Loverman Read online

  Viva. He had to talk to her. Or not. Maybe he could fix the situation with Maxine before Viva even had to know she was in town. The last thing he wanted was to involve his sister. As strong as she was, she didn’t need this shit. She didn’t deserve it. She’d paid a high enough price already.

  “Your mother knows how to trigger you,” Charles observed.

  So did Charles. He’d be stupid to let him realise that. He couldn’t trust him. Not with this.

  Kemp shot him a glance. “Where were you?”

  “A place called Eden, of all things.” Charles’ abruptly remote expression reminded him of the kid he’d been at that toxic Palm Beach mansion: all rich-kid hauteur and dismissal. But he knew Charles better now, remembered the lonely kid at that Bellevue Hill boarding school, and there was too much hidden behind that calm. “After we got back from the gallery that night, once you were asleep, I got in my car and… just drove. I found myself halfway to Melbourne. I booked into a hotel. I needed time alone. Time to think.”

  Time to process the media storm, more like. Time to hide like a wounded animal.

  Jesus, what the fuck was going on in his head?

  “And you just happened to come back here in time to let my mother in the front door?” Suspicion lashed every word.

  Something flickered behind Charles’ eyes. “Oh no, Kemp. I was planning to stay at the hotel another week or so. I came back because Maxine rang me and demanded it.”

  Christ. Talk about laying it on the line. It was difficult not to flinch. Kemp shoved down that emotion. Plus, even the concept that his mother had managed to hunt down Charles’ private number was terrifying. He was stunned she’d managed it.

  He was upstairs, in the bedroom, when Charles joined him as he was peeling off his tee. Charles halted him with a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had a shock. Seeing your mother again after so long can’t have been… well, pleasant. Let me run a bath for you.” His nose wrinkled fastidiously. “As much as I dislike the woman, frankly she was right about one thing—you are a little ripe.”

  Kemp snorted. “I thought you enjoyed the way I smelled.”

  Charles smile was unexpectedly dark and dirty and wicked. “I do. But the way you smell right now—it’s you, amped up by ten. At least. And doesn’t a good, long soak in the tub sound tempting?”

  It did. Way better than the quick shower he’d been planning. Reluctantly, Kemp nodded. He was never comfortable having others run around after him, tend to him. It was one thing in a professional, work context; then it was business. But away from that? It just felt awkward. Maxine’s narcissism had left both Viva and him incapable of gracefully accepting anyone trying to pamper them. They were just too used to being self-sufficient.

  Still, he was too bleary with exhaustion to argue, and he needed to get clean. The main bathroom had a big corner spa tub, and while he stripped off in the bright morning light, a slice of vivid summer sky in the high window, Charles turned on the taps and hunted out the bath salts. Naked, Kemp kicked his filthy, sweaty, post-show clothing to a corner of the bathroom floor and waited for Charles’ gaze to catch on him. For once, it didn’t.

  There was no blue, blue stare sliding over his suddenly tight, prickling skin. No deliberate glance at his cock. No heat in the eyes that met his.

  No promise of more, always more.

  Instead, Charles bent over the churning tub, the jets on, and dabbled a hand in the foaming water. The air was filled with a fresh herbal scent. It smelled impossibly clean and enticing, while nothing about what happened between them could ever have been described as clean. Soothing. Raw, filthy, and compulsive was a better fit. Easier to understand. Easier to deal with. What was happening between them right now didn’t fit into that.

  He felt thrown off balance, and he didn’t enjoy it.

  “I thought maybe I’d see you at the gig last night,” Kemp said into the fragile silence and then regretted it.

  Charles straightened up and said bluntly, “I didn’t want to deal with a crowd. I should have answered your messages but—”

  “You just wanted to be alone. Fair enough,” Kemp said abruptly. Although, hell, even a week ago, Charles would have demanded an invitation to the Blues Basement gig if one hadn’t been offered.

  Everything was shifting. What would be the next bad news?

