Chapter Seventeen
“I don’t get why he still doesn’t like me. Dogs like me.” Viv complained after Ross refused to let her feed Salsa the fat off the raw steaks.
“It’s because you’re an imposter.”
“But how can he tell? I wear my twin’s clothes. I even wear the same deodorant. We’re exactly the same.”
“You’re nothing alike, not really.” Ross thought about it. “You radiate a different energy from your sister,” he said. “I never look at Meredith and want to—” He concentrated on turning the steaks on the barbecue.
Viv finished chopping up a second chicken patty for Harry who’d demolished the first in record speed. “Wring her neck?”
“That’s right,” Ross said easily. He was barbecuing under the overhang of the deck. Harry and Viv sat at the trestle table using a sun umbrella to protect them from the rain. Harry was in hog heaven, shoveling down bits of chicken patty with one hand, the other thrust outside the umbrella, palm up to catch raindrops.
Engulfed in Ross’s black leather jacket, collar upturned to frame her face Viv looked as sexy as hell as she took every opportunity to spoon peas into Harry’s mouth. Ross forced his attention to the barbecue.
He wasn’t sure how they’d ended up here. Except when she’d cried, he’d had to comfort her. Regardless of how he felt about her actions, her motives were always pure. Purer than his.
“You were pretty keen on wringing my twin’s neck at Linda’s,” she reminded him.
“Any neck would have done. Your sister’s happened to be the closest.”
The sound of gunfire drew his attention inside. Tilly was engrossed in watching another of his SAS DVDs. Viv followed his gaze. “Have you told her that selection isn’t open to women?”
“Hell, no. I’m too scared.” He checked the steaks and turned them. A jet of flame roared through the grill as fat dripped onto the gas burner. “Why don’t you encourage her into your line of work,” he suggested. “It seems cutthroat enough to suit her.”
Viv laughed, “Ain’t that the truth.” Ross raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been on the shortlist for a remake of Kiss Me, Kate starring Anne Hathaway and Johnny Depp. I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure I’ve missed out on the job.”
“Only ninety-nine point nine percent?”
“The producer said they’d notify the successful applicant by the fifth.” She shrugged. “That was four days ago.” She accepted raindrops from Harry’s cupped hand. “Thank you.”
“So phone. Find out,” Ross suggested.
“In our industry, it’s very much a matter of don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
“I said that,” he reminded her. “And you ignored me.”
“No.” Viv shook her head. “Phoning now smacks of desperation. I’m supposed to be the much-sought-after Vivienne Jansen.”
“Which makes it even more impressive when you ask how you can improve your chances next time. I’m guessing you want there to be a next time?”
Viv accepted another raindrop from Harry. “You’re right,” she said at last, “and it stops me fretting about it. Watch the baby?” Retrieving her cell from her jeans, she keyed in a number. “Hello, Sue. It’s Viv Jansen. Listen, I realize you must have chosen someone else for the Depp/ Hathaway project but…” Her voice faded as she disappeared inside the house.
“Iv?” said Harry.
“She’s coming back, mate.” Harry offered Ross a raindrop with a big smile. Chicken patty dotted his face like smallpox.
Ross returned the grin. It was good seeing the kids, good seeing Viv, now they’d finalized boundaries.
He plated the meat. “C’mon, mate, let’s go inside. It’s too wet to finish a meal here.”
“No.”
“I can hear a helicopter on TV…”
Harry held out his arms. Ross cleaned him off, scooped him up and took him inside with the meat platter, dumping him by his sister. “Dinner’s ready in five, Til.” He found Viv sitting at the dining table. She glanced up, dazed.
“Sue said she’s been calling. Merry gave her the cell number last Tuesday but of course I’ve had a new one since the cereal bowl incident.” She frowned distractedly. “I don’t understand why I wouldn’t have got the emails, though, the address was correct.”
“Have you checked your spam folder?”
“When have I had a chance to do that?”
“Well, at least you know now.” Ross put the meat on the table. “I’m sorry, Viv.”
She stared at him blankly, then laughed. “You don’t understand. The reason they’ve been trying to contact me so urgently is because I’ve got the job.”
He grinned. “You’re kidding.”
Her face wreathed in smiles, she stood up. “They were about to give up on me because they hadn’t heard from me. Ross, thank you.” She made a slight movement toward him then stopped, obviously wary of another rejection. So he hugged her, a brief hard embrace that he tried to keep detached from and couldn’t. “Congratulations.”
