‘That was…’ She attempted to explain and I smiled at her lack of words.
‘Yep, it was.’ I winked at her reassuringly as our breathing slowly began to normalise.
‘I’m sorry, Daniel, but I really do need to get on.’ I released one arm from her body and lifted my hand to her face. I ran my thumb ring over her bottom lip and watched it pucker under my ministration.
I moved my eyes back to hers. Eight fucking green bottles…
‘Yeah, I understand. But, you need to understand this, this is just the start of us, Amy. We both want this… I’m coming back later.’ I lifted her back down to the floor, gave her a chaste kiss on her swollen lips, and confident she felt the same way, I started to back away towards the kitchen door.
‘I’d like you to,’ she answered almost on a whisper.
‘Good. What time do ya finish?’ My face broke out into a huge grin at her words.
‘We close up at around seven, but I’ll have some bits to do after,’ she answered as I watched her smooth her black skirt back down over those fucking stockings. I fought to tear my eyes back up to her face.
‘That’s okay, I’ll wait, because you’re worth waiting for.’ I gave her a smile, taking in everything about the flushed state I was leaving her in, and exited quickly out of the kitchen door, before I changed my mind about leaving at all.
I watched the door close after him and then moved my eyes to the window. Although the glass in the kitchen window wasn’t transparent, I could see the moment his headlights came on as his car started and pulled away from the parking spot outside. I watched until the red of his tail lights dimmed to nothing as he drove away.
My heart was still banging in my chest, my knickers were wet and the top of my thighs felt damp.
‘What the hell?’ I asked into the empty room.
But there was thankfully no one within earshot to answer my question, nor sight to witness the state I was in. The sound of the busy tearoom filled my ears. What had I very nearly done in here with all those people just a few feet away?
I walked over to the sink we used for handwashing and just stood with my wrists under the cold water for a few minutes as I took in deep breaths and tried hard to collect myself enough to cool down. At first, I couldn’t look in the small mirror above, but eventually I lifted my gaze.
The woman in front of me was no one that I recognised.
My cheeks and neck were flushed with colour. My lips were a dark red and full. Unconsciously, I brought my fingers up to touch them, they felt tingly and sensitive. My hair was messy as several other pieces had fallen out in our desperation for each other.
I had never been that frantic for anyone else. I was no innocent, I’d had relationships and had always enjoyed the physical stuff. But I had wanted Daniel to literally consume me here in Lauren’s kitchen
‘Oh, my God.’ I spoke to the reflection looking back at me as I tidied up my hair back to where it should be.
I knew that, caught in the moment as I had been, I would have let him fuck me on the worktop he had lifted me to sit on.
‘Who are you?’ I laughed at myself as I watched my eyes open wide in realisation.
I felt younger than my thirty-three years and free for the first time in a long time. Excitement coursed around my bloodstream as I remembered how his touch had driven me to the point of combustion. I wrapped my arms around myself and inwardly squealed.
‘And he’s coming back,’ I spoke to the once again pulled together woman in the mirror. I began to dry my hands on the blue paper towel.
‘Has he gone?’ Kirsty asked from behind me.
I spun around quickly to find her and Debbie behind me in the doorway. I nodded my answer to them and, trying to look professional once again, I looked around the kitchen to check we had everything necessary for the rest of the day.
‘Wow… What can we say? He was rather gorgeous, Amy,’ Debbie uttered.
I couldn’t stop the huge smile I was trying to suppress as it engulfed my face.
‘I know. Sorry, both of you. I know how busy you’ve all been out there, when I was in here…’ I stopped, unsure I could explain exactly what I had been doing in the kitchen.
‘You’re right! It’s disgusting, us out there working our hands to the bone and you in here nearly getting boned. It was only nearly, wasn’t it? I mean you didn’t do the nasty in here, did you?’ Debbie carried on as she wrinkled up her nose in pretend disgust. ‘It looked like a close thing to me,’ she added.
