see her transformation. This was not about Sam Kirk! She had to get that through her thick head.
She registered that everyone had sobered. She guessed they were thinking about the news she’d given Rudy before lunch.
“Don’t worry, your jobs are all safe,” she said quickly. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Except for her, of course. But she was sure they weren’t worried about her.
“But it won’t be the same,” Sukie said, echoing Rudy’s earlier remark. “We like working for you and Sam. It will be weird without you.”
“You’ll get used to it. And it’s not like I’m going straight away,” Delaney said, moved by her employees’ sincerity. Maybe they were a little worried about her.
“Are you—are you getting married or something?” Justin blurted out.
Delaney blinked. “No!”
Justin turned beet-red. “I just thought maybe you’d fallen in love with some jerk who didn’t want you to work and maybe we could go around and break his kneecaps or something.”
Delaney was touched all over again. “There’s no guy, trust me. I just want to do something different with my life,” she assured them.
Offering up one last smile, she crossed to her office.
The smile faded when she saw the note Sam had left on her desk.
Gone to talk to lawyers. Will have answer for you by p.m.
Wow. He’d moved quickly.
She sat with a thump. Soon, it seemed, she’d get what she wanted.
So why wasn’t she feeling relieved or happy?
Because you’re a besotted idiot, she told herself. Determined to change that, she grabbed her phone messages and focused on work.
She had to be strong now, or suffer the consequences later. There was no other way.
SAM WAS SO WORKED UP when he got home from the lawyer’s office that he had to play five rounds of Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation before his stress levels were manageable. When he’d finally maxed out his personal best score, he shut the unit off and grabbed himself a beer from the fridge. Heading out onto the balcony, he gazed across the crowded inner-city suburb of Richmond as he sucked down some much-needed liquid calm.
The evening breeze was cool, and the sky was a faded apricot color by the time he lifted himself out of his lounger and padded back into the house.
He’d been so angry with Delaney earlier that he could barely think, but now a semblance of rational thought had reasserted itself. For some reason, Delaney’s biological clock had suddenly exploded. Personally, he blamed Claire and her three offspring. Clearly the kids—evil geniuses that they were—had implanted some kind of hormonal device in Delaney’s brain while she was on holidays and Claire was making hay while the sun shined. Women always wanted other women to have children. They were constantly encouraging each other to procreate—a maternal conspiracy.
So. Delaney wanted kids of her own. It wasn’t the end of the world. But it didn’t mean she had to get out of the business. When he’d been discussing things with his lawyer this afternoon, a number of options had been floated. The one that appealed the most was keeping Delaney in the business as a silent partner, and bringing in an advertising sales manager to handle Delaney’s role. That way Delaney was still a part of the business—still connected to his life—but she could go off and find Mr. Perfect at the same time. Everyone was a winner.
It was such a great idea, Sam decided he should just go sell it to Delaney on the spot. Plus, he’d never stayed angry at her for this long before, and it felt weird. And, of course, there was dinner to be considered. He couldn’t cook, Delaney could…. Again everyone was a winner.
Grabbing the remaining two beers from his fridge, he snagged his house keys and made his way downstairs to Delaney’s apartment. Her door was red where his was blue, but the layouts inside were identical. They’d bought the empty warehouse shells at the same time, and shared the cost of an architect to fit out both spaces. There were small, idiosyncratic differences, of course—Delaney’s bathroom was all white where his was dark grey. And her kitchen had a lot more stainless-steel equipment than his. But apart from that, the apartments were a matched pair. Like him and Delaney.
She took her sweet time answering his knock, and he was beginning to frown with impatience when the door swung open.
“Sam!” she said, clearly surprised to see him. He was too busy doing a double take to register the fact, however.
What on earth had she done to herself?
“What on earth have you done to yourself?” he demanded, eyeing her freaky new haircut uncertainly.
Since when did Delaney have soft layers of honey and toffee-colored hair gently framing her face? His stunned gaze moved from her new hair to her face itself as he realized that that looked different, too. Eyes bigger and smokier, mouth redder and poutier. She was wearing makeup! His Delaney was wearing makeup!
Then his eyes dropped below her neckline and he nearly had a heart attack. What had happened to Delaney’s signature crisp cotton shirt? Or the man-sized surf T-shirts she wore around the house? The tiny, teeny aqua thing she had on barely justified the words tank top. It was like the ghost of a tank top, an imprint that might be left behind when a tank top passed over to the other side.
For a full, mind-bending five seconds he found himself focusing on the twin stars of Delaney’s new purchase—two of the perkiest, prettiest breasts he’d seen in a long time. Thrusting up toward the low neckline of her top, they positively begged for a man to reach out and see if they felt as delectable and firm as they looked. Wrenching his eyes away, he continued on his downward spiral into madness as he caught sight of the jeans she was wearing. Painted-on was the term that came to mind. Darkest black, and so tight that if she was a man he’d know what religion she was. But she wasn’t a man. Oh boy, she so wasn’t a man.
“Shit!” was all he could think to say.
Delaney flinched and her eyes flashed at him.
“Thanks a lot. That’s all you can say? What have you done, and shit? Nice,” she said.
Then she turned her back on him and walked away and, for the first time in his life, Little Sam reared up in his boxers and saluted his best friend. Since when did Delaney have such a delectable butt? Heaven. Pure heaven. Round and high and so grabable that when he looked down he saw his fingers had actually curled in anticipation.
Suddenly Sam registered what he was doing, and the fact that he now had an embarrassing, incredibly inappropriate, illicit boner making itself at home in his jeans.
Had the world fallen off its axis? What in the name of all that was good was going on here? Where on earth did he get off cracking a woody over his best friend?
He never had sexual thoughts about Delaney. She was a complete no-go zone where that kind of stuff was concerned. She meant too much to him for him to stuff it up with some stupid sex thing. A long time ago, he’d made a decision—Delaney was out of bounds. And it had worked. It really had. He’d never even peeked when they changed out of their wetsuits at the beach. She was his friend, damn it. You didn’t check out your best friend.
So why was there now a hard-on making its presence felt in his underwear?
Sam shook his head to clear it.
It was surprise, that was all. Delaney’s new look had taken him unawares, made him look at her in a different way before he could get his defenses up. That was all it was.
And he’d offended her with his shocked reaction.
“Shit,” he said again, but under his breath this time. Depositing the beers on Delaney’s recycled Oregon dining table, he followed her into her bedroom.
She was pulling clothes out of the jumble of shopping bags on her big king-size bed. By the looks of it, she’d cleaned out the whole women’s department at David Jones.
“You’ve been shopping?” he asked stupidly, reeling from yet another blow to his perception of the world.
Delaney hated shopping almost as much as she hated makeup and…perfume? He sniffed the air suspiciously, becoming aware that a sweet, light fragrance had wrapped itself around him. It was the odor equivalent of crack cocaine—once he’d had one sniff, he couldn’t seem to get enough.
“What’s that smell?” he demanded.
Delaney threw her hands in the air. “It’s Dolce and Gabbana Light Blue. What’s wrong? Does it smell like horse manure? Is that what you’re going to tell me next?”
Sam blinked at her anger, then admitted to himself that it might be a little justified. The problem was, he was in free fall here, staggering from one shocking revelation to another. But he probably could be a little more diplomatic about what was coming out of his mouth.
“No, it’s nice,” he said.
Delaney went back to clearing out her shopping bags, her movements tight with anger.
“I’m sorry,” he said, painfully aware that he’d hurt her feelings with his insensitive reaction. Although it had been more oversensitive, if he were being pedantic about it.
In fact, her hair looked great, not freaky at all. Silky and touchable. A perfect frame for her sweet face. Which wasn’t quite so sweet anymore, thanks to Mr. Max Factor and friends. More…sultry. Promising.
Sam swallowed and shook his head. It was so not his place to be thinking any of these things about Delaney. She would completely flip out if she had even an inkling that he’d gotten aroused over the sight of her ass in her tight new jeans. Even as he thought it, Delaney turned and bent to pick up something off the ground. He thrust his hands into his pockets to counteract the ass-grabbing urge that once again rocked him, and wrenched his eyes away.
“So, um, I went to the lawyers this afternoon,” he said, trying to get a grip on himself.
“Uh-huh,” Delaney murmured, hanging dress after dress in the wardrobe. He frowned when he saw how short they were. Maybe they were tops, not dresses? If he was to have any chance of keeping his sanity and conquering this sudden, aberrant bout of hyper-awareness where she was concerned, they’d better be.
“He floated another idea, something we hadn’t considered. We get someone in to take over your role, and you stay in the business as a silent partner. Maybe just give advice whenever required, that kind of thing,” Sam said, leaning against the wall.
Delaney shook her head, her newly streaked hair dancing around her face hypnotically.
“But I told you, Sam. I want out. I don’t want to be connected to the business at all.”
Sam should have been more worried about what she was saying, he knew he should, but she’d just emptied out a shopping bag full of lacy, silky scraps. He watched, fascinated, as she sorted through the rainbow-hued mass, matching bras to panties or thongs. Thongs! Delaney in a thong. Delaney’s perfect, ripe peach of a butt in a thong.
Little Sam once again made a determined effort to join proceedings, and Sam fisted his hands in his pockets, dreading the thought that Delaney might look up and see his erection and get completely the wrong idea.
He was not turned on by her new underwear. He was not turned on by her. He was just freaking out over the fact that she wanted out from the business. That was all. His body’s response was just a weird offshoot of his reaction.
Belatedly he realized that Delaney had stopped packing things away to stare at him, waiting for his response.
“Um, right,” he said.
She sat on the bed, offering him an untrammeled view down the neck of her new top.
“Sam, I know this has been a bolt from the blue, and it’s going to take you some time to adjust, but it’s what I want,” she said firmly.
Her breasts rose and fell with each breath she took, straining upward as though they wanted to escape the confines of her clothing. He licked his lips, wondering what color her nipples were.
It was such a basic, primal thought that Sam actually turned toward the door, ready to flat-out run from his own animal instincts.
“What’s wrong?” Delaney demanded. She stood again, and Sam heaved a sigh of relief that he could no longer see down her top. The pressure in his boxers eased a notch, but he didn’t dare pull his hands from his pockets.
“Nothing. Just a bit of…gas,” he said lamely when nothing else came to mind.
“Not in my bedroom,” Delaney said instantly, pointing toward the door. “And you need to get out anyway. My date will be here soon and I need to start getting ready.”
Sam froze. “Date? What date?”
Delaney lifted a shoulder negligently. He just managed to keep his eyes above her neckline.
“Jake dropped by this afternoon. He asked me out to dinner tonight,” she said.
Sam stared at her. “Jake the printing rep? That Jake?”
“Do we know any others?” she asked.
“But he’s a complete sleaze, Delaney. He’s always checking out chicks, and every time I see him out somewhere he’s with a new woman,” Sam said indignantly.
“So? Maybe he just hasn’t met the right woman yet,” Delaney said.
Before he could tell her how wrong she was, what sort of trouble she was inviting, she shoved him out of her bedroom and shut the door in his face.
3
CRACKING OPEN ONE of the beers he’d brought down, Sam paced back and forth across Delaney’s jarrah wood floor, sucking in beer and trying to breathe out tension and frustration. He was supposed to go back upstairs to his own apartment—the way Delaney had yelled through her closed bedroom door that she’d see him at work tomorrow had been something of a giveaway in that direction. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was worried about Delaney going out with a bona fide lady’s man like Jake. The guy was six foot, solidly built, and Sam knew from listening to the girls in the office that they thought he was dreamy. Delaney wouldn’t stand a chance against a practiced make-out artist like that.
He could hear the sound of the shower as Delaney got ready for her date, and he tried to keep himself from imagining what she was doing in there. What she looked like naked, those perky, high breasts of hers slick, the nipples pebbled from the water’s warm touch, how she might slide her hands down over her hips and round over that perfect butt…
What was wrong with him? Why was he suddenly having these intimate, crazy-making thoughts about Delaney? She was like his sister. He wasn’t supposed to care that she was a woman. It just wasn’t a factor in their relationship. At least, it never had been. But all of a sudden, it was as though someone had ripped down an invisible force field that had been between them and he was seeing her for the first time.
And Delaney was definitely a woman. A beautiful, desirable woman.
And Jake the sales rep was going to take her out tonight and do his best to get inside the tiny, lacy scraps of silk he’d seen Delaney sorting through earlier.
It made Sam so angry that he almost threw his beer bottle at the wall. The tempo of his pacing increased. She couldn’t go out with Jake. It was a simple as that. Once she got out of the shower, he’d talk sense to her, and she could call Jake and give the guy the brush-off. Then Sam would take her out for burgers or something. They’d have a few beers together, and get things back on their old, solid footing.
The clock in Delaney’s open-plan kitchen read just five minutes shy of eight by the time she emerged from her bedroom. She came wrapped in a cloud of perfume and precious little else from what he could see.
The dress she was wearing was the color of autumn leaves—a dark, burnished orange—and it set off Delaney’s tan perfectly. It had tiny spaghetti straps and a tight bodice that hugged her breasts, then it swooped down over her hips to end a bare few inches below her butt.
“You cannot be serious,” Sam said before he could help himself. He’d planned on staying calm, being the voice of reason. But Delaney could not go out in public in that dress. For starters, it almost certainly violated several decency codes. And it would definitely pose a medical risk for elderly males. Surely she didn’t want to be responsible for giving some randy octogenarian a fatal heart attack?
“Sam, if you haven’t got something nice to say, go home,” Delaney said wearily.
He’d hurt her feelings. Again. Determined to get this right, he crossed to her and put both hands on her shoulders. She tried to twitch out of his grasp, but he just held her more firmly.