  Charles took in his weary, wary expression and grimaced. “You certainly didn’t need me at the gig to have a good night, but then Maxine contacted me and made it clear that I was required back here.” Maxine’s threats must have been spectacular to return Charles to Sydney if he’d been hell-bent on solitude. They’d also worked while Kemp’s own attempts at contacting him hadn’t received a single answer. Great. With a sigh Charles adjusted the water and stepped back. “It’s just right.”

  Between the dull aches in his reeking body and the total nightmare of Maxine back in their lives, Kemp could not process this new mood.

  He rubbed a palm over the stubble on his jaw and stepped carefully into the tub. Charles was right. The temperature was exactly right, the water like silk.

  He sank into it with a sigh. “So how does it feel to have a hit show?”

  “You mean how does it feel to have a notorious show?”

  Kemp’s mouth took on a wry twist, and he sank fully below the bubbling water, let it soak through his hair before he resurfaced. “Fuck them. Fuck them all.” He cut Charles a glance. “I was worried about you, Chaz. Now just get in the bath, okay?” He stretched out a hand.

  Charles ignored it. “You were worried about me?”

  What could he say to that? Once Charles checked his messages properly, he’d realise that yes, the impossible had happened. He’d actually been worried. Fuck it.

  “Yeah,” he said, eyes gritty, half-closed. “I was worried. Now please get in the damn bath.”

  It was mid-afternoon before Kemp stirred on the king-sized bed that filled much of the room, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. How much time had he wasted sleeping? Shit. He grabbed his phone off the battered amp case.

  No, no messages from his sister. Nor his mother.

  The awareness that Maxine had actually been in his home made his skin crawl. Quickly he pulled on trackpants, a loose tank, and headed downstairs. Charles was standing in the kitchen, feeding items into the juicer.

  The air was sharp with the bright lush scent of strawberries and oranges. Charles turned the machine off and glanced up.

  Kemp hooked out one of the mismatched stools by the stainless steel island bench and sat down. “This is not sustainable, Chaz,” he said flatly.

  Charles’ face froze for a moment and then smoothed. Those celestial eyes focused on the vivid stream of orange pink as he poured juice into two glasses, silently pushed one towards Kemp. Charles drank some juice, and Kemp tried not to watch the movement of the powerful muscle in his throat as he swallowed. Glass empty, Charles tapped it against the bench with a clink clink clink. “I would say that this juice is very sustainable, Kemp. Not to mention healthy. Which you should pay more attention to.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Charles’ jaw tilted up a degree. That hauteur again. Kemp had seen Charles ice others with it, but as a tactic it sure as fuck wouldn’t work on him, even if Charles did stand a couple of inches taller and a whole lot more immaculate.

  Charles was the GQ model. Kemp was just a wiry, fucked-up musician who cleaned up well enough to fool a crowd of thousands. Didn’t mean that close up, in the flesh, he wasn’t way less than perfect and certainly more of a disappointment. How in the hell to even begin this? At least sleep had given him clarity.

  He dunked the tip of his forefinger into his juice and brought it to his mouth to lick off. “Tastes great,” he agreed, aware of Charles’ sudden arrested stillness. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. Maxine came here for money, and judging by the way she’s brought you into this, I’m incidental. What she really wants is another slice of you
r father’s fortune—in the shape of your inheritance.” Kemp picked up the glass and drained the juice. It should have been delicious. He could scarcely taste it.

  Just how much could he say without bringing Viva into this? Because at the end of the day, this was all about Viva. His mother understood that. He could not allow Charles to. If he did know—knew anything about what had really happened, years ago, when they were all playing happy families in Palm Beach—he’d certainly have reason to bring the police into it, and that could not be permitted. Viva had to be protected. She could not have her life flayed open, be used by their mother yet again, just because he couldn’t keep his fucking desperate hands off Charles. Hadn’t been able to, in fact, even years back. The situation that was brewing had to be contained, and fast. Kemp didn’t bother censoring himself. “You and I have our issues, Charles, but the idea of Maxine gaining any further profit from her sorry bloody marriage to your father turns my stomach.”

  “Just what are you suggesting?”

  “She seems to think we’re a genuine couple. We’re not. We’re convenient. Two people who fuck. That’s it.”

