Think fast, Alys. “I got lost last night. It was late, and somehow I must have gone wrong at the top of the stairs; I was really, really tired, so I came in here.”
“Oh.” He looked as though he was considering challenging my story, but no alternative came to him, thank God. “This used to be Sabine’s room. Now I use it as a kind of dressing room, keep most of my work gear in the wardrobe. Hence—” He indicated his near nakedness with the hand not holding up the towel.
“Oh. Right.” Pressing the duvet against me to prevent anything sagging in an off-putting way, I sat farther up the bed. “Um.”
Leo was still adhering to the wall, clearly terrified by the view. “Look, I’ll just go and—in another room. Er—I’ll meet you in the kitchen?”
“Yes, all right. Shall I cook us some breakfast?” An insubstantial smell of bacon frying was wafting through and making my stomach writhe.
“Oh, I’ve already had mine. It’s nearly nine. I’ve finished morning stables, came in for a quick clean up, thought we might take a run into Exeter in a minute if you’re up for it. I’ve got to pick up a couple of bridles that are in being mended, and there’s the cinema.”
“That sounds very nice.” Then I remembered last night. “How’s Felicity?”
Leo’s face darkened and he almost forgot himself enough to let go of the towel. “A bit so-so really. The vet managed to stop the spasms but she’s not herself at all yet. Jay’s going to keep an eye on her today, maybe walk her around a bit, see how she goes.”
He sidled out of the room hell-bent on not letting me get so much as a glimpse of his buttocks. He could have saved his energy, I’d already sussed his gluteus maximus. It was the sort of thing which drew the eye. Particularly in those shorts he’d had on yesterday.
I found the kitchen after only one false start, but Leo had beaten me to it. “Gosh, Alys you look”—I held my breath—“fantastic.”
Better or worse than your average horse? I felt like saying, but didn’t. “Thanks. So do you.” I meant it. His hair was still damp and dripping onto his black T-shirt, his jeans were creased and his jodhpur boots were dusty. But he was wrapped in an aura of careless sexuality, so absolutely the type of man I fancied that he might have been an Identikit-Date. I was about to suggest a cup of tea before we got going, anything to keep my stomach quiet, but at that moment the telephone rang. Leo picked it up and turned to me after a second.
“Alys, it’s for you.”
“What?” I shook my head. “No one’s got the number.”
Leo just gave a sideways shrug. “It’s a woman. At least, I think it is.”
“Ah, Alys, you are there. I was worrying because you were ringing in the night, making a panic of yourself.”
“Hi, Jace.” Of course, good old 1471. “No, only wanted to check that you knew about Mrs. Winterbourne’s parcel.”
“She is here now, telling me about her big bottom.” I couldn’t even begin to interpret this one. Leo was shuffling his feet, obviously impatient to be off. “So you are okay?”
“Fine. No worries. Anyway, Jace, where the hell were you last night? Got yourself a hot date, did you?” There was a small pause, and Jacinta giggled. “You didn’t? You jammy cow!”
A little unfair, given that I had spent the night in another man’s bed, even if the bed in question hadn’t, strictly speaking, been his. It hadn’t been for want of trying.
“It was not a date, Alys, I was just having drinks with Piers. He is very nice boy, you know? Very, very cute.”
Obviously Piers had taken to Jace more than I’d thought. My stomach gave a mysterious little wobble. “I bet that was fun.”
Jacinta giggled again. “I was learning to drink Snakebite. We were having a competition, and I think he is very poor today.”
Behind me Leo had stepped up the shuffle. “Right. Lovely. Well, I’d better go, Jace. I’m off to Exeter. Talk to you later.”
“I hope you are being careful of yourself, Alys.” Jace’s voice was suddenly serious. “Do not let what is in his trousers run away with you.”
I kept my face straight. “I shall try to make sure it is well contained. Bye.”
I was giggling over Jacinta’s warning when I climbed into the Land Rover, Leo looking at me quizzically. There was no way I could have explained Jace’s idiosyncratic approach to the English language to him, so I contented myself with saying, “It was Jacinta who I work with, just checking up.”
