Holding Out for a Hero (9 page)

She turned to Jake. “Can I invite some local media to a training session? Maybe we could re-create this scene?” Ella could see the photo now. The kids might hate it but the publicity could be fantastic. “Trish would you come back one day and pose for us?”

Jake felt Trish tense beside him and felt for her hand giving it a squeeze.  He looked down at Ella. “No press.”

Ella smiled. “Oh come on, big famous footy star, not afraid of the
Western Suburbs Post
photographer are you?”

Jake knew that the news of him back on the scene, coaching, would break soon enough, especially if they managed to pull off a miracle and become real contenders. And he’d deal with that then. But he wouldn’t court them before they came knocking. “No. Press.” Jake’s voice had gotten softer and Ella frowned.

“It would be good for the school.”

“Any press and I’m out of here, Ella.” He held her gaze for a few moments. “That’s number four. No. Press. That’s not negotiable.”

Ella blinked as he walked away. She looked at Trish. Trish shrugged and bounded away again approaching the next unwilling participant, caping him up and turning on her clippers.

Rosie woke to the cool serenity of an off-white ceiling and was momentarily disorientated. Where was her blood red paint and black netting? Then Simon murmured and stretched along the length of her and she became aware of his naked ass filling her palm. And suddenly all was right. She squeezed it just to reassure herself he was actually here.

“You’re killing me.”

Rosie smiled at his sleepy voice. Last night she hadn’t been able to wait an extra ten minutes to get home and they’d ended up back at his place instead—for the first time. It had seemed only sensible, being mere minutes away from the restaurant and given her total disregard for the road rules as she’d considered his zipped fly fair game.

“I don’t know,” Rosie murmured, her hand moving from his ass to other interesting regions. “You younger men, no stamina.” She hit pay dirt and smiled, her hand encasing the evidence of his state of readiness.

“You were saying?” Simon murmured before flipping her over and pinning her to the bed in one swift, well-executed move, forcing a surprised little squeal from her mouth.

Rosie laughed. “I may have been wrong about the stamina.”

“Damn straight you were,” he muttered as his mouth lowered onto hers.

The door opened and both of them froze as a voice floated toward them. “Simon, darling, I just noticed your car here.”

Simon cursed under his breath, placing his forehead against hers briefly before rolling off to stare at the ceiling.

“Mother. Have you ever heard of knocking?” He sat up, the duvet bunching around his waist.

Mother? Rosie lifted her head off the bed to sneak a peek at the woman advancing into the room. She looked like a cross between Camilla Parker Bowles and Barbara Walters.

“I’m sorry, darling. You’re so rarely home these days I—”

Rosie heard the reproach in her voice as a pair of cold, slate gray eyes settled on her. She gave a small smile and waved.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you had—”

Rosie, completely starkers under the covers, felt like even they’d been stripped away by Simon’s mother’s scrutiny. It didn’t take Iris’s gift to know that she didn’t exactly measure up. She felt the shrewd gaze on her bed hair, her heavily kholed eyes—no doubt panda-esque by now—her eyebrow piercing, the studded collar encircling her throat. Rosie waited for the floundering matriarch to finish her sentence, half expecting her to say,
a prostitute in your bed
.

“—a guest.”

Rosie smiled as good manners won out over motherly disdain. She flicked a glance at Simon. “You live with your mother?” she murmured.

Simon looked down at her. “You think I live in a mansion by myself?”

Mansion
? Rosie blinked and looked around at the room. It was rather
spacious
. She squinted—was that the river she could see through the French doors? She suddenly wished she’d paid her surroundings more heed last night. But the truth was, the only surroundings she’d been interested in were the fabric ones preventing access to his body and how to get them off him in the shortest space of time.

Simon looked at his mother and sighed. “Mother, this is Rosie. Rosie, my mother.”

Rosie wasn’t sure of the etiquette after being sprung in bed with your thirty-year-old boyfriend by his mother. She was thirty-six years old, for fuck’s sake!

“Pleased to meet you Mrs. Lewis.”

“Geraldine, please.”

Rosie nodded at the tight smile, fairly sure that Simon’s mother was merely being polite. There were a few moments when nobody said anything and Geraldine looked at Rosie like she was Monica Lewinsky and her son like he’d just been caught picking up a blue dress from the drycleaners.

“Er … was there something you wanted, Mother?”

“Yes, of course.” Geraldine smiled another tight smile. “I was going to ring you a little later. Henry Lichfield is coming for lunch today. He wants to meet you.”

