by Susan Napier
To this end she offered, the next morning, to type for him in the afternoon as well. To her chagrin, though Hugh accepted the offer, he went on to tell her that he would be spending the afternoon in Whitianga. She typed disconsolately for half an hour in his absence, wishing she hadn’t been in such a hurry to get away from Steve. His song, Julia had turned out to be a hauntingly catchy ballad of love, not the tale of hard-hearted betrayal she had feared it might have turned into!
Julia frowned at the lines of type fading across the page. That ribbon had to be changed. Recklessly, she decided to tackle it herself … perhaps the jinx would be merciful.
‘Oh God, what have I done?’ A few minutes later Julia surveyed the mess in horror. How had the cartridge got jammed like that? She poked at it with a ballpoint and somehow a foot of ribbon spat out at her. The more she fiddled, the worse the snarl became and Julia managed to cover the typewriter, herself, and several pages of typescript with inky fingerprints whilst trying to cram everything back. Long, sweaty minutes passed, then the grandfather clock struck doom.
‘Oh God!’
Time to go down and prepare the marinade for the satay. Tonight was supposed to be a double celebration—Steve’s new song and Michael’s completed play. She turned her back on the sneering typewriter and fled, vowing to be back before Hugh.
She scrubbed her hands in the kitchen sink, expertly cut up the two plump, fresh chickens with a razor-sharp cleaver and put the pieces into a glass dish. Handfuls of chillis, ginger-root, and onion were thrown into the blender, followed up with generous slurps of soy sauce, oil and water (so much for the precise science of cookingi). One loud and angry whizz, and whip off the lid to push down the ingredients with her rubber spatula …
‘Something smells interesting.’
‘Waahhh!’ Julia’s hand slipped and punched the blender’s control button. The thick, oily, sludge exploded with a roar out of the open top, splattering reddish blobs all over the kitchen, including the frozen figures of Julia and Hugh. Some of them even reached the eight-foot ceiling.
‘Turn that bloody thing off!’ yelled Hugh over the racket, lurching forward to slam his hand down on the button, switching the grinding mechanism off. ‘Damn you to hell, Julia, I thought you said you never had accidents in the kitchen!’
Some of the marinade had flown into Julia’s horrified open mouth and she coughed furiously to rid herself of the peppery heat. When the tears cleared from her eyes and she saw Hugh’s livid expression her gaze skittered down his suit and lingered …
‘Isn’t that the suit …?’ she croaked to a halt at his hissing, indrawn breath.
‘The very same! Thanks to a good dry-cleaner it survived its dunking … but this time you can pay in full for your damned stupidity!’
She couldn’t blame him, the suit was freckled all over with oily spots, and he had, after all, fronted up with the money for her car bill without argument. Poor Hugh, he was quite rigid with anger, wrinkling his nose at the potent smell enveloping them, dabbing at his face with a no-longer-spotless white handkerchief.
Julia began to giggle and the giggles grew. Soon she was leaning against the kitchen table helpless with laughter, fresh tears streaming down her face, stomach tortured by mirthful spasms.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry …’ she hiccupped semi-hysterically. ‘But you look … oh, Hugh, your poor dignity … you look as if you’ve got measles!’
‘And I warned you once before about laughing at me,’ said Hugh in a peculiarly goaded tone of voice.
He reached out a large hand and before Julia could move he had snatched her off her feet, hands almost completely spanning her waist. She was lifted high, dangling like a rag doll against his body, gasping with astonishment and clutching at his wrists to support herself upright. Her heart thundered at his expression. He was angry but his anger was tightly controlled, and Julia knew instinctively that he wouldn’t use his superior strength to physically hurt her. If she struggled he would let her go.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked breathlessly, with conscious challenge, knowing already what he was going to do, and wanting him to do it.
‘Something I shouldn’t,’ he muttered, lowering her against his mouth, sending sparkling streaks of exhilaration through her body as his limber tongue invaded her mouth, punishing with pleasure. He held her easily, as if she weighed nothing, as he kissed her, tilting and turning her small body with his hands so that he could explore her mouth from different angles. Julia’s hands left the rigid tendons of his wrists and clutched at the solid warmth of his neck as she felt him move, carrying her backwards, hard thighs bumping between her dangling legs.
He stopped and slowly, slowly, let her slide through his hard embrace until her toes touched the floor. From hip to shoulder Julia’s body burned at the crushing, sliding friction down the length of the masculine torso. Now the long fingers angled firmly under her arms, thumbs pressing into the soft undersides of her breasts. Julia melted into him, sliding her arms under his jacket, around to his back where her hands spread across the hard-packed flesh, nails burrowing into the warmth, urging him closer. She was on her tip toes, head buzzing with pleasurable sensations, opening to him as his mouth clung hotly, drifted and clung again. It felt so good, even better than it had before.
‘For a moment I thought you were going to put me over your knee,’ she said dreamily as he nibbled the point of her chin, thumbs beginning a lazy movement which stroked the soft wool of her sweater against the ultra-sensitive skin of her breasts, making them tauten and sending a lick of heat plunging to her belly.