Tilly was impressed by the news. Though she couldn’t imagine anything worse than being a princess like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, “other than having an army.” she’d loved Depp as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “D’you think he’ll still have chocolate left, you know from the movie—I still have Easter eggs an’ it’s September.”
When they sat to eat, Viv hardly touched her meal, she was too excited…relating funny anecdotes of off, off, off-Broadway stage productions from her early days. And Ross could tell she was itching to text everybody. “It would be bad etiquette at the table,” she said when he suggested it.
Ross laughed. “Yeah, and we’re really worried about etiquette tonight. Harry’s covered in custard, your niece is chewing with her mouth open and you’re feeding Salsa under the table…don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“No, the virtual world can wait,” she said firmly. “Right now, I’m celebrating with you guys.”
Ross hesitated. “I have a bottle of champagne somewhere,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
“Not if you’re saving it for something special.”
“This is special enough.”
Excusing himself he went to the kitchen. At the back of a cupboard he found the Krug he’d put aside to celebrate the day he officially rejoined his unit. “Not chilled,” he told Viv on his return, “and we’ll have to drink it out of wineglasses but it is champagne.”
“Can I have some?” Tilly said.
“Sure.” He poured a tiny sip for her.
“Me!” said Harry. “Me.”
Solemnly, Ross handed Harry his water.
Tilly giggled. “But that’s just—”
Ross raised his glass. “To your clever auntie.”
They all chinked glasses, Viv helping Harry, a sparkle in her eyes.
Tilly choked on hers. “But this is horrible,” she said, dismissing his $180 wine, then looked at her goblet and brightened. “Auntie Viv, you can do your party trick. The one with the cartwheel.”
“After dinner,” Viv promised. “I’ll need to limber up first. Ross, this is delicious. What is it?”
He refilled her glass. “Some import.”
They used the cartwheel as leverage to talk Tilly into an early bedtime. Ross rolled back the rug in the living room while Viv did stretches. The kids sat on the couch, wide-eyed in their pajamas. It had stopped raining, but there was enough of a chill in the air to warrant a fire and it cast a red glow on their expectant faces.
Tilly had supervised the refilling of the glass to three-quarters because she wanted to make it tricky but not too tricky, she’d informed them. After two glasses of Krug, Viv seemed to be finding it hard to drum up the necessary gravitas. Ross joined the kids on the couch, mimicked a drumroll and got an elbow in the ribs from his niece. “Shush!”
Her aunt choked down a laugh.
“Here we go,” she said, and holding the glass steady, did a perfect one-handed cartwheel around it, her long hair sweeping the floor through the turn.
She landed neatly, and Tilly scrambled out of the couch to check the level in the glass. “None spilled,” she announced, and everyone clapped.
The firelight caught Viv’s eyes as she laughed, her flushed cheeks and disheveled hair, and Ross realized that even his iron will could be melted by laughter.
* * *
Viv walked into the kitchen where she found Ross settling Salsa on a blanket in the corner. “The kids are waiting for a good-night from you.”
“Coming.” With a final pat for the dog, he handed her the glass of champagne Viv set down after her cartwheel.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked. Friends, just friends. But she was happy and relaxed and a little high from the alcohol and Ross was so gorgeous she kept forgetting not to flirt with him. Still, he’d made it plain she was safe and she’d switched off her danger radar.
“It’s not as if this stuff keeps,” he said, disappearing down the hall. “I’ll have a glass, too.”
Viv looked at Salsa. Salsa looked at her. “I don’t suppose you’d let me pat…” The dog stared her down. “No, of course not.”
Pouring Ross’s champagne, she nearly dropped the bottle when she noticed the Krug Grand Cuvee label and realized how kind he’d been. Reminding herself he wasn’t interested, Viv returned to the living room.
The first thing she noticed was that he’d already laid out bedding for the pull-out couch. Unconsciously she sighed, then put the glasses on the bookcase and stoked the fire since it was plainly the only thing going to keep her warm tonight.
As she picked up her glass again, her gaze fell on the spine of the book behind it. Overcoming Impotence.
Viv froze. No, it must mean something else. Impotence in the boardroom perhaps or impotence in the kitchen? With a quick check over her shoulder she pulled it out of the bookshelf. Coming to terms with Erectile Dysfunction.
“The kids want you again.”