“Laney, you look amazing. Hot. Too hot, in fact. There is no way Jake will be able to keep his hands off you,” Sam explained honestly.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want him to?” Delaney said, pushing his hands away.
“Well…no. Why on earth would you let a guy like Jake take advantage of you? He’s not good husband material, Delaney, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Because you’re such a great judge of that, right?” she challenged him.
Sam pulled his dreadlocks off his forehead, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to get through to her.
“He’s going to look at you in that dress, and all he’s going to think about is sex,” he finally said. There, he couldn’t be more blatant than that.
“Good,” she replied.
“What?”
“I said good. I have had sex before you know, Sam. I do know what goes where. I have needs, too,” she said defiantly.
She pushed her hair behind her ear, and he saw that she was wearing slinky silver drop earrings that drew attention to her long, slim neck. She was so fine and sleek and strong. She was way too good for Jake the rep.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” Sam said after a long silence. “If you’re willing to just put yourself out there like that…I can’t protect you.”
“I didn’t ask you to! I’m a grown woman, I can take care of myself,” Delaney all but shouted back at him. Her cheekbones colored up nicely, and her breasts seemed in imminent danger of popping out over the top of her dress.
While he was giving himself a mental bitch-slap for looking in the first place, Delaney crossed to the door and opened it wide.
“Out. Now,” she said unequivocally.
Sam opened his mouth to deliver one last warning, but she glared at him and he closed his jaw with an audible click.
Feeling distinctly hard done by, he moved past her and out into the hall.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Sam said.
“Hey there, Sam,” a voice said from behind him, and he turned to see Jake approaching down the corridor.
The cheesy schemer was dressed like Mr. Slick from a fashion catalogue, and he was even carrying a bunch of flowers. Sam felt his lip curl as he eyed the other man.
“Jake,” he managed to bite out. Jake offered his hand, and Sam stared at it for a beat before reluctantly shaking hands. He made sure he squeezed the other guy’s knuckles good and hard, though, just so Jake would know who he’d be dealing with if he got out of line with Delaney.
“Sam was just leaving,” Delaney said meaningfully.
Sam twitched, but he knew he had no choice. She was right—she was a grown woman. A fully grown, fully adult woman. With needs, she’d said.
Great.
“Delaney—you look sensational,” Jake said, bending to kiss her hello.
Sam felt the lip curl make a return appearance as Jake’s arms slid around her, his hands lingering way too long on her lower back. Sam knew exactly what the other guy was thinking: how much small talk do I have to fake before I can get my hands on that amazing caboose?
If he stayed any longer, Sam knew he was going to do something really, really dumb.
“Have a great night,” he said sourly.
Then he turned and walked away.
DELANEY TOOK A DRINK from her wineglass. Across the table, Jake’s lips were moving, but she had no idea what was coming out of them. She gave herself a mental shake. She had to focus on Jake instead of constantly slipping back to her earlier conversation with Sam. It was pointless to go over and over what had passed between them. As if she’d needed yet another reminder that her feelings for him were unrequited, Sam’s attitude could not have shouted indifference more clearly. Although perhaps she was being unfair. He hadn’t been indifferent. He’d been…brotherly. As he always was. A concerned friend. It was enough to make her want to scream.
“Should we get another bottle?” Jake asked, and Delaney realized that she’d drained her glass in one long gulp.
“Um, sure,” she said.
Jake signaled for the waiter, and Delaney forced herself to concentrate. It wasn’t as though Jake wasn’t attractive or fun to be with. Normally she really enjoyed exchanging banter with him when he came into the office. And there was no denying his masculine appeal—he was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. So why wasn’t she sitting here hoping that he’d kiss her when he took her home tonight? Instead, she was wondering how she could head him off at the pass. Would it be unforgivably rude to get a taxi home on her own at the end of their meal? Or should she just go the whole hog and fake an appendicitis attack right now?
Damn Sam Kirk, and damn herself for letting him ruin her for any other man.
“You know, I’ve wanted to ask you out for a while,” Jake said as the waiter moved off.
Delaney blinked. “Really?”
“Yep. But I always kind of got the feeling you weren’t available,” Jake said.
It made her wonder if that was the way other men had seen her, too—unavailable. Was it possible that she subconsciously sent out “keep off” signals because her feelings for Sam were so strong?
“Well, I’m single, always have been,” Delaney shrugged, not quite sure what to say. If she flirted with Jake, she felt as though she’d be doing so under false pretences.
“When I saw you this afternoon I hoped maybe my luck had changed.”
“What do you mean?” Delaney asked.
“New hair, new clothes—the classic relationship break-up makeover,” Jake said.
Delaney stared at him for a beat. In a way, he was right. She was breaking up with Sam. He just didn’t know it.
“It was time for a change,” she said feebly.
“Speaking of which, I still can’t believe you’re leaving Mirk,” Jake said, shaking his head.
“Well, I have been there since the beginning. Nearly eight years now,” Delaney said.
“Why the big move, if you don’t mind me asking? Don’t tell me you got poached by one of the big guys? I know a ton of publishers who’d love to have you on their sales staff,” Jake said.
She tried to find a way to answer without lying. She was doing enough of that with Sam.
“I’m thirty,” she shrugged, opting for brutal honesty. “I realized that I could spend the rest of my life working like a dog…or I could start thinking about the other things in life.”
“Like…?” Jake asked, his dark eyes intent on her.
“You know. A husband, kids. It sounds kind of clichéd when you say it out loud,” Delaney said self-consciously.
“If it’s a cliché, it’s only because most single people in their thirties start looking around, wondering if there are any lifeboats left. No one wants to stay too long on the dance floor and get stuck when the Titanic goes down,” Jake said, smiling self-deprecatingly at his own analogy.
“Especially if you can’t swim,” Delaney added wryly.
“I don’t think you need to worry about not being able to swim,” Jake said warmly. “I bet there will always be some guy willing to share his life raft with you.”
It was a compliment, she knew. And she should probably feel flattered. But she didn’t. Instead, she felt mildly uncomfortable and completely transparent. Surely he could tell she wasn’t interested? A part of her was tempted to confess all to him, apologize for wasting his time and offer to pay for his meal.
She should have waited until she’d expunged Sam from her life before trying to date. She was just perpetuating the same problem she’d always had while Sam was on the scene: no man ever measured up.
Sure, Jake was good-looking. But his brown eyes weren’t half as engaging as Sam’s bright blue ones, and his smile not nearly as sincere and fun-loving. And while Jake was witty and clever—he’d read all the latest books and seen all the coolest movies—he didn’t make her laugh nearly as much as Sam. He also didn’t make her blood fizz in her veins, or her heart shimmy in her chest, and she wasn’t sitting on the edge of her seat, hoping for an accidental brush of his fingers against hers, or the feel of his knee nudging hers beneath the table.
He just…wasn’t Sam. It was as small and as sad as that.
Reaching for her wineglass, Delaney took another big gulp.
Surely taking a taxi home wouldn’t be that bad form…?
SAM FELT LIKE A CAGED TIGER with a bad case of hives. It was ten o’clock. Delaney had been out with Jake for two whole hours. In all likelihood, they were still at dinner, trying to decide whether or not to have dessert, talking about politics over coffee, hoping the weather would be a little cooler next week….
Or old smoothie Jake had already finagled Delaney back to his pad and was even now peeling her clothes off. Sam ground his teeth together at the thought of Jake sleazing his way beneath Delaney’s defenses.
Sam ground his teeth even harder when it occurred to him that maybe Delaney didn’t have any defenses to sleaze beneath. Maybe she was the one grabbing Jake by the crotch and throwing him onto the bed. If Delaney tackled sex the way she tackled everything else in her life, she’d be a force to be reckoned with in the bedroom.
She was fit and tanned from all their surfing. She’d be limber, lithe. And she had needs. Jake would probably think all his Christmases had come at once.
Sam paced some more and worked on reducing his molars to dust.
What exactly did having needs mean, while he was on the subject? That Delaney needed to have sex? That she craved an orgasm? And if that were the case, why couldn’t she just take care of the matter on her own in the privacy of her home without putting him through all this torture? Anything was preferable to the thought of her being with Jake.
Instantly an image of Delaney pleasuring herself popped into his mind’s eye. Her head was thrown back, and one hand cupped a pert, high breast. Her other hand was busy between her widespread thighs, stroking her own wet heat with gentle fingers—
Sam swore explosively. When had he turned into such a Grade-A creep? This was Delaney he was thinking about, imagining naked. Getting the world’s largest, most persistent boner over.
Delaney. The girl next door. His old street-cricket buddy. His business partner. His best friend in all the world. Delaney was not about sex and desire and urges. Delaney was about loyalty, and intimacy and knowing someone would always be there for him, no matter what.
There was no way he was going to screw all that up by suddenly turning into Mr. Horndog around her. Hell, it wasn’t as though he was deprived in the female companionship area. Coco’s hideous perfume was still fading from his apartment. He wasn’t exactly hard up.
By midnight, he’d given up on the pacing and gone to bed. With one ear cocked for the sound of Delaney’s apartment door closing, he pretended to read the latest surf mag from the U.S. until he finally admitted to himself that he’d been staring at the same page for ten minutes.
Switching the light off, he told himself he was going to sleep. What Delaney did with Jake was none of his business. Sam knew he should be far more concerned about this bee she had in her bonnet about selling him her half of the magazine. Why wasn’t he lying there, unable to sleep, worrying about that instead of obsessing over her love life?
Plus, she’d slept with other guys before, he knew she had. It wasn’t as though she was a virgin or anything. Although that would solve a lot of his current problems, he decided as forty minutes went by and there were still no telltale noises from downstairs or any indication that he would be getting some shut-eye anytime soon.
Turning onto his stomach, he pushed his prickly dreadlocks out of the way, irritated by the feel of his ropey hair against his face. The sheets felt itchy and scratchy, too, even though he’d just changed them yesterday. Restless, he rolled over again, this time trying his side.
Maybe he should just wait out this thing that was going on with Delaney and the business. She was freaking over her biological clock, that much was obvious. Perhaps if he let her settle a little, she’d ease back on the idea of bailing on the magazine.
Because try as he might, he just couldn’t get his head around the idea of doing it all without her. She was so fundamentally essential to the way the magazine worked, to the way he worked.
Sighing heavily, he changed sides, making an impatient noise as his hair scratched his face and neck again. His feet got tangled in the bedsheets, too, and he kicked at them viciously until they came loose.
Why couldn’t he get to sleep? All he wanted was to stop thinking about all this crap and have a little bit of peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask?
But everything was annoying all of a sudden—his hair felt like pipe cleaners on his head, his sheets might as well have been made from sandpaper and his whole body felt too hot. After another few minutes of tossing and turning, he bounded from the bed and strode purposefully into the bathroom. Flicking on the light, he found the scissors in the bathroom drawer and grabbed a handful of dreadlocks. Impatient, he hacked away until they came loose in his hand and he could dump them in the bin. Within minutes he’d cut the whole lot off, plugged his hair clippers in and set the blade to number two. It didn’t take long to trim his remaining hair to a short, sharp buzz cut. Before he’d grown the dreads, he’d kept his hair like this for years. Satisfied that he’d done a decent job, he rinsed off briefly in the shower, then returned to the bedroom.
Throwing himself onto the bed, he ran a hand over his newly clippered hair. Better. Much better. His brain even felt cooler, less frenzied, if that were possible. Maybe now he could get some sleep.
Curling onto his side, he closed his eyes—just as the dull thunk of Delaney’s door shutting sounded below. His whole body was instantly on the alert. He held his breath, ears pricked.
Was Jake with her?
Sam couldn’t hear anything. Scrambling to the side of the bed, he craned his head toward the floor, knowing that Delaney’s bedroom was directly under his own. Surely if they were in there, doing…it, he’d hear them, right?
He felt faintly nauseous. And still he couldn’t hear anything. Sliding out of bed completely, he knelt on all fours and pressed his ear to the floorboards.
He was self-aware enough to be ashamed of his own actions—but not enough to stop them. Straining to hear, he held his breath until black spots floated in front of his eyes.
Still nothing. It wasn’t as though either Jake or Delaney were trained ninjas—he should be able to hear something.
Swearing repeatedly under his breath, he padded naked out into his living area and crossed to the sliding doors that opened onto his balcony. Creeping outside, he got down on his hands and knees again and peered through the cracks in the decking that made up the floor of his balcony.
He couldn’t see anything. And his bollocks were shrinking to the size of marbles in the cold night air.
Realizing at last how ridiculous and pathetic he must look, he went back inside.
Delaney was home. He suspected without Jake, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t really mean anything if she were alone, anyway, since it was nearly one-thirty and she could have had several bouts of energetic, need-fulfilling sex at Jake’s place before coming home to her own bed.
Furious for no good reason, Sam punched his pillow into submission and threw himself back onto his bed.
Sleep seemed like a far-off oasis, never to be attained.
At around three, he groaned into his pillow. It wasn’t enough that his brain was feeling well and truly fried from all the back-and-forth bullshit he’d been indulging in all night, but he had a persistent, throbbing erection that would not quit. He was practically drilling a hole to China, the thing was so hard.
Rolling over, he got a grip on the situation. With a bit of luck, a quick bout of hand relief would also do the trick for his insomnia—in his book, an orgasm was nature’s most effective sleeping pill.
Closing his eyes, he gave himself up to the slow build of sensation as his hand stroked up and down. Images flashed in front of his mind’s eye as he trawled his own personal X-Files for inspiration: a pair of lean, hungry thighs, spread wide. A peachy backside arched high in the air. Small, pert breasts pouting for his tongue and his touch.
Sam grunted, building his tempo as the images began to coalesce into one sexy, hot woman. She was beneath him, her long legs wrapped around his torso as he hammered into her. Her back arched, her nipples demanding his mouth and her head tossed from side to side as she panted her pleasure.
