Suck and Blow: Party Games, Book 1 (13 page)

Her chest squeezed hard, a knot wrapping around her heart and pulling tight, a sensation she’d never ever experienced in her life before. No wait, that was wrong. She
had
experienced it before, the last time she and Alec had seen each other as school students, at the state public-speaking finals where she’d come second to his first. She’d labeled it hate back then. But now… Damn it, had she really gone and fallen in love with Alec Harris ten years ago? When she was a stupid girl full of herself and her own importance? Was she only just realizing that now? Recognizing it for what it really was? Or was what she’d felt back then just the emotions of a wild, high-strung teenager? Was what she felt now, right
now
—this overwhelming, choking, terrifying emotion threatening to undo her—was
this
love? Real love? Romantic love? The kind poets had written about for hundreds and hundreds of years? Was she really that weak?

What other explanation did she have?

And if she was in love with Alec, what did she do next?

Axel Rose started wailing from the floor again, the singer’s screech shattering the silence and Frankie flinched.

Alec pulled a face. “Damn it.” He folded his body together and pushed himself from the bed with a growl. “I better get it.” He turned and gave her an apologetic look. “The only person who would be calling me at this time of the morning is my brother, and if I don’t answer now he’ll just keep calling me and calling me.”

He bent over to scoop his jeans off the floor, the warm light spilling into the bedroom from the hallway casting his naked body in undulating shadows. That unnerving, altogether too wonderful pressure gave a tug on Frankie’s heart again, and she swallowed, gnawing some more on her bottom lip. He was so bloody fine to look at. Surely what she was feeling was just sexual physical attraction? Yes, on a much greater level than any she’d experienced before, but that was a given with Alec—
everything
she’d experienced with him was on a greater level.

Like love?

She stared at him. Watched him dig around in his jeans’ pockets. Watched him withdraw a slim black iPhone from one of those pockets and raise it to his ear. Watched as his lips began to move, his eyes becoming distant as he began a conversation she couldn’t hear. Her brain was buzzing too loudly. Her heart thumping too powerfully.

Love? Oh God, really?

He stood beside the bed, his hair mussed and tousled and sexy, his body lean and perfectly muscled, his cock a long, thick promise of pleasure…

Surely it was just physical. It couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t be.

Frankie studied him, taking in the latent strength of his physique, the confident calm of his presence. Even when he ran a hand through his hair, messing it up more so, his gaze flicking around the room as he spoke to whoever
was
on the other end of the connection, he oozed a relaxed assurance that made her belly flip-flop and her pulse quicken.

What would it be like to look at him every day in such a natural state? To bask in his confident good-humour as she feasted on his raw good looks? To hear his voice as he bade her good morning and know he was hers? To share a shower before going to work? To meet up for dinner and watch the other women in the restaurant stare at him with greedy want? To engage in deep-and-meaningfuls as they dissected the latest film they’d watched curled up in bed together, knowing they would wake in each other’s arms the next day…

Unbidden, the thought of sharing breakfast with him as they read the morning papers teased her. She pictured him drinking his coffee as she ranted about which celebrity was making a fool of him or herself. She imagined them working in the garden together, Alec attempting to teach her how to correctly prune a tree and her failing miserably and not caring because she was with him and he was with her. In the space it took her heart to thump, she lived that future.

That future. A future with a man who was as intelligent and articulate as he was sexy and horny.

Her throat grew thick. What would it be like to live a life, to
share
a life with someone who actually made her feel…feel…

What?

How
does
he make you feel, Francesca?

She couldn’t answer that question. It was too freaking scary to even—

“I don’t give a flying fuck, Mac.” Alec’s voice jerked Frankie out of her disquiet. She blinked, pushing herself up into a sitting position.

“What the hell are you doing calling me at 3a.m. anyway? Don’t you have anything better to—?” He stopped, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. “An argument? Jesus, Mackenzie, how old are you?”

Another pause. Frankie frowned. She shouldn’t be listening, but then if Alec didn’t want her to hear, he would have walked from the room.

“So say sorry, you jerk.”

He paused again, raking a hand through his hair as he shot her a quick look. “Because I have better things to do than listen to you carrying on about a contract I’m not interested in signing.”