Viv pivoted, fumbling to hide the book behind her back.
“Find some bedtime reading?”
“No.” Her hands tightened convulsively on the paperback. She summoned a smile. “Go tell those brats to quit stalling.”
Instead he came closer. “What have you got there?”
With a terrible sense of inevitability she realized there was no avoiding this. “I do have a book but…well…this is a little awkward.” Why had she said that? Cheeks hot, she brought it forward.
Ross’s attention went to the cover and his face lost all expression.
“Of course it’s probably not yours.”
“It’s mine.”
Viv wished the floor would open up and swallow her. “If I’d had any idea, Ross, I wouldn’t have kissed you…or propositioned you earlier.” Now she sounded like a sexual predator. “Would you want to…talk about it?”
His cool gaze lifted. “Not much point, no pun intended.”
A nervous laugh bubbled up in her and Viv bit her cheek and tried to think of puppies dying. “It would only have been a disappointment anyway.”
Realizing what she’d implied she added hastily, “The reality could never live up to my eight-year-old fantasy.” Damn the champagne for loosening her tongue. In trying to save his feelings, she’d only exposed her own.
“You’ve fancied me for eight years?” he said.
“I’ll go check on the kids.” All thumbs, she jammed the paperback into the bookcase and left the room. She settled the children quickly, not wanting Ross to think she was embarrassed and hiding. Viv scrambled for an innocuous subject as she returned and her eyes fell on the champagne bottle. “Ross, I had no idea you’d opened a Krug…let me reimburse you for it.”
“Viv, relax. I’m impotent, not impoverished.”
“Right, yes. I wasn’t suggesting—”
“Let’s just enjoy it.”
“Good idea.” She took a large sip, then another. He didn’t look ill at ease, lounging on the couch, glass in hand, gazing into the fire.
“I’m glad my condition’s in the open,” he said. “We can relax now.”
“Yes.” She settled in the armchair. “Is it—”
“But we won’t talk about it.”
“No.”
So they discussed her new job.
Was the impotence permanent or temporary?
Talked about a possible design for a specialist bookcase.
The result of his injuries from the ambush?
He told her about Muriwai’s gannet colony.
Is that why his relationship with the blonde ended?
For a wild moment, Viv wondered if she could help Ross overcome his disability, but common sense told her that someone nervously prone to laugh at awkward moments when empathy and encouragement were called for, wasn’t up to the job, no pun intended.
Besides, she didn’t have any expertise in being a patient lover. Uninterested in the softer emotions, sex was strictly for fun and she was perfectly happy with a mutual gallop to an orgasm. Viv didn’t want to be held afterward, or reassured or cherished. And she didn’t expect—or encourage—lovers to make the experience any more meaningful than the enjoyment of an excellent meal or a good movie.
Still, by the time she’d drunk another half flute of champagne she was nearly brave enough to try. Nearly.
Ross leaned forward and threw a log on the fire, then adjusting the cushions and stretched full-length on the couch. “When you asked in the weight room if I’d ever imagined what it would be like?” He watched the dancing shadows on the ceiling. “You meant the sex.”
Viv snapped upright “If I’d known—”
“Yeah,” he said. “I did imagine.”
A smart woman would stop him now. Viv remained silent
“We’d leave the wedding separately to avoid gossip, even feigning surprise when we met in front of the hotel elevators. While we waited, we’d exchange small talk but as soon as the elevator door closed, I’d pull all the pins out of your hair—because I’d seen you tug at them through the service—and then I’d draw you close and kiss you.”
Viv held her breath.
“The kiss starts slow as we learn the shape of each other’s mouth, find the perfect fit, and then gets deeper.” His voice dropped to a husky timbre. A shiver went down her spine. “I push down the straps on your girly bridesmaid dress and peel the bodice down to your waist and take my time getting acquainted with your breasts.”
She struggled to breathe. “In the elevator?”
“You’d trust me to slide it up again before we reached our floor,” he said, a smile on his lips. “Anyway, you wouldn’t be worrying about that because you’d be focused on how good my mouth felt tonguing your nipples and wishing my hands would slip under the satin skirt and find skin.”
Her nipples hardened. She stirred restlessly on the chair.
“In your hotel room—” Ross put one hand behind his head, and his T-shirt revealed a tantalizing strip of iron-hard muscle “—we’d lose the dress and, that cute little pink G-string I caught a flash of when you did your one-handed cartwheel.”
