Living the Charade (6 page)

He scratched his chest and her eyes soaked him up. God, the man really did look airbrushed!

‘Damn. Maybe
I’m
prone to sleepwalking,’ he said.

Miller hugged the duvet closer and felt her nipples throb with awareness as her hands accidentally grazed over them. Heat immediately bloomed in her face at the memory of
why
her breasts felt so heavy and sensitive.

‘This isn’t funny. That’s sexual harassment.’

The great oaf just rolled his eyes. ‘As I recall it, it was you who cuddled up to me in your sleep—not the other way around.’

‘I did not.’

‘Suit yourself. But last night I put a row of pillows between us, and I know it wasn’t
me
who knocked them aside. Anyway, I disengaged my hand as soon as you asked.’ He raised and lowered his knee gingerly beneath the blanket and she hoped that she
had
hurt him.

‘Remind me not to do you a good deed again,’ he said.

‘Ha. Good deed, my foot. You wanted to...to...’

‘Have my wicked way with you?’ His eyes glinted. ‘If that was what I wanted that’s what we’d be doing.’

‘You wish.’

‘A challenge, Miller?’

She didn’t deign to respond. Why would she? Of course it wasn’t a challenge—especially when she had liked the feel of him against her a little too much.

Her breathless response reminded her of the time she’d been secretly trapped in the girls’ toilets at the hideous school she’d attended while the main bullies had loitered, giggling vacuously over some boy or another.

By the time they had hit fifteen, boys had been all they could talk about. Miller had wanted to yell,
What about when it all goes wrong?
But of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to look more like a freak than they already thought she was. All of them had seemed content to live in the moment in a way she never could after her parents had divorced.

‘There was no way I was letting you sleep on the floor. Get over it.’ Valentino’s gruff voice jolted her back to the present.

‘Turn the other way,’ she demanded, letting her painful memories slip away.

When he complied without argument she shot out of bed and snatched up her robe. Ignoring him, she grabbed her running clothes and stalked towards the bathroom.

‘Just so we’re clear.’ She stopped in the doorway. ‘This arrangement does
not
extend to sex, and even if it did you would be the last man I would choose to sleep with.’

He looked at her as if he could see right through her. ‘So you keep saying.’

His intense eyes never left hers and Miller found it hard to swallow. He looked irresistible and dangerous with his untidy dark hair and overnight stubble. By contrast she was sure she looked a fright, and all of sudden it seemed imperative that she get away from him. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so vulnerable.

She shook her head. ‘You’re too used to getting your own way. That’s your problem.’

Valentino threw back the covers and stood up. He was only wearing low-riding hipster briefs and Miller quickly averted her eyes. She felt irrationally angry when he laughed. He stalked towards her and Miller deliberately held his gaze, refusing to let him see how affected she was by his potent masculinity.

He shook his head. ‘Lady, you are one overwound broad. Yes, my hand was on your breast—but that little moan you exhaled before your uptight brain kicked into gear let me know that you liked it. More than liked it.’

‘Well, my uptight little brain rules my body, and what you felt back there was just a physiological reaction.’ Miller felt irrationally stung by his assessment, even though she had insulted him first. She couldn’t help it; he just made her feel so...so...
emotional
!

‘You’re telling me you’d get turned on if you woke up with TJ’s hand on your breast?’

Miller clamped her lips together. That was a no-win question and they both knew it. ‘There’s no way to answer that without stroking your mountainous ego, so I won’t bother.’

‘You just did.’

Oh!
Miller swivelled and slammed the bathroom door in his laughing face. He was
so
arrogant and
so
full of himself.

Impossible. The most impossible and most gorgeous man she had ever come across.

She leant back against the door and sighed. No wonder he had women lining up outside his hotel rooms to get a glimpse of him. The man was sex on legs and he knew it.

Miller made a frustrated noise through her teeth and her breasts tingled with remembered pleasure as she pulled on her shorts, sports bra and top. A strenuous run would help her forget this morning before her meeting with Dexter and TJ.

Taking a fortifying breath, she decided to ignore Valentino—but that plan instantly unravelled when she opened the bathroom door and noticed him sitting on the side of the bed, tying his shoelaces and dressed as she was.

‘Please tell me you’re not going for a run?’

Valentino looked up. ‘Is there a law against it?’

His eyes immediately dropped to her bare legs and Miller felt slightly uncoordinated as she continued across the room to the closet.

She wanted to say yes, but he would no doubt think she was being uptight again—and anyway it was petty. The man was doing her a favour by being here—albeit a reluctant one—and who was she to tell him he couldn’t go for a run? She might dislike the tumultuous feelings he incited in her just from looking at him, but she was going to have to get used to it if she was going to survive the next twenty-four hours with any degree of dignity. She had already decided she wasn’t going to be his weekend plaything, so how hard could it be?

