Driving Her Crazy (14 page)

It was an incredible blend of old world charm and modern boldness. It was simply stunning.

‘Sadie...’ He shook his head. ‘That’s...amazing.’

Sadie blushed at the compliment. ‘It’s just a sketch,’ she dismissed, used to disregarding her work.

Kent shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. It’s...a work of art.’

Sadie gave a half-laugh. She liked what she saw, and creating it had felt incredible, but she could see its flaws and felt the old doubts return. Could hear Leo’s
you’re not talented enough
mantra in her head.

‘I couldn’t not,’ she said absently, looking down at the sketch. ‘When I woke up and saw the sky, I couldn’t not capture it. I
had
to do it.’

Kent heard the surprise in her voice. ‘Well, that says a lot, doesn’t it?’ he murmured.

Sadie frowned as she half turned to look at him. ‘What does it say?’

‘You’re an artist, Sadie Bliss. And whatever the hell you’re doing with this journalism gig is just wasting your time. You were obviously born to do this.’

Sadie shook her head as she turned back to the sketch. ‘No. I’m not good enough.’

Kent tightened his hand around her belly. ‘Says who? Leonard Pinto?’

Sadie shrugged. ‘The man does have an eye for art.’

Kent felt irrationally angry that one man could screw with a woman’s head so much. ‘Leonard paints women who look like boys. I think his eye is seriously off. I also think he knows
exactly
how talented you are but he didn’t want to let you go.’

Sadie wanted to deny it but hadn’t she come to the same conclusion yesterday? That he’d wanted his muse back and he was prepared to go to any lengths to get it?

Kent gentled his hands against her and lightly circled his thumbs over the curves of her hips. ‘Sadie, you are
incredibly
good. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to explore that a little more?’

Sadie shut her eyes as his words of praise, aided and abetted by the brush of his thumbs against her skin and the scrape of stubble at her neck, seduced her.

A fledgling ray of possibility sparked to life inside her and she shied from it. Art had made her incredibly happy. And incredibly unhappy. Could she go back to that roller coaster again?

She pushed the illicit thought away, stamping on its lure. It wasn’t something she could decide on a whim. Certainly not on a car rooftop with a man who had already muddled her senses a little too much.

‘I think,’ she said, injecting playfulness into her tone, ‘you’re just saying that to get in my pants, Kent Nelson.’

Kent smiled as he nibbled at the place where her neck met her shoulder. She was obviously changing the subject but he had to give her points for her method.

‘Well, now, that’d be kind of hard considering I pitched them somewhere over the side last night.’

Sadie smiled, letting herself get lost in the sexiness of his voice, taking her away from the serious stuff for a while. ‘Kent Nelson,’ she murmured. ‘Are you suggesting I’m not wearing any underwear?’

Kent chuckled as he trailed his hand from her hip downwards. ‘Well, now, why don’t I check?’

Sadie shut her eyes as he confirmed what they both knew very quickly.

‘Mmm,’ he murmured, his other hand travelling north as his tongue traced patterns on her neck. ‘You feel good.’

Sadie bit her lip as his hand cupped a breast. She tried to turn but he tightened his arms around her.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Lean back and enjoy.’

Not an offer she could refuse.

The
tow truck arrived at nine as promised and before they knew it they were sitting in the front of a poorly sprung truck next to an ancient local who chatted away merrily. A local who was thankfully oblivious to the fact that Sadie’s fingers kept brushing lightly against the firm bulge behind Kent’s zipper. And the way Kent’s fingers caressed the swell of her breast under the guise of a casual arm slung over her shoulder.

It was a long, sexy, three-hour journey back to Katherine.

When they got into town Sadie opted for a café to do some work on her laptop whilst Kent saw to the vehicle. But not before he’d dragged her into the deserted toilets at the garage, pushed her against the wall and kissed her senseless, promising retribution for the torture she’d put him through.

Which made it difficult to concentrate on the story for Tabitha. So instead she spent her time in the café madly journalling the last few days with Kent. Words, like the strokes of the pastels this morning, flowed freely and she wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a pair of worn jeans came into her line of vision.

She looked up from her screen and Kent smiled at her.

‘I called your name twice. The story’s shaping up nicely, then?’

Sadie tried not to look guilty as she smiled back at him. ‘I think Tabitha will be happy,’ she lied. ‘Is the Land Rover ready?’

He nodded. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Three cappuccinos, a muffin and a burger with the lot.’

Kent laughed at the sparkle in her doe eyes. ‘Good. I’ll order something to go and then we can hit the track.’

They were heading north to Darwin fifteen minutes later.