“I didn’t think the skirt would fall that far,” she confessed.
“And I’d get you naked, except for the stilettos, which make your legs even more incredible than they already are. We’d stop being polite with each other,” he said slowly, “and get a little wild.”
Viv stopped breathing again.
Ross turned his head, and his silver-gray eyes gleamed in the firelight. “You need a refill.”
It was so not what she expected him to say that Viv blinked. “What?” Dazed she looked at her empty glass. She’d drained it.
“Let me take care of that for you.” Swinging his legs off the couch, Ross picked up the champagne bottle and emptied the dregs into her glass, so close she could almost see a second hand on his five o’clock shadow above that lush, full mouth, so close she got a hit of his scent, pine and male. She made a helpless sound in her throat and swayed closer.
“This isn’t too difficult for you, is it?” he asked. “My therapist said talking without any pressure attached to performing might help.”
Viv sat back, digging her nails into the armchair. “No,” she rasped. Grateful for the loose sweatshirt that hid her nipples.
He stayed where he was, elbows resting on knees, within reach, as he gazed into the fire. She was helpless to look away.
“Where was I?”
She swallowed. “We were getting wild.”
“Oh, yeah.” His eyes darkened. “I imagined touching you, everywhere, and you touching me.” She could see them vividly in her mind’s eye.
“And maybe my fingers would be a little roughened through soldiering,” he said, “but I’d be gentle, taking my time.” She nearly whimpered. He smiled at some private thought. “So much time that you’d get impatient because you’re a ‘want it when I want it’ kind of girl, used to being in charge. But with me, you’d want it to last, want the slow, sweet, torturous buildup to penetration, want to wait until I whispered, ‘Part your legs for me.’ And when it happened, when I finally slid into you—”
Viv shot to her feet “Ross, I can’t talk about this anymore,” she said in a strangled voice, unable to look at him. “I’m sorry, I’d love to be helpful but…”
If you keep talking like this I’ll spontaneously combust.
“…the kids get up so early and it’s late.”
“Viv.”
Reluctantly, she met his limpid gaze.
“Did I turn you on?”
“No, I mean, yes, but it’s my fault I’m obviously insensitive or very sensitive depending on how you…” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m so sorry.” With a contrite expression, he pulled her onto his lap and she felt his body heat through her jeans and suffered another painful surge of lust. His breath tickled her cheek as he stroked a strand of hair off her face. “How can I fix it? A mug of cocoa, maybe?”
Viv shifted to get comfortable and suddenly registered why there wasn’t as much room as there should be. Instinctively her hand sought verification. He was hard, hot and definitely primed to go.
Ross looked into her eyes. His own gleamed. “It’s a miracle,” he said humbly.
“You bastard.” Viv shoved hard on his lap to stand up, but though he winced he didn’t release her.
“It was a present from your new sister-in-law, Jo. Long story.”
She shoved again—harder—and he let her go.
“You tortured me as a joke.”
“No. I used a white lie as foreplay.”
“A white lie’s not supposed to benefit you.”
“So you got nothing out of it?”
She crossed her arms over her tight nipples. “Nothing.”
“Then come over here and I’ll make sure you do.”
She could hardly breathe when he looked at her like that, firelight shifting across his lethal smile. Dangerous. Too dangerous?
“We’re on different sides,” Viv hedged.
“Yeah.”
“Charlie…Merry…Dan…no one will like it.”
“Which is why we won’t tell them.”
She had a pang of disquiet. “Is this about paying Dan back, Ross?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said. “It’s about how you can charm me with a one-handed cartwheel. You’ve been screwing with my concentration, my brain and my sleep for days and it’s got to stop. So I figure if we can’t defuse the bomb we’ll detonate it under controlled conditions.”
“But—”
“You know, if you keep throwing up objections, you’ll spoil the moment.”
“What moment?”
“This one,” he said, and smiled.
Viv started to say something flippant, then stopped. Something in Ross’s eyes made her feel exposed, even vulnerable.
He registered her sudden disquiet. “Or we can say goodnight.”
Viv wavered. Who was she kidding? She wanted him. She’d always wanted him. What harm was there if she was leaving? A small inner voice started answering that question and she shut it down. Like he said, don’t spoil the moment. “In my fantasy,” she said, “you weren’t wearing anything.”
