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What felt like hours later she was finally naked and her muscles utterly slack, her legs floating in front of her as she used Alex like a lilo. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so relaxed. The tiredness swamped her—the long months of hard work and heartbreak as she’d cared for her slowly dying mother were finally taking their toll. The devastation at her father’s callous abuse of them. What kind of person stole at a time like that?
Dani would give anything to have her back. Just anything. But there was nothing she could do. Except the one last thing she’d asked. Maybe she could bring peace to her mother’s final rest—and peace for herself.
She was too tired, too desperate, not to take the help Alex had offered. Her pride in her independence had to be shelved. ‘What you said yesterday…’
‘About the investigator?’
She felt the reverberations in his chest as he spoke—even as softly as he had—and felt reassured by the solid strength of him.
‘Yes.’
His wide palms stroked down her upper arms. ‘You don’t have to tell me about it. I can just make the appointment for you.’
She smiled sadly. He was offering her privacy, offering her help, but she wanted to share it now—it was a burden that had got too heavy for her, but that would be nothing to him. ‘My mother had a son eight years before she had me. Here in New Zealand. She named him Eli. She adopted him out.’
‘And you want to find him.’
She nodded. ‘We’ve never met. He doesn’t know I exist. I only found out about him just before she died. I only have the vaguest details and I’ve tried, but I can’t get anywhere.’
‘You don’t have any other family, do you?’
She shook her head—none that she recognised.
‘The PI will help.’ Alex sounded all CEO certain. ‘We’ll call him tonight.’
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘They work all hours.’
Like him. Unless he was in party mode. ‘Shouldn’t you be going out somewhere?’
‘Nowhere else I’d rather be than here.’
Dani rested her head back on his chest and smiled at his hot-chocolate-smooth words—he always had the right answers, didn’t he? But now, having told him about her search, she felt her exhaustion quadruple. She closed her eyes.
‘Don’t worry, Dani.’ She heard him from a distance. ‘We’ll find him for you.’
CHAPTER NINE
DANI looked up at Alex’s deep sigh.
He’d laid his cutlery down and his smile curved lopsidedly. ‘We have to go out tonight.’
‘We do?’ She nearly choked on her last mouthful. He’d picked her up from work bang on time, spun her in his arms the minute they got to the top of the stairs of his house, kissed her while walking them through to the kitchen and made the most of the big bench. When they’d finally come up for air and done their clothes back up, they’d sat down to dinner. All she wanted to do now was fall into bed—and play some more.
Yesterday had been divine—according to Alex the ‘day of rest’ meant no getting out of bed all day. In between the ferocious sex they’d dozed, she’d read the newspapers, he tapped on his laptop and they’d snacked on whatever they could find in the fridge. She was still hot from it—and exhausted in equal measure.
‘Drinks with the charity divas. It won’t take long but I need to put in an appearance.’
‘I don’t, though.’
‘Yes, you do, you’re the newest employee and they’re all very keen to meet you. Besides, you’re my excuse to leave early. You’ll have a headache.’
‘What? No way. You can have your own headache.’ She watched him clear the plates. ‘Do we have to dress up?’ She didn’t want to take up his offer to buy her some clothes—an offer he’d repeated in the guise of a loan—but the fact was, apart from a few work skirts and shirts and her one little black dress, it was jeans and tee and that was it.
‘Casual is fine.’
But after a quick shower she put on one of her quality cotton work shirts, tucking it into her jeans and securing them with a belt. She pulled on her boots instead of the trainers she preferred to jog round in when she was doing ‘casual’. Her casual and his casual were two quite different things. As a last touch she slid in the clip he’d given her the night of the dance. There were a couple of other women in jeans, Dani noted when they got there, but their jeans were designer.
It was a much smaller gathering than the dinner had been, much more informal and much more intimidating. The dinner had been too busy and too loud for any real in-depth conversation with anyone. This was more like appearing in front of a selection panel for an elite club. She was sure she was being judged—and that she was failing.
Alex held her hand and she was grateful for that because, beneath the tastefully mascaraed lashes, she was getting a few scarily close looks. The princesses of society all seemed to have gathered together and now they inspected her with barely veiled curiosity. She made her head stay up high; she would not drop it and stare at the floor. But she was nothing like them—she didn’t have the breeding, the elite education, the looks, definitely not the wardrobe. His fingers gripped hers tighter and she sensed him looking at her.
