‘There’s someone waiting for you at the front counter.’
I managed not to whoop and punch the air, but it was a close-run thing.
Grabbing up my stuff – and trying to ignore my workmates’ comments to the tune of ‘go get him, tiger’ – I hurried to the kitchen doors.
Theo looked around as I burst out all in a flurry and, as his pale green eyes locked onto mine, I felt an explosion of butterflies in my stomach.
‘Hey, neighbour!’ I exclaimed breathlessly, hurrying around the counter to meet him. Then, hyper-aware that my colleagues would have rushed back to the windows and with the uncertain state of Theo’s and my relationship suddenly thrown into sharp relief, I had a brain malfunction and reached out to give him a light, matey punch on his shoulder.
There was a beat and then Theo looked down at where I’d hit him, then across to the faces peering out at us from the kitchen and clearly decided not to comment.
‘I thought I’d offer you a ride home,’ he said instead and I almost wilted with relief as he didn’t ask the questions he would’ve been well within his rights to. Questions such as, ‘Why’re all those people staring at us?’ and ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Thanks.’ My voice was still much too bright, much too high-pitched, but I persevered. ‘That would be amazing.’
He stepped forward and held the door open for me, the pair of us exchanging a small, almost furtive, smile before we headed into the gloomy evening.
*
Giovanna was babbling.
With her hands tightly clasped in her lap and her curls aquiver, she sat in the passenger seat and spoke quickly about her day, about cakes and pastries and his apparently super-human ability to charm her boss, even as her subtext screamed: We nearly kissed! You’re trending nationally!
He was obviously not going to bring up that moment when he could’ve so easily slanted his mouth against hers. As she had to eventually break off to take a breath, however, he flicked his eyes across to her and asked, ‘You saw the articles, then?’
‘No!’ she exclaimed, although, truth-teller that she was, he saw her squirm for a second and then admit, ‘I mean, yes.’
There was a pause and then, clearly unable to stop herself now the elephant in the room had been acknowledged, she burst out, ‘It’s so unfair. Anyone with half a brain can see that Helena threw you under the bus. Your expression in the photos makes it pretty damn obvious how uncomfortable you were, so why are people painting you as the bad guy?’
He’d been looking forward to seeing her all day, hadn’t been able to concentrate for thinking of her, in fact, and this reaction was part of the reason why. Somehow, seeing the tips of her ears glow red with indignation on his behalf went some way to loosening his own knot of resentment.
‘Because it’s easy money.’ Her question may have been rhetorical, but he answered it anyway.
‘Easy for some people, maybe,’ she said dourly and, in a rush of appreciation, he reached across and squeezed one of her hands with his. She shot him a surprised look and he released her, trying to ignore Ari’s voice as it suddenly popped into his head singing, Reeeeeebound.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, more sternly than he meant to. ‘It’s done now. This isn’t my first time round with this. I’ll refuse interviews, people will get bored of Lena’s side and it’ll simmer down.’
He didn’t mention his other plan for moving on from it all, the one involving Headhunter Harry that Ari hated so much, and was glad he hadn’t as she made a small noise of discontent and muttered, ‘I still hate it.’
‘No disagreement here.’
As she subsided into silence, her need to jabber away apparently exorcised by getting to talk about how well Lena’s plan to punish him for his past no-shows and accusation of nepotism had worked, he wondered whether she was as aware of him as he was of her. For knowing her for such a short period of time, he felt weirdly attuned to Giovanna, to her every shift in mood, to the feel of her body even with space between them.
Had she stayed awake last night, as he had, replaying that moment when she’d kissed his cheek and he’d been unable to let her go? And, if so, why hadn’t she knocked on his door like she usually did when she couldn’t sleep? Was it O’Connor? Did she feel guilty? God, he hoped not. With every fibre of his being he hoped that she hadn’t connected O’Connor with even a second of the previous evening. As hard as parts of it had been, and despite the many people involved, it’d been their night, his and Giovanna’s, just like their midnights together. Just like now.