I turned away to look out of the window at passing Devon. Didn’t want him to know about last night’s little panic. The sun throbbed down, all the vegetation which lined the lanes was smothered in a layer of sandy dust thrown up by the passing wheels. If it rained now, there was going to be eyebrow-level mud.
Rain seemed as far away as Christmas as we drove into Charlton. I was still watching the passing view and Leo hadn’t remarked on my silence. Whenever I glanced towards him, he was staring straight ahead at the road, every now and again thumbing his glasses back up towards the bridge of his nose.
“I’ll need to pop in and see Alan,” Leo said at last, without any reference to the conversational lapse. “He’s got a couple of in-hand bridles for me to pick up. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“Hey. Alys. Come in with me. I want to introduce you to Alan.” He took my hand across the gearstick. I resisted for a fraction of a second’s peevishness, then let his fingers fold over mine. “Really I just want to show you off.” He lowered his voice. “I can’t believe you’re real. Introducing you to people makes it all more solid somehow, more true.”
I thawed faster than a choc-ice in a chip pan. “I’d love to. Do I look all right?”
In the shadow of the Land Rover, Leo pulled me tight against him. “You look absolutely bloody amazing,” he said slightly hoarsely.
Now this was promising. “So.” I leaned into him. “Why don’t we go back?” I gave it the full works, hair tossing, lip licking, I even attempted a small, knicker-twisting hip-wiggle.
He let his hands fall away. “Well, it’s not often that I get a day off like this, to go and do what I want and we’ll have plenty of time, won’t we?”
I told myself not to be so childish. “Of course. I’m looking forward to the film.” And, hopefully there will be hotdogs, and chocolate. My stomach let out a little groan of anticipation. “Shall we go and meet your Alan?”
“Good idea.” Leo took my hand and began to lead me across the road, to my horror into the same saddlery shop that I had rushed to beg information on him. I reared back against the pressure of his fingers. “It’s okay,” Leo said, misunderstanding. “You don’t have to be shy. Alan is a great guy, known him for years.”
Inside the shop was as dark as ever, still redolent with the soapy organic smell of leather. My heart rose a little, there didn’t seem to be anyone behind the counter. Leo wandered around, lifting and sorting various items as though he did this every day. “Al!” he called, freeing a tangled mass of leatherwork and teasing it out into component items. “I’ve come for the tack.”
“Hello there.” The voice came from behind us, forestalling my instinctive idea which was to crouch down behind a feed bin. “’Tis you again, Mr. Forrester.” The middle-aged man who I’d encountered last time came into the shop through a side-mounted door which led to a back room.
“It is indeed. I’ve got a couple of youngsters coming out at the Devon County next week, and I knew you’d finished with the bridles. So I thought, since we were passing—” He looked around for the we part of the equation, but she was currently busying herself with a totally fake interest in a set of luridly coloured nylon head collars hanging conveniently far away. “Alys?”
“Er. Hello.” I hoped that enough strange auburn-haired women walked in here that I might be lost in the masses.
Leo introduced us but I didn’t hear. I was still pulsating with terror about what Alan was going to say. His eyes registered nothing but a passing interest in Leo’s words and a friendly
recognition. I held my breath; if Alan told Leo we’d already met, then I’d have to admit to Leo that I’d already known who he was before I met him at Isabelle’s.
“So. I see you found ’im.” Alan’s first words were about as bad as it could get but promptly got worse when he explained, “Your lady friend was in here—oh, few weeks back now, asking after you.”
It wasn’t malicious, that I was sure. I mean, how could he have known? It was a casual, passing remark, nothing more. I felt my bladder drop to my knees.
“Alys?” Leo was only mildly curious.
“I was on my way up to see Isabelle. I saw you come in here, and I thought—God, this sounds so weird—I thought I recognised you. You must have reminded me of someone, I don’t know who.”
“Came in wantin’ to know who you be.” Alan handed over two bridles surely too small to be worn by anything outside of a model farmyard.