Frankie narrowed her eyes. Contract?

Alec rolled his eyes, pacing five steps away from the bed—buck naked and coiled with pent-up frustration—before turning and pacing five steps back to where he’d started.

“I’m not interested in becoming a TV celebrity either.”

TV? Frankie straightened, her stare fixing on Alec’s scowling face. TV? Celebrity? What was going on here?

“I’m not a complete idiot, Mac. I read the contract and as far as I can tell, that kind of commitment would mean living in the US for at least four months of the year.”

He gave Frankie another glance, this time letting out a snort as he shook his head. “I know California has gum trees, dickhead. That’s not the point. I like doing what I do now.”

A round of excited babble fell from the phone.

Alec scrunched up his face, his free hand clenching into a hard fist. “She can find another landscaper to host the show.”

Show.

At the word Frankie’s skin prickled. Show? TV? Celebrity? These were all words she used every day. All words she never would have connected to Alec Harris.

“I don’t care if she owns the bloody network!” Alec burst out, and this time it wasn’t just frustration she heard cutting his voice to a rough growl. It was genuine anger. “I’m happy to redesign her garden, or anyone else’s garden in the US, but I’m not remotely interested in being the bloody host of a bloody television program.”

The sound of Mackenzie’s voice spat out of the phone, a machine-gun fire of words spoken with just as much vehemence as Alec’s. Frankie blinked again. Surely she hadn’t heard the name she
thought
she’d heard? Had she?

Her skin prickled again, a reaction she experienced whenever her nose got the scent of something…big. She studied Alec. Really looking at him. With her Kerpow Talent Management hat firmly tucked on her head.

If the American female network owner was
the
American female network owner Frankie suspected it was…if the woman wanted Alec to be on her network…

Frankie’s mouth went dry.

Oh, boy. Alley Cat could be this country’s next big thing.

Her heart thumped hard. Her nipples pinched tight.

“Listen, bro,” Alec let out a puffing sigh, scrubbing at his face as he did so, his shoulders slumping for a split second, “I don’t know what’s going on with you at the moment, but something tells me it has everything to do with Lillian McDermott and bugger all to do with this whole US thing. So for the love of God, will you just go say sorry to the woman? Please? And leave me alone?”

Whatever Alec’s brother said next brought a crooked smile to Alec’s lips—a smile that made Frankie’s pussy flutter with appreciation and her professional instincts stir with possibility. With his drop-dead hunkaliciousness, his distinctively Australian accent and the right agent…

Frankie caught her lip with her teeth once again.

“No worries, Mac,” Alec was saying into his phone, all sign of tension gone from his body. He stood by the bed, eyes grinning at her, one hand resting loosely on his low, lean hip, completely and utterly at ease with his nudity. “I know.” He shook his head again, although whether to her or his brother, she couldn’t tell. “It’s simple, mate. You fuck up, you say sorry.”

Frankie guessed Mac must have said something to that. Whatever it was, Alec chuckled. “That makes two of us, brother. Now fuck off. I have a tree I need to plant.”

Mac’s laughter reverberated all the way through the connection, tickling her ears even as Alec ended the call and tossed his mobile onto the mattress behind her. “Now—” he climbed onto the bed, first one knee then the other, his gaze both playful and smoldering with a burning intensity that sent another wicked flutter through her sex, “—about that planting…”

“Who’s your agent?”

The question was out of Frankie’s mouth before she could stop it. Or more to the point, before she realized she was actually asking it. Part of her wanted to groan. Another part of her stared at him, waiting for his answer.

He cocked an eyebrow, a taciturn stillness claiming him. “I don’t have one.”

Frankie blinked. “What do you mean, you don’t have one? Who does your PR work?”

He shrugged. “I try to avoid it.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m a gardener, Frankie, not a celebrity. And as you no doubt heard, Mac’s on hand if a contract more complicated than ‘yes, I let Alec Harris and Going Bush Landscape dig up my yard’ comes my way.”

