Who Do You Trust? (10 page)

Oh, yeah. Nice image. McCluskey’s woman, that sweet bundle of sin with the deliciously wicked mouth, on her knees for him…

So much for the last of the red-hot lovers. McCluskey had done her over in less than thirty minutes flat, and no repeat performance for him to watch, either.

He liked watching—but better still, he liked
doing.
He could do a much better job of her than McCluskey. What a loser. First time on a blanket in the backyard, for Pete’s sake, like a horny teenager in a backseat. Oh, yeah, he knew how to please a woman far more thoroughly than that. And one day soon, pretty Lissa Carroll would know all about it.

He liked delicate, haunting women like Lissa; so much to discover beneath the quiet shell. And when the mystery was over, they were so easy to break. Meanwhile he could enjoy what that luscious mouth could do to him. He’d make better use of that sweet mouth than McCluskey had dreamed of. Yeah, there was something…something about Lissa Carroll he wanted—all for himself.

But it was far more important that using her mouth and body would turn that jerk McCluskey inside out. Ruin him for life. Yeah, he’d break McCluskey all right…and he liked that idea best of all.

D
amn!

Mitch watched in helpless fury as the car disappeared. So what happened now? Were all bets off, now
the man had shown himself? Did their watcher know that he and Lissa faked it just then? Did he realize Lissa now had an ally? Or did he and Lissa and their gun-toting voyeur have to keep playing this perverted little game right down to the finish?

Who the hell was he?

Another car passed. The woman driving gave a slow wolf whistle. “Hey, darlin’, you advertising?”

Oh, sheesh—he had nothing on but his briefs! He swore and stalked back across the long-fallow fields to Lissa’s place to hop into his jeans. Then he ran inside to Lissa. Had she seen that jerk’s gun on her? Was she as scared as he was?

She was dressed again and on the phone, but she turned to him as soon as the door opened.
Did you know him?

He shook his head. “Play the game,” he whispered softly in her ear. “He knows I saw him. If I don’t tell you about it I look bad, and if you don’t tell me, he thinks you’re with him—and he’s secure.” He wanted to draw her close, to caress her sun-kissed honey skin beneath her loose lemon top—wishing he had the right to stroke her and give her the physical comfort they both needed.

Her head fell to his shoulder, crowding in close, needing the contact as much as he did, but she kept talking. “We’ll see you at the airport at six, Tim. Don’t be late. We want a few days alone together before the wedding and for once you’re going to put your life on hold for me. Got that?”

He could hear the chuckle as Tim evidently agreed.

When she hung up, he held her by the arms, caressing up and down her silky skin, soothing, reassuring her, even as he spoke with heavy sexual intent for the listening device. “Let’s pack our things, baby. Don’t pack too much, and nothing heavy—all summer gear. You won’t need much of anything where we’re gonna be.” With a lightning decision that he knew he’d get in really hot water for later, he mouthed,
Insect repellent. Covering hat. Dark-green or long-sleeved clothes if you can. Netting if you have it.

With a startled glance of comprehension—for though high-altitude Canberra could get really hot on occasion, it was rare to need big hats or insect netting—she nodded, gave him a slow, scared smile and laced her fingers through his. “Come and help me, then I’ll help you. And maybe we can play in between. Tonight seems a million miles off.”

Clever, clever girl. Her words were shy, just a touch sultry, and the little quiver in her voice could be discounted as post-sexual nerves. Let their listener make of that what he would.

He followed her into her room and sat on the bed, watching her shaking hands haul out an overnight bag. “C’mere, baby. Let’s play first.” He pulled her on top of him, laying her cold hands on his warm, naked chest. “Did you really share this bed with Tim?” he breathed in her ear, because he was curious—because he wanted to distract her from hefear. Because he wanted her hands on him again.

After a startled moment she shook her head with a little smile. “I burned the damn thing in the back paddock and bought a new one with the divorce payout,” she whispered. She looked down, saw her palms flat against the curling hair on his bare chest. With slow, lingering touch, almost as if she moved against her will, she caressed him, filling her hands with his skin. The look in her eyes was one of total wonder. Sweet joy. Surprised innocence. An arousal so new, so life-changing, he had the answer before he asked the question.

“So you haven’t slept with him since the divorce?”

Her hair, warm and smelling of jasmine, grass and sunshine, tumbled over her face as she leaned down and pressed a slow, hot kiss on his chest. “Jerk,” she mumbled. “Do you think I’d make the same stupid mistake twice?”

