Moth to the Flame

by Maxine Barry

  ‘How very . . . pretty,’ she said. And it was. They walked across the road to the gate, which opened with a teeth-tingling squeak.

  He moved in front of her, extracting a set of keys from his pocket and opened the door, his eyes slightly mocking as he ushered her inside. The door opened straight into the living room itself. Genuine low oak beams ran the length the ceiling. The ancient walls bulged, and were painted an off-white. A stone fireplace dominated one wall.

  ‘I do hope you weren’t thinking of polka-dot curtains and floral chair covers,’ Davina muttered drolly over one shoulder, as he marched inside and looked around.

  ‘No. I thought I’d leave the decorating to you.’

  The words echoed in the cool empty interior, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting back to her, making her eyes widen.

  She turned, slowly, and looked at him. Gareth closed the door behind him, the old-fashioned black-painted latch falling and enclosing them in a cool private silence.

  ‘Me? Why should I decorate the place?’

  Gareth continued to look at her. His eyes were as fathomless as the ocean, and as powerful. ‘Don’t you want to?’ he challenged her softly.

  Davina turned away quickly, before he could decipher the look on her face. She turned, looking around the empty room. Being black and white it cried out for loud, bold, splashes of colour. Ruby red velvet curtains, perhaps, or scarlet silk? A leather couch in front of the fireplace. A bold, multi-coloured Arabic rug on the floor. And around the lights . . . stained glass? She knew a woman who made exquisite stained glass lampshades. She moved towards the empty fireplace, imagining a log fire flickering away.

  ‘Are you asking me to move in with you?’ she asked loftily, looking at the soot-darkened stones.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know I’m not the home-making type.’

  ‘A real home doesn’t need to be made,’ Gareth mused. ‘It just is.’

  Davina laughed. ‘You should write greeting card verses,’ she said, deliberately cruel. She turned then, to see what effect she’d had on him. And instantly saw that it was none at all. He was still leaning against that door, still looking wonderful, still watching her with that patient, considering, gentle understanding. Damn him!

  She turned back to the fireplace, tossing her find blonde head, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing.

  Wasn’t this everything she could hope for?

  She had part two of her plan well under way. As soon as he’d finished setting those exam papers, all she had to do was make a photocopy. Pay off Gavin Brock. And then sit back and watch Gareth’s world fall apart. And now, right here, he was offering her another way to break his heart. He was asking her to share this place with him. His dream cottage. His life. What better way to teach him what real pain betrayal could cause? So why was she hesitating? Why wasn’t she reassuring him that of course she would decorate this beautiful place for him. Of course she would come live with him, and be his love . . .

  ‘It can be on any terms that you want,’ Gareth said quietly, watching her shoulders tense, as if he’d just issued a threat, rather than a freedom. ‘If you want to go back to London and only come here for the odd weekend, that’s all right. Or stay away for longer, and come for a few weeks at a time. Or just come in between jaunts to wherever in the world you want to visit,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t mind. So long as you come home to me.’

  He’d read the poems she’d written whilst she’d been in Borneo, living in a beach hut. Poems written in the Australian Outback. Poems written when she’d been in Hollywood, living with Jax Coulson. He understood that inspiration meant everything . . .

  ‘That’s very obliging of you,’ Davina said drolly, trying to put some venom into her voice and failing miserably. ‘Like being a doormat, do you?’

  Gareth sighed deeply. ‘It’s not going to work, Davina, I told you that,’ he said quietly. ‘You only have the power to treat me like a doormat if I choose to give you that power. And I don’t.’

  She turned on him then, her cat-green eyes blazing. ‘Oh, but in the meantime I have your permission to come and go from this place, just how I like?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Living just as I please?’ her chin lifted challengingly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what if I decide to take a new lover as well?’

  Gareth’s eyes flickered. He felt the room around him recede, then rush back. Felt pain. Anger. Fear. And then, suddenly, as clear as a flash from a precious gem, he understood a truth that had his heart melting.

