Page 14 of All Summer Long

Much as Alice wanted to undo her robe and show him, she didn’t. Reaching up she covered his hand with hers and regretfully moved it from her jaw to her lap.

‘Robinson, don’t. It’s not going to make either of us feel better.’

‘Are you sure about that, Alice?’ he whispered, massaging her fingers, his face so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. ‘Because right now I’m feeling a whole lot better.’

God, it was tempting. He was gorgeous, and his body was hard and sexy and warm, and her lips wanted to kiss his slightly open ones more than anything.

‘No, you’re not,’ she said, laying her hand on his cheek. ‘Not really. You’re lonely and you’re hurting, just like I am.’

A small, sad smile tipped one corner of his mouth. ‘You’re not her, and I’m not him. It’s just you and me here tonight. Alice and Robinson. Is that so very bad?’

Alice shook her head, not answering him because she was finding it almost impossible to deny him or herself.

‘I’m not looking for love, and I don’t think you are either,’ he went on. ‘We’ve both been there, got the t-shirt, and had it ripped from our backs. Our cards are already on the table.’

‘That’s exactly why it’s a bad idea,’ she whispered.

‘As bad ideas go, this one feels pretty good in here.’ He tapped his chest with two fingers. ‘And your eyes tell me it feels pretty good in there too.’

He reached out and touched the same fingertips against the silken lapel of her robe, coming to rest against the pulse at the base of her throat.

‘If I kiss you, maybe we’ll know for sure if it’s good or bad,’ he murmured, his fingers drifting around her neck into her hair.

There was something in the barely there touch of his hand against her skin that made her arch into him, the space between their mouths so small that one tiny movement was all it would take.

Alice hadn’t kissed anyone else but Brad in years and years, and she was nine parts wildly turned on to one part absolutely terrified.

‘I’m scared,’ she breathed, her lips barely moving.

‘Don’t be,’ he whispered, and then he moved forward and covered her lips with his, and Alice found that she wasn’t.

She wasn’t, because his kiss was so slow and gentle, his lips hardly moving on hers, his fingers cradling her head.

Alice closed her eyes and breathed him in, and her hand curved over the warm strength of his shoulder.

His body was heaven under her hands, solid and hard where his mouth was soft and sure.

He reacted to her touch, gathering her closer, opening her lips with his to let his tongue slide over hers.

It was the best of first kisses, the kind that melted every bone in your body and made your blood sing a chorus of hallelujahs in your veins.

It happened in her mouth, her body and her heart, like a box of fireworks all exploding at once.

She barely registered when he pulled her across onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, because all she wanted was to be closer and for him not to stop.

His hands skimmed down the length of her spine, making her arch and press into him, her hands in his hair pulling his mouth harder onto hers.

The change in him was instantaneous; he seemed to let go of his restraint and kissed her properly, deep, open mouthed and crazy hot.

Alice didn’t need to question whether or not he was turned on, she could feel the heat and the hardness of him under her ass and it made her gasp.

He moaned in his throat and sank his teeth into her bottom lip as his hand cupped her breast through the thin layer of her robe.

She may as well have been naked, because when his fingers closed around her nipple it felt that way.

‘I guess that answers my question of whether or not you’re naked under this,’ he said, sliding his mouth from her lips to her ear and mouthing the sensitive skin there. He wound her hair around his other hand, using it like a tether to tip her head back and expose her neck to his lips.

When he slipped his hand inside her robe and held her breast, Alice gulped down air at the intimacy of his skin touching hers.

He moaned her name, kissing her slowly again now as his thumb drew equally slow circles around her nipple.

It was agonisingly sexual, magic and delicious and new, so very different to the way Brad had touched her that her eyes opened and locked with his as he flattened her breast with his palm.

Neither of them breathed as he massaged her skin, watching each other’s eyes as he pulled his hand back and rolled the tips of his fingers around her nipple.

