Awakened by His Touch (11 page)

‘I wasn’t— I’m not
expecting
anything.’

But that wasn’t anger flushing red over her shirt collar. She liked it. Either the kiss or the exhilaration. Didn’t much matter which. He was just pleased to have finally unravelled a bit more of the mysterious Ms Morgan.

‘Well, you can expect an awesome afternoon on the water. Next stop the Indian Ocean.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘S
ERIOUSLY
,
DUDE
. A blind chick?’

Elliott threw Danny his most withering stare. ‘She’s not a “chick”, Dan. She’s a woman.’

Danny flicked his gaze to where Laney sat, firm-knuckled around
Misfit
’s gunnel, her white shirt blown back tight against her torso. Showcasing every curve. Elliott instantly felt protective of those curves, because she couldn’t see them to know how uncovered they were by either her one-piece swimsuit or the translucent shirt. It felt vaguely wrong to be appreciating them.

‘She sure is.’ Danny grinned. ‘A
blind
woman.’

‘So?’

‘So that’s not your usual type.’

‘That’s the least of the ways Helena Morgan is not my type, Danny.’ He kept his voice low, just in case the laws of physics suddenly decided to change direction and carry their words to her extra-perceptive ears. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is what are you doing? Is this serious? Is it casual? Is it work?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘It matters, mate. If this is work then why is she here, out riding with us? And if this is casual then you might have picked the wrong girl to hit.’

‘She’s blind, Dan, not impaired.’ The vehemence of his own voice surprised him. ‘She’s as capable as any other woman of dealing with something short term.’

‘And that’s what this is? A bit of short-term something?’

No. It wasn’t as seedy as Danny made it sound. He’d thought he knew, but he was starting to doubt his own mind. ‘It’s not anything.’

Yet
—and only if you didn’t count two kisses and the impending promise of more.

‘I wanted to get her off the farm. Have a chance to talk with her in a different context.’

Danny glanced back at him from the wheel of
Misfit
. ‘Why?’

Good question. ‘To see what makes her tick.’

‘Why do you need to know that?’

You didn’t buy a boat with someone if they weren’t a good mate, but that wasn’t something he was prepared to answer honestly to himself, let alone his best friend. ‘Because this job hangs on getting her co-operation.’

Ugh
, when had he become such a good liar?

‘Ah, so it
is
work. Are Ashmore Coolidge cool with you sleeping with your clients?’

‘I’m not
sleeping with her. And the firm trusts me to use my best judgement.’

‘In other words they’re cool with you sleeping with a client if it leads to revenue?’

‘I’m
not
sleeping with her.’

‘Right.’

‘Damn it, Danny—’

‘Hey, I’m just trying to work out if I should bother getting to know her.’

‘She wants to try parasailing. That’s it.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Mmm, what?’

‘Smacks of dirty pool, Elliott. Getting her high on adrenaline and then hitting her up for whatever it is you want.’

Anger bubbled hard and fast just below the place where he usually kept it contained. ‘That’s not what I’m doing. She just wants to experience something new.’

Though wasn’t he? Could he truly say it hadn’t crossed his mind how good a kiss between them would be right after she landed? Or in the air?

Danny eyeballed him. ‘And since when did you become a life coach?’

‘Why are you busting my brass about this?’

‘There’s a blind woman clinging to the front of our boat. That’s not usual, man.’

Elliott’s eyes narrowed and focussed on Laney’s white-knuckled grip on the chrome catch bars that lined the bow. Was that just a secure farm grip...or was she absolutely terrified?

Danny must have read his mind. ‘Is she okay out there?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘What if she falls off?’

Irritation warred with concern. ‘Last time I checked, blindness didn’t affect grip.’

‘But what if she does?’

‘Then she treads water until we circle back and pick her up, like anyone else.’

His friend gaped at him. ‘That’s harsh, man.’

‘She
can’t see
, Danny. She’s not a two-year-old.’

In one
whump
it all hit him—how tired Laney must be of being treated as if she was a child. Or disabled. When she was the least disabled disabled person he’d ever met. How the two sides of her must come into conflict all the time—the independent woman who didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves and the gentle soul who appreciated that everyone truly meant well.

