by Alix Kelso
And brushing the flour off her face? That had been a cheesy move. What was wrong with him?
Yet there’d been something in her eyes when he’d done it. Surprise? Annoyance? He wished he knew. Was it possible she might actually be interested in him? It didn’t sound like things were exactly rosy between her and this boyfriend. But the last thing he wanted was to start chasing after someone who wasn’t interested. He’d been through enough this year already without adding insult to injury. And his Uncle Keith was enough of a cautionary tale in that department to give him fair warning.
Still, something about her intrigued him and drew him in.
When he pulled up outside her tenement block, she was already preparing to jump out before he’d brought the car to a stop.
“Let me help you upstairs with these food boxes,” he said.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t carry all those cartons and this picnic blanket too.”
“I’m not taking your new picnic blanket.”
“That’s right, you’re not taking it. I’m giving it to you.”
Before she could protest any further, he came around and opened her door, helped her out with the boxes and the blanket, and carried the load while she found her keys and made her way upstairs. When Laura stepped in through the wooden storm doors and opened the inside door to her flat, he waited on the landing, and when she turned around he held out the things he’d carried.
Laura looked at his outstretched arms, laden with boxes, and the picnic blanket dangling off his wrist from its tie cord.
“Come in and I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, smiling. “The least I can do is offer you coffee after such a lovely afternoon.”
“I’d like that,” he said, and followed her inside.
He took in the little hallway and saw a living room at the front, kitchen at the back, and a small bathroom. The other two doors off the hallway were closed, and he guessed those were bedrooms. In the kitchen, she began filling the kettle and gestured for him to dump the load he’d carried on the table. It was a bright airy kitchen, the tall windows letting in lots of light from outside. Houseplants crowded the deep windowsill, and a little vase of daisies sat on the waxed pine kitchen table. Pots and pans sat neatly on open shelving in the pantry, with stacks of colourful mismatched plates and cups beside them.
“This is a really nice flat,” he said. “Lots of space.”
“I don’t live here alone,” she said, pulling cups from the shelf. “I have a flatmate, Yvonne. She’s staying at her boyfriend’s for a couple of days.”
Shifting her bag on the kitchen table to get at the food cartons, she spied the certificates they’d been given following the pancake-making lesson.
“Oh, I want to pin up my certificate!”
He saw her expression light up as she darted from the kitchen with her certificate in hand. Amused at her enthusiasm, he followed as she disappeared into one of the bedrooms off the hallway. Peeking around the door while she rummaged in a desk by the window, he looked in surprise at her small bedroom. There was barely space for a double bed, and the drawers, wardrobe, and tiny desk were crammed together side by side.
“I guess you drew the short straw when it came to assigning the bedrooms,” he said.
She glanced up and looked around the room. “I don’t mind, I like it in here. It’s nice and cosy.” She returned her attention to the desk and finally located a small box of pushpins. “And I had to take this room, anyway. I couldn’t get good rent for a bedroom this small, so my flatmate always gets the big bedroom.”
“The trials of sub-letting.”
“Actually, I’m not sub-letting. I own the flat. I bought it with what was left over once I’d sold my parents’ house and cleared their mortgage and bills. I’m lucky to have the place and lucky I didn’t end up sofa-surfing after my parents died, but I can’t run it without a flatmate paying rent. Waitressing tips in Valentino’s are good, but not that good.”
She turned to the wall and pinned up the pancake certificate. “There!” she said, grinning. “Now I’m all proud.”
Bruce stared at the wall and stepped a little closer into the doorway. He realised that most of the wall between the bed and the wardrobe, up to around head height, was covered with certificates of one kind or another.
“Look at all these!” he said, taking another step forward. “Do you mind if I ...?” He gestured to the wall.
“Sure, if you really want to,” she said.