‘Let’s play I Spy,’ Sadie said as she opened the packet of Twisties Kent had purchased back at the café.

Kent rolled his head to look at her briefly before looking back at the road. ‘You think because we bonked like bunnies last night that I’ll do anything for a repeat performance?’

Sadie grinned as she bit down on the cheesy snack, flavour exploding in her mouth. ‘Yep.’

He laughed.
She was right
. ‘You think I’m that easy?’

Sadie shrugged, examining a fat orange finger of pure carbohydrate. She brushed it against her mouth and sucked it slowly in. ‘I could make it worth your while.’

Kent’s gaze snagged on the orange dust clinging to her mouth. ‘We’re not talking about hand feeding me Twisties here, are we?’

She smiled as she plucked another out of the bag and licked it before she popped it into her mouth. ‘Nope.’

‘You’re talking trading sexual favours?’

‘Yep.’

‘I
love
your dirty mind.’

Sadie laughed. She
loved
how he looked at her—as if he’d already stripped her naked.

Leo had looked at her as if he could fix her.

Kent looked at her as if she was already perfect.

‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...’ she pulled another Twistie out of the packet and poked it into her cleavage ‘...T,’ she said, looking up when she was satisfied with the placement.

Kent’s breath hitched in his chest as saliva coated his mouth. He was reminded of how he’d thought about eating Twisties off her body last night and he was hard in under ten seconds. ‘How about we play truth and dare instead?’ he suggested, his voice rough and low.

‘Truth and dare,’ Sadie mused as she placed a second in her cleavage.

‘I dare you to strip down to your underwear and stay that way until we get to Darwin.’

He held his breath as he waited for her reply. The Sadie from a couple of days ago would have flayed him alive at the suggestion. Hell, the Kent from a couple of days ago would never have suggested it. But this Sadie, hell-bent on decorating herself in snack food, looked as if she was up for something totally spontaneous.

He certainly was.

Sadie felt her breath thicken in her throat and her nipples bead at his indecent proposal. ‘Sure. But I dare you not to touch. Think you could manage that?’

Kent’s pulse wooshed through his ears. She looked so damn sure of herself and he was torn between being the dare-taking kid of old who’d do anything to win and knowing that, if she really did get down to her underwear, it would only be a matter of time before he folded.

He nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

Sadie smiled at the bob of his throat. ‘Okay, then.’

Kent tried really hard to concentrate on the road, but it was difficult with Sadie shimmying out of her clothes in his peripheral vision. In under a minute she was sitting in some hot-looking red and black matching underwear—Twisties protruding from her cleavage.

Sadie tossed her clothing on the floor and smiled at him. ‘I give you—’ she looked at the clock ‘—five minutes.’

Kent kept his eyes firmly trained on the road. ‘Easy,’ he scoffed.

‘Yes.’ She smiled as she shoved another lurid orange finger into her bra. ‘I know.’

Kent tapped his foot as the minutes slowly ticked by and Sadie shoved more Twisties everywhere. Her hair, her bra straps, snuggled against her nipples, her belly button.

At four minutes and thirty seconds she pulled the band of her knickers out and dropped one down the front, closing it with a snap.

‘Right!’ Kent said, indicating abruptly as he took the car cross country, right off the road. ‘You win.’

The
three-hour trip took about double that by the time he’d relieved her of all the hidden food and licked all the Twistie dust off her and she’d eaten a few off him. It was early evening when they drove into the outskirts of Darwin.

Kent looked at Sadie as she stared out of the window. She’d been curiously quiet the last hour or so. ‘Cat got your tongue, Sadie Bliss?’

Sadie turned and smiled at him. She’d been conscious of their time running out and it was making her wistful. ‘I didn’t think you liked me chattering?’

‘Since when did that stop you?’

Sadie ignored him. Since their relationship, or whatever the hell it was now, had moved to another level, since they’d both got to know each other a little better, she didn’t feel a blinding need to fill up the silence.

The silence was companionable. Maybe that was the sex. Whatever—it wasn’t awkward for her any more.

‘Airport?’ Kent asked a moment later. ‘Or night in a swanky hotel and airport in the morning?’

Sadie felt her heart rate pick up a little. One last night with Kent. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe this was the start of something. As addictive as Kent could be, he had issues to get sorted. So did she. She needed to sort out what she wanted to do with her life and she didn’t need the distraction of him.

She didn’t want to trade one addiction for another.

‘What, no spiders? No scorpions?’

Kent grinned. ‘How will we manage?’

‘Lead the way.’

Half
an hour later they were opening the door to the executive suite at the
Esplanade Central.
Sadie brushed past Kent and threw herself on the cloudlike, king-sized bed, flapping about as if she were making a snow angel on the stark white bedding.