He chuckled, low and rich, wanting so bad to make this real, but mindful of the bug behind the headboard he’d found earlier on, and the silent gray-suited menace not too far away, he kept his hands to himself. But unable to entirely resist temptation, he lifted her face and kissed her open mouth.

Then Lissa sagged on him, whimpering, her hands going to his hair to hold him there. The kiss went on and on, lips and tongues dancing, breath mingling with the moans they both couldn’t help. Their hands exploring, drinking in the warm textures of the other in wondrous discovery.

How could a kiss be so sweet, and so impossibly saturated with sexuality at the same time?

Because I’m kissing Lissa, my sweet, sexy surprise package of woman—and she’s kissing me.

And
man,
how she was kissing him, touching him—giving him the unmistakable green light to go, with two glorious, bewitching words. “Touch me…” Her hand guided his beneath her summer top to find her silky bare breasts beneath.

With a little groan of exultation, he touched, caressed—and slowly he drew a chocolate-tinted nipple into his mouth.

Lissa gasped and writhed against him. “Mitch,” she moaned—this time soaked in real passion. “Yes, Mitch, oh, yes…” Her voice had a high-pitched lilt to it, telling him she was filled with the frantic, hot, mindless urge to mate…just like him. And suddenly the fresh, clean-smelling room held the heady scent of sex. The one response a woman couldn’t possibly fake.

Still suckling her, he touched her beneath her skirt, feeling the delicious wet heat through her panties. She bucked against his hand again and again, creating her own friction until his hand slipped inside the cotton barrier, and his finger gently stroked and circled her where she had to have him, where she ached and pulsed and pounded for release; and within moments, she shuddered all over, cried out his name and collapsed on him, in the most beautiful surrender he’d ever known. A surrender that held no losers—they both claimed victory.

He kissed her hair and held her, feeling content. “We have to go,” he whispered eventually.

She lifted her face. It was flushed, flooded with dazed wonder, satiation and renewed need. “But Mitch, you didn’t…”

He smiled, and touched her warm che. “But you did, Lissa. You did, and that’s enough for me.”

Total confusion filled her eyes: a stunned, glazed look. “But how can it be—”

Hoo-wee. She truly didn’t know. Tim must’ve been a hell of a loser in bed. “I can wait,” he murmured, with a quick glance at the back of her bed.

Instant comprehension: all her rosy color faded. “Oh, God, he heard me,” she breathed in his ear. “He heard me… That filthy creep listened in on my most private moment…” She glared at him in bewildered betrayal. “How could you? How could you remember, and still go on?”

He muttered a curse, holding her close as she tried to pull away. “I’m sorry, Liss. I forgot, too, until just then.” Still she struggled against him. “We have to keep up the whole lovers’ thing until we find out who the hell this guy is, why he wants to destroy me and why he just pulled a gun on you!”

She stilled so completely he wondered if she’d fainted. He cursed himself. Maybe she hadn’t seen the jerk, after all.

Then she sighed. “Tonight’s your turn, then. I’ll make sure of that.”

Her voice was filled once again with the sultry saccharine sweetness of the fake siren. Lissa the consummate actress was back, with a vengeance.

He was still unforgiven.

Tim’s fair, handsome face showed up stark and pale against the fading glare of a hazy city dusk when he and Lissa returned from their little walk around the fuel-and-tar-scented airport. Through the passing lights of early-evening traffic, his eyes met those of his one-time best friend in a silent question.

Mitch handed Lissa her bag, lifted his brows and slowly nodded.

Tim invoked the name of his savior beneath his breath, then said levelly to the kids, “Hey, guys, I’ve got a great surprise for you. Just wait till we get into the car!”

“Yeah!” Matt bolted without a backward glance; and Jenny, after unsuccessfully trying to get Tim to tell her what his special surprise was, followed Matt to find clues.

But Luke glanced from Mitch to Lissa, his eyes filled with the same old question, the same fear. The need for love and reassurance that would take years to fade, if it ever did.

Lissa hugged him. “Luke, darling, I’d never, never leave you. Neither will your dad. We’re just going away for a few days, okay? We’ll call you every day on Uncle Tim’s cell phone.”

“Your mum’s right.” Mitch bent to his son. “Matey, hear this now. I’m your dad and I love you kids more than anything in the world. I never left you and I never will. If Kerin hadn’t taken you away from me, we would always have been together. But we always will be from now on. What Mum says is the truth. Trust us. We’re just going away for three or four days. Okay?”

“Yes, Dad,” Luke whispered, shadows in his hurting eyes.

Tim joined in. “Matey, I swear the fun’ll only last three or four days before Mum and Dad are back to drive you nuts, so you’d better make the most of it!”