He stepped closer and looked at the array of certificates. There seemed to be one for every imaginable activity. Cocktail mixing. Beginner’s Spanish. Kayaking. An archaeological dig. A section completed on the Southern Upland Way. Argentine tango. And more, far more than he could take in.
“Wow,” was all he could say, gazing around the wall.
“Yeah, it’s a sickness.”
“How can you say that? Look at all the things you’ve done.”
She shrugged. “Not to any degree of proficiency. I just like dabbling. That one there” – she pointed to a certificate acknowledging participation in a watercolour painting class – “was the first one I got.” She narrowed her eyes at the date printed on the certificate. “Eight years ago, God. Anyway, it was just a fun thing to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and at the end the instructor gave us these certificates. It was a way to get us to sign up for more classes, of course, but I liked having it. Stupid, but there you go. A couple of months later, I walked a part of the Southern Upland Way, and it turned out you could send away and get a certificate for the section you’d completed. So I did. And I liked getting that certificate. It was a tough walk with tough climbs. And since then, I’ve been collecting these things.” She gestured to the wall. “Little triumphs. It helps to remind yourself of them when you’ve had a tough day.”
“And what’s this?” he said, pointing to a printed chart pinned to one side.
“Ah, well, that’s my training regime. I’m doing a ten-kilometre run next month, and this is my progress record. It’s been pretty hard going.” She pointed to the numbers on the chart – times logged, distances covered. “When it comes to the actual race, I’ll probably finish last, if I don’t simply drop dead in the middle of it.”
“With this much preparation, you’ll be brilliant.”
“Hmm, well, we’ll see. They give you a great finisher’s certificate, all gilt embossed. I already looked at it online. It’ll be the nicest certificate I’ll have. If I actually get it.”
“You’ll get it.”
“Thanks for the confidence boost, but you haven’t seen me wheezing my way around Mungo Park.” She tilted her head to the bedroom door. “Kettle’s boiled.”
He followed her back to the kitchen, his head spinning at all those certificates on her wall. Little triumphs, she’d called them. He liked that.
He leaned against the counter while she made coffee. When she reached to open a cupboard behind him, he moved to let her pull out the coffee jar, only for her to have to ask him to move once again so she could find a new bag of sugar in another cupboard.
“Sorry,” he said, shifting.
“It’s fine,” she said, laughing.
She was close to him as he moved aside for a second time. Close to him as she leaned around to look for the sugar. Her hair brushed against his shoulder as she reached, and he could smell the faint scent of her shampoo, a lingering hint of green apples.
“Sorry. I’m in the wrong cupboard. The sugar must be in this other one.”
“Sorry, right.”
Moving at the same time, they bumped together and laughed.
Then stopped laughing.
As he looked at her, the kitchen, the flat, everything just seemed to melt away. All he could see was her. The moment spun on and on. He wondered what it would be like to put his hands around her waist and pull her close. He wondered if she would fit against his body the way he thought she might, and if kissing her would make his heart beat even faste
r than it already was.
He’d just decided that he absolutely had to find the answers to these questions, when the front doorbell rang.
He jumped back, away from Laura and away from that moment he’d almost seized with both hands.
Laura, her eyes wide, blew out a breath. “I better answer that.”
As she ran from the kitchen and unlocked the door, he shook his head and tried to pull himself together.
What was that? It had felt like he’d been momentarily transported to a different planet. Get a grip, he told himself. Seriously.
Once Laura opened the front door, he saw a young woman stomp into the flat with a guy coming in behind her.
“Thank God you were home!” the young woman said, shrugging out of a jacket that looked soaked through. Bruce noticed her hair hung damp too. “What a disaster! Officially, this was the worst romantic day trip ever.”
“How can you say that?” said the guy. “We were having a lovely time!”
“We were, until you shoved me into the bloody river!”
Bruce stepped into the hallway, and the new arrivals looked his way.
“Yvonne, Olly, this is Bruce,” Laura said, closing the door. “Bruce works in The Crooked Thistle, Yvonne. Bruce, this is my flatmate, Yvonne, and her boyfriend, Olly.” She turned back to Yvonne. “What happened?”
