Your Bed or Mine?

‘Fine but she’s not your mother.’

‘No one is, no one could be,’ Matt said gently, as he had a hundred times before. And as always he was instantly transported back to those awful months after her death, his dad sobbing at night, grief racking his body when he thought Matt was asleep. How many nights had he been woken by that low keening? How many times had he slipped out of his bed to lie in the passageway next to his dad’s closed door, listening until his father finally stopped crying and drifted off to sleep?

‘Twenty-two years, Matt, and I’m still as in love with her as I was. They say that people forget their loved ones, that they don’t remember their faces, their voices. I still remember everything. Her wide green eyes, her raucous laugh, the way she always stuck her tongue between her lips when she was concentrating.’

And because his dad remembered so much, and spoke of her often, he did too. He’d adored his mother, grieved her death, but her passing had also taught him that marriage and love equated to heart-wrenching grief and he’d decided, at the ripe old age of eleven, to have nothing to do with it.

They were getting morbid, Matt thought, and changed the subject. ‘So, I think I have a new flatmate…’

Matt explained the circumstances around Tori’s arrival and soon Patrick was chortling in amusement. His dad wasn’t a prude, thank God. He could talk to him about anything and he did.

‘Oh, and I went to see your uncle Alfred yesterday.’

Matt tuned out as Patrick updated him on the health of his great-uncle and just listened to the comforting hum of his dad’s voice. After his mum died, they’d stumbled through their lives. Patrick had learned to cook and to listen; mopped up spilt milk, broken windows from cricket balls and Matt’s own childhood tears. Cricket had turned to rugby, and excruciating lectures about sex and girls had been suffered through—by both of them—and they’d both had to wrap their heads around his dad dating again. But Patrick had kept his sex life away from him—thank the Lord—and nothing and no one had disturbed their masculine, sports-crazy home.

It had been a blow to realise that, while he was good at cricket and great at rugby, he wasn’t good or great enough. He was an excellent sportsman but just wasn’t brilliant…he didn’t have enough raw talent to take his sport to the next level. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t work in the field, Patrick had constantly reminded him. He could always be associated with sport…

And now Matt represented twenty of the biggest names in sport that he personally looked after and his two associates had another sixty they represented between them. One of his tasks while he was in London was to consider hiring a UK-based agent to expand his business.

Matt heard a noise on the landing outside and glanced at the luminous hands on his sports watch. It was long past midnight and he wondered who else was up.

‘Dad, sorry, I’ve got to go. Speak soon and look after that chest!’

He tossed his mobile onto the side table, sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. His eyebrows lifted when his door handle dipped and the door slowly opened. He’d always had excellent night vision and didn’t need light to discern the slight female form, perfectly curved. As she turned to close the door her slithery robe rustled and he was treated to the most luscious bottom he’d seen in a very long time. Her hair was streaked and her profile, caught in the landing light just before she shut the door, showed a small, straight nose, full lips, deep-set eyes and a round, stubborn chin.

She stopped by the far side of the bed and he watched as small hands went to the belt on her robe and the fabric slipped off her shoulders revealing perky breasts, a flat stomach, slim hips and those fabulously long and silky legs.

Birds sang, and an orchestra started playing and he was quite sure that a mountain, somewhere in the world, moved. She was that sexy, he thought, as lust shot straight to his groin and belted up his spine.

Ah, the actress from earlier.

Which raised the question: what the hell was she doing in his room?

Naked?

Ooh, Tori thought, wiggling under the covers, a nice firm, lump-free bed. High thread count, clean cotton sheets, a decent feather pillow. Thank you, Isaac, for being in Amsterdam or Paris or somewhere else exotic doing cocktailbar stuff and leaving your room empty for me to borrow. She sighed happily. This was a million times better; she could get a decent night’s sleep in this comfy bed and she’d feel so much better in the morning: stronger, bolder, better able to cope. She rolled over on her side and dropped her hand to the mattress…

Except that wasn’t a mattress. Tori froze. It was warm and hairy and the muscles underneath her hand contracted and released.

She’d known enough male bodies to immediately realise that she was holding a very muscular male thigh and because she could feel something that felt like a testicle brushing her pinkie finger, she suspected that her hand had landed quite far up his thigh—far as in ‘far too close’.

