The Bad Boy's Redemption. Joss Wood

the audience settled down, the chef, dressed in tartan chef’s pants and an enormous maroon chef’s hat, put his hands on his hips and looked into the audience.

      ‘Thank you for being here! I always ask for audience help and I usually ask for volunteers, but tonight I understand that Will Scott is in the audience. I’m the biggest, gayest fan!’ Rupert shuddered delicately and the audience howled with laughter.

      Lu heard Will’s groan.

      ‘So maybe Will could come up and give me a hand to make sugar baskets? Will, are you...game?’

      Will muttered a swear word and looked at Lu with panicked eyes. ‘Crap, Lu—I burn bloody water!’ he whispered.

      As Will stood up Lu slapped her hand against her mouth to keep the laughter from tumbling out.

      He bent down so that he spoke directly into her ear. ‘You might think this is funny, Mermaid, but I will get my revenge.’

      Lu’s laughter, hot and hard, followed Will up onto the stage.

      Will bombed at making sugar baskets. He tried so hard, and was such a good sport about it, but he burnt his sugar twice and accidentally knocked Rupert’s elaborate half-finished sugar cage to the floor, where it shattered into a million sugar pieces. Rupert eventually, and very good-naturedly, threw in the towel and sent Will back to his seat, where he proceeded to sit so still that Lu was convinced he’d slept through the rest of the show.

      As they cleared the theatre Lu looked up at him and lifted her eyebrows. ‘Did you enjoy your sleep?’

      ‘It was great. What did I miss?’ Will replied cheerfully.

      Lu laughed. ‘Nothing you want to know. I, however, learned how to make the ganache for a Sacher Torte.’

      Will’s eyes lit up. ‘That Austrian chocolate cake? Cool—thanks in advance.’

      ‘I’m not making you that. It takes hours!’

      Will placed his big hand at the base of her neck. ‘I’ll have one because you laughed at me! When I was called up on stage...when I burnt the sugar—’

      Lu gurgled. ‘Twice.’

      ‘You were rolling in your seat laughing! Sacher Torte—and if you agree I’ll buy you an Irish coffee now.’

      Lu grinned as he steered her into the theatre bar. ‘Oh, all right, then.’

      She followed the waiter to a table that looked out onto the bustling city centre street. Will placed their order and shook his head.

      ‘I get to choose what we do next,’ he told her, mock-sternly. ‘You can’t be trusted.’

      Lu lifted one eyebrow, remembered that he wasn’t that keen on her, and used the don’t-mess-with me-expression that normally had her brothers wilting. ‘You are presuming a lot, aren’t you?’

      Will sent her a lazy smile. ‘You’re irritated with me.’

      ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

      ‘Telling you. You can keep your face blank, Mermaid, but your eyes are far too expressive. You’re annoyed because I didn’t give you an answer as to whether I wanted to sleep with you or not.’

      Bingo! Give the man a gold star!

      Will rested his arms on the table and leaned forward. ‘Before I respond to that, I need to ask you if you meant what you said in Kelby’s office?’ Will asked.

      Lu frowned. ‘Which part?’ she asked, wary.

      ‘About not wanting to get involved with anyone?’

      ‘Yes.’ She needed to stand on her own feet before she tried to walk beside someone else. Find out what made her tick, what made her happy.

      ‘OK, so here’s what I’m thinking: I can take you to bed—and, yes, I’m alive and breathing, and you’re hot, so God knows I want to—and we’ll sleep together and have a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t see you again. It’s not what I do... And that could be weird seeing that we have to work together for the next couple of months.’

      ‘OK...’ What was she supposed to say to that? And where was he going with this?

      ‘Or I can not take you to bed and see you again.’

      Huh?

      ‘Look, Lu, at the risk of sounding like a conceited ass, I can walk into any club in the city and have someone new in my bed every night.’

      ‘You’re right—you do sound like a conceited ass,’ Lu murmured.

      ‘But I don’t have someone to hang with—someone to pass the time with. I enjoy your company...even when you’re trying hard to hide your irritation.’

      He’d been thinking about it since he’d last seen her—thinking about what Kelby had said. Despite his issues around relationships he genuinely liked people and enjoyed being around them. He couldn’t foist his after-hours company on his team mates—he was their boss, and who wanted to socialise with their boss? And Kelby had his family and didn’t want or need him around. Being single in a foreign city could be lonely, and having someone to hang with would make time go faster, would kill the hours away from the stadium.

      Pushing his attraction to her aside—he could do that: he wasn’t a hound dog—he genuinely enjoyed her company; she was restful, easy to be with. Lu was real in a way that he hadn’t encountered in a woman in long time. When last had he felt so at ease, so relaxed with a woman?

      With her, he felt as if he was himself. He curled his lip. Not Will Scott the legendary rugby player. Not the caretaker coach everyone was watching to see what he did with their beloved team. Not Jo Keith’s unreliable bad-boy ex-husband.

      Just Will. He really liked being just Will.

      And he enjoyed the fact that Lu didn’t simper or smirk and hang on his every word. That she could call him a conceited ass. Apart from his sisters, who called him far worse, every other woman he’d met only ever complimented him.

      It got old very quickly.

      He made it sound so easy, so simple, Lu thought. And it could be that simple if she didn’t overthink this. Sex and walk away, or no sex and a couple of months of hanging together, having fun.

      She wanted sex but she needed fun. She wanted to laugh like she had earlier, to try new things, to stagger to work bleary-eyed because she’d been out having a blast. She wanted to drink cocktails and wear pretty dresses and try new foods. She wanted to recapture a little of the youth she’d lost, to live life—taste it, feel it, experience it.

      And she just knew that she would have more fun with Will than without him.

      She’d be mad to pass up this opportunity for one or two nights of hot sex and also—Ding! Ding! Ding! the jackpot bell rang—her brothers would stop messaging her a hundred times a day to see if she was OK.

      ‘OK—and you’d be helping me out at the same time.’

      ‘That’s an added incentive...but how?’

      Lu waved her hand in the air—a gesture he now realised she used when she didn’t want to pursue a subject. Or when she was trying to be brave.

      ‘Would you consider doing things like pottery lessons? Dance classes?’

      ‘I was thinking about dinner and a movie. But I’d consider anything...if you gave me a reason.’

      Lu shook her head. ‘It’s not important and....it’s silly.’

      ‘Tell me, Lu.’

      She heaved in a huge sigh and stared at the table. ‘Before they left for uni my brothers told me that they were worried about me being on my own so much and that they wanted me to start getting out more, start doing stuff. They want me to have some fun, to get out and do things.’

      Seeing