Man About the House Read online

  He groaned at the irrefutable evidence that Murphy’s Law and irony were the ruling cosmic influences in his life. He’d won her trust without even buying a ticket in it, and when his interest in her was flat-out registering any higher than his waist.

  Oh, yeah, no doubt about it! If there was a God, She was definitely female.

  Prudence won through over Brett’s ill-conceived idea to hang around the agency under the pretence of wanting to study the details of the London-based business Meaghan was so eager to purchase. There was no reason he couldn’t review the prospectus at home, and a whole lot of reasons why waiting until Joanna finished work so he could drive her home wasn’t a good idea. Not the least being that she trusted him, when merely hearing that soft, husky voice of hers say his name had him fantasising about what she’d sound like chanting it in the throes of passion.

  A particularly fanciful image of desire-drowsy turquoise eyes watching him as he fanned silky jet hair over his pillow almost doubled him over as he crossed the lawn to the front door.

  ‘This is getting ridiculous!’ he snapped.

  ‘Ah, and I do so prefer the sublime...’

  The familiar but unexpected voice had Brett pivoting to see a six-foot-six giant walking up the path. ‘Jason! G’day, mate. Great to see you!’

  ‘Same here.’ The reply was accompanied by a crushing bear hug and a macho thump on his shoulder. Brett gave an exaggerated grunt and forced a frown as they broke apart. ‘You on a new weight regime?’

  ‘Nah, it’s just your time in the States turned you into a wuss,’ his redheaded friend teased. ‘Still, it’s good to have you home. Life’s too quiet when you’re not around, McAlpine.’

  ‘Yeah, right. You wouldn’t know a quiet life if it bit you on the bum.’

  ‘True, but I’d certainly be interested in getting better acquainted under those idyllic circumstances!’

  Brett could only laugh. ‘As incorrigible as ever, I see. When’d you get back?’

  ‘About an hour ago. My cupboards are bare and the surf is flatter than a bowl of soup; so if there’s no beer in your fridge it’s really gonna crush me.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, mate.’ Brett motioned his lifetime friend up the front steps. ‘A cold tinnie is as good as in your hand... But you only get one, before I take you to check out a place up at North Palm I’ve got my eye on.’

  Jason stopped in his tracks, and, turning, raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘What, you’re home for good? How’s Toni feel about that?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m staying. And Toni, as they say in the classics, is history.’

  ‘About time you came to your senses,’ Jason muttered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘OH! SORRY, Brett, I didn’t realise you had guests.’

  Joanna’s arrival jerked his mind from the rough house plans he and Jason had spent the last few hours sketching.

  ‘No! It’s okay, Jo,’ he said hastily, realising she was about to retreat. ‘It’s just Jason.’

  ‘Who’s not at all wounded by being dismissed as being so utterly unimportant,’ his friend inserted. ‘Anyone who’s known Brettland as long as I have has learned to love him despite his appalling lack of manners.’

  Brett would have liked to think Joanna’s wide-eyed reaction was caused by his friend’s warped sense of humour and high camp act, but he knew it wasn’t. There was no disguising the rank amusement dancing in her eyes, despite the obvious struggle she was having keeping a grin at bay. ‘Brettland? Er...is that your real name?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he grunted. ‘And the red-haired giant with the trout mouth is Jason Albridge.’ He shot the man in question a lethal look, which typically he ignored, his attention on the room’s latest arrival.

  ‘Ah, you must be the charming Joanna I’ve heard so much about. Or does everyone call you Jo?’

  ‘Er, no. Just Brett... sometimes.’

  ‘Do I?’ he asked, surprised by her comment.

  She nodded. ‘Just sometimes.’

  ‘Oh.’ He knew he thought of her as Jo, but since she was rarely wearing clothes in his head it seemed a bit personal to call her that in public. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, no! It’s okay! I like it, That is, I don’t mind.’

  The idea that she’d noticed something he himself hadn’t even been aware he was doing created a strange sensation within him. A gentler, less primal sensation than those she usually sparked, and it was an effort to drag his eyes from her and respond to whatever inane comment Jason was making. ‘Huh?’