Danny meant well and Elliott wanted to thump him already. ‘Just treat her like anyone else. Except maybe ease up on the ogling.’

‘She can’t see me do it.’

‘No, but I can.’

With that, he swung around the boat’s windshield and manoeuvred his way up to the bow to join Laney. Despite the strong headwinds caused by their speed she either heard his approach or felt his footfalls, because her head tilted towards him just slightly even as her hands tightened even more.

He raised his voice over
Misfit
’s motor. ‘Okay, Laney?’

‘Loving it.’ The wind almost stole her words from him.

He shuffled closer. ‘Your knuckles are looking a little pale...’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t also terrified.’

He slid down next to her and matched her death-grip on the chrome trip rail.

‘I think this is the fastest I’ve ever gone in my life.’

‘Really? I thought for sure Owen would have put the pedal to the metal a time or two out on the back roads.’

‘Yeah, he has. But I didn’t have my head out of the window like Wilbur so it’s not the same. And although I’ve doubled with someone on a horse once it was a shire horse, to take our combined weights, so it didn’t get up a whole lot of speed.’

‘Want us to slow down?’

‘No! This is awesome.’

But her knuckles weren’t getting any pinker, and again he realised how many things she must have done in her life
despite
her fear. And right behind that he realised that she wouldn’t necessarily have been any more or less afraid even if she could see the water whizzing by at one hundred and thirty kilometres per hour.

She tipped her head back and opened her mouth. ‘I love the spray.’

The salt and the speed.

‘It stings.’

‘
Pfff.
This is nothing.’

Her bees
. He chuckled, then raised his voice to be heard. ‘No. I guess not.’

‘So where are we going in such a hurry?’

‘There’s a sandbar east of here. We use that as a launch site.’

‘You don’t lift off from the boat?’

‘Not if we have a choice. And not when we’re doing tandem. It’s easier from terra firma.’

That brought her head around again. ‘We’re going up together?’

‘You think I’m going to send you up alone on your first flight?’

What kind of a man did she think he was?

‘Can it hold two?’

His laugh barked out of him. ‘We’ll find out.’

But she wasn’t laughing.

‘Yes, Laney. It can hold two. And this isn’t optional. You’ve never parasailed before.’

Her frown didn’t ease.

‘Who did you think was going to give you instructions?’

‘I didn’t really think about that. In my head it’s all very...’

‘Organic?’

‘Something like that.’

Misfit
lost speed. ‘Well, you’re about to find out. The sandbar is just ahead of us.’

* * *

‘When you feel my body move, just move with it. Like we’re dancing.’

No. If they were dancing she’d be facing him, respectably, instead of strapped in tight with her back to his big, hard chest. Like upright spooning.

‘And as soon as you feel the upward tug if you don’t think you can run with me then just lift your legs.’

‘And let you do all the work?’

‘The boat is doing all the work, really. I’m just keeping us upright.’

Yeah. That was all he was doing. He wasn’t giving her the experience of her life. He wasn’t keeping her thundering heartbeat in check by his very presence.

He took her again through the basic instructions and then treble-checked the harnesses. Every yank nudged her body closer to his; every buckle-rattle brushed her body with his knuckles. In case she’d forgotten how close together they were standing.

His friend gently revved the boat a way off the sandbar.

‘Ready, Laney? Bend forward.’

Right. Because that wasn’t suggestive
at all
when you were tucked this close to a man.

But she had no choice as his chest and shoulders bent towards her—

‘Now,
run
!’

She did—absolutely determined not to pike out and lift her legs. It took a certain amount of trust to run on unfamiliar terrain, but being strapped to Elliott went a long way to reassuring her that he’d have checked their path for obstacles if for no other reason than his own preservation. His feet ploughed into the sand next to hers—virtually between hers—until the promised yank came, and then another closely after it, and suddenly there was no more sand to plunge her feet into and the harness pulled up taut between her thighs.

And she was running on thin air.

Her stomach didn’t lurch, as she’d half expected, and the only clue that they were ascending was the circulation-restricting pressure of the harness and the gentle whoosh of air diagonally down her face.