She met the look and murmured softly in his ear, ‘How many of the women in this room have you slept with?’
‘Not even a tenth of how many you’re thinking.’ He lifted her hand to his chest, pressing it against the fine merino sweater so she could feel the steady beat of his heart, and grinned broadly at her. ‘Not feeling insecure, are you?’
‘Oh, no.’ Hers was going machine-gun-style.
He grinned. ‘They just want to get to know you.’
More like they just wanted her out of the way so they could get to him. Now she understood why his arrogance was so innate. People thought he was wonderful—they just about bowed and scraped as he made his way across the room. And now they were doing the same for her—granting her a kind of power just because of her perceived association with him. Except for her they had sharp eyes, even sharper smiles. She didn’t fit in and they knew it.
She looked around desperately as Alex chatted to an older couple. Another jeans-clad woman stood across the room, alone and on the outer. The thoughts so readable on her face mirrored the ones inside Dani—she wanted to get the hell out of there.
Dani murmured an ‘excuse me’ and walked towards her, ignoring Alex’s movement to keep her close.
‘Hello,’ Dani introduced herself to the woman. ‘I’m Dani.’
‘Sara.’ The woman smiled shyly. ‘It’s my first time.’
‘Me too.’ Dani gave her a look and both their smiles went wider. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I’m representing one of the charities the fund is considering supporting. I’m doing a presentation at next week’s board meeting and they invited me along tonight so I could meet some of the board members. To break the ice.’
Well, the ice was shatterproof in some corners of the room.
‘Tell me about your charity.’ Dani grinned. ‘You can practise on me.’
It was so nice to talk about someone and something else for five minutes. Dani was tired of smiling and ‘mmming’ and ‘ahhing’ and trying not to give her secrets away. They took a drink from a passing waiter and bonded.
Every so often Alex would glance across to her and she saw the keen question in his eye—not so much an ‘are you OK?’ kind of caring question, but a ‘what are you up to?’ keen observance. She turned her back on him and made herself relax. Another charity worker joined them, then another, and they found chairs and talked about their projects.
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‘How’s your head, Dani?’ Alex bobbed down behind her seat and enquired—all seeming solicitude.
‘It’s fine.’ She smiled brightly, deliberately missing the message in his eyes. ‘Honestly, that delicious dinner really seemed to do the trick. I feel so much better than I did an hour or so ago.’
She turned back to Sara and the other women sitting beside her and smiled. ‘So tell me more.’
Sara’s cheeks were deep pink as she looked from Dani to Alex and back again. ‘Are you sure you have time?’
‘I have all the time in the world.’ Dani looked up and smiled sweetly at the tall man towering beside her. ‘Don’t I?’
‘Of course.’ His smile was set charm, then he walked off.
Dani beamed at Sara, savouring the moment—she did like to tease him.
Another half-hour passed and she was engrossed in conversation. Well, almost engrossed—her Alex-radar was as on as ever. She was aware of him watching her almost stalkerlike. And she lifted her head when he approached again—with unmistakable purpose.
‘I’m very sorry to interrupt, Dani—’ Alex broke through the circle of chairs and held his hand out to her ‘—but it really is time for us to go.’
‘You haven’t met Sara—’
‘Alex Carlisle.’ Alex immediately turned and took Sara’s hand instead. Shaking it briefly. Then he wrapped his arm around Dani’s shoulders and literally hauled her to her feet.
‘I’m sorry I’ve talked at you all evening.’ Sara stood too.
‘Not at all,’ Dani reassured her with a genuine grin. ‘I really enjoyed hearing about it.’
He didn’t drag the goodbyes to the hostess and Dani was so amused by his impatience she was able to rise above the cool nods she got from some of the queens.
Outside they walked to where he’d parked.
‘You meant it, didn’t you?’ Alex unlocked the car.
‘Meant what?’
‘That you enjoyed hearing about Sara’s work.’
Dani slid into the seat. ‘So what if I did?’
His smile broadened. ‘And you can be so nice to people. So social.’