“And then we met at Izzie’s?” Leo looked stunned. I opened my mouth to leap in with a further explanation and realised I couldn’t think of one. “That is amazing. What kind of serendipity must have been at work that day, hey? That feeling of recognition. You thinking you knew me, and then us meeting and my feeling that you understood me, somehow, like you had some secret knowledge about me…? That is—words can’t describe it, can they?”
Well, I could think of a few.
Chapter Sixteen
We had fun that day. A breeze from the river was cooling the Exeter streets, blowing through the disappointing post-war architecture of the city centre like a mud-scented mistral. We wandered the pigeon-haunted close, where kids played on the statues and teenagers lay coiled around one another in the shade of the cathedral. I had another brief stab of missing Florence, part of me hoping she too was wrapped around some beautiful youth on a baked stretch of greenery, but most of me hoping she was sitting indoors reading Ancient Greek and knitting a wimple.
The Lord of the Rings was reassuringly full of carbohydrates and Pepsi. By the time we staggered back out onto the dreaming streets, the air was heavily dark and smelled musky.
“Well,” said Leo. “I enjoyed that. Deserved all those Oscars, didn’t you think?”
My enthusiasm was slightly less than his because I had spent a considerable portion of the time wondering what Piers and Jacinta had been up to last night. Snakebite? Piers must have lowered himself considerably if that had been his drink of choice. What on earth had brought that about? Had he been trying to get her drunk?
“Alys?” Leo was scanning my face. “You looked lost there for a minute. Deep in thought?”
“Not really. Nothing important.”
We walked on through the cooked air, back to the Land Rover and Leo pulled his mobile from his pocket. “I’d better just drop by the yard on the way back. Jay’s had the vet to Felicity again, says she doesn’t like the way things are going. I won’t be long.”
Surely this contravened the Geneva Convention or something? On the one hand, Leo was behaving as though I was the most desirable woman on the continent. On the other, it seemed as though he wanted to put a wall of horseflesh between us. Was I deluding myself into thinking he was attracted to me?
We drove through the darkness back to Charlton, passing occasional comments about the films and the heat, until the Land Rover swung into the drive. “I will honestly only be about ten minutes.” Leo spoke to me out of the driver’s window as I stood with gravel in my sandals. “Put the kettle on.”
I trudged into the house, the kitchen smelled doggy, but again the perpetrators were nowhere in evidence. I wondered where they were. Probably down on the yard with all the other nasty biting objects. Then I wondered whether that description included Jay, and why Leo hadn’t introduced us. Had he got something to hide? Was she a gorgeous blonde, with topple-over tits and hips like a python? If she was, why was I here?
“Alys?” He must have come in another way. I hadn’t even heard the car. “Are you all right? You look absolutely miles away again. Is there something worrying you?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m fine. You were quick.”
“Well, look, do you mind if we have a drink? I’m a bit, gosh, well I suppose I’m nervous if you want the truth.”
“Nervous?” I stared blankly at him. “About Felicity?”
“No, Alys, about you.” Leo poured two glasses of wine, although I didn’t touch mine. “I know that I’d like to take things further.” He swallowed down the contents of his glass. “I just—and it’s been so long since Sabine and I—”
“I think you’ll find that you don’t forget how. It’s like riding a bike,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. If he was going to compare me to Sabine, there was only going to be disappointment in store.
“Would you like to come upstairs?” Leo took off his glasses and fixed me firmly with his green eyes. The sheer attractiveness of him stopped this from being the most cheesy line I’d ever heard. “It could be a terrible mistake of course, but if you’re willing to take that chance?”
My heart was throbbing like a pain. “Yes.”
I let him take my hand, his fingers were cold from the glass, slightly moist and his touch was so ethereal it was barely there. It was like holding hands with fog.
“I am”—he advanced slowly—“really, really scared.” Chilly fingers brushed my cheek and tipped my face towards his. “Everything seems to be running out of my control.” Gentle lips grazed against mine, then came back for a more exploratory kiss. He was pressed full-length against my body, leaving not much of his desire to the imagination, cupping my face between his hands and kissing in an almost exploratory way. If this was the first intimate contact he’d had with a woman since his wife, an experimental approach was probably not surprising. Maybe she was the only woman he’d ever been to bed with.