Okay, she really hadn’t planned on feeling Isaac up this evening. And why did she immediately feel guilty? Because of Poppy, she realised. Poppy and Isaac had something cooking; what it was she wasn’t sure but it was something…

And while she had many, many, many faults, stealing her best friend’s man—potential man—wasn’t one of them.

If she was desperately lucky, then Isaac would be asleep and she could sneak back out and keep her mouth shut for ever and ever and ever…

Tori, trying to be very stealthy, lifted her thumb off his thigh, then her index finger, middle and ring finger and finally her pinkie. Pulling her hand away, she sighed with relief when there was no reaction from the body and slowly started to inch her way out of the bed.

A deep, sexy-as-sin voice growled at her through the darkness and pinned her to the bed. ‘Where are you going? It was just starting to get interesting.’

‘Isaac?’ she whispered and held her breath, desperately hoping that Isaac had acquired a slight accent she didn’t remember him ever having.

‘Nope. Sorry.’

Sometimes, Tori thought, you are the statue and sometimes you are the pigeon. Obviously her day to be the statue wasn’t quite over just yet.

The bedside light snapped on at the same moment that Tori bailed out of bed, the hounds of embarrassment snapping on her heels. She was halfway around the bed and still eight feet from where she dropped her robe—serve her right for being a slob and just dropping clothes on the floor—when she realised that he could see her in all her naked, jiggling glory!

‘Eeep!’ She instinctively slammed her forearm against her boobs, cupped her pubic strip with her hand and stood there with her mouth hanging open, a deep red flush covering every inch of her body.

Help, help, help, help, help…

What to do…? What to do…? What to do…?

Seeing the corner of the loose duvet draped over the corner of the bed, she yanked it up and bailed underneath it, only taking another breath when she knew that every inch of her body was covered. Of course, she could still feel the long, long length of him—they were only separated by the sheet—but at least he couldn’t see her!

Dear Lord, who was he? She was going to kill Poppy, slowly and with an evil smile on her face.

Tori felt fresh air slide in under the duvet and knew that he’d lifted it up to look at her. She turned her face into the mattress and gnawed the bottom of her lip.

‘Hey there…’

Ooh, he had the nicest voice. Deep, mellow, like an aged whisky on a freezing winter’s night.

‘Want to come out from under there so that I’m not talking to your—admittedly gorgeous—tortoiseshell head?’

Tortoiseshell? Say what? Tori frowned while her brain turned over his words. Huh, he must mean her hair and the various shades of colour. Browns, reds, blondes…tortoiseshell. Dave, her hairdresser, would love that description.

Okay, so not the point.

Tori pulled her face out of the mattress, breathed deep and lifted her eyes and found herself looking up at a bigger, broader and—obviously—hairier chest than hers. He had just the right amount, she thought, a perfect black T that dusted his pecs and drifted into a luscious line that flowed over a stone-hard A-pack. The sheet covered his hips and she managed to contain her sigh of disappointment. Her eyes ambled upward again, noticing a crescent-shaped scar on his lower rib, the flat masculine nipples, muscled shoulders, thick arms, an angular jaw covered in black stubble, a wide mouth tipped up in amusement and eyes the colour of…

‘British racing green,’ she murmured, the words sliding out of her mouth.

‘Excuse me?’

She wanted to wave her hand but instead she held the duvet to her chest. ‘Your eyes, they are the exact shade known as British racing green,’ she said, blushing and ducking her head into the mattress again. She sounded like such a twit; she’d snuck into his bed—naked—and she was wittering on about his eyes.

They were beautiful but…really?

Oh, fudge. Her face flared and she hoped he didn’t notice. There was only one way to get out of this situation and that was to brazen her way through it. She wasn’t in PR for nothing, she decided, and had plenty of practice.

Taking all her courage in both hands, Tori kept the duvet firmly in place and wiggled her way up so that she was sitting upright, the duvet tucked under her arms.

‘Hello,’ he said, his mobile mouth quirking up in a half-smile.

‘Um…hi.’ Tori pushed her hair out of her face and straightened her shoulders. ‘Sorry about this.’