“Casanova here thought it would be nice to go out on a canoe on the river,” Yvonne said. “Then, for reasons that cannot be explained, he shoved me in.”
“I didn’t shove you in!” Olly said, clearly struggling to suppress laughter. “You stood up in the canoe, Yvonne, and destabilised us. I was trying to pull you down on to the seat, and you thrashed out at me and fell in.”
“Funny how you didn’t fall in.”
“I was sitting down, which is what you should’ve been doing.”
“Anyway,” Yvonne continued, “to cut a long story short, I fell in the river. I had to swim to the riverbank to get out. We’re in the middle of nowhere and need to return the canoe, so I had to climb back in and sit there, soaking wet, all the way back to the boat hire place. I’m covered in muck and weeds, and this guy’s laughing his head off.”
Olly said nothing, which Bruce thought was probably a good move.
“Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t in the mood for romance after that, so I asked him to bring me home. It was only when we got here I realised my keys must’ve fallen out when I took a dunk in the river. If you hadn’t been here to let me in, I might’ve flipped out.”
Yvonne stopped to draw breath. “So, I need a hot shower and fresh clothes.” She turned to Olly and poked a finger in his chest. “I’m not speaking to you, so you can go home.”
“Come on, Yvonne, don’t be like that.”
“You laughed at me, Olly. You were in hysterics, while I was splashing around in that filthy river water.” She rubbed at her leg and scowled. “I think a fish might’ve bitten me.”
Bruce saw Olly’s face creasing dangerously with the effort of suppressing laughter, and he also saw the look that crossed Yvonne’s face when she noticed it. He decided it was time to leave.
“Laura, I’m going to head home,” he said.
“No, wait!” She spun around. “We were going to have coffee.”
“Next time,” he said, and turned for the door. “See you soon, and thanks for a nice afternoon. Yvonne, Olly, nice to meet you guys.”
He headed out the door, half-jogged down the stairs, and felt relief when he hit the pavement outside.
He’d almost gone and done something stupid, something insanely stupid, and he ought to thank his lucky stars that Laura’s flatmate and her boyfriend had come blasting in when they did.
He’d had an amazing afternoon, no doubt about that. He liked being with Laura. And God knows, he’d wanted to kiss her, just grab her and kiss her. The look she’d given him in the kitchen when they’d got in each other’s way made him sure she’d wanted to kiss him too. There was no misreading it.
But as he stalked towards Shaw Street and The Crooked Thistle, he made a decision. His heart was still broken after the end of his marriage. His business career was currently non-existent. He was voluntarily living in his uncle’s spare room and working for free. All of those things had to be put right before he could even contemplate letting his feelings run wild for a woman.
Having a business, running his own pub, being successful – those things were important and without them he was drifting. He had to feel like himself again and get his hands back into the hard graft of a project. That was what he’d come back to this city for, and he had to focus on actually doing that and only that.
He couldn’t think about Laura. He’d only just got divorced.
He had to get back on track. Find a new place, buy it, and turn it into a great pub and a great business. He had to get back into the game.
Only then would he think about grabbing women and kissing them.
Inside The Crooked Thistle, a football match played on the big screen, assorted punters were enjoying their drinks and pub grub, and Keith was behind the bar pulling pints.
“Hey son, we’re not too busy yet, but if you’ve got a minute maybe you could go down into the cellar and—”
“Sorry, Uncle Keith, I can’t help out tonight,” Bruce said and headed for the back stairs. “I’ve got some work to do.”
Ignoring his uncle’s surprised stare, he went to his bedroom, stared at the ugly painting above his bed – his ex-wife’s ugly painting, he thought with a groan – before shaking his head and sitting down with his laptop. Pulling up some of the files he’d begun on commercial properties for sale, he noticed with disgust that it had been weeks since he’d actually done any serious work on them. No wonder he’d ended up scouting that dead-end prospect this morning. He had been putting things off and licking his wounds for far too long.
