Then he was gone.
Jaz reached up and touched her cheek. The imprint of his lips still burned there. A business arrangement, she told herself. That was all this was— a business arrangement.
Jaz slipped into the car the moment Connor pulled it to a halt outside the bookshop. At precisely five-fifteen.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
That was the sum total of their conversation.
Until he swung the car into the drive of Rose Cottage approximately three minutes later and turned off the ignition. ‘Here we are,’ he finally said.
She gaped at him. She turned back to stare at the house. ‘You bought Rose Cottage?’
Most old towns had a Rose Cottage, and as a teenager Jaz had coveted this one. Single-storey sandstone, wide verandas, established gardens, roses lining the drive, picket fence—it had been her ideal of the perfect family home.
It still was.
And now it belonged to Connor? A low whistle left her. Business must be booming if he could afford this. ‘You bought Rose Cottage,’ she repeated. He’d known how she’d felt about it.
‘That’s right.’ His face had shuttered, closed.
Had he bought it because of her or in spite of her?
‘Your things are in there.’
She dragged her gaze from the house to follow the line of his finger to an enormous garage.
He wasn’t going to invite her inside the house?
She glanced into his face and her anticipation faded. He had no intention of inviting her inside, of giving her the grand tour. She swallowed back a lump of disappointment…and a bigger lump of hurt. The disappointment she could explain. She did what she could to ignore the hurt.
‘Shall we go find what you need?’
‘Yes, thank you, that would be lovely.’
She followed him into the garage, blinked when he flicked a switch and flooded the cavernous space with stark white light. Her things stood on the left and hardly took up any space at all. ‘All I need is—’
She stopped short. Then veered off in the opposite direction.
‘Jaz, your stuff is over here!’
She heard him, but she couldn’t heed his unspoken command. She couldn’t stop.
Her feet did slow, though, as she moved along the aisle of handmade wood-turned furniture that stood there—writing desks, coffee tables, chests. She marvelled at their craftsmanship, at the attention paid to detail, at the absolute perfection of each piece.
‘You made these?’
‘Yes.’
The word left him, clipped and short.
He didn’t need to explain. Jaz understood immediately. This was what he’d thrown himself into when he’d given up his drawing and painting.
‘Connor, you didn’t give up your art. You just… redirected it.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘These pieces are amazing, beautiful.’ She knelt down in front of a wine rack, reached out and trailed her fingers across the wood. ‘You’ve been selling some of these pieces to boutiques in Sydney, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I came across a piece similar to this a couple of years back.’ She forced herself upright. If she’d known then that Connor had made it she’d have moved heaven and earth to buy it.
‘I went into that shop in my lunch hour every day for a week just to look at it.’
His face lost some of its hardness. ‘Did you buy it?’
‘No.’ It had been beyond her budget. ‘I couldn’t justify the expense at the time.’
She sensed his disappointment, though she couldn’t say how—the set of his shoulders or his lips, perhaps?
‘Mind you,’ she started conversationally, ‘it did take a whole week of lecturing myself to be sensible…and if it had been that gorgeous bookcase—’ she motioned across to the next piece ‘—I’d have been lost…and horrendously in debt. Which is why I’m going to back away from it now, nice and slow.’
Finally he smiled back at her.
‘My things!’ She suddenly remembered why they were here. ‘I’ll just grab them and get out of your hair.’
He didn’t urge her to take her time. He didn’t offer to show her any of the other marvels lined up in the garage. She told herself she was a fool for hoping that he would.
WHEN Jaz opened the door to him on Saturday evening, Connor’s jaw nearly hit the ground. She stood there in a floor-length purple dress and he swore he’d never seen anything more perfect in his life. The dress draped the lines of her body in Grecian style folds to fasten between her breasts with a diamanté brooch. It oozed elegance and sex appeal. It suited the confident, capable businesswoman she’d become.
Ha! No, it didn’t. Not in this lifetime. That dress did not scream professional businesswoman. The material flowed and ran over her body in a way that had his hands itching and his skin growing too tight for the rest of his body. It definitely wasn’t businesslike. What he wanted to do to Jaz in that dress definitely wasn’t businesslike.
He had to remind himself that the only kind of relationship Jaz wanted with him these days was businesslike.
He had to remind himself that that was what he wanted too.
‘Hi, Connor.’
Gwen waved to him from the end of the hallway. It made him realise that he and Jaz hadn’t spoken a word to each other yet. He took in Jaz’s heightened colour, noted how her eyes glittered with an awareness that matched his own, and desire fire-balled in his groin. If they were alone, he’d back her up against a wall, mould each one of her delectable curves to the angles of his body and slake his hunger in the wet shine of her lips.
No, he wouldn’t!
Bloody hell. Get a grip, man. This is a business arrangement. He tried to spell out the word in his head—B-U-S… It was a sort of business arrangement, he amended. He wanted to help Jaz the way she’d helped him. He wanted to prove to her that Clara Falls was more than Mr Sears and his pointed conservatism. He wanted her to see the good here— the way Frieda had. Instinct told him Jaz needed to do at least that much. If she wanted to leave at the end of twelve months after that, then all power to her.
He glanced down into her face and tried to harden himself against the soft promise of her lips…and the lush promise of her body.
Gwen strode down the hallway. ‘Are you okay, Connor?’
He realised he still hadn’t uttered a word. ‘Uh…’ He cleared his throat, ran a finger around the inside collar of his dress shirt. ‘These things cut a man’s windpipe in two. I feel as trussed up as a Sunday roast.’
‘You look damn fine in it, though.’
‘You’re looking pretty stunning yourself,’ manners made him shoot back at her. In truth, with Jaz in the same room he barely saw Gwen. He had a vague impression of red and that was about it.
Jaz folded her arms and glared at him. Man, what had he done now? He turned back to Gwen. ‘Who’s your date tonight, then?’
Gwen shook