by Kait Jagger
‘You are damnably hard to get hold of, Miss Gregory,’ he answered immediately. She could hear music and Swedish chatter in the background.
‘Sorry, sorry. I’m out with Kayla and I didn’t hear the phone. Say hello, Kayla.’
‘Hi, Stefan!’ Kayla shouted, looking at Luna like, What’s up with you?
‘Are you and your staff having a good time?’ she asked, lifting her shoulder gingerly and resettling it against the pillow behind her.
‘A very good time. Very productive.’
Luna heard James’s voice asking Stefan something, then heard him shout, ‘Hullo, Luna!’ only to be echoed by a few more voices, and laughter.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Stefan said, to groans and more laughter from his colleagues. She heard a door shutting, and sudden quiet on his end. ‘I’m standing out on the balcony and the snow is coming down very heavy. I wish you could see it.’
‘Me too.’ Luna hesitated, acutely conscious of Kayla, who made absolutely no bones about the fact that she was listening to the entire conversation. ‘And the skiing is good?’
‘It is. James is very grateful you convinced me.’
‘Well, anything to make James happy.’
‘Are you alright? You sound tired.’
‘No,’ she said more brightly. ‘I’m fine. Kayla’s just brought us another round of drinks.’ Luna held up her plastic container of jelly and Kayla clinked it with hers. ‘So, I’ll, um, I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.’
After they’d rung off, Kayla looked at her and, forgetting about her shoulder, Luna shrugged, then winced. ‘He’s off skiing with his work friends. I don’t want to bother him with this.’
‘You’re weird. He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?’
Well, yes, Luna supposed so. But she was sure she’d done the right thing.
When they got back to Arborage just after 1am, Kayla insisted on making the taxi wait while she saw Luna up to her room, got her undressed and tucked her in bed.
‘Thank you for looking after me, Kay,’ Luna said sleepily, lying on her back in bed, arm in a sling.
‘Anytime, babe,’ Kayla replied, tiptoeing out of the room.
Chapter Twenty–Five
She managed, just, to get up and go down to the office late the next morning. She put on her favourite grey dress with not too much difficulty, but gave up on her hair, eventually phoning Caitlin on her mobile and asking her to come up and brush it into a ponytail for her.
‘Everyone’s been asking after you,’ the press officer reported, after reassuring Luna that her motorcycle had been rescued by members of the garden staff and returned to the barn. ‘Even mean old Paul Walker.’
To which Luna merely remarked, ‘Really.’
Happily, the Marchioness was out for the morning visiting friends, so Luna got on with simple tasks as best she could, hunting and pecking on her laptop with her right hand. And Caitlin was right; Luna was touched by the number of staff who came by to check on her, Marta personally delivering a cup of tea and chocolate croissant.
But by midday she was struggling. It wasn’t so much the shoulder that hurt but everything else. The junior doctor had warned her that this might happen, given the fall she’d experienced. She was loath to take more of the muscle relaxants he’d given her, in view of how completely they’d knocked her out the night before. She had something she still needed to do today. So just after lunch she carefully slipped her coat over her shoulders and walked out into the garden, into the woods beyond.
Eventually, she arrived at Paul Walker’s little cabin, where she found him sitting outside, skinning what looked like a rabbit.
‘You shouldnae be out here, wi’ yer arm like tha’,’ he said gruffly, gesturing to Luna’s sling.
‘You should have stopped, Paul,’ Luna said.
‘Wha—?’
‘Last night. You should have stopped. For all you knew, I could have been seriously hurt.’ It had been Walker’s eyes she’d seen in that rear-view mirror – the wary look on his face now confirmed it.
‘I dinnae know what yer…’ he began, trailing off when he saw the expression on her face.
‘Obviously, I can’t prove it was you. And since it would be my word against yours, there’s nothing I can do about it. But it definitely wasn’t okay to just leave me there.’ With that, she turned on her heel and walked away from him. On one level, it was a blessing, this; she was no longer afraid of Paul Walker.
