Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  “Is that what you thought?”

  “Yes. Except it isn’t ‘what I thought.’ It’s how it was.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, honestly no, I just didn’t know how to deal with it, either,” he stumbled. “It wasn’t that way. It really wasn’t. And I intended to explain, eventually, I really did. But when you kept turning on me, when you kept bawling me out in front of everybody, well, I just thought you didn’t want to know. Honestly I did.”

  He paused. She said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.

  “So I decided tonight, that I’d had enough. That I couldn’t take it anymore. That I was going to tell you…”

  His voice trailed off. She was curious.

  “Tell me what?” she prompted.

  He didn’t respond for a while. She stared at him, genuinely puzzled. Her first thought was that he was going to tell her that he’d applied for a transfer or something similar—that he no longer wanted to work with her or be with her in any way. And she realized that she wouldn’t like that at all. Even baiting him the way that she knew she had over the last three months had given her a certain twisted satisfaction, had scratched the itch that was inside her. She didn’t like the idea of losing him for good, even though he had never been hers. Except for one brief night. And only part of a night at that.

  She felt the tears welling. This would never do. As ever she fought to show nothing, to keep her expression blank. Her mind was still intent on exerting control—over her tear glands as well as her body language—when he spoke again.

  “To tell you, to tell you…that I’m in love with you,” he said.

  Karen was dumbfounded. She had not expected this. In fact, it was the last thing she had expected. She was not a woman with a high opinion of herself when it came to men and their feelings for her, or the effect that she had on them. Indeed, she was not a woman with a high opinion of herself in any area. Even when it came to the career in which she had been extremely successful, Karen did not consider herself a success. She was always plagued with doubts. Her whole persona, the way she was when she went out in the world, was so much based on pretending. It really had not occurred to her, given his behaviour towards her following their one-night stand, that Cooper cared about her one jot, except maybe as a senior officer who could affect his future prospects in the job.

  She stared at him in amazement.

  “I thought it was you who didn’t want to know,” she stumbled. “I thought I was just a quick lay, and that you regretted it the next day. That’s how you behaved, or that’s how it seemed to me, anyway. Indeed, that’s how you’ve been behaving ever since.”

  He shook his head. She thought he looked a bit like an overgrown puppy dog that knew it had misbehaved badly and was craving affection, wanting to be stroked and made a fuss of.

  “I knew I was in love with you the moment I touched you,” he said. “I guess I was in love with you before, actually, but I didn’t realize it. The night I kissed you after that Indian meal, for a moment I thought you were going to ask me in then. I wanted you to so much. But I just didn’t dare do anything about it. And then when you did, well, it was beyond anything I could have expected, beyond anything I’d ever known.”

  He began to cry then. To weep unashamed tears. His shoulders shook. Big sobs racked his body.

  “I really am in love with you,” he muttered through the tears.

  She got up from her seat, went across and sat next to him. She wrapped her arms around him, this big strong man. He buried his head in her shoulder and just carried on weeping.

  It was several minutes before he stopped. She did not try to say anything. Instead she just held him very tightly, her whole body encouraging him to let his feelings out. He certainly seemed better at doing so than she was, she thought. And she warmed to him even more because of it.

  Eventually he pulled away from her, wiping his face with both hands. His eyes were red and swollen and full of anguish. She didn’t think she had ever witnessed such an instinctive outpouring of raw emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No,” she responded gently. “I’m very very flattered.”

  He pulled even further away, the pain in him all the more apparent.

  “Is that all? Just flattered? What about you? What do you feel?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she said. She thought that she did know well enough. In fact, she knew that she did. But old habits die hard. It was not in Karen’s nature readily to open her heart.

  “You don’t know?” He sounded quite distraught.

  “You’ve given me a shock, Phil,” she went on, trying to be lucid, to be logical, to cool the situation a little. “I mean, you’re a copper. And a married one. I actually know nothing about your personal life. I don’t know if you’re happy, I know nothing about your marriage or your family. I am well aware, though, how so many of the blokes in the job are. I’m privy to locker-room gossip. I’m another cop. I know how they talk about women, particularly the married ones. How they talk about their wives. How they talk about other women who are stupid enough to let them into their beds. Most of them have no intention of rocking their marital boat, that’s for certain. They just like a bit of variety. And they’re quite inclined to boast about it. They’re into one-night stands, because that way they don’t get any extra problems. I thought that’s what I was to you. Just a one-night stand. I thought you made that perfectly clear. I thought maybe that was how you lived your life. That you liked to play away from home occasionally but that was all. And that in the cold light of dawn you backed away—particularly from me, a woman you worked with, a woman who is a senior officer.”

  It was quite a speech for Karen, and it was the truth. Phil Cooper looked as surprised as she had been earlier. He shook his head.

  “Is that really what you thought, boss?”

  “Phil, for Christ’s sake, will you stop calling me boss? Under the circumstances it makes me feel even worse.”

