The Proposal

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘I’ve checked us into the hotel,’ he said, searching her eyes. ‘If that’s what you’d like.’

  ‘I’d like that very much,’ she said, taking his hand and leading him from the dance floor, feeling sexy at being in charge.

  They went up in the little lift to the second floor. One hand still holding hers, Daniel pushed open the door and then pulled her into the darkness of the room, not bothering to turn on the lights.

  He pushed up the silk jersey and pressed her against the wall, cupping her buttocks, his hands searing through the soft fabric, his mouth lowering to kiss her bare shoulder.

  ‘That’s a lot of dress you’ve got on there. Is this some sort of designer chastity belt?’ he said as he struggled through the acres of fabric.

  ‘Let’s just get it off, shall we,’ she laughed softly as they stumbled towards the bed.

  She pushed her hands down his boxer shorts, feeling the firm contours of his body, then brushed her palm over his prickle of pubic hair, over the entire length of him until he grew hard in her hand.

  He unclipped her bra and peeled off her thong, and when they were both naked, they fell back on to the mattress. He straddled her and swooped down to suck her tight brown nipples, one, then the other, then down to her belly, kissing and stroking it with his breath, his lips, as if she were the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. He licked his fingers and pushed two of them inside her, finding such a hot, delicious spot that she groaned and arched her back, enjoying the sensation of feeling so desired. And as she spread her legs, she felt him push inside her, slowly at first, until she was full of him and they were moving in rhythm, the sweet energy building and building to such a white-hot climax that she did not want it to stop but at the same time she wasn’t sure if she could bear it to continue.

  When Amy opened her eyes, the thin winter sun was leaking through a small gap in the blinds. Daniel, she thought with a smile, her hand sliding across to check he was still there, warm and solid. It wasn’t a dream after all. She looked across the room and saw Georgia’s dress lying on the floor like a pile of melted silk jersey.

  ‘Oh crap,’ she hissed, leaping out of bed to scoop it up, smoothing down the fine fabric. Please don’t be damaged, she thought. Georgia had been so kind to lend it to her, she couldn’t take it back screwed up in a ball.

  ‘Nice view.’

  She jumped and straightened up, quickly holding the dress in front of her naked body. There was a pause, then she burst out laughing.

  ‘No point in hiding it all now,’ said Daniel with a lazy grin. He held out a hand to her and she carefully laid the dress on a chair and walked back to the bed.

  ‘You’re awake,’ she said, smoothing his hair back.

  ‘Sleep is a waste when I’ve got you next to me.’ He hooked his hand around her waist and tried to pull her back under the covers. ‘Come back to bed,’ he smiled.

  ‘Honey, I can’t. I’m due at the Forge later and I’ve got to go up to Primrose Hill, see Georgia, return some stuff.’

  ‘That won’t take long.’

  ‘I have to go home and change first,’ she said, standing up and pulling on her knickers.

  ‘You’re still pissed off, aren’t you?’

  ‘Dan, I have things to do today.’

  He swung his legs out of bed and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ he said, nuzzling his lightly stubbled chin against her shoulder. ‘If it makes you happy, we’ll take it slow, but right now, I want to spend every night until I leave for Washington just like last night.’

  ‘That might be an expensive undertaking,’ she smiled, realising immediately that he could actually afford a room at Claridge’s from now until next Christmas just from the interest on his trust fund.

  ‘What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?’ he said, planting light kisses on a strip of her neck.

  ‘I think Cheryl wants me to work.’

  ‘Take the evening off. Tell Cheryl I’ll pay her staff wages for the night if I can get to spend it with you.’

  She turned around to face him.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Gideon mentioned he’s having a house party,’ he said, playing absently with his cock. ‘He has this great place in Docklands. We could go to that, then go to my mum and dad’s for this lunch thing they always have on New Year’s Day.’

  ‘No, no, no. I think I need to be kept away from your parents for a while.’

