Arthur

by Nancy Warren

  “Absolutely. I won’t tell a soul.” Her eyes were dancing, and Meg was suddenly glad she had a female friend here. Even though they’d only recently met, she had a good feeling that she and Maxine were destined to be friends.

  “And, since you’re obviously dying to know, it was fantastic.”

  “Hah. I knew it. I always figured he had to be good in bed. Some guys, you can just tell. I thought last night that there was something happening between you two.”

  “Hey, it’s nothing really,” she said, thinking of how he’d disappeared so fast this morning. “Only a casual holiday thing.”

  “Arthur’s not the casual type,” Maxine informed her. “Since I’ve been here, I haven’t seen him fixing anybody else’s faucet or replacing her light bulbs.”

  “Really?” Her heart bumped and she wasn’t sure whether the knowledge that she wasn’t one in a string of women made her feel better or worse.

  “I’m not saying he’s a saint, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure he has women, but he’s not a player, if you know what I mean.”

  Maxine didn’t stay long. After a little more of the female bonding of a good gossip over a cup of coffee, she left.

  And Meg slapped peanut butter on whole wheat toast, because it was a healthy breakfast, and ate it with a banana for potassium. She did not think about what she would have eaten had Arthur stayed.

  Then she cleaned up her small kitchen, poured another cup of coffee, turned the phone off and the computer on, and sat at her desk, while her coffee grew cold and the cursor blinked at her, teasing.

  She thought about Arthur and what she’d learned of him last night. A man who could kill. A man who had killed. That’s why she’d seen him so clearly as her villain, that first day. It wasn’t merely his rugged, dark good looks and the hint of danger. It was something deeper that she’d glimpsed without understanding what it was. That dark place inside him.

  Many men and women went to war. Many had come home, and how many carried that dark shadow within them?

  A man of many parts, of darkness and of light.

  When she began typing, she followed her villain as he went home, having stabbed his victim through the heart – which was his individual signature. She entered with him into his home in the suburbs where he climbed into bed and made slow, tender love to his wife.

  She shivered when she wrote the next scene, where he arrived at his appointment the next morning with her novel’s protagonist, his psychiatrist. Meg knew what the psychiatrist didn’t. She was his next intended victim.

  She finished her work for the day, feeling excited. For some reason, this book that had been so stubborn to begin, was now flowing. She packed up her computer and walked up to Hart House where Maxine had told her she could use the Internet connection. After checking her email and finding an amusing story from one of her writing pals, some routine messages from various friends and relatives, she felt as though she’d never left home.

  If she lifted her head, she’d see her own office wall, with her calendar, her inspirational framed quotes, her own book covers which her father always had framed for her. She’d look out her window to waving cedar trees and the bird feeder where the chickadees played.

  She’d spent a lot of time in the last few months watching the chickadees, so much so that she could identify a few of them. And there was the crow who liked to give them a bad time, and the cat from next door who would watch from the ground, tail flicking.

  Now, when she raised her head she saw a small Vermeer. Behind her left shoulder was an honest-to-God suit of armor, and on the walls of the office were various family photos; the weddings, picnics, usual fare, except that some of these family snaps included members of the royal family.

  And that’s when she knew she was miles from home and some days it seemed like centuries from home.

  She emailed the first few chapters of her book to her agent, knowing her rejuvenated muse was going to make one man in New York very happy.

  When she’d sent the chapters, she packed up her laptop once more and emerged to find Maxine pacing the grand entrance hall with a cell phone glued to her ear, giving rapid-fire instructions to some poor lackey. She held up a hand to Meg indicating she should wait.

  Wiggins trod in his slow, stately way across the flagstone entry hall, his very blank expression giving away his disapproval of Maxine’s conversation. Did he disapprove of her doing business in the front hall? Ignoring a guest? The very notion of the cell phone? Probably all three.

  Maxine wrapped up her call with an order to “Overnight me the script.” Then she ended the call and turned her attention to Meg. “Had a great idea,” she said.

  Somehow, when Meg looked at that very determined, very business-like face, she had a bad feeling she wasn’t going to love the idea.

  “Writers’ holidays,” Max said, grinning broadly.

  Yep. Her instincts hadn’t led her astray. “What about them?”

  “Don’t be dense. Here. With you to lead them. We’ll fill the place with novice writers and you can teach them all how to be bestsellers. Isn’t it a great idea? And, of course, we’ll make a documentary of the process.”

  “If there was a course that taught people how to be a bestseller, believe me, there’d be a lot more bestsellers.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. You can teach writing. Hey, I could do a section on filmmaking. We could bring in a few more people and a few more pounds. God knows we could use them.”

  “I’m not—“

  “Come on, think about it. We’ll have a meeting sometime before you go home. I think it would be great, but if you hate the idea I’ll—“

  “Give it up?”

  “No.” Maxine sent her a ‘duh’ expression, then grinned with devilry in the curve of her lips. “I’ll find out who your greatest competition among suspense writers is and ask them.”

