The Actuary

by K T Bowes

  Chapter 43

  Emma tapped Christopher on the shoulder at the end of Granville Street, wanting him to release her there instead of on Newcombe Street. He obliged, pulling the bike over and coming to rest against the curb. Emma struggled from the bike and went to war with her helmet, pulling to no avail.

  “Stop, woman!” Christopher batted her hands away and lifted it off easily, leaving Emma panicked and sweating on the footpath. Christopher laid her helmet down on the ground next to his and then began to smooth her frantic hair away from her face. “So, this is goodbye proper then?” A sadness crept into his eyes and Emma felt the hitch in her chest.

  “I guess so.” She gulped and her eyes filled with tears.

  Christopher shook his head. “No more cryin’ for you. You’ve got choices now, so get makin’ them.” He pressed his forehead to Emma’s, curving his neck and spine to reach her. His hands rested either side of her cheeks and he touched his lips to hers, causing the flare of natural passion to spark between them. Too soon, he pulled away, a small smirk touching the corner of his full lips. “Go home to yer husband, beautiful,” he said wistfully and let go, leaving Emma standing on the pavement feeling empty.

  “Christopher!” Emma’s voice sounded panicked and once he turned to look at her, she felt her head empty of all sensible thought. She gulped. “The solicitor couldn’t get onto the estate.” Christopher looked confused and dismissed the statement with a shrug as he pulled his helmet back on and stowed her redundant one in the cavity under the seat. Emma took a step forward. “Anton did. He came heaps of times. How come?”

  Christopher’s eyes narrowed into slits of pleasure as his helmet masked the broad smile. Emma mouthed the words even as he said them and shook her head. “Fat Brian.” She watched as Christopher started up the engine and pulled out into the traffic. She lifted her hand in acknowledgement of his single left handed salute and then he was gone, blending into the line of lunchtime traffic heading north into town. Emma watched as Christopher plunged through the traffic lights just before they turned red and bit her lip as the memory dislodged itself and flashed before her eyes. The tall motorcyclist stood at the cash register in the service station after Emma’s hasty exit from the wedding, his neat backside encased in dark pants and those brown eyes twinkling through the gap in his visor. Nicky waved and Christopher ruffled his hair. Harley Man.

  “It was him!” Nicky argued back in the hire car and Emma had sighed at her child’s insistence. But he was right. Harley Man wasn’t just a figment of her creative son’s imagination. He was real; he was Christopher bloody Dolan.

  “Well, looks like everyone knew except me,” Emma mused. “And I always deemed it likely anyone with something as expensive as a Harley, would leave that estate in a coffin, robbed for the bike and anything else of value.”

  ‘I chatted to Harley Man today,’ Nicky would tell her and mostly Emma humoured him, not wanting to quash his imagination, even when little Mo nodded enthusiastically and validated Nicky’s tale. Now she thought about it, Harley Man often appeared around the same time as one of Anton’s surprise visits and more so in the last year. Emma sighed and shook her head. Christopher Dolan would love the nickname and Emma regretted not getting to share it with him. She put her hand into her pocket, feeling the weight of the envelope full of keys. Then she smiled. Christopher hadn’t given his back.

  With a huge sigh of resignation, Emma trudged up Granville Street with a lightness in her heart. Allaine’s God was certainly having a busy morning interceding in her life. The thought wasn’t unpleasant and Emma readied herself to see Rohan again after their fight, buoyed up by the knowledge that at least now, she owned somewhere else to go. Realism plucked at her dreams, reminding her how her meagre wage at the school would probably be swallowed up in the power bill for the enormous house. The powerful sense of Rohan which stayed constantly with her, tugged at Emma’s heartstrings, fighting with her over her life decisions. Everything about Rohan belonged to her and she squeezed the bridge of her nose as she walked, banishing the love and affection for him which overrode everything else. Allaine’s sheets of incriminating plant descriptions nestled against the envelope of keys, daunting and as poisonous as their subject. Rohan would never accept the truth.

  Christopher was a gorgeous, dangerous distraction from the reality of her sham marriage and Emma wrinkled her nose in displeasure as she opened the front door, her heart already belonging to the strong Russian but her head convincing her otherwise. The waft of Felicity’s overpowering perfume caused a wave of nausea and Emma readied herself for the other woman’s spite.

  “Em?” Rohan appeared in the doorway from the plush living room they hardly ever used. His eyes were bloodshot and his blonde hair stuck up on end. Yesterday’s white shirt listed to one side, untucked from his jeans and he leaned against the doorframe as though afraid he might fall down. Relief flooded his face.

  “Hi,” Emma replied, shooting a polite smile in his general direction. She slipped her boots off and tutted at the piece of fluff from her tattered sock which floated down onto the wooden floor, ignoring the waft of Rohan’s masculine pheromones attacking her hormones with vigour. Emma hung her sweater on its peg and shoved her boots in a cubby hole underneath. Scooping the fluff from the floor, she headed for the dustbin in the kitchen.

  Rohan blocked her, putting his body in her way. “Bin!” Emma held the fluff in his face and he snatched it out of her hand.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Emma tried to turn away in exasperation but found herself pinioned by her shoulders from behind. She resisted the urge to kick out backwards, suspecting Rohan might overbalance. “Em, please?” His voice contained an unfamiliar begging edge as the strong, capable Russian spun her around until her breasts touched his chest. “No more, please,” he whispered. “Not just for me, for both of us.” His fingers caressed her shoulders and Emma felt herself weakening. Rohan gave her a small shake as though trying to wake her up from some delusional stupor. “Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll let you go. You can walk away and I’ll even give you the money you need. You just have to say the words, Em. Say it.”