  ‘You don’t do infidelity, Davina,’ he reminded her quietly.

  Davina felt her eyes widen. How . . . She turned back to the fireplace. ‘You know me pretty well, don’t you?’ she said bitterly.

  Gareth moved from the door at last, walking across the empty floor, his footsteps echoing eerily off the walls. She tensed, then relaxed, as his arms slipped around her. His hands folded across her waist, pulling her back, nestling the curve of her spine against the line of his chest and stomach.

  They fitted like a pair of spoons.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said softly. ‘That scares you, doesn’t it?’

  Davina smiled ruefully. It did, somewhat! ‘You’re a strange man, Gareth Lacey,’ she said at last. ‘Tell me about that student who died.’ She blinked, wondering where those words had come from. She hadn’t even been thinking about David. And yet . . . Yes. She had to know. Now, before she could say Yes or No to moving into this cottage with him. She had to have his version of the death of her brother.

  Gareth stiffened, and almost instantly pushed her away. She sensed at once the upheaval inside him, and turned to watch him walk to one of the windows and stare out across the rolling Oxfordshire countryside. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked bleakly.

  ‘Why did he die?’

  ‘He killed himself.’

  Davina clenched her hands into fists, and forced them open again. He sounded so . . . blank. As if the words he was saying meant nothing. ‘Why?’

  ‘I caught him cheating on his Prelims.’

  Davina knew that at the end of their first year, students in some subjects had Preliminary Examinations. She knew why Sin-Jun had been forced to send David down. She wanted more from him than just the facts. What did facts matter?

  ‘How can you be so sure that he cheated?’ she demanded angrily, knowing that David would never cheat in his life.

  Gareth turned to look at her, the grey eyes genuinely puzzled. ‘Why do you want to talk about all this, Davina?’ he asked, his voice dangerously soft, and she felt a warning shaft of alarm flicker through her. Damn, she should have known not to push him too hard. She’d always known she would have to keep a tight rein on her feelings.

  If he began to suspect . . . She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know all about Jax Coulson, who has to be the biggest disaster in my life. I just wanted to know about your worst secret too.’

  Gareth shook his head. ‘What do I know about Jax Coulson? You were together when he was a struggling actor, you split up when he made it big. He gave a rather lurid interview about you that made you sound like a human version of a black widow spider, and you kept quiet.’ He shrugged.

  Davina laughed. ‘Jax was . . . a man with a dream, when I met him,’ she began to explain.

  ‘You loved him?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Not like I love you.’

  Davina would have taken the words back the moment they left her mouth, came out of her subconscious, but it was too late.

  Gareth couldn’t say a word. Couldn’t think of a word that would fit. He just . . . lived the most wonderful moment of his life.

  ‘When he made it big, the fame just . . . went straight to his head. So I ended it.’

  ‘He was angry? That was why he dumped on you so publicly?’

  Davina shook her head, laughing softly. ‘Hell no. It was his publicist who put him up to that interview and gave him the famous quote. I didn’t mind. I am wild
.’

  ‘I love you.’

  She stared into the fireplace. ‘I know.’

  ‘Davina?’ he said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t you think we stand a chance?’

  The quick gasp she gave was easily audible in the fraught quietness of the empty room. So, he’d picked up on that had he? Why was she so surprised? She turned around slowly. Looked at him. And wanted to tell him the truth. We’re doomed, my darling, because you killed my brother.

  It was as if they were living in some hideous scene from Romeo and Juliet! She wanted to laugh, and cry. But she did neither. ‘Perhaps I just don’t trust you enough yet.’

  Gareth nodded. ‘Time will cure that,’ he said confidently. And it would. She would come to learn that being loved didn’t have to mean being controlled. Being caged.

  Time. Davina laughed. Time would only show him that you couldn’t destroy people and get away with it. That’s all that time would show her soul mate, Gareth Lacey.

  She laughed again, a bleak, harsh, bark of laughter, but Gareth wouldn’t have traded it for a gentler kind, from a gentler woman.