“Oh, yeah, baby,” he encouraged in the privacy of his fantasy.
Then the woman opened her eyes, and he realized he was staring into Delaney’s pleasure-clouded face, and that he was riding her body, his erection buried deep inside her.
He swore angrily and jerked his hand away from his penis as though he’d just been electrocuted.
Wrong. So wrong, on so many levels.
But he’d been so close. So damned, temptingly close.
Lying in the dark, panting, Sam made a decision and slid his hand back onto his hard shaft. He could control his own fantasies, couldn’t he? For the sake of a bit of fulfillment? Squeezing his eyes shut tight, he concentrated on calling another woman to mind. Coco. Or that cheeky brunette…Sandra, that was her name. Or Mandy, with her sexy little laugh.
But it was no good. The only woman his subconscious wanted to have sex with was Delaney, and she kept snaking her long legs around him and panting in his ear.
After an unequal struggle, he gave up all resistance. He was so close, and too greedy for release. It’s just a fantasy, he told himself as he imagined burying his face in Delaney’s breasts. It doesn’t mean anything. And, more importantly, she never needs to know.
In seconds he was shuddering out his orgasm, Delaney’s name on his lips, her image in his mind. Afterward, he wallowed in unaccustomed guilt. He hadn’t felt this bad about a bit of harmless self-gratification since early puberty.
What a sterling day, he thought as he at last drifted off to sleep. Absolutely sterling.
DOWNSTAIRS, DELANEY TOSSED and turned for hours after Jake dropped her off and she’d crawled into bed. Jake had wanted to come in, but she hadn’t felt up to the pretense. It had been exhausting enough making it through dinner.
She felt bad about letting him kiss her, though. She hadn’t really wanted to, and she’d had no intention of following through. He must have thought he was in with a good chance when she let him press her up against her door and thrust his body against hers. But she’d only done it out of a sort of morbid curiosity, just to confirm how big a hopeless case she was.
Pretty big, was the answer. Not a single zing from Jake’s very practised kiss. Nothing but a realization that mouth-to-mouth contact was really kind of disgusting if you didn’t want to jump someone’s bones.
At six in the morning, she got sick of pretending she was ever going to sleep. Throwing off the covers, she strode into the bathroom and ran herself a bath. When it was foamy and full, she dimmed the lights and sank into the steaming water. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least try to unwind a little. Yesterday had been a trying day, between breaking her big news to Sam, getting a makeover, and going out on her first date in over six months.
Easing her head back against the rim of the bath, Delaney closed her eyes. The water was warm and soothing, sweetly scented with her favorite mango bath gel. Slowly she felt the tension ease from her limbs.
She’d spent the night agonizing over whether she was doing the right thing or not and mourning the loss of her friendship with Sam. Because that was inevitable. Once he learned the next stage in her plan—that she was going to sell her apartment—he would understand what she was doing: cutting him out of her life. And then things would really get ugly.
No one liked to be rejected, least of all by the person they trusted more than anyone else in all the world—and she knew she was that person for Sam, just as he was for her. She was going to hurt him so much. But she felt as though she was fighting the battle of her life—and if she lost, she would have to give up on having a full and complete existence and resign herself to remaining Sam’s faithful, reliable sidekick for the rest of her days.
She really didn’t know if she had the strength to go through with it all, though. That was the troubling part. As soon as she’d seen Sam yesterday, her thighs had gone weak. How could she get so turned on just by being in the same room with him, yet he was completely indifferent to her?
Even though she knew it was a refined form of torture, Delaney let herself remember how he’d looked when she first saw him yesterday. Strong and tanned, his eyes sparkling with energy, his hard body relaxed. She shifted minutely in the bath as she remembered the flash of belly she’d seen when he’d scratched his chest. He had a great stomach, ribbed with muscle and sprinkled with exactly the right amount of hair. She’d seen it so many times when they were out surfing that it should have been about as sexy as a foot or an ear or an elbow to her. But it never failed to excite her.
She realized her thighs had spread apart in the water, and that her hand had found its way to the nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. Biting her lip, she slid a finger between her own folds. Her clitoris was swollen, already aroused by her thoughts, and she slid her finger over and over it gently, imagining it was Sam’s hand between her legs, Sam about to bring her to climax.
Panting, Delaney let her head drop back and gave herself up to the building tension between her thighs. Her free hand slid onto her breasts, sliding from one soap-slicked mound to the other, plucking at her nipples with increasing firmness.
“Oh, Sam,” she sighed, completely lost in her fantasy.
Only to have the mood abruptly shattered by the sound of someone pounding on her front door. She shot bolt upright in the tub, water sloshing around her as she wondered who on earth would be on her doorstep so early in the morning.
She guessed who it was at the same time that Sam called out for her to let him in.
“Come on, Delaney—we need to talk,” he bellowed from behind the door.
Climbing from the tub, Delaney hastily towelled herself dry and dragged on her silk robe. It was ridiculous to feel caught out, but she did. She’d been indulging her sexual fantasies about Sam for years, and it had always been hard to look him in the eye the next time she saw him. Now she felt as though she’d been busted in the act.
“Delaney, come on!” Sam bellowed, pounding on the door again.
“Hold your horses,” she called as she made her way across the living room.
Swinging the door open, she gasped with surprise when she saw that he’d shaved his dreadlocks off. He looked younger, oddly, without his now-familiar dreads, and the planes and angles of his handsome face were thrown into sharper relief. She resisted the urge to curve a hand into his cheek, touched by the vulnerable boy she could see in his man’s face all of a sudden.
“You cut your hair,” she said stupidly as he pushed past her into her apartment.
Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well, I had some spare time on my hands last night,” he said sulkily.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
Sam shook his newly shorn head. “Nothing.” Striding into the center of her living space, he propped his hands on his hips and scanned the apartment.
“So, is he still here?” he asked.
There was a definite note of belligerence in his tone, and Delaney bristled.
“Sam, I don’t know what exactly has crawled up your butt this morning, but take it back to your place and deal with it, okay?” she said shortly.
“What’s the big problem? We’re both adults. I’m just asking an adult question,” Sam said.
He was angry, agitated, she could see, and she guessed this was about her pulling out of the business.
“I know you’re pissed about me wanting to sell out of the magazine, but there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said with determination. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Did he stay the night or not, Laney?” Sam asked.
She stared at him. “Why do you suddenly care so much about my love life?” she demanded, utterly bewildered. What was really going on here?
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Sarah Mayberry
Since when was his best friend this hot?The world according to Sam Kirk has just turned upside down. His best friend and business partner, Delaney Michaels, has returned from vacation a new woman. . . a gorgeous, hot new woman. Suddenly Sam is thinking entirely inappropriate thoughts about his buddy. Worse, with Delaney's changed look, she's abandoning their friendship in pursuit of the picket-fence dream.It's a nightmare come true. Then one night finds them tangling in the sheets. It should feel wrong, wrong, wrong. . . instead, it feels very right. And now Sam knows exactly what he'd do to keep his best friend: absolutely anything.
ANYTHING FOR YOU
Sarah Mayberry
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • AMSTERDAM
PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM
ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
This one is especially for Chris. Thanks for
filling my life with love and laughter.
As usual, big thanks also to my reading buddies—
La La, Emms, Hanky Panky, Kirst, Caz and Satan.
And, of course, Wanda—
the best editor a girl could have.
Merci beaucoup!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Coming Next Month
1
SAM KIRK SAT BACK on his haunches and surveyed his handiwork. Not bad, even if he did say so himself. Smiling, he pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his hands on his jeans to clean the chalk dust off his fingers. The smile turned into an out-and-out grin as he admired the full result of his labors from a bird’s-eye viewpoint.
Outlined on the navy industrial carpet in front of him was a classic crime-scene body outline depicting a form sprawled halfway across his business-partner-cum-best-friend’s office. To add to the CSI look, he’d rifled through her filing cabinet, pulled a few books off her bookshelf and left all her desk drawers open. Highly satisfied with himself, he retreated to the doorway and began unrolling the police tape he’d wheedled from his mate in the force. Fixing one end to the doorframe, he stretched the tape to the opposite side and stuck it in place.
“Delaney is going to flip when she sees this,” their receptionist, Debbie, said from behind him.
“I know. It’s going to be great,” Sam said with relish.
Debbie shot him a look designed to let him know she thought he was weird. She’d only been with their extreme sports magazine, X-Pro, for a month, so she wasn’t up to speed yet on the office dynamic. When she’d been around a little longer, she’d understand that playing practical jokes on each other was just how he and Delaney operated. Every year when she went on holidays, he came up with some outrageous stunt to surprise her when she returned.
One year, it had been cajoling their printer to bind a single copy of the latest edition of the magazine inside out, then just casually leaving it on Delaney’s desk on her first day back. She’d gone ballistic when she found it, and it had taken him twenty minutes to convince her that the full 60,000 editions of the magazine hadn’t been mailed out to their subscribers in the same condition. Then there was the time he’d glued all her stationary accessories to her desk. Stapler, hole punch, computer mouse. Hell, he’d even stuck her wheelie chair to the carpet. Remembering the bewildered look on her face still brought a smile to his lips.
Stuffing the debris from his scene-setting into a carrier bag, Sam eyed his gathered staff of five.
“Remember, serious faces. She’ll only buy this if no one laughs,” he warned them.
“Sam, man, you’re so deluded. She’s going to know it was you the moment she sees it,” their layout artist, Rudy, said.
“But she can’t be sure. All I’m looking for is a moment of doubt,” Sam said.
Checking his watch, he crossed to his office and looked out the window to see if Delaney had arrived yet. Her parking space was still empty, and he frowned. She lived in the apartment beneath him, and he hadn’t heard her come home last night. But, he reminded himself, he didn’t always hear her door open and close, and her car had definitely been in the space allocated to her apartment when he left early this morning, keen to get in and prepare his little surprise.
It wasn’t like her to be late, especially on the first day back after two weeks off. Normally she was champing at the bit to get back in to it. That was one of the great things about owning their own business. Work wasn’t a burden or a drag—it was something they enjoyed, even if sometimes it could be stressful or boring.
He was about to call her on her cell phone when he caught himself. Feeling a little foolish, he dropped into the chair behind his desk. He was carrying on like a dog who’d been locked inside all day, waiting for his master to come home. Delaney had only been away two weeks, but the truth was, he’d missed her like crazy.
His gaze fell on the photo occupying the one clear space on his desk. Two teenagers filled the frame—one a tall, chestnut-haired lout, the other a slim, brown-haired girl who was sporting a shiny black eye. Both wore Lycra rash vests and baggy board shorts, and their faces were tanned from long days at the beach. The boy was grinning hugely, his arm slung around the girl’s shoulders, and the girl was looking furious and grumpy and determined. The picture had been taken when they were both sixteen, the summer he’d taught Delaney how to surf. She’d scored the black eye on the first day when her board flipped and clocked her in the face. She hadn’t even cried, he remembered—just took a moment to get her breath before she started paddling again.
That was the thing with Delaney—when she wanted something, she bloody well went for it, both barrels blazing. Perhaps it was why they’d hit it off the moment her family moved onto his street when he was just twelve years old. The moving vans had barely started disgorging their contents before a scrappy, skinny girl had gravitated to the game of cricket he and his buddies had been playing in the street. She’d waited until the ball came her way before catching it deftly and asking if she could join in. The other neighborhood kids hadn’t wanted to let her play, but she’d offered them a deal—if she could bowl them out, she was in. If not, she’d walk away without another word. She’d bowled a blindingly fast bouncer that almost took one kid’s arm off before it hit the wicket, and all the others had hastily passed on their turns to bat, readily conceding that she could play.
It had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that had survived every test thrown at it, from his insanely jealous girlfriend when he was in his early twenties, to the stress of starting a fledgling magazine on the smell of an oily rag. Delaney was the one constant in his life, the only person who got him—his jokes, his silences, his need to sometimes just get away and surf or skate or travel. Hell, she even shared the same address, since they’d bought warehouse apartments in the same building. She didn’t constantly ask him what he was thinking or how he was feeling. She didn’t need reassurance twenty times a day that she was an important part of his life. And she didn’t play games and sulk if she didn’t get her own way.
As though some all-knowing feminist deity had read his thoughts and decided to punish him, the phone on his desk buzzed.
“Sam, there’s a Coco here to see you,” Debbie said.
Sam groaned. “Could you tell her that—” he began to cajole, but Debbie cut him off.
“No, I couldn’t. Delaney said when she hired me that under no circumstances was I to ever make excuses for you to one of your girlfriends. It’s in my contract,” Debbie said brightly.
Before he could counter this argument, the line went dead. A moment later, a wave of cloying floral scent preceded Coco as she minced her way to his office doorway.
“Hiya, bub,” she said in her signature baby voice.
Sam barely controlled a cringe. How had he ever found that voice sexy? His eyes dropped to Coco’s two best assets, clearly defined by the skin-tight white tank top she was wearing.
Right. Now he remembered.
Sadly, however, the sight of her generous D cups no longer sparked an ounce of interest from Little Sam, the man in charge of social activities. Perhaps it was the squeaky voice. Or the fact that Coco had a highly manicured white poodle that he’d caught her kissing on the mouth recently. Or the way she had of calling him bub. Or maybe it was all of the above, combined with the fact that he’d yet to have a single conversation with her that hadn’t included the words “When I do a photo spread for your magazine.” She seemed to think he was the man who was going to launch her modeling career, despite the fact that he’d told her over and over again that X-Pro wasn’t that kind of publication. He’d been trying to ease his way out of their casual three-week relationship for the past few days, only returning every second call and manufacturing overtime at work to keep his nights unavailable. So far, so good—until now.