  Meg immediately envisioned Constantin Fishbourn staying in her cottage, lecturing with appalling pomposity, telling students how to write badly, plot sloppily, and drink heavily. The very notion infuriated her. She narrowed her eyes. “You are a very devious woman.”

  “I know. And I wouldn’t even think of any other writer unless you turned us down.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Meg said loftily.

  “It’s all I ask. And, not to put pressure on you or anything, but I told George I wouldn’t marry him until this place was in the black. You know, every pound counts. So, you coming tonight?”

  Meg could not believe she was being blackmailed like this. She shook her head, half aggravated half amused. “Am I coming where?”

  “I keep forgetting you don’t live here. Isn’t it weird? It feels like you’ve been here for years instead of weeks. Darts. We play every week at the pub.”

  “I’m not very good at darts.”

  “You can be on my team, then. I’m killer.”

  The pub equaled Arthur who had so casually drifted out of her door this morning as though the night of searing intimacy meant nothing to him. Casual? What could be more casual than a game of darts? She’d show Arthur Denby casual, all right.

  “I’d love to come.”

  “Excellent. We meet at seven. Want us to pick up you on the way?”

  “No. I can get there on my own.”

  So she found herself, at precisely seven, outside the pub door. She was wearing her favorite jeans, a gossamer soft cashmere sweater in her preferred shade of green, Italian leather boots and some chunky jade jewelry she’d picked up at a Seattle craft fair. Her hair shone, her makeup was fresh. She was as hot as she had it in her to be.

  With a deep breath, she opened the door.

  Her gaze went straight to the bar. And there was Arthur, pulling the cork out of a bottle of Bordeaux. The corkscrew drilled into the cork with efficient precision and then his arm muscles flexed and he pulled the cork out with the same ease she’d take an egg out of an egg carton. She remembered the way those arms had felt around her last night, the way his ha
nds could arouse her. He’d brought her so much pleasure with hands and mouth and driving cock last night that she was momentarily lightheaded with the pleasure of seeing him again.

  For a long second she couldn’t move, could only stand there inside the door watching him. Then his gaze lifted and stared unerringly directly at her, as though he’d known she was there.

  It was the kind of moment she’d write about, the kind she didn’t believe happened in real life, a moment of absolute intimacy across a crowded room.

  His blue-grey eyes darkened and burned into hers. She felt branded, marked, compelled. She couldn’t look away or move. Then his gaze traveled her body, and she decided the ridiculously priced jeans were worth every penny.

  Casual, she reminded herself, as she walked slowly forward fighting the urge to sprint, to pound across the floor so fast her boots would catch fire. To launch herself over the ancient, scarred wood of the bar and into his arms. To take his mouth with her own, drag him down to the floor behind the bar where neither of them would emerge for several days.

  Instead, she walked slowly. And said, “Hi,” as though she hadn’t come in his mouth last night.

  And he said, “Good to see you,” as though he hadn’t buried himself inside her body and called out her name as he exploded.

  Casual, she reminded herself as her pulse kicked up and she curled her fingers against each other to keep from reaching for him.

  She might have stood there forever, staring at the man like a publican’s groupie, but she heard herself hailed.

  “Hey, Meg.”

  She turned. “Maxine. Hi. Hello, George. Is your ankle better?” They’d come in behind her and she hadn’t even noticed.

  “Yes, thanks. Sorry, we’re a couple of minutes late. We got held up.” She glanced at the pair of them and saw the heightened color in Maxine’s cheeks, the wild hair and a red mark on her lip that looked like a bite mark. George might be limping slightly, but it obviously hadn’t slowed him down in bed.

  He wore a similarly blissful expression. He held onto Maxine, but not only for support for his injured leg.

  Instinctively, she glanced at Arthur to find him meeting her gaze with a broad grin on his face. Yep, he seemed to be saying to her privately, freshly shagged.

  Chapter 8???

  They walked out of the pub and down a village road lined with the low stone walls that were so prevalent in this part of England.

  He held her hand in a loose, warm grip and they didn’t speak. She was still savoring the amazing sex, she suspected he was too.

  She hadn’t slept with many men, but with enough to know that what happened between her and Arthur was special.

  There was something about him that inspired her trust and that left her free to let herself go.

  The night was cool, but after the heat of their passion, not unpleasantly so. There were few lights still burning in the village, and other than a cat skulking under a bush doing whatever it cats did at night, they were alone. Their footsteps shushed along the road. They turned again and she saw a pair of carriage lamps burning in a wonderful two-story stone house. She was surprised when that was the house he led her to. Inside, her astonishment grew. Had she expected some slovenly bachelor flat in a basement? She supposed she had.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” she cried, when he flipped on the lights inside and she saw that the place had been furnished with antiques and paintings on the walls that, even to her inexpert eye, were obviously the real thing. “How old is the house?”

  “Late seventeen hundreds. It was the parsonage. It fell into disrepair so I was able to pick it up quite cheaply after the financial crash. It’s been my hobby ever since, fixing it up and furnishing it to period.”

  His pride was evident and she found that endearing.

  When he led her upstairs, her steps were quick knowing that pleasure awaited her.

