'Can't.'
'Yes, you can,' he said, slowly reaching over to stroke her hair, still damp, like cool water running through his fingers.
You're going to feel like hell in the morning, he thought. And you're not the only one.
She sighed, turned, her eyes flitted open to find him in the dark. 'Can't kick you out of your bed. Not fair.'
For a long moment, he hesitated. Then decided there was no point arguing with someone who was drunk. He slowly took off his jeans.
Lizzie's eyes flickered open to the sounds of morning at Middle Point. Traffic. People. Seagulls. The waves. Snatches of the night before came back to her like a crazy slideshow. A bottle of French champagne. Christmas presents. A smouldering kiss from Dan at dinner. Come to bed.
Oh, God.
Heaving in the front yard. Her shoes. Where were her shoes? This was like a bad movie, one of those from her childhood that was repeated endlessly in the summer non-ratings period. Her bad movie. The one in which the heroine does something stupid over and over again and never learns. The one in which the ending never changes. Lizzie groaned, tried to judge if her head would explode if she lifted it off the pillow. An attempt confirmed that it was still intact. She propped herself up on her elbows and when the sheet slipped down her body, she swore.
She was buck-naked.
In Dan's bed.
With a huff she thought back to the old Dan. The old Dan would be no stranger to having a carousel of women in his bed. Her. Anna. Her again. She looked around on the floor for her red dress and couldn't see it. Then she remembered what she'd done to it. The groan came from down deep. She'd probably never want to wear it again, anyway.
With a towel wrapped round her, pulled so tight it flattened her breasts, and safely pinned in her armpits by elbows pulled close to her sides, she gingerly walked to the kitchen. The closer she got, the stronger the smell of something damn good assaulted her nostrils. And when she reached the doorway, the sight of something close to perfect assaulted every one of her senses.
Dan's dark hair was ruffled and sticking up at strange angles and his jaw wore a shadow of growth. A white T-shirt and brightly coloured boardshorts, the summer uniform of the beach, hung loosely on his frame, and he had a chequered tea towel slung over one shoulder. He seemed to be humming to himself as he turned something in a pan on the stove. Bacon. Lizzie closed her eyes in blessed relief. And then she smelled something suspiciously like coffee. Real coffee.
When she opened her eyes again, Dan was looking at her with a smile so warm she forgot to breathe. He put down his cooking utensil and went to her, his hands reaching for her arms, rubbing them gently from elbow to shoulder. He widened his stance and dipped his head so he could look at her more closely.
'How you feeling?' There was no smirk hidden in the remark, nothing but kindness and concern.
'Like shit, actually.' Lizzie managed a grin and Dan responded with an affectionate laugh.
'I happen to have the perfect antidote to that. Go sit down.' Dan nodded his head in the direction of the table and Lizzie obeyed. In a flash, Dan had presented her with a cup of coffee, strong, black and steaming hot. She wrapped her fingers around it.
'Since when does a small town boy drink real coffee?' Lizzie regarded him with a raised eyebrow and a tease of a smile.
He reciprocated both. 'Since he began hoping a small town girl might drop by again.'
Lizzie's heart beat a little faster. She didn't want to look up at him to see what his eyes were saying to her, finding his words too much to take in. Before she could think about what he'd said, a plate of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs and toast appeared before her. It looked greasy and disgusting and was absolutely the best breakfast she'd ever had.
Dan poured himself a coffee from the French press and sat opposite her at the table. When Lizzie popped the last piece of bacon into her mouth, it struck her that both times she'd sat at Dan's table, he'd fed her. Wasn't that turn up for the books.
'Thanks for breakfast. Just what I needed.' Lizzie swallowed, allowing herself only a quick glance in his direction.
'It's the least I can do.'
Lizzie looked out the front windows. Cars had already parked along the esplanade and people were unloading eskies and kids and umbrellas, taking surf boards down from roof racks, preparing for Boxing Day on the beach.
'Elizabeth.' Dan's voice was soft, teasing.
'Yeah?'
'You know, nothing happened last night.'
Lizzie put her cutlery neatly across her plate. So he wanted to talk about it. She so didn't. Didn't want to relive her embarrassment and mortification at her behaviour.
'I know,' she replied and felt the heat bloom in her cheeks.