“Hey,” he said, trying to inject a note of welcome into his voice. He might be a feckless love rat—as Delaney had told him many a time—but he wasn’t a cruel, feckless love rat.
“Hey, yourself. I was just in the neighborhood, and I thought I would drop in and see if you were free for lunch.” Coco pouted.
Sam frowned and flicked a glance at his watch. “Um, it’s ten in the morning, Coco,” he said.
“So? You’re the boss, aren’t you?” she said, eyes busy scanning the front covers of X-Pro that covered one of his office walls. Her wide blue eyes darted from image to image with increasing rapidity, taking in the skate boarders, snow boarders, BMX bike riders and surfers who had graced the magazine’s cover over the past year.
“Is this the only magazine you publish?” she asked incredulously, the baby voice miraculously disappearing.
“Yep. Extreme sports, like I said,” Sam said.
“Triple X, you said,” Coco corrected him, eyes narrowing sharply.
Sam snorted his amusement. “X-Pro, Coco. I’m no Hugh Hefner. Although I wouldn’t mind a visit to the Bunny Palace.”
“But I thought…” Coco said, clearly disappointed.
“Like I said the other night—” the night he’d picked her up and she’d practically tongue-kissed her dog goodbye “—I’m more than happy to hook you up with a photographer friend of mine. I’m sure he could help you with your, um, ambitions.”
Sam held his breath as Coco frowned, obviously thinking things over. Slowly.
“Can you call him now?” she asked after a looooonnng pause.
Sam smiled. “Sure I can. Hell, he might even be free for lunch,” he added.
Without wasting another precious second of Coco’s time, he reached for the phone. That was the thing Delaney didn’t understand about his love life, Sam mused as he dialed. She thought he left a trail of brokenhearted women in his wake, but all the women he went out with were tailor-made for the kind of no-strings fun he specialized in.
As he waited for his photographer buddy to pick up, he registered that Delaney still hadn’t shown up for work. Where the hell was she, anyway?
DELANEY MICHAELS sat in her parked car, staring blankly out the windshield. If she drove around the corner, she’d see the bright aqua street sign that announced the offices of Mirk Publications in the inner-city Melbourne district of Fitzroy. She’d find her reserved parking spot, along with an office full of people waiting for her return from holidays.
And, of course, Sam.
The thought of facing Sam was what had made her pull over nearly half an hour ago. She’d been doing really well until then, staying focused on her end goal, reminding herself over and over that she’d made the right decision—the only decision. And then she had flashed forward to how his face would look when she told him, the confused, hurt, baffled expression he would get in his eyes. That was when she’d had to swerve to the curb and take half a dozen deep, calming breaths to stop the panic tightening her chest.
She didn’t think she could do this.
She had to do this.
Or she might as well sign up for the old spinsters club now and avoid the rush when she was sixty and grey and still ridiculously, besottedly, pathetically in love with Sam Kirk.
Gritting her teeth, Delaney scrunched her eyes shut and made an angry, frustrated growling sound in the back of her throat. She had been over and over and over this decision. The better part of the last week of her holiday had been spent facing the sad truth of her life and formulating a plan to change things. She wasn’t a coward. She had never backed away from a challenge in her life. And she wouldn’t back away from this. It was just…hard.
When a woman had been in love with the same handsome, ne’er-do-well, charming, funny, sensitive, generous, incorrigible rogue for the better part of her life, it was probably only natural for her to feel a little…shaky about how she was going to cope once she’d pruned him out of her world. But that was all it was—stage fright, pre-match jitters. Nothing would stop her from going through with her plan, because there was too much at stake.
If she hadn’t decided to go on vacation with her sister’s family, she might have let a few more years slip away before she made the vital break. Watching her sister’s life from a prime, courtside seat, she’d had a cosmic revelation. She wanted a family. She wanted a husband and kids. She wanted snotty noses and tears for no reason and snuggling in bed with small, warm bodies. And she was never going to get any of it while she was in love with Sam.
How was she ever supposed to find someone she liked enough to marry while Sam filled her whole world? Even the fact that she thought in terms of liking someone, not loving them, was testament to how long Sam had been her everything.
It was pathetic. Especially since the big dope didn’t have a clue. Even when she’d been a doe-eyed teen, mooning around after him, he’d never gotten wise. Thank God. She’d swiftly learned what happened to the love interests in Sam’s life—a few blissful, heady moments in the warm sunshine of his attention, then a lifetime of exile in the land of shadows once he’d moved on. She’d soon worked out that it was far better to be his ever-present buddy and sidekick than to risk all for a few fleeting moments of perfection. And it was a compromise she’d been happy with the bulk of her adult life.
It wasn’t like she wasn’t getting any action of her own. She had needs, after all. And there were only so many Sam-fueled fantasy sessions a girl could host in the privacy of her lonely bedroom. She’d had lovers, off and on, over the years. None of them had so much as put a dent in her love for Sam, of course. And she’d hurt some of them, she knew, with her emotional unavailability. But she hadn’t been celibate, pining in a tower somewhere over her unrequited love.
In all honesty, she’d thought she had it worked out. Sex when she needed it, and Sam in her life forever. Perfect. Right?
Except now it was time to grow up and face the facts: if she wanted children and a husband, she had to get Sam out of her head and heart.
She knew herself well enough to know that that meant excising Sam from her life. Just the thought of it made tears well up in her eyes as she stared bleakly out her windshield. She couldn’t imagine her life without Sam in it. He was her best friend. Her business partner. The one who finished her sentences. He could always make her smile, and he could infuriate her like no one else on the planet. It would be like losing an arm or a leg.
Or a heart.
But there were no half measures with this thing, she could see that. She’d be cheating her future husband if she remained friends with Sam. She had to at least be open to the possibility of loving someone else.
She felt sick to her stomach. Their lives were impossibly intertwined. She lived beneath him, for Pete’s sake. She worked with him. No, not just worked—she owned half the business, he owned the other half. It really would be like lopping off a limb.
But she didn’t see that she had much choice. It wasn’t as though her love for Sam would just curl up and die of its own accord one day. It had been nearly sixteen years and it showed no signs of waning. So, she was faced with a choice—Sam, or a family of her own.
Sitting in her car, Delaney felt the panic rising again. She forced herself to think practically and push the panic away. It was nearly a quarter past ten. She needed to get in to work. At the very least, there would be a big pile of paperwork in her in-tray that needed to be dealt with.
Starting her car, she drove the remaining short distance to the office and parked in her spot. Taking a deep breath, she exited the car and beeped it shut. For the first time ever, the sight of her red-and-white MINI Cooper didn’t bring a smile to her face.
“That bad, huh?” she asked herself wryly as she turned toward the entrance to the building.
She blinked as a startling vision almost plowed in to her.
“Careful!” the woman said, pursing hot pink lips. Delaney’s gaze swept from the woman’s honey-blond mane of tangled hair past impossibly blue eyes, cute little ski-jump nose and neon mouth, only to come to a grinding halt on the woman’s truly spectacular breasts. Whoa! They were so large and so tightly outlined by a white tank top that Delaney could barely pull her gaze away. And she was a woman! She felt a small stab of pity for the male of species. Against breasts like these, most men were powerless.
“Sorry,” she muttered, stepping aside to let the other woman pass.
Jessica Rabbit flashed a tight little smile before strutting away, ass wiggling in her high stiletto heels and short leather miniskirt, despite the fact that there was no one but Delaney to notice.
A true professional, Delaney thought, always committed to the cause.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look like that and walk like that and behave like that. She and Jessica Rabbit might as well come from different planets. Delaney glanced down at her own slim, boyish figure. If the bra manufacturer was on the generous side with their measures, she was a B cup. But more often than not she was an A. And where the other woman’s waist swerved in and out again like the corner of a racetrack, her own body sort of ran straight down, sidestepping the need for such womanly accoutrements as an hourglass waist or childbearing hips. Narrowing her eyes, Delaney decided that she might rival the other woman in the legs department, however. She had a good four inches in height on Jessica, and much of that was leg. And she’d been told she had a nice ass, firm and small.
She sighed and pushed her bangs off her forehead. Why was she standing on the threshold of her business taking stock of herself like this?
Because you know what that woman was doing in this building, she told herself. Or, more accurately, who.
Steeling herself, Delaney pushed open the door and strode into the reception area of their small offices. Debbie looked up from her computer screen and broke into a welcoming smile.
“Hey, Delaney! Thank God you’re here—Sam has been driving us crazy, asking if anyone’s heard from you,” Debbie said.
Delaney’s treacherous heart leaped in her chest, but she barely gave it the time of day. She was used to the damned thing lurching around inside her whenever Sam was in the vicinity. Occupational hazard of having an unrequited crush on her best friend.
“He’s highly excitable,” she said, and Debbie blushed a little.
Delaney gave Debbie an intent look. Yep, all the signs were there—Debbie had a crush on Sam. The poor fool.
Great. Another receptionist bites the dust.
Delaney wondered how long it would take before Sam had to deliver the “I don’t dip my pen in the office ink” speech to Debbie, leading their receptionist to quit so he could go out with her. Judging by the depth of Debbie’s glow-on, not long.
“Your messages are in your office. Sam handled most things, but a few clients only wanted to speak to you and they said they would wait until you got back,” Debbie said.
Delaney nodded her acceptance of this. She was largely responsible for the advertising sales side of the business, while Sam supervised and wrote for the editorial half of the magazine. While he could step into her shoes on occasion and schmooze with the best of them, it wasn’t his natural element.
“About time, lazybones,” a deep male voice said from behind her, and all the small hairs on her forearms stood on end.
“Sam,” she said, bracing herself for the first sight of him after two weeks away.
As usual, absence had made the heart grow fonder. He looked taller, broader, sexier than ever in his worn, faded denims, crumpled T-shirt and scruffy skate shoes. His skin was always tanned thanks to his weekly surfing sessions, and he was still sporting the ridiculously clichéd dreadlocks that he’d been cultivating for the past year. A mixture of his natural chestnut and sun-bleached blond, they hung to his shoulders in thick, matted ropes. On any other thirty-year-old man dreadlocks might look like a pathetic attempt to cling to their youth, but Sam pulled it off with ease.
Bright blue eyes sparkling with pleasure, he stepped forward.
“Laney!” he said, scooping her into his embrace.
For a few heady seconds she was held tight against his hard, hot chest, and his smell swamped her—a mixture of sun and pine forest and spice. Probably soap and laundry detergent, knowing Sam. He famously decried aftershave as being “one step too close to being a she-male” for his tastes, and any scent he had was all his own.
If Calvin Klein bottled it, he could buy himself the World Bank, she figured.
“Sorry I’m late. I had some stuff to take care of,” she said evasively as she extracted herself from his embrace. She swallowed a lump of lust and forced a smile.
“How’re things? No problems while I was gone?” she asked.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Sam said.
He was wired about something, she noticed, studying him. A bit too perky, a little too shiny-eyed.
“Okay, what have you done this time?” she asked resignedly. She pretended to hate the practical jokes he played on her, but she secretly loved the trouble he took to amuse and annoy her.
“Nothing. Although there was an unfortunate incident while you were away….” Sam said, doing his best to sound solemn as he steered her toward her office.
She registered the Crime Scene, Do Not Cross tape across her door with a blink. Then she saw the chalk outline on the carpet, and her paperwork strewn all over her desk.
“We’re not sure how they got in, but it appears there was a falling-out between thieves, and there was a bit of a struggle….” Sam said with admirable composure.
Delaney rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease. As if you wouldn’t have called me on my cell phone if someone had bitten the big one in my office. And you’re tidying up my desk, mister,” she said, poking a finger into his chest.
He grinned, clearly proud of himself.
“Admit it—had you going for just a second,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re too transparent, Kirk. I can read you like a billboard.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Just like I can read you, Michaels—and when you saw that police tape, you had your doubts,” he said.
She quirked an eyebrow at him as she unceremoniously tugged the crime-scene tape loose and let it flop to the floor. Entering her office, she dumped her briefcase and turned to face him, propping her butt on the edge of her desk. He hooked his hands over the top of the door frame and grinned at her. God, it was good to see him. Unable to help herself, she fished to confirm her guess about the woman outside.
“So who was the pneumatic blonde?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light and disinterested. She had a Ph.D. in light and disinterested. It was almost an art form for her.
“Coco,” he said, waving a hand dismissively.
And that, thought Delaney, is the end of that. She almost pitied Coco, but the other woman hadn’t looked heartbroken in the least.
“How long this time? A week? Two weeks?” she asked.
“Three. With time out for bad behavior,” he said.
“Bad behavior?”
“Yeah. Caught her kissing her dog on the lips,” Sam explained with a grimace. “Had to wait for the cooties to settle.”
“Ew. That’s just plain wrong, as well as giving the dog false hope,” Delaney said.
Sam threw back his head and let out a crack of laughter, and she felt a warm surge of pleasure that she’d amused him.
She realized she was staring at the strong column of his throat, her eyes caressing the firm, muscled planes of his chest and shoulders, nicely defined by the soft material of his T-shirt and his hanging-off-the-doorframe posture. She could feel her nipples tightening, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Occupational hazard number two: unruly body parts that always seemed to be on the verge of betraying her.
But not for much longer, she promised herself.
“Coco wanted us to feature her in the magazine,” Sam said.
Delaney blinked. “Does she skate or something?” she asked, her mind boggling at the effect those D-cups would have on the boys down at the skate ramp.
“Not exactly. She must have misheard me when I told her the name of the magazine. She thought it was Triple X,” Sam said, deadpan.
Delaney’s mouth dropped open. “As in…?”
“Yep.”
Delaney broke into giggles. “That’s why she was looking so pissed off outside,” she said.
“Was she?” Sam looked a little piqued. “It’s not as though we didn’t have some fun. What is it with women these days? Multiple orgasms not enough anymore?”
