Driving Her Crazy (4 page)

Kent looked down at her doe eyes, the lashes fluttering against her cheek. She did look pretty done in and she had driven all day without complaint.

‘Fine. I can sleep in the car.’

Sadie cocked an eyebrow. She doubted the confines of his back car seat would be very accommodating for a man of his proportions. ‘I’m an adult. You’re an adult. There are two beds. I promise not to wake up in the middle of the night and try to seduce you.’

Kent gave her a grudging smile. His first for the day. ‘Well, now you’ve just taken all the fun out of it. And you, going to the trouble of bringing your frilly negligee.’

Sadie blinked, surprised to discover that beneath all that guarded silence, a sense of humour lurked. ‘Well, will you look at that,’ she murmured. ‘He does know how to smile.’

Kent suppressed another smile. ‘Don’t get used to it.’

Sadie absently massaged her neck, too tired for this conversation. ‘Fine, tough guy, sleep in the car. Just don’t moan tomorrow when you have a crick in your neck.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve slept far rougher.’ Being embedded with active forces in the Middle East on several occasions had been far from luxurious.

Not that he’d slept much then.

Or now, for that matter.

Sadie sighed. ‘Well, bully for you, He-man.’

Kent was so surprised by the nickname he actually laughed this time. He’d never been called that before, at least not to his face, and it was bemusing. ‘Did you just call me a he-man?’

Sadie felt his laughter undulate through every muscle in her body right down to her toes. It might have taken her all day but it had been worth the wait. ‘I call it as I see it.’

Kent opened his mouth to deny it but Sadie was looking up at him with long, sleepy blinks and he had the wildest urge to see what she’d look like between motel sheets.

He turned to the woman behind the desk, who’d been watching their exchange like an engrossed spectator at a tennis match. ‘Where do I sign?’ he asked.

THREE

The room was clean but basic. A bar fridge, a television, a bathroom. And two very hard-looking double beds. Still, they beckoned, more inviting than a Bedouin tent, and right now Sadie wouldn’t have swapped it for the Waldorf Astoria.

‘I bags the shower,’ she said as she threw her backpack on the bed closest to the bathroom and delved through it for some clean clothes.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ Kent asked plonking himself on the other bed and flipping through the information folder placed next to the fluffy towel folded into a fan with a wrapped bar of soap strategically placed in the centre. ‘They serve bar meals until eight.’

Sadie was starving. But not as much as she was sleepy. She was used to denying herself food. Sleep not so much. Sleep was as vital to her as air.

And woe betide anyone who deprived her.

‘Nope,’ she said, picking up her towel.

‘Celery again?’ Kent asked.

He wasn’t sure how much she’d brought in that fridge bag but there seemed to be an endless supply of it today. Every time he opened a packet of something or rustled a wrapper more appeared.

Sadie was too exhausted to make a pithy comeback. ‘Too tired. Need to sleep,’ she muttered, closing the bathroom door even before the last word was out of her mouth.

Kent heard the shower turn on and fell back against the bed. It felt like a rock and he literally bounced a little. The back seat of his vehicle would have been softer. But then it wouldn’t have had a hot, busty, naked woman just three metres and a wall away.

Getting wet. Getting soapy.

He felt heat bloom in his loins and placed the open information folder over his face.

Sadie Bliss was a bad idea. No matter what her body, her delectable smart mouth, her quick wit or her name might suggest.

He didn’t need a psych consult to know he was still pretty messed up. He’d had nearly two years of being held ransom by his body and the surgeons and physios had pronounced him cured—or as cured as he was going to get. But it was pretty dark inside his head still. He’d put off tackling the psychological fallout from the accident, thinking and hoping that time would heal as it had his physical ailments.

But it hadn’t.

So, he really didn’t need a fling with Sadie Bliss. Or, more importantly, she didn’t need a fling with him.

He wasn’t in a good headspace.

And she was too chatty, too pushy.

Too young.

He didn’t have a right to screw with that.

What he needed to do was get back to what he was good at—taking pictures. Use his art as therapy. As a way back to the rest of his life. Then he could worry about the Sadie Blisses of the world.

He heard the taps shut off.

Pictured her reaching for her towel...

He sat up and pulled his shirt off. The room was stuffy and he suddenly felt very hot. He wondered over to the air-con panel and flicked it on. Then he picked up the phone on his bedside table and placed an order with the woman at the desk. He prowled to the bar fridge, pulled out a bottle of beer, parked his butt against the cabinet, cracked the lid and took a fortifying gulp.

The harsh metallic rattle from the shower curtain being pulled back rang like chimes of doom around the room.

Lord. Just how thin were these walls?

And then came a blood-curdling scream.