She felt him lean against her so that the hard edge of the kitchen table dug into her buttocks. Slowly, slowly he continued the lean until Julia was arched back, flat against the table top, oblivious to the pool of marinade soaking into the back of her sweater as she stared into the grey-blue eyes glittering into hers. Were they getting bluer, or was that just the reflection of her own, so close to his?
‘I haven’t finished with you yet,’ he threatened softly, adding huskily: ‘I get the feeling that you wouldn’t object to anything I did to you … and there’s so much I could do.’ He buried his mouth in hers again, this time with a questing urgency which startled and excited Julia, making her forget as completely as he obviously had how vulnerable they were to interruption.
The broad chest hovered over her as she felt his hands leave her then gasped as she felt them slide smoothly up under her loose sweater, silking over the lycra leotard she was wearing for warmth, splaying heavily out over her generous breasts. Julia shuddered against him, her back arching further as the cupping, massaging motion of his fingers took effect. She groaned his name, glad she had worn no bra, glad that she fitted so perfectly into his hands. She had never felt such an urgent need for assuagement, a need which overrode inhibition and common sense, and stripped away all her preconceptions of what naked passion could be. His fingers were soft, subtle, skilful, bringing her nipples to burgeoning fullness through the thin lycra, teasing out her response so that Julia bloomed with the rising of her blood.
Her legs, hanging over the side of the table, were trapped by the crowding strength of his and Julia twitched them helplessly, aching to wrap them licentiously around him, to draw him even closer than was physically possible.
His mouth lifted at her restless movement and he stared down at her hectically flushed face, still glistening under its light application of pink oil. He was breathing as hard as she was, but he brought it quickly under control, the massive chest expanding and contracting rhythmically, the only sign of colour on the tips of his ears. Julia watched dazedly as he licked his lips experimentally, his mouth reddened to sensual fullness by long contact with hers.
‘You taste so hot and spicy. Kissing you is like eating fire.’ He ducked and stroked his tongue over her jawbone, nudging her head around so that he could take the soft, fleshy lobe of her small ear into his mouth and suckle it with a firm, tugging pressure that was incr
edibly erotic. Julia sighed with pleasure, not wanting him to stop, and turned her head so that he could get access to the other ear. Her eyes fluttered open, blurring slightly, then focusing sharply on the interested face of Charley, peeping around the open back door!
CHAPTER EIGHT
JULIA gave a strangled squawk and heaved with all her might at the rock-solid chest above her. Hugh didn’t budge an inch, but he did look over his shoulder to see what had brought on her sudden protest. At the sight of Charley he made a brief murmur and straightened, sliding his hands but from under Julia’s sweater with unhurried ease.
‘Did one of you explode?’ Charley grinned, venturing on to the slippery kitchen floor. Oh yes, he was definitely growing up. Two years ago he would have melted in embarrassment, but now it was Julia who blushed, rolling off the table and yanking at her suggestively rumpled sweater.
‘An accident with my blender,’ Julia managed huskily, thrusting a tangle of curls off her hot brow.
‘Oh. Are you OK?’ Charley knew all about her jinx.
‘I wasn’t kissing her for medical reasons, Charley, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ Hugh cut in smoothly. Julia sent him a speaking look. He sounded quite unruffled, yet a few moments ago he had been practically raping her on the kitchen table. Well, not raping exactly … whatever the definition, he had no right to behave with such calm when Julia was still flushed and aroused, her heart pounding fit to burst.
‘Were you looking for me?’ she asked Charley, trying to get a grip on reality.
He was. He wanted to take the VW for a test run, and not having obtained his drivers’ licence yet, he wanted Julia to drive him. To her surprise Hugh stepped in again, this time to offer his services as chauffeur while Julia cleaned up the kitchen. Charley appeared so pleased Julia didn’t have the heart to argue, but she couldn’t help feeling somewhat put out as the two males wandered out in companionable conversation, ignoring her pique.
So frantic was she for the rest of the evening, salvaging her chicken recipe, that Julia quite forgot about Hugh’s typewriter. It wasn’t until she joined the others in the lounge for pre-dinner drinks and saw Hugh attired in yet another immaculate suit that she remembered. Hell!
Accepting a sherry from Michael, Julia felt a niggle of disquiet as she saw that Hugh was holding one too. He wasn’t the teetotaller she had thought, she had discovered that when they went out to dinner together, but he drank only sparingly, and never when he had work to do. Did that—gulp—mean that his typewriter was still out of action? Julia sneaked a look at his face. As usual unreadable, though the grey eyes were narrowed on her in a most unsettling way. She flashed him a quick, nervous smile, then regretted it when he began to move across the room towards her.
‘What a lovely dress, Julia,’ she heard Olivia beside her exclaim. In honour of the occasion Julia had put on the only long dress she had brought with her—a pure-silk butterfly dress. ‘It’s hand-painted isn’t it? What a fabulous design. Where did you get it?’
‘Umm, in Auckland,’ said Julia distractedly as Hugh joined their little group. ‘Browns Mill actually, you know, the craft place. The designer specialises in unique, hand-painted silks.’
‘As unique and as beautiful as the woman who’s wearing it,’ Richard chipped in lavishly. ‘Ah … “she hangs upon the cheek of the night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear”.’
