Playing Grace

by Osmond, Hazel

  He caught her looking and she dropped her gaze to his hand resting on the table.

  ‘You have paint under your nails,’ she said and was surprised that she didn’t feel panicky or sad or angry as she usually did when something reminded her of Bill.

  She saw him pull his hand back before hesitating and letting it remain there.

  ‘Yup,’ he said, ‘just getting some bits and pieces ready for the installation, you know.’

  ‘Did you find a location? The other evening, with Gilbert?’

  ‘No, got waylaid. Plenty of time.’

  He was so close to her she could feel him all the way down her side. He was looking at her lips. And then something over her shoulder took his attention and he did one of those double-takes she’d last seen when he was trying to understand what the hell Alistair was on about.

  She turned to see Nadim at the bar, a pint of orange juice held to his chest in one large hand, one foot on the brass rail at the bottom of the bar. He was working hard at looking nonchalant – it made him seem as if there was something caught between his neck and his collar.

  ‘The damndest thing,’ Tate said frowning. ‘That guy …’

  She turned back round quickly.

  ‘I swear …’ Tate started again. ‘Looks familiar. Can’t think where … but I swear …’

  She got up. ‘I think I need to go to the toilet. I won’t be long.’

  As she passed Nadim, she flared her eyes at him and whispered, ‘Outside.’

  He emerged on the pavement, and she harried him round to the side of the pub.

  ‘What on earth are you doing? One, you’re in a pub – what would your wife say if she knew? And two, has Dad asked you to keep an eye on me?’

  Nadim was a jowly man and his mouth made a downward curve.

  ‘Well, he might have. But now, Grace, he’s gone quiet. Not answering his mobile. He’s left me deep undercover with no operating instructions.’

  How had she ever thought her father’s interest in crime was better than an interest in morris dancing?

  ‘I think you should go home, Nadim. Tate nearly recognised you back then; he was trying to place you. Go home.’

  Nadim was reluctant.

  ‘Go home,’ she said again. ‘Or I might just tell your wife next time I see her that I saw you drinking vodka and orange. A pint of it.’

  She left him professing it was just orange and rejoined Tate. He was fiddling with a beer mat before he saw her, and when he did, he stood up and smiled, his teeth very white in the gloom of the pub.

  She really wanted to drink a double Scotch. Just standing there, straight down in one. She could do with a cigarette too. Any kind.

  Then she stopped craving anything but Tate, because his smile had become something dirtier, and she saw his gaze do a trip down her body and back to her eyes again.

  For the first time she let him look for as long as he wanted. She didn’t cut short his access or pass off the way she was looking back at him as if it was something that had happened by accident. His cocky ‘let me in’ look seemed to melt away the longer they stood there, until it was obvious even to her that what he’d said before she’d got thwacked on the head was true – he wanted her. She saw him shift his stance and the look changed again as if, suddenly, he were unsure of himself.

  Without them discussing that they were going, she was lifting up her bag and he was picking up his coat and they were outside. Grace didn’t even care if they found Nadim was still standing there.

  Tate was looking at her lips again.

  ‘Really want to kiss you, Gracie,’ he said, struggling into his coat. ‘If you don’t want me to, better say something now, because in a minute I’m not gonna be able to hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears.’ He was moving as he spoke; she felt his hands find her waist and he was pulling her towards him. Whether she would have said stop if he’d given her the opportunity, she would never know, because suddenly his mouth was on hers and the feel of his lips made all the things she’d tried to keep a lid on force their way into her mind for a few disorientating, gut-churning seconds, before they spiralled away again, God knew where, and she kissed him back. It was a tentative kiss on both their parts and he pulled away after the briefest of time. When she opened her eyes, he was still right up close, his breath seeming laboured.

  ‘Jeez, Gracie,’ he said, both hands coming up to hold her face. ‘If I kiss you the way I want to, it’s gonna kill your neck.’

  He could not have possibly known how much she was turned on by that – it made her feel desired and precious to him, and when he brushed her hair back off one cheek and lightly kissed her there, the old Grace was awake, prowling around, looking on and saying, He’s gorgeous. What are you waiting for?