Delaney suddenly got very interested in tidying up her desk. Multiple orgasms with Sam Kirk. It was enough to set her underwear on fire.
“How was the holiday? Did those horrible brats of Claire’s drive you around the bend?” Sam asked, dropping onto the visitors’ couch.
“The holiday was great. And they weren’t brats. They were…perfect,” she said, her voice softening as she remembered all the special little moments from the last two weeks: Travis’s pencil drawing to say goodbye, Callum’s nightly insistence that she be the one to read his bedtime story, Alana’s repeated intrusion into her suitcase to play dress-up—a high compliment, her sister assured her.
“You catch any waves? Heard Gunnamatta was going off,” Sam said, naming a famous surf beach a few minutes drive from where they’d been staying.
“Not really. Just paddled around on the bay with the boys. Travis wants to learn how to surf,” she reported.
“Excellent. Another little grommet to clog up the waterways,” Sam said wryly.
“You were a grommet once. A particularly annoying one, as I recall, always dropping in on other surfer’s waves,” she reminded him.
“I was precocious. Oozing natural talent,” he said.
“Oozing something, that’s for sure.”
Sam just grinned at her. “Missed you, Laney,” he said, sliding a hand casually beneath his T-shirt to scratch his stomach.
She was treated to a flash of taut, muscled belly, the tanned skin sprinkled with crisp, caramel-colored curls that tapered down toward the waistband of his favorite jeans.
She snatched her eyes away and took a deep breath. Do it now, she told herself. Before you spend too much time with him and lose your nerve.
“Um, I need to speak to you sometime, too,” she forced herself to say, eyes fixed on the stack of papers she was shuffling together.
“Sure. What’s up?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t mean now,” Delaney said, panicking.
“No time like the present,” Sam said easily.
He was right, even if he didn’t know exactly how right. Suck it up, Michaels, she told herself.
Crossing to the door, she kicked it shut. Sam raised an eyebrow.
“A closed door conversation. My, my—I must have been really naughty this time,” he said lightly.
Delaney moved back to her desk and sank into her chair. Then she just stared at him for a moment, her eyes lovingly cataloguing his handsome, open face. This would be the last time she saw him without anger or confusion or resentment clouding their relationship. The last time that he would be her old, much-loved friend, no strings attached, no issues between them.
The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled nervously. “Okay, you’re freaking me out now. What’s going on?” he asked. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Talk to me, Laney,” he said.
Delaney closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath, then opened them.
“I want to sell you my half of the business,” she said in a rush.
Sam shook his head in confusion. “Sorry? Do you need money or something, Laney? Because you should have said—”
It was her turn to shake her head.
“No. I want out. I want out from the magazine, Sam.”
2
SAM FELT AS THOUGH he’d been punched in the gut. Delaney wanted to sell her half of the magazine? It just didn’t make sense to him. He shook his head again, frowning.
“I don’t get it. What’s changed all of a sudden?” he asked.
She was staring at the carpet, but she lifted her eyes to meet his before she spoke.
“I’ve had enough. I realized while I was away that I wanted to do something different. Maybe travel. I don’t know,” she said.
She was lying. He knew her better than he knew himself, and there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“Bull. Tell me what’s really going on,” he demanded, starting to feel angry and a little threatened.
Delaney couldn’t just walk out on him. They were a team, a tight little duo. He’d barely survived her annual two-week vacation with his sanity intact, for Pete’s sake.
“Sam,” she said, then she sighed heavily and put her head in her hands.
After a shocked second he saw that she was crying. Delaney never cried. Ever.
“Hey,” he said, shooting to his feet and moving to stand by her chair. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he held her tight. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out,” he said.
He felt her body stiffen under his arm, and she sat up straighter. He got the message—she didn’t want his comfort. Feeling doubly rejected, he returned to the couch.
There was a long silence as they stared at each other across the small space that separated them. He studied her closely, trying to find some clue as to what was really going on. But she looked the same as ever—her long mid-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, the fringe sitting straight across her brow. Her hazel eyes were clear and bright, not a skerrick of makeup in sight, as usual. Her nose was a little red on the end, true, but that was from the crying, he guessed. And she was biting her lower lip, her teeth nibbling at the full curve. She had a small mouth, but her lips were full, the lower one particularly so. A Cupid’s bow, Delaney’s mother always called it, to which Delaney inevitably rolled her eyes.
She looked the same as she always had—like Laney. His best friend.
“Come on, spill,” he said softly.
She sniffed inelegantly and he leaned over to grab the box of tissues off her bookshelf.
She waited until she’d blown her nose before speaking.
“I want children, Sam. I want a husband. A family,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.
Sam frowned. Laney never talked about her love life. He was always a little bit surprised when he caught sight of a guy leaving her apartment. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d been introduced to a man she was dating. She’d always been very private about it, and he’d respected that. Truth was, he didn’t really want to know, he suddenly acknowledged. Probably that made him a selfish bastard for not wanting her to be happy. Deep down inside he’d always feared that if she met Mr. Right, their friendship would change irrevocably. Sam would be number two in her life. And when children came, he’d be shuffled even further down the food chain. It didn’t say much for his nobility as a human being that the thought of Delaney with a family made him feel scared and lonely and threatened. But there it was.
Struggling to contain his messed-up emotions, Sam smoothed his hands down his thighs, then clasped his knees, bracing himself to be a grown-up.
“Of course you want kids,” he finally managed to say.
Delaney laughed, a watery, reluctant chuckle.
“You are the worst actor in the world, Kirk,” she said.
He shrugged sheepishly. “Okay,” he conceded. “You know I’ll be jealous as hell when you get married and have kids,” he admitted.
She looked startled. “Jealous?”
“You know—’cause things won’t be the same anymore,” he explained awkwardly.
Delaney’s eyes dropped to the carpet and she hunched a shoulder. “No, they won’t.”
“But I don’t see what any of that has to do with leaving the business,” Sam said. He might be about to lose most of Delaney, but he would cling to what little he had left. If she stayed in the business, she would always be a part of his life, no matter what.
“It’s too all-consuming, Sam,” she said. “We live for this place. How am I ever supposed to meet someone when all I do is eat, sleep, breathe Mirk Publications?”
“Then we’ll get a sales assistant. You can do half days. Whatever it takes,” he countered.
“No. It wouldn’t work. I’m a control freak, you know I am. And it’s thinking about the business when I’m not here that’s part of it, as well. I’d still be doing that if I owned half of it. I need a complete break,” she said.
There was a determination in her tone, a firmness that he recognized. Delaney had made her decision. Without talking it over with him. Without consulting him in any way. She’d simply gone away, and come back determined to do her own thing.
He started to get angry. “And where does that leave me?” he asked. He hated the fact that he sounded like a sulky kid, but that was how he felt, so he might as well own up to it.
“Sam, you can easily afford to buy me out. You know you can. Or you can get in another partner. Or go into partnership with another small publisher. God knows, we’ve had enough of them sniffing around over the years,” she said.
Sam stared at her. She was serious about this. Completely serious. He wanted to yell at her. To tell her in no uncertain terms how stupid and selfish and wrong all this was. But he didn’t. He bit his tongue and fought for control.
“When do you want out?” he managed to ask.
“As soon as possible,” she said baldly.
Unbelievably, in light of their conversation to date, her words still stung. He rocketed to his feet.
“I’ll talk to the bank,” he said, and then he pulled her office door open, slamming it behind him as he exited. Their entire staff turned his way, but he ignored them all, crossing next door to his own office and slamming that door, too.
Then he threw himself into his office chair and dropped his head into his hands.
What in the world was he going to do without her?
DELANEY TOOK A LONG, shuddery breath and then let it out. She’d just had the hardest conversation of her life, hands down. Swiveling in her chair, she leaned forward and rested her forehead on her desk.
The look in Sam’s eyes. The hurt. The lack of comprehension. She hated causing him pain, but she had no choice.
Unless she was prepared to tell him the real reason she had to go.
Which was never going to happen.
Which left her back at square one. Although, technically, she was at square two now. She’d delivered the big blow. Now she just had to live through the next little while before she could walk away from the business. And Sam.
Her heart wrenched painfully in her chest at the thought. But she had to face up to it. One day soon, in a month or two’s time, she would walk out the double doors of this building and out of Sam’s life forever.
She lifted her head off the desk, then dropped it down again, banging her forehead. It felt like an appropriate punishment for the mess she’d created, and she did it several more times—bang, bang, bang, bang—until it suddenly occurred to her that she might bruise her forehead. Good luck explaining that one to sane, ordinary people—I’d just screwed up my entire life, so I thought I’d add brain damage to the mix.
Lifting her head, she stared blindly at the wall planner in front of her. Absolute honesty time—there had been a part of her that had hoped that when Sam heard her big news he’d break down and say something to give her hope. She figured that the exact same part of her twisted female psyche was responsible for believing in unicorns when she was five and Santa Claus until she was eight, but it didn’t make the realization any easier to bear. How sad could she get? Even at the eleventh hour, she was hoping for a reprieve, that he’d tell her he was mad about her, he couldn’t stand the thought of life without her. As if Sam wouldn’t have found some time over the past, say, sixteen years to recognize that his brotherly affection was actually repressed lust for her slim, boyish body, if that were actually the case.
A knock sounded on the door behind her.
“Yes?” she called out.
The door opened a crack and their desktop artist, Rudy, poked his head in. “You okay?” he asked cautiously. With his flamboyant red-and-blue-dyed hair and multiple piercings, coupled with his tendency to dress in brightly colored rave club wear, Rudy looked like a demented elf.
Delaney summoned a smile for him. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“Right. I’ve been with you guys for five years, Delaney. You and Sam have never slammed doors before,” Rudy said.
“Sam slammed the door,” Delaney pointed out.
Rudy rolled his eyes as if to say it was the same difference. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
Delaney opened her mouth to offer up another soothing platitude, but she realized that she might as well just tell him the truth. The sooner it became an accepted fact, the sooner she could move on.
“I’ve asked Sam to buy out my share of the magazine,” she said. “I’m leaving the business.”
Rudy’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “No way!” he said.
Delaney just held his eye until the incredulous expression faded from his face.
“But you and Sam are like bread and butter. Or strawberries and cream. Or…or…peanuts and bananas. You never have one without the other,” Rudy said.
“Peanuts and bananas, Rudy?” she queried.
“Try it sometime,” he said. Then he stared at Delaney as if he were a lost puppy.
She tried her best to be reassuring.
“It’s not going to change anything for you guys. Sam will still be here. The magazine will be exactly the same,” she said.
“No, it won’t. It’s not the same without you around. If you’d been here for the past two weeks you’d know that. Sam can’t do all the things you do. Just like you can’t do all the things he does. That’s why you make a great team. Like peanuts—”
“And bananas. I got it,” Delaney said. “I’m sorry, Rudy, but it’s just the way it is. It’ll all work out okay, you’ll see.”
If only she could believe her own advice. Shooting her one last bewildered look, Rudy slipped back out into the main office. Within seconds, their remaining four employees would be up to speed, Delaney guessed. Which would save her having to conduct the same difficult, uncomfortable conversation four more times.
Working on autopilot, she turned her computer on and began to organize her desk. Sam’s practical joke had left her normally neat and tidy work surface a mess of disordered paper. She spent the next twenty minutes mindlessly filing and straightening things, then she worked her way through her phone messages. By the time she’d dealt with the more urgent ones, it was lunchtime.
She usually ate lunch with Sam. They’d walk to a local café, or jump in the car and go somewhere farther afield, just to clear their heads. Once or twice a year, when the weather was too damned irresistible and the surf report was too enticing, they’d bail on work completely for the whole afternoon and take off for the nearest surf beach.
She could just imagine his expression if she sauntered next door and suggested they grab a bite. She hadn’t heard a peep from him since he’d barreled out of her office and into his own—no low murmur of phone conversation, no chatting with the other employees. Like her, Sam was probably staying put in his office, reeling from her announcement.
For a second she was gripped with a wild impulse to tell him it had all been a big, stupid joke. That she’d just been yanking his chain, the ultimate practical gag.
The urge was so strong she forced herself to scoop up her car keys and purse before she could give in to it. Striding to the front door, she told Debbie that she’d be back in an hour.
The mall was probably not the best place to go when she was feeling down, but somehow she wound up there. Fluorescent lighting, neon signs, crowds of dull-eyed shoppers—she fit right in as she walked around aimlessly, staring blankly at clothes racks, sorting pointlessly through sales bins. It wasn’t until she caught herself burrowing furiously through a bargain bin, trying to find a complete set of Christmas-themed napkin rings, that she snapped out of it.
Not only did she not own napkins, she hated knick-knacky home decor items with a passion. Dropping the offending objects like hot potatoes, she exited the store and sat on the nearest bench. Pulling a notebook from her handbag, she forced herself to focus.
Yes, she was a little off balance after making such a life-changing decision and then following through on it by telling Sam her intentions, but it was no excuse to wig out completely. She had to keep moving toward her end goal—find a husband, build a family.
She wrote both things down in her notebook, then groaned and tore the page out, throwing it into the nearby bin. Who was she kidding? She didn’t need a to-do list—she knew what had to be done.
First, she had to stop comparing every man she met to Sam Kirk. Second, she had to actually start taking more men up on their offers to take her to dinner/the movies/bed. With Sam out of her life, hopefully the rest would simply fall into place.
Wig-out over, she stood and smoothed the creases from her tailored slim-line trousers. Her hands stilled on her thighs as she stared down at her sensible, businesslike outfit. She always wore pants to work. And she almost always wore a shirt, or some other kind of sensible, tailored top. She wasn’t a fussy, frills-and-flowers kind of woman, never had been. But still…
Scanning the mall, her eye was drawn to the glint of a mirror, and she crossed to stand in front of it. The woman staring back at her was plain-looking, with long straight mid-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing navy linen pants and a cream cotton shirt, and while both were of good quality and well-cut, there was no escaping the fact that she looked a little like a military nurse. Or a postal worker.