‘Ah-h-h, bliss,’ she murmured.

Kent looked at Sadie all stretched out and shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

Sadie sucked in a breath at the undiluted lust she saw in the copper flecks of his eyes. She lifted her foot and placed it on his thigh. ‘I need a shower first. I smell like Twisties.’

Kent’s pulse tripped at getting Sadie wet all over. ‘Good idea.’ He pulled his T-shirt over his head. ‘Get naked,’ he said.

Sadie laughed even as the sight of his chest did funny things inside hers. ‘I just need to put my laptop on charge,’ she said.

He unzipped his jeans. ‘Hurry.’

Sadie watched him as he headed to the shower until he disappeared from sight. Maybe getting on a plane tomorrow was going to be a little harder than she thought.

She vaulted off the bed at the unsettling thought. She grabbed her laptop out of her bag and set it up on the desk in the room, plugging it into the nearby power point. She opened the lid and pulled up the document from earlier. She took her memory stick out of the pouch in the laptop bag and was about to insert it when Kent called, ‘Sadie Bliss, get your delectable butt in here now or I’m coming to get you.’

Sadie turned around to find a naked Kent standing in the doorway to the bathroom. She hadn’t seen him naked and vertical and he really was a sight to behold. Even his deformed ankle didn’t detract from his overwhelming masculinity. Her belly flopped and her heart did a painful squeeze.

She dropped the memory stick on the table and swallowed against her suddenly parched throat.

‘Well, when you put it like that,’ she said, mission forgotten as she kicked out of her shoes and lifted her T-shirt off as she walked towards him.

Kent grinned as he took three paces into the running shower, feeling the warmth hit the back of his neck, watching as Sadie entered the bathroom in just a tiny scrap of red and black fabric at the apex of her thighs, a foil packet between her teeth. His semi-arousal turned to full blown as she looked him straight in the eyes whilst she stripped the scrap away.

And when she stepped into the shower cubicle and sank straight to her knees he knew Sadie Bliss was going to be very hard to forget.

TEN

Kent was still grinning as he left Sadie washing her hair in the shower fifteen minutes later. This really wasn’t how he thought this assignment was going to turn out.

He’d been prepared to tolerate it.

Tolerate her
.

To have just pushed her against the shower tiles and had his way with her was not what he’d envisioned after their first not-so-promising shower incident in Cunnamulla.

Well, not seriously anyway
.

His stomach growled and he remembered why he’d been kicked out of the shower. He picked up the room service menu off the bedside table and headed for the phone to order. He sat at the desk and dialed, shifting the open laptop to make room for the menu. Sadie’s discarded memory stick sat next to it and he picked it up as he said, ‘Hello,’ into the receiver.

He had a brief conversation as he flicked through the menu ordering wildly inappropriate things that would probably give Tabitha apoplexy when the bill came in.

Champagne. Strawberries. Oysters. Cheese platter.

The fancy chocolate pudding with a warm gooey centre. He had definite plans for that.

His gaze fell on the laptop screen as he absently turned the memory stick over in his hands while the call taker repeated his order. The header
Kent Nelson, Mere Mortal
caught his eye and his grin faded.

He read the two paragraphs on the screen, then dropped the stick as he scrolled down further, replying automatically to the woman on the other end of the phone and hanging up, not hearing or caring if the order was correct.

He read it all—all two thousand words—his heart beating faster, anger simmering with every one. Everything he’d said, everything that had happened between them, was there. And more. Her observations. Her opinions.

Her pop psychology.

Stuff that he hadn’t even begun to grapple with. Had shied from even thinking too hard about.

By the time he got to the end—
Kent Nelson is an enigma but no man is an island
—he was so mad he wanted to break things.

Sadie came out of the shower wrapped in a fluffy gown, towelling her hair. ‘Did you order something?’ she asked his back. ‘I’m starving.’

Kent stood and turned to face her. ‘You’re writing a story about me?’ he demanded.

Sadie frowned at the steel in his voice and the return of the hard lines of his face. She hadn’t seen them for a couple of days now and had forgotten how austere they could be. ‘No.’

He stepped aside and pointed to the laptop screen. ‘I think you are.’

Sadie gasped as she realised what she’d done. She shook her head as she walked towards him. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

Kent slashed his hand through the air, pulling her up short. ‘I told you my story
was not
for sale. This stuff is private.’

Sadie struggled to understand how the day had gone to hell so quickly. One moment they were in the shower and she was thinking she could get used to all that single-minded intensity of his, particularly when he was buried deep inside her, and the next he was looking at her with ice in his eyes.

