Leo’s murmur of triumph whispered into my ear and he collapsed on top of me. “Oh, Alys.”
I relaxed under his weight. “This is nice.” I meant the closeness, the intimacy rather than the sex.
“Yes.” Leo struggled himself up onto his elbows and looked down into my face. “I really didn’t think I’d ever have anything like this again.”
“Surely you must have had women chasing you?” I waved an arm to indicate the whole of Charlton Stud. “You’ve got all this—and you’re not exactly ugly either.”
He sighed and flopped over sideways leaving my body feeling chilled. “I’ve never really noticed women. Horses were always my life. I probably wouldn’t have noticed Sabine either if she hadn’t had Charlton Stud. Oh I know, you thought this was all mine.” He pulled a wry face. “The fact is that I inherited it when she died. It belonged to Sabine’s father. She took over the stud when her parents died. The huge irony is that we were on the point of divorce when she was killed. I was waiting for her to get back from France so that we could get the papers drawn up to sell this place.” There was a curious little smile on his face. “I nearly lost everything.”
“I thought Sabine was perfect,” I blurted out, thinking of the photograph in the other bedroom.
“Oh, she was. Absolutely. Perfect skin, perfect hair—perfect.” Leo sounded very bitter. “Trouble was, I wasn’t the only man to think that. Every time she went away to sales or showing, I’d wonder. In the end I had to tell myself I didn’t care, that if she came home and said she’d met someone else, it wouldn’t hurt.” He smoothed my hair off my face. “I’m not very good with people you see. Too shy, too single minded. Whereas with you, Alys”—those green eyes looked down into my face again—“I feel that we share something deeper, something beyond communication.”
I lay for a long time in the dark, listening to his breathing become slow and regular, trying to find the sleep which had eluded me all night. Leo had opened up to me! I gave a little shiver of glee, partially occasioned by now knowing that Sabine hadn’t been the epitome of perfection I had imagined. Maybe she had liked the admiration, fed on it, encouraged it—perhaps fidelity hadn’t meant anything to her?
Nice thought.
I slid into unnoticed sleep and woke with birdsong, the sound of hooves on gravel and an absence of Leo in the bed. I’d left my bag downstairs and my clothes were nowhere to be seen, so I searched for something of Leo’s to put on. A quick scout round the room revealed a chest of drawers, under an enormous pile of old horse magazines.
I opened the first drawer, but it contained nothing more than some old show programmes and rosettes. The next drawer seemed to be packed with receipts and invoices, and I began to wonder whether Leo actually had any clothes. Then the third and last drawer. Revelations. Poems. Poems that made my heart pinwheel and pushed my breath into my throat, words dragged from the depths of a burning soul. Such pain. Such dead resignation to fate. Suddenly ashamed, I closed up the drawer and went to the window to gasp in some air, feeling as though I’d somehow forced reluctant admissions from the lips of a dreamer.
Wrapped in the duvet, I watched the morning coming to life outside. Once again the sun was coating the world with its adhesive rays, beating the brightness out of it and flattening the shadows. Out on the driveway, Leo stood holding a pony by its head collar. I looked at him with new eyes, new insights into the depths of him, watching as he glanced up at the approach of another pony being dragged reluctantly along by a woman.
I peered into the baked morning. Was this the elusive Jay? In my head she had become almost as much of a paragon as Sabine, efficient around the horses and a siren elsewhere. The real Jay looked approachable and more like a best mate than a manager, with a curvy figure and dark brown hair scraped back and tied into a tidy, workmanlike bun.
She tugged her animal to a standstill alongside Leo, letting the rope go slack. The two of them bent, side by side, Leo pulling at the pony’s leg, Jay looking down at the hoof. I opened the window and called down a greeting but neither of them seemed to hear, both entranced by equine matters.
There I stood, wearing only the sex-damped duvet, and there was Leo, on his knees. With another woman. Not a beautiful woman, but an ordinary, everyday woman. He’d left his bed with me in it, to go to her and the horses.