  Davina was his. Claws, complications, contradictions and all.

  He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jared rubbed a hand wearily across his forehead as the red curtains got stuck half-way across the stage. Beside him, Alicia grinned. ‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ she muttered, sotto voce. ‘At least we’ve ironed out the problems in the play; missed cues, spotlights that don’t work, and all the rest of it are just technical hitches, aren’t they?’

  Jared leaned one arm along the back of her chair. ‘So that’s the way it is?’ he drawled. ‘My play’s all right, so all the nitty-gritty little problems are your headache!’

  Alicia laughed, but was acutely aware of his every movement. The way his T-shirt clung to his muscles and fluttered at the neck with every breath he took. The scent of his aftershave. The touch of his breath on her cheek. Since that kiss in the punt, she seemed to feel uneasy whenever Jared was around.

  ‘Right, you lot can go,’ Jared called. ‘We’ll go for a full dress rehearsal tomorrow. Props! Did you hear that?’

  From the colourful language that filtered back to him, he assumed Props had heard all right. Alicia grinned as the room emptied. Sin-Jun was throwing a small party in the SCR in honour of her brother, and they were all invited.

  ‘Aren’t you all a-flutter at being invited into the mysterious depths of the Senior Common Room?’ he teased, lifting one finger to trace the curve at the nape of her neck.

  At his touch, a wonderful but very physical tingle shot down her spine and she dragged in a quick gasp of air.

  Jared, who was watching his finger curl a long lock of raven hair around it, smiled whimsically. He might be wrapping her around his little finger in reality, but as things went . . .

  He was the one completely in her thrall. Her shyness, and the way she battled to overcome it charmed him. Her growing confidence, in both her play, and her ability to write, made him want to burst into song. Ever since that day in the punt, he’d been longing to kiss her again, but he wanted it to be special. A woman like Alicia should be wooed. With flowers, and walks in the park, and romantic candlelit dinners and . . .

  ‘So, I expect you’re nervous about next term, hum?’ Alicia, who’d been wracking her brains for something intelligent to say, suddenly felt his hand still on her neck.

  ‘What?’ Jared croaked. ‘Oh, you mean Finals. Yes, I suppose so. But I hope to get a first. Arrogant so-and-so, aren’t I?’

  Alicia laughed. She loved him when he was laughing at himself. Loved him when he was smiling. Just . . . loved him.

  Now, having him all to herself in the quietness of the dark theatre, she wanted to take the opportunity to learn every last thing about him. From his favourite colour, down to the way he liked to clean his teeth.

  ‘What’ll you do, when you leave here?’ she asked, a pang of pain lancing through her as she realised how very close that day was. Just one short term . . .

  Jared shrugged. ‘I’ve already applied to do a B.Sc. in Engineering. I’ll need it, if I’m to get a job with the firm I want.’ He named a very prestigious firm indeed. One that regularly won contracts to build roads and damns and bridges, all over the globe. ‘A BA from Oxford won’t be enough to get me in,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘Not even a first. A BA and a B.Sc. might, though,’ he added.

  ‘And . . . which College are you applying to?’ she asked, trying not to sound too pathetic as she held her breath for the answer.

  ‘I’m staying here, of course. You think I want to go somewhere else when you’re here?’

  Her breath rushed out of her in a very audible sigh. Then she blushed. He must have heard it! Quick! Think of something to say! ‘What do your parents think of it all?’

  Jared stirred restlessly and let her hair fall free from his fingers. Taking her courage in her hands, Alicia turned sideways to face him and propped her chin in her hands.

  Their faces were now only inches apart. This time it was Jared who noticed the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the cotton sweater. The scent of her floral perfume wafting towards him. The sweet curve of her unpainted lips as she smiled . . . ‘Hum? Oh, they’re happy. Dad’s got a good job, so they won’t object to me still not earning,’ he grinned.

  It gave Alicia just a bit of a jolt. Stupid, of course, to just imagine everyone in the world was as comfortably placed as the Normans. Jared saw the surprise and then chagrin cross her face, and bit back the fear that began to gnaw at him.