It was erotic, and it moved her deeply, so much so that tears filled her eyes and crept down her cheeks. Robinson eased his hand from her robe and wiped away her tears with his thumbs, drawing her back into his chest and pressing his mouth against her forehead.

‘It’s okay to feel like this with someone else,’ he said, stroking his hand over her hair, understanding her without the need for explanation.

They stayed that way for a while. He smelled so good; clean and woody and male.

Alice breathed him in, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his neck, not wanting to leave but knowing she needed to.

‘I should go.’

He held her a little tighter and sighed against her hair. ‘Yeah.’

‘Thank you for kissing me,’ she smiled shakily. ‘I think I probably needed someone to do that. Someone other than him, I mean.’

‘Glad to be of service, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Consider me available if you ever need your boundaries testing some more.’

‘You’re top of my list, cowboy.’

‘You have a list?’

She liked his easy, lighthearted way. ‘I’ve just started one. You’re the only man on it so far.’

‘I kind of like being the only one on it, Alice.’

She wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t really want a list.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you home.’

A pang of sadness surfaced when she remembered that this wasn’t her home any more.

‘You don’t need to do that.’

He stood up with her in his arms and set her down gently on her feet.

‘I know I don’t need to. I want to.’

‘I can practically see the Airstream from here,’ she said, pulling on her boots as he opened the back door.

‘Yeah, but I hear there’s bears in the woods,’ he said, grabbing a leather jacket she didn’t recognise from the coat hooks and wrapping it around her shoulders. Butter soft and battered, it had the same comforting woody, unique smell as his neck.

‘I don’t need protecting,’ Alice laughed as they walked across the moonlit grass, but she really did mean it. Her life was going through the mother of all changes, and if there was one thing she was learning it was that she didn’t need anyone else to take care of her.

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said, looking up. ‘Stars are out tonight.’

Alice tipped her chin up and gazed at the dark studded sky. ‘I heard on the radio this morning that the weather’s about to change. They said we’re in for a long, hot summer.’

Robinson led the way through the trees, their footsteps the only sounds in the late darkness. At the Airstream he swung the unlocked door open, peering around inside it before stepping aside.

‘All clear. No bears waiting to eat you for a midnight snack.’

‘That’s good,’ she said, unaccountably nervous that he was going to kiss her again. She looked over her shoulder into the caravan. ‘I won’t ask you in for a nightcap.’

He shoved his hands down into his jean pockets and nodded, a small smile on his lips as he looked at the ground. ‘Wise.’

‘Take your jacket back,’ she said, starting to shuck her shoulders out of it.

‘Keep it for tonight,’ he said. ‘It suits you.’

She nodded, drawing it close. ‘Night then.’

‘G’night, Alice. Sleep tight.’

He might have winked, a barely perceptible gesture as he turned and walked away. She watched him until he was out of sight, and then closed the door and crawled into bed, his jacket still wrapped around her beneath the covers as she fell asleep.

Robinson heard the front door knock loudly the next morning and debated whether or not to answer it.

It wouldn’t be Alice, she would have used the back door, so it had to be either one of the residents he’d met the other week or a stranger.

The latter would be preferable, because after the email he’d just received from his manager he wasn’t in the mood to entertain guests.

It was barely ten in the morning and five minutes ago he’d been seriously considering searching the cupboards in the manor for a bottle of tequila.

‘Hang on,’ he called out, his southern-boy good manners winning out in the end.

Glancing out of the window before he opened the door he saw a flashy sports car he didn’t recognise in the driveway and frowned, opening the locks and pulling the heavy door back.

A guy he’d never seen before stood on the step, slightly shorter than he was and a lot more groomed, from his sharp hair cut right down to the mirror shine on his no doubt highly fashionable shoes.

Robinson’s hackles rose, automatically assuming either press or a sales man.

‘Hi there,’ the guy said, and Robinson nodded in silent reply, waiting for more.

‘Is Alice here?’

Robinson narrowed his eyes, reassessing the situation. ‘She doesn’t live here any more, dude.’

