on earth did they expect to share a bed, share a marriage, share a life, for any length of time, then walk away at the end as if nothing had happened?
He’d done it before, turning his back on Melbourne without a backward glance. Could Ruby?
The way she’d been after seeing her sister, the conflicting emotions he’d glimpsed before she’d tried to hide them, spoke volumes.
Ruby cared. Cared about her sister, cared about her business, cared full stop.
Would she be so bold and brazen in a few months when their pretend marriage had run its course and he headed back to Western Australia?
He shoved the matches back into the box with force, breaking three before slowing down and lighting the rest of the tea lights.
He snaffled the box of rose petals and the condoms, sprinkling the former on the bed, stashing the latter in both bedside drawers. And an extra string in the bathroom.
Best to be prepared.
He needed to eradicate this uncertainty suffusing him and wild, no-holds-barred sex would do it.
Desperate to shake the jitters and lose himself in her, he headed for the lounge. Only to stop dead in the doorway.
His sexy wife lay curled up on the sofa, asleep.
Her head lolled on an armrest, her fancy up-do a rumpled mess, cascading curls everywhere. Her mouth hung open, tiny puffs of air escaping as she exhaled. The faintest dark circles ringed her eyes where she’d rubbed them in fatigue and his earlier funk intensified tenfold.
He didn’t do tenderness.
He didn’t do caring.
But at that moment, staring at his exhausted, slumbering wife, he came close to both.
CHAPTER NINE
R UBY woke as she did every morning. In the wee small hours, savouring the darkness and peace when she produced her best work.
She loved slipping into her fluffy pink dressing-gown and worn leopard-print slippers, snagging her hair into a messy ponytail with elastic and padding downstairs to her workshop.
There was something almost furtive about it, as if she was stealing a few extra hours in the day compared with everyone else by sneaking around in the darkness.
It was why her mum had bestowed the apartment over the showroom to her. Both her mum and Sapphie had been light sleepers but they’d quit complaining about her nocturnal wanderings when they saw the pieces she produced.
When she’d hit twenty-one they’d moved out, her mum to a modern apartment in Toorak, Sapphie to a Californian bungalow not far from their showroom on High Street.
She’d missed them initially but had found comfort in her creations as she always did. They’d sustained her through bad dates and bad break-ups, through losing her mum and then Sapphie being ill a year later.
Her fingers tingled and she stretched, eager to head downstairs, pick up her pliers and start creating magic.
One problem.
When she stretched, her foot encountered another.
Her eyes flew open and the first thing she saw was Jax Maroney’s handsome face inches from hers.
In that moment it all came flooding back.
Seaborn’s on the skids.
Proposing to Jax.
Marrying him yesterday.
Telling Sapphie.
What she couldn’t remember was how she’d ended up in this bed.
She’d been shattered after her confrontation with Sapphie, emotionally overwrought. She’d built up this perfectly plausible marriage scenario in her head, prepared to rationalise it to her sister, not lying but not telling the direct truth, when Sapphie had seen straight through her.
In a way she’d been relieved. Sapphie hadn’t freaked out too badly, she hadn’t dismembered Jax, and having her sister know the truth alleviated some of her stress.
But it had finally taken its toll. She hadn’t wanted to talk on the drive to the B&B. Besides, Jax didn’t seem the comforting type. Baring her soul to have him dismiss her or close down as she suspected he might would’ve made her bawl.
As it was, his caring side had almost made her cry. What had he said, something along the lines of ‘a woman like you deserves a
He’d done it before, turning his back on Melbourne without a backward glance. Could Ruby?
The way she’d been after seeing her sister, the conflicting emotions he’d glimpsed before she’d tried to hide them, spoke volumes.
Ruby cared. Cared about her sister, cared about her business, cared full stop.
Would she be so bold and brazen in a few months when their pretend marriage had run its course and he headed back to Western Australia?
He shoved the matches back into the box with force, breaking three before slowing down and lighting the rest of the tea lights.
He snaffled the box of rose petals and the condoms, sprinkling the former on the bed, stashing the latter in both bedside drawers. And an extra string in the bathroom.
Best to be prepared.
He needed to eradicate this uncertainty suffusing him and wild, no-holds-barred sex would do it.
Desperate to shake the jitters and lose himself in her, he headed for the lounge. Only to stop dead in the doorway.
His sexy wife lay curled up on the sofa, asleep.
Her head lolled on an armrest, her fancy up-do a rumpled mess, cascading curls everywhere. Her mouth hung open, tiny puffs of air escaping as she exhaled. The faintest dark circles ringed her eyes where she’d rubbed them in fatigue and his earlier funk intensified tenfold.
He didn’t do tenderness.
He didn’t do caring.
But at that moment, staring at his exhausted, slumbering wife, he came close to both.
CHAPTER NINE
R UBY woke as she did every morning. In the wee small hours, savouring the darkness and peace when she produced her best work.
She loved slipping into her fluffy pink dressing-gown and worn leopard-print slippers, snagging her hair into a messy ponytail with elastic and padding downstairs to her workshop.
There was something almost furtive about it, as if she was stealing a few extra hours in the day compared with everyone else by sneaking around in the darkness.
It was why her mum had bestowed the apartment over the showroom to her. Both her mum and Sapphie had been light sleepers but they’d quit complaining about her nocturnal wanderings when they saw the pieces she produced.
When she’d hit twenty-one they’d moved out, her mum to a modern apartment in Toorak, Sapphie to a Californian bungalow not far from their showroom on High Street.
She’d missed them initially but had found comfort in her creations as she always did. They’d sustained her through bad dates and bad break-ups, through losing her mum and then Sapphie being ill a year later.
Her fingers tingled and she stretched, eager to head downstairs, pick up her pliers and start creating magic.
One problem.
When she stretched, her foot encountered another.
Her eyes flew open and the first thing she saw was Jax Maroney’s handsome face inches from hers.
In that moment it all came flooding back.
Seaborn’s on the skids.
Proposing to Jax.
Marrying him yesterday.
Telling Sapphie.
What she couldn’t remember was how she’d ended up in this bed.
She’d been shattered after her confrontation with Sapphie, emotionally overwrought. She’d built up this perfectly plausible marriage scenario in her head, prepared to rationalise it to her sister, not lying but not telling the direct truth, when Sapphie had seen straight through her.
In a way she’d been relieved. Sapphie hadn’t freaked out too badly, she hadn’t dismembered Jax, and having her sister know the truth alleviated some of her stress.
But it had finally taken its toll. She hadn’t wanted to talk on the drive to the B&B. Besides, Jax didn’t seem the comforting type. Baring her soul to have him dismiss her or close down as she suspected he might would’ve made her bawl.
As it was, his caring side had almost made her cry. What had he said, something along the lines of ‘a woman like you deserves a
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