  Put like that, it sounded fucking brutal. He was panicking. Not that Charles had flickered so much as an eyelash.

  Instead, Charles watched him with that maddening, detached reserve.

  “She thinks you’ll give her money because of us,” Kemp forced out. It was a humiliating, hateful fucking admission. “She believes that some imaginary emotional bond between us would make you hand over cash. Look after her. That’s all relationships have ever meant to her. Dollars. But if she thinks there is no us, then she’ll go—”

  “You really believe that?”

  No. No, he didn’t at all. But he wanted Charles out of this equation before he was dragged any deeper into it. Before he learnt any more about exactly what had happened at that mansion, years back, and exactly how it had all come to an end. He could not permit Charles to discover Viva’s role in any of it. About what her life had been there. About just what she’d been forced into. It had been the bargain he made with himself when he’d given in to the craving that had been in his blood for years. Give in, take what you want, but protect Viva. The balancing act from hell.

  Was Maxine really capable of spilling all that she knew? Could she do that to her own daughter? Well… hell, yes. The money at stake was a colossal incentive. It was everything.

  It was weird, but he never thought of Charles in terms of those… what, many millions? As an entitled rich kid… maybe, yes, once upon a time, but now, he saw him fully as an incredible artist, a brilliantly talented photographer who had big problems dealing with the shitshow that came with the public recognition of that talent.

  To Kemp, Charles Durant, son and heir of Richard Durant, mining magnate, was a different individual to that hard-working artist, to the still, contained man standing across the bench from him. But Maxine saw no difference. Kemp would lay odds that she saw nothing but big fat pulsing neon dollar signs when she faced Charles, just the way that she’d seen nothing but glittering black Amex cards and dollar signs when she’d been with old man Durant.

  Which meant that she was capable of anything, anything at all, and the possibility of her spilling everything to Charles to gain it all was just too damned likely. Disaster was gathering close by, fat as storm clouds.

  Agitated, Kemp prowled around the bench to Charles. “You understand what I mean, right?”

  Charles said nothing. Instead, he slowly reached a hand out, eyes fixed on the touch of his fingers as they delicately landed across the pale skin of Kemp’s chest, above the low neck of his tank. Charles’ fingertips simply rested there, as if he was relearning just what Kemp’s warmth felt like.

  Kemp’s heartbeat ran out of control. Charles had to feel it, that sudden acceleration. It had been so damned long…

  “Yes,” Charles said, still with that maddening detachment. “I understand exactly what you mean.”

  Kemp reached out. Charles wrapped a hand around Kemp’s wrist. A flush ran up Charles’ throat. His gaze fired up. Kemp’s cock hardened at that heat. The brutal speed of it dizzied him. Kemp pulled out of that grip, and he pulled Charles closer, a hand at his nape.

  “Mmm,” he gritted out. “You feel so good—”

  Christ, Charles had worked deep, deep under his skin. The skin that Kemp had told himself was too tough, too hardened to allow anyone but Viva under.

  Somehow, somewhere, at some time—truthfully, in those lost, distant days at the boarding school, the both of them shaken in the aftermath of shock, violence, and death—it had happened. Charles had got to him. Didn’t matter, right now. Nor did the worry and concern Kemp had felt over Charles’ disappearance.

  In the bath that morning, Kemp had insisted on shampooing Charles’ hair after Charles had shampooed his own. Kemp had been unwillingly charmed by the way Charles had sunk into that novel intimacy, resisting and then becoming absorbed by the quiet, rare tenderness of Kemp’s fingertips working the suds through those golden, unbleached strands. Afterwards, Kemp had lazed back against the end of the tub. He’d fallen asleep in that warm, gentle water quickly and deeply. His memories of Charles getting him out of the tub and towelling him down were blurry.

  He’d slept like the dead, but now…

  Now, he was very much awake.

  Charles’ hand slid down, over the trackpants Kemp wore. He found the rigid outline of Kemp’s cock and nuzzled at his throat.

  “This is not sustainable?” he repeated softly. He palmed Kemp’s erection. “It seems very, very sustainable to me.”

