Yes, he’d have filming to do in Australia for the TV job, but he’d have weekends back here. He was already considering basing himself in New Zealand to be with her. That would work, wouldn’t it?
Caleb lifted his head and caught her staring at him, the raw vulnerability stark in her eyes hitting him like a blow to the stomach.
You really think she deserves a casual “let’s see how far we can take this” affair?
He couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. Because no, she didn’t. She deserved far more than that.
Suddenly the words she’d said to him the day their affair had started came flooding back. The moment he’d realized just how badly he’d hurt her when he’d pushed her away all those years ago.
“I had someone. I had you.”
Cold began to seep through him. Wasn’t that what he was doing again? Taking what she offered him like a selfish bastard without even a thought to how this might affect her.
Taking just like Dad did.
The cold turned to ice. No, he didn’t want to be like his father. Didn’t want to be the one taking and taking, and giving nothing in return. Because he had nothing real to give her. Nothing of any substance. His capacity for care had been totally burned out by first his mother, then his father. He had nothing left for her.
“Hey,” she said softly. Her fingers brushed over his mouth. “Something wrong?”
“Just thinking coffee might be good,” he said, needing some excuse to get away so he could think about what he was doing.
Judith’s hand dropped away. “Oh, good plan.”
“Stay there. Don’t move.”
Not bothering to dress, Caleb walked out into the kitchen and began rummaging around for the coffee stuff. For the first time, it bothered him that he knew where it was, and that he knew where everything was in her apartment. It felt too intimate and he hadn’t planned for it to get there so quickly.
As he spooned some coffee beans into the grinder, he leaned his hip against the counter, trying to think.
He didn’t want this to end, that was the bottom line. He hadn’t wanted it to end the first time, if he was honest with himself. They’d had something back then, the promise of something amazing. And now, these past two weeks, he’d felt it again. That potential. If only they had time and space in which to explore it…
A loud knock sounded on Judith’s door.
Crap. Probably time to put some pants on.
Going back to the bedroom, he found Judith half out of bed.
“I’ll answer it,” he said, pulling on his tuxedo trousers from the night before.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You go back to bed and I’ll bring some coffee in a bit.”
She gave him a smile that caused a bittersweet pain in his heart as he went back out into the hallway and down to the front door.
Goddamn he loved that smile of hers.
The knocking came again, harder this time.
“Steady on, mate,” Caleb muttered and jerked the door open.
To find Joseph standing on the other side of it.
Caleb’s stomach dropped into his feet. Oh, shit.
There was a horrible, awkward moment where the two of them just stared at each other. Then Joseph’s gaze slowly made its way down Caleb’s torso, taking in his very bare chest, his tuxedo trousers, and his also very bare feet.
“I assume there’s a good reason why you’re in my sister’s apartment wearing nothing but your trousers?” Joseph asked in a voice that promised a swift and painful death.
Caleb bit back a curse. Because what the hell could he say to that? Other than “busted?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “About that.”
Joseph’s eyes drilled into him like a couple of laser beams. “You were fixing a leak and your clothes got wet?”
“No. Not as such.”
“Oh, you went momentarily insane and tore all your clothes off? And Judith took you home and found you some pants?”
Clearly this was not going to go well. “Not that, either.”
“That, my friend, is the wrong answer.”
Caleb sighed. “You’d probably better come in.”
Joseph had already decided that’s what he was going to do, because he shouldered past Caleb and headed down the hallway into the lounge.
Cursing, Caleb followed him, finding his friend pacing near the windows, a thunderous look on his face.
“You’re sleeping with my sister,” Joseph said flatly.
Caleb thrust his hands in his pockets. “Look, before you give me the lecture—”
“The lecture?” Joseph cut him off. “I’ve already given you the bloody lecture, Cal. I gave that to you eight years ago, when you were sniffing around her—”