I’d rarely felt so bereft. Oh, I’d come close of course, when Alasdair and I had split up, and Florence and I had moved out of the four-bedroomed place in Harrogate and into the little flat in York. But then the only things I’d lost had been material. Now I felt like I’d lost a chance.
Maybe it was the words I’d just read which made me more vulnerable than I would otherwise have been, because I stood glumly contemplating the scene coming to an end as the girl wheeled her pony around and set off back the way she had come.
Everything inside me had sunk. Yesterday I had been so buoyed up with excitement and anticipation culminating in last night’s triumphant sexual regatta, complete with flares igniting and waves crashing on the shore. Now I felt like the last voyage of an old dredger.
The dull central core of pain nagged at me like toothache as I retrieved my hairbrush from the table, my yesterday-night shirt-of-passionate-abandon from the chairback and tried to repack them without letting the memories come too. I didn’t want to pull these clothes out of my bag to remember the way he’d kissed my shoulder when I undid my buttons, the feel of his fingers tangling in my hair as I’d arched above him. No.
Chapter Eighteen
“…and so I told him I had an urgent phone call from home and had to come back.” I sat slumped in Simon’s chair behind the curtain, chain-eating HobNobs.
“Alys.” Jace shook her head slowly. “You are sometimes a very silly girl.”
“What?” I felt as though she had punched me. Surely, unequivocal support was what friends were for? “Why?”
“Because once again you are not talking. You are seeing him with this girl and you are feeling that you are—what?—too old, too used up, too dry to be loved? But you are running away instead of standing up and saying ‘I am feeling very bad and I wish for you to comfort me’?”
“But he never—” I sniffed back the tears. “He never told me I was beautiful or great in bed or anything. He thinks we’ve got some sort of recognition-thing going—and that’s only because I’ve read his poetry.” I flopped back in the chair, my indignation spent. “I feel crap. Used and crap.”
“No.” Jacinta’s voice was very firm. “I am not listening to you any more, Alys. Always you are going round and round with the questions with me, but what can I tell you? Is it that you are wanting me to be saying that yes he is bastardo? This I cannot say, because I do not know him. And neither more do you. So, no more talking of it, unless you are going to be ringing up this man and having a good talk about how you are feeling. All right?”
She broke through the curtain, sweeping out of the cubbyhole like the QE2 setting indignant sail. Even though the HobNobs had lost their flavoursome moreishness in the face of her annoyance, I ate a couple anyway, flicking the crumbs sadly onto the carpet.
Okay, so Leo had appeared upset by my precipitate leaving. Not simply upset, but bewildered, baffled. I’d had to concoct a story about Florence arriving back from London to find the flat flooded and the fire brigade on the doorstep before he’d agreed to drive me to the station. He’d even offered to come back with me. I remembered the feel of his farewell hug, how I’d briefly relaxed into the sensation of being wanted, before the mental picture of him and Jay talking came floating back and I stiffened away. I wanted to talk to him—oh, how I wanted to. But I needed the reassurance of home.
“Alys!” Jace called to me from the shop floor. “You are broody like an old hen. Come here and be helping me, I am wanting to finish with these books because Piers he is coming to take me to lunch.”
I dragged myself from my weary tangle of thoughts and went through, trailing biscuit crumbs. “You’re going out wi
th Piers again?” Even my voice sounded heavy. “Where’s he taking you?”
Jace gave me an odd look from under lashes so heavily mascaraed that any single one would constitute an offensive weapon. “I am not knowing. Why, do you wish to come also?”
“I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.” Although with the way Jace was dressed today, even anthrax would have had a job cramping her style. She looked like a gothic lampshade.
“I am sure Piers will not mind.” Jace lifted a pile of books.
Companionably, our slight tiff forgotten, Jace and I carried the priced-up books through, then I left her to get on with shelving so that I could man the till. Shelving was a job Jace was ideally suited for. She could easily reach shelves which had me teetering on a stool. Perhaps I should wear stilettos. I looked down at my shoes. I’d worn sexy boots at Leo’s, why not at work?
“Do you think I should wear sexier shoes?” I called through.