Sadie
had never seen a spider so huge in all her life. She saw the odd tiny creature scurrying around her flat but she was pretty adept at wielding a can of insect spray, and it seemed the local population of creepy crawlies had put the word out to avoid Sadie’s abode at all costs.

But this thing, hanging on the back of the door as if it were the mother ship, was a monster. It was big, and hairy and very, very ugly.

There was a belting on the door followed by, ‘Sadie!’

The spider didn’t even move at the noise so near its epicentre—yes, it was big enough to have an epicentre—and nor did Sadie. ‘Kent!’

‘Are you okay?’ he demanded through the door.

‘Big, big,
big
spider,’ she called.

Kent looked at the door in disbelief. A
spider
? Her horror-flick scream had scared ten years off his life. Did she have a clue how very trivial a spider was in the grand scheme of things?

Now, some of the things he’d seen—they were worth screaming about.

‘Bloody hell Sadie, I thought you were being murdered.’

‘If this thing gets hold of me, I’m sure it’ll have a good go,’ she yelled.

‘It can’t be that big.’

‘It is,’ she said, anchoring the towel more securely under her arm.

And it was between her and her clothes.

She eyed her pyjamas hanging on the back of the door. Had the spider crawled over them? She shuddered at the thought.

Just how long had it been in here watching her?

‘I think it’s one of those bird eating suckers,’ she announced.

‘The ones that are only found in South America?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘Not any more.’

‘Sadie...’

‘Okay, I know, I’m sorry. I’m a horrible girly, city-chick cliché. But truly it’s huge and spiders just plain creep me out.’

Kent leaned his forehead against the door. He’d been landed with a car-sick, celery-eating, arachnophobe.

Who’d have thought that would come in such a fine package?

‘What do you want me to do?’

Even through the door Sadie could hear his exasperation. Could sense his impatience with her girly theatrics. But it was easy to judge when you were on the other side of the door—
the safe side
. ‘I want you to come in here and kill it!’

Kent sighed. The fact that she was being held captive in the bathroom by a spider didn’t bother him a bit—eventually she’d have to figure it out herself. And if he only had faith she’d do it silently he’d leave her to it.

But a day in a car with Sadie Bliss had told him she didn’t really do quiet contemplation. ‘Are you decent?’

Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘Why? Do you think the spider cares?’ she yelled.

He took a breath. ‘I’m coming in.’

‘Easy, very easy,’ Sadie ordered. ‘It’s on the back of the door and I do not want to see how far that thing can jump.’

Kent opened the door slowly whilst Sadie watched his progress, her eyes peeking out over the edge of the shower curtain she’d pulled around herself for extra protection as if it were an invisibility cloak.

Kent glanced her way, two doe eyes and the top of her head the only things visible as she eyeballed the back of the door. ‘You know it’s more scared of you than you are of it, right?’ he murmured as he slowly opened the door further.

Sadie didn’t take her eyes off the terrifying arachnid. ‘I doubt it.’ It looked like something from an ancient Roman arena.

Once the door was almost all the way open and Sadie could no longer see the hairy critter she relaxed slightly. She looked at Kent, realising for the first time he was shirtless. His broad chest and flat abdomen, complete with a light smattering of hair that arrowed down behind the band of his low-slung jeans, filled her vision.

It was truly a sight to behold.

Why was it again she’d never been into buff men?

For a moment she almost forgot she was being terrorised by a mutant spider.

Almost.

‘Right,’ she whispered, dragging her gaze off his chest to the other terrifying object in the room. ‘I’m going to climb out of the bath and walk very slowly towards you. Once I’m safely out of the room you can do your he-man thing.’

Kent wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for Sadie to come out from behind the curtain. But he sure as hell wanted to see the creature that had Little-Miss-Curves all het up.

‘Okay,’ he whispered dramatically back, her dirty look bouncing easily off his shoulders.

Sadie quietly pushed back the curtain and gingerly stepped out of the bath. She could feel Kent’s gaze on her and couldn’t figure out which animal to keep her eye on the most.

She gripped the towel more firmly to her body.

Slowly she sidled along the wall furthest from the door, edged around the vanity basin where her toiletry bag sat. When she drew level with Kent she realised they were just one hotel towel and a pair of Levi’s from being naked. His bare, broad shoulders and his spare stubbled face filled her vision. He smelled of Twisties and beer.

Who’d have ever thought
that c
ould be such a potent combination?

‘Thank you,’ she murmured as he fell back against the front of the door to allow her to squeeze past.

And it was a squeeze. Her body brushed his as she slipped from the room and Kent felt the caress of towelling against his chest all the way down to his groin. For a moment he stood still and did nothing; the impact of her eyes, her mouth, her bare creamy shoulders and the damp tendrils of hair framing it all was temporarily paralysing.