‘Of course not,’ she said, knowing full well he was a hundred times fitter than she was and would never suggest they run together.

‘You run often?’ he asked.

Miller glanced his way, noting his conciliatory tone. ‘A couple of times a week. You?’ she added, deciding to accept his olive branch.

‘Every morning except Sunday.’

She didn’t want to ask what he did on Sunday mornings. She was afraid her hormones would want her to do more than just visualise it.

He tilted his head, that devilish smile playing around his lips. ‘I get time off for good behaviour.’

The incongruity of that statement brought an instant grin to her face. ‘Yeah, right. I’m sure you were the type of teenager who crawled out of your bedroom window when your parents were asleep and partied all night.’

‘They were called study nights at our house.’ His deadpan expression made her laugh.

When she realised that he was laughing too she quickly sobered. Because she didn’t want to enjoy his company, and by the wary darkening of his eyes he didn’t much want to enjoy hers either.

But still the light-hearted connection persisted and made her nervous. A sudden impulse to place his hand back on her breast and kiss him senseless blindsided her.

‘It’s a beautiful morning. Why don’t we stretch on the beach first?’ he suggested.

Shocked by the unfamiliar emotions driving her thoughts and desperate to break the tension that throbbed between them, Miller cleared her throat and hoped that single gesture hadn’t transmitted to him just how affected she was by his presence.

‘I don’t think we should run together.’

Valentino eyed her dubiously. ‘How will it look if you run off in one direction and I go in the other?’

Telling, probably.

Miller smoothed her eyebrows in a soothing gesture that failed dismally.

She looked down at his long muscular legs dusted with dark hair.

‘Come on, Miller, what are you afraid of?’

Him, for one. Her own feelings, for two. Did he need three? ‘I’ll slow you down,’ she mumbled.

‘I’ll forgive you,’ he replied softly.

Miller sighed. One of her strengths was knowing when she was beaten, but still she was hardly gracious when she said. ‘Okay, but don’t talk to me. I hate people who run and talk at the same time.’

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
morning
was
beautiful. Peaceful. The air was crisp, but already warmed by the sun beating down from a royal-blue sky, and the fresh scent of saltwater was tart on the silky breeze. Seagulls flew in graceful circles, while others just squatted on the white-gold sand, unaffected by the gentle, almost lackadaisical nature of the waves sweeping towards them.

The beach arced around in a gentle curve towards a rocky outcrop, and as it was in an unpopulated area it was completely deserted at this time of the morning.

After a few quick stretches Miller set off at an easy jog along the dark, wet packed sand left behind as the tide went out, sure that Valentino would get bored and surge ahead. But he didn’t. And then she remembered that he’d complained about his knee and wondered if she
had
hurt him this morning.

Feeling hot already, Miller turned her head to look at him, her ponytail swinging around her face. ‘I didn’t really hurt your knee, did I?’ she panted between breaths.

He glanced across at her, only a light sheen of sweat lining his brow, his breathing seemingly unaffected by his exertions. ‘No. The knee is fine.’

‘Was the accident very bad?’

When he didn’t respond, she flicked her eyes over his profile, just in time to see him tense almost imperceptibly.

‘Which one?’

‘There’s been more than one?’

He glanced towards the ocean, and she didn’t think he’d answer.

‘Three this year.’

She wasn’t sure if that was a lot for his profession. She imagined they must crash all the time at the speeds they drove. ‘The one where you hurt your knee?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘Bad enough.’

His voice was gruff, blunt. Very unlike his usual casual eloquence. ‘Was anyone else hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wh—?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t like to talk while you ran?’

It was pretty clear he didn’t want to tell her about it so she let the subject drop. But of course her curiosity was piqued. Dexter’s comment about his next race being the race of the decade was making her wonder if it had anything to do with his accident. She really didn’t know anything about Valentino Ventura, other than the fact that he was called Maverick and he dated legions of women, but she wouldn’t mind knowing what secrets she was beginning to suspect lay behind his devil-may-care attitude to life.

* * *

Tino had never run with anyone before. Not even his personal trainer. Running was meditative, and something he liked to do alone, so he hadn’t expected to enjoy Miller’s company as much as he was.

Despite his large family he wasn’t the type to need others to be close to him. He was a loner. Maybe not always, but certainly since his father’s death. And, yeah, he knew a shrink would say the two were connected but he was happy with the way he was and saw no reason to change. If he died one day pushing the limits, as his father had, and Hamilton Jones had last August, at least he knew he wouldn’t be leaving a devastated family behind him.

The image of Hamilton’s wife and two young daughters—teary and slightly accusing at the funeral, because he’d survived and their father hadn’t—caused guilt to fluctuate inside him.