The three of us burst out laughing as they walked over to the trays of sandwiches they appeared to both need.
‘No, we didn’t do the nasty in here. I promise you,’ I replied.
‘SANDWICHES!’ came the shout from the other side of the door, reminding us just exactly what we were here for.
The girls grabbed the trays and started to exit.
A sudden burst of excited adrenalin took over me. I wanted all the cakes and pastries done for tomorrow. For some reason, I wanted the night off. I went back to the pastry I had previously been rolling out, picked it up and chucked it into the bin.
A voice from behind me interrupted my thoughts as I calculated how much I needed to make for the eight hours of opening tomorrow and the forty covers we had for every hour.
‘Oh, by the way, I think you may need to disinfect that worktop too,’ called out Kirsty as she poked her head back around the swing door. Laughing, I picked up the nearest oven glove and threw it at her fast retreating figure.
‘There you go.’ I counted out the last of the day’s tips and pushed the large piles of coins and notes towards each member of the staff. ‘Thirty-two pounds and seventy-five pence each. It’s been a great day, everyone. Thank you so much for your hard work.’ I stood up and pushed my chair back in to the table. ‘I’ll see you all nice and early tomorrow.’
I watched as ten hands came out to grab their money and then they all stood one by one to leave.
‘Bye, Amy.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
The shouts got less as one by one they streamed out the door and finally it shut with me inside.
The almost silence was welcome. All I could hear was the sound of the oven cooking the last of the goodies for tomorrow and the hoover of Mr and Mrs Smith as together they cleaned up the tearooms.
I looked up at the weight-driven wall clock. We’d done fantastically. It was only twenty minutes past six. As if on cue the door burst open and my eyes darted to it in panic.
‘Oh my God, what a day… Is it wine o’clock?’ Winter’s voice rushed over me with the cold air that entered with her, and I relaxed a little.
‘What’s up with you, Amy?’ Lauren asked as she came into the tearoom behind her. I watched as she gave The Fairy Garden the quick once over, taking in everything about her baby. Then she smiled as she realised all was well.
‘I’m fine, all good here, nothing to say. Great day, excellent takings. All as it should be.’ I knew I had said too much, but didn’t seem to be able to stop myself.
They stopped dead in their tracks and turned to look at each other just the once. I watched them nod in understanding and then they turned back to stare at me. The longer they looked, the higher their eyebrows raised.
‘Uh huh,’ Lauren answered.
Winter walked over to me and pulling herself up to the tallest height she could in the ridiculous heels she nearly always wore, she began to walk around me. In defence, I folded my arms over my chest.
‘What?’ I questioned.
I could feel their eyes just taking me in. Winter had begun to move my hair around, lifting long pieces as she pretended to examine me.
‘Enough.’ I let out a small laugh as I pulled away.
‘TOO LATE! Oh, Amy, what are we going to do about you? You have a love bite on your neck. What have you been up to?’ She spoke in her best posh, reprimanding voice as I pulled away from her appraisal. ‘We leave you alone for a few hours and you turn into a horny little bitch
.’
In reaction, my hand came up to the side I knew Daniel had lavished attention on earlier and I knew I was caught. I’d been played into a confession by my best friends.
‘Got something to tell us, cousin?’ Lauren asked as she smiled.
‘It was Kirsty and Debbie, wasn’t it?’
They both nodded in unison.
‘Sit down then,’ I answered.
Over a glass of Pinot, I told them everything I knew about Daniel. The colour of his eyes, and just how attractive he was. I told them about the accident and the possible loss of my nan’s car and how he’d rescued me after I’d gone into the ditch earlier today. I explained how he’d looked at me and the fact he had said I was refreshing. I tried to get over to my two best friends the chemistry that seemed to flare up between us just by our eyes finding each other’s. They asked a few questions about him, but most of them I had no answers for. I told them he was American and that he was over for Jack’s wedding.
