Six Weeks, page 5
But she knew it wasn’t that. The energy he showed her at night was ferocious. No man possessed that hunger and had more to spare.
In bed, practically anything was on the table, but she’d pre-emptively shut down any future with Austen.
Only two weeks ago Jaya had been scared—hell, she’d been terrified—that Austen would want more, but so far, he’d showed interest only in what she could give him physically. Their usual interactions of dropping each other a quick joke or meme had dwindled to nothing, as if their sexual relationship crowded out the possibility of anything else.
She hoped it was temporary. She was betting their relationship on it. But now, it seemed like whatever happened, she would be on the losing side of that wager.
Jaya missed sitting in a bar with him and talking about her bruised heart. Next time, she’d be sitting by herself, thinking about the way he was treating her heart. For some reason, she was upset that he was ignoring it.
How stupid was that?
Chapter Four
“How’s the great experiment going?”
Jaya tried not to grimace, knowing that any reaction at all would likely extend the conversation.
Still, did Mark have to ask her that question every time she visited? She and Austen had been together now for nearly a month, and she was more than a little sick of the pointed queries.
For Mark and Katie, though, her relationship with Austen seemed to be an endless source of entertainment. In fact, she knew exactly what Mark was going to say next.
“I swear, this is better than an episode of Survivor.”
“I would have said The Bachelor,” his wife said dryly, placing a glass of mineral water in front of Jaya.
“Nah,” Mark insisted, “that show is all about embarrassment and humiliation. This experiment is about survival—isn’t it, Jaya?”
“I thought Survivor was about winning a million bucks,” she said with a smile.
“Austen’s worth a lot more than that, I bet.”
Her smile twisted. “I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but I wouldn’t take that bet.”
Katie lifted her glass. “Smart girl. I wouldn’t bet against Austen on any subject.”
The remark felt loaded…like a bomb. Jaya chose not to touch it.
“How’s the basement reno going?” she asked pointedly.
Katie frowned. The renovation was the bane of her existence. “Still in the planning stages…again. Mark ‘Hamlet’ Fisher here had another change of heart, and we’ve started down a new path. Cosy country cabin. Muskoka in the heart of Toronto.”
Her husband grinned unashamedly. “Tell me that doesn’t have a great ring to it,” he said.
“What happened to the last idea?” Jaya searched her memory. “Ultramodern games room slash entertainment complex?”
Mark waved his previous brainchild aside. “That’s stale. It’s already been done.”
“By one of Mark’s college buddies,” Katie added wryly. “He unveiled it last week to a whole bunch of us.”
“He stole my idea,” Mark said.
“You’ve had about a thousand ideas for the basement,” his wife pointed out, “and not one of them was exactly unique. You can’t keep blaming people for going ahead with theirs when we take more than a year to land on just one.”
Jaya smiled as they bickered lightly back and forth. She’d heard this argument before. It was one of their greatest hits.
With a pang, she realised this was what she wanted. A relationship with a rock-steady base which life’s little windstorms only ever touched the surface of. The base remained strong, no matter what the weather.
She knew what Katie would say. She had that already—with Austen.
But Jaya knew a great deal more about Austen now than she had three and a half weeks ago.
She knew how insatiable he was in bed, thrusting her away from him after sex every night, only to snatch her back into his arms an hour or two later. Because of him, her sleep patterns were horrendous. It was only by having a nap immediately after she got home from work every afternoon that she was able to keep up with him at night.
How Austen managed to function at the office, she could only imagine.
Outside of bed, he was quiet and moody. They shared none of their old banter. When he did respond to her attempts to start a conversation, his replies were inevitably sarcastic or cynical.
Worst of all, he never called her ‘kiddo’ or ‘kitten’ anymore. When he did speak to her, he used her name as if they were strangers.
The experiment hadn’t brought them closer or alleviated any of the lingering issues between them. Instead, it had thrown up more obstacles and made more problems.
If all Austen wanted was sex, it was all she was going to give him.
* * * *
It was four-thirty on a Friday and after a long day of rehearsals, the actors were getting restless.
Jaya sensed the director’s indecision, and she made it easier on her with a murmured comment.
“You only have the place booked until five today. You’ll have to send them home early anyway.”
The director shot her a relieved look. After a second, she called out, “That’s it for today, folks. Go home and get a start on your weekends. See you back here on Monday.”
Jaya was also off that weekend but unlike the young actors, she knew exactly how she would be spending it—in her cousin’s bed.
The show they were rehearsing was a modern drama, but Jaya felt as though she were caught in a Greek tragedy.
The more Austen slept with her, the more she believed he hated her—for his weakness, for his need of her.
Jaya made her way to her office and when her phone rang, she took the call automatically, not bothering to check the number.
“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
She recognised Austen’s voice, of course, but couldn’t quite make sense of the invitation.
“We’re already seeing each other at ten,” she pointed out. They always met at ten and they always met at his place. How he spent the rest of his evening, she didn’t know and didn’t ask.
