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face, saw that she was blinking away an out-of-character tear, and his temper drained away. ‘Want a drink, squirt?’ he asked, all gruff, the way he always was when confronting emotion.

      ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do,’ Sarah said.

      ‘Whisky?’

      ‘Why not?’

      Adam got up to pour her a small measure of Scotch, and by the time he brought it to her, she had herself under control again.

      ‘How about we move you out of the granny flat while she’s gone?’ he asked. ‘Then you won’t have to deal with what I’m sure will be her new husband when they get back. If they ever get back, that is. She’s gone so far off the deep end about Italy lately I wouldn’t put it past her to move there.’

      Sarah sniffed at her drink, wrinkling her nose. ‘Massimo’s okay, and I’m pretty isolated from the main house anyway.’

      ‘Yeah, well if he’s ever not okay, you know you only have to say the word.’

      ‘I think one attempt at stepfather-castration is enough for this lifetime.’

      Adam poured more whisky for himself and took his seat again. ‘I castrate on a needs-must basis.’

      Sarah giggled then, and reached across for his hand. She held it, then squeezed it, and Adam’s heart squeezed right along with it as he gripped her hand back. ‘I’m sorry she’s dumping Bertie,’ he said. ‘I know how much you love him.’

      ‘He’s the only decent step-parent in the bunch. I just wish I knew what she thinks is missing. Not that Dad’s any better. What are they looking for, Adam, and why can’t they find it?’

      ‘They’re looking for the same thing you keep looking for. Perfect love. And they can’t find it for the same reason you can’t find it—because it doesn’t exist.’

      ‘What if it does exist?’

      ‘Then we obviously don’t carry the gene for it—giving or receiving.’

      Silence, and then Sarah sighed again and released his hand. ‘So okay, let’s talk about how we extricate you from the thing with Lane.’

      Adam shook his head. ‘I can’t be extricated.’

      ‘Of course you can.’

      ‘I signed a contract, Sarah.’

      ‘Yes, but it’s not legally binding. It can’t be. It’s a sex contract. Like Fifty Shades of Grey. They’re not enforceable.’

      ‘It is not like Fifty Shades of Grey. Jesus, Sarah! Do you really think I have a red room?’

      ‘So you’ve read Fifty Shades have you?’

      ‘No I bloody well have not, but I haven’t been living under a rock, you know.’

      ‘Anyway, how would I know whether or not you have a red room?’

      ‘Because you’ve snooped all over this house, that’s how! And that’s not the point, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether the contract is legally enforceable or not. I signed and that’s it. You know how I feel about commitments. If you make them, you keep them.’

      ‘Yes, yes, I know. Which is why you don’t make them to women, as you’ve been at pains to point out ever since you hit puberty. So I just can’t work out why you did it. I mean Lane is a woman, isn’t she?’

      Why had he done it? It was a question Adam had been asking himself ever since signing on the dotted line. He didn’t like the only answer he’d come up with: that Lane’s particular combination of defencelessness and intractability had goaded the self-control and common sense right out of him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to admit such a thing to his sister.

      ‘This isn’t a commitment to a woman—not as such,’ he said. ‘It’s a paid business proposition.’ Which was the truth—what was between him and Lane Davis was nothing like a normal relationship—but damn if he didn’t sound like a snake oil salesman saying it.

      ‘“Paid business proposition”?’ Sarah scoffed. ‘As if you need either the money or the proposition!’

      ‘And anyway, she’s more ice cube than woman.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Brr.’

      ‘Not funny.’

      Another over-the-top shiver. ‘No, it’s not.’

      ‘As it happens Lane’s got fire under the ice—that’s what she’s been told.’

      ‘Who’d say such a dumb-ass thing?’

      ‘Someone who knows women very well. You’re not the only expert out there, you know.’

      ‘I hope you don’t mean Mum,’ Adam said, even though he knew from Sarah’s irritatingly smug smirk she meant nothing of the kind.

      ‘Not a female,’ she said.

      Adam decided he needed more whisky and picked up his drink.

      ‘Although I’m sure Mum would agree,’ Sarah went on. ‘She keeps saying she sees Lane in the colour red, which is a hot-not-cold colour.’

      Adam choked on his Scotch. ‘Hang the hell on! Are you saying Mum knows Lane?’

      ‘Hmm, she’s met her quite a few times, at least. And why are you looking at me like that?’

      ‘Trying to get my head around the fact that my mother met the girl I’m supposed to be having a sexual affair with before I did.’

      ‘Yes, well at the risk of repeating myself, you’re not supposed to be having a sexual affair with Lane, and I wasn’t intending for you to ever meet her, and I only let you meet her out of desperation. As I’ve told you and told you, I’m over introducing my friends to you. They always fall in love with you, you never reciprocate, and they end up hating me. And I do not want Lane to hate me.’

      ‘You’re safe in this instance. Lane isn’t going to fall in love with me—I’m not her type.’

      ‘Early days, Adam,’ Sarah said darkly.

      ‘Time won’t change the fact that she needs a man she can boss around and that ain’t me.’

      ‘You’d better make sure of it. You are not allowed to make her fall in love with you. Got it?’

      ‘I don’t “make” girls fall in love with me.’

      ‘You do something to them. Maybe you’re the one with the cauldron, cooking up spells.’

      ‘If I were going to cook up a spell, it would be to get you over your “be still my throbbing heart” one-true-love claptrap.’

      ‘My heart doesn’t throb.’

      ‘So stop trying to make it.’

      ‘Why? So I can be as miserable as you?’

      ‘I wasn’t miserable until my sister and my mother lumbered me with a frigid bed partner for three months.’

      ‘As I keep saying, you lumbered yourself.’ She sniffed at her glass again. ‘And she’s not frigid. Mum says she just has a little … complex.’

      ‘Yeah well last I heard Mum was an interior decorator, not a psychologist.’

      ‘She’s good at this stuff, Adam!’

      ‘She’s good at interior decorating.’

      ‘She says Lane’s problem is a lack of personal confidence, and that’s arisen because of her fractured relationship with her mother. A Mommie Dearest complex, Mum calls it.’

      Adam stared at her. ‘Have I fallen

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