Simon whistled. That was quite a coup. He was wealthy and connected and didn’t do pity lunches and could be a useful ally for his future political aspirations.

But.

“Can’t, sorry, Mother. I have another engagement. You’ll have to reschedule.”

Geraldine became very still. “Reschedule? Do you have any idea how difficult it was to arrange this today.”

“Yes, Mother, and I really am sorry but I just can’t make it.”

Geraldine pressed her lips together. “And what, pray tell, is more important than your future?”

Simon knew that note in his mother’s voice. He’d grown up with that steely resolve to have her own way and he had to admit it grew more impressive in its execution every year.

Rosie squeeze his thigh under the covers and he thanked God she didn’t scare easily as he said, “A football game.”

“You’re going to blow off a man with enormous political influence to watch
football
?”

Rosie marveled at the way Geraldine Lewis made football sound like the dirtiest word ever invented. Ella was going to love her.

“Rosie’s friend, Ella, is principal of Hanniford High. Their team is playing in the BSFC today. It’s their first match.” He shrugged. “It was sort of my idea.”

Rosie felt the brief sideways slide of Geraldine’s gaze that blatantly said,
Hmph, your friend—figures.

“Hanniford High?” Rosie almost laughed at the way Geraldine’s eyebrows had practically hit her hairline. There was no doubt the older woman knew exactly of Hanniford’s rep.

“I promised, Mother.”

“Darling, if you want to get involved in local school sport I’m sure the Brisbane Grammar would welcome your involvement. They won the Schools Cup your last year, didn’t they?” She looked at Rosie. “Simon went to the Grammar. He gave the valedictory address his senior year. He was dux.”
And you’re corrupting him.

Rosie was getting the message loud and clear. Well—her hand slid higher on his thigh—she’d do her damnedest.

Simon had had enough. He wasn’t going to have a career discussion with his mother on a Saturday morning while his girlfriend—if that’s what he could call Rosie—watched on like an engrossed Wimbledon spectator above the covers and a sex maniac, her hand finding its way into his lap, beneath.

“Please give my apologies to Henry,” Simon said sharply as Rosie gave him a very intimate squeeze and he fought to keep his eyes from closing on a surge of pleasure. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Geraldine looked from one to the other and then sniffed. “Very well.” She nodded at Rosie and exited with practiced regal grace.

Simon fell back against the bed. “Sorry ’bout that.”

Rosie waited for the door slam and was surprised to hear only a dignified click. Man, she was repressed! There was some serious passive-aggressive stuff going on with good old Geri.

He rolled up onto his side as her silence stretched, his hand resting against her belly. He frowned. “You’re speechless, aren’t you?”

Rosie shook her head. “No, just waiting for Jeeves to enter with the morning paper.”

Simon chuckled. “It’s his day off.”

Rosie gave a half-hearted laugh before the opulence of the room sobered her. It was the ultimate in
Vogue
chic. “Seriously though. You’re kind of … rich, right?”

Simon winced at the description. If his mother was here she’d have corrected Rosie instantly.
Wealthy
, Geraldine had always insisted.
Rich
was so common.

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “I’m afraid so.”

A small smile was playing on his delicious mouth and her heart swelled in her chest. Oh God, what was he doing with her? “How rich?”

“Disgustingly. Is it turning you on?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Would you prefer it if I was poor?”

Rosie gave a rueful smile. “Yes, actually.” Poor she could do. Poor she was used to. She was the daughter of a carnie, after all. Poor boys turned her on. God knew, she’d dated enough of them. Sure, she’d known he wasn’t like the others. She’d known he was from blue ribbon stock, but this level of wealth was surprising. To say she felt a little out of her depth was an understatement.

Simon stroked a hand down her flat stomach and felt her muscles react. She was looking so serious suddenly and he wanted Rosie from last night back. Rosie who’d laughed as he’d sworn and nearly swerved the car off the road when her hand had found its way past his zipper and her head had followed.

 “Do you want me white-collar poor or
Oliver
poor? Because you know I know how to beg, right?”

Rosie smiled despite the weird depression settling around her and the certainty that this could never last. “I know you can in handcuffs.”

He nuzzled her neck. “Please, Rosie, I want some more.”

She shut her eyes as the touch of his mouth on her skin made her want things she didn’t want to get too used to. “Your mother doesn’t like me.”

He smiled against her neck. “My mother doesn’t like anyone. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even like me most of the time.” He kissed up her neck. “She barely tolerates my father.”

“I bet she liked Penelope.”

Simon stilled, then he flopped onto his back and sighed. “She adored Penelope. In fact I’m not sure she’s forgiven me for breaking it off.”