  ‘It would probably be easier if I was lying down,’ she said, looking at him from under her lashes, and she saw she had surprised him. If anything, his breath seemed more laboured.

  ‘Cab?’ he said and she almost shouted, ‘Yes.’ He was pulling her to the edge of the pavement, then he was out in the road, waving his hand about.

  ‘Where to?’ he called over his shoulder as the taxi came to a halt.

  ‘Wherever’s closest.’

  ‘Ribbonfield Mansions, Grantham Street,’ he said to the driver and pulled at the door to get her in, leaping in behind her.

  Grace had a moment of clarity in the taxi when she remembered that she was still meant to be in the pub keeping him busy and that he might be a thief and, even if he wasn’t, he was absolutely the wrong man for her to be with, and then Tate put his hand on her thigh and she wanted him to kiss her properly. It was difficult to get the angle quite right; she couldn’t turn her head much, but Tate proved to be both imaginative and determined. Even with the seatbelts on.

  He was kissing her in a way that made her realise just his mouth wasn’t going to be enough. When he pulled the collar of her coat aside far enough to allow him to drop kisses at the base of her throat, she felt his blond hair tickle her neck and expected it to stir up memories of Bill, but it didn’t – it stirred up heat and a sweetly excruciating tightness in her belly.

  ‘Oh, that is so …’ she exhaled and knew that if he kept on kissing her like that, if the traffic continued to move so slowly, she might do something from her old days. She imagined taking off her belt and taking off his and telling him to lie back on the seat and …

  She caught the taxi driver’s eye as Tate was pushing up her sleeve and kissing down the inside of her arm to her wrist, before slowly taking her middle finger into his mouth, and the look he gave her definitely said, Don’t even think about it on my seats.

  He dropped them outside a terrace of white houses with columned porches and Grace thought, Dad’s right, this is a bloody good address. How can he afford to live here? There’s no such thing as a free place to sleep. What’s he doing to earn it?

  ‘You live here?’ she asked, and Tate said, in between kissing her neck, ‘Long story, Gracie, and there’s a few other things I need to tell you as well. We could talk about them now, or I could take you upstairs and see what you’ve got on under this serious old coat.’ He was opening it as he spoke, trying to get her shirt free of her trousers.

  We should talk about it now, sensibly and calmly, her brain said, while her mouth murmured, ‘Upstairs,’ and he hustled her up the steps and through the front door. The hallway was silent and smelt of expensive candles and polish, and they raced up the stairs, him pulling her by her hand as he bounded ahead. His keys were out of his trouser pocket; he was fumbling with them and he took long enough trying to get the right one in the lock that Grace had time to think, This is going too fast. All I know is that he turns me on and I need him and he’s going to tear my heart out – and he might be a crook.

  Then the key was in the lock and she couldn’t remember any of the questions she’d been asking herself.

  ‘Normally have trouble getting it in, do you?’ she whispered in his ear as he waltzed her in
through the door and kicked it shut behind him.

  ‘Nope, never. Usually slips in nicely,’ he whispered back in a way that intensified the heat she was feeling, the tightness in her stomach and her desperate, desperate urge to feel all of his skin against all of hers.

  He went to punch in some numbers on the burglar alarm and stopped.

  ‘That’s weird …’ but he didn’t finish talking because she had taken off her coat and when he heard it hit the floor, he turned to look. She started to unbutton her shirt.

  ‘Jeez,’ he said and she was being pulled along the hallway. ‘Kitchen, sitting room, library,’ he reeled off and Grace saw marble worktops, huge sofas and even larger chandeliers flash by.

  Here was a bed that you probably needed a sat nav to find your way across, a wall of wardrobes, wallpaper good enough to frame.

  ‘Let’s get that head of yours somewhere soft.’ He helped her very gently on to the bed. He was taking off his boots, kicking them across the floor, then taking off his socks as she started to undo more of her shirt buttons.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, nodding at what she was doing, ‘I get to do that. Hate that freakin’ shirt – gonna tear it off and ball it up and chuck it out the window.’