“You mentioned upstairs?” I whispered into his ear when he broke contact for a moment. “It would be a bit more comfortable.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Leo whispered back. “I want to, so badly, but is it all too soon? Am I rushing things?”
“Rushing?” I’d known tectonic plates that moved faster than this. “Well, you mustn’t do anything you don’t want to.” Inwardly I let out a groan. Being understanding was all very well, but I was so turned on by his kissing and his closeness that if he kept this up much longer I wouldn’t be able to walk, except possibly like John Wayne.
“Let’s go upstairs.” He tugged at my wrist.
I let him lead me up the staircase and along the landing, through a door I’d previously not noticed, into his bedroom. There was a saddle on the bed, which he hastily plopped onto the floor, giving me time to glance around and notice there didn’t seem to be any pictures of the stupendous Sabine in evidence. There were, however, a couple of TVs mounted high up in one corner. I hoped he wasn’t into watching movies. Or making them. “I’m sorry it’s a bit untidy.” Leo shifted the saddle again, awkwardly. “I wasn’t expecting…”
He could obviously carry the reticence on all night. “We could just sleep together,” I said. “Without any pressure.”
“What, you and I in the same bed? Sleeping? Together?” He looked amazed. “Without—you know—anything happening? I think that sounds—very sensible.” He seemed to gain a bit of confidence by having the pressure to seduce me taken off. “We could just lie together.”
“Right.” I started to unbutton my shirt, very slowly, keeping my eyes fixed on his, and after a moment I was gratified to see his gaze dropping downwards. His mouth opened, a little slackly, his expression glazed, then his eyes came back up to mine and he grinned.
“I don’t think I’m scared any more.”
Chapter Seventeen
I lay under the weight of the sleeping Leo’s arm and stared up at the ceiling. His breath puffed regularly on my skin and I hated myself for wanting some postcoital reassurance that Sabine, despite her earth-stopping appearance, had made love like a woman shoving a supermarket trolley through a muddy gatewa
y.
The sex had been good. In bed Leo’s reticence became tenderness, his reserve, restraint. I hated to admit it, but I’d become used to brief sexual encounters to make sure I was still alive. To reassure myself I wasn’t just Florence’s Mum. But the York dating pool available to penniless single mothers of teenagers seemed, as far as I was concerned, to consist of men who wanted no commitment. So having Leo here, one arm looped about my waist and a long leg inserted between my thighs, was something of a coup.
I tried to move without disturbing him, slipping from his partial embrace slowly and stickily, inching from beneath the covers so as not to cause a great blast of chilly air to go slashing into his sated sleep. He gave a tiny sigh and rolled into the piece of bed I’d been occupying, but didn’t wake up. I tried to head for the door but tripped over the saddle which stood on end beside the bed.
“Shit.” The leather was cold and slippery and for a moment it felt as though I’d tripped over a dismembered corpse. The saddle fell with me and sprawled out on the mat on its back with its skirts flapping like a disembowelled torso. “Shit!”
Leo sat suddenly upright, one smooth fluid movement. “What’s happening?”
“I fell down.” The way he’d moved was eerie, lying deeply asleep one minute, but managing to be vertical and awake within seconds.
“Thank God. I was dreaming—I thought it was Jay coming to wake me up and get me to give a hand.”
“Does Jay often have to come get you out of bed?” I asked carefully, disentangling myself.
“Only when the monitors are off.” Leo waved at the TV sets. “And that’s hardly ever. Don’t worry.” He flipped the edge of the covers back. “I’ve given myself tonight off, Jay can cope on her own. Come back to bed.”
I inserted myself under the duvet, curling up against the warmth of him. So, Jay knew where his bedroom was, did she? The thought stayed with me even after he reached out to me again. It was a little off-putting, to say the least. My mind jittered from thought to thought as we rolled together, Leo and Jay, Leo and Sabine, Piers, Piers and Jacinta.
Slightly Foxed Page 10