It was Rosie’s turn to roll up on to her elbow. “How long were you together?”

“Five years.”

“Five years!” Rosie’s statute of limitations was more like five weeks.

Simon chuckled. “That’s bad right?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not at all. It’s … sweet. It just seems so … mature. You’re obviously the adult in this relationship.”

He groaned. “I’m guessing that’s not a compliment.”

Rosie smiled. “It’s not that. It’s just … settling down with one woman and having all this expectation on you about your future … Don’t you want to just, I don’t know, live a little first? Leave the heavy stuff for middle age?”

“This country needs young, energetic politicians with a vision for the future. Politicians that stand an outside chance of actually being alive to see their policies come to fruition rather than making pie-in-the-sky promises that they know they’re not going to be around to see through.”

Rosie’s heart tripped a little. He was right. She smiled at him. “I like it when you talk clean. I think I just came.”

Simon laughed and kissed her neck. “Orgasms are no extra cost.”

He nuzzled her neck for a bit and she shut her eyes, enjoying the sensations that fizzed in her blood and pricked at her skin, ignoring the dull nag inside her. If a life of civic duty was truly what Simon wanted then she’d be nothing but a liability. He needed someone like Penelope. She pushed away from him.

“Why
did
you break it off with Penelope? It seems to me she’s probably the type you need by your side.”

“You’re right. She was. But I suddenly realized that while she was everything I could ever ask for in a political wife—serene, demure, unopinionated, unflappable, organized, with this great ability to blend into the background—she was, in actual fact, mind-numbingly boring.”

Rosie didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that blending wasn’t her forté. “Not the kind of girl who’d give you a blowjob while you were driving?”

Simon laughed. “Oh, no. Penelope never went down.”

Rosie blanched not quite believing what she’d just heard. “You were with her for five years and she never sucked your dick?”

Simon looked up into her horrified face and smiled. “Never. In fact, I’m not even sure she touched it at all.”

God! No wonder he was with her. She looked into his handsome face, his dimples like a siren’s call to her bleeding heart hormones. “Oh no, poor Simon,” she crooned, her hand sliding down to fondle his neglected penis. “And it’s such a nice specimen too.”

Simon grinned. “I like to think so.”

He grew hard in her hand. “And look at that.” Rosie gave him a scandalised look that would have been well at home on a Victorian virgin except for the Goth-cum-dominatrix dog collar. “It’s in full working order.”

After a marathon session last night Simon was amazed it worked at all. “Gee. I wonder where I can put that?”

Rosie gave him wicked grin. “I have the perfect place for someone with as much catching up to do as you.”

As she disappeared beneath the covers, Rosie pushed aside thoughts that maybe this was only about the sex for Simon. Maybe she was just a stopgap until he found Penelope mark II: demure on the outside but slutty in bed; a politically correct, oral-sex junkie.

Because two things were for certain. She could never be a Penelope. And whatever version of Penelope he ended up with, she hated her already. Suddenly she knew this was about more than the chase. More than taking Mr. Neat and Prim and messing him up.

Simon Charles Henry Lewis was well and truly under her skin.

*

Geraldine bade them a stiff goodbye a couple of hours later. “Why do you still live here?” Rosie asked as she watched Geraldine’s stony face slowly get smaller in her side-view mirror.

“Aside from the river views being a great way to impress chicks?”

Rosie rolled her eyes. “But of course.”

He shrugged. “Convenient. Close to work. Great venue for entertaining.” He flashed her a smile. “Rent free.” He frowned at her unimpressed look. “It’s expected, I guess, and I can come and go as I please. I have my own wing, my own privacy.”

“Oh, like this morning?”

“It freaks you out that she caught us, doesn’t it?”

“No,” Rosie blustered. “I just … can’t believe you still live at home. With your
mother
.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “This from someone who lives with two crazy old aunts.”

She looked out the window and muttered, “That’s different.”

“How?” he asked trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. “How is you living with Selma and Patty any different to me living with Rose Kennedy?”

Rosie smothered a smile at his apt character portraits and turned to face him. “I live there because I want to. Not because it’s convenient or expected. Because I love those crazy old ladies and that crazy old house.”

Simon nodded. He could see that. He tried to imagine feeling such attachment to the Lewis family house and just couldn’t. Growing up the only child in a cold, stone mansion had been a lonely life. No siblings to climb the trees with or play hide-seek in the many, many rooms. Not that such frivolous childish antics would ever have been tolerated. “You’re lucky.”