Jennie Adams - What's A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds - What's A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds

‘Look at the drop for me. Then we’re going to act out…’ He led her close enough that she could look over.

As Lally truly registered that they stood five storeys up on a deserted rooftop late at night, her imagination kicked in. What did Cam plan to write about this setting? What did he want her to do?

Lally glanced at her boss, and adrenalin and excitement coursed through her veins. It seemed necessary to speak in a hushed tone, and she whispered, ‘This is going to be a real rush, isn’t it? Like skydiving or something. My instincts are telling me it will be exciting. My heart’s in my throat already and I don’t even know yet.’

‘I don’t know what you’ll think.’ His fingers tightened their hold around her arm. ‘But we’re going to find out.’

‘YOU’LL be completely safe, Lally, but you may not feel safe for a moment or two.’ Cam’s gaze searched her face.

‘Whatever it is, I’m ready.’ Lally ignored the breathless edge to her voice and the nervous tension that went with it.

Cam clasped his fingers loosely about her elbows. ‘This would all happen very fast. She wouldn’t have time to think, but for the point of this exercise I’ll talk you through some of it. I want your thoughts on what her reactions would be.’

It was automatic for Lally’s hands to come up and splay against his chest through the cloth of his dinner jacket. The evening bag was over one of her wrists. ‘I think your heroine would feel her heart-rate speed up, and she would tell herself to be careful. Be very careful.’

Cameron’s glance rested briefly on her mouth. ‘She doesn’t know whether he intends to kiss her, attack her, accuse her, hold her at gunpoint, try to overpower her or throw her over the edge. Is he on to her secrets?’

‘And is she on to his?’

No sooner had Lally got the question out than Cam drew her back a little from the edge. He swept her up in his arms in a lightning-fast move. One hand came under the back of her thighs, the other cupped behind her shoulders. Her handbag was jammed between their bodies. His face was inches from hers.

They were a safe distance from the edge but, oh, it didn’t feel safe in those first moments. Lally caught her breath and a soft gasp of sound left her parted lips. Her free hand locked around the back of his neck.

‘Easy.’ Cam felt Lally’s arm lock around the muscles in his neck, and he took two long steps, not towards the edge but parallel to it. ‘Sorry. I need to know how my male lead would feel carrying her.’

‘If he’s doing it to get closer to the edge, she’d be fighting him.’ Lally’s words brushed against his temple and cheek. ‘She’d struggle to get free.’

Lally was tense, but not struggling.

Cam had to think about his characters. The research. He could see the characters clearly in his mind.

That was great; his instincts told him he would be able to write this scene. He had his female character fixed now, defined, he knew who she was and that she would work well for his story. That issue was resolved for Cam.

What wasn’t resolved was his desire for the woman in his arms. That had been getting further and further away from his control since they’d first schemed this idea up earlier today. Maybe the excitement of it, the sheer fun of planning and executing it, was why Cam hadn’t controlled his other responses to Lally very well.

‘Yes, she would struggle to get free, but I’ll deal with working that out for myself or we can role-play it elsewhere. Even though we’re away from the edge, I don’t want to risk losing my balance or anything while we’re up here.’ He tried to sound focused and interested in the research. Not distracted…

‘If he does intend to throw her, the best thing she could do is refuse to release her hold on him, unless he was prepared to go over with her.’ Lally made this observation with what judiciousness she could find in the face of her distraction. Being held this way, held close to Cam’s broad chest, made thinking difficult. ‘Or unless he had the capacity to subdue her some other way before he tossed her over.’

In tandem with her words, Lally’s hand locked harder about his neck.

Cam moved his body enough to allow her to get her other hand free. ‘In the scene, she would struggle to get that hand loose.’

Lally added it to her hold about his neck. ‘So she’d hold on like this?’

‘At this stage, yes.’ God, his voice was way too deep, and his entire body seemed utterly focused on what he held.

And what he held was Lally Douglas in a flowing, beautiful dress that made her look both sultry and alluring. He felt the brush of the soft fabric over his hand where he held her in his arms; the hem wrapped around his trouser legs. He held Lally, her face upturned towards his, excitement and an edge of uncertainty stamped on that face.

It was not because she didn’t feel safe with him. There was apprehension of another kind, the sort a person felt when they entered uncharted territory with someone they found attractive.

Are you cataloguing her reactions now, Travers, or your reactions to her?

Cam stopped walking and murmured, ‘She would quite probably try to reach for the gun in her purse.’

‘Yes.’ Her words whispered into the stillness. She didn’t move.

Cam’s focus was on her face, his gaze touching on each feature—eyes, cheeks, nose, finally lingering on her mouth. His look, filled with want, desire and something perhaps deeper than both of those things, drew Lally’s gaze to his eyes and locked it there. Her breath stilled all over again. All around them was darkness and city silence, which was no silence at all, but it still shrouded them in isolation here while the world went by below.

Darkness and aloneness and consciousness.

Cam’s gaze met hers once more in the dimness, and everything slid into a different place for Lally. The evening; the slow meal and their talk about his writing and work projects; her determination not to look too deeply into herself: it had all mixed in together and blurred into this one moment that was so much more than the compilation of those parts. That really had nothing at all to do with those parts.

‘I shouldn’t have picked you up like this.’ He murmured the words, but he didn’t let her go.

Instead his hand wrapped more firmly behind her shoulders and he shifted to stand with his legs splayed apart.

His head lowered towards her. ‘Tell me not to…’

‘Not to…?’ But Lally knew. She looked into his eyes and she couldn’t say the words. How could she say those words to Cam when his gaze was on her this way, desire stamped across his cheekbones, burned into the shadows beneath his eyes, etched over lips that softened and dipped towards hers?

She should say no. She needed to protect her emotions and not take risks, but Lally could only wait while her lips softened in anticipation.

And then he was there. The kiss she had secretly longed for was happening.

His lips tasted faintly of coffee, and were both firm and gentle as he softly kissed her, oh, so softly, as though they had all the time in the world and all he wanted to do was this.

She’d thought she was holding her own, that she had control over this evening with him. That she had at least held on to a little of what it was all about, remembered they were doing this for his research and no other reason.

Well, this didn’t feel like research. Her lips softened beneath his and when he slid her slowly down his body until her feet touched concrete it felt natural and right to let his arms close around her, to step fully into his embrace and let the kiss take them where it would.

Cam made a soft sound in the back of his throat. He deepened their kiss, his lips caressing hers, moulding to hers, tasting and giving and taking. One hand splayed against the small of her back; the long, lean fingers of the other wrapped around her jaw.