  He stepped towards her and held her face in his hands.

  ‘Amy, I love you. I want to be with you and my family have to understand that. They’re not all bad, but if they make you uncomfortable, then say the word and we’ll just go to the party and spend the first day of the new year in bed at my place. We can call in pizza and watch crappy movies all day long. How about it?’ he said, stroking her nipple.

  ‘That sounds like a plan,’ she smiled, as they turned around and fell back on the bed.

  The sunshine had pushed its way through the clouds by the time Amy emerged from Chalk Farm tube. It was still cold, her breath puffed in front of her and the frost on the pavement sparkled, but she had a spring in her step. In fact, it could have been pouring with rain and she would have felt like doing a Gene Kelly-style whirl around a lamp post. After leaving the hotel, she had been back to her flat to change and had a suit bag containing Georgia’s magic dress draped over her arm. She was back with Daniel, she had friends who cared – she felt on top of the world.

  She stopped at the florist in the village and bought a nice bunch of tulips and rose verbena. As an afterthought, she popped into the newsagent’s to buy a Kit Kat. Usually she would have denied herself chocolate – in fact she had been denying herself pretty much everything since she was eleven, since her seriousness about ballet demanded that she stay flyweight and slim – but since her trip to Manhattan, things had changed. Not only did she feel lighter, more confident in her skin; she felt that there was a future ahead of her, a future with Daniel and maybe, just maybe, a future that didn’t involve dancing. Or at least one that might not involve Amy obsessively logging and justifying every calorie going into her body.

  She was just turning into Georgia’s street and savouring the illicit joy of the chocolate when she spotted someone familiar. Early thirties, wearing jeans, a thick fisherman’s sweater and a stripy college scarf, he had the sort of brooding good looks of a Heathcliff or a Mr Rochester. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she had seen him before – some BBC period drama? she wondered to herself – before she realised it was Georgia’s relative Will.

  He had obviously recognised her too. She watched him hesitate in his tracks, then, as he realised that a confrontation was unavoidable, slow his pace.

  ‘Hello,’ she said awkwardly when they were a few feet apart.

  He stopped and nodded.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Amy, Georgia’s friend,’ she said, feeling a little embarrassed.

  ‘I remember,’ he said tersely.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said brightly. ‘Or should we be saying happy new year by now?’

  ‘I thought it was all happy holidays in the States,’ he replied in a tone that suggested that Americans were colonial heathens.

  Hmm, and a merry Christmas to you, grumpy, thought Amy.

  They stood in clumsy silence for a second.

  ‘So did you have a good trip?’

  ‘It was great.’

  ‘You didn’t text me back.’

  His dark eyes made her feel guilty again.

  ‘Will Hamilton,’ she replied as the penny dropped. ‘That was you.’ She tried not to squirm as she remembered the mystery text that she had read just a minute before Daniel’s call had distracted her from everything else.

  ‘We were on our way to the airport, then I turned my phone off,’ she said, flushing at the lie.

  ‘For twenty-four hours?’ he replied, his black eyebrows knitting together to su
ggest his disapproval.

  Her arm was aching and being in Will Hamilton’s presence was unsettling. She had known from the second she had met him that he was suspicious of her, and ignoring his text, his concern about his relative, had undoubtedly done little to make him trust her any more.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said, nodding to the suit bag that contained Georgia’s dress. ‘Heavy.’

  ‘Santa suit?’ he said wryly.

  ‘A dress. One of Georgia’s actually; she lent it to me for a special night out. Hence the flowers.’

  ‘Result dress, was it?’

  She wondered what a result dress was and then blushed at the thought of it lying in a heap in the Claridge’s bedroom and knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘Well, this isn’t just a dress, it’s a work of art. It deserves to be carefully looked after.’

  Will smiled for the first time and his whole face lightened.

  ‘I can see that you’ve been spending too much time with Georgia; you’re starting to talk like her.’