The guy glanced away down the drive and then back again, sliding his shades off and into the open collar of his shirt. ‘Do you happen to know where she went?’

If there was one thing Robinson knew it was how to protect privacy, both his own and other people’s.

‘Who wants to know?’

The stranger on the step seemed irritated by the question, as if he should already know who he was.

‘I’m Brad McBride. Her husband.’

Robinson nodded, suspecting as much and wondering if it’d be bad manners to land one on McBride’s chiselled jaw. Blood sure would make a mess of his carefully put together outfit. But then this was the guy who’d made a mess of Alice’s heart, and that stain was way more difficult to wash out.

‘My solicitor mentioned the idea of renting the manor out, you must be our new tenant,’ Brad said smoothly, holding out his hand to shake. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise things had moved so quickly.’

Our new tenant? His arrangement was with Alice, not this guy.

‘Sorry, man. I don’t know where she is. If she should call by I’ll mention you were looking for her. Any message?’

Brad opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again as Alice’s voice rang out from deep inside the house, calling Robinson’s name. Robinson cursed himself for unlocking the back door earlier; she must have let herself in to the kitchen.

‘I brought your jacket back,’ she called loudly, and then she wandered into the hallway, barefoot as ever, his leather over her arm. She stopped halfway across the hall when she saw who stood on the step.

Brad was quick to make a judgment call on what he saw.

‘You don’t know where she is, huh?’ he said, dropping his nice guy demeanour.

‘It’s not my fault if you don’t know where your own wife is, city slicker,’ Robinson said, needling him deliberately because it felt good.

‘Where she is or who she’s shagging, by the looks of it,’ Brad said, twin spots of colour sparking up on his cheekbones.

Alice stepped forward and stood beside Robinson. ‘What do you want, Brad?’

‘To talk with my wife in private, if that’s not too much to ask around here these days.’

‘It is,’ Robinson said. ‘This is my house for the next six months. Make an appointment through my lawyer if you want to come in.’

Alice laid a hand on Robinson’s arm. ‘It’s okay, I’ll talk to him.’

Robinson looked down at her, knowing he was interfering where he had no place.

And then, even though again he knew he had no place, he dipped his head and kissed Alice brief and hard on the mouth.

He caught her unaware, so much so that her mouth opened a little in surprise.

His tongue brushed over hers momentarily, sending a shiver down his spine, and her eyes widened a little when he broke off and stepped back.

‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,’ he said, touching her cheek, and then stalked out and left them to it.

Alice took Brad through to the lounge, where he pushed the door closed and spun around to face her.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m sorry?’

Brad jerked his head towards the door. ‘Him. Who even is he?’

Alice sighed. ‘He’s the new tenant. I told you about him, or at least I let your solicitor know that the lease had been agreed.’

‘New tenant and a whole lot more besides, by the looks of it,’ Brad levelled at her. ‘You didn’t waste any time letting someone else stick their tongue down your throat.’

She stared at him for a few long moments. ‘I’ll remind you, as it seems that you’ve forgotten, that you left me for another woman. What did you expect me to do, Brad, sit around and pine for you? Is that the problem here? You don’t want me but you don’t want me to have anyone else either?’

‘You’re still my wife,’ he said.

‘Yes, and I was your wife when you decided to sleep with Felicity Shaw. It didn’t seem to stop you then.’

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t fucking believe this,’ he muttered, and Alice could see that he genuinely didn’t.

Self-belief had always been one of Brad’s strongest traits; it must be a difficult pill for him to swallow that anyone could move on from him.

Was that what she’d done? If he’d turned up even so much as yesterday then the answer would have been no, but that was then and this was now, the day after she’d made out with Robinson Duff at the kitchen table.

So yeah, maybe she had moved on just a little bit and she was selfishly glad that it seemed to hurt Brad on some level, even if it was his pride rather than his heart.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked him quietly.

‘You know, I even felt bad about coming here today to say this, but not any fucking more,’ he said, posturing by the fireplace. ‘This is my house and I want it back. I want Borne Manor.’