With another of those heartbreakingly uncertain, haunting smiles of his, Luke nodded. “Okay, Uncle Tim.”

Tim clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Good man. Liss, my little love, why don’t you take Luke to the car? I wouldn’t mind catching up with my old buddy Mitch for a few minutes. You know, male bonding, swap war stories, etcetera.”

“We don’t have time, Tim,” Lissa replied, her voice sharp. The warning carried itself clearly to both men.

“Lissa, sweetie, trust me. You have time. Say goodbye to the kids,” Tim retorted, in curious gentleness.

With flared nostrils and gritted teeth, Lissa herded a reluctant Luke to the car waiting fifty meters away. “Poor Liss always had too much pride for her own good,” Tim said softly, watching his ex-wife walk across the car park. “She’d really rather you walked through life not knowing the truth—even if it means losing you.”

Mitch faced his old school friend squarely. “Spit it out, Tim. I’m sick of working in the dark with her. We’re in the middle of a bloody serious situation here and we don’t have much time.”

“I’ll protect those kids with my life,” Tim said quietly. “I’ll take ’em where he couldn’t possibly find them, and he’ll have to walk over my dead body to get to them. And you’d better do the same for Liss or I’ll kill you myself.”

Mitch rounded on him. “If you still love her that much, why the bloody hell did you ever leave her?”

Tim met his accusing gaze without flinching. “Because, though I love her to death and always will, I’m not the man for her. I can’t give her what she needs.” He shrugged and said simply, “I’m gay, Mitch.”

“Oh, crap!” he gasped without thinking. “You had twenty girls before Lissa. You were married to her more than five years, and all over
her
like a bloody rash for three years before that!”

Tim’s mouth quirked. “Ever heard of denial, mate? That’s what those girls were for me—and what my marriage to Lissa was. I loved her like crazy. I still do. I wanted to believe it was the right love—that if I married her, my attraction to men would die out. I hoped, almost believed it was teenage stupidity, a passing thing I’d get over with the right woman. But I only made Lissa unhappy, in and out of bed.”

“Let’s skip that part, shall we?” Mitch growled, wanting to deck him for ever having Lissa in bed, feeling totally flabbergasted by Tim’s unexpected revelation. Tim Carroll, who could barely keep count of the girls he’d bedded, was gay?

Tim said seriously, “Do you think I
want
to talk about this? I can’t leave it out. If it weren’t at the heart of all the problems you have with Lissa now or will have in the future, I wouldn’t bring it up at all.”

His gut wrenched. “So she’s told you we have problems.”

“No, mate. She didn’t have to. The tens so thick I could make a gourmet sauce with it.”

Mitch shrugged. “So you know what’s causing it. Get to the point, Tim. We’re in a bit of a hurry escaping some jerk after Lissa with a gun, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, okay—but this is hard to talk about, so give me a minute.” Tim shook his head. “She’s scared of sex. She thinks she’s no good in bed—that she’s incapable of turning a man on.”

Mitch stared at his old friend and swore. Hard.

Tim sighed. “You know how she wanted to be a virgin till her wedding night? Well, she was—and for two weeks after that.”

“What?”

“It took me all the honeymoon to make love to her—and it was a nightmare.”

Mitch blew out a sigh.
Sheesh.
No wonder Lissa was so tetchy about sex. No wonder she wanted them to be lovers so long before she’d marry him. “Go on.”

“We wrote it off at first that were both upset about what I did to you, me being drunk, and grieving over the way you left. But deep down I knew we had a real problem. My love for her is what I’d feel for a little sister, if I had one. Touching her felt so damn wrong I couldn’t get past it. What she didn’t realize—and probably still doesn’t—is that she never wanted me, either. We should never have been anything but friends.”

Mitch said slowly, “But if you knew that, why would she—”

“Because we grew up together! C’mon, mate,
think!
You were there. She heard the rumors, talked to girls in the locker rooms. I might be gay, but she knows I was more than bloody capable with
some
girls. A lot of girls. Just not Lissa.”

He felt the blood drain from his face. Good God. What must that have done to Lissa’s self-esteem?

“In five years, it was only good once.
Once.
After I’d met Ron, my partner of the past six years—but I didn’t act on the attraction. I still wanted to deny what I was. I came home from the gym where I met him, tortured about my life, and saw my beautiful Liss waiting for me, so lonely, so glad to see me. It was the only time I didn’t have to pretend she was someone else—I just wanted to give her all the love I had, all the care she deserved. We conceived Jenny that night.” He sighed. “I left two weeks later.”