But now that would change. It had to.
And so he would focus on getting his life back on track, and that meant he just wouldn’t think about Laura at all. He wouldn’t think about how her hair had smelled of sweet green apples. And he definitely wouldn’t think about that kiss they’d almost had.
What could be so hard about that?
Chapter 8
Laura puffed her way up the hill in Mungo Park. Her calves were screaming at her to stop and it was all she could do not to listen to them. Or to the stitch that had knotted its way into her side.
Every run she’d had this week had felt like this: sore, exhausting, and unpleasant. Last week, she’d thought she’d been on a good roll, feeling stronger, logging better numbers into her spreadsheet. But this week, nothing seemed to be going to plan.
Monday had hurt in her abdomen, but she’d chalked it up to indulging in too many rich treats at the food festival she’d gone to with Bruce. Tuesday had hurt in her thighs, and she’d thought that the poor run the day before was simply having a knock-on effect. But now it was Friday, and not only did every muscle in her body still ache with each step she ran, but she felt utterly exhausted too.
At the top of the hill, she clutched her sides and gasped for air. She didn’t think running was supposed to make you feel this wretched.
A woman wearing tight leggings and a designer athletics top ran up the hill and jogged serenely past. She barely had a hair out of place, Laura noticed, barely a single bead of sweat on her forehead. This woman would have no trouble running a competitive race. She probably wouldn’t even have to shower afterwards, just touch up her still-perfect lipstick and carry on with the rest of her weekend.
Scowling, Laura wiped her sweaty forehead, shoved her hair back into the ponytail from which it kept escaping, and rubbed at the stitch in her side. She wished she hadn’t worn these stupid thick jogging trousers that made her too hot, and wished she’d made time to buy some proper running tops instead of settling for these over-sized T-shirts that made her feel the size of a bus.
But there was no point getting upset. The well-groomed, fat
-free woman already rounding towards the park exit had probably been running for years, whereas she’d only taken it up a couple of months ago. She ought to have been prepared for training setbacks. It had been too optimistic to assume that everything would be smooth-sailing.
Laura half-jogged, half-limped her way back to the flat. Writing the morning’s running time on her chart on the wall, she felt nothing but dismay to see it was fully four minutes longer than her time a week earlier.
In the kitchen, she found Yvonne at the table hunched over a bowl of Weetabix.
“God, you look awful,” Yvonne said when Laura wheezed into the kitchen.
“Thanks.”
“Maybe this running lark isn’t such a great idea.”
“Maybe it’s not.” Laura filled a glass with water and chugged it down.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Yvonne said. “What I should say is that you’re doing a great thing and you should keep at it, because you’re brilliant and you’ll definitely succeed.”
“Yeah, that’s what you should’ve said.” Laura set the glass in the sink and pulled a cereal bowl from the pantry shelf.
“And probably I should apologise again for last Sunday.”
“You don’t need to keep apologising, there’s nothing to apologise for,” she said, filling her bowl with bran flakes and adding milk.
“If I’d known you were planning on bringing home a guy who looked as good as he did and snagging him in a lip-lock, I never would’ve come back.”
“Yeah, well, I must’ve misread things, because not only did he not kiss me, but I haven’t seen him since.” She stabbed unhappily at the bran flakes with her spoon.
“So, you go and speak to him. You go and kiss him!”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“Why on earth not?”
Laura’s phone pinged. She picked it up from the counter and saw a message from John. Ever since he’d dumped her in favour of Indiana Jones, he’d been texting constantly to apologise, and midweek she’d relented and accepted his request to make it up to her by taking her out to dinner. Now she realised she was scarcely in the mood for it, but they’d already arranged it for that evening. Cancelling would look like she was playing tit-for-tat – you cancel on me, and I’ll cancel on you.