  “I’ve got two rooms up here that I haven’t got to yet, and then I’ll be done.”

  She walked into the master bedroom and fell in love. With the window seat that needed a woman’s touch. A pretty cushion, she thought, so you could sit in there and read a novel with a cup of tea. She loved the angles of the ceiling, the slight unevenness of the floor boards. He’d kept the room masculine, but she thought a few more touches of the feminine would make the room perfect.

  A few more things like the vase of roses on the mahogany drum table would give the room more balance. She had a suspicion that the roses were there for her, and that made her heart skitter.

  “The bathroom’s through there,” he said. “I converted one of the bedrooms.”

  “I take it this isn’t authentic to period?” she teased as she took in the marble shower enclosure, the huge tub and the gleaming sinks.

  She walked back into the bedroom, losing herself in imagining, as she’d done since she was a child.

  “Tell me you’re not picturing a grisly murder in my bedroom,” he said, watching her in some amusement.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I was picturing this house with the vicar and his wife and several children reading, or sewing. Taking tea in that lovely room downstairs. You know, I get the feeling that this house has held a great deal of happiness, don’t you?”

  He didn’t look at her as though she were crazy, but as though he finally had found someone who got it. “First time I walked into this house it felt … content. Even though it hadn’t been occupied for years, I could feel it had been a happy home. I bought it soon after.”

  It was too big a house for one guy. She felt that those lovely, empty rooms must be waiting for him to settle down and have some kids so the sounds of laughter and young voices would fill the house once again.

  But, long before that, she suspected the walls were going to echo with the sounds of their passion when she saw him advance on her with that look in his eyes she was beginning to know well.

  His predatory look.

  She’d already had two orgasms tonight, now she was firing up like a woman who hasn’t seen action in months. How did he do that to her?

  Then he put his mouth on hers and she knew exactly how he did it.

  Chapter 8

  When they woke the next morning, the sun was shining. In the daylight, the old parsonage was as perfect as it had been the night before. The gardens needed work. He kept lawns mowed and the hedges trimmed, but she could see that the rose bushes needed pruning and the beds were empty of color.

  She’d put a wrought iron table and chairs right there, she thought, looking at a flat patch of grass that would make a perfect place for a stone patio. Mentally, she added a rose arbor, a small stone fountain or maybe a bird bath in that corner under the mock orange.

  Whoa. What was she doing? Inserting herself into the scene?

  Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. This wasn’t her house, even her country, and this man certainly wasn’t hers. Well, not in the long term.

  With regret, she turned away from the window to find him watching her with an odd expression on his face.

  “What?”

  “You look good in my house. Right.”

  How bizarre that they should both be thinking the same thing at the same time. On such a subject.

  She smiled and tried to lighten the mood. “I was planting a flower garden in my head.”

  “That’s another thing I haven’t had much time for.”

  He came up and touched her shoulder. He was always doing that, dropping little touches as he passed. It was like this second conversation going on between them on a much deeper and unspoken level that had nothing to do with the superficial words.

  It felt like he was saying, you’re special, I care, as though he needed that briefest physical connection between the major ones.

  If she’d thought about it before, she’d have said that some guy touching her all the time would irritate the hell out of her; but it wasn’t true, and she found she was starting to do it too. For such a new relationship, they already had patterns of behavior that
were astonishingly intimate.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Mmm. Please.” He poured a cup and added a drop of skim milk and half a spoon of sugar into the china mug before handing it to her. She stared at him. “You know how I like my coffee?”

  “Bartender’s trick. Memorize your best customers’ drinks. Brings them back.”

  “Am I one of your best customers?”

  “The best.”

  “You make good coffee.”

  “Thanks. I’m also handy with a fry-up. I can make you breakfast or I can let you scamper back to Stag Cottage to get to work. Which is it?”

  She blinked at him, comprehension dawning. “Is that why you rushed out of my place yesterday morning? So I could work?”

  “Of course. You made such a bloody production about not having the time for a bloke that I reckoned my only hope of another shag was to make myself scarce.”

  “Oh.” She felt foolish and was fairly certain her cheeks were pinkening. “I thought you were racing off out of there to keep things casual.”

  He came up to her, up and up until they were pressed hip to hip, and he glared down into her eyes. “Then you are a very silly woman.”

  She’d been called a few things in her life, but silly, in that utterly endearing way, had never been one of them.

  She felt silly. Deliciously so. “Well,” she said, nudging him with her hips until she got a gratifyingly firm response. “I’m not so silly that I’d turn down breakfast.”

  On top of her earlier surprises, she discovered that the man could cook. No bangers and beans and chips this morning, but an omelet with spinach and feta cheese. She squeezed oranges for juice, and they ate at the round table by the window.

  Of course, the sailcloth tablemats would have to go. The round table begged for a linen cloth.

  She could see them sitting here, sharing the paper years from now. But she could also see him in her West Coast modern house. He’d never been there, but she could see him as clearly as though in memory. It was the spookiest damn thing she’d ever experienced.

  After breakfast, she wasn’t ready to leave him. She said, “I need to drive into town to the Internet café. Could I beg a ride?”