Her face was thinner, her bottom rounder and her hair longer—halfway down her back. He imagined winding those curls around his fingers as he slipped inside her... Seb shook his head. They shared far too many memories, he reminded himself, a whole handful of which were bad, and they didn’t like each other much.
Have you totally lost your mind?
‘Let’s get you home and we can argue later, when you’re back to full strength.’ Seb bent down and easily lifted her rucksack with one hand, picking up her large leather tote with the other. ‘You okay to walk?’
Rowan stood up and pulled her bag over her shoulder. ‘Sure.’
Seb briefly closed his eyes. It was a struggle not to drop her bags and bring her mouth to his.
‘What’s the problem now?’ Rowan demanded, her tone pure acid.
He stared at the ceiling before dropping rueful eyes back to her face. ‘I keep thinking that it would’ve been easier if you’d just stayed away.’
‘Loan me the cash and I’m out of here,’ she pleaded.
‘I could...’
Rowan held her breath, but then Seb’s eyes turned determined and the muscle in his jaw tightened. ‘No. Not this time, Ro. You don’t get to run.’
THREE
Rowan sat in the passenger seat of Seb’s Audi Quattro SUV as he sped down the motorway towards Cape Town. Although it was a little before eight in the evening, the sun was only just starting to drop in the sky and the motorway was buzzing with taxi drivers weaving between cars with inches to spare and shooting out the other side with toothy grins and mobiles slapped against ears.
Cape Town traffic was murder, no matter what the time of day. It came from having a freaking big mountain in the middle of the city, Seb thought. He glanced at his watch; they’d been travelling for fifteen minutes and neither of them had initiated conversation. They had another half-hour until they reached Awelfor and the silence was oppressive.
Seb braked and cursed as the traffic slowed and then came to a dead stop. Just what he needed. A traffic jam and more time in the car not speaking to each other. At the best of times he wasn’t good at small talk, and it seemed stupid, and superfluous to try to discuss the weather or books, movies and music with Rowan.
And on that point, since it was the first time that Rowan had been in the same time zone as her parents for nearly a decade, he felt he owed it to them to keep her in the country until they got a chance to see her, hold her. Like him, they didn’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, but he knew that they had to miss her, had to want her to come back. He could sympathise. He knew what it felt like, waiting for a loved one to come home.
He had never been able to understand why she didn’t value her family more, why she rebelled so much. She had parents who took their jobs seriously; he and Callie had a runaway fickle mother and...Patch. As charming and entertaining as Patch was, he was more friend than father.
Rowan’s parents, Heidi and Stan, had always been a solid adult presence right next door. Conservative, sure, but reliable. Intelligent, serious, responsible. On a totally different wavelength from their crazy daughter. Then again, it sounded as if Rowan operated on a completely different wavelength to most people, and he had enough curiosity to wonder what made her tick.
Since this traffic was going nowhere they had time to kill and nothing else to talk about, so he would take the opportunity to satisfy his nosiness.
He and Ro had never danced around each other, so he jumped straight in.
‘I want to know why you’re broke. I know that you consider yourself a free spirit, too cool to gather material possessions, but surely a woman your age should have more to her name than a hundred pounds?’
She’d known this was coming—had been bracing herself for the lecture. Because Cape Town was synonymous, in her mind, with being preached to.
Rowan pursed her lips as she looked straight ahead. Seb hadn’t lost his ability to cut straight through the waffle to what he thought was important. Lord, she was too tired to tangle with that overly smart brain of his. Too weirded out by the fact that he made her ovaries want to dance the tango. What to say without sounding like a complete idiot?
Keep it simple, stupid.
‘I was doing a deal and I was supposed to get paid for delivering the...the order when I got into Oz.’
‘What were you peddling, Rowan?’
Seb’s eyes turned to dark ice and his face hardened when she didn’t answer. Of course he couldn’t take that statement at face value. He needed more and naturally he assumed the worst. She knew what he was thinking...