‘Danny’s turned on the winch,’ he said, and sure enough, the sounds around them changed as they lifted further and further from the ocean. Less boat, more sky.

‘How far up will we go?’

‘We have two hundred and fifty metres on the winch.’

She knew which hives were a quarter of a kilometre from the house and tried to imagine that in an upward direction. It was tough imagining
high
when you’d never seen it. Or felt it, particularly.

They fell to silence and before too long that was more or less what they had. Even the rumbly engine of
Misfit
and the sounds of the sea were replaced with the sounds of...

‘Nothing,’ she murmured.

‘What?’ Elliott leaned in closer to her ear and the comparative warmth of his breath on her cheek was the first time she’d noticed that her skin was so cool. Even though it was a warm autumn day.

‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so quiet,’ she said, and barely needed to raise her voice. ‘I thought there’d be whooshing.’

‘Danny’s slowed the boat to a gentle run.’

‘Can you describe what you see?’

He could. He did a great job—not quite as good as her talented mother, but not bad for a rookie, and better again than his descriptions of buildings. He talked about the shape of the land, the winding line of the coast. The island off in the distance to their left. Her brain immediately adjusted and added her version of an island to her imagined vista and she nestled into the deepness of his voice.

The cold nip of the air, the complete ambient silence, the amplified sense of altitude that his words had given her—they all had an effect. She swallowed back the emotion.

‘Even the gulls are below us. We’re up with the tradewinds. I’ll let you know if I see an albatross.’

For some reason the very idea of that hit a place deep down inside her where she’d never looked—a place of longing and loss and what would never be—and tears began to trickle from her eyes. She would never see an albatross hanging on the current. And she sure as heck wouldn’t hear it or touch it, so, for her, albatrosses might as well not exist.

‘Laney, are you crying?’

‘No,’ she croaked through thickening tears.

He leaned forward and around as best he could to look at her. ‘Don’t cry.’

All that did was open the floodgates.

‘It’s not crying,’ she sobbed—though what exactly
was
it? ‘It’s appreciation. Thank you, Elliott. I might never have had a chance to do this.’

Just above her head he shuffled something and freed up one gloved hand. He used it to stroke some loose damp hair away from her face. ‘You’re welcome. Just enjoy the view.’

He said that as if he meant every word, and she wondered if he finally
understood
how she worked. Because she
did
have a view—just as real as his. She just didn’t see it the way he did.

Their flight—their silence—seemed to go on for eternity. Laney took to wiggling her toes against the cold, and to make sure she had some circulation still happening in legs compromised by the tightness of the harness. She was going to have to run again when they landed, and she didn’t want to be the one to send them both plunging face-first into the sandbar.

‘So...’ he started, still so close behind her. ‘How are you feeling about the prospect of more between Morgan’s and Ashmore Coolidge?’

‘Really? You want to talk about that
now
?’

‘Well, we’re up here for a while. You want to talk about that kiss instead?’

Ah...no. Not while she was pressed this close to him. She was likely to tip her head back and go for a repeat performance.

‘I’m not sure my feelings about growth have changed at all.’

‘You still don’t trust me?’

His voice was like one of her favourite wines. Full-bodied with things unsaid, but carrying undertones of something more subtle—defensiveness, hurt.

‘It’s not a question of trust. It’s a question of need. I was honest with you when I said I didn’t see a need for Morgan’s to grow. Why would that have changed just because I’ve shown you a few things?’

‘The research?’

‘I can see merit in that but I don’t think giving access to a few researchers is the level of growth Ashmore Coolidge is thinking of, somehow.’

‘No. You’re right. We have our sights set much higher.’

And by ‘we’ he meant ‘he’.

‘I don’t want you to be disappointed, Elliott. That you’ve wasted so much time.’

‘It’s not a waste, Laney. I’ve met you.’

Her heart lurched, but it was easy to blame it on the sudden dip of the parachute. Far below Danny must have given
Misfit
a burst of speed, because they lifted again almost immediately.

‘And I’ve met your parents and completed Morgan’s biennial health check.’