  ‘No bad thing, surely?’

  Will shrugged and looked down at his watch, indicating that their conversation was over.

  ‘Are you okay there, bag, flowers? Or do you need a hand?’

  ‘I don’t need a hand,’ she said as a thought occurred to her. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a word . . .’

  He glanced down at his watch again as if her request was an inconvenience.

  ‘Please, Will, it’s about Georgia. I’ll only keep you five minutes. Girl scout’s honour,’ she said, raising three fingers.

  ‘You were a girl scout?’ he said, taking the dress bag out of her hand.

  ‘Buy me a coffee and I’ll tell you all about it,’ she said, leading him into the nearest coffee shop.

  The café they had entered was bristling with boho shabby-chic trinkets – of course it was: this was Primrose Hill, where everything had to be elegantly distressed. Immediately she could see that it was Will’s local coffee place, because of the reaction of the girl behind the counter as he walked in.

  ‘Hello, Will,’ she smiled, batting her eyelids shyly behind her fringe.

  Amy suppressed a smile: the girl was practically handing him her phone number. She gave Will a sideways glance as he ordered two lattes. She could certainly see why the pretty blonde barista would notice him. He was a good-looking guy with a crooked smile, clever eyes and the sort of aristocratic bone structure that came with generations of good breeding and which not even his messy dark hair could disguise. In his college-boy jeans and sweater he looked a lot like the handsome young men from the drama department at college, the particularly good-looking ones who always thought they were destined for movie stardom. In another life, her life pre-London, pre-Daniel, she might even had had a crush on him.

  She took a seat by the window, put down the flowers, and allowed her gaze to drift out on to the street. She smiled as she thought back to the night before. The dinner, the sex, the promise that Daniel would skip his parents’ New Year’s Day lunch to spend the day with her.

  ‘Latte,’ said a voice as a lightly foaming mug was put in front of her and she returned to the present.

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiled back at Will, who pulled off his scarf and took a seat opposite her.

  ‘So I take it you’re a regular here,’ said Amy.

  ‘I spend more time and money here than I probably should, yes,’ said Will, blowing on his coffee. ‘In fact I could probably hang-glide in here.’

  ‘Hang-glide?’

  ‘See that shop across the road?’ he said, pointing through the window. ‘Above it – that’s my flat.’

  ‘The one with the socks hanging off the balcony?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It’s not exactly drying weather, is it?’

  ‘I think they’ve been there since the summer.’

  ‘And I think you’ve just put me off my latte.’ She laughed, and the tension between them softened.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your text.’

  ‘I was probably being a little overprotective,’ he said, looking up at her from over his coffee cup.

  ‘I think Georgia is definitely capable of looking after herself.’ She smiled back. ‘But I’d have been suspicious too – the mystery American taking a member of your family on a Manhattan magical mystery tour.’

  ‘I wasn’t suspicious,’ said Will, looking at her directly.

  ‘Yes, you were,’ laughed Amy. ‘I could tell you were wondering if it was part of an elaborate plan to liberate Georgia from some of her money.’

  ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, not denying it. ‘Overactive imagination.’

  She took a sip of her own drink.

  ‘So what do you do? For a living, I mean.’

  ‘Is this the pressing thing you wanted to discuss?’

  ‘No, I’ve just realised I don’t know what kind of man would have his underwear out on display.’

  ‘Take a guess,’ he challenged her.

  ‘Lawyer? No, not neat enough.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘That also puts accountant and banker out. Doctor, maybe? Not with all that hair. PR. Possible, but I always thought they had a sort of insincere charm.’

  ‘So I’m charmless. That’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that . . .’

  ‘I’ll put you out of your misery. I’m a writer.’

  ‘As in books?’

  ‘Nothing so grand. Plays. The clichéd deluded artist starving in his garret, I’m afraid. You wanted to talk about Georgia?’