Survivor guilt.

The team doctor had warned him about it afterwards, and while he’d never admitted to feeling it he knew that on some level he did. But he also knew it was something that would wear off if he didn’t think about it. Because the accident hadn’t been his fault. Hamilton had tried to overtake on one of the easiest corners on the track, but had somehow managed to clip Tino’s rear wheel and hurtle them both out of control.

Hamilton had lost his life and Tino had missed three of the following races due to injury. And he’d failed to finish the last two races due to mechanical issues.

He wasn’t superstitious, and he didn’t believe in bad luck, but he couldn’t deny—at least to himself—that there seemed to be a black cloud, like in a damned cartoon strip, following him around at the moment.

A sudden memory of the moment his mother had returned from the bathroom and he’d had to tell her that his father—the love of her life—had just been involved in a hideous accident clamped around his heart like an iron fist. No one knew what had caused the accident that had ended his father’s life—engine malfunction or human error—but the pit crew had said his father hadn’t been himself that morning, and Tino remembered overhearing his mother urge his father to pull out of the race. But the old man had ignored her and gone anyway.

Tino swiped a hand through his hair. Had that been what had killed him? His mother’s soft request? Tino shuddered. It was a hell of a position for a man to be put in.

Refocusing on Miller’s steady rhythm, he was surprised that he didn’t have to temper his speed all that much for them to remain together.

Waking up beside her, he hadn’t meant to have his hands all over her, and now he decided that it would be best to play the relationship game her way. So what if Caruthers had the hots for her? It was none of his business, as she had rightly pointed out. Now that he knew he wasn’t being used as a patsy to hide an affair it shouldn’t mean anything to him that the other man wanted her.

Had they
ever
been lovers?

Not wanting to head down that particular track he concentrated again on the rhythmic sound of their feet hitting the sand and the crystal clear waters of the South Pacific Ocean rolling onto the beach. The coastline reminded him a little of his house on Phillip Island, near Melbourne, although he knew the water there was at least ten degrees cooler and a hundred times rougher.

Miller stopped and started walking, her hands on her hips, and Valentino joined her.

‘You can keep going if you want,’ she panted.

He glanced at her. He
could
keep going but he didn’t want to. What he wanted was to stop thinking about the past and make her smile. Like she had back in their room. He wondered what she did for fun, and then wondered why he cared.

‘You work out a lot?’ he asked.

She glanced at him, and he tensed when her eyes dropped to his stomach as he used his T-shirt to wipe a line of sweat off his brow. He knew she was attracted to him, maybe even as attracted as he was to her, but he also knew it would be stupid to follow up on that attraction. Not only did
she
not want it—he didn’t either. And, while his body might have ideas to the contrary, his body was just an instrument for his mind, not the other way around.

‘I go to the gym three times a week and try to go for a run along the Manly foreshore on the weekend.’

She walked in a small circle to ease the lactic acid burn from her legs.

‘You do weights?’

‘Some. Mainly light weights. Although I missed every one of my workouts this week due to work, so no doubt when I start back Monday morning I’ll be a little sore.’

‘Do some now.’

She cast her eyes from the sparkling ocean to the sand dunes behind them. ‘I’m sorry, but if you see a weight machine anywhere around here you’re on your own.’

He laughed. ‘There’s a lot you can do without machines. Trust me. This is part of my day job. Why don’t we start with some ab crunches?’

He lay on his back and started curling his head towards his bent knees. He’d made it to twenty when out of the corner of his eye he saw her reluctantly join him. He wasn’t sure why that pleased him so much.

She kept pace for a minute, then fell back on the sand. ‘I’ve been running for a while but I’m still pretty new at the gym thing,’ she said.

‘Okay, now squats.’

Miller groaned. ‘I really don’t like squats.’

‘No one likes squats except bodybuilders.’

She laughed and the husky sound made his stomach grip.

‘Come on.’ His voice was gruff, unnatural sounding.

She jumped lithely to her feet and he couldn’t look away from the toned muscles in her thighs as she braced her legs slightly apart.

‘Raise your arms overhead as you go down. And keep your chest up.’ He cleared his throat, trying to concentrate on her technique rather than recalling the feel of her peaked nipple pressing eagerly into his palm. ‘Squeeze your glutes and extend through your hips as you come up.’

He’d need to dunk himself in the ocean at this rate, but at least his mind was fully focused on something other than racing again.

‘Am I getting a personal training session now?’ She grinned at him, but didn’t stop.

‘Maybe.’ He returned her smile. ‘I do aim to please.’

‘What’s next?’ She breathed deep and shook out her legs.

Tino could think of a lot of ‘nexts’ that involved her horizontal on the soft sand without the top and shorts, but he shouldn’t even be thinking like that.