  Cooper managed a wry smile. “Sorry,” he muttered, for the umpteenth time. He took a big white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose noisily. The handkerchief had been neatly pressed and folded, by his wife, no doubt. Only men who had wives who did that sort of thing for them were likely to carry carefully ironed real cloth handkerchiefs around with them.

  She watched in silence, determined not to get too carried away. The handkerchief had been a timely reminder. Whatever he said, whatever he professed to feel for her, he was still a married man who had shown great reluctance to follow up their night together.

  It was a minute or two before Phil began to talk again, his voice quite calm now. “I’d better tell you about me,” he began. “I’m not like the others.”

  Well, that was original, she thought, trying desperately to remain at least a little cynical.

  “You see…” He looked uncertain, sounded as if he couldn’t get the words out. “You see, I met my wife when we were both very young. She was sixteen and I was seventeen. We were both virgins. We became best friends and eventually lovers and before either of us knew where we were we were married. I was barely twenty. Neither of us had been to bed with anyone else.”

  Another pause. Karen waited again.

  “The thing is, Karen, that was still how it was until you, until us…”

  He really couldn’t get the words out. Karen was confused. He couldn’t possibly mean what he seemed to mean, could he?

  “I don’t quite understand,” she said. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that you are the only woman I have ever been to bed with except my wife. I’ve always been faithful to her. But it’s not something you let onto in a police station. Most of the guys would think that there was something wrong with you.”

  With a different sort of man Karen might have thought this was a chat-up line. There was, however, absolutely no chance that Cooper was being anything other than devastatingly truthful. She somehow did
not doubt that for one minute. And she could see that he hadn’t finished what he was saying. She waited in stunned silence for him to continue, to drop a further bombshell, maybe.

  “I don’t mess around, Karen. I never have and I never will. This thing that happened between us, it didn’t happen by chance. It wasn’t a game. I don’t know about you, I can’t guess about you. You keep things so close to your chest. But for me it had been building up for some time.”

  “I tried very hard not to let myself do anything about it. I didn’t know how you felt but I bloody well knew how I felt. I knew it was important before it happened, and when it did happen, well, it was probably the most momentous thing in my life. I’ve never felt anything like it, Karen. Yes, OK, I told myself afterwards that it must never happen again. But I just knew in that instant when we first touched how special we were, that there was something between us that I may well have been looking for all my life.”

  He stopped. He looked uncertain now, perhaps regretting already that he had said so much. Karen touched his face, then took his hand and squeezed it in a gesture of reassurance. No, not a gesture. She wanted desperately to reassure him, to bring him comfort. The time had come even for her to be honest. She had tried not to admit to herself what she really felt. In the face of this extraordinary outburst of emotion, this extraordinary display of trust in her, this candid declaration of love, she could do nothing, for once in her life, other than be totally honest about the depth of her feelings.

  “It’s all right, Phil,” she said. “It’s the same for me.”

  “Really?” His voice was very small.

  “Really. From the beginning of ‘us.’ As you say, maybe even from before that. But I thought it wasn’t like that for you. When you didn’t want to speak to me the next morning I didn’t know what to do. I was devastated. You had really hurt me and I just wanted to hurt you. That was why I kept sniping at you. I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I understand. I can see how it must have looked.”

  “Yes, well. Why, though? Why couldn’t you at least have talked to me the next morning?”

  Cooper gave a little grunt.

  “I’d just sent my children to school. I’d just had breakfast with my wife. I don’t cheat, Karen. I don’t do it. It might seem old-fashioned, but there it is. When I saw you in the car park I just wanted to take you in my arms. But I couldn’t. I just didn’t dare respond at all. So I decided I had to try to walk away. Turn my back on you. It was all I felt capable of.”

  “Guilt, then? That old friend.”

  “No.” Cooper sounded mildly surprised at his own reply. “I didn’t feel guilty. I don’t feel guilty. I don’t think it comes with this particular territory, not when you’re being absolutely honest, not when you’re being true to yourself.” He managed a small smile. “Fear more than guilt, I think.”

  “And are you still afraid?”

  “Terrified.” This time he beamed at her, that big wide smile which seemed to have done something permanent to her heartstrings.

  “Me too,” she said. There was a warm glow inside her, though. She knew she was possibly about to embark on a dangerous journey, but she could not help herself.

  “I do feel the same. I felt it from the beginning as well. I think I love you, too, Phil.”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her full on the lips, long and hard. It was fast and passionate. Just like the first time he had grabbed hold of her. She felt a kind of shudder run through her body. She didn’t know what it was. She had never felt it before.

  “Did you—did you feel that?” she stumbled.

  “Yes, oh, yes,” he murmured into her ear.

  “So, what was it?”

  “I have no idea. I think the earth moved.”

  “What, with just a kiss?”

  “There’s something special between us, Karen. Something rare. Something I can’t stay away from anymore, can’t waste. That’s why I’m here tonight.”

  “I know.”

  He kissed her eyelids and her nose and her lips very lightly, all the while stroking her hair, in much the same way as he had when he’d put her to sleep like a child that first night. She was equally moved. She dissolved into his arms.

