Margaret Way - Six Australian Heroes

LAURA looked at the car and wished that she didn’t find being in Ryan’s company such a struggle. But from the moment she’d opened the door to him, she’d been thrown off-kilter.

She’d thought she was used to his good looks. After all, she’d seen him every Friday for two years and had never been rendered weak at the knees. But that was exactly how she’d felt a few minutes ago.

Perhaps it was the way he was dressed—all in black. Black jeans, black T-shirt and a black leather jacket. It was not the kind bikers wore but a softer, sleeker kind of jacket. It still gave him a distinctly macho edge. In it, he looked not just handsome but drop-dead gorgeous.

It had taken all of her composure not to stare. But she’d been rattled all the same, even more rattled when he had smiled and said how good she looked.

Thankfully, she hadn’t done anything humiliating like blush. Unfortunately, however, she’d become defensive and uptight and, yes, downright bitchy. Which was the last thing she wanted to be with him today. If she was going to convince Gran and the rest of the family that Ryan was her real boyfriend, she’d have to stop being her usual sarcastic self and start being nice. Seriously nice.

To compliment his car would be a good idea, but she refused to gush. Gushing was going way too far.

‘It’s very nice,’ she said. ‘I like the dark-blue colour.’

‘Get in,’ he said, coming round to open the passenger door for her.

She did so, sighing with undeniable pleasure as she sank into the soft, cream leather seats.

‘Comfy?’ he asked.

‘Very,’ she said, and glanced up at him.

Bad idea. He was smiling at her again. God, but he was just so gorgeous when he smiled like that!

‘You can’t beat leather, can you?’ he said, still smiling.

When her stomach actually fluttered, she gritted her teeth, put on her seat belt then turned her eyes straight ahead.

Unfortunately after he closed the door he strode round the front of the car, right past her line of vision.

Even the way he walked was sexy, she realised, his legs moving with long, jaunty strides and his broad shoulders rocking slightly from side to side. It was a confident walk. Confident and cocky.

Laura sighed with relief when he moved out of view. But her relief only lasted until he opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel.

‘I think under the circumstances,’ he said as he gunned the engine, ‘That we should put the top down.’

Instant panic sent her eyes jerking in his direction. She wanted to tell him not to do that, but already the roof was retracting and, really, what could she say? It wasn’t as though it was a cold day. There was absolutely no wind and there wasn’t a cloud in the clear, blue sky. There was no logical reason why she should be alarmed. But she was.

‘You’ll enjoy it,’ he added, his eyes meeting hers. ‘Trust me.’

Laura gave him a tight little smile. It wasn’t him she didn’t trust, she realised with a jab of dismay. It was herself.

Where had this sudden mad attraction come from?

Admittedly, Ryan was a very attractive man in a physical sense; as cynical as she was about the male sex, Laura wasn’t blind. Okay, so he wasn’t her usual type. Unlike her gran, she’d always gone for elegantly built males of average height who didn’t tower over her. Big, broad-shouldered, macho men had always made her feel uncomfortable.

Ryan was certainly making her feel uncomfortable right at this moment, but in a disturbingly delicious and insidiously corrupting way. It was as well that he didn’t fancy her, Laura realised. A blessing, too, that he had a girlfriend, otherwise she just might have been tempted to make a fool of herself this weekend.

Her stomach churned at the development of this highly unexpected situation. There she’d been, thinking she’d have trouble pretending to be Ryan’s girlfriend. Now she was faced with having to control the urge to seduce the man!

Not that she would know how to seduce a man. She’d only had two lovers in her life, both of whom had done the seducing. She had absolutely no confidence in bedroom matters, and not a lot of interest these days, either.

Until this moment …

Perhaps her years of celibacy had finally caught up with her. It was the only reason Laura could find for the way she was feeling, so horribly aware of the man sitting next to her. Her sudden vulnerability to him brought a peculiar tension to her body which she could not remember experiencing before. Her shoulders stiffened, then pressed back hard against the seat, her hands twisting together in her lap.

‘Relax, Laura,’ he commanded as the car accelerated away from the kerb and hurtled off down the street. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

She wasn’t so sure about that. Even if she got through this weekend with her pride intact she’d have to give Ryan up as a client. She could not bear the thought of going to his office every Friday afternoon with the same kind of feelings running through her that were running through her now.

It wasn’t long, however, before she forgot about her pride and succumbed to the exhilarating and highly seductive experience of riding along in a convertible. Lord, but it was fun, whizzing through the city streets with the sun beating down on her face and the wind in her hair. It was impossible to remain uptight. Soon she relaxed back into the seat, thoroughly enjoying the envious looks on people’s faces as they passed them by. Perhaps it was silly of her to feel pleasure at the misconception that Ryan was her boyfriend, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

‘See?’ Ryan said after a few minutes. ‘I told you you’d enjoy it. Want me to put some music on?’

‘If you like,’ she replied, having to work very hard to keep her voice cool and in no way flirtatious.

‘Tell me what you like,’ he countered. ‘Music wise. I should know your taste in music, don’t you think? And vice versa.’

Laura shrugged. ‘I like just about anything which has a melody, a good beat and interesting words. I’m not into hard metal, or rap. I don’t have a favourite artist or a band. I never was the sort of teenager who went ape over some singer. Unlike Alison who was—and is—simply crazy about Robbie Williams.’

‘Who’s Alison?’

‘My best friend. We went to boarding-school together.’

‘Ah. Perhaps we should leave the music off for now whilst you give me a quick update on your life so far. You don’t have to tell me everything. Just the things you think I should know.’

‘I’m certainly not going to tell you everything,’ she retorted, thinking of Brad and Mario.

And she certainly didn’t mention those two humiliating relationships. But she did tell Ryan about her mother running away from home to Sydney and eventually marrying her father, who’d been a runaway of another kind. Carmelo Ferrugia had been a lawyer, a refugee from Columbia whose first wife and children had been murdered by some very bad people. Carmelo had been twenty years older than her mother, a kind, compassionate man who’d spent the rest of his life helping people in difficulty.

She also told him about their tragic death in a small-plane crash when she’d been only eleven, about her years living up in the Hunter Valley with her grandparents and her time at a Sydney boarding-school.

‘I always knew that I would stay in Sydney as soon as I finished school,’ she added. ‘And that I would become a lawyer, like my dad. I actually worked for legal aid for a while, like he did. But I didn’t like it all that much. I found it a bit … boring.’

‘So you moved on to Harvey, Michaels and Associates.’