Page 30

JENNA

“The things I do for you.” Geordie’s chest beneath me relaxes in a sigh as he leans down to brush a kiss on the top of my head.

“You didn’t seem to be complaining a few minutes ago,” I huff against the sweat-damp curls of his hair plastered against my still overheated cheek, as my fingers lazily circle one very erect honey-coloured nipple. “The things you were doing for me seemed to have some pretty obvious benefits for you, too.” I can’t help my mouth from curving into a satisfied smile.

My thighs tingle at the thought of Geordie between them. I can still feel the sensation of his length buried inside me, his cries matching my own as we moved together in rhythm, the words ‘Yes, yes’ echoing in the air. The friction of his hips against my clit pushed me to a second, overwhelming orgasm, just moments before he collapsed against me, breathless, sweaty, and completely spent.

“Not that,” his laughter rumbles through me. “I’d never complain about our mutually beneficial workouts.” I can hear the smile in his voice, but the words erase my own .

Mutually beneficial workouts. That’s what I asked for and that’s what I get. As it becomes harder and harder to push down my feelings for Geordie, I regret this agreement to the point where it ties my stomach in knots every time I think about it. Especially since I stopped fooling myself that it’s anything more than my response to his likeability, and our compatibility between the sheets.

To begin with, I tried to justify it as simply me allowing the fact he’s my favourite person in Cluanie—one of the few people in this town who I’m really comfortable with—to colour my feelings. That self-deception didn’t last long.

In my work I can put a PR spin on almost anything, sell half-truths or even outright lies with a confidence that has me believing them too. Unfortunately, you can’t lie to yourself. I am falling for Geordie MacDonald. Hard.

While I make a living extracting people from disasters of their own making, I’m totally clueless when it comes to finding a way out of my own. Not when I see such longing in his eyes and chide myself for being so selfish to even start this with him.

Already, we’ve both run roughshod over the rules we put in place to prevent this happening. I’ve let him fall for me too, when that’s the worst thing he could ever do. Because when you fall, there’s always got to be a landing, and when that landing is finding out who I really am, it’s going to hurt both of us.

In this Goldilocks tale, he will discover I am the girl who is both too much and not enough, and realise he needs someone who is just right. When I watch him walk away, as eventually he will, it’s going to smash my heart into a million pieces, but he won’t get away unscathed. I hate the pain it will cause him because he’s so kind and decent. Unlike Adam, Geordie understands he can hurt me, and he won’t want to, but in the end he’ll also understand that he needs to—because I’m not for him.

“Are you going to admit that was pretty good, or are you just going to pretend all those ‘Oh Gods’ were some kind of come to Jesus moment?”

“Yes,” I mumble. “I love doing this with you.”

“Good. So do I, and no, I wasn’t talking about giving you orgasms, sweetheart. I meant joining the fucking pub quiz team.”

“You didn’t have to, not for me.” I sit up, glad of the change of subject while schooling my mouth into a mock pout for his benefit. “You could have said no, although I admit Lexie did a pretty hard sell.”

“What? And let you head down to The Railway on your own every Tuesday night? Fuck off.”

“I wouldn’t have been on my own,” I fire back. “Not in a whole bar full of people.”

“And that’s exactly why I had to join the team. Too many people. Too many single male people, in fact.”

“Geordie. You don’t trust me, huh? We agreed this is exclusive, right? Or is the deal off? Did someone catch your eye? One of those pretty girls swarming the club rooms?” I tease.

This is the part of our agreement I don’t regret. If I’m screwed up now, it’s nothing compared to what I’d be if he was seeing other people. I’m only going to have Geordie for a short time, so there’s no way I want to share.

“Yes, this is exclusive, sweet,” he reassures. “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s all those other bastards who want to hit on you. ”

“You do know someone’s going to be onto us, with you sitting there glaring at every man who comes within a foot of me like you did last night?”

The man grows teeth and claws if anyone other than Nathan approaches. Damn it, he was even a little frosty with Connor squeezed in the booth next to me, and he knows Connor could never be more than an old friend. I’ve told Geordie outright. I love the man to bits, but there’s no spark between Connor and me; never has been, never will be.

“Ten feet,” he scowls. “And even that’s too close.”

“Look, the quiz night’s going to be great. Both of us have been away a long time. It’s a good way for us to get back into the local social scene. Something other than the rugby club.”

Don’t get me wrong, I do love the club, even the smell of the carpet soaked by years of spilt beer, and the tang of liniment drifting from the locker rooms brings waves of nostalgia from my childhood, but if I’m going to survive Cluanie, there has to be more.

“At least I don’t have to sit there looking like a dick at the rugby club. I know I can hold my own on the field.”

“You’ll hold your own in the quiz team, too.”

“Yeah, right,” he says, and the gloomy look in his eyes makes something tug inside me, seeing how this beautiful, intelligent man thinks so little of himself.

I curse all those people who ever made him think he was anything less because his brain doesn’t work like theirs, or because he learns differently from other people. That includes his bastard of a father. I’m determined to prove them all wrong. This stupid pub quiz is one way I can start .

“We’ll practice,” I say. “There are question sets online. Give me your phone. I left mine in the car.”

He tosses it across and I search for a moment. Geordie grabs at some pillows, props himself up, and crosses his arms across his chest a little belligerently, a less than enthused expression on his face.

“OK, hit me with them.” He exhales a weary sigh.

“Right,” I say, having found the website for the very company The Railway uses for their quiz. These will be perfect. “Question one: What is the main ingredient in guacamole?”

He screws up his nose.

“Avocado. Disgusting. Way too green.”

“Geordie MacDonald, you’re going to get a bloody deficiency disease if you don’t start eating something besides meat and carbs.” I glare at him and he smirks back, totally unashamed of his childish stance on vegetables.