Back to square one.

Sadie dropped the towel, her hair hanging in damp strips around her shoulders. ‘I’m not doing a story on you. I’m just...journalling.’

‘It sure as hell reads like a story,’ he snapped. ‘Did Tabitha put you up to this?’ he demanded. ‘She’s been trying to get me to do an exclusive for months.’

Sadie took another step towards him but halted as he held out his hand. ‘Tabitha has nothing to do with this. It’s just me putting my thoughts and feelings down. I have absolutely no intention of doing anything with it. You can delete it right now if you want.’

Kent turned, leant over the keyboard and hit Control A. The article highlighted before his eyes and he hit the delete button.

He only wished it felt as satisfying as it looked.

Sadie watched her work disappear in dismay. Those words might have come easily but no writer liked to lose work. Sure, she could write them again, but they’d never be as perfect as they had been.

She propped her hands on her hips. ‘Happy now?’

‘Do you have a backup?’ he asked.

Sadie nodded. ‘On the memory stick.’

Kent picked up the stick. He gave her a wide berth as he rounded her and headed for the bathroom. Once inside he avoided looking at the shower cubicle as the memories of their soapy encounter returned. He strode to the toilet, opened the lid, tossed the stick in and flushed it.

‘It’s okay,’ Sadie said derisively when he stormed out a moment later, his limp more obvious than it had been in days. ‘There wasn’t anything important on there.’

Kent ignored her as he hefted his bag onto the bed and pulled out some clothes. Her apparent lack of concern over the loss of the article hadn’t mollified him.

Had she been interviewing him all along? Was that what all the incessant questions had been about? Had she been taking notes the entire five days? Did she think that she could bat those incredible lashes at him and he wouldn’t mean what he’d said yesterday—
God, was it only yesterday?
—that it was no one’s damn business?

He’d thought she’d been joking about her interviewing him. Obviously not.

Sadie watched as he dressed quickly in jeans and a T-shirt, the flash of a naked back and buttocks when he dropped the towel having a funny effect on her pulse despite their current state of animosity. ‘I’m not doing a story on you, Kent.’

Kent sat on the bed and stuffed his feet into his shoes. Whether she was or wasn’t just wasn’t the point any more. This debacle was a salient reminder of why he’d kept himself to himself.

He’d let Sadie Bliss and her treacherous curves get way too close. Her conjectures in the article had been searing and insightful and even now he shied from them.

He didn’t want or need her inside his head. What the hell did someone in their mid-twenties know about stuff like this?

He’d come out here to get his photographic mojo back. Not to lose his head over a woman and certainly not to get it head shrunk by one either.

There were things he had to come to terms with, he knew that. But he was doing that to his own timetable.

She was wrong—this man was an island.

The uninhabitable kind.

He stood and looked at her. ‘This was a mistake.’

Sadie blinked. ‘What was? This hotel room? Sex in the shower? Sex on the roof of your car? Our night under the stars? Making me believe that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my body? Talking about the accident? Or just the whole damn trip?’

Kent nodded, his jaw locked. ‘All of it.’ He should never have taken the assignment in the first place. He should have kept her at a distance.

His blunt admission rocked her back on her heels; she was surprised by how much it hurt. Okay, he was pissed at her. She got it. But did he really regret everything that had happened? Apart from this sticky end, which she would no doubt analyse ad nauseam in the coming months, she didn’t have a one. Kent had helped her think differently about herself—about her body and her art.

And for that she would be for ever grateful.

‘For the last time, I was not writing a story about you.’

Kent folded his arms across his chest. Okay, he believed her. But he doubted she was being honest with herself over her true reasons and that was cause for concern.

‘Well, who were you writing it for?’ he asked. ‘Because if it was just for you then I think you may be a little...fixated on me.’

The last thing he needed was Sadie Bliss making his life difficult after they parted ways with some obsessive girly crush.

The last thing he needed was Sadie Bliss full stop.

‘We had great sex, Sadie. But don’t delude yourself—there can be nothing else.’

Sadie was speechless for a moment at the sheer ego on the man. She wished she could tell him it wasn’t that good, but unfortunately she couldn’t.

She could however assure him he wasn’t the only man in the world. A girl had her pride.

‘I hate to be the one to break this to you but I’m pretty sure you do not own the only penis-of-amazing-powers in the world and I’m
damn
sure I can get on with my life without pining for it.’

Although she’d probably think about it a little more than was healthy.

‘Besides which,’ she added, ‘if you think all we had was sex, then maybe you’re a little deluded. You shared stuff with me I’m betting you’ve never told anyone else. I can get sex and, thanks to you, I’ll be sure to hold my future partners to a higher standard, but where are you going to find someone you can talk to, Kent? Because you
really
need to talk to someone.’

