With This Fling...

Read Online With This Fling... by Kelly Hunter - Free Book Online

Book: With This Fling... by Kelly Hunter Read Free Book Online
Authors: Kelly Hunter
Ads: Link
bet?’
    They drove in silence after that, apart froma murmured comment here and there. When they got to the outskirts of Sydney, Charlotte surprised him yet again by requesting that he drop her at an inner city Rocks address rather than the one he’d picked her up from.
    She directed him into a steeply descending driveway, dug a set of keys from her handbag, and pressed a remote switch attached to the key ring. The eight-foot wrought-iron driveway gates began to ease open. A heavy-duty garage Roll-A-Door began to open further down the drive. ‘Who lives here?’
    ‘Me,’ she said as Grey drove down into a spacious underground car park with room for a dozen or so vehicles. ‘The house at Double Bay belongs to Aurora. At least, it did. Now it’s mine, only I couldn’t face going there tonight. She’d have been disappointed in me today, I think. In the hurt I caused, no matter how much better off Sarah’s going to be without you. Too many lies. Far too many lies of late, and they just keep getting bigger. You can park there.’
    He did as suggested, brooding over her remarks as he strode around the car to open the door for her.
    She smiled, briefly, as she got out of the car and he closed the door behind her, but there was no leaning into him as there had been for his parents’ benefit. No playing of power games.
    ‘I’m sorry about today,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’
    ‘You didn’t. We had a deal. A good deal—one I entered into willingly.’ She offered up a small smile. ‘Don’t mind me if I seem a bit morose. It’ll pass.’
    He hoped so.
    ‘Would you care to come up for a coffee?’ she said next. ‘I’ve no agenda, no ulterior motive other than I don’t think much of my own company these days and I do my best to avoid it. You could tell me about your research. About what you hope to find in Borneo.’
    Grey hesitated.
    ‘Never mind,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not mandatory. We’re square now. And you probably have other places to be.’
    Somewhere between this morning and now, Charlotte’s confidence had taken a hammering and self-derision had found purchase. His doing, not hers, and he cursed himself for not seeing, not giving any thought whatsoever to Charlotte’s feelings about the role he’d asked her to play and the hits she would take on his behalf.
    ‘You should know that a research scientist never misses an opportunity to expound on his work,’ he offered gravely. ‘You don’t even have to be an appreciative audience. You justhave to be awake. And, yes, I’ll join you for coffee.’
    They stepped into a lift and went up a few floors and came out onto a landing with only two doors leading from it, one of which was labelled ‘Fire Escape.’
    Charlotte’s penthouse apartment boasted a million-dollar close-up view of Sydney Harbour Bridge, framed by enormous, double—or triple—glazed tinted windows. White was the predominant colour in the apartment; white walls and ceilings, white marble floors, white kitchen fixtures and benches and a snow-white leather lounge. And then, as if someone had taken exception to the designer palate and vowed to melt it down, an eclectic array of paintings, sculptures, books, tapestries and floor rugs in every imaginable colour and from every imaginable historical period had been added to the mix.
    He stopped in front of a painting formed entirely of various coloured oil paints dripped onto a canvas in no particular order.
    ‘Do you like it?’ she said.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Abstract art. Jackson Pollock’s finest. It’s whatever you want it to be.’
    ‘Handy,’ he murmured. ‘You
own
this?’
    Charlotte nodded. ‘It was my grandmother’s.Lots of rumours about how she came to own it. My favourite one is that she and Pollock were friends and that she won it from him in a card game. Rumour has it they were initially playing with coins from the Roman Empire. As the stakes got higher, the currency of the

Similar Books

And the Burned Moths Remain

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Faithful

Kim Cash Tate

The Local News

Miriam Gershow

Fiends SSC

Richard Laymon

SeduceMe

Calista Fox

Brother's Keeper

Elizabeth Finn