Chapter 27
Colin
Don’t look at Leesa. Don’t look at her! Under no circumstances—
My dad could tell you self-discipline wasn’t my strong point.
I barely resisted. Maybe I’d felt her gaze or maybe I just had no self-control when it came to Leesa Magdalena Kubicka.
Whatever the reason, when I glanced up and found her staring right back at me, the ripple of gratification became a full-on wave.
Did she want kids?
I didn’t know why I was wondering. I’d never ask her to her face and even if she admitted she wanted a family, it wouldn’t be with me.
She’d be looking for some solid, stable guy – who actually liked kids.
Although this little guy wasn’t as weird as I’d expected.
He might look like an alien, but he felt pleasantly squishy.
Maybe one day…
‘What’s all thi—? Ah, g’day, Ramila.’ Dad cut himself off to greet Nellie’s wife with a kiss on the cheek. ‘Lovely to see you. Congratulations on the little nipper.’
‘Thanks, Tony,’ she replied indulgently.
He studied me, but I had no desire to return his gaze. I shifted the baby carefully and managed to plonk him back into Nellie’s arms before any harm came to him – or Dad had a chance to make the comment I could feel brewing.
‘Well, boys, don’t stand around in the lobby all day. You can at least get out of the way while the swannies move the mattresses in.’
This was a pretty nice hotel compared with some of the questionable establishments we stayed at year after year, but sleep was critical during the Tour, as evidenced by the truck transporting eight ergonomic mattresses all around France, one for each Harper-Stacked rider.
On camp, we suffered through sweat testing and endurance training but during the Tour we were pampered, aside from the gruelling hours spent on the road.
As the guys dispersed, I drifted across the lobby, helpless to move in any other direction except towards her.
She kept her eyes off me until my toes were in her line of sight, but I could see how much it was costing her.
When she finally looked up, her expression was waxy and pinched – and Lori was smirking at me in a less-than-subtle hint that she knew what was going on here. That made one of us.
‘G’day, Magda. Monster,’ I added as an afterthought, using my childhood nickname for my sister as I draped an arm over her shoulders.
She was nearly two years older, but when she was being a hardarse, that age gap felt like ten years and on the rare occasions when she showed her vulnerability, it was no gap at all.
‘Valerio,’ Leesa deadpanned in reply, a small smile on her lips.
Without questioning my actions, I draped an arm around her as well and squeezed both of them. I wanted to wind a finger in her springy curls, turn that dry smile into a happy one. I felt as though I’d spent the past two weeks as a slab of stone, but one touch from her and I was a person again.
It was definitely the stress talking.
‘Why do I feel like the third wheel?’ Lori asked, a pained expression on her face. ‘What happened to the staying away thing?’ she asked Leesa in a stage whisper that I was obviously supposed to hear.
Lori extricated herself, but I leaned heavily on Leesa – in a companionable, friendly manner. ‘I’m staying away,’ I insisted brazenly.
‘Urgh, this is weird, bronads,’ Lori commented.
‘You don’t get to say that,’ I countered, reluctantly dropping my arm. ‘I shared a fucking bedroom with your boyfriend for half the season last year. I haven’t recovered yet.’
‘Is that your excuse? I didn’t think it was contagious.’
‘What’s contagious? Falling—?’ I cut myself off just in time, although the look Lori shot me suggested she had her suspicions about what I’d been about to say.
Leesa’s voice, low and amused, smoothed over the conversation. ‘Oh, how I missed the dulcet tones of the Gallagher siblings bickering.’
‘Just watch out,’ Lori grumbled. ‘He’s probably slipped a cockroach into your pocket.’
Leesa’s gaze snapped up in alarm as her hands dipped into her pockets in a panic.
‘It’s down your shirt,’ I admitted sheepishly.
With an abortive shriek, she slapped at the back of her neck, tugging at the neckline of her pretty blouse. I grasped her forearms gently and tugged.
‘I’m joking.’
‘You bastard!’ Her eyes flashed and her chest was heaving and wow, I’d missed her. Just two weeks and it had been two weeks too long. I wanted to kiss her; just a light peck would take the edge off.
I heard footsteps and then the voice of Lori’s boyfriend Seb. He’d retired at the end of the season last year, but was back to help out the support staff for the Tour – and probably to catch a few days with Lori. ‘Do we need to separate them?’ he asked.
