Unsticky

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Your favourite painter’s Paul Klee?’ she clarified, remembering to pronounce his surname ‘clay’ so she didn’t come across as a total philistine. ‘That’s such a boy thing to say.’

  ‘Well, who do you like?’ Vaughn laughed and he needed to do that more often because it transformed the angular lines of his face into something almost friendly. ‘Georgia O’Keeffe? What a girl thing to say.’

  ‘Erté,’ Grace said immediately. ‘Mostly his fashion illustrations for Harper’s - that girly enough for you, Mr Vaughn?’

  ‘Just Vaughn will do,’ he said mildly, refilling her glass from the second bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. ‘You know a lot about art.’

  ‘I did Art and History of Art for A-levels and I must have been dragged round every gallery in the country before I was ten.’ Grace reached for the bottle of San Pellegrino as her teeth were going numb, which was a warning sign that she was well on the road to ruin.

  ‘Your parents are art lovers?’

  ‘Grandparents,’ she corrected, carefully pouring water into her glass with a hand that barely shook. ‘And not really art lovers, they just wanted to find a way to occupy me that didn’t involve video games or watching too much TV.’

  Vaughn’s ever-changing face had changed again; eyes narrowed in contemplation. ‘And what do your parents do?’

  ‘My father does something in an office in Worthing. Sells insurance, I think,’ Grace conceded, looking hopefully around for their server. There was still enough room for dessert and if she was chowing down on something chocolate-based then she didn’t have to answer any more questions. ‘My mother lives in Australia.’

  ‘So you were brought up by your father then?’

  Grace put down her glass with enough force that water slopped over the rim. ‘I don’t like talking about my family.’

  Vaughn gave a careless shrug. ‘Evidently.’ He smiled with just the tiniest hint of cruelty. ‘Why did your mother leave?’

  He was un-fucking-believable and blind if he couldn’t see that Grace was scowling ferociously. But judging from the way Vaughn hadn’t taken his eyes off her, he’d noticed but simply didn’t care. ‘My personal life isn’t a free gift that comes with the purchase of dinner,’ she told him crisply. ‘My parents married young, they divorced young. I went to live with my grandparents. Satisfied?’

  Vaughn calmly rearranged his napkin as if the brief recap of Grace’s toxic formative years had barely registered. ‘I was only asking. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘I’m not upset! FYI, I had a happy childhood. I baked cakes. I learned to knit. There were books everywhere. The worst thing was they only had a black and white TV and it was embarrassing when I had friends over.’ Grace made a concerted effort to lower her volume knob. ‘My grandparents are amazing. They put their life on hold for me.’ She tried to smile. ‘OK, they were kinda strict sometimes and there was a lot of ‘when I was your age there was a war going on’ but I’d have been much worse off if my parents had stayed together.’

  ‘And what do your grandparents do? Are they retired?’

  Grace couldn’t help but smile now. ‘Grandy plays golf and my grandmother’s a pensioners’ rights activist - she writes angry letters to the Daily Mail when they’re mean about Marks and Spencer.’ She paused for thought. ‘And they go on a hell of a lot of walking holidays.’

  She smiled again, expecting Vaughn to smile back but he was studying her so intently that Grace was tempted to cover her face with her napkin. ‘I’m getting used to your huge repertoire of filthy looks,’ he remarked idly. ‘But like I said before, when you smile, you’re really quite beautiful.’

  ‘You are so weird,’ Grace muttered, before she could stop herself.

  ‘Most people just call me an arrogant bastard and have done with it.’

  ‘I never said that . . .’

  ‘And I’m most grateful.’ The smile he gave her was slightly cracked. ‘I’m just curious about you. Also, I have a theory that the most interesting people have the most interesting pasts. Don’t you agree?’

  Grace twisted her lips. ‘I’m not sure we have the same definition of what makes an interesting past,’ she said carefully.

  ‘You’re probably right.’ Grace must have imagined that cracked smile and the shadowed cast to his eyes because now Vaughn was curling his arm over the back of the banquette and giving every impression that he was relaxed. ‘Now why don’t you tell me what you get up to in that famous fashion cupboard?’

  There was a line being carefully drawn through the last ten minutes so Grace could take her cue and rattle on about her thwarted plans to become the greatest stylist that never was. Instead, she flagged down their waiter and after a little dithering ordered the apple crisp with vanilla gelato, then she turned back to Vaughn. ‘Well, hang on, do you have an interesting past?’ she asked coolly. ‘Want to tell me about your childhood?’

  Vaughn shifted fretfully and drew his arms in so he could trace patterns on the table with his long fingers. ‘There’s really nothing to tell.’

  ‘Have you always lived in London?’ Grace persisted.

  Vaughn lifted his head and, even in the soft light, Grace spotted the warning glint. ‘Off and on,’ he bit out.

  She’d always been the kind of girl who liked to pick her scabs instead of leaving them to heal on their own. ‘Like, how?’

  ‘Like, I grew up there when my family weren’t abroad and then I went to boarding school in Hampshire.’ Vaughn hesitated, before throwing caution to the wind. ‘My father was in the Diplomatic Corps.’