  He was pulling his own shirt up and over his head and Grace saw his belly and chest appear bit by bit. He tanned easily, she could tell, and imagined his body moving through water, coming up out of it, drips beading and pooling in his belly button so she could lick them out.

  He came back to the bed, got on it and straddled her hips. He was grinning down at her.

  ‘Comfy?’

  ‘Yes, but if you chuck my shirt away, these have to go too.’ She tugged at his pinstripe trousers.

  ‘These? Why these, Miss Surtees, have been in ma family for generations. We routed the British in these trousers and now I’m gonna do the same to you.’

  They didn’t move straight away after that, both getting used to this new way of being with each other. Not talking, just looking.

  Then he was undoing the last of the buttons on her shirt and kissing each bit of her that was exposed, but he didn’t throw her shirt out of the window when he peeled it off because suddenly, brazenly, she had removed her bra. It seemed to take his mind right off the shirt, which fell from his hands and then slid from the bed to the floor.

  ‘Work of art, Gracie,’ he said, not moving. And then, after gabbling that he was never letting her wear clothes again, he was undoing her trousers and pulling them down over her hips. She felt his mouth move over her thighs, his tongue making runs that finished with a kiss. Slowly he moved from one to the other, gave each its due attention, particularly along the place where her knickers met flesh. And then he was easing them down as well. She closed her eyes and if her neck hadn’t been so delicate, she would have arched her back as she felt his hands on her bare hips.

  He made a noise of appreciation and when she looked he seemed dreamy, mesmerised.

  ‘Blonder than me,’ he said and lowered his head and kissed her. That was the moment the real Grace came roaring back.

  She reached down and put her hand in his hair, tugging just enough to get his attention, and soon she was helping him get his trousers off, helping him get his pants down, and he wouldn’t leave her mouth alone as she wrapped herself around him, holding him as he said, ‘Gracie, Gracie, you’re all naked in my bed, everything stripped away.’ And she was there, there in that actual moment, not removed from herself like the poor barmaid at the Folies Bergère. She was kissing him back – she couldn’t leave his mouth alone either, or his neck or his chest or his shoulders … God, his shoulders.

  Quicker and quicker now, she was letting herself lose control and opening up for him. She helped him roll on a condom and took him in, sensations bombarding her as she caressed him with her tongue and her hands and felt him move over and inside her doing the same. She heard him say, ‘That’s … wow … Gracie. Jeez.’ Then he wasn’t talking any more and she was being noisy and they’d both forgotten they were meant to be careful with her neck and her head, and she forgot she was meant to be careful with everything. Instead they just absolutely, frantically, went for it.

  *

  Lying on top of her afterwards, with both of their hearts hammering, Tate said, ‘That was one hell of a tour, Miss Surtees. Now I’m gonna need a neck brace too.’ Rolling off her, he lay by Grace’s side and she turned to face him. He was looking at her as if he’d known all along that they should be lying here like this. But it was not a smug look, just a supremely happy one. She felt his hand on her breast; saw the silver of the ring on his thumb against the pink of her nipple.

  ‘You young men,’ she said, playing an imaginary chord on his arm with her fingers, ‘think you know it all.’

  He nodded and she loved the way it made his hair move.

  ‘Certainly didn’t know there was so much fire under that ice, that’s for sure.’ He moved his hand from her breast and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Wouldn’t want to see it disappear again. Your eyes are even more beautiful when they haven’t got all those extra layers of darkness in them.’ His tone was sad, and he reached for her and pulled her closer, kissed her on the mouth. ‘Not gonna keep asking you what happened, but if you ever wanna tell me …’ He frowned and turned his head because there was a definite clunk from one of the wardrobes; she’d heard it too. Now there was a kind of scrabbling and Tate was off the bed, his head tilted slightly while he walked along the wall of wardrobes as if trying to work out where the noise was coming from. He stopped, backtracked, caught hold of a door handle and pulled sharply.