‘Should I have asked him more about himself? I don’t even know how old he is,’ I asked them both suddenly, worried by my lack of knowledge about a man I’m sure I would have allowed to fuck me in my cousin’s kitchen, if we hadn’t been interrupted.
‘Seriously, Amy?’ Winter laughed. ‘You are in your thirties and an intelligent woman. We do not, I repeat do not, have to know every detail of all of the men we bed.’
‘We don’t?’ I grimaced at them both. ‘You both know how out of touch I am.’
I bit down into one of the pastries I had brought out with the bottle of wine and groaned at the rich taste and the way it melted in my mouth. My cousin was a seriously good cook.
‘No. We don’t.’ She flung her head back and finished what was left of the wine in her glass. Winter was always one for the dramatic way to get her point of view across. Once again, her head tilted forward and her eyes found mine, just as my index finger pushed the last little piece of pastry, that had stuck on my lips, into the corner of my mouth, ‘And you, Amy, by the sounds of it, need an orgasm that is given by a man’s fingers, tongue or cock, not a food related one.’
I bit down onto the inside of my lips, effectively sealing my mouth shut as the urge to burst out laughing at her words became all-consuming. If I hadn’t have done, the absolute perfect vision of Winter would have been covered, as I sprayed her with small pieces of masticated pastry. Her eyebrows raised as she watched me struggle. Luckily the urge left me as Lauren dipped into the conversation.
‘I agree with Winter. He sounds gorgeous and just what you need, Amy. Whoever he is and wherever he’s come from, if he’s a one-time-only or a couple of weeks’ worth of very welcome distraction…’ She didn’t finish her sentence. I watched as after she’d stopped speaking, she slumped back into her chair with a sigh at her own words.
‘You just had to use that word, didn’t you?’ Winter chuckled at her.
I looked at Winter and raising my eyebrows in question, without using words, I asked how Lauren had got on today at The Manor. She grimaced, shook her head slightly and slashed a single finger across her jugular.
But the urge was strong and I just had to ask. ‘And you, Lauren. How are you?... How did your day go? Did you erase the ghosts, by seeing him?’ I shoved her shoulder gently with my hand, trying to push her into answering. ‘How did it go?’
Lauren didn’t answer me straight away, but took a large gulp of her wine and then, holding the stem, she wiggled the glass in front of Winter, like the empty vessel was now offending her.
Winter refilled it.
‘Well I saw Rafferty, several times actually. I know that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Well yeah! And?’ I pushed.
‘I think the only sentences we actually spoke went something like, “leave me alone, you just don’t get it, do you? I’m not interested in you,” and he replied, “I don’t for one fucking minute believe that and neither the fuck, do you!”’ She took another swig of wine to wash down the memory. ‘It seems he’s convinced I only took the job with Winter to get back with him… ARSEHOLE!’
‘I know he’s my big brother but… hear, hear.’ Winter raised her glass to us both. ‘Here’s to the company of females, as my brother’s bloody band have been nothing but bloody distracting all day,’ Winter toasted.
‘Really?’ I questioned with a raise of my eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Lauren and I did really well today, but we could have achieved so much more if they’d have just left us alone. We may even have to ask for your help up there tomorrow evening, if that’s okay?’ She smiled a thin-lipped grimace at me and I nodded quickly to answer her. ‘Raff has been “helping” whenever she’s around.’ She used her fingers either side of her head to open and close quote her sarcasm. ‘And I… well, I seem to have pulled the roughest, most foul-mouthed member of my brother’s band.’
‘You have?’ I sat up, almost bouncing in my seat to listen to more of the story. ‘Come on, tell me all. We know how much you enjoy a bit of rough, now don’t we?’ I smirked at her, eager for her to dish up her news, and loving the fact I was no longer in the spotlight.