“Nothing deficient about this, is there?” He leans back and spreads his arms wide, his naked body living proof that he might be right.

“Vain bastard,” I scoff. “OK. Next. What is the national animal of Scotland?”

“For fuck’s sake, are you picking out the easy ones just for me?”

“Nope.”

“Unicorn. It’s on the Cluanie R.F.C logo for chrissakes.”

“Exactly,” I say, skipping to the next question. “Which 2014 Taylor Swift album was her first officially labelled as pop rather than country? Oops, I think that’s one for Daisy—who just so happens to be the best damn brow tech I think I’ve ever let loose on these.”

I waggle my brows at him and he laughs, and stretches forward, tracing a long finger across them .

“Beautiful,” he says. “Like every bit of you.”

I’ve never been turned on by someone touching my brows before, but then, it doesn’t even take a touch for Geordie to light me up. When his hand softly drifts down, tracing the contours of my face I melt into it until he’s cupping my cheek. I’m already thinking we should forget the quiz and go back to practising other things. Though we hardly need to, given I’ve been in Geordie’s bedroom every day since he moved in. From his smug face, he’s reading the effects of his caress, and I pull away.

“No distracting me from quiz practice. The answer was 1989, by the way,” I say, going back to the phone. “Which is the only Northern Hemisphere team to have won the Rugby World Cup?”

“England, 2003,” he recites as if that’s the most ridiculously easy question he’s ever heard. I wouldn’t have got it even though I’ve lived and breathed bloody rugby for years. Geordie’s going to be the man for any rugby questions. “Wish I could say Scotland,” he muses. “Maybe one day—”

He jerks his head towards the window as the sound of a car climbing the long driveway drifts up from below. It’s a refined purr, not the diesel rumble of Nathan’s trusty old Land Rover. Geordie stalks over to the window, buck naked, and draws back the curtain. A slant of moonlight highlights his beautiful arse, round and muscled from all that thrusting in the scrum. Perfect for any kind of thrusting, really. It makes me want to grab hold of it and pull him onto me—and into me—again.

“Jesus,” he says. “It’s my father.”

I pull a sheet around me and move to stand, one hand on his shoulder, peering down into the parking area out front of the house. A broad silver Mercedes glides to a halt next to my little BMW roadster, which practically glows as the security lights, triggered by the other car’s arrival, bathe the area below.

The two vehicles couldn’t be more different: Kenneth MacDonald’s sedan, a conservative middle-aged man in a formal dinner jacket, while my expensive gift-to-self is a flamboyant redhead in a sparkly cocktail dress. I’ve begun to regret buying something so distinctive since I started sneaking around with Geordie. I’m sure someone in the neighbourhood will soon note my regular trips up this country road at odd hours of the day and night.

“Crap. What do we do? I can’t exactly pretend I’m not here. I knew we should have done a deal with Nathan for his spot in the garage.”

“What the fuck does he want?” Geordie tenses beneath my hand. “Oh, shit. I hope it isn’t something wrong with Mum. Though surely he’d have phoned.”

Geordie’s phone never leaves his side. What I once considered a vice in myself, I’ve learned to accept in him. Though work claims most of his calls, I understand the deeper truth: he needs to be there for his mum, haunted by what he considers his years of neglect. How could I fault him for that?

He moves to take it from me, but stops as the thunk of the car door closing echoes from below.

“Oh, fuck. No,” he says.

“Fucking hell,” I chime in. There are no other words for it.

Rachel MacDonald, the unmistakable curly golden mane tumbling down her back, stands hands on hips, glaring at my car, a frown on her heart-shaped face, and muttering to herself. From what I know about my friend of nearly thirty years, I don’t need to lipread—she’ll be saying “Fucking hell” too .

In our shock, Geordie and I jostle at the curtain and the movement catches her eye. The security light spotlights Rachel’s upturned face, knotted brows, narrowed lips, and incredulous expression. She looks as if she’s just discovered the Lord Chief Justice skinny dipping in the Thames.

Geordie lets the curtain fall as she strides towards the front steps. “I’ll go,” he says. “I’ll deal with this.”

As the hammering on the door begins, I imagine Rachel’s fists, clenched tight, fingers heavy with gold jewellery rapping on the old wood, demanding entry. I slump on the bed, watching Geordie retrieve his boxer briefs from beneath it.

“No, we both lied to her. We should both be there.”

It’s the last thing I want to do, but I don’t have a choice. I’ve talked to Rachel five times in the past two weeks—five chances to come clean. Even when she brought up the trip to Edinburgh and Geordie, I didn’t bite. Maybe my silence threw her off the scent. But now she’s here, and this is so much worse than if I’d just spat it out.

“Seriously,” he says. “Leave her to me Jenna. At least give me a few minutes with her first. You jump in the shower.”

Nausea rises in my throat, the sour taste of deceit. I might just throw up.

Geordie drags on a set of sweatpants. They slouch low over his hips. He doesn’t bother with a shirt, which is probably unwise. Confronting Rachel with evidence of his recent undress isn’t going to help matters—but we’re in so much shit, it’s probably not worth trying to hide it.

“I’m coming,” he yells, over the pounding on the door. Geordie’s expression isn’t fearful, more pissed off as he charges down the stairs to meet her. I’m glad one of us is feeling brave .

I slip into the tiny ensuite bathroom and turn the shower on full, hoping to drown out what’s happening below. The normally soothing staccato of hot water on my skin does nothing to damp down my worries. I rehearse opening lines for the conversation ahead, but for the first time in my life, words fail me. Ironic—I can polish anyone else’s crisis to a shine, yet fumble in the dark with my own.