‘Your Herrick put it far more aptly, I think, Richard.’ Julia held her breath at Hugh’s quiet interjection. Avoiding his gaze her eyes sank to the injured hand holding his glass. There was a faint, dark smudge on his wrist. Ink? Oh dear … Nervously she watched his other hand reach out to catch one of the fluttering points of her sleeve, pulling it so that she had to turn to fully face him. She didn’t know quite what she was expecting, but his first, soft words had her eyes rearing, startled, to his.
‘ “When as in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (me thinks) how sweetly flowes
That liquifaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!” ‘
Julia was mesmerised, as much by the indecently honeyed tone of his voice as by the way his grey eyes slid over her face, over the silk to where it drew taut across her breasts, reminding them both of how he had touched them. Indeed they began to ache, as if he was touching them now.
‘Oh, very appropriate,’ sniped Richard sourly. ‘Poetry, yet, big brother. You’ll be taking to the boards next.’
‘The kind of poetry that suits Julia is rather unsuitable for public performance,’ returned Hugh smoothly, not taking his eyes off a blushing Julia.
All through dinner it was the same, Hugh topping every endeavour of Richard’s to gain Julia’s attention. After she got over her initial breathless confusion Julia was tongue-tied by a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance at his heavy-handedness. He was being so obvious, surely everyone knew he was being sarcastic? But Connie was beaming benignly at them, Charley grinning knowingly and the others richly entertained by the romantic contest. Only for Julia was it a penance, knowing it was Hugh’s way of getting back at her.
‘Will you cut it out, you’re making everyone suspicious,’ she hissed desperately at Hugh as he leapt to pull out her chair when they all rose to leave the table.
‘Nonsense, they’re loving it,’ he murmured blandly into her ear. Catching Ros’s lascivious wink Julia knew he spoke the truth. ‘And look at Richard … on his last legs. If I can be moved to such revolting sentimentality he knows he may as well throw in the towel.’
Julia clenched her fists to stop herself throttling him. Revolting sentimentality! It was beautiful, heart-stopping … if only it was sincere. Oh, how she longed for him to mean every single sentimental word of his wooing. It gave her the shivers, imagining what it would be like to have Hugh so completely and utterly in love with her that he laid his heart at her feet with delicious phrases … O how that glittering taketh me! She escaped from her hut flushes into the kitchen, where she put the coffee on. Drifting back into the hall, wrapped in cosy dreams of mutual and everlasting love, she ran into Richard as he came out of the dining room. He struck a dramatic pose of woe.
‘ “Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I’ll descend.” ‘
‘Ohh, Richard, not now!’ snapped Julia.
‘Dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?’ He grinned at her fierce scowl. ‘You can take that hideous expression off your face, love. I concede.’
Julia viewed his graceful gesture with suspicion.
‘You know what Byron said about friendship?’ he continued with rueful charm. ‘It’s love without his wings.’
‘Well, we are kiwis,’ murmured Julia, naming New Zealand’s unique flightless native bird. Her heart sank into her shoes. The last thing she wanted to do was to call off the charade with Hugh. She wanted more time, needed more time, to show him that their relationship was worth something for its own sake.
‘I am,’ said Richard. ‘I’m beginning to think that you and Hugh are birds of a different feather.’
‘Are you two coming? Or are you going to stand out there exchanging clichés all night?’ It was Hugh, standing in the lounge doorway. ‘We’re going to toast Steve and Michael with the rest of the champagne.’
He reached out a casual arm and hauled Julia against him as she walked past, anchoring her there so that she was forced to share his glass of champagne. How much had he heard? Probably too much for her to pretend that Richard was still going to be a problem. And weren’t they all drinking to Steve’s recovery? She felt torn in two, and Hugh’s mockery suddenly became too much to stand.
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll have an early night,’ she told the assembled gathering after coffee had been distributed.
‘Good idea.’ Hugh put his own cup down.
‘Go ahead,’ said Michael drily. ‘Why should the night of my triumph over the Muse be different from an
y other night?’
‘Don’t be a sourpuss, darling,’ scolded his wife. ‘You two go on up,’ she said to Julia and Hugh, for all the world as if they were an old married couple. ‘The twins can help if I need assistance to wheel the old man away. He always gets stonkered when he finishes a play. Not a pretty sight.’
‘We could stay a little longer …’ offered Hugh, but Julia, sick of playacting, leapt in with both feet.
‘No we can’t,’ she said flatly, and flushed as everyone looked at her, tucked within the circle of Hugh’s arm.
‘That’s OK, we understand,’ Ros grinned at her eagerness. ‘Just remember what Connie told you about the you-know-what.’
Hugh raised an eyebrow and Julia gave a tiny groan as she dragged him upstairs and rounded on him fiercely.
‘You’re worse than Richard, you know that!’ she accused distractedly. ‘You made them think ..: them think …’ She stuttered to a stop in the face of his amusement. ‘There was no need to be so … so …’
‘Amorous?’
‘Lecherous!’ she howled, enraged by the smile that so usually enchanted her. He had no right to be so unfeeling.