  Grace could feel him pulling away from her so that the little throb of connection between them, which had been waxing and waning all night, was abruptly severed. Besides, being the sole focus of his most glacial stare wasn’t much fun at all. Grace decided to stop scab-picking and go back to her original plan to be light and frothy.

  ‘I heard that if you meet someone at an embassy party and they say that they’re a cultural attaché, then actually they’re really a spy. Is that true?’ she asked mischieviously.

  Vaughn’s eyes stopped trying to bore holes into her and he laughed softly, the tension melting away like the pool of ice cream in the bowl, which had just been placed in front of Grace. He even stretched out a hand towards her arm resting on the table, but thought better of it and fiddled briefly with the salt-cellar instead.

  ‘I do know some cultural attachés, and I don’t think any of them are involved in international espionage. Another illusion shattered?’

  Grace nodded, her attention temporarily distracted by her pudding, which was the fifth best thing she’d ever eaten. ‘They all get shattered sooner or later.’

  ‘I still want to know what you get up to in your fashion cupboard and why you were so tetchy when I spoke to you yesterday,’ Vaughn said, his gaze riveted to her bowl-to-mouth motions.

  There was no way Grace could give Vaughn any of the highlights of yesterday’s shoot, so she settled for a highly edited version that made her appear to be indispensable and ingenious in a demurely sexy His Girl Friday manner and had the added bonus of coaxing these deep-throated chuckles from Vaughn. ‘My boss calls me “the Model Whisperer”,’ she concluded with bashful false modesty, but Vaughn’s attention was on her pudding, which she pushed away after only a few spoonfuls. ‘Too much,’ she complained. ‘My eyes were bigger than my belly.’

  Vaughn hesitated for almost a nanosecond, then snagged the bowl nearer and licked his bottom lip. ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, spoon already halfway to his mouth.

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘I don’t usually have that much of a sweet tooth,’ he remarked. Grace nearly believed him, then remembered how he’d eagerly ordered four variations of chocolate cake on her birthday.

  Thinking about that also made Grace remember how she’d become so flustered when they’d said goodbye. She wondered what ‘goodbye’ would be like this time. The evening’s non-date status was still undefined. There had been no sly
touches of his hand on her leg under the table, no accidental banging together of knees. But there had been the waist-stroking at the gallery and he’d called her beautiful twice.

  Probably when she was getting out the car, she’d brush her lips against his cheek, Grace decided. This time she’d totally own the goodbye and leave him wanting more.

  Vaughn was currently scraping the bowl clean with a dreamy little smile on his face. For the first time he seemed like a real, live boy and not a man who was a combination of expensive suiting and huge amounts of sarcasm. He looked up and blinked as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  ‘You should have just ordered a pudding for yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I never have pudding,’ he declared loftily. ‘Do you want coffee?’

  Grace didn’t wear a watch but it felt as if it was late. ‘Not really, thank you,’ she said, standing up. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’

  At least she wasn’t lower middle class enough to make polite noises about having to powder her nose, she thought, as she took in her flushed cheeks, which were a perfect match for her dress, in the restroom mirror. She also looked a lot drunker than she felt, though that wasn’t saying much.

  By the time she walked back to the table, rather steadily all things considered, Vaughn was pulling a black Amex card out of his wallet. She hadn’t known they existed for real outside of books. Grace watched as he signed his name and gave their waiter a $100 bill for a tip with a subtle sleight of hand.

  Vaughn didn’t try to touch her as they walked alongside each other, but when they reached the door, his hand grazed her hip. It felt like a million tiny fires igniting, just from one incidental touch. Grace cannoned into the door with a small, ‘Ouch!’ and she knew that Vaughn knew.

  Walking to the chauffeur-driven car felt like wading through treacle and as soon as the door closed on them and the car eased away from the kerb, Vaughn was reeling her in. Hand gently cupping the back of her neck, he was pulling her in closer, closer, closer.

  He didn’t kiss her. Not at first. But stroked the back of his hand against her cheek and it felt scratchy and wrong. That Grace could ever be with someone . . . be with someone like Vaughn, and just sit still and be touched.

  There was only one way to get him to stop. So Grace kissed him for the lack of good reason not to. And Vaughn kissed her back.

  It was different from the kisses that she usually got. Vaughn kissed her just like he’d eaten her dessert, like her mouth was a thing to be savoured, enjoyed slowly.

  It was as if Vaughn’s kisses were saying all the stuff that he couldn’t - and when it really came down to the cold, hard facts, there was something between them. Had been ever since she walked out of the lift earlier. Grace didn’t know what it was, but when Vaughn’s hand closed over her breast, thumb rubbing and pressing, she made a sound in the back of her throat that she didn’t think she’d ever made before.

  There weren’t many things that Grace knew for certain. But she absolutely and unequivocally knew that sex with Vaughn would be good. More than good. It would be sheet-tearing, limb-flailing, screaming-loud-enough-to-wake-the-neighbours good. No one could be as tightly wound as Vaughn and not unravel when the lights were on low and the stereo was set on smooch.