  There was her father, bent over as if he had just toppled sideways. One hand was over his eyes. ‘I told you to keep him busy,’ he said, ‘not bring him here. And where the hell’s Nadim? He’s meant to be shadowing you.’ But Grace wasn’t listening; she was too preoccupied looking at the icon held in her father’s other hand.

  CHAPTER 30

  Grace had known falling for Tate would make her life go to hell in a handcart. She just hadn’t realised it would happen so quickly or so drastically.

  It had been half past five in the afternoon when she agreed to go for a drink with him. Now it was one the following morning; from the taxi window she could see only the odd staggering or homeless soul.

  So, in seven and a half hours she’d given up fighting her attraction for Tate; had heart-wrenchingly lovely sex with him while her father hid in his wardrobe; seen him arrested; been questioned by the police in the presence of a solicitor; had her fingerprints taken; and, finally, been released on police bail pending further enquiries. She guessed Tate was still in the police station somewhere. At least she was only fighting guilt by association; he had the bigger problem of explaining how there was a stolen icon in his wardrobe. Or, rather, two stolen icons – the other one was in there too; her father had just dropped it when he’d fallen over sideways, hence the clunk.

  So, nine years of living a quiet, well-ordered life and she’d ended up sitting in an interview room having her entrails picked over by the police.

  They would probably turn up with a search warrant for her flat later, find the paintings under her bed and put her down as a major art thief.

  Served her right – she knew all this chaos would happen.

  To go with all those new experiences, Grace also had a severely trampled heart. She’d spent so long stopping herself falling for Tate that, when it had happened, she’d plummeted like lead – straight down; no hesitation or deviation. Which was why, even faced with the solid proof of what he’d done, it was hard to pull up from the nosedive. She should concentrate on the choking, tear-gas-filled chaos he’d helped create at the galleries. On all the subterfuge and lies. Where was the outrage that he’d stolen the things she loved?

  Instead she kept thinking of what had taken place on that bed and what had happened after her father had stumbled out of the wardrobe.

  Almost at once, the police had started hammering on th
e door to the flat, summoned by her father from within the wardrobe – God, they must have been making so much noise not to have heard him. At the sound of knocking, Grace had scrambled, clumsily, under the duvet and her father had gone to open the door. Tate had stood there, naked, looking first at the wardrobe and then at her.

  ‘Keep him busy?’ he’d said, repeating her father’s words as if they were only now making sense to him. ‘I told you to keep him busy,’ he’d repeated. He seemed empty and kicked. ‘Is that what this was, Gracie? Keeping me busy?’

  She’d said ‘no’ quickly, but he fired back, ‘So, you had no idea your dad thought I stole the icons? Didn’t know he was following me?’

  She had floundered at that as ‘no’ was a lie and ‘yes’ was worse, and saw him press his lips together and slump down on the bed with his back to her. She knew he’d now remember how she had talked to her father on her mobile just before she had agreed out of the blue to go to the pub with him.

  She’d wanted to put her arms around him, press her lips to his shoulder, but now there were police in the room and her father was whispering to her to say nothing, that she didn’t want to implicate herself any further. Although how it was possible to implicate yourself more when you were already sitting up naked in a suspect’s bed, having obviously just had sex with him, she didn’t know.

  When they took him away, Tate didn’t even look at her.

  He had his head down and, once again, it seemed as if his boots were too heavy for him.

  The stark desertion of the streets mirrored how she felt, but she didn’t know if it was because she’d fallen for Tate and he was a thief or because of that look of anguish he’d given her when he thought she’d just been using him.

  Still, in the end he was like Bill – except Bill had only stolen her heart … Tate looked as if he’d gone for that and the icons. All she’d got in return was a cut head and a sore neck.

  She tried hard to find any silver lining in the huge dark, thundering cloud that seemed to be centred over the taxi and heard her mother say to her father, ‘So brave of you, anything could have happened.’ Ah, there it was, that patch of silver: her parents were speaking to each other again.