Dan shifted in his seat, crossed his arms on the table, leaned towards her. 'I think I deserve a medal for my restraint, don't you? I was a total gentleman. Even though you were naked in my bed.'
'Yeah, I'm sure the front garden barfing was a total turn-on.' Lizzie shivered at the memory and covered her eyes with her hands.
'Not so much. But the part where I took off your clothes and put you in the shower? It was right up there.'
Something shimmied up Lizzie's spine and lodged in her throat.
'Nice lingerie, by the way.'
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Lizzie had a flashback to her decision the night before to wear her sexiest red bra and knickers under that red party dress. Julia had convinced her to buy them when they'd gone up to Adelaide. When she'd put them on and stood in front of her mirror, she'd for once been distracted from her wobbly bits and instead saw the bits that weren't half bad. The lingerie had been a present for her and her alone, to give herself a sexy kick up the arse, and she'd had no clue that the lacy bits of barely-there nothingness would be on display to anybody. Especially not him.
And now he was probably thinking she'd done it all on purpose, that she'd set a mantrap, with her lingerie as the bait. That she wouldn't care that he was with someone else. That was more humiliating than vomiting in front of him.
'I'm sure Anna will admire your restraint too.' Lizzie straightened and met his eyes.
The sexiness drained out of them. 'What's Anna got to do with it?'
'I'm not the kind of girl to cut someone else's lunch, no matter how drunk I am.' Lizzie gulped down the last of her coffee and pushed back the chair with a scrape.
'Hang on,' Dan said, his voice louder now and testy. He stood too. 'What kind of a man do you think I am? First of all, I'm not the kind of guy to fuck someone who's drunk. Even if she happens to be unbelievably hot and naked and in my bed, centimetres away from me. And not even if I had a raging hard-on most of the night. Clear?'
Lizzie gulped. Most of the night? Oh my.
'And second,' he clenched his fists at his side, taking a deep breath, 'There's nothing going on with Anna and me. Nothing. She's married, for fuck's sake.'
Now she really felt like a deflated balloon the day after the party. This was a bad midday movie. Trying to resurrect a shred of self-respect, she went with what she knew but what he hadn't told her himself. 'I know you two were involved.'
Dan shook his head in disbelief. 'Jesus, Lizzie, that's hardly a secret. She is a fantastic woman. We're still friends. Good friends.'
'But you didn't think to tell me yourself, did you?'
Dan cursed himself. He couldn't tell her any more. He just couldn't. He wasn't ready to give her the whole story. That would have to be enough. For now.
Lizzie stepped backwards. 'Whoever she is to you is none of my business. I didn't apologise for my behaviour last night. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to see that. Thank you for the shower, the bed, the breakfast.'
For taking care of me.
'You don't have to apologise. And where the hell are you going?'
Lizzie pulled the towel tighter against her, closed her eyes in humiliation at the question she knew she had to ask. 'Where are my clothes? I need to go home.'
Dan nodded towards his bedroom. 'Grab a T-shirt of mine from the drawer. I'll drive you. I'm not letting you walk home.'
It was a command she was happy to obey. The thought of walking the streets of Middle Point the morning after the night before in a vomit-splattered party dress, looking for all the world like a trashed party-girl, was beyond mortifying.
CHAPTER
21
Every day for the next week, Lizzie barely had time to draw breath. Tourist season was in full swing. The pub was groaning with people for lunch and dinner and for drinks at every hour in between. Traffic on the esplanade felt like Adelaide's peak hour, all day. The beach below was filled with life and people and summertime. Sandcastles were being constructed with precision by groups of young children, their noses smeared with sunscreen like tribal markings. Teenage boys sauntered the beach with bodyboards under their arms, their boardshorts so low-slung that the brand of their jocks were visible on their flat, tanned stomachs. Teenage girls in wetsuits took to the waves too, their long hair pulled back in high ponytails, while others in bikinis lay on the sand, topping up their honey tans and sending text messages. Surf schools plied their trade every day in the peak season, their advertising flags staked into the sand and perpetually fluttering in the breeze. Anxious parents crowded the waterline with cameras and little kids with low centres of gravity sprung up on their feet on rented boards in shallow swells, converted to the sport in one wave.