‘Pretty sure Leesa can take care of herself and I’ve got no interest in protecting Colin, but we don’t want Dad to find them in such a compromising position.’
I was rather enjoying the compromising position, the familiar scent of her reaching my nostrils and her skin under my fingers. The shot of endorphins was better than a post-race massage. But Leesa drew away, swiping my hand off her arm when I couldn’t seem to release her.
‘Maybe you can make yourself useful and take a photo of us,’ Lori interrupted my thorough study.
‘Uh, ’course.’ I tore my gaze away, accepting Lori’s phone from her.
Looking at the image on the screen as I lined up the shot, I saw so much in Leesa’s face. The colour in her cheeks and the way her eyes flickered to me told me a hundred little things that still weren’t enough.
‘Make sure you don’t cut me out of the photo, little bro peep,’ Lori said drily, crossing her arms.
Leesa snorted a laugh, bumping Lori companionably and I snapped a photo that made me smile crookedly. I’d have to beg Lori for it later.
I rummaged in my pocket for my phone and handed it to Seb. ‘Take a photo of the three of us?’
Lori must have known it was a pretext to get a nice photo with Leesa, but I didn’t care.
In a month, all I’d have of her was this photo and memories of this moment.
Her forehead was right there. I could drop my chin and press a kiss there and release all this wild stuff inside me that had been churning since I saw her again – since I said goodbye in September, or maybe even earlier.
‘Molly! Frankie! There y’are!’
I straightened, dropping my arm from Leesa’s shoulders with a start at the sound of Dad’s voice, calling Lori and Seb using his nicknames for them. It was only me he called by my real first name.
‘You all coming for lunch?’ he asked.
I wanted to grab Leesa by that pretty blouse and drag her with me, but she’d only think I was hiding behind her again to take the pressure off with Dad. Instead I leaned close just as she was about to go.
‘Can we talk later?’
Her eyes were wide and wary. ‘I’m not sure that’s—’
It wasn’t ‘no’. ‘After dinner? Your room?’
Her gaze clouded, as though her thoughts were heading in the same direction as mine and she wasn’t certain about it. I didn’t expect we’d have sex, although part of me hoped, but I still wanted time alone with her before everything crashed down around me.
‘Okay,’ she murmured, gesturing that I should go.
*
It took her critical seconds to come to the door when I knocked that night. I scanned the hallway urgently as I waited, panicking that one of the swannies would come by and tell on me to Dad – and then panicking that she wouldn’t open up.
But when she did, I drew back in surprise. She was doubled over at the waist, hair over her head, water dripping from the ends of the curls onto the floor.
‘Sorry, I washed my hair and I can’t blow-dry it or I just get frizz. It’s a curl thing. Come in,’ she said from under her hair, scrunching it with a towel as she straightened.
She was wearing thin cotton pyjamas, splattered with water, at once so domestic and so incredibly sexy. I wanted to take the towel from her and rub it gently over her hair – then take off all her clothes and give her an orgasm.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked, pulling her hair to one side so she could peer at me, obviously no idea of the storm raging in my chest.
I snagged one sodden curl. ‘Better now.’
She watched me warily. ‘How was lunch? I would like to have been a fly on the wall for a Gallagher family lunch.’
‘You should have come,’ I blurted out, which only made her eyes wider.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and leaned on the back of her door.
‘It’s interesting these days with Seb around.
Dad likes him, which is weird, because Seb stood up to him for Lori last year.
Lori could always get away with more than I could.
’ I choked off my words, wondering why I’d added that last bit.
‘What about you? Did you miss me?’ Grasping her around the waist, I pressed my lips to her jaw, soaking up her sigh.
‘Colin—’
‘I missed you,’ I murmured, covering the reticence I didn’t like between us with a fraction of the truth. As her body sagged against mine, everything else fell away.
‘Colin, we—’
I dipped my head to her neck, using my lips to nip at her throat.
Her squeak didn’t discourage me, especially not when her thighs opened an inch in response to my exploring hands on the curve of her arse.
Her fingers curled around the back of my neck.
I was dying to know if she was as ready for me as I was for her – up and eager in less than a minute with this woman.
She opened her lips to draw in a shaky breath, chest heaving, but she managed to say it, the truth I’d been shoving out of my head.
‘We aren’t supposed to be doing this.’