  When they were working on the play together it was easy to forget the vast differences in their background. Then, like now, he’d suddenly see himself through her eyes.

  ‘You come from Bicester, don’t you?’ she named the small market town in north Oxfordshire.

  He nodded. ‘That’s right. I was brought up in a nice little council house in a nice little estate.’ He knew he was being facetious. Knew he should shut up. It wasn’t her fault that she knew nothing about his world. Why should she?

  Alicia sensed only the sudden pain in him. The sudden conflict. ‘Jared?’ she said softly. ‘What’s wrong with a council house?’

  He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s just . . . I never want to go back there. Oh, I don’t mean literally. I mean . . . I want to go forward. To something different.’

  She leaned closer, a slightly puzzled look creasing her lush dark brows, but a thirst for understanding in her china blue eyes. ‘Tell me,’ she said softly.

  And so he did. Holding nothing back. Sparing himself—and her—nothing. ‘When I was growing up, I went to a tough school. The corridors were always full of roving gangs of bullies, the classrooms were in sixties concrete blocks that were freezing in winter, not enough textbooks. Everything about it depressed me. But even then, at the age of 13, I could see that the school was my only chance.’

  He looked at her, wishing . . .

  ‘Chance for what?’ she prompted, although she already knew the answer.

  ‘A chance to do something with my life other than get a dead-end job, or . . . go to jail. Like my brother,’ he said starkly, watching her closely now.

  Alicia was shocked. She knew she shouldn’t be. She knew, utterly logically, that what your brother did, or was, was no reflection on you. Hadn’t Neville’s presence here already told her that! But she was shocked. She couldn’t help it.

  She’d never even known anybody who’d gone to jail. Or known somebody who’d known somebody who’d gone to jail.

  ‘Yes,’ Jared said frankly, almost uncannily reading her mind. ‘My older brother’s in jail. For burglary. He watched others swanning around in fancy cars, and thought the world owed him a living. Of course, the world didn’t think so.’ Now that he’d begun, he was determined to be ruthlessly honest. With both himself, and with her.
Alicia deserved no less.

  ‘When I got into Oxford, and having gained an Exhibition, mum and dad were thrilled, but they didn’t really understand what I was doing here.’

  ‘I want to meet them,’ she said softly. And she did. They sounded wonderful.

  ‘You will,’ Jared promised huskily. ‘Mind, I’m not trying to make myself into some kind of saint,’ he laughed, a touch embarrassed now. ‘I’m in this for the money,’ he said drolly. ‘I want to get rich. One day, start my own company. Be one of those rich cat company chairmen.’

  ‘A chairman who still goes out to Colombia in his hard hat and designs bridges though,’ she said softly. Her eyes were luminous now. Glowing like Ceylon sapphires in the darkness of the theatre, and Jared caught his breath. She had him pegged. Right down to his last dream . . . He could see the adoration in her eyes. But wanted more. Something much more lasting than that. She was so young still . . . It made him afraid.

  ‘Alicia,’ he said softly. ‘You know, Agatha Christie travelled all over the world with that archaeologist husband of hers. You could come to Colombia with me. Write about a murder on a construction site.’

  She wondered if he was joking. Or if he really meant . . . could possibly mean . . . could actually be asking her to go with him. To stay with him.

  ‘Jared,’ she said softly, but he was already leaning across to her. The hand, which had played so gently with a tendril of her hair, now suddenly cupped the back of her skull, drawing her closer to him. She just had time to draw in a quick breath, close her eyes, and then his lips were on hers. Gentle at first, then moving with a growing hunger. He pulled her closer, dragging her half on to his lap. She felt the hard firmness of his thighs against her own. Her arms came around him, linking behind his neck, her breasts pressed close to him. He moaned, leaning back in the seat, until he and Alicia were sprawled across three of the front-row seats. Jared could feel an armrest press painfully against his back, but ignored it.