“I am not hearing you. What did you say?”
“Do you THINK,” I bellowed, “that I should wear SEXIER SHOES?”
“Oh yeah, talk dirty to me again.”
I jumped, hadn’t heard him come in. “Piers!”
“Were you thinking, say, heels? Kinda like—real high?”
I couldn’t tell if he was winding me up or not. “Um. Jace!” I called. “Piers is here.”
“Or suede? I get real hot for suede.”
“JACE!”
Piers looked at me sideways. “Hey, what’s up with you today? You seem kinda edgy.”
“Alys is not liking men right now.” Jacinta loomed into vision like a war barge. “I say we are taking her away to eat and she will forget all the bad doings.”
Piers frowned. “Bastard stand you up again? Just say the word and I’ll punch him out.”
I laughed. Piers was an unlikely champion. “My knight in shining cotton.” I brushed a casual hand over his arm. “Thanks, Piers. But it wasn’t really Leo this time, it was me. I just felt, well, Leo can compartmentalise his life so easily. There’s the horses”—and Jay, my mind whispered—“and there’s me.” I made little “boxes” with my hands. “I can’t do that. I want a man who can overlap. Who can make me feel like I’m the centre of his world.”
Jacinta snorted. “You tell me when you find that man, Alys. I feel you may have long, long wait.”
Piers held his hands up. “Hey, you two want to be alone with your bitterness and anger, or we going to lunch?”
We decided to go back to my flat and have lunch there. I tried to step back, to suggest that Jace and Piers go off somewhere alone together, but they were adamant. We arrived at my front door in the Porsche. It was not a stylish arrival.
“I think I’ll walk back.” I levered myself from the miniscule shelf which passed for a backseat and where I had spent the journey sitting bolt upright between them like a cross between a chaperone and a cocker spaniel. “This is not a three-seater.”
Jacinta untied her headscarf and forced her hair forward with both hands. “Is a little fast driving for no roof, Piers. You too are looking like you have been very well blown.”
“Uh, yeah.”
The flat smelled terrible. It had smelled bad last night when I’d arrived. This was worse.
“Foargh,” Jace exclaimed. “Alys, it is smelling like you are keeping dead persons. It was not smelling like this when I was coming to feed Grainger.” Then her face creased into a frown. “Although I think that Snakebite made my nose not work.”
I ran round apologising and opening windows. Then we ate and Jace updated Piers on the latest chapter in the disaster that was my love life.
“So, Alys, why are you thinking he is like this?” Jace asked as I returned to the table after another brief and fruitless hunt for Grainger.
“Hmm—he’s not been very well lately, so it’s only to be expected that he might not be able to control himself as well as he used to.” It was only when I saw their confusion that I realised she had been asking about Leo. “Oh. I don’t know. I’m just so confused. Men, huh! Sorry, Piers, present company excepted, of course.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“I have been thinking that this is a man who is not having thoughts of you. Is easy with horses, you give them food, you clean up shit and there they are, all happy. I think this man is not good with women. Are you still caring?”
Ah, the inevitable question. Did I care? I collected the soup bowls and ran water into the sink while I thought. Yes, I cared. I cared that I felt stupid—that he’d been more interested in sex than in me. I cared about the way I felt. But him? Did I care about him? Enough to swallow my pride and talk to him? I could still feel the burning chill from the power of his words, lying there useless and impotent in a drawer when they should have been etched into a million souls. I thought of his green eyes, his cool, muscular body—
“Hey, Alys.” Piers came and stood behind me as I pensively rinsed dishes. “I’ve been thinking, Florence isn’t due back until Wednesday, right? So why don’t you come out with me tonight? There’s a couple parties on, you know the kinda thing.” Jacinta snorted and said something shortly in Spanish. To my surprise Piers replied, also in Spanish then switched languages. “How about it? Cheer you up, guaranteed! Come shake yer funky thang.”