He sucked in a litre of air and took her through a couple of other light exercises. ‘Push-ups.’

Miller grimaced. ‘Oh, great. You’re hitting all my favourites.’

She got down on the sand and started pushing herself up, her knees bent.

‘They’re not real push-ups,’ he teased.

‘Yes, they are!’ After twenty she collapsed and rolled onto her back. ‘Okay, that’s it. Those and the bench press are my weakest exercises.’

He absently noted how the sun had turned her hair to burnished copper, with some of the tendrils around her temples darkened with sweat. Her cheeks were pink from exertion, her chest heaving...

Don’t even go there, Ventura.

‘That just means you have to do more of them.’

Miller turned her head towards him and her eyes sparkled as blue as the ocean behind her. ‘Oh, darn. No bench press. What a shame.’

Tino smiled. So she did have a sense of humour.

Lifting from his sitting position beside her, he came over the top of her, before he could talk himself out of it, his body hovering far too close to her own.

Her eyes flew wide and her hands fluttered between them, the pulse-point at the base of her throat hammering wildly. ‘Valentino, what are you doing?’

He liked the way she used the full version of his name. Breathless. Husky.

‘Accommodating you.’ His own voice was rough again, as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of sand, and he hoped to hell she hadn’t noticed that he was already fully hard. ‘I’ll be your bench press.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

He braced himself on his arms and lowered his upper body slightly over hers. ‘Hands on my shoulders,’ he commanded.

When she put them there he barely suppressed the shudder that ran the length of his whole body.

She shifted beneath him. Swallowed. ‘This won’t work,’ she said, but she didn’t remove her hands. ‘You’re too big.’

Her eyes met his and the air between them sizzled.

She was wrong. This wasn’t silly. This was way beyond silly. ‘Ten reps. Go.’ He just wanted them out of the way now.

She pushed at his shoulders and he mentally worked his way through every component of a car engine as they moved in unison. He could feel her hot breath on his neck as she exhaled and he dared not look at anything but the sand above her head.

Of all the lame-brain things to do...

He paused when he felt her weaken, intent on pushing himself away from her, but he made the mistake of looking down into eyes that had gone indigo with desire.

The sound of seagulls squalling couldn’t even distract him from the hunger that burned a hole in his belly.

Her hands slipped down his arms, shaping his muscles, and her eyes drifted to his mouth. ‘Valentino...’

Her husky plea weakened him more than fifty reps with twenty-five-pound dumbbells could and, groaning deep in his chest, he lowered his head and captured her soft mouth with his own.

* * *

Miller was aware of every hard inch of Valentino’s male flesh pressing her into the sand. Her own body throbbing as if it was on fire, totally drugged by his heat, his smell, his taste. She couldn’t remember why this was a bad idea. No rational words remained in her head to rein in her pleasure-fuelled body. Her arousal with him in bed earlier had returned full-force.

Impatient with a need she’d never felt before, she swept her hands down his back and then smoothed them up under his sweaty shirt. He groaned approvingly and with his elbows either side of her face cradled the back of her head, angling her so that his skilful mouth could ravage her lips, his moist tongue plundering and duelling with her own in a way that made the ache between her legs become almost painful.

She felt his other hand drift over her torso, feather-light as if learning her shape, his fingertips moving closer and closer to the tip of one breast. Moaning, Miller twisted in his hold, her body begging for more of his touch. She felt him smile against her mouth, his lips drifting over her jaw and down the column of her throat.

‘Please, Valentino...’ she pleaded, her body craving a release she had never experienced during sex but which now seemed infinitely possible. Infinitely desirable.

Obliging her, his hand rose over her breast, cupping her, his thumb flicking back and forth over her nipple at the same time as his teeth bit down on the straining, sensitive cord of her neck.

Miller cried out, jerking beneath him. Her body was liquid with need, her hips arching towards his, her mind completely focused on one outcome.

His fingers plucked more firmly at her nipple and her fingernails unconsciously scored the tight muscles of his lower back.

He shifted sideways and she whimpered in protest. Then his hand slid lower, and she stopped breathing as he cupped between her legs.

‘Miller—’

She didn’t want him to speak. She just wanted to lose herself in these magic sensations. She dragged his mouth back to hers, her tongue instantly gratified by the warm wetness of his deep, soul-destroying kiss. Her body was close, so close, and she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

‘Oh!’

His hand slipped beneath the hem of her shorts and knickers and then his fingers parted her and lightly stroked her swollen flesh. He groaned into her mouth, pressed deep at the same time as Miller pressed upwards, and that was all it took for her to tumble over the edge. She gripped his shoulders and wrenched her mouth from his, gasping for oxygen as her body disintegrated into a million wonderful pieces.