Enemies with Benefits

Someone was playing bongo drums in Poppy’s head. And someone else was stomping in her stomach. Her throat hurt. Her mouth was dry. She felt like hell.

Worse than hell.

After a couple of minutes stabilising herself she twisted in the sheets about to sit up but her foot collided against something warm. Something large. In her bed. Her eyelids shot open and she managed to stifle the scream in her throat, holding her breath as she tried to make sense of it. Her heart thumped in conjunction with the annoying beat in her head as her toes gingerly tested the object.

A leg. Human. Hairy.

What. The. Hell?

She closed her eyes again until her stomach stopped churning. There was a man in her bed.

Isaac?

It took all of her strength to turn over quietly so as not to waken him up. Yes—same hair, same smell. She clamped her eyes closed again.

Isaac.

A bare leg. Two bare legs. She felt down her front … no cosy pink flannelette pyjamas, but a skimpy silk cami top? No PJ bottoms, but matching silk and lace French knickers? Lara’s expensive design—for best times only. What in hell had she done?

Please no.

Surely not?

Surely, surely not? She’d spent the night with a man. With Isaac. First time in eight long years and she couldn’t even remember it?

The vodka and Coke she’d had at the pub before she came home she easily remembered. And … ugh … the red wine gifts from her clients. Bile rose to her throat. She was never ever drinking again. Fuzzy flickering images of Isaac arriving while she was putting up the tree gradually came into focus. But how had they gone from that, to … this?

But oh, oh, God … she suddenly remembered kissing him in the bathroom. Remembered how she’d felt bold and brave and very sexy. And how he’d tasted so nice, his kiss so tender … Even now she could smell his scent, firing flashes of heat through her belly.

‘Sleeping Beauty finally wakes up.’ He turned, naked shoulders peeking out from her sheets, sat up, eyes as bright as the daylight splicing through her curtains. His hair was mussed up and he looked devastatingly hot. ‘Sleep well? Eventually?’

‘Why are you in my bed?’ Bunching the sheet around her throat, she sat up, too. No way was she getting out until he’d gone.

‘You don’t remember, Poppy? What a shame. It was a spectacular night and you don’t remember at all? I’m so disappointed.’

There was that shake of the head she knew so well. Daddy Spencer would be a proud man to see someone perfect that frown, even if it wasn’t his own flesh and blood.

‘I remember … we kissed.’ Oh, God, kill me now. ‘And then …’ She tried to force the cogs in her brain to work harder, faster, but they were stuck in fog. ‘Not a lot else.’

His hands clasped at the back of his neck showing mighty fine pectoral muscles, impressive biceps … Her mouth dried to something beyond the Sahara. Mortified she might have been, but she could still take time out to appreciate a beautiful human specimen when she saw one. She’d touched that? Lain under that? Or had she been on top? Or both? Who knew?

Aargh! Why couldn’t she remember?

He appeared to be struggling to keep a straight face. ‘You surprised even me. And I’m used to pretty much anything. Not exactly a screamer, more a gasper …’

‘A gasper? I didn’t … We didn’t …?’ A flash of him running his hand through her hair emerged through the soup in her brain. No, that had been years ago. But … the image in her head was of her current bathroom. Of safe hands stroking her back. A soft smile as he’d picked her up and carried her across the apartment and into her bedroom.

‘You kissed me.’ No way would she forget that in a London minute.

‘No, Poppy. You kissed me.’

‘You kissed me back.’

Those magnificent shoulders shrugged. ‘Glad to help out a lady in need. You said you wanted me to teach you a few things. Asked me … begged me.’

Oh, good Lord. Begged Isaac? ‘Well, that was the vodka talking.’

‘Vodka? No, a couple of bottles of Aussie Shiraz by the looks of it.’

Her stomach lurched with just the thought of it. She swallowed hard. ‘Vodka with colleagues in the pub before the wine on my own.’ Could it get any worse? He’d kissed her because she’d asked him to help her. Begged him. Not because he’d fancied her. Not because he’d wanted her. He’d kissed her out of pity.

She’d begged him?

‘I have to say you are an almost textbook drunk.’

‘Good to know.’ That’d be right. Usually Poppy did everything by the book, because not doing so caused too much harm and mayhem. And she never wanted to go there again.

‘But what is it about me, Popsicle?’ His use of her childhood nickname made her cringe, and he damn well knew it, making her pull the sheets more tightly round her cleavage as he spoke. ‘Is it something I do? Is it the way I smell? Every time we get a moment alone we end up with your head down, bum up. Gasping. Stage five implemented to perfection. You are a champion upchucker.’

No. Not again. ‘I was sick?’

‘Yes. Spectacularly.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ No wonder her stomach hurt.

‘Not pretty.’

‘So we didn’t, er, you know.’

He shrugged. ‘Hey, you know me, I never give away our secrets.’

She’d begged him not to before and he’d been true to his word. She threw him a glance—his grin widened and she wasn’t sure if he was referring to back then or last night. But he was clearly not going to enlighten her. Irritating.

Over the ensuing years that evening had hovered between them like an ominous dark cloud—would he ever confront her? Would he put her in a situation where she’d have to confess to everyone what she’d done and show who the real Poppy Spencer was?

So far he’d kept schtum on the whole thing—but then she’d never allowed herself to be in any kind of situation where she owed him anything more. And ever since then the all-new shiny reformed Poppy Spencer hadn’t put a foot wrong.

But still—he knew. And for that reason alone she kept him at a distance.

Fast forward to the second most mortifying moment of her life—if they’d actually done the deed surely she’d know? She’d feel different—her body would feel less nauseated and more … excited. Surely? No, they hadn’t had sex, she was pretty certain. Relief flooded through her. ‘So why are you in my bed now? Why am I in different clothes? Where are my pyjamas?’

His head shook. Disappointedly. ‘Don’t panic, I put a quick stop to the kiss and you’re still an almost-virgin.’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind. Just something you said last night. Amongst a whole lot of other stuff.’ His voice rose a couple of octaves. ‘“Please don’t leave me, there’s a mouse on the run. I’m scared. Too cold. Too hot. I need a drink. Headache. I’m going to be sick again. Please, don’t leave me, Isaac, I’m scared.” Eventually your demands exhausted me and I fell asleep right here. You are one hell of a snorer, by the way. I hope for your sake it was just because of the alcohol.’ He smiled his slow, lazy smile. ‘And now you’re wearing the only things I could lay my hands on in the dark at four-thirty this morning during the too-hot phase. Very, very nice, too.’

His eyebrows rose as his fingers plucked the blush-pink lacy straps of her cami. At his touch her body reacted in a very un-Poppy-like way—with a frenzied surge of what she could only describe as lust. And he knew it, too, judging by the glittering in his eyes. ‘Must have cost a fair bit.’