  His friend merely shook his head. ‘Forget it. It’s obvious your interest in discussing house plans has suddenly plummeted to zero,’ he said dryly. ‘So I might as well head off home.’

  To Brett that sounded like a great idea, as it meant he wouldn’t be forced to try and concentrate on anything other than what he wanted to: Jo. Not that she gave a damn, he realised, hearing the next words out of her mouth.

  ‘Why don’t you stay for tea, Jason?’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘I mean dinner. Sorry, I still slide into “bushie” speech occasionally.’

  ‘Where exactly are you from?’ he asked.

  ‘A tiny town out in West Queensland. I doubt you’ve even heard of it.’

  ‘Try me?’ he challenged, oblivious to the way Brett was pointedly stacking up the work they’d been doing in the hope that he’d hurry up and go home.

  ‘Kuttibark.’

  Jason’s face broke into a wide grin. In spontaneous response Joanna’s lit with excitement. There was no mistaking her delight as she squealed, ‘You know it!’

  ‘Nope. Never heard of it!’

  It was an old, hackneyed joke, but it had Joanna chortling with laughter and almost falling over herself insisting Jason had to stay for dinner.

  Brett had to acknowledge that the resentment he felt over the guy’s light-hearted flirting with Joanna wasn’t a good sign. On a cerebral level he knew the force of the irritation he felt towards his friend was irrational, and that was all that stopped him from saying, Hey, Jace, old buddy; remember you like your bread buttered on the other side. If even his best friend, who was gay, could bring on the pangs of jealousy, then it pretty much indicated Brett’s interest in Jo—Joanna—extended beyond that of a possible short-term. no strings relationship. Which was what Meaghan and he had feared and been tempted by respectively.

  It was a realisation which both panicked him and had him wondering just how big a bastard he’d turned into that he could entertain ideas of a casual relationship with a woman as sweet, trusting and already emotionally scarred as Jo. Joanna! Jo-an-na! Damn it, he had to stop visualising her starkers! Right. And once he managed that he could start disciplining himself to ignore the way he felt when he looked up and found her watching him, and the way his body tightened when he watched her walk, or laugh, or just breathe.

  ‘What are you groaning and muttering to yourself about?’ Jason demanded. ‘There’s nothing wrong with sausages and boiled vegetables.’

  ‘With gravy,’ Joanna tacked on, which did little to clarify what the hell they were talking about.

  ‘I like your ideas for the house,’ she went on. ‘But I don’t understand why you don’t want carpet. I always wished we’d had carpet.’

  ‘In the West Queensland climate? You’re kidding!’ Despite his loathing of carpeting, on climatic, health and aesthetic grounds, he hadn’t meant for his tone to come out sounding quite so seating.

  ‘I think it’s better to lay carpet than to cut down valuable trees just so people can have fashionably polished floors,’ she retorted. ‘Using carpet also helps support the domestic wool industry,’

  ‘Relax, Jo. The timber I use will come from plantations, not old growth forests,’ he told her, fighting a smile at the evidence that she actually did read and absorb the information in the varied and copious quantities of magazines he’d noticed accumulating in the house. Then, remembering she did this to try and fill all the social and intellectual gaps of her childhoo
d, his amusement faded to be replaced by a sensation so gentle he wanted only to hug her. Not jump on her in a frenzy of raw animal lust, just hug her and hold her and try to compensate for the crazy actions of her old man and the rest of her family.

  By the time he’d crawled free of his thoughts, she was trying to haul a huge sack of potatoes out of the pantry and onto the sink-top.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, moving instinctively to help her. His hands closed over hers, and as they did it felt as if every vital organ he possessed shut down.

  He wasn’t breathing—couldn‘t—yet the scent of her somehow managed to travel through his system. His blood was bubbling away at boiling point, but he remained frozen, bent over clutching her hands as they in turn clutched the tied neck of the sack of potatoes. When he lifted his head her face was only scant centimetres from his.

  It was a face to make sculptors weep for its perfection.