  “We did this already!” Emma stared up into Rohan’s deep blue eyes, losing herself like she did when she was a small girl and then a teenager. His soul was as firmly knitted to hers as her own and it would be like admitting she didn’t love breathing, or eating or being Nicky’s mother. She faltered and her lips moved, wondering if it would be better for all of them if she tried to detach from this beautiful man. The words stuck in her throat, refusing to perjure her heart in the lie.

  “I know. But you didn’t answer that time.” Rohan watched her lips with frightening intensity and the light dulled in his eyes as Emma tried to speak.

  Emma shook her head finally. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I hate you right now, but I can’t tell you I don’t love you. It wouldn’t be true.”

  Rohan swallowed and wiped Emma’s tears away with his thumbs, clasping her face, his fingers moving against the soft skin behind her ears as he pulled her lips towards his, guiding her in to oblivion, just like the first time they kissed, her twelve and him, fifteen. He inhaled and pulled her into him, arching his tall body around hers and making her neck ache with the effort of meeting his lips.

  Emma yelped in surprise as Rohan lifted her off her feet, not in a romantic sweep as Christopher had done in the garden but upright, Emma’s feet off the floor as Rohan aimed blindly for the living room door, keeping his arms tightly around her body and his lips over hers. He ceased only long enough to lay her on the sofa and strip off his tee shirt. Emma’s eyes narrowed as he turned to throw the garment, the long wound on his back protruding from underneath the white gauze. Staining showed through, reminding her of the back street doctor and his unethical practices. Rohan stroked her cheek as he undid his jeans one handed, bringing Emma’s focus back to the dark blue pools of his eyes, which fixed on hers as though welded there by an unseen hand. “Look
at me,” he whispered as he helped her with her zipper. “Don’t think about anything else. Just us.”

  Their lovemaking wasn’t a testimony of romance. It was the consummation of an agreement, the resurrection of a covenant made long ago by which each was irrevocably bound. The first time was a rush of explosive passion, a feast for the hungry, but the second time was the love Emma remembered and spent the last seven years craving. Rohan Andreyev was a considerate, attentive lover, leaving Emma moaning, breathless and desperate for more.

  When Rohan’s feet slipped on the floorboards for the umpteenth time, his foot trapped in the hem of the jeans he resisted pulling down any further than his knees, Emma placed her hand against his chest and turned her face away from his kisses. “Take them off, Ro,” she whispered, looking up into his tortured eyes.

  “It’s fine.” He tried to place his lips back over hers, the fire beginning to rage again.

  “Ro, I know about your leg. Please, take your jeans off.”

  His lips parted in futile protest as courage and lust fled. He lay sprawled across her, his skin warm and enticing but the moment ruined. Emma reached up and smoothed the crow’s feet next to his eyes, laughter lines no longer used in his present, empty life. “It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference to me. Please don’t shut me out now. We seem to go forwards making progress and then slip backwards so much further. We need to go forward and keep going, or...”

  “No.” Rohan placed his lips over Emma’s to prevent the threat escaping. “Ok.” He kissed her neck and nibbled her ear lobe. “But can we go upstairs to bed? I’m getting too old for shagging on the sofa.”

  Emma chose her own bed and they snuggled down under the covers, her head tucked tightly in Rohan’s armpit and her hand resting on his muscular stomach. They lay for a while as the day waned, not talking but enjoying the sound of each other’s heartbeat and the familiarity of being together. The weight of all the things they needed to talk about seemed to hover overhead like a menace.

  Emma rolled over onto her stomach and pushed herself up on one elbow, using her other hand to play with the dog tags around Rohan’s neck. They clinked in her fingers, a tinny, delicate sound. She pressed her lips against Rohan’s service number, punched into the metal. “About Felicity...”

  “I don’t want you to mention her name ever again!” Rohan wrinkled his face in displeasure. “Especially not in bed with me.”

  “So can I mention her in bed with someone else?” Emma asked facetiously and Rohan’s blue eyes widened.

  “No! You won’t be in bed with someone else. Felicity was never my girlfriend. She turned up here yesterday and I sent her away after she admitted threatening you. Craig told her he’d call the cops if she didn’t leave. But she came again today, just before you got back. I’ll just keep sending her away until she gets the message. I think there’s something a bit unhinged about her.”

  “You noticed!” Emma scorned. “It took you long enough!”

  “Sorry.” Rohan became silent and brooding, smoothing his fingers across a crease in the bedsheet. It occupied all his attention as myriad thoughts coursed through his brain.

  Emma sighed and put her fingers over his, stilling their movement. Rohan swallowed, but didn’t look up. “You seemed to have a lot to say to me downstairs,” she smirked, her lips rising at one corner. Her eyes flickered with mischief as her dark curls tumbled around her face.

  “We didn’t do much talking,” Rohan commented, rewarded by Emma’s triumphant smile.

  “I didn’t mean that kind of talking.” She put her lips over his and heard him inhale as her hand wandered below the sheets, exploring forbidden territory. “You seem to have lost your way, Mr Andreyev. Let me help you.”

  As Emma’s soft lips tousled the downy hair on Rohan’s chest, he groaned and splayed his fingers across her lower back, grinding her body into his. Emma giggled, sixteen again, as she reached up and bit his full lip, drawing another gasp of pleasure from him. “I forgot what a bad girl you are,” he sighed and Emma laughed.

  “So did I.”