Her mind flashed to the eye-popping blonde she’d encountered outside the office that morning. No one would ever mistake Coco for a postal worker, that was for sure. And while Delaney knew she could never even begin to play in the same league as the epically endowed Coco, there was no reason why she shouldn’t make the best of her assets.
That’s what it was all about, after all, wasn’t it? Using what you had to attract the opposite sex. Then it was down to personality and compatibility and chemistry.
Once again she scanned the mall, this time looking for a hair salon. There were three to choose from, all situated close to one another. She spent a few minutes analyzing the cuts of the hairstylists in each establishment, as well as those of their clients, then she simply picked the one that looked the most expensive. She hadn’t had a haircut in months. Normally she tidied up her own bangs with the kitchen scissors, and just had the spilt ends cut off the back every now and then.
Approaching the counter, she smiled nervously at the receptionist.
“Hi. I’d like to get a haircut,” she said.
“Of course. We actually have an opening now, if you’re interested,” the girl said smoothly. “Someone canceled at the last minute.” She flicked a strand of perfect hair over her shoulder, and Delaney found herself following the silky fall of the woman’s multihued locks. Eyes narrowing, she assessed the receptionist’s haircut: shorter at the front, it gradually became longer toward the back, just skimming her shoulders. The choppy texture of the cut was emphasized by a mixture of brown streaks, ranging from darkest chocolate to cinnamon to a golden bronze. It was sexy hair, alluring hair. Nothing postal or military about it at all.
“Do you think they could cut my hair like that?” Delaney asked impulsively.
The receptionist tilted her head to one side and considered her. “Absolutely. Let me get Volker. He’s the expert,” she said.
Delaney found herself being ushered into a seat by a lanky hairstylist with a pronounced German accent.
“Oh, yes, we can do something with this,” he said approvingly as he freed her hair from its tie.
“It needs to be like hers,” Delaney said, pointing toward the receptionist who had once again resumed her station at the front of the store.
“It will be better,” Volker announced, no hint of ego or boasting in his voice—he was simply stating a fact.
Two hours later, Delaney decided he was right on the money. The woman staring back from the salon mirror was a stranger. Gone was her straight, no-nonsense fringe. Now her hair swept gracefully to one side of her face to fall in graduated layers onto her shoulders. Each layer was made up of a myriad of colors—russet, chocolate, ginger—so that when she ran her hand through it or shook it, her hair shimmered with light and movement.
“Wow,” the receptionist said when Delaney stepped up to the counter to pay her bill. The girl’s gaze flicked doubtfully to her own reflection in a nearby mirror and Delaney felt a dart of feminine pride. She had hair that other women envied! How good was that!
Her euphoria lasted for all of the five seconds it took for her mind to default to wondering what Sam would think of her new cut.
Stupid stupid stupid, she told herself, but it didn’t make any difference. He had been the sun her world orbited around for so long, it was going to take time to wean herself away from using him as her touchstone.
The realization drove her into the nearest David Jones department store, her step determined.
Another hour and a half later, she stuffed a dozen rustling shopping bags into the back seat of the MINI. She’d gone berserk. There was no other word for it. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman had nothing on Delaney. She’d practically handed her credit card over to the sympathetic sales assistant and told her to go crazy. New makeup, perfume and underwear, six pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, three pairs of figure-hugging jeans in black, red and dark denim, and a host of skirts, dresses, tank tops, T-shirts…She honestly had no idea exactly what she’d bought. But it was all fitted. Tight, even. The skirts were either short and flirty, or short and figure-hugging. The dresses were triumphs of design, with minuscule straps and cinching belts and draping skirts that made her look willowy and elegant and mysterious. And the bras…Who would have thought that a bra could make such a difference? She refused to wear a padded bra, but the underwire balconette bra the saleswoman had shown her actually gave her cleavage. And the colors! She had a rainbow of silk and lace in her shopping bags. She’d oohed and ahhed so much she was sure the saleswoman must have thought she’d just escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. But the truth was, Delaney hadn’t spent this much time thinking about her appearance since she was a teenager and she’d made a single pathetic, misguided attempt to make Sam look at her as a woman. He’d laughed at her too-bright lipstick and her sister’s clothes and asked if she was going to a fancy dress, and she’d gone home and scrubbed at her face until it was red raw.
Since she’d long ago given up on Sam loving her, she’d relegated the art of allure and seduction to the dustbin. If a man was interested in plain old Delaney, she’d give him a whirl. But she had never gone out of her way to be sexy before. And this new wardrobe of hers was undeniably provocative.
Good, she told herself firmly. She was thirty years old. She only had a limited amount of time to meet a decent man, fall in love and start making babies.
She’d called Debbie from the hair salon to explain her long absence, and she stopped at the other woman’s desk to collect her messages on the way in to her office.
“Just three calls. Everyone still thinks you’re on holiday,” Debbie said absently, passing the chits over without looking up from her computer monitor.
“Thanks,” Delaney said, turning away.
“Get out of town!” Debbie suddenly squealed from behind her. “Delaney, what have you done?”
Delaney felt a stab of apprehension. She’d changed into the black jeans at the shop, matching them with a bright aqua tank top that made the most of her newly upthrust bosom. It was just like the time she’d dressed up for Sam—clearly she’d got it all wrong again. She closed her eyes for a second, then braced herself and turned back to face Debbie.
“Not good, huh?” she asked flatly.
“Are you kidding?! You look amazing. Astonishing. Stunning!” Debbie babbled. “Rudy, come and check Delaney out!”
Of course, that meant everyone else came as well, Amanda and Justin and Sukie trailing Rudy out into the reception area. They all circled around her oohing and ahhing.
“Your hair is so gorgeous. I want to eat it,” Rudy said worryingly.
“Those jeans, Delaney. Wow,” Justin said admiringly. Delaney noticed he was having a hard time taking his eyes off her ass.
Sukie was staring at Delaney’s chest, and she winked knowingly. “Mademoiselle FiFi,” she said, naming the brand of Delaney’s new bra. Sukie patted her own perky chest with satisfaction. “I love her work.”
It was all salve for her ego, and she felt her confidence blooming. She should have done this ages ago. She’d always taken the line that what people saw with her was what they got, but she realized now she’d been missing out on a lot of fun. She’d liked putting on lipstick and a touch of mascara and eye shadow with the expert guidance of the woman in the beauty section of the department store. And testing the perfumes had been a hoot. It was nice to feel desirable and attractive for a change.
Her gaze kept flicking toward Sam’s closed door, but Debbie answered her unspoken question before she had to ask it.
“Sam left not long after you,” the receptionist said.
Delaney stomped on the absurd sense of disappointment she felt at Sam not being there to see her transformation. This was not about Sam Kirk! She had to get that through her thick head.
She registered that everyone had sobered. She guessed they were thinking about the news she’d given Rudy before lunch.
“Don’t worry, your jobs are all safe,” she said quickly. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Except for her, of course. But she was sure they weren’t worried about her.
“But it won’t be the same,” Sukie said, echoing Rudy’s earlier remark. “We like working for you and Sam. It will be weird without you.”
“You’ll get used to it. And it’s not like I’m going straight away,” Delaney said, moved by her employees’ sincerity. Maybe they were a little worried about her.
“Are you—are you getting married or something?” Justin blurted out.
Delaney blinked. “No!”
Justin turned beet-red. “I just thought maybe you’d fallen in love with some jerk who didn’t want you to work and maybe we could go around and break his kneecaps or something.”
Delaney was touched all over again. “There’s no guy, trust me. I just want to do something different with my life,” she assured them.
Offering up one last smile, she crossed to her office.
The smile faded when she saw the note Sam had left on her desk.
Gone to talk to lawyers. Will have answer for you by p.m.
Wow. He’d moved quickly.
She sat with a thump. Soon, it seemed, she’d get what she wanted.
So why wasn’t she feeling relieved or happy?
Because you’re a besotted idiot, she told herself. Determined to change that, she grabbed her phone messages and focused on work.
She had to be strong now, or suffer the consequences later. There was no other way.
SAM WAS SO WORKED UP when he got home from the lawyer’s office that he had to play five rounds of Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation before his stress levels were manageable. When he’d finally maxed out his personal best score, he shut the unit off and grabbed himself a beer from the fridge. Heading out onto the balcony, he gazed across the crowded inner-city suburb of Richmond as he sucked down some much-needed liquid calm.
The evening breeze was cool, and the sky was a faded apricot color by the time he lifted himself out of his lounger and padded back into the house.
He’d been so angry with Delaney earlier that he could barely think, but now a semblance of rational thought had reasserted itself. For some reason, Delaney’s biological clock had suddenly exploded. Personally, he blamed Claire and her three offspring. Clearly the kids—evil geniuses that they were—had implanted some kind of hormonal device in Delaney’s brain while she was on holidays and Claire was making hay while the sun shined. Women always wanted other women to have children. They were constantly encouraging each other to procreate—a maternal conspiracy.
So. Delaney wanted kids of her own. It wasn’t the end of the world. But it didn’t mean she had to get out of the business. When he’d been discussing things with his lawyer this afternoon, a number of options had been floated. The one that appealed the most was keeping Delaney in the business as a silent partner, and bringing in an advertising sales manager to handle Delaney’s role. That way Delaney was still a part of the business—still connected to his life—but she could go off and find Mr. Perfect at the same time. Everyone was a winner.
It was such a great idea, Sam decided he should just go sell it to Delaney on the spot. Plus, he’d never stayed angry at her for this long before, and it felt weird. And, of course, there was dinner to be considered. He couldn’t cook, Delaney could…. Again everyone was a winner.
Grabbing the remaining two beers from his fridge, he snagged his house keys and made his way downstairs to Delaney’s apartment. Her door was red where his was blue, but the layouts inside were identical. They’d bought the empty warehouse shells at the same time, and shared the cost of an architect to fit out both spaces. There were small, idiosyncratic differences, of course—Delaney’s bathroom was all white where his was dark grey. And her kitchen had a lot more stainless-steel equipment than his. But apart from that, the apartments were a matched pair. Like him and Delaney.
She took her sweet time answering his knock, and he was beginning to frown with impatience when the door swung open.
“Sam!” she said, clearly surprised to see him. He was too busy doing a double take to register the fact, however.
What on earth had she done to herself?
“What on earth have you done to yourself?” he demanded, eyeing her freaky new haircut uncertainly.
Since when did Delaney have soft layers of honey and toffee-colored hair gently framing her face? His stunned gaze moved from her new hair to her face itself as he realized that that looked different, too. Eyes bigger and smokier, mouth redder and poutier. She was wearing makeup! His Delaney was wearing makeup!
Then his eyes dropped below her neckline and he nearly had a heart attack. What had happened to Delaney’s signature crisp cotton shirt? Or the man-sized surf T-shirts she wore around the house? The tiny, teeny aqua thing she had on barely justified the words tank top. It was like the ghost of a tank top, an imprint that might be left behind when a tank top passed over to the other side.
For a full, mind-bending five seconds he found himself focusing on the twin stars of Delaney’s new purchase—two of the perkiest, prettiest breasts he’d seen in a long time. Thrusting up toward the low neckline of her top, they positively begged for a man to reach out and see if they felt as delectable and firm as they looked. Wrenching his eyes away, he continued on his downward spiral into madness as he caught sight of the jeans she was wearing. Painted-on was the term that came to mind. Darkest black, and so tight that if she was a man he’d know what religion she was. But she wasn’t a man. Oh boy, she so wasn’t a man.
“Shit!” was all he could think to say.
Delaney flinched and her eyes flashed at him.
“Thanks a lot. That’s all you can say? What have you done, and shit? Nice,” she said.
Then she turned her back on him and walked away and, for the first time in his life, Little Sam reared up in his boxers and saluted his best friend. Since when did Delaney have such a delectable butt? Heaven. Pure heaven. Round and high and so grabable that when he looked down he saw his fingers had actually curled in anticipation.
Suddenly Sam registered what he was doing, and the fact that he now had an embarrassing, incredibly inappropriate, illicit boner making itself at home in his jeans.
Had the world fallen off its axis? What in the name of all that was good was going on here? Where on earth did he get off cracking a woody over his best friend?
He never had sexual thoughts about Delaney. She was a complete no-go zone where that kind of stuff was concerned. She meant too much to him for him to stuff it up with some stupid sex thing. A long time ago, he’d made a decision—Delaney was out of bounds. And it had worked. It really had. He’d never even peeked when they changed out of their wetsuits at the beach. She was his friend, damn it. You didn’t check out your best friend.
So why was there now a hard-on making its presence felt in his underwear?
Sam shook his head to clear it.
It was surprise, that was all. Delaney’s new look had taken him unawares, made him look at her in a different way before he could get his defenses up. That was all it was.
And he’d offended her with his shocked reaction.
“Shit,” he said again, but under his breath this time. Depositing the beers on Delaney’s recycled Oregon dining table, he followed her into her bedroom.
She was pulling clothes out of the jumble of shopping bags on her big king-size bed. By the looks of it, she’d cleaned out the whole women’s department at David Jones.
“You’ve been shopping?” he asked stupidly, reeling from yet another blow to his perception of the world.
Delaney hated shopping almost as much as she hated makeup and…perfume? He sniffed the air suspiciously, becoming aware that a sweet, light fragrance had wrapped itself around him. It was the odor equivalent of crack cocaine—once he’d had one sniff, he couldn’t seem to get enough.
“What’s that smell?” he demanded.
Delaney threw her hands in the air. “It’s Dolce and Gabbana Light Blue. What’s wrong? Does it smell like horse manure? Is that what you’re going to tell me next?”