  Kemp clenched his fingers in the hair at Charles’ nape, dragged his head back to press an open-mouth kiss against Charles’ own throat. He sucked at Charles’ Adam’s apple. The fingers working him through his sweats became rougher. Expert. Knew exactly what he wanted. Gave it to him. Kemp groaned. “We have to cool it for a while. Throw Maxine off. Maybe you should move back in to your house. No more sleepovers.”

  “This is you breaking up with me?” Sarcasm edged Charles’ low, cool voice.

  Breaking up? You had to be a real couple to break up, and they were… they were…

  “Christ—” Kemp hissed. He hadn’t permitted emotion to seep into this, but he was hit with regret, sharp and traitorous as broken glass. He wanted to say no. Instead, he said, “Fuck. Yeah, for now, anyway… Till I can back Maxine off. She’ll have less leverage if we cool it down.”

  For the first time ever when they were tangling, Charles laughed.

  Chapter Ten

  Charles knew that if he hadn’t found some way to laugh at Kemp’s pronouncement, found some dark, twisted humour in the entire situation, he would have walked out the door and gone straight to his security team. Gotten them to hunt down every scrap of scabrous, shameful information there undoubtedly was on Maxine Durant-Carreton and used it to permanently shut her up.

  Why he hadn’t ordered it before, he didn’t understand. Some last vestige of respect for the concept of privacy, perhaps. And also, because those were exactly the kind of tactics his father would have used, and he refused to behave like that man.

  God, it wasn’t the first time his ex-stepmother’s bloodlust for his inheritance had derailed his life. The woman was feral. She’d been a fitting mate for the bastard that his father had been.

  He’d never told Kemp that she’d challenged the will. Fought to have her prenup turned over. That information had been kept largely out of the public arena.

  But Charles, not his legal team, had very much driven her defeat. She’d finally given up, after, to the shock of the adults advising him, he’d demanded a private meeting with her. “I know what you did, Maxine,” he’d told her.

  Seated in that lawyer’s office, just the two of them, she’d eyed him with contempt: near fifteen and wearing the uniform of his private school. He’d clearly struck her as a joke. “Really, Charles?” She’d surveyed the massive Durant diamond on her finger. “And what exactly did I
do? Walked down the aisle with your father? Because I think the world is aware of that fact.”

  “You covered up for him,” Charles had said. “You permitted him.”

  Her head had jerked up at that.

  “Permitted what?”

  “You sold your own daughter for my father’s money,” he stated flatly. “And if I have to, I’ll share what I know with the world.” A lie, but Maxine wouldn’t know that. She judged others by her own ugly standards. He’d understood that even then. “You won’t be able to walk down the street. The tabloids will crucify you.”

  Maxine had gone paper white. “Just what— You’re a sick, sick little—”

  “I’ll enjoy what it does to my father’s reputation.” Charles had sat, contained, hands folded against their violent tremor. “Why should I protect him? He destroyed my—”

  But she missed that bitten-back giveaway.

  “Protect?” Her beautiful eyes were hard grey stones. “My god, I can’t believe I’m even sitting here listening to a—” She eyed him with open dislike and allowed, “Perhaps your father looked a little too long at Viva by the pool. Enjoyed the view. Nothing more. You don’t care about my daughter. You hated the sight of her. No, this is all about the will, the money—”

  “If you want, yes, it can be about the money.”

  Maxine was viciously flushed. “You sanctimonious little shit.”

  Charles lifted a shoulder. Indifferent. “I have proof, Maxine. Do you want me to show you? That can be arranged. Dates, times, photographs. My father liked to keep trophies,” Charles said. He was lying. There were no trophies—at least that he knew of. Maxine didn’t know that. Charles had swallowed against the tightness in his throat. “If I have to, I’ll go public.”

  A pause. She raked him with one long, calculating look. Was he a threat? Charles had met her stare with his own. He’d had harsh years of training in boardroom tactics from his father: a relic of the time when the man had groomed him to inherit his empire. If nothing else, it had given him the tools to face down Richard Durant’s toxic widow. A rare bonus he’d never expected.