  His hand slipped from her breast to her waist, mouth worrying at a spot behind her left ear that seemed to be connected by some complicated system of veins and blood vessels straight to her clit. Then it was an undignified tug and scramble so Grace was half in his lap, half-kneeling on the seat, one foot on the floor for balance. Making out in the back of a limo was just as ergonomically challenging as making out in the back of an unlicensed minicab, though thankfully the driver was behind a screen and not able to ogle them in his rear-view mirror.

  Vaughn whispered something but Grace was too busy finally curling her fingers through his hair to hear. She realised that she’d wanted to do that for hours. He was coaxing her closer now, so one hand could slip under her skirt, up her thigh, and one hand was edging along the neckline of her dress.

  Grace felt him hesitate then but she pushed her tongue into his mouth so she could taste vanilla ice cream and expectation. His fingers were still dancing against breast and thigh and she wanted something more forceful but made an inarticulate sound of protest instead. How could you say this stuff with words, when you never knew what you really wanted?

  Then Vaughn’s fingers grazed the edge of the tit-tape, which was starting to come unstuck. Grace tensed at the thought of being found out but he was already pushing her sideways on to the seat so she was no longer riding his thigh like a Grand National jockey hopped up on speed pills, but sliding clumsily over leather with legs akimbo.

  And OK, she could deal with a moment’s regrouping to pull down her dress where it had ridden up and surreptitiously prod her tingling lips to make sure that the Harlot lipgloss wasn’t smeared around her—

  ‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ Vaughn said, straightening his jacket and crossing his legs so it was hard to believe that a minute ago he’d had Grace writhing on his lap.

  Rewind! thought Grace in horror. That hadn’t been some polite kiss good night - that had been foreplay. Or was this just some tactical retreat to ascertain that Grace had no intention of crying ‘date rape’ and embroiling him in a messy court case a couple of weeks from now?

  Bold from the endorphin rush and the huge amounts of white wine still racing through her system, Grace reached for his stiff hand. ‘It’s OK,’ she assured him, with a coy sideways sweep of her lashes. ‘Let’s go back to yours.’

  He was already disentangling her fingers. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, patting her hand in an almost avuncular manner. ‘It’s very late and I’m sure you have an early start tomorrow.’

  Her brain could register the snub but instead of passing a message on to her body, Grace was pressing up against him and taking in tiny sips of air as she brushed her breasts against Vaughn’s arm. ‘I don’t need much sleep,’ she husked, and reached up to kiss the flushed plane of his cheek. And she couldn’t believe she was doing this, going there, but her hand was curling around the twitching length of him, relishing his shocked gasp. ‘I know you want me.’

  ‘It’s late,’ he repeated mechanically, firmly removing her hand and looking straight ahead. ‘We’ve had a wonderful time and you’re a very sweet girl, but this is not going any further.’ And while Grace was still processing this, he added censoriously, ‘You’ve had far too much to drink.’

  Of course, it made perfect sense. Even though, one minute ago, it had seemed like the best idea ever. But then it would be an hour later or morning and Grace would be creeping home in the same clothes with that same dry-eyed, dry-mouthed feeling she always had when she’d slept with someone and knew she was never going to see them again.

  Apparently she wanted to see Vaughn again.

  But that wasn’t why he wouldn’t take her home and have his way with her on sheets with some super-numerical thread count. It was because Grace had been pretending all night; trying out the part of another girl who was more upper class than Upper Holloway, at ease rather than easy. And Vaughn must have seen right through it as soon as the lift doors opened and she’d tripped out in her uncomfortable shoes that she’d got for fifty per cent off because there was a tiny nick on one heel.

  And if she’d really been that other girl, she’d have laughed this off, but she was Grace. So she made the time-honoured ‘talk to the hand’ gesture and snarled, ‘Fine, whatever,’ as she slid so far across the seat that the door handle dug painfully into her side.

  Vaughn sighed and shot her a grimly unamused look. ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ he said sharply, which finished the job of completely piercing her drunken miasma, so she was left feeling miserable and nauseous. And yeah, completely mortified. ‘There’s no need to take this so personally.’

  He was right again. She was being stupid again. Getting way ahead of herself again. ‘Can you drop me off at my hote
l?’

  Vaughn didn’t even look at her but smoothed down the lapels of his jacket. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Of course. You don’t mind if I catch up on my messages, do you?’

  Grace did mind but she wasn’t in a position to argue, so she stared out of the window and concentrated on the exquisite agony of her pinched toes and the itchy tit-tape and how she wanted to puke every time the car hit a pothole. Or was it from shame? She couldn’t tell either way.

  When they pulled up outside the Soho Grand, the driver opened the door for her and the only acknowledgement she got from Vaughn was a brief and dismissive glance as he looked up from his BlackBerry.

  There was no need for him to be so huffy. After all, she was the injured party. ‘Look, maybe we could . . . ?’

  But the door had closed and the driver was already behind the wheel and pulling away from the kerb. Grace was left standing on the sidewalk outside the Soho Grand on West Broadway with even the doorman giving her a disparaging look as he took in her dishevelled hair, crumpled dress and the way she was scrunching up her face to stop the tears from falling.