The potential of Jace shaking her funky thing made me smile. “I haven’t heard you speak Spanish for years.” It was all I could think of to say.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Been keeping it up, putting in some practice talking to Jacinta here.” Jacinta gave a small smile. “Y’see Pop’s from the Argentine. Met Ma when she went down buying polo ponies. He’s still there, given up the ponies now, spends his time building boats, so when I call him I speak Spanish. I was bilingual til I was about twelve but—hey, use it or lose it, yeah Alys?”
I wasn’t sure about the way he was grinning at me. I was even less sure about the hand on my shoulder. I could feel his rings cool against my skin where my much-washed T-shirt sagged.
“Come out tonight. Show this Leo guy you’re not sitting in pining.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I ought to be here in case he rings again.” Leo had rung a few times, but somehow fate had conspired with bad luck to make me miss each call. I’d been going to ring him back this evening, but really, was it worth it? Was I worth it? If he started to wonder about my motives, they might not stand up to much investigation. Particularly if he quizzed Isabelle and found out I was not the old schoolfriend I’d pretended to be. Whatever I wanted Leo to think I was, a gold digger definitely wasn’t it. “All right I will. Thanks, Piers.” Piers and Jace exchanged a look and I could have sworn she winked. “Shall I meet you at your place, Jace?”
She shook her head. “Tonight I have things to do. I am sorry, Piers.” Piers gave a mock-formal bow in her direction. “But I am staying in.”
“Oh, Jace, isn’t coming out with us better than sitting indoors? That’s so boring.” Besides, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go out on my own with Piers. I had the feeling his idea of partying was a long way from mine. Which, owing to my somewhat limited social circle, had tended until recently to involve small girls in party dresses and hysterical levels of excitement.
Anyway, I had nothing to wear.
Jace gave a huge sigh, her bosom rose and fell like a speeded-up film of the creation of mountain ranges. “No. I am sorry, but I think that now is the time.”
“Time for what?” Did I imagine it or was there a glance exchanged between the two of them? Was I missing something essential here? “Jace? Piers?”
A snapping line of Spanish and they both shrugged.
“What, you reckon we can’t enjoy, just the two of us?” Piers leaned towards me. “You want that I show you a good time, Alys?”
“I’m not sure that I want you to show me anything, Piers,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “You’re not actually afraid to go out, Jace, are you?”
“Me? Afraid?” Jace drew herself up and looked
down at the top of Piers’s head. “I think it would be me protecting you, but no, this is not the case. I am deciding to stay inside and prepare for next weekend.”
“Having Antonio Banderas over are you? Jace—”
Piers shook his head. “Nah. ’Sokay. Don’t sweat it. We’ll enjoy on your behalf. Right, Alys?”
What else could I do? The pair of them had clearly ganged up on me, so I nodded grudgingly. “Okay. I’ll go out. I’ll enjoy myself. But I won’t enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”
“Whatever.” Piers still had his hand on my shoulder. “Come on, I’ll drop you back at work.”
So he drove us, more slowly, back to Webbe’s, where I continued to hover over the phone in a sweat of indecision for the rest of the afternoon.
Chapter Nineteen
I told myself it was only Piers, and that he was simply being kind. None of this helped. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to be totally casual and throw on a pair of jeans (although not the ones which made my bottom an odd shape, I wasn’t prepared to be quite that casual) or to go the whole set and wear a dress and heels. Would that make me look as though I was expecting everything to be classy and catered?
Most of my wardrobe and several drawers lay on the bed. I’d laddered the only black tights I possessed, and I hadn’t found Grainger to put him on his litter tray for the evening. It was six thirty, Piers was picking me up at seven and I was wearing a dressing gown. My fingers itched with the urge to phone Jace, just for advice and reassurance. So she could tell me I wasn’t being a total tart for going out partying with my stepson rather than sitting at home worrying about my potential relationship. After all, so what if Leo did have more going on in his life than pining after me? So bloody what? He had a business to run. What was I expecting? Breakfast in bed and cuddles? Yes, actually. But—oh, sod it. I’d give myself the night off. A night without thinking about the jealousy I’d felt of the obvious communication Leo and Jay shared, of the feelings I knew he kept contained.
Slightly Foxed Page 11