“I want to have dinner with you first,” Austen replied. “I’ll pick you up at your place. Eight o’clock.”
“O—” He had already hung up. “—kay.”
Jaya stared at her phone.
That was weird.
* * * *
Jaya dressed carefully, choosing a dress she’d worn only once before to an opening night production and a pair of thin black stilettos to match. With a bit of effort and a lot of hair product, she managed to pull together a trendy, messy updo. The mirror told her the effort had been worth it.
When Austen arrived to pick her up, she was glad she had dressed up. He looked freshly showered and was wearing a new suit, sans tie, his white shirt open at the collar to show tanned skin.
“Very nice,” she approved as she stepped out onto the sidewalk on his arm.
Austen hadn’t yet said a word about how she looked but his long hungry stare spoke in his stead.
He put her into his car, a low-slung black coupe, before going around to the driver’s side and getting in.
“You look fantastic,” he finally said as he pulled the car away from the curb.
“Good enough to eat?” Jaya teased.
He slanted her a deep blue-eyed glance. “You know how much I love to eat you out.”
She did know and it was as much as she liked to suck his dick. But that was dark-of-night conversation, not middle-of-the-evening banter. Why the sudden change?
“I’m glad you suggested dinner,” she told him.
“Are you?” He sounded sceptical. “We don’t seem to have much to say to each other recently.”
“Too easily distracted, I guess,” she said lightly.
He moved one hand off the steering wheel to rest briefly on her knee. “You are very distracting, kitten.”
Kitten. A strained nerve within her seemed to unknot itself as soon as she heard that nickname.
Just one ‘kiddo’, she silently begged him. Please.
Anything to show they could make it back to an intimacy that had nothing to do with their physical closeness.
She didn’t want one or the other with Austen.
She wanted both.
Jaya wanted it all. Physical, mental, emotional. She wanted everything he had to offer a woman, which was a great deal.
He was her man. She knew the truth at last.
* * * *
Austen chose a small restaurant tucked into a side street, old-fashioned and very expensive, with white tablecloths and candles at each table.
It was the kind of place men booked with an engagement ring tucked into their pockets.
The kind of place Austen would have reserved a table at for Lisa…
“Did you take the pledge?” Austen asked with a humorous quirk to his lips after the sommelier had come and gone without an order.
“What?” It took her a moment to make sense of his remark. “Ha ha, very funny. No, I was just…thinking.”
“A bottle often helps with that.”
“Then you should have ordered one,” she shot back.
He raised one blond brow. “On your behalf? I dare not. I never know what you’re in the mood for.”
Jaya clasped her hands beneath her chin. “You could surprise me.”
He smiled. “I thought I already had—four weeks ago.”
Four weeks. The same time he had told her he wanted her.
“That was a surprise,” she admitted.
“Was it so unexpected, Jaya?”
Jaya, this time. It was a step backwards.
“You know it was,” she said.
“That’s because you were wilfully blind,” Austen told her, a note of harshness underlying his words.
“Don’t waste your legal terms on me,” she said. “I didn’t go to law school.”
His mouth tightened. “Yet you knew it was a legal term. Don’t play dumb with me, kiddo. I know you.”
It’s ‘Jaya’ one minute, she thought, ‘kiddo’ the next. He was wreaking havoc with her emotions.
But he had a point. Katie’s and Mark’s reactions told her she had missed some vital signposts along the path of her and Austen’s relationship. They certainly hadn’t been surprised.
“You know me,” she quoted. “Those are famous last words.”
Austen’s smile was grim. “Do you know something I don’t? Am I going somewhere? Into the six-week stale dated pile?”
Jaya pressed her palms flat against the table. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the six-week expiry date on us!”
Looking across at him, she saw that Austen’s hands were clenched.
“Well, I’m sick of thinking about it,” he said from between clenched teeth. “Seeing that date come closer and closer, day by day. I knew what it would be like. I’ve vicariously experienced it every time you came to me with another breakup story. But knowing it’s coming for me is worse than I could have imagined.”
His face was tortured. For the first time she noticed that he had lost weight. His cheeks were hollows beneath his cheekbones. He’d always been lean but now he was positively skinny. Was that why he was wearing a new suit—because the others he owned would have been too loose on his thinner frame?
His insatiable appetite for her suddenly took on a different, darker meaning. He was grabbing at what little time he thought they had together, sacrificing even sleep for it.
But then why had he suggested having dinner together tonight?
“I have a proposition for you.”
Jaya’s heart started hammering in her chest, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear it if they strained their ears over the light classical music coming over the sound system.
Fuck, is he going to propose?
“W-what is it?”
She kept her left hand in plain view, just in case.
Perhaps this was what people who were being abducted by aliens felt like. Her mind was in red-lights-flashing, high-alert mode, but her body was acquiescing the way it always did with this man.
