‘Try me.’
He paused. Looked at her. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. ‘Forget it, Kate.’ One of those infuriating smiles that meant nothing. ‘It’s not germane. And—Ah, the intercom. Better go let your sister in.’
If Shay and Rick were surprised to find a man at Kate’s they didn’t show it. And Scott—well, he was all smooth charm. But in that closed-off, keep your distance way. A way that made Shay, who was unusually perceptive, narrow her eyes at him.
As Shay and Rick went to get the girls there was silence.
Kate racked her brain for a way to break it—a way to break through the sudden wall of reserve that was between them.
But in the end Scott was the one to break the silence. ‘So, Kate, I owe you.’ He reached in his pocket for his wallet.
‘Wh—What?’
‘Money for the pizza.’ He handed over some notes.
Kate stared at the money in her hand as he returned his wallet to his pocket. ‘Scott…?’
‘Fifty-fifty, remember?’ he said with a meaningless smile. ‘And now I’d better hit the ro—’
He broke off as Rick and Shay reappeared, carrying Maeve and Molly, who were drowsy and tousled and lovable.
Kate kissed the girls. And then watched, fascinated, as they each in turn leaned towards Scott for him to kiss them too. She saw Scott blush as he did so. The cool reserve was gone for those few moments, replaced by something perilously close to tenderness.
Scott…and children.
Something he couldn’t have because he never stayed with a woman long enough? Or because he was a Knight. Or…or what?
Shay, won over in that instant, smiled at him, and Scott blushed again.
And then Kate and Scott were alone again, and she wondered what was going to happen next. Given the way he’d kissed her out on the terrace, by rights she should have been flat against the door with Scott all over her the moment it closed behind her family…but Kate had a feeling that was not going to happen.
Scott took her face between his hands and she waited, breathless and curious.
‘You’re so beautiful, Kate,’ he said, but that fact didn’t seem to make him happy.
He leaned close, put his forehead on hers and just stopped. Not moving, not even breathing.
Kate wanted so badly to wrap her arms around him and tell him everything would be all right, even though she didn’t know what was wrong. But she stayed exactly as she was. Soaking in this moment where nothing happened, nothing changed.
And then Scott released her, stepped back. Smiled one of those smiles that didn’t reach his eyes.
‘I hope you appreciate that I did not kiss you then,’ he said. ‘Please note for future reference that I am capable of obeying the rules. No kissing if it isn’t going to lead to sex, right?’
‘But I thought—’
‘I just—I just think I’d better go home tonight.’
‘But you can still go home tonight. I mean, after…’
But at the look on his face—closed-off, determined—Kate forced herself to stop. She wasn’t going to beg. Not any man. Ever. And especially not this one, who was already running rings around her in every possible way.
Ring-running. For her own mental health, it was going to have to stop.
So she smiled, as remote as he was. ‘Yeah, we’re over our target, right?’
‘Right,’ Scott said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then—new week, new target.’
‘Not tomorrow,’ Kate said.
‘But you said Sunday.’
‘And now I’m saying no.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘That sounds like pique, Kate. And we don’t have room for pique in our contract.’
‘No, we don’t have any allowances for pique in our contract, Scott,’ she said, very cool. ‘This is not pique. I wasn’t expecting you tonight—as you know very well. I was, in fact, planning to do some work once I’d put the girls to bed. Now I have to play catch-up tomorrow. So thank you.’
‘Ouch. I’m going to need that stapler,’ Scott said.
Then with a mock salute he was gone.
Kate looked at the door, wondering exactly what had happened out there on the terrace.
She crossed her arms against a chill premonition that things between them were not going to work out the way either of them expected.
THE NEXT MORNING Scott was back at Rushcutters Bay, his finger frozen just short of the intercom buzzer, wondering what the hell he was doing.
Kate had made it clear she was going to be busy today, doing the work she’d planned to do the previous night if not for his inconvenient arrival. Code—and not exactly secret—for I don’t want to see you.
And yet here he was, trying to work out how to charm his way into her apartment, how to apologise for the way he’d run away last night. The way he kept running away.
But how did you tell someone you’d run because you were in too deep and wanted to pull back—even as you were fronting up for more?
He hadn’t intended to see her last night after she’d sent that irritatingly dismissive email about babysitting, but…well, he’d wanted to see her, dammit!
And he’d also known that if he didn’t see her he’d be looking down the barrel of another sleepless night. Because his frazzled brain kept circling round and around everything that had happened on Thursday night, urging him to prove to himself that the way he’d been feeling was a one-off, all caught up in the unforeseen angst of the occasion—Hugo; that shared moment when they’d both just got it; his winning—winning! That was why he’d smiled at her—okay, he smiled a lot…he even smiled at her a lot…but not like that. And that explained the sex too—so straighty one-eighty that it should not have seared him like a barbecued steak, and yet it had been on fire, plated up, skip the garnish, delicious.
So, yeah, last night, he’d intended to prove the one-offness of it all to himself. To turn up off-schedule, joke about Valentine’s Day, dazzle her with a little light-hearted banter, with the girls there to run interference and put the kybosh on anything emotional. Then they’d have sex in a manner in keeping with their contract—he’d thought of something highly technical that would mean they’d have to concentrate on not breaking a bone, so no time for losing themselves in the moment—and voilà: back to normal. Head back in the right place, heart untouched.
No watching her sleep or tracing his finger over her eyebrow, no sniffing her damned perfume when he was alone in her bathroom. None of that creepy stuff.
But instead his dumbass brain had started shooting off on tangents until he’d started thinking about kids. Redheaded, grey-eyed kids. How it would be to bring up kids the Cleary way, with people flinging gooey clumps of love at you—not the Knight way, where you had to prove yourself every damned day just to get a frosty nod. And then had come the blinding knowledge that he’d have to be married to the mother of his kids, so maybe the Cleary way would never work for him.
And then it had hit him that he was really, actually, contemplating fatherhood. Fatherhood! Him!
In too deep—caring too much—needing more—run.