There we sat for another thirty minutes as she told us all about the drummer Cade. He had pulled no punches when explaining what he would like to do to her and how much she was gagging for him in return. Him trying to hook up with Winter had meant Raff had hung around even more, apparently calling Cade “the biggest fucking male slut on legs” and telling him in no uncertain terms that “no fucking way did he stand a chance with his sister.”
By the end of the story we were laughing at the whole predicament.
It all sounded like a comedy sketch, albeit a little more fraught.
I raised my glass at them both. ‘Here’s to us, the three musketeers. It could only happen, that us three could attract so much bloody male interest on a weekend when we don’t even have time to sleep.’
‘Only us. Cheers!’ they called back.
We downed our glasses and I took my leave, the weighted clock telling me that it was now quarter past seven. I was running late for my date or whatever the heck it was.
I had pulled up outside the tearooms way before seven o’clock. I wasn’t normally so fucking punctual, but tonight wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away. I watched as several staff members, including the few I had met today, jumped into their cars to go home.
I could just about see Amy inside through the steamed-up glass and the glow of the decorative lights on the windows. My hand had found the door as I thought about getting out early, when another car pulled up. I let go of the door and leant my body over onto the steering wheel watching closely through the windscreen as two women got out of a Mercedes. I instantly recognised Winter, Raff’s sister, and turned my gaze to the other one. She looked a lot like Amy, same hair, build etc. Then it clicked, it was Lauren. I had only seen her a few times in pictures before. Pictures that my best mate only got out when he was fucking hammered. But when Raff described her, it was like he was writing a song. He had described her every fucking detail and so fucking perfectly. I had long since seen her in my mind’s eye, before I’d ever seen her in the pictures he held in his wallet and on his hard drive.
Apparently, he was over her, and in some strange fucking way I think he really believed it. We were all absolutely convinced otherwise. But it was a banned fucking topic and as the rest of us had only ever had fucked-up relationships with the other sex, who the hell were we to give advice?
When I had gone back to The Manor for a couple of hours this afternoon for a shower, I’d caught up with Luke and his little girl, Brielle. In amongst playing with her and her puppy Biscuit, Luke had caught me up with what was happening there.
So, it appeared the solution that Raff had first come up with three years ago, that Luke, Cade and I so desperately needed, was now biting him in the balls like a dose of genital crabs. He was back here with Lauren, although maybe subconsciously it had been the solution he needed, too. Luke told me ho
w he’d had to pull Raff off Cade earlier as Cade had made several plays for Winter, just to wind the fuck out of Raff.
I’d laughed, listening to him describe the situation.
It all sounded like a normal fucking day at the office to me.
I looked back over at the tearoom. I’d told her I’d wait, so that’s exactly what I did. With less bodies in the tearoom the windows had begun to clear.
Amy and her friends had stood and laughed together, over what I couldn’t make out, and then they’d sat down at one of the tables with a bottle of wine. Instinct told me that I might be waiting some time.
But like a dog in fucking heat, I stayed there. I relaxed back into the warmth of the leather seat, crossed my arms over my chest and closed my eyes, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t impatient as fuck.
I’d never waited for another woman before, why the hell was she different?
Every now and then I opened one eye just to check she was still in there.
It’s okay, Brody, you just need a fuck that’s all.
Suddenly she stood up and I briefly glanced at the time on my dashboard. It was fifteen minutes past seven. I sat up, desperate to know if she was coming out.
Desperate? Fuck, I was a pathetic fucker.
I saw her pull her coat on and my heart jumped up into my mouth. I’d been waiting for this moment since I’d closed the kitchen door on her earlier.
I opened the car door and stood down onto the newly fallen, crisp white snow. Carefully, trying hard not to scare her with any sudden movements, I made my way to the hood of my Defender, leant my ass against it, and crossed my arms over the top of my coat.
She stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. As she turned, I saw the moment she caught sight of me waiting for her.
Brody (Default Distraction Book 1) Page 7