Ross grinned and stood up, sweeping off his T-shirt in a graceful movement that lifted his ribs and tightened his washboard stomach.
Oh. Soldier.
Tossing it aside, he unzipped his jeans, let them fall, stepped free and kicked them aside. He stood there in his navy boxers. Viv’s knees went weak and she gripped the chair for support. Hooking a thumb over the waistband of his shorts, he cruised in the direction of his bedroom. In the deep shadows away from the firelight, she caught a glimpse of prime male ass as the boxers hit the floor outside the door.
Viv sucked in a deep, deep breath. They were really, truly, finally going to do this.
On unsteady legs she followed and found Ross propped on one elbow on top of the covers, the bedside lamp providing all the light a woman needed to find her way. “Yep,” she managed. “Just like my fantasy.”
His lips curved. “Then what happened?”
“I was naked, too.” With clumsy hands, she pulled off the sweatshirt, unfastened her jeans. As a costume designer she was comfortable with nudity, as a woman she was acutely conscious that she was revealing herself to a man whose body was his temple and who’d once dated a woman with abs. Her figure might be slim and toned from yoga but it wasn’t muscled and on a menu her breasts definitely fit under the appetizer category.
She’d never cared about this stuff before and, annoyed that she did now, Viv adopted a clichéd pose, hand on one out-thrust hip, and said, “Ta-daaa.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, “where’ve you been all my life?”
Viv forgot her pose and smiled.
And it was easy, so easy to walk to the bed, and lie beside him, not touching, but close enough to exchange body heat.
He leaned forward to kiss her but she resisted. “And then,” she whispered, “in my fantasy I touched you.” Lightly she ran her fingertips across his collarbone, down to a pec, circled around a nipple and watched it harden. “I followed my hand,” she said huskily, “with my mouth.”
His eyes darkened. Leaning forward, Viv pressed her lips to his warm flesh and dotted kisses over the sparse silky hair of his chest until she reached a nipple. Ross’s ribs swelled in a sharp inhale as her teeth closed gently over it. Viv lifted her head. “How’s my fantasy working for you so far?”
He made a sound between a groan and a laugh. “It’s working.”
Her fingers brushed across his ribs to navel and belly, tracing his scars with tenderness, following the arrow of hair to his groin. She closed a hand around him. “Definitely cured…and of course where the fingers go, the lips follow…”
Viv kissed her way down each rib, teased his navel then lay her cheek on his abs, mere inches from his erection, pulsing in her hand. “Ross?” she said, making sure he felt the heat of her breath.
“Viv?” he ground out.
One last gentle breath of air then she released her hold on his cock, and nipped her way up his body to smile into his dazed eyes. “Mine was a revenge fantasy—for making me wait eight years, you son of a bitch,” she said sweetly.
His gaze cleared. With a chuckle he hauled her on top of him and kissed her until she forgot payback fantasies. And Ross touched where he said he’d touch and the skin on his fingers was rough, but his caresses achingly gentle. And she cried out as she came under his exquisite exploratory touch, and then again around his heat, an orgasm that was savage and fast for both of them.
Ross rolled off her and they eyed each other sheepishly across the pillows, and then Viv started to laugh. The release of tension after all these years of wanting him was so breathtaking, so splendid, such a hilarious anticlimax after such an astonishing climax.
Her laughter ignited his and they ended up laughing so long and hard they had to use the sheet to wipe away tears. “In my defense,” Ross said when he could speak, “it has been more than eighteen months since I last did this.”
“You’ve been celibate that long?” Viv suffered a pang of unease because it gave their lovemaking more meaning than she was comfortable with. So the blonde in the photo on the mantel was Terri? The one he’d been dating at the time of the ambush and unceremoniously dumped, according to Dan. But Viv suddenly knew exactly why he’d cut her loose.
“How’s your ex-girlfriend doing on the triathlete circuit?” she asked casually.
“First place in the world champs last year,” he said proudly.
“I hope you take some credit for that,” she said, and felt him tense as he realized the trap she’d laid for him.
“If you want to make it as an elite athlete, you have to be single-minded,” he said testily. “All I did was free her to make the most of her opportunities.”
“Speaking of opportunities, I’ll give you ten minutes’ recovery and then we’re doing it again.”
Under her cheek, the muscles of his chest relaxed as Ross chuckled. The Iceman figured his reputation as a hard man was still intact, but Viv knew she’d never think of him the same again.
“I only need five,” he said.