Minutes after Luna got back to her desk, the Marchioness returned from her visit. She clearly hadn’t heard about Luna’s accident the previous night and was appalled to learn the details.
‘Is it the same arm?’ she asked, and Luna nodded, reminded that Lady Wellstone had been there the first time she dislocated her shoulder. And then, the strangest thing. Lady Wellstone came and leant down next to Luna in her chair, gently putting her arms around her. ‘My dear girl,’ she said. ‘Go up and go to bed.’
She took two muscle relaxants the minute she got to her room, settling herself on the settee in the most comfortable position she could manage, with her head flat on the seat cushion and her shoulder propped on a pillow, waiting for the pills to take effect. She fell into a fitful doze, waking to find Stefan standing in front of the sofa, dressed in jeans and a jumper, staring down at her. She blinked, sure for a minute she was dreaming.
‘You’re back early,’ she said.
‘You are never riding that motorcycle again,’ he replied sternly.
She struggled to sit up, flinching as her body protested. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Kayla’s pictures, which she tweeted to Nancy and which Nancy retweeted to all her followers…Honestly, Luna,’ he said exasperatedly, ‘do you really have no idea of how social media works?’
‘I should have thought.’
‘No, you should have told me.’
‘But you sounded like you were having so much fun, and there was nothing you could do by the time we talked. And Kayla was looking after me…’
He made an irritated noise and sat down next to her on the sofa.
‘I’m fine now,’ she said, gesturing to her sling.
‘What were you doing out at that time of night on your bike anyway?’ he asked crossly.
‘I went to the cinema with Jem and Rod.’ Really, with her shoulder aching and her neck stiff, suddenly Stefan being angry with her was more than she could take. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
‘Otch, Luna,’ he relented, putting his arm around her and carefully pulling her head against his chest.
The jumper he was wearing was made of some really soft yarn and she buried her face in it, eventually asking a muffled question: ‘Did you leave all your co-workers behind in Åre?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry, they’re still having plenty of fun.’
‘It’s just a shame you’re missing it.’
‘I was ready to leave anyway,’ he said simply. ‘What can I do for you, flicka? Are you hungry? Do you need me to get you anything?’
She could only assume the muscle relaxants were finally kicking in, because these questions and him calling her flicka made her feel a little emotional. Her voice cracking, she asked, ‘Do you think you could wash my hair? I haven’t washed it for three days. It’s too hard, I can’t do it with one hand, and I’m so sick of it being dirty…’ She sounded pitiful even to her own ears, and she was very, very glad Stefan had come back early when he kissed her forehead and cuddled her a little closer.
He took her sling and clothes off with great care in the bathroom and helped her into the tub, filling it as she sat in it. Then he washed her hair, all the time talking about his ski trip, the weather in Sweden, winter weather he had known as a boy, the many winter jumpers he had owned as a boy. Inconsequential, comforting stuff. After drying her off, he picked her up and carried her back to the sitting room, lighting the fire and slowly brushing her hair while she leant against his shoulder.
There was a knock on the door and it was a mark of how completely muscle-relaxed she was that Luna didn’t panic, gesturing for him to go into the bedroom. She opened her door to find a member of the kitchen staff with a tray for her.
‘The Marchioness thought you’d want some dinner,’ he said.
After he’d gone, she and Stefan sat on the rug in front of the fire, sharing her roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables. ‘God, this was exactly what I wanted,’ she said, then told him about the Marchioness hugging her earlier.
‘Well, you are a very good PA,’ he said. ‘She should be hugging you and kissing your feet, I think.’
Luna wondered, then, as she had wondered many times that week, how much Stefan knew about the Marquess’s health, whether Lady Wellstone may have been more forthcoming with him than with her children. In her drug-induced state, she almost said something to him about the Marquess’s forthcoming surgery. Almost. But then remembered that hug, and what it meant.