He got the feeling she was waiting for him to take the lead, to explain away or to confirm their almost-kiss, but what he wanted and what he knew was the right thing by her were fundamental opposites so they returned to their old standby of silence.
Neither of them spoke again, in fact, until they were once more faced with a parting of the ways in the corridor outside their doors. Then Giovanna said, all in a rush, ‘D’you want to come in? I have cake.’
12
Theo looked at me for a long moment, a look I felt all the way down to my toes, and then nodded, that one customary action of his causing a little zip of electricity through my body that made me fumble my keys as I aimed for the lock.
What was I doing? This wasn’t some simple ‘hey, come round to my house and read about jet engines if you can’t sleep’ suggestion, this was a straight-up ‘come back to my place for coffee’ come on. And he’d said yes!
Flicking the lights on, I led the way into my flat, almost wincing as I saw with fresh eyes how messy it was. There were dishes all over the kitchen counter, for goodness’ sake! It was hardly an environment of seduction. Oh, god, is that what I was planning? A seduction? I’d come a long way since the ‘play it cool’ thoughts of earlier that day. Except, I suppose he had made a move in coming to my workplace and offering me a lift home, it was really just my turn.
I toed off my work shoes by the door and smiled shyly at him as he shrugged out of his big coat and draped it across the back of a chair. His shirt was a sage green that heightened the already startling colour of his eyes and, as he unbuttoned the cuffs and started rolling the sleeves back in a practised manner, I found that I was gaping like he’d revealed his bare chest.
‘Take a seat,’ I said, my voice cracking slightly as my mind unhelpfully assaulted me with an image of Theo sans a shirt. ‘I’ll just . . . you know. Cake. Plates.’ Great, I’d lost the ability to speak in complete sentences. Unable to look at him, I hurried into the kitchen area.
‘I do eat vegetables and other healthy stuff,’ I called as I headed to the fridge to pull out the leftovers from last night’s insomniac baking episode. ‘I don’t just eat cake.’
‘If I could make cakes like you do, they’d be all I’d eat.’
It was exactly the right response and, with my head in the fridge, I allowed myself a moment to grin inanely at how much I liked liking Theo.
With skill born of many years’ experience, I extricated the cake – a two-layer lemon and cardamom creation – from the items surrounding it and nudged a space for it among the dirty dishes on the counter. It made some of the items awaiting washing up shift ominously close to the edge, but I was adept at managing the competing demands of my slobbish ways and limited counter space, and didn’t give it too much thought.
What I did give a great deal of thought to was how incredibly aware I was of Theo behind me. His presence in my flat was like the cardamom in the lemon cake: a complex yet subtle addition that had taken something simple in a whole new direction.
I was pleased with the simile – the more I thought about it, the more it worked – but it really wasn’t the time to allow myself to skip too far down that fanciful path. Instead, very glad to have something to do other than find new and inventive ways of making a fool of myself in front of Theo, I stood on tiptoes to reach the fancy cake plates I’d no doubt wowed him with the previous week. Unfortunately, they were further back than usual, and my
fingers kept only just brushing their rims.
‘Need some help?’
Theo’s deep voice came from right behind me and my already on-edge nerves completely lost their figurative minds. I was clumsy at the best of times, but in that moment, I felt downright skittish. It shouldn’t really have come as any great surprise, then, that, as I whirled to face him, my arm caught against the dishes waiting to be washed.
A ceramic mixing bowl, a plate and two glasses were swept off the counter and onto the tiled floor, where they smashed with a cacophony not dissimilar to the percussion line in Theo’s favoured metalcore. My heart leapt into my throat at the loud crashes, and there it stayed, beating a rapid pulse I was sure Theo could see.
There was a resounding silence after the last tinkle of broken glass had faded away, and Theo and I stood toe to toe in the wreckage.
‘Don’t move,’ he said quietly after a few long seconds had ticked by.
‘Okay,’ I said, my voice husky. I had no intention of moving, mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I still knew how.
‘You could cut yourself.’
