“They say love is blind,” she quipped.
“I don’t think so. Not with me, anyway. When I look at you, I know exactly what I see. The perfect woman. You’re beautiful. Smart. Sexy. But best of all, you know what you want in life and are prepared to work hard to get it. You’ve no idea how attractive I find that.” He reached over the table and picked up her left hand, stroking its perfectly manicured fingers. “I’m crazy about you, Zoe.”
Her heart melted as it always did when he told her things like that. “And I’m crazy about you,” she returned softly.
“Then why won’t you move in with me?”
Zoe smothered a sigh. This was the second time Drake had brought this subject up.
The offer was flattering, she supposed, but not what she wanted at this time in her life. Zoe had just discovered dating and romance, and she didn’t want to give it up just yet. She knew what happened when people started living together. Soon, they were taking each other for granted or arguing about the housework.
Alternatively, the girl did everything then resented her boyfriend like mad. Zoe had been an unpaid, unappreciated housekeeper for her father for several years, and once was enough!
But she could hardly tell Drake that. It would sound…selfish.
“Drake, look, I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I love you to death. And I love the time we spend together. But I’d rather leave things as they are for now. I mean…we haven’t known each other all that long, have we? And living with each other is a very big step.”
His lips pressed tightly together and Zoe felt a moment of panic. Was this it? Was he going to dump her, just because she wouldn’t live with him?
Drake eventually cocked his head on one side and smiled a wry smile. “Is this your way of playing hard to get again?”
Zoe blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it took me two months to get you into bed. That’s a record, believe me. I was beginning to think you were frigid.”
Zoe suspected her refusal to sleep with Drake had only made him keener, but she honestly hadn’t been playing a game. The truth was her relationship with the ghastly Greg had left her with a host of insecurities and an appalling self-body image. Despite now having a figure most women would envy, she’d still needed to be endlessly pursued and flattered by Drake before feeling confident enough to expose herself physically to him.
He’d finally succeeded in seducing her, courtesy of two bottles of wine over dinner, two hours of foreplay and umpteen declarations of devoted and undying love for her.
Being frigid hadn’t been the issue at all.
Of course, Zoe had to concede she wasn’t crash-hot in bed. How could she be when her only other experience had been with a wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am kind of man? Drake’s well-practiced technique in bed had been a real eye-opener. When she’d even had an orgasm that first night, she’d been over the moon.
Unfortunately, once she returned to being stone-cold sober, having a climax during sex became as scarce as chocolate éclairs in her diet.
Not Drake’s fault of course. He was a wonderful lover. Attentive and tender and romantic, always doing and saying the right things. The blame lay entirely with her. Once naked, she always worried too much about what she looked like. Exercise and dieting might have gotten rid of the fat and the flab, but not those wretched old tapes playing in her head.
Thinking negative thoughts about herself was obviously a killer when it came to coming.
When her not having orgasms began to bother Drake, Zoe did the only thing a sensible girl in love could do. She started faking them. After all, why should Drake have to feel guilty or inadequate when the inadequacies were all hers?
And who knew? Maybe one day, when she felt really relaxed and not the result of an alcoholic coma; when all her old doubts and fears had been firmly routed, she would come like clockwork. ‘Til then, Zoe wasn’t going to stress over one small imperfection in their relationship which had nothing whatsoever to do with Drake and everything to do with her own personal physical hang-ups.
“Have you ordered?” she asked, deftly changing the subject away from moving in with him.
“First thing I did.”
The drinks waiter appeared on cue, with a glass of chilled Chardonnay for Zoe and Drake’s usual lunchtime liquid of mineral water. He never drank when he had to return to work.
“I’ve ordered the food, too,” he added when Zoe went to pick up the menu.
“Oh.” Zoe tried not to feel irritated, because once again, she only had herself to blame. During her first half dozen dinner dates with Drake, she’d always deferred to his greater knowledge of wine and food, and now, he often presumed to order for her.
“I couldn’t wait for you to arrive,” he said, perhaps seeing her slight annoyance. “I told you. I don’t have much time. I have to pick up a client at the Hyatt at one-thirty. Businessman from Hong Kong. Wants a penthouse smack-dab in the middle of Sydney. Money no object.”
“Wow. Sounds like a good prospect.”
“You can say that again. Sydney’s moved up a notch in popularity since the Olympics. And why not? It’s the best city in the world. And the most beautiful.”
“You don’t have to sell me on Sydney,” Zoe commented. “I love the place. Just look at that view.” From where she was sitting, Zoe could see the Opera House on her right and the bridge on her left. Straight ahead, a sleek white cruiser was slicing through the sparkling blue waters, its decks filled with photo-snapping tourists.
Zoe was sipping her wine and admiring the view herself when she heard Drake suck in sharply, as though in shock.
Her eyes snapped back to find him staring at something—or someone. She heard him mutter under his breath.
Zoe swiveled ‘round in her chair to see firsthand the object of Drake’s agitation.
She was blond, and she was heading their way.
Zoe didn’t recognize the woman and she would have, if they’d met before. Stunning six-foot blondes with double-D-cup breasts were hard to forget.
“Well, well, well,” the blond bombshell said with a saccharine smile as she stopped beside their table. It took a moment for her impressive cleavage to jiggle to a halt. “If it isn’t Drake Carson, the man of a thousand lines and even more broken promises. Sorry to interrupt, honey,” she directed at Zoe, “but Drake and I have some unfinished business. You did say you’d call, didn’t you, lover? I mean, I know it’s only been a couple of weeks since the conference, but I was beginning to think you hadn’t found me quite so special after all. Surely you aren’t one of those creeps who lie their teeth out to get a girl into bed, the type who thinks they can do what they like when they go away, without any consequences and without the little woman back home finding out?”
Drake glowered at her but said nothing.
Zoe felt like a big black pit had yawned underneath her chair and she was about to fall in. Drake had gone to a sales and marketing conference in Melbourne just two weeks earlier. He’d rung her every night of the three days he’d been away, saying how much he’d missed her.
She stared at him, wanting to believe this woman was some crazed jealous troublemaker intent on breaking them up for her own devious reasons. But the cornered guilt on Drake’s face simply could not be ignored. Or denied.
“Oh, so you are one of those creeps?” the blonde taunted. “Well, I never! Aren’t you lucky I’m not a vengeful bitch like that blond chick in that movie? What