‘I didn’t—I’m sorry!’
She dived into the bathroom—leaving Jannes looking crestfallen on the bed—and rinsed out her top, before hanging it in the shower to drip dry. It was only once the emergency was dealt with that she realised she was wearing not much more than a slightly damp bralette underneath. And now she was in her underwear, in a hotel room with Jannes, and had no idea where she was going to find something dry to wear.
Jannes appeared at the bathroom door, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. ‘Everything okay?’ he asked. ‘Could it be rescued?’
‘No harm done,’ she said, crossing her arms over her chest, and then spotting the towelling robes on the back of the door. Jannes’s eyes grew wide as she came towards him, and then a look of relief washed over his features as she grabbed the robe and tied it firmly around her waist.
‘Do you want me to get you something from your case?’ he asked her, his ears slightly pink, giving him away.
‘I didn’t bring a spare,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t anticipating pyjama disasters.’ But they would have to do something, because it was hard enough ignoring these feelings for Jannes that were only growing stronger. Spending the night with him in only her underwear would be unbearable.
‘Want to borrow a T-shirt?’ Jannes asked, and she could have kissed him with gratitude, if that wouldn’t have made things infinitely more complicated. She took half a second to think about how intimate it was, borrowing his clothes to sleep in. But if the alternative was this flimsy underwear, she didn’t really have much of a choice.
‘Thanks, yeah, that’d be great.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
LARA WOKE TO the smell of oranges—the smell of Jannes, his shower gel or his laundry powder, she’d never been able to work out exactly what—and a complete lack of feeling in her left arm. She opened her eyes a crack before squeezing them back shut. She couldn’t be responsible for what she did when she was sleeping, she told herself. Except she might have been dreaming about Jannes—things were a little hazy—so that did make her kind of culpable if she’d somehow started acting out her fantasies. But that wasn’t important now.
What was important was extracting herself from this situation without waking him. She took an inventory of body parts. Her left arm was trapped under his chest, hence the lack of feeling. Her right had fallen into the notch of his waist. Her left leg was tucked in behind his knees, but her right was clamped between hard thighs. She tried an experimental pull, but Jannes’s legs tightened around hers and he pulled her closer with the arm trapped beneath his body. He smelled of oranges, and the soft hair at the nape of his neck was tickling her face.
She had to get herself out of this before Jannes woke up. The last thing that this situation needed was for there to be two of them conscious of how unbelievably close and unbelievably hot this was. Because while this was one-sided it was something that she could undo. If they were both awake, both aware of how close they were to...to something stupid, then she wasn’t sure if her self-control would hold and she wouldn’t do something to embarrass herself—something that could break her heart and their friendship.
She took just half a moment to imagine a world where things were different. Where something deep inside herself hadn’t broken when her father had left her. Where Jannes wasn’t scarred by being left again and again by his parents. Where they were both whole and healthy and ready to trust. If she had been that person, if he had been that man, she knew that they would be happy. She knew that there was no one on the planet who was more perfect for her than Jannes was. But they weren’t those people. And trying to make this friendship any more than it already was would result in both of them getting hurt. And losing Jannes from her life... Removing herself from the bed was the only safe course of action.
She withdrew the arm that was resting on top of Jannes’s waist and laid it against his back, using it to gently push him away. If she could just free her leg, she could snatch her arm from underneath him and it wouldn’t matter if that woke him because she had every intention of being out of the room before he even realised what was going on. But she couldn’t take that approach with both arm and leg: too high risk. Too much of a chance of getting caught.
She tried easing away from him again, this time pushing gently at his shoulder as she tried to move her leg. But he just held on to her tighter, wrapping her trapped arm around his middle and scooting back closer to her. So he was a touchy-feely sleeper. She tried really hard not to file that fact away for future reference. She let her forehead rest against th
e nape of his neck as she took stock of her failure and reconsidered her tactics. When she moved away, he pulled her closer. So if she wanted to get out, she would have to get...closer? Oh, this was going to end in tears, she was sure of it.
She rested her arm back on his waist and tightened it experimentally. Jannes took a deep breath in and let it out as a long sigh. Interesting. She pressed her chest harder against his back, keeping her forehead close to the soft hair at the nape of his neck. She was never going to be able to eat an orange again after this. But the longer she held him, the more his grip on her relaxed. She just had to stick this out.
The next time he breathed out, she pressed herself against him again, trying hard not to notice the shift of his muscles under his shirt, the tensing of his abs as she pressed her hand against them. But the vice around her trapped thigh loosened, and slowly, slowly, she drew her leg back.
Jannes shifted restlessly when she finally got it free, and she tucked her cheek into the notch where his neck met his shoulder until his stirring stopped. This was torture. It was everything that she wanted, but knew that she couldn’t have. If she had to design a torture for herself this would be it. Being so close to Jannes that she was practically inhaling him without being able to do anything—to keep them from both getting hurt. Worse—having to rely on her own slightly shaky self-control to keep them both in line.
She listened and waited as Jannes’s breathing slowed and deepened. The soft hairs on his thigh tickled her sensitive skin and she bit her lip to stop herself sighing. She had to keep her eye on the prize here. And the prize was unquestionably extracting herself from this situation without doing something that couldn’t be taken back. Without doing something that would lose her Jannes for ever.
But it was so tempting not to fight this. Just go back to sleep with her body smooshed up against Jannes’s. To wait for them both to wake up like this and...allow the inevitable to happen.
But then what if she started to feel...more for Jannes? And he’d inevitably start to pull away—she’d seen him with girls before; she knew his MO too well to question what would happen. And she would be left, leaving her hurt and confused—and without her best friend there to help put her back together. She was smarter than that. Too smart to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
She took a final deep breath, pulled her leg back and breathed a long sigh of relief. She’d done it, and Jannes hadn’t even twitched. She was so close to being free from him.
Except she wasn’t, was she? Because even when she was out of his bed she was still in his life. She’d agreed to date him. To bring him to family parties, to show up on red carpets and photo calls with him. She could do that as a friend. As long as they were doing it in separate beds from now on.
She pulled her arm out from underneath him and rolled towards the edge of the bed, her eyes on Jannes to see if he would wake. Nothing. Not even a twitch. She let out her held breath in a rush and darted from the bedroom, knowing how dangerous it would be to stay.
* * *
Jannes woke to unfamiliar surroundings, unable to shake the feeling that he had lost something important. It was only as he clicked where he was—the honeymoon suite of the Liverpool hotel—that he realised what was missing: Lara. He sat up in bed, looking round until he heard movement in the next room and realised she must be up already. No wonder he’d slept in later than her. He’d been awake half the night, listening to her breathing beside him, fighting the urge to deconstruct their pillow barrier and pull her close.
She had fallen asleep while they were still bickering good-naturedly about the relative merits of the slime-balls on the dating show that they’d both admitted to liking. And then she’d snored on, oblivious to the fact that they were in bed together.
Had she felt awkward when she’d woken up this morning? Was that why she was in the next room instead of lounging in bed, taking advantage of the opportunity for a lazy Sunday morning? He swung himself out of bed and pulled on jeans from his bag. Lara was in the sitting room of their suite, coffee in hand as she listened to the radio, head tipped back against the sofa, eyes closed.
‘You’re still tired,’ he said, leaning against the doorway and watching her. Her eyes snapped open and he thought for a second that she was going to spill her coffee, but somehow she managed to rescue it. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Was I hogging the duvet?’