Sam blinked at her anger, then admitted to himself that it might be a little justified. The problem was, he was in free fall here, staggering from one shocking revelation to another. But he probably could be a little more diplomatic about what was coming out of his mouth.
“No, it’s nice,” he said.
Delaney went back to clearing out her shopping bags, her movements tight with anger.
“I’m sorry,” he said, painfully aware that he’d hurt her feelings with his insensitive reaction. Although it had been more oversensitive, if he were being pedantic about it.
In fact, her hair looked great, not freaky at all. Silky and touchable. A perfect frame for her sweet face. Which wasn’t quite so sweet anymore, thanks to Mr. Max Factor and friends. More…sultry. Promising.
Sam swallowed and shook his head. It was so not his place to be thinking any of these things about Delaney. She would completely flip out if she had even an inkling that he’d gotten aroused over the sight of her ass in her tight new jeans. Even as he thought it, Delaney turned and bent to pick up something off the ground. He thrust his hands into his pockets to counteract the ass-grabbing urge that once again rocked him, and wrenched his eyes away.
“So, um, I went to the lawyers this afternoon,” he said, trying to get a grip on himself.
“Uh-huh,” Delaney murmured, hanging dress after dress in the wardrobe. He frowned when he saw how short they were. Maybe they were tops, not dresses? If he was to have any chance of keeping his sanity and conquering this sudden, aberrant bout of hyper-awareness where she was concerned, they’d better be.
“He floated another idea, something we hadn’t considered. We get someone in to take over your role, and you stay in the business as a silent partner. Maybe just give advice whenever required, that kind of thing,” Sam said, leaning against the wall.
Delaney shook her head, her newly streaked hair dancing around her face hypnotically.
“But I told you, Sam. I want out. I don’t want to be connected to the business at all.”
Sam should have been more worried about what she was saying, he knew he should, but she’d just emptied out a shopping bag full of lacy, silky scraps. He watched, fascinated, as she sorted through the rainbow-hued mass, matching bras to panties or thongs. Thongs! Delaney in a thong. Delaney’s perfect, ripe peach of a butt in a thong.
Little Sam once again made a determined effort to join proceedings, and Sam fisted his hands in his pockets, dreading the thought that Delaney might look up and see his erection and get completely the wrong idea.
He was not turned on by her new underwear. He was not turned on by her. He was just freaking out over the fact that she wanted out from the business. That was all. His body’s response was just a weird offshoot of his reaction.
Belatedly he realized that Delaney had stopped packing things away to stare at him, waiting for his response.
“Um, right,” he said.
She sat on the bed, offering him an untrammeled view down the neck of her new top.
“Sam, I know this has been a bolt from the blue, and it’s going to take you some time to adjust, but it’s what I want,” she said firmly.
Her breasts rose and fell with each breath she took, straining upward as though they wanted to escape the confines of her clothing. He licked his lips, wondering what color her nipples were.
It was such a basic, primal thought that Sam actually turned toward the door, ready to flat-out run from his own animal instincts.
“What’s wrong?” Delaney demanded. She stood again, and Sam heaved a sigh of relief that he could no longer see down her top. The pressure in his boxers eased a notch, but he didn’t dare pull his hands from his pockets.
“Nothing. Just a bit of…gas,” he said lamely when nothing else came to mind.
“Not in my bedroom,” Delaney said instantly, pointing toward the door. “And you need to get out anyway. My date will be here soon and I need to start getting ready.”
Sam froze. “Date? What date?”
Delaney lifted a shoulder negligently. He just managed to keep his eyes above her neckline.
“Jake dropped by this afternoon. He asked me out to dinner tonight,” she said.
Sam stared at her. “Jake the printing rep? That Jake?”
“Do we know any others?” she asked.
“But he’s a complete sleaze, Delaney. He’s always checking out chicks, and every time I see him out somewhere he’s with a new woman,” Sam said indignantly.
“So? Maybe he just hasn’t met the right woman yet,” Delaney said.
Before he could tell her how wrong she was, what sort of trouble she was inviting, she shoved him out of her bedroom and shut the door in his face.
3
CRACKING OPEN ONE of the beers he’d brought down, Sam paced back and forth across Delaney’s jarrah wood floor, sucking in beer and trying to breathe out tension and frustration. He was supposed to go back upstairs to his own apartment—the way Delaney had yelled through her closed bedroom door that she’d see him at work tomorrow had been something of a giveaway in that direction. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was worried about Delaney going out with a bona fide lady’s man like Jake. The guy was six foot, solidly built, and Sam knew from listening to the girls in the office that they thought he was dreamy. Delaney wouldn’t stand a chance against a practiced make-out artist like that.
He could hear the sound of the shower as Delaney got ready for her date, and he tried to keep himself from imagining what she was doing in there. What she looked like naked, those perky, high breasts of hers slick, the nipples pebbled from the water’s warm touch, how she might slide her hands down over her hips and round over that perfect butt…
What was wrong with him? Why was he suddenly having these intimate, crazy-making thoughts about Delaney? She was like his sister. He wasn’t supposed to care that she was a woman. It just wasn’t a factor in their relationship. At least, it never had been. But all of a sudden, it was as though someone had ripped down an invisible force field that had been between them and he was seeing her for the first time.
And Delaney was definitely a woman. A beautiful, desirable woman.
And Jake the sales rep was going to take her out tonight and do his best to get inside the tiny, lacy scraps of silk he’d seen Delaney sorting through earlier.
It made Sam so angry that he almost threw his beer bottle at the wall. The tempo of his pacing increased. She couldn’t go out with Jake. It was a simple as that. Once she got out of the shower, he’d talk sense to her, and she could call Jake and give the guy the brush-off. Then Sam would take her out for burgers or something. They’d have a few beers together, and get things back on their old, solid footing.
The clock in Delaney’s open-plan kitchen read just five minutes shy of eight by the time she emerged from her bedroom. She came wrapped in a cloud of perfume and precious little else from what he could see.
The dress she was wearing was the color of autumn leaves—a dark, burnished orange—and it set off Delaney’s tan perfectly. It had tiny spaghetti straps and a tight bodice that hugged her breasts, then it swooped down over her hips to end a bare few inches below her butt.
“You cannot be serious,” Sam said before he could help himself. He’d planned on staying calm, being the voice of reason. But Delaney could not go out in public in that dress. For starters, it almost certainly violated several decency codes. And it would definitely pose a medical risk for elderly males. Surely she didn’t want to be responsible for giving some randy octogenarian a fatal heart attack?
“Sam, if you haven’t got something nice to say, go home,” Delaney said wearily.
He’d hurt her feelings. Again. Determined to get this right, he crossed to her and put both hands on her shoulders. She tried to twitch out of his grasp, but he just held her more firmly.
“Laney, you look amazing. Hot. Too hot, in fact. There is no way Jake will be able to keep his hands off you,” Sam explained honestly.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want him to?” Delaney said, pushing his hands away.
“Well…no. Why on earth would you let a guy like Jake take advantage of you? He’s not good husband material, Delaney, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Because you’re such a great judge of that, right?” she challenged him.
Sam pulled his dreadlocks off his forehead, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to get through to her.
“He’s going to look at you in that dress, and all he’s going to think about is sex,” he finally said. There, he couldn’t be more blatant than that.
“Good,” she replied.
“What?”
“I said good. I have had sex before you know, Sam. I do know what goes where. I have needs, too,” she said defiantly.
She pushed her hair behind her ear, and he saw that she was wearing slinky silver drop earrings that drew attention to her long, slim neck. She was so fine and sleek and strong. She was way too good for Jake the rep.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” Sam said after a long silence. “If you’re willing to just put yourself out there like that…I can’t protect you.”
“I didn’t ask you to! I’m a grown woman, I can take care of myself,” Delaney all but shouted back at him. Her cheekbones colored up nicely, and her breasts seemed in imminent danger of popping out over the top of her dress.
While he was giving himself a mental bitch-slap for looking in the first place, Delaney crossed to the door and opened it wide.
“Out. Now,” she said unequivocally.
Sam opened his mouth to deliver one last warning, but she glared at him and he closed his jaw with an audible click.
Feeling distinctly hard done by, he moved past her and out into the hall.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Sam said.
“Hey there, Sam,” a voice said from behind him, and he turned to see Jake approaching down the corridor.
The cheesy schemer was dressed like Mr. Slick from a fashion catalogue, and he was even carrying a bunch of flowers. Sam felt his lip curl as he eyed the other man.
“Jake,” he managed to bite out. Jake offered his hand, and Sam stared at it for a beat before reluctantly shaking hands. He made sure he squeezed the other guy’s knuckles good and hard, though, just so Jake would know who he’d be dealing with if he got out of line with Delaney.
“Sam was just leaving,” Delaney said meaningfully.
Sam twitched, but he knew he had no choice. She was right—she was a grown woman. A fully grown, fully adult woman. With needs, she’d said.
Great.
“Delaney—you look sensational,” Jake said, bending to kiss her hello.
Sam felt the lip curl make a return appearance as Jake’s arms slid around her, his hands lingering way too long on her lower back. Sam knew exactly what the other guy was thinking: how much small talk do I have to fake before I can get my hands on that amazing caboose?
If he stayed any longer, Sam knew he was going to do something really, really dumb.
“Have a great night,” he said sourly.
Then he turned and walked away.
DELANEY TOOK A DRINK from her wineglass. Across the table, Jake’s lips were moving, but she had no idea what was coming out of them. She gave herself a mental shake. She had to focus on Jake instead of constantly slipping back to her earlier conversation with Sam. It was pointless to go over and over what had passed between them. As if she’d needed yet another reminder that her feelings for him were unrequited, Sam’s attitude could not have shouted indifference more clearly. Although perhaps she was being unfair. He hadn’t been indifferent. He’d been…brotherly. As he always was. A concerned friend. It was enough to make her want to scream.
“Should we get another bottle?” Jake asked, and Delaney realized that she’d drained her glass in one long gulp.
“Um, sure,” she said.
Jake signaled for the waiter, and Delaney forced herself to concentrate. It wasn’t as though Jake wasn’t attractive or fun to be with. Normally she really enjoyed exchanging banter with him when he came into the office. And there was no denying his masculine appeal—he was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. So why wasn’t she sitting here hoping that he’d kiss her when he took her home tonight? Instead, she was wondering how she could head him off at the pass. Would it be unforgivably rude to get a taxi home on her own at the end of their meal? Or should she just go the whole hog and fake an appendicitis attack right now?
Damn Sam Kirk, and damn herself for letting him ruin her for any other man.
“You know, I’ve wanted to ask you out for a while,” Jake said as the waiter moved off.
Delaney blinked. “Really?”
“Yep. But I always kind of got the feeling you weren’t available,” Jake said.
It made her wonder if that was the way other men had seen her, too—unavailable. Was it possible that she subconsciously sent out “keep off” signals because her feelings for Sam were so strong?
“Well, I’m single, always have been,” Delaney shrugged, not quite sure what to say. If she flirted with Jake, she felt as though she’d be doing so under false pretences.
“When I saw you this afternoon I hoped maybe my luck had changed.”
“What do you mean?” Delaney asked.
“New hair, new clothes—the classic relationship break-up makeover,” Jake said.
Delaney stared at him for a beat. In a way, he was right. She was breaking up with Sam. He just didn’t know it.
“It was time for a change,” she said feebly.
“Speaking of which, I still can’t believe you’re leaving Mirk,” Jake said, shaking his head.
“Well, I have been there since the beginning. Nearly eight years now,” Delaney said.
“Why the big move, if you don’t mind me asking? Don’t tell me you got poached by one of the big guys? I know a ton of publishers who’d love to have you on their sales staff,” Jake said.
She tried to find a way to answer without lying. She was doing enough of that with Sam.
“I’m thirty,” she shrugged, opting for brutal honesty. “I realized that I could spend the rest of my life working like a dog…or I could start thinking about the other things in life.”
“Like…?” Jake asked, his dark eyes intent on her.
“You know. A husband, kids. It sounds kind of clichéd when you say it out loud,” Delaney said self-consciously.
“If it’s a cliché, it’s only because most single people in their thirties start looking around, wondering if there are any lifeboats left. No one wants to stay too long on the dance floor and get stuck when the Titanic goes down,” Jake said, smiling self-deprecatingly at his own analogy.
“Especially if you can’t swim,” Delaney added wryly.
“I don’t think you need to worry about not being able to swim,” Jake said warmly. “I bet there will always be some guy willing to share his life raft with you.”
It was a compliment, she knew. And she should probably feel flattered. But she didn’t. Instead, she felt mildly uncomfortable and completely transparent. Surely he could tell she wasn’t interested? A part of her was tempted to confess all to him, apologize for wasting his time and offer to pay for his meal.
She should have waited until she’d expunged Sam from her life before trying to date. She was just perpetuating the same problem she’d always had while Sam was on the scene: no man ever measured up.
Sure, Jake was good-looking. But his brown eyes weren’t half as engaging as Sam’s bright blue ones, and his smile not nearly as sincere and fun-loving. And while Jake was witty and clever—he’d read all the latest books and seen all the coolest movies—he didn’t make her laugh nearly as much as Sam. He also didn’t make her blood fizz in her veins, or her heart shimmy in her chest, and she wasn’t sitting on the edge of her seat, hoping for an accidental brush of his fingers against hers, or the feel of his knee nudging hers beneath the table.
He just…wasn’t Sam. It was as small and as sad as that.
Reaching for her wineglass, Delaney took another big gulp.
Surely taking a taxi home wouldn’t be that bad form…?
SAM FELT LIKE A CAGED TIGER with a bad case of hives. It was ten o’clock. Delaney had been out with Jake for two whole hours. In all likelihood, they were still at dinner, trying to decide whether or not to have dessert, talking about politics over coffee, hoping the weather would be a little cooler next week….