Much later as they lay in bed together, Stefan sitting up against the bed head and Luna resting against his chest, he asked her for details of the accident and the aftermath. She decided not to mention Paul Walker, saying only that the car hadn’t stopped and she hadn’t managed to get its registration number. When she got to the part where the junior doctor rotated her shoulder back into place and Kayla fainted, Stefan didn’t seem to think it was as funny as Luna did.
‘I don’t like to think of you, standing in that lane all by yourself,’ he said, stroking her still damp hair. ‘I mean it, Luna, I don’t want you riding that bike again.’
She decided to let that rest.
*
Luna was so much improved on Saturday that, after Stefan snuck out just after dawn and she went back to bed for a few hours, she managed to go down to the office for a few hours to catch up on work. Taking just a few normal painkillers after lunch, she went first to the barn to check on her bike, which seemed none the worse for wear, a few new scratches notwithstanding, and then to the Dower House.
She found Stefan in the kitchen doing his laundry, laptop and tablet set up on the island.
‘You look much better,’ he said, taking her in his arms and looking her up and down. ‘Come sit. I’ll make coffee.’ As he put the kettle on, she sat at the island and glanced at his tablet, where she could see a set of thumbnail photos.
‘Are these from your skiing trip?’ she asked.
‘Mmm,’ he nodded.
‘May I look?’
‘Absolute.’ He came and sat next to her, flicking through the pictures on the slopes and in what appeared to be a well-appointed chalet, telling her who was who. Bibi Myers turned out to be a sweet-looking lady of around forty.
‘I don’t know why, but I pictured her young, blond and stunning,’ Luna said, quickly adding, ‘Not that she’s not pretty.’
‘You surprise me, Luna,’ Stefan teased. ‘I didn’t think you were the type to worry about what my office assistant looks like.’
‘Oh, I’m not worried about someone with such poor PA skills,’ she responded blithely. ‘Impersonating her boss on email – very bad form.’
‘A mistake she won’t be repeating,’ he assured her. ‘So…’ he said, tone deliberately light, ‘I was looking and I noticed that you appear to have no online presence. Nothing on any of the social media sites I know of, anyway. Or is “Luna Gregory” really a false identity; is there a virtual you living a life I don’t know about?’
Luna had been expecting this following his barb the previous night. She actually prided herself on having a perfectly acceptable understanding of how social media worked, working as she did with Caitlin to manage no less than three feeds for the Marchioness. But he was right about her own lack of ‘online presence’.
‘Well,’ she began, ‘my parents died at about the time I would have started getting into that kind of thing.’ At the immediately contrite expression on his face, she put her hand on his knee. ‘No, no, it’s alright. So, I didn’t get into it at the time, and later when I considered doing it there were stories all over the place about online stalking and data mining and security breaches. And it just…didn’t seem like a good idea. It isn’t for me anyway, that kind of thing. I’m more of a face to face person.’
‘I like you face to face,’ he said, kissing her. ‘And as usual your superior reasoning puts me to shame.’
After that, they drank coffee and took turns pulling up their favourite cute animal video clips on the tablet. It all felt very normal and nice, as did eventually pressing her knee into his and placing her mouth on the pulse beating in his neck. They took the back stairs up to his bedroom, Stefan following her up with his hands on her bottom. His mood sobered when she gingerly removed the sling from her arm before starting to unbutton her shirt.
‘Are you sure we should…’ he began.
‘Definitely,’ she said, nuzzling his jaw.
‘It isn’t going to hurt you?’
To which Luna stamped her foot and said, ‘We haven’t had sex in a week. A week, Stefan. You’re not going to make me beg, are you?’
He conceded after that, undressing her and then himself and fireman-lifting her up onto the four poster bed. It was still light outside, and Luna savoured the new experience of burrowing under the covers with him in the late afternoon, whispering and kissing and touching each other. In due course she crawled on top of him and ran her right hand along his chest.