‘Oh.’ I looked down to see that I was, indeed, barefoot in the eye of a cyclone of glass and ceramic shards. ‘Right.’
‘Okay if I . . . ?’
And then, before I really knew what he was asking, I felt Theo’s warm hands settle on my waist and, as if I weighed no more than a feather, he was lifting me clear of the booby-trapped floor. He carefully set me down on the counter where I’d inadvertently cleared a space.
It could’ve been a fleeting moment. He could’ve moved away. I could’ve laughed off my clumsiness. But as we continued to gaze at each other, it wasn’t, and he didn’t, and I didn’t. In touching me, even in the platonic, helpful way it’d no doubt been intended, Theo had thrown us right back to the moment the previous evening when I’d kissed his cheek.
My hands had landed on his chest as he’d swung me up and there they stayed, the material of his shirt soft and expensive against my fingers, the warmth of his body faint at first, but growing warmer against my palms as the seconds ticked past.
My white work top had rucked up as Theo’d lifted me, and one of his fingers rested against the sliver of skin exposed above the waistband of my black trousers. It was a light touch, an innocent touch, but I felt it as acutely as if it were the most erotic contact I’d ever experienced.
Eyes locked on mine, Theo slowly reached up to touch one of my curls where it fell against my cheek, his knuckles brushing against my skin. His thumb gently stroked the length of the lock of hair once, twice, three times, a rhythm that tugged at something primal inside me.
I tipped my chin up, causing his fingers to drift down and move over my lips, parting them ever so slightly. As I took a quick breath in response, something sharpened in Theo’s expression and his dreamy caresses stilled. In the next second, he’d cupped the back of my head, and pulled me up into a kiss.
His lips against mine were fiercer than I expected from those initial, almost hesitant, touches: bold and urgent and uncontrolled. It was a side to him I’d only caught a glimpse of the previous evening, the yin to his Stone Cold Killer yang, a passionate side that made me literally breathless as he claimed then released then claimed my mouth again.
Sensation coursed through me and I clenched his shirt, vaguely aware of my nails biting into my palms through the material, but the pain barely registering.
His light touch at my waist tightened, my shirt bunching as his hand slid up to my ribcage in something between a caress and a grip. I understood that need to be closer, felt consumed by it, in fact, and hooked my legs around his, my feet pressing against the backs of his calves. I could feel every line of him this way, my soft skin moulding against his hard muscles, the blood pulsing through our bodies a tangible presence as our lips and teeth and tongues clashed and danced.
There was no sound in the studio other than our harsh breathing, the occasional gasp, and so the knock when it came was as loud and devastating as a gunshot.
‘Gio!’
Theo and I froze, our flushed faces still so close I could feel his breath against my dampened, swollen lips.
‘Gio, are you in? Why aren’t you answering your phone? We need to talk.’ It was Zoë, rapping away with the arrogant demand of entry only a best friend could be confident in.
My grip on Theo loosened, more out of surprise than any wish to actually let him go, but he seemed to take it as a sign, and stepped back. The loss of him was brutal, the feel of his hands and lips that, moments before, had been branded on me, cooling and fading much too quickly. Worse, he turned away from me so I couldn’t read his expression, and in the next second was pulling my dustpan and brush off a hook on the back of a cupboard door.
Staring at the back of his head as he crouched to start sweeping up the mess I’d made, I called out almost absentmindedly, ‘Come in,’ in response to Zoë’s continued knocking.
‘Good, you are here. I was worried you’d already gone running to–’ Zoë burst in already speaking, but stopped short as she saw me hastily smoothing my top in my position on the counter and Theo at my feet.
‘Hey! Hi! Hello!’ I said much too loudly, before grimacing and adding, ‘That was too many greetings, wasn’t it?’
‘A couple, yeah.’ Zoë’s expression slowly morphed from confused to slyly amused as she took us in. Theo probably wouldn’t have given anything away even if he hadn’t been keeping his face averted, but I might as well have been holding a banner that read ‘Just Kissed’. ‘What’s going on here, then?’
