Or he could keep it even simpler. Just Carissa, an intimate stranger who’d shared his bed for a night. Some soft curves in the bumpy road that was his life right now.
She didn’t know he had her bracelet. And her panties, he noted, spotting the scrap of blue silk on the bed amongst the tumbled sheets. Ah well, he’d have them gift wrapped and handed in to her at the front desk. But he’d see she got the bracelet back personally.
A girl with her classical background wouldn’t know anything about a band like XLRock, he decided, hunting up a room-service menu. Rave’s band had needed financial backing to get started and Ben had been happy to put down the money.
Fourteen years ago in a tiny pub on the edge of the Nullabor Plain, Ben had taken the fifteen-year-old runaway pickpocket under his wing and taught him to play guitar. The kid had become a runaway star.
Ben stared sightlessly at the ceiling. All he saw was Rave. A couple of weeks ago he’d stepped in with his own guitar to help out when one of the band members had quit on the eve of the open-air concert, Desert Rock. But Ben hadn’t been able to resist the lure of Broken Hill’s Musicians’ Club on the way home.
The memory taunted him. His stomach tied itself into those familiar knots and he decided he wasn’t hungry after all. Grimly he grabbed his jeans from the floor where he’d shucked them last night and headed for the shower.
Adjusting the temperature to just above cold, he let the water pelt him and shivered as he soaped up. He could still see the frustration in Rave’s eyes. But he’d grown accustomed to the tantrums. ‘Jess won’t mind one extra night, Rave. Phone her and blame me. Here, take the Porsche for a spin.’ He’d handed him the car keys himself.
It was the last time he’d seen him.
Ben wrenched off the taps, pressed his fingers to his eyelids. He hadn’t expected Rave to be irresponsible enough to get plastered before he got behind the wheel. He should have seen it. He’d tried to escape the visions that plagued him—waking, sleeping—but the guilt stuck like barbed wire.
And the nightmares kept coming.
For one brief evening, Carissa had made him forget.
When he re-entered the main room, the Sydney Morning Herald had been slipped beneath the door by some faceless night porter. Without glancing at the headlines he tossed it into the bin. He was so tired of the smell of impersonal hotel rooms. Sick of the sight of staff with their plastic smiles, the clatter of service trolleys.
He turned to the spectacular view of high-rises against a gold sky. Just once he wanted to look out a window and see an untidy cottage garden or a stand of stringy eucalypts, a wooden letter-box with the paint peeling off. How many years had it been since he’d slept in a house? A home? Too damn many.
He needed a place where no one who knew him could find him. Space where he could think for a few days before the gut-wrenching prospect of facing up to Jess.
Even if he had to pay a couple of months’ rent for a few days, the room on Sydney’s coast advertised in the staff cafeteria might just be the temporary hideaway he was looking for.
CHAPTER THREE
SLIDING his sunglasses down his nose, Ben studied the house from his hire car, checked the ad again. ‘Want a quiet retreat away from city noise?’ it read. ‘Spacious old family home. Own bed/sitting/bathroom, share kitchen. Meals cooked if preferred.’
The house itself was a gracious old bungalow but someone had let it go. The midday sun glared off a khaki lawn and a row of straggling rose bushes. Faded paintwork was peeling along the verandah and around the windows. The roof sagged and one of the wooden steps leading to the front door was missing.
Mozart—at least he thought it was—drifted through an open window as he unfolded himself and climbed out of the car. He pushed open the gate, caught the scents of coffee and fresh-baked cake as he walked up the path.
He knocked and a voice sounded from somewhere inside. The door opened and a young woman with a long flow of black hair and grey eyes looked out. Her skimpy olive crop-top revealed smooth tanned skin. Black Lycra shorts clung to shapely legs. She was, in a word, a knockout.
‘Good morning, my name’s Ben Jamieson. I’ve come about the room.’
She stared at him a moment, then her mouth curved into a wide grin. ‘Hey, Carrie, your piano tuner’s here,’ she called in an amused voice to someone down the passage.
‘No,’ he began, ‘there’s some misunderstanding, the room—’
‘Ben Jamieson.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Wait up. The Ben Jamieson?’ She grinned. ‘I’m Melanie Sawyer, Carrie’s stepsister.’ She offered her hand, her grip firm. ‘I just called round on my way home from the hospital—I’m a nurse.’
‘I didn’t ring for a piano tuner, and the kitchen sink…’ A woman joined Melanie, her voice trailing off when she saw him.
His blue lady transformed.
Biting back the first word that sprang to his lips, he exhaled sharply, rocked back on his heels.
‘Carrie, there you are,’ Melanie said. ‘This is Ben Jamieson. He’s come about the room. Ben, this is—’
‘Carissa.’
He compared the two females, both gazes fixed on him. Melanie might dazzle the eye, but Carissa shone with an inner spark that set her apart.
Right now her hair was an out-of-control waterfall of gold. A buttercup-yellow vest-top clung to braless breasts. Mile-long legs gleamed beneath short denim cut-offs and she had two dark stains on her knees and a glob of something black on her cheek. Her feet were bare.
She didn’t look pleased to see him.
Her cheeks flushed but those blue eyes turned a dangerous shade of cool. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was in the staff cafeteria…’ He held out the ad.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘How did you manage that?’
‘Friends in high places?’ He should just get the hell away, but he couldn’t seem to move his feet.
Melanie frowned. ‘You know each other?’
‘I don’t…’ Carissa threw him a suspicious look, then turned to her sister. ‘How do you know him?’
Melanie shook her head at Ben. ‘The queen of pop, Carrie is not. Ben’s a songwriter.’ Her brow creased. ‘You were there when…oh, God.’ Her sentence hung in an awkward silence broken only by the chattering of birds and Mozart pouring from the stereo inside. ‘Rave Elliot, XLRock,’ she finished in a low voice.
Carissa’s eyes widened and thawed to lukewarm. ‘That horrific accident. I read about it.’ She leaned a shoulder against the door. Not flushed now but pale as milk. ‘I had no idea you…I’m sorry. For your loss.’
The pain struck hard. ‘Rave and I were like brothers.’
For a few hours this woman had taken his mind off his grief. Not just with her body, but with charm and optimism. Could she be good for him a little longer? If they laid the ground rules from the start…
He took a fortifying breath. His best decisions were often ones he didn’t think about too deeply. ‘I’d like to look at the room.’
But Carissa frowned. ‘Why? Why would you choose a cheap rented room over a penthouse suite?’
A fair question. ‘I need a private place for a while. If you’re worried about the short stay, I’m happy to pay you six months’ rent up front.’
The frown remained.
Melanie flashed him a reassuring smile. ‘Excuse us a moment. Wait right here,’ she said, tugging