Read Online Wish by Kelly Hunter - Free Book Online Page A

It’s less than you deserve, I know that. I
do
know that.’ He lapsed into silence again and Billie was silent too. She knew full well that his rules of engagement weren’t fair. That she should value herself more and his lovemaking less. That sooner or later she’d have to pay for her lapse in judgement. But, oh, the pleasure had been sweet.
    ‘Adam?’ She waited until he turned to look at her. She leaned forward and the kiss she coaxed from him could have lit up a midnight sky. ‘Yes.’

Chapter Nine
    Adam did not follow Billie inside the cottage for another round of nakedness and passion. She needed to get to work, he needed to get back to the house and put food in his stomach. Something, anything, to help keep his hunger for Billie in check.
    He headed home. He had a shower too, and didn’t stint on the shampoo and soap. He made sandwiches. And then Simon showed up.
    ‘I passed your new tenant on the way in,’ said Simon as he ambled over to the kitchen bench, fixed himself a coffee and made himself at home. ‘Tell her she drives too fast on that road.’
    Adam scowled.
    ‘Aren’t you chatty?’ said Simon.
    ‘Windmill’s in pieces,’ he said by way of explaining away his black mood.
    ‘You want a hand with it?’
    ‘You got time?’
    Simon nodded and eyed the ready-made sandwiches with interest. Adam pushed them towards him, and the jam jar and half a loaf of bread besides.
    Twenty minutes later the bread was gone and he and Simon were standing by the windmill, with Adam ignoring a certain crushed patch of grass for all he was worth.
    ‘Who helped you lift it out?’ asked Simon, looking at the pipe.
    ‘Billie.’
    Simon tipped his hat back to stare at him. ‘Really?’ he said mildly.
    Adam grabbed the new pump from the tray of the ute and headed for the windmill. Discretion. It was the only way this thing with Billie was going to work.
    He and Simon worked well together, always had done. In between swapping out the old pump for the new and lowering pipe back down the bore Simon talked about his sheep and stud rams, when he was thinking of separating lambs from ewes and could Adam give him a hand with the drenching. Busy conversation that went a fair way towards keeping Adam’s mind off a naked Billie Temple and the way she’d wrapped around him.
    ‘So how’s she working out?’ asked Simon, halfway through lowering the third pipe. ‘Your tenant.’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Got a pretty smile. Of course, with a mouth like that it’s not long before a man starts wondering what it tastes like.’
    Adam fumbled the pipe, cursed, and exhaled his relief when Simon was there to steady it. Despite making light of it with Billie, if he dropped sixty foot of two-inch pipe down a one-hundred-and-fifty foot hole that was only six inches wide, it wasn’t coming back up.
    ‘Sorry.’ Simon’s smile was unrepentant. ‘Didn’t mean to distract you.’
    ‘You didn’t.’ Between them they lowered the pipe until the clamp rested gently on the lip of the hole. ‘My grip slipped, that’s all.’
    ‘Right,’ said Simon drolly. ‘You should ask her out.’
    ‘I don’t date.’
    Simon sighed, tipped his hat back. ‘Not sure that’s real healthy,’ he said and wore Adam’s icy glare with equanimity.
    ‘She has a kid.’
    ‘You like kids, remember?’
    ‘Yeah, but I don’t want one of my own. I’m not looking for another family, Si, I don’t want one. Been there, done that. Failed.’
    A family man.
    His father had made it look so easy, only Adam had tried it and it hadn’t been easy at all. He’d been a lousy husband to Caroline and a distant father to Jeremy. Caroline had seen to that, for she’d bound the boy to her so tightly there’d been no room for anyone else. He liked to think that as Jeremy grew older the boy would have spent more time with him. He liked to think he could have made his marriage work, but his heart knew better. From beginning to abrupt and tragic end, his family life had