  She watched his face, wondering how much to tell him. The last thing she wanted to do was betray the confidence of a friend, but it was precisely because she considered Georgia her friend that she had to speak to Will.

  ‘I don’t know Georgia very well. Not before New York, anyway.’

  ‘So why did you go with her?’

  ‘Because she asked me to. It was a job,’ she said, struggling to find the right words.

  ‘A job?’ he said with a note of surprise.

  ‘I was a companion. A professional companion. For her trip. She didn’t want to go alone, and anyone can understand that.’

  He was looking at her intently, and she could tell he was trying to assess the nature of their friendship.

  ‘Look, I know it’s none of my business,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘But I don’t think it’s right that Georgia should be spending Christmas alone. Or at least with someone she doesn’t know very well. She has a family, doesn’t she? So why isn’t she spending this most important time of year with them?’

  ‘Our family is complicated,’ said Will. His tone was brisk, but it was slightly undermined by the little froth moustache sitting on his top lip.

  ‘Complicated,’ repeated Amy, remembering that Georgia had used the same word about an old boyfriend. ‘But what is it that’s so complicated, Will? It seems to be pretty straightforward to me. Your family has abandoned her at a time when she needs the most support.’

  Will narrowed his eyes. His look was so intense that she had to glance away from him.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s old!’ said Amy, exasperated. ‘I mean, she can walk and talk and look after herself, but she shouldn’t be living on her own at the top of all those stairs with no one to support her, or advertising for strangers to come and accompany her on holiday.’

  ‘I try,’ said Will, his own frustrations becoming obvious. ‘I go round, I offer to help, I even bloody moved down the road so I could keep an eye on her, but seriously, Amy, she doesn’t want to know. She’s cut herself off from the family. Barely tolerates me, and that’s the way she wants it.’

  ‘But why? Why did the family fall out?’

  Will put down his cup.

  ‘It’s not for me to discuss.’

  ‘Why not? It seems as if you’re the only one who cares about her. Please, Will. She’s been very kind to me and I want
to help, but unless I know what she’s dealing with, I can’t do anything.’

  Will glanced at her and hesitated.

  ‘It was something that happened when she was a girl, a teenager really. There was a party and . . . something happened, something bad. People took sides – you know how families can get. Let’s just say it didn’t end well.’

  ‘Come on, Will, you’ve got to give me more than that.’

  ‘Everything I know is hearsay – family gossip and whispers,’ he said, pushing a sheet of hair away from his face. ‘No one ever sat me down and said, “Okay, Will, this is why Georgia never comes for Christmas.” And I suspect that even if they had, it wouldn’t be the truth anyway. The only person who really knows what it’s about is Georgia.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll ask her, then.’

  ‘With respect, I doubt she’ll want to talk to you about it either.’

  Amy had to admit that she agreed with him. After all, she barely knew Georgia, and this was the sort of conversation that would be difficult even for someone’s closest friend. For a moment Amy thought about her own family, all of them squashed around a tiny table. Would they ever ostracise her? Could something that happened when she was a girl have driven such a wedge into her family? She really didn’t think so. Her family was separated by distance, but the ties that held them together were strong – bound by blood and love and memories.

  ‘Jeez, what’s wrong with you Brits?’ she said, feeling suddenly angry. ‘Is it just this stiff upper lip, or is it emotional constipation?’

  ‘Nice image for first thing in the morning,’ said Will tartly as she threw her filthiest look back at him.

  ‘It’s not funny, Will.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s not funny,’ he said, pushing his coffee cup angrily to one side. ‘A family torn apart isn’t funny. But here’s the truth: Georgia hates us. She doesn’t want anything to do with us. And if you really were a good friend of hers, then you’d step back and respect that.’

  Amy shook her head, disappointed and disgusted.

  ‘Well, I’d better go and return the dress – and check up on your family while I’m at it.’

  ‘So now I’m the bad guy,’ he said, throwing his hands up in exasperation.