  “Will you take me to bed now?” he asked.

  “Is that what you really came for?” She was aware of a certain edge to her voice. An edge of uncertainty, an edge of suspicion. But then, it was new for her to really trust someone, particularly in this situation. She couldn’t help questioning still, just a little.

  He kissed her eyelids again.

  “No, that’s not what I really came for,” he said. Then he grinned, lightening the moment. “Well, it’s certainly not all I came for. I love you, Karen Meadows, detective superintendent of this parish. I really love you. I wanted to tell you all that I’ve told you, and now I’ll settle just for holding you if you want. It’s more than enough. It really is.”

  Karen pulled his mouth onto hers and kissed long and hard, savouring the flavour of him, breathing in his scent.

  “Don’t you dare,” she whispered into his ear. “I don’t think it’s enough for me. Not nearly enough.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to fuck me. And I don’t care whether we do it in bed or right here.”

  He was on her then. Every bit as urgent as before. Once again he was not as she had expected as a lover, even though she didn’t know quite what she had expected, or even if she had expected anything. He ripped at her clothing and at his own. He had a way of crawling all over her, or that was how it seemed.

  His mind, as well as his body, seemed to enter hers. She felt the shudder again, a kind of internal and quite uncontrollable shake starting somewhere in the abdomen and stretching both ways at once, down to her toes and up to her head.

  She asked him again if he felt it, and he said that he did. Cried out that he did, and that he was loving every moment of it.

  When the first time was over they instinctively followed the same routine as before. They went to bed, once again having to remove a prostrate Sophie who hissed angrily at Cooper, no doubt seeing him merely as an unwelcome intrusion, and lay close and tight together before making love again. Whatever they did, whether it was just lying together or making love, they seemed to fit so well. Everything fitted so well. They didn’t talk much. Perhaps they had said it all, perhaps they didn’t dare say more. Karen wasn’t sure. She knew this was earth-shattering. She knew it wasn’t just that flush of first lust. She really knew that, was absolutely sure of it. And after they had finally finished she fell asleep in his arms. It felt wonderful. Sleep engulfed her with a kind of sweet ease that was entirely new to her.

  She woke with a start when she felt him ease away from her, unfold his arms, try to slide out of bed unnoticed. She noticed, of course. It was impossible for her not to. She felt as if she were joined to him at the hip. If he twitched, if he hiccupped, if he sneezed, if he stubbed his toe, she would know. And she certainly knew that he was planning to leave her.

  She watched him dress, smooth down his hair, pull on his trousers and his shoes, button his shirt, fasten his tie around his neck. Then he came to her and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m so sorry I have to go,” he murmured.

  “I know. I’ve heard it all before.”

  He winced. “This is different, Karen. This really is different.”

  “I know,” she said. And she did know, too. It didn’t help, though, not at that moment. He was going to go just when she needed him most.

  He leaned forward then, kissed her fringe, and her eyelids, and her nose, her chin and her lips and said, like before: “I’m putting you to sleep now.”

  He almost succeeded, too. She watched him leave the room through half-closed eyes. She was nearly asleep. Then, when she heard the front door slam in the distance, she seemed to be slammed into full wakefulness again.

 
It had been quite a day. The horrible experience of being in court and seeing Richard Marshall freed, and then the extraordinary thing that had happened between her and Phil Cooper—and it was extraordinary, she had no doubt about that—overwhelmed her.

  She rolled onto her front, buried her face in the pillows, and sobbed her heart out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The following day reality hit even harder. Karen never liked mornings very much. This was one of the hardest mornings of her life. Knowing what was ahead of her made it even more difficult than usual to drag herself out of bed. Sophie, who had returned to her favoured corner of the duvet as soon as Cooper had departed, yawned luxuriously. Karen was too preoccupied even to give the cat her usual morning stroke.

  She peered at herself unenthusiastically in the bathroom mirror and splashed cold water repeatedly on her swollen eyes. Karen’s face did not recover quickly from tears, which was one of the reasons she tried to avoid them.

  The events of the previous day had been monumental. And as she brushed her teeth with only a poor attempt at energy she realized that she was unsure exactly what had had the most devastating effect on her, Richard Marshall walking free or Phil Cooper confessing his love.

  She felt rather as if both her head and her heart belonged to someone else, and someone else she didn’t know, at that. Her elderly neighbour Ethel was putting her rubbish in the chute again when she left for work.

  “And how’s my favourite policewoman this morning?” Ethel enquired cheerily.

  “Fine, thanks,” replied Karen absently, not at all inclined towards banter for once, as she walked slowly towards the lift, head down, lost in her own thoughts, but nonetheless aware of Ethel’s curious eyes following her.

  When she arrived at Torquay Police Station it took a monumental effort of will for her to put on her usual act. She made herself stride into the station with her head held high, to appear self-confident and in control. And just like getting out of bed in the first place that morning, it was as hard as she had ever known it to be. Every officer she encountered that morning looked subdued.