Or old smoothie Jake had already finagled Delaney back to his pad and was even now peeling her clothes off. Sam ground his teeth together at the thought of Jake sleazing his way beneath Delaney’s defenses.
Sam ground his teeth even harder when it occurred to him that maybe Delaney didn’t have any defenses to sleaze beneath. Maybe she was the one grabbing Jake by the crotch and throwing him onto the bed. If Delaney tackled sex the way she tackled everything else in her life, she’d be a force to be reckoned with in the bedroom.
She was fit and tanned from all their surfing. She’d be limber, lithe. And she had needs. Jake would probably think all his Christmases had come at once.
Sam paced some more and worked on reducing his molars to dust.
What exactly did having needs mean, while he was on the subject? That Delaney needed to have sex? That she craved an orgasm? And if that were the case, why couldn’t she just take care of the matter on her own in the privacy of her home without putting him through all this torture? Anything was preferable to the thought of her being with Jake.
Instantly an image of Delaney pleasuring herself popped into his mind’s eye. Her head was thrown back, and one hand cupped a pert, high breast. Her other hand was busy between her widespread thighs, stroking her own wet heat with gentle fingers—
Sam swore explosively. When had he turned into such a Grade-A creep? This was Delaney he was thinking about, imagining naked. Getting the world’s largest, most persistent boner over.
Delaney. The girl next door. His old street-cricket buddy. His business partner. His best friend in all the world. Delaney was not about sex and desire and urges. Delaney was about loyalty, and intimacy and knowing someone would always be there for him, no matter what.
There was no way he was going to screw all that up by suddenly turning into Mr. Horndog around her. Hell, it wasn’t as though he was deprived in the female companionship area. Coco’s hideous perfume was still fading from his apartment. He wasn’t exactly hard up.
By midnight, he’d given up on the pacing and gone to bed. With one ear cocked for the sound of Delaney’s apartment door closing, he pretended to read the latest surf mag from the U.S. until he finally admitted to himself that he’d been staring at the same page for ten minutes.
Switching the light off, he told himself he was going to sleep. What Delaney did with Jake was none of his business. Sam knew he should be far more concerned about this bee she had in her bonnet about selling him her half of the magazine. Why wasn’t he lying there, unable to sleep, worrying about that instead of obsessing over her love life?
Plus, she’d slept with other guys before, he knew she had. It wasn’t as though she was a virgin or anything. Although that would solve a lot of his current problems, he decided as forty minutes went by and there were still no telltale noises from downstairs or any indication that he would be getting some shut-eye anytime soon.
Turning onto his stomach, he pushed his prickly dreadlocks out of the way, irritated by the feel of his ropey hair against his face. The sheets felt itchy and scratchy, too, even though he’d just changed them yesterday. Restless, he rolled over again, this time trying his side.
Maybe he should just wait out this thing that was going on with Delaney and the business. She was freaking over her biological clock, that much was obvious. Perhaps if he let her settle a little, she’d ease back on the idea of bailing on the magazine.
Because try as he might, he just couldn’t get his head around the idea of doing it all without her. She was so fundamentally essential to the way the magazine worked, to the way he worked.
Sighing heavily, he changed sides, making an impatient noise as his hair scratched his face and neck again. His feet got tangled in the bedsheets, too, and he kicked at them viciously until they came loose.
Why couldn’t he get to sleep? All he wanted was to stop thinking about all this crap and have a little bit of peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask?
But everything was annoying all of a sudden—his hair felt like pipe cleaners on his head, his sheets might as well have been made from sandpaper and his whole body felt too hot. After another few minutes of tossing and turning, he bounded from the bed and strode purposefully into the bathroom. Flicking on the light, he found the scissors in the bathroom drawer and grabbed a handful of dreadlocks. Impatient, he hacked away until they came loose in his hand and he could dump them in the bin. Within minutes he’d cut the whole lot off, plugged his hair clippers in and set the blade to number two. It didn’t take long to trim his remaining hair to a short, sharp buzz cut. Before he’d grown the dreads, he’d kept his hair like this for years. Satisfied that he’d done a decent job, he rinsed off briefly in the shower, then returned to the bedroom.
Throwing himself onto the bed, he ran a hand over his newly clippered hair. Better. Much better. His brain even felt cooler, less frenzied, if that were possible. Maybe now he could get some sleep.
Curling onto his side, he closed his eyes—just as the dull thunk of Delaney’s door shutting sounded below. His whole body was instantly on the alert. He held his breath, ears pricked.
Was Jake with her?
Sam couldn’t hear anything. Scrambling to the side of the bed, he craned his head toward the floor, knowing that Delaney’s bedroom was directly under his own. Surely if they were in there, doing…it, he’d hear them, right?
He felt faintly nauseous. And still he couldn’t hear anything. Sliding out of bed completely, he knelt on all fours and pressed his ear to the floorboards.
He was self-aware enough to be ashamed of his own actions—but not enough to stop them. Straining to hear, he held his breath until black spots floated in front of his eyes.
Still nothing. It wasn’t as though either Jake or Delaney were trained ninjas—he should be able to hear something.
Swearing repeatedly under his breath, he padded naked out into his living area and crossed to the sliding doors that opened onto his balcony. Creeping outside, he got down on his hands and knees again and peered through the cracks in the decking that made up the floor of his balcony.
He couldn’t see anything. And his bollocks were shrinking to the size of marbles in the cold night air.
Realizing at last how ridiculous and pathetic he must look, he went back inside.
Delaney was home. He suspected without Jake, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t really mean anything if she were alone, anyway, since it was nearly one-thirty and she could have had several bouts of energetic, need-fulfilling sex at Jake’s place before coming home to her own bed.
Furious for no good reason, Sam punched his pillow into submission and threw himself back onto his bed.
Sleep seemed like a far-off oasis, never to be attained.
At around three, he groaned into his pillow. It wasn’t enough that his brain was feeling well and truly fried from all the back-and-forth bullshit he’d been indulging in all night, but he had a persistent, throbbing erection that would not quit. He was practically drilling a hole to China, the thing was so hard.
Rolling over, he got a grip on the situation. With a bit of luck, a quick bout of hand relief would also do the trick for his insomnia—in his book, an orgasm was nature’s most effective sleeping pill.
Closing his eyes, he gave himself up to the slow build of sensation as his hand stroked up and down. Images flashed in front of his mind’s eye as he trawled his own personal X-Files for inspiration: a pair of lean, hungry thighs, spread wide. A peachy backside arched high in the air. Small, pert breasts pouting for his tongue and his touch.
Sam grunted, building his tempo as the images began to coalesce into one sexy, hot woman. She was beneath him, her long legs wrapped around his torso as he hammered into her. Her back arched, her nipples demanding his mouth and her head tossed from side to side as she panted her pleasure.
“Oh, yeah, baby,” he encouraged in the privacy of his fantasy.
Then the woman opened her eyes, and he realized he was staring into Delaney’s pleasure-clouded face, and that he was riding her body, his erection buried deep inside her.
He swore angrily and jerked his hand away from his penis as though he’d just been electrocuted.
Wrong. So wrong, on so many levels.
But he’d been so close. So damned, temptingly close.
Lying in the dark, panting, Sam made a decision and slid his hand back onto his hard shaft. He could control his own fantasies, couldn’t he? For the sake of a bit of fulfillment? Squeezing his eyes shut tight, he concentrated on calling another woman to mind. Coco. Or that cheeky brunette…Sandra, that was her name. Or Mandy, with her sexy little laugh.
But it was no good. The only woman his subconscious wanted to have sex with was Delaney, and she kept snaking her long legs around him and panting in his ear.
After an unequal struggle, he gave up all resistance. He was so close, and too greedy for release. It’s just a fantasy, he told himself as he imagined burying his face in Delaney’s breasts. It doesn’t mean anything. And, more importantly, she never needs to know.
In seconds he was shuddering out his orgasm, Delaney’s name on his lips, her image in his mind. Afterward, he wallowed in unaccustomed guilt. He hadn’t felt this bad about a bit of harmless self-gratification since early puberty.
What a sterling day, he thought as he at last drifted off to sleep. Absolutely sterling.
DOWNSTAIRS, DELANEY TOSSED and turned for hours after Jake dropped her off and she’d crawled into bed. Jake had wanted to come in, but she hadn’t felt up to the pretense. It had been exhausting enough making it through dinner.
She felt bad about letting him kiss her, though. She hadn’t really wanted to, and she’d had no intention of following through. He must have thought he was in with a good chance when she let him press her up against her door and thrust his body against hers. But she’d only done it out of a sort of morbid curiosity, just to confirm how big a hopeless case she was.
Pretty big, was the answer. Not a single zing from Jake’s very practised kiss. Nothing but a realization that mouth-to-mouth contact was really kind of disgusting if you didn’t want to jump someone’s bones.
At six in the morning, she got sick of pretending she was ever going to sleep. Throwing off the covers, she strode into the bathroom and ran herself a bath. When it was foamy and full, she dimmed the lights and sank into the steaming water. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least try to unwind a little. Yesterday had been a trying day, between breaking her big news to Sam, getting a makeover, and going out on her first date in over six months.
Easing her head back against the rim of the bath, Delaney closed her eyes. The water was warm and soothing, sweetly scented with her favorite mango bath gel. Slowly she felt the tension ease from her limbs.
She’d spent the night agonizing over whether she was doing the right thing or not and mourning the loss of her friendship with Sam. Because that was inevitable. Once he learned the next stage in her plan—that she was going to sell her apartment—he would understand what she was doing: cutting him out of her life. And then things would really get ugly.
No one liked to be rejected, least of all by the person they trusted more than anyone else in all the world—and she knew she was that person for Sam, just as he was for her. She was going to hurt him so much. But she felt as though she was fighting the battle of her life—and if she lost, she would have to give up on having a full and complete existence and resign herself to remaining Sam’s faithful, reliable sidekick for the rest of her days.
She really didn’t know if she had the strength to go through with it all, though. That was the troubling part. As soon as she’d seen Sam yesterday, her thighs had gone weak. How could she get so turned on just by being in the same room with him, yet he was completely indifferent to her?
Even though she knew it was a refined form of torture, Delaney let herself remember how he’d looked when she first saw him yesterday. Strong and tanned, his eyes sparkling with energy, his hard body relaxed. She shifted minutely in the bath as she remembered the flash of belly she’d seen when he’d scratched his chest. He had a great stomach, ribbed with muscle and sprinkled with exactly the right amount of hair. She’d seen it so many times when they were out surfing that it should have been about as sexy as a foot or an ear or an elbow to her. But it never failed to excite her.
She realized her thighs had spread apart in the water, and that her hand had found its way to the nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. Biting her lip, she slid a finger between her own folds. Her clitoris was swollen, already aroused by her thoughts, and she slid her finger over and over it gently, imagining it was Sam’s hand between her legs, Sam about to bring her to climax.
Panting, Delaney let her head drop back and gave herself up to the building tension between her thighs. Her free hand slid onto her breasts, sliding from one soap-slicked mound to the other, plucking at her nipples with increasing firmness.
“Oh, Sam,” she sighed, completely lost in her fantasy.
Only to have the mood abruptly shattered by the sound of someone pounding on her front door. She shot bolt upright in the tub, water sloshing around her as she wondered who on earth would be on her doorstep so early in the morning.
She guessed who it was at the same time that Sam called out for her to let him in.
“Come on, Delaney—we need to talk,” he bellowed from behind the door.
Climbing from the tub, Delaney hastily towelled herself dry and dragged on her silk robe. It was ridiculous to feel caught out, but she did. She’d been indulging her sexual fantasies about Sam for years, and it had always been hard to look him in the eye the next time she saw him. Now she felt as though she’d been busted in the act.
“Delaney, come on!” Sam bellowed, pounding on the door again.
“Hold your horses,” she called as she made her way across the living room.
Swinging the door open, she gasped with surprise when she saw that he’d shaved his dreadlocks off. He looked younger, oddly, without his now-familiar dreads, and the planes and angles of his handsome face were thrown into sharper relief. She resisted the urge to curve a hand into his cheek, touched by the vulnerable boy she could see in his man’s face all of a sudden.
“You cut your hair,” she said stupidly as he pushed past her into her apartment.
Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well, I had some spare time on my hands last night,” he said sulkily.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
Sam shook his newly shorn head. “Nothing.” Striding into the center of her living space, he propped his hands on his hips and scanned the apartment.
“So, is he still here?” he asked.
There was a definite note of belligerence in his tone, and Delaney bristled.
“Sam, I don’t know what exactly has crawled up your butt this morning, but take it back to your place and deal with it, okay?” she said shortly.
“What’s the big problem? We’re both adults. I’m just asking an adult question,” Sam said.
He was angry, agitated, she could see, and she guessed this was about her pulling out of the business.
“I know you’re pissed about me wanting to sell out of the magazine, but there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said with determination. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Did he stay the night or not, Laney?” Sam asked.
She stared at him. “Why do you suddenly care so much about my love life?” she demanded, utterly bewildered. What was really going on here?
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Sarah Mayberry
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Since when was his best friend this hot?The world according to Sam Kirk has just turned upside down. His best friend and business partner, Delaney Michaels, has returned from vacation a new woman. . . a gorgeous, hot new woman. Suddenly Sam is thinking entirely inappropriate thoughts about his buddy. Worse, with Delaney′s changed look, she′s abandoning their friendship in pursuit of the picket-fence dream.It′s a nightmare come true. Then one night finds them tangling in the sheets. It should feel wrong, wrong, wrong. . . instead, it feels very right. And now Sam knows exactly what he′d do to keep his best friend: absolutely anything.