Free Just for You by Rosalind James Page B

wasn’t there. She told you what her mate said the mate saw, and that sounds reliable to you? I’ll tell you this, if she saw me doing anything with those girls, Joann’s mate was doing more than drinking, because it didn’t happen. All that’s coming to you, what? Third-hand? Fourth-hand? And you’d rather believe that than me telling you?”
    “So tell me what happened,” Reka insisted, and actually made a beckoning motion at him that had the anger rising higher. “Come on. Tell me.”
    “What happened is that I got pissed.” He saw the roll of her eyes, and he didn’t know if he wanted to cuddle her or spank her. Both, probably. Both, definitely. “That’s right. I did. It happens. Occasionally a person drinks too much, especially after that person’s just played a rugby match, especially if that person might be a little lonely. People have been known to do things they regret later. Even you might’ve had that happen from time to time, if you cast your mind back.”
    “Like I did with you,” she flashed back. “Thank you
very
much. And, what? You telling me you got pissed and did some other girl like you did me? Oh, wait.
Two
girls. Even better. Goodbye.” Her hands were on her hips, and then she reached around him for the door and yanked it open.
    “No,” he said, not moving from the spot where he was planted, because he’d be damned if he was going down without a fight. His hands curled into fists, the anger goingstraight there, the tension holding him rigid. “I’m telling you I didn’t. I’m telling you I drank too much, and because I’m
not
a fool, not anymore, I didn’t drive home. I went to have a kip first, and then I woke up because a couple of girls wandered into the bedroom and decided they’d give it a go, and I threw them out, least I think I did, because they left again. A bit stonkered at the time, though, wasn’t I. I could recite the flow of the conversation for you, what I said, what they said, what bloody Joann’s bloody mate probably said, except I couldn’t, because I don’t remember it well enough. Because it was just exactly
nothing
.”
    “And that’s it?” she demanded. “That’s what you’ve got for me?”
    “That’s it. That’s what I’ve got, and that’s all I’ll ever have, and I’m sorry you don’t like it, but what am I meant to do about it? It’s going to happen. I’m going to be someplace, maybe someplace far away, there are going to be girls around, and some of those girls are going to think it’d be nice to take a tour round the park with an All Black, and I’m going to tell them no, for some reason I don’t understand myself at this moment.” His voice was getting a little louder, and so what? “Why the hell d’you think I’m coming all this way to see you? If I just wanted to have sex, I could have sex, and I could have it without all this agro. Easy as. Thank you very much, twenty dollars for a taxi and see you later. There you are. Sex. I know how to get it if I want it like that, and what I’m wondering right now is, why the hell not?”
    He’d flung the words out, and he’d seen her wince at them, and he hated that he’d said it, but what was he supposed to say? It was the truth.
    “You think I don’t know that, how easy it is for you?” she said, rallying, because there was nobody tougher than Reka. No matter how much his hands fisted, no matter how angry she could see him getting, she wasn’t backing down. “I know that. That’s the point.”
    “You think you know. And you’re dead wrong. It’s pretty obvious that you think I don’t know the difference between sex and…love.” There. He’d said it. What more could he do? What more could he say?
    “No,” she said. “I think you do know the difference. I think you know exactly, and you separate them, and you think that makes it all right. Because it’s ‘just sex,’ and it doesn’t matter to you, so it shouldn’t matter to me. That’s what I