  Her vivid, almond-shaped eyes were wide open, but so still Brett felt certain he could dive into the crystal depths of those eyes and find his soul. He might have tried, had he not been distracted by the tip of a melon-pink tongue peeping nervously out from between lushly glossed lips. When it darted back out of sight the muscles in the pit of his belly felt as if they were being tightened by a winch. What would that mouth taste like...feel like beneath his? Would it transmit the serenity her fragile features suggested to soothe him, or match the passionate fire she ignited in him? And—

  Without warning his hands were empty and she was out of his reach.

  ‘It’s okay, Brett,’ he heard her say. ‘I’ve spent my life lugging sacks three times the size of this. Third drawer, if you’re looking for the potato peeler, Jason.’

  ‘I was. You want the pumpkin peeled too?’

  ‘Of course!’ Her laughter warmed the room. ‘You can’t eat it with the skin on.’

  ‘Rubbish! Butternut pumpkin baked in its skin is heaven...’

  Though Brett heard, even comprehended every word of the inane ongoing banter between Joanna and Jason, he couldn’t rally his thoughts enough to move beyond the sensory and emotional overload his body had just experienced and join in with some glib aside. He needed space and time to sort out what was happening to him. Somehow lust had got tangled with sentiment, and his most basic instincts were being dulled—or was it sharpened—by emotions usually reserved for those who didn’t affect him on a sexual level.

  His brain framed the excuse that he was going to have a shower before dinner, and the notion might or might not have been verbalised by his mouth; either way, he shut the pantry door and headed for the other half of the house.

  Fifty minutes later, when he joined Jason and Joanna at the dinner table, it was with the relief of knowing he’d succeeded in getting things back into perspective. It had taken a bit of time to figure out, but ultimately he’d been able to chalk up his recent erratic emotions to the fact that he genuinely liked Joanna, and because of her youth and lack of experience in the real world he felt protective towards her. Which wouldn’t normally have been a problem except that she was also excruciatingly attractive, naturally sensual, and his libido had unfortunately chosen now to start emerging from its hibernation of the last four months.

  So, he’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t that he was any more physically attracted to Joanna than he would have been to any other beautiful, intelligent, sexy woman be might have encountered right now; it was just that the non-sexual, protective instincts she engendered in him were stronger than he’d have expected, and, taken by surprise, he’d got them muddled up with his need to get laid. Knowing the sooner he accomplished that the sooner he’d be back on an even keel, he found himself contemplating Jason’s invitation to attend an AIDS fund-raiser the following night.

  If there’d been any one noticeable advantage in growing up having a sister, it was having been able to gain a valuable insight into how the female mind worked, and Brett’s assessment was that: a) it invariably jumped to conclusions, which always put men in the wrong; b) it invariably jumped to the wrong conclusions, which still always managed to put men in the wrong; and c) the only time a woman didn’t jump to conclusions was if doing so would work in a man’s favour.

  All of which meant that if he phoned any of his old girlfriends they’d wrongly assume he was interested in rekindling old passions and expect more than the one-night-only appeasement Brett was contemplating. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt the feelings of a woman he knew. Therefore the obvious solution was a one-night stand with someone whose current desire for commitment was as nonexistent as his own. Though he’d prided himself on having outgrown the shallowness of casual sex, given the erotic ideas that watching Joanna spooning ice cream into her mouth inspired in him, it suddenly seemed like the most noble of sacrifices.

  ‘So what about you, Brett?’ Jason said, looking expectantly at him. ‘Do you want to come tomorrow night or not?’

  The unfortunately worded query had Brett choking on his own dessert. As he struggled to his feet, gasping, spluttering, his eyes tearing, Jo bounded out of her chair and hugged him from behind.

  The sensation of having her breasts pressed hard against his back wasn’t conducive to aiding his already oxygen-deprived lungs, although it was possible the vicious fist she slammed into his ribs—twice—might have been responsible for restarting his stalled heart. Survival instincts, however, kicked in, allowing him to catch her hand’s third approach and pull her off him before she inflicted any more damage to both his nervous and skeletal system.