‘You know me, just smashing some stuff. And Theo’s–’ I faltered.
‘Helping to clean up,’ he said, his gaze still firmly on the task at hand.
‘Which he doesn’t have to do.’ Suddenly remembering my manners, I made a feeble gesture to suggest he hand the dustpan to me, but stopped as he glanced up.
‘Let me,’ he said simply.
My heart gave a weird sort of stutter at the mess of emotions written across his face and, looking across at Zoë, I saw that her eyebrows had shot up.
‘What. The. Fuck?’ she mouthed at me and I gave a tight little shake of my head to show now wasn’t the time for explanations.
‘Okay then,’ Zoë said, drawing the words out slowly. ‘Hi, Theo.’
‘Zoë,’ he said shortly.
Silence reigned for a few seconds, the undercurrents in the room more like a tsunami as Zoë continued to look between us in fascination.
‘I should go,’ she said in the end, her words sounding more like a question than a statement.
I was about to agree that I’d catch up with her later when Theo said, ‘No, I’ll go.’
He rose and tipped the dustpan contents into the bin while I gripped the counter to stop myself gripping him – gripping him and demanding he stay and kiss me again. But he didn’t even look at me as he slung his coat across his arm and made his exit.
‘You can’t let him get away with that.’ The door had barely clicked shut after Theo when Zoë made her announcement.
‘What?’ In a daze and still staring at the door, I barely registered that she was speaking.
‘You can’t let him do whatever the hell he just did to you and then run off.’
It didn’t even occur to me to pretend nothing had happened. Instead, I touched a finger gently to my still warm and no doubt scarlet lips. ‘We kissed,’ I said slowly, almost as if confirming it to myself after the other party’s abrupt disappearance.
‘No shit,’ Zoë laughed. ‘You should’ve hung a sock on the door or something so I didn’t come barging in.’
I couldn’t imagine Theo wanting any part of something so uncouth – in fact, the way Theo had left without so much as a backward glance suggested he no longer wanted any part of any of it.
Shying away from that line of thinking, I focused instead on my best mate, realising that she was still in her white beautician uniform, her dark hair neatly pinned back. As Zoë usual
ly ripped off her detested uniform and released her hair over her face less than three seconds after her shift had finished, this was significant.
‘Why did you come barging in? What’s up?’
‘That’s so not the point right now,’ she said firmly. ‘You have to go after the Nod Next-Door.’
I shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know if I should.’
‘Why the hell not?’
Feeling stupid about still sitting up on the counter, I hopped down and pulled Zoë over to the couch.
‘Well, for one you saw the way he skedaddled.’ Catching sight of a photo of Dec, Zoë and me from Dec’s eighteenth birthday that sat on the small table next to the couch, I pulled my knees up to my chest protectively. ‘And, for another, I’m not sure I should’ve kissed him.’ Because, really, it’d been one thing to have a crush on Theo, but now the reality of what it actually felt like to act on it was hitting me and, in among all the fluttery, excited feelings was something else: guilt.
I’d been able to mostly put Dec out of my head since I’d found out that Theo was a Leventis, focusing on everything that that had meant rather than my own problems. As a strategy, it’d been working fine, but now it felt like the lack of obsessing over Dec over the past four days was catching up with me all at once.
‘I mean, Dec doesn’t like Theo and Theo doesn’t like Dec. Theo’s supposed to have kicked Dec off his team and there’s all this drama going on at their work.’ I could hear my voice getting shriller and the words falling out of me more quickly as my highly strung emotions switched their attention from one crush to another. ‘God, there’s all this stuff I don’t know about and I’ve been so focused on Theo recently that I’ve not considered Dec in it. What kind of a friend does that make me?’ I clapped my hands to my face and slumped back. ‘I’m awful.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Zoë advised bluntly. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Haven’t I? I’ve been friends with Dec for seventeen years, I only started speaking to Theo a bit over a fortnight ago! My friend’s enemy should be my enemy. I kissed the enemy!’
Cake at Midnight Page 19