The way he said it, with a flippant snort, made Frankie narrow her eyes. “So what you’re telling me is you have no one to manage your—” she searched for the right word, “—star potential? And you’re getting contract offers from—”

His laugh cut her off. “Star potential?” He shook his head, his grin wide. “As I said to Mackenzie, I’m not interested in being a celebrity. Nor hosting a television show in the US.”

Frankie’s mouth fell open. “But…” she began, at a loss. “But…”

Alec laughed again, a low, relaxed chuckle that stroked over her senses. He dropped onto his side, stretching out beside her again to slide his hand over the length of her thigh, her hip and up to her ribcage. “I know this may be very hard for the owner and director of Kerpow Talent Management to understand,” Frankie’s eyebrows shot up at his mention of her agency’s name. How did he know what her company was called? “But I’m not remotely interested in fame and fortune.”

She frowned at him, struck speechless. Her entire life had been spent surrounded by those who were famous, and those who hungered to be. Her parents—the extroverted king and queen of the entertainment industry that they were, God love them—had her convinced by the time she was five no other type of person existed. It wasn’t until she met Miki when she was eleven at the café Frankie’s mother ran as a tax dodge that she realized this wasn’t the case. In fact, if it wasn’t for Miki, and then later Grant and Dayne, Frankie could have quite possibly moved into adulthood thinking anyone
not
famous and rich were to be pitied. The irony that she’d moved into an industry that seemed solely focused on pampering the famous and infamous wasn’t lost on her.

But with Alec’s looks, with his obvious talent, his already famous list of happy clients…hell, with a contract offer from the queen of US television how could he
not
see where the next step lead him?

How could he not want it?

And why, when her life’s work was all about getting that very
it
for her clients, was her heart so tight at the notion that he didn’t?

Once again, Francesca Winchester, Alley Cat throws you for a bloody loop.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. She felt like she had to say something, but what? What
did
she say at this point?
Do you know what’s being offered to you? Are you insane?

I love you?

It was Alec’s fingers brushing over the sensitive dip of her waist that jerked her away from the last thought.

“My dad was a painter.” His voice was pensive, its deep timbre almost a rumble in his chest. “Not an artist painter, but a house painter. We scraped by on whatever work he could find, surviving job to job. He was good at what he did, very good, but he was too honest to make money in the building trade. Especially when the housing industry collapsed during the nineties.” He snorted a soft laugh, his fingers tracing a lazy line up the curve of her hip. “I remember him ranting often at the dinner table about this so-and-so or that so-and-so undercutting his quotes. ‘They water down their paint, boys’, he’d tell Mac and me, disgust clear on his face. ‘They water down their paint and stop at two coats when they quote three.’ He wouldn’t do that. It went against every moral, professional fibre in his body. He watched the crooks land job after job and stood by his ethics. As a kid who desperately wanted a new bike, I was pissed at him often for those ethics. It wasn’t until I was older, maybe fifteen, that I realized the value of them.”

His gaze watched the journey his fingers were taking over Frankie’s hips, but something told her he was looking at something else. Maybe the bike he’d wanted so much? Maybe the man who’d refused to cheat those he worked for. Who refused to cheat himself?

A shiver rippled over Frankie and she swallowed. How many times had she heard her own father gloat about ripping off one client or another growing up? Gloating about the deal he’d signed, about who got ‘bent over and shoved up the arse’ and who got ‘to suck the tit’? As a teenager, how many times had she felt uncomfortable listening to her mother laugh over his boasts?

“‘Hard work never killed anyone, boys’,” Alec said, affecting a deeper, somehow gruff tone. “That was another of his favourites. ‘It’s not a disgrace to be poor, just an inconvenience’, was another.” Another chuckle escaped him and he gave her a quick look, a wry smile playing on his lips. “We were inconvenienced a lot while I was growing up. Well, until we won the lottery that was. Then we weren’t poor any more, but Dad still kept working. And he kept to his professional morals. The only thing that changed in our lives was the school Mac and I went to. Mum and Dad stayed the same. Hell, apart from the base model Toyota Corolla Dad bought Mum, I don’t think they even changed their cereal brand. But we were enrolled at Knox Grammar. They wanted the best for their sons, so they sent us to the best school money could buy. I never had the heart to tell them the first lesson I learnt there was what cheap money meant.”