  ‘Are...you try...ing to kill me?’ he managed between coughs, eagerly accepting the glass of water Jason handed him.

  ‘I didn’t want you to choke to death.’

  ‘So wh—?’ He cleared his throat. ‘What? You’d rather break my ribs and have me die of a punctured lung? Haven’t you heard of patting someone on the back?’

  Her expression was at best patronising. ‘That’s not what you do when someone’s choking,’ she told him. ‘What I did is known as the Heimlich Manoeuvre, which is the correct way of dislodging obstacles from the air passages. I read about it in a magazine article on first aid.’

  ‘Did they state a survival rate for the unfortunate victims subjected to this particular lifesaving technique?’ he muttered, massaging his ribs.

  ‘Never mind him, Joanna,’ Jason told her, waiting until she’d resumed her chair before sitting down himself. ‘Some people just don’t know how to be grateful.’

  She nodded, then gave a theatrical sigh. ‘You’re right. Next time I’ll just let him choke.’

  ‘Okay! I’m grateful! All right?’ Brett knew he sounded anything but. Taking a calming breath, he tried to get past the fact that he was angry because in the space of a few seconds, due to something as innocuous as a spoonful of peaches and ice cream, Joanna had managed to again scramble his sensory circuit. It was pretty hard to credit that just any sexy, attractive woman trying to prevent him choking would have had the medically unprofessional effect on him she’d had.

  ‘Let me rephrase that...’ he said, refusing to tempt fate further and pushing his dessert aside. ‘Thank you, Jo—er—Joanna! I appreciate your help.’

  ‘That’s okay. I only did it because I wanted to keep my record intact—I’ve never had anyone die eating a meal I’ve prepared yet.’

  He told himself that her wink was intended to be cheeky, not suggestive. But while his brain bought that story his body didn’t. He was damned grateful tomorrow night’s charity do would provide a wall-to-wall choice of single, available socialites. Not that he was going to be too fussy. Right now, ‘any port in a storm’ struck him as one hell of a handy motto to adopt!

  He deliberately stayed in bed the next morning until he knew Joanna had left for work. He’d also been intending to hide out there when she got home from work until it was time for him to leave for the fund-raiser, but that idea bit the dust when she came charging into the house an hour earlier than she usually did.

&nb
sp; ‘What are—?’

  ‘Worked through my lunch hour,’ she explained, somehow reading a mind which from where he was standing had blanked out at the sight of her. ‘Haven’t got time to talk now,’ she added on a brief, bright smile as she darted past him down the hall.

  Before he’d motivated himself to move from the spot where she’d left him standing, her head poked through the doorway of her room at the end of the hall. ‘Can I please have the shower first?’ she asked, her voice cajoling. ‘I promise I won’t be in there long.’

  You would be if I joined you! He slapped down the thought. ‘Go ahead,’ he said wearily, telling himself that until he had a chance to placate his mutinous hormones tonight, the smart option was to avoid any discussion with her that might encroach on things even remotely sexual. ‘Sing out when you’re through, Jo—anna,’ he added swiftly. ‘I have to be out of here by six-thirty,’

  He’d barely finished speaking when she burst back into the hallway. Raven hair flying about her shoulders, she used one hand to strategically clutch the front edges of an otherwise unsecured slinky robe and the other to carry a huge toiletry bag. A quick long-legged stride bad her at the bathroom door in less than a heartbeat; not that his heart was still beating after the robe had parted to give him a brief, side-on view of one incredibly shapely limb from ankle to hip.

  She paused at the door to shoot him a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, Brett. You’re an angel. I’ll be quick; I promise.’

  Then she slipped into the bathroom, leaving him pondering the paradoxical notion of how a guy could be angelic and horny simultaneously.

  ‘Br-e-e-ett! Can you come here a minute?’

  The urgent request came from down the hallway, just as he was pulling on his dinner jacket and anticipating a quick exit from the house.

  Oh, God, what now?

  ‘Brett!’ she called again. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I can hear you,’ he muttered. Hear you, see you, smell you! Do every damn thing except touch you and get you out of my mind!