‘You have the best pectoral muscles of any man I’ve ever known,’ she opined, before moving her hand to his arms. ‘Very nice biceps as well. Really,’ she slid her hand down to his stomach, ‘there’s so much to admire here I hardly know where to start…’ She stretched her fingers further, smiling to find him hard and ready, and ran a fingernail along the length of his penis.
‘Oh, I think you do, Miss Gregory,’ he replied, stretching and sighing beneath her.
She lifted his penis till it was pressed against her stomach, then caressed it slowly. She was on the verge of mounting him when she saw his eyes on her left arm, which she was holding to her chest, the hand curled over her breast.
‘I swear it doesn’t hurt,’ she promised.
When he continued to look doubtful, she rolled her eyes, lifted herself off him, and resettled facing the opposite direction, grasping his cock and hunkering down on it before he could protest. Presented with a view of her posterior atop him, her feet tucked against his sides and her hair hanging down to the small of her back, Stefan overcame his scruples. He placed his hands on her waist and thrust up into her, saying, ‘God, you’re good.’ His hands moved across her stomach to her mons and he parted her, pressing his fingers against her in just the way she liked best.
They continued this way for some time, their combined sighs and imprecations, noises of pleasure and gratification filling the room as the sky outside darkened and shadows fell. ‘Tell me when you’re ready,’ Stefan said eventually, and soon after she was. ‘I…ah, now,’ she moaned, eyes closing, her hand on his, feeling it finish her. And seconds later he was with her and all there was in the world was their two bodies, falling into darkness together.
It shouldn’t have surprised Luna that his quest for reciprocity in terms of sharing personal histories reared its head again later that night. But it took her unaware all the same when he said, ‘So you wished you had brothers and sisters too, when you were little.’
‘Yes.’
‘But your parents…’
‘I think they thought I was enough.’
They were lying in bed together, Stefan toying idly with her hair.
‘Which of your parents are you most like, in terms of personality?’ he asked, and when she hesitated he continued, ‘I think I am like my father, for the most part.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re very like him. I haven’t met your mother, of course…’
‘A pleasure I hope you can forego for some time to come,’ he joked. And was silent. Waiting for her answer.
<
br /> Luna sat up in the bed.
‘I’m not much like either of my parents. My, um, mother was an amateur singer – that’s how they met. They were both very creative, artistically inclined.’
She slid down from the bed and walked into the bathroom, turning on the cold tap and staring at her face in the mirror. At her father’s eyes. She poured herself a glass of water, drank half of it and poured the rest out in the sink. She walked back to the bed and he was out and waiting for her, lifting her up onto the mattress. She turned on her side, facing away from him, and he put his arm around her waist.
It hadn’t been enough for him, her answer. She could tell. And yet she had nothing more to say.
Chapter Twenty–Six
Stefan was away for two weeks after that, two weeks when she learned what it was to miss him.
She knew, of course – he had told her before he left – that he was working in Munich and Berlin before returning to Stockholm for a week. And she was sure that had she phoned him he would have made time for the call, and asked her in that usual, pleasant way of his how she was, whilst telling her almost nothing of how he was or what he was doing. So she didn’t call, just as she had accepted impassively his assurance that he would have more time to spend with her in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
‘It’s fine,’ she had said, standing in the front hall of the Dower House with him surrounded by his luggage, her poised like a bird for flight. ‘You don’t have to—’
Only for him to pull her into his arms, cradling her sling gently and kissing her. ‘Please look after yourself until I come back, Luna. No more injuries, yes?’
The sling was gone within the week at any rate – Luna soon found she had no patience for it. Indeed, her shoulder was so much improved that she managed to decorate the Marchioness’s office for Christmas as a surprise one afternoon. She was just putting the finishing touches on a garland she’d hung around the mirror behind Lady Wellstone’s desk when her boss returned with Isabelle from a shopping expedition in London.