Austen’s eyes didn’t quite meet hers. “I’m often invited to client events, important dinners, that sort of thing. Usually, if I can, I decline. It’s awkward to attend many of these events because they often require a date. Bringing a woman to such an event—particularly the same woman to more than couple of them—is even more awkward. And I’ve used up my quota of negative R.S.V.P.s for the year.”
The breath Jaya had been holding came out in a silent whoosh.
“Are you asking me to be your date to a bunch of boring work functions?”
He met her astonished gaze with an expressionless face. “Yes. Please.”
Jaya shook her head, trying to clear it. “I don’t know—why didn’t you ask me this sooner? I would have gone with you before all of this started.”
It was true, she would have gone. Out of guilt, if nothing else. Because the woman he should be going to boring lawyerly dinners with was Lisa. Who she’d blocked.
“Back then,” Austen said, “you wouldn’t have gone home with me afterwards. Now, you will.”
“How can I refuse?” Jaya murmured. “You’re very good at taking a woman home.”
He gave her a faint grin. “High praise, coming from an expert.”
Her own smile faded.
“Damn,” he swore softly. “That was supposed to be a compliment of sorts. An ill-thought-out one, I’ll admit.”
“What do I have to do?” Jaya returned to their previous subject. “Besides look cute and gaze adoringly at you once in a while.”
His face suddenly pensive, he scrutinised her features. “Now I’m having second thoughts.”
“Why?” She was ready to be offended again.
“Because you’re not capable of looking ‘cute’. You look sexier and more beautiful when you’re ill than most women look dressed to kill.”
Heat poured into her cheeks. He was a flagrant liar—but that didn’t mean she didn’t like hearing the lies.
“So?”
“So,” he said in a smooth voice, “I probably shouldn’t risk taking you out in public until I have a ring on your finger. Two, to be safe.”
Oh dear, she thought, the restaurant’s aggressively romantic atmosphere must be getting to him too.
Austen waited a full thirty seconds before continuing to speak. “I expected there to be a Jaya-shaped hole in the wall after I made that statement.”
Lowering her eyelashes, she pointed out, “I’m still here.” Panicking on the inside, where it didn’t show.
He reached over to take her hand. “So you are. I guess I wore my track shoes for nothing.”
She giggled. “Were you going to chase after me?”
“Damn right.” He sobered abruptly. “Haven’t I always?”
Jaya squeezed his fingers. “Don’t.”
The eyes he raised to her were devastatingly bleak. She could hear the clock ticking down in his head towards the six-week mark.
“Don’t what?”
She tried not to flinch at the harsh tone. “Don’t think of the past. Think of today. Think of tomorrow. When do you have your first invite?”
It took him a moment to answer. “Tomorrow night. A fundraising ball for a client’s favourite charity. I figured no one would miss me in the crowd. Unlike the vast majority of the firm, I don’t depend on connections for client referrals. No one comes to me because they want to. They come to me because they know I’m good.”
Being used to actors and other theatre types, who would never dream of missing an exclusive private event and even the slimmest chance of being photographed for Toronto Life, his indifference was refreshing.
“Well, since you’re going now, I’ll have to do my best to make our appearance a memorable one.”
His grasp tightened on her hand. “What about afterwards? Are you still coming home with me?”
It tore at her to hear him sound so unsure, but Jaya made her lips smile brightly at him.
“That part of the night is going to be even more memorable,” she told him huskily. “I promise.”
Chapter Five
When her phone rang at a quarter to seven the following evening, Jaya was surprised to find Austen on the other end.
“I’m not coming up,” he said before she could ask him why he was calling. “Could you please come down and meet me? I’m illegally parked in front of your building.”
“Why aren’t you coming up?” she asked. His manners were usually impeccable.
“Because of that picture you texted me and because,” he said, “if I set foot in your apartment, I’m going to want to see it in the flesh.”
She couldn’t resist sending him the pic while she was dressing earlier. She so seldom wore a matching bra and panties, much less in fine black lace, that it seemed like a waste not to share them.
Jaya laughed softly. “Coward.” Before he could reply, she added, “I’ll come down. I want you to see what goes with the black lace panties.”
Austen was leaning against the hood of his car when she emerged from her building. He looked uncharacteristically tense, judging by the tautness of his jaw. Was he belatedly sweating the outlandish outfit she’d promised him?
Instead of widening with delight, his eyes narrowed when he spotted her.
Straightening to attention, he spoke out of barely moving lips. “Go upstairs and change.”
Jaya faltered for a second then pasted on a smile and continued walking—sauntering, really—towards him. Her new heels were sky high, but she remembered how much he’d liked her black stilettos…especially hooked around his back while he rode her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, looking up at him. “Don’t you like my dress?” A muscle was going wild in his jaw, clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching. It was truly fascinating.
“I like the dress. Very much. In our bedroom, where it belongs.”
Our bedroom. Was that an unconscious slip or merely part of his general attitude of arrogant possession?
He wasn’t going to tell her what to wear. Not tonight, not ever.