But he was aware of her watching him, her hands fidgeting while she waited for his
he-man
move, and his brain came back online.

He strode into the bathroom and slowly shut the door. Her clothes were hanging on the back. And, yes, he had to admit, it was one of the larger Huntsman spiders he’d seen. He shook his head and grabbed her clothes. The spider scuttled to the top of the door, then onto the ceiling. He walked over to the bath/shower unit, stepped into the tub to open the window on the wall opposite the shower head so the poor creature could make its escape.

He turned to step out, his gaze falling on a scrap of material hanging on the shower-curtain rail. A silky-looking pink thong with a little diamanté twinkling at the front.

For a heartbeat there was nothing in his head but elevator music. Then there was a whole lot more.

None of it conducive to his sanity.

None of it conducive to going out there and facing her again.

‘Is it gone?’

Her voice sliced like a machete through the inappropriate images in his head and Kent dragged his transfixed gaze off Sadie’s underwear to the back of the door. He stepped out of the tub and had the door open in two strides.

‘Not yet,’ he said, thrusting her clothes at her and shutting the door behind him. ‘I opened the window. It’ll crawl out soon enough.’

Sadie blinked. ‘You did what?’ She clutched her clothes to her chest. ‘Are you nuts? You opened the window? So all his mates could join him?’ She took a step back. ‘What if it doesn’t go?’

It was the second time she’d questioned his mental faculties and, even if they weren’t already a little on the dicey side, her silky pink thong probably hadn’t helped. He wished she’d get dressed already. Damp strands of dark hair brushed creamy shoulders offsetting the natural rouge of her mouth and, frankly, insane had never looked so damn good.

Kent smiled patiently. ‘We’ll keep the door shut.’

‘What if it crawls back in here, under the door? What if it runs over my face in the middle of the night?’ She shuddered. ‘You do know human beings are supposed to swallow eight spiders in their lifetime, right?’

He clamped down on the urge to tell her there was no way she’d choke that sucker down and instead rolled his eyes. ‘I’m sure it’s looking for the fastest exit it can make, Sadie. It’s probably just trying to recover from the stroke it suffered when you screamed fit to wake the dead. I’m surprised the cops haven’t been called to investigate.’

Sadie shook her head mutinously. ‘I need it dead. I won’t be able to sleep knowing its alive and in here. And trust me, you
do not
want to be around me when I’m sleep deprived.’

‘Because you’re such a treat now?’

‘Please,’ she asked. ‘Please get rid of it.’

Kent knew he was doomed. He would have done just about anything that mouth was asking. Hell, he would have slain a dragon for her had there been one of those in the bathroom.

‘Fine.’

He stalked to his bed and unzipped a long side pocket of his backpack, pulling out a metal walking cane he’d brought along in case there was some serious hiking required to find the perfect shot. He adjusted its length, then returned to the bathroom, ignoring Sadie, who was watching the shut door with trepidation.

He kicked the door shut behind him to block out the view of her still-naked-beneath-the-towel stance, only to have her push it open again. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she said from behind him. ‘I want to see it dead. I don’t want you coming back out here telling me it’s gone just to shut me up because you think I’m being neurotic.’

Kent turned. She was standing back a little from the doorway, her large grey eyes piercing him with a do-not-mess-with-me look.

Kent raised an eyebrow. ‘I see we have trust issues.’

Sadie glared at him. ‘My issues are none of your damn business. Just make it dead.’

Kent grinned at her prickliness as he turned back to locate the poor creature who’d had the supreme bad luck of choosing this particular room to explore. Although, seeing a naked Sadie Bliss had to have been some consolation.

It was crouched in the corner of the ceiling above the bath. ‘Come on, itsy-bitsy,’ he said as he approached the bath, the walking stick extended. ‘Time to move along.’

Sadie inched a little closer. ‘I said dead, damn it,’ she snapped from the doorway

‘Yeh, yeh, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he said as he positioned himself.

Bad. Word. Choice.

The diamanté from Sadie’s thong glimmered in the light and tantalised his peripheral vision.

Sadie’s gaze was drawn to it too.
Oh, no!
She hadn’t meant to leave it hanging there. She’d just forgotten everything the second
itsy-bitsy
decided to show.

What the hell must he be thinking?

‘Right,’ Kent said, pushing the rounded knob of the stick towards the spider. ‘Time to move along.’

‘What are you doing?’ she snapped again.

‘I’m not killing the spider, Sadie,’ he said as he gently swept it towards the open window.

Sadie gasped as the spider scuttled onto the end of the stick. She took a step back as she opened her mouth to warn Kent but in two seconds he’d dropped the stick from vertical to horizontal, the end with the spider poking out of the window. Once it hit the great outdoors the spider didn’t need any encouragement, practically leaping to its freedom.