Kent glared at her, his face stony. He did not want to get into a conversation about his state of mind. That was especially none of her business. ‘This is
not
about me, Sadie.’

‘So you’re just going to have nightmares for the rest of your life?’ she demanded. ‘You’re going to hear poor Dwayne Johnson calling for his mother every time you shut your eyes?’

‘I’ll deal with my stuff,’ he snapped. ‘I just want to make sure you aren’t spinning castles in the air because of our physical...intimacy.’

Sadie snorted. Kent had opened up so much from the guy he’d been at the beginning of the trip, but right now he’d taken a huge slide backwards. He couldn’t even recognise they’d been more than just physically intimate. That there’d been emotional intimacy as well.

And he was running for the hills.

‘Why on earth would I want to be involved with a man who is so guarded, so...’ she floundered around looking for the most apt description that didn’t involve mentioning how far up his backside his head was jammed ‘...deep in his man cave, I feel like I need a miner’s lamp and pick whenever I talk to him? Relationships shouldn’t be that hard, Kent.’

He nodded, his lips terse.
His work here was done
.

‘Good,’ he said, brushing past her and heading for the door. ‘At least we agree on something.’

He was desperate to put as much distance as possible between him and her damn robe belt that was loosening and flashing glimpses of her cleavage. It made him want to throw her on the bed, which was not conducive to walking away.

To ending it.

Whatever
it
was.

Sadie turned and watched him limp away. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

He opened the door. ‘Out.’

And then there was just Sadie left looking at a closing door, her heart beating wildly. She sank onto the end of the bed, her brain trying to catch up. Twenty minutes ago she’d had a screaming orgasm in the shower. Now Kent was gone and there was a heavy feeling in her chest and a growing urge to cry.

She stood. She would not cry. She’d cried over her father and cried over Leo.

She would not cry over a man she’d known for five days.

She walked on shaky legs to the telephone, ignoring the open laptop taunting her.

If only she’d shut the lid!

Maybe instead of scaring him off she and Kent would be talking right now about seeing each other some more. Because she hadn’t been ready to say goodbye just yet and she was pretty damn sure, after that shower, he wasn’t either.

She dialled the airport and changed her flight.

Six months later...

‘C’mon.’ Leila banged on the bathroom door. ‘It’s opening night and the gallery will be crowded.’

Sadie looked at herself one last time in the mirror. Why she was fussing she didn’t know. He never went to gallery events, he’d told her that.

In fact she wouldn’t normally be going either. Now she was a full-time student again she couldn’t afford the big ticket price—she’d even had to take on a flatmate, Leila, to make the rent. But when two tickets had mysteriously turned up and Leila, a photography major, had spied them, Sadie hadn’t had the heart to deny her.

And, truth be told, she was curious.

Sadie had already seen some of it, of course. The dozen photographs printed with her Leonard Pinto feature had been magnificent. But this exhibition,
Centre Attraction
, was the complete outback series and, being Kent’s first exhibition of new work, had garnered a true buzz in the art scene.

It had been billed as
the
show to see.

‘How do I look?’ she asked Leila as she opened the door, her fingers absently stroking down the front of her retro fire-engine red dress. It dipped at the cleavage, nipped at the waist, clung to the hips and flared around the calves in an elegant fishtail.

‘Woohoo, baby,’ Leila crowed. ‘I’d do you.’

Sadie laughed, the stress bunching her neck muscles instantly easing. Leila was out and proud and very much in a couple but her flattery was just what Sadie needed tonight. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s
do
this thing.’

Kent
almost choked on his beer when he spotted Sadie sashay into the gallery. He hadn’t been sure she’d come even with the tickets he’d sent her. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to make such an entrance. The eyes of every straight man with a pulse tracked her path from the door to the bar area.

She’d come a long way since awful power suits and baggy T-shirts.

The gallery was crowded and he was stuck in a corner with some of Tabitha’s cronies, but he watched her as she did the rounds of the displays. She chatted to the woman she’d arrived with and seemed to make polite conversation with other patrons who were admiring the exhibits as well.

None of them shone as she did.

Watching her felt like coming out of a fog and he realised he’d missed her even more than he’d thought. He’d wanted to see her, to show her his work that she’d been so much a part of. Particularly the centrepiece. He was proud of it and wanted her to be proud of it too.

But he hadn’t expected everything to finally make sense by just looking at her.

Yes, he’d thought about her every day. Missed her every day. But this was more. So much more.

She was two exhibits away when he politely excused himself from the group of people he’d been barely paying attention to anyway.