Marissa bounced her body away so that it was square-on to the steering wheel, but she couldn’t turn her ears off.
‘We both know there’s something off about him,’ Abigail continued. ‘Something dark.’ She opened the passenger door and threw it wide. ‘But there’s something dark about you too.’
She stared at Marissa, whose lips were now a thin line across her pinched expression. ‘You choose status over everything. Even me. I wonder if he keeps you once he’s lost me. I wonder if you’d let him hit you for a bit of fame, or if it’s just okay for him to hit me.’
She stepped from the car and strode back into what had once been her home before it had become her prison. She thrust a change of clothes and some spare cash into an overnight bag, and within minutes was back on the street. Her mother’s car was already gone, and Abigail felt nothing when she noted its absence.
There was so much to feel right now. Her mother’s betrayal, however, wasn’t important enough to rate a mention.
She walked to Isobelle’s, leaving the front door open behind her.
With every step of the two miles to her best friend’s house, Abigail wished for bruises. A little purple would go a long way towards damning her fiancé. She had no proof, and she had few allies left, but she had to believe that Isobelle would be one of them. That she’d help her and comfort her, and show her what had been posted from Abigail’s Facebook account. With that, Abigail would be informed, and there was power in information.
It was true the best friends had drifted somewhat since Mal had come onto the scene. They’d once been inseparable but now, not so much. Thinking on it, Abigail realised that the impending wedding had brought the pair closer again, and the thought cheered her. Isobelle would believe her. She wasn’t so taken in with Mal’s charm that she would disregard her dearest friend’s account of the man behind the mask. She would be in Abigail’s corner. She was Abigail’s friend, not Mal’s. She hadn’t crossed the stage like all the others.
In two miles, Abigail wouldn’t be alone. In two miles, Abigail would find the support that had been absent in the car with her mother.
Things could only get better from here.
Chapter 14
Batman and Tolkien
On Sunday, Dillon was again waiting outside Boucake, but this time he’d planned a broader adventure for them than a walk through town.
Abigail’s jaw fell slack when he walked her to a motorcycle with a sidecar.
‘Driver or passenger?’ he asked. They were hand-in-hand. She looked extraordinary in the pale-yellow blouse and slim-fitting jeans she’d changed into, and as she looked at the bike he looked at her. With hunger. With gratitude. When she turned to him he was already smiling.
‘You’d let me drive?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
She looked at the bike again. ‘I don’t have a motorcycle licence.’
His disappointment likely matched hers. What a sight it would have been to see her astride it. But there was a solution if he only adjusted the itinerary in his mind.
‘I’ll drive us out of town. You can drive it somewhere quiet.’
They drove north-east, away from the press of buildings and crush of people, to the sprawling grounds of Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, which had once been reimagined as Wayne Manor in a Batman movie. Deer grazed in the woodlands. A slow walk around the lake treated them to birdlife and quiet conversation. They shared a pot of tea in a courtyard café, and Abigail proved herself to be the better table tennis player of the pair. They held hands as they walked through the natural history exhibits in the grand old rooms of the manor, and kissed in the grand doorway before stepping back into the sun. Abigail took her turn in the driver’s seat on the back roads of Gotham, five miles north, then they had tea at a restaurant in Luton to break up the long ride home.
Dillon’s stomach whirred like the spokes of the wheels. She’d given him her address so he could drop her off, and for over a hundred miles, he’d wondered if she’d invite him inside.
When he turned into her street and slowed, he was disappointed to find a parking spot straight away. If she stepped out of the sidecar and kissed him goodbye, it would still have been a great day. But if her hand lingered in his and her mouth sought something that a roadside farewell couldn’t satisfy, then this day might escalate into something glorious.
He turned off the engine and watched her step stiffly onto the road. She stretched, unclasped her helmet and tucked it under her arm. Which was promising. He lifted his helmet free so that he wasn’t looking at her through a visor, and she walked around to the side of the bike where she could stand close. Her smile was exultant. The bike had been a good choice.
He didn’t dare step off it, though—that screamed of presumption.
He’d promised himself on the A1 that he wouldn’t be the first to speak, but now she was standing there, mere steps from her front door, it was almost impossible not to beg for a little more time.
‘I don’t have coffee,’ she said. She fussed with the helmet. Tossed her hair. ‘Or tea, really. I mean, I have tea, but I don’t have sugar or milk. I haven’t been to the shops in a while.’
He smiled.
‘I have wine, though. More than I can possibly drink myself.’
He waited, breathless.
‘Would you like to come up?’ She stared at a point just below his ear as the colour in her windswept cheeks deepened.
‘To help you drink it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Sure.’
They smiled at each other. Inside, he was confetti and party horns, and those whirring toys kids spun beside birthday cakes. Outside, he was an adult.
He stepped stiffly from the bike, secured it, then took her helmet from her and followed her up the narrow path to the front door of her block of flats.
Abigail looked more beautiful now than she had all day, and he hadn’t imagined he could revere her any more than that first moment he’d seen her when she’d finished work and begun her afternoon with him. Her hair had lost its bounce; it had been pressed flat beneath the helmet and he’d long ago kissed the lipstick from her mouth. But here, in the subdued porch light with the creeping dusk at their backs, he thought her the kind of beautiful poets wrote verses about.
That, and he may be about to get her into bed. Sex made everything seem beautiful.
She didn’t look at him as she unlocked the door, nor when they stepped inside and she showed him where he could set the helmets down. She walked ahead of him into the kitchen, crouched, and rustled something in a bowl. As she pulled two glasses down from an overhead cupboard and pulled a bottle from a rack over the fridge, he looked around.
They could be a study in opposites. Where Dillon favoured empty surfaces, Abigail crowded corners with tea lights and trinkets. There were books everywhere. Unable to be contained on the bookshelf alone, they were stacked on the floor, on the small table beside the couch, and beside the TV. There was a large-knit blanket crowding one end of the couch, and an empty mug on the side table beneath a fussy lamp that would’ve looked lost amongst the hard lines and pale shades of his house. Her couch was for curling up in. His was for upright conversations and a rough sleep—a poor choice he should fix.
He spied a cat bed under one corner of the dining table, and in the bed a lump of dust and dirt-coloured fur.
‘You have a cat?’
She’d never mentioned it.
Abigail stepped into the living room and angled her head to look at the cat. ‘Yep. He followed me home from the bus stop a few months back and never left. No microchip, no tags. No food in his belly.’ She passed Dillon a glass of Cab Sauv. ‘I was particularly susceptible to strays at the time.’
‘Name?’
‘Tolkien.’
‘As in Lord of the Rings?’
‘As in “not all those who wander are lost”.’
She sat on the couch and he dropped down close to her. There wasn’t even a cat’s width between th
eir thighs, but even that was too much.
‘Any other living things in your life I should know about?’ he asked, and brought the wine to his lips.
‘Nope. I mean, I’ve got a sister in Australia, but I think I’ve mentioned that.’
She most certainly hadn’t. ‘Older or younger?’
‘Younger.’
‘Name?’
‘Louisa.’
‘Are you close?’
‘Yes.’
The one word answers suggested that the Book of Abigail was closed again.
Dillon wasn’t a naturally curious person. Things were what they were, he wasn’t the type to need every detail. But the things Abigail didn’t say made it hard to not ask questions. Her stories, either sporadically volunteered or patiently leveraged from her, were often incomplete. Surface-level at most.
People didn’t delete all their social media accounts on a whim, nor was it an accident that she wasn’t pictured on her business website or Instagram. She’d almost married someone, but all Dillon knew about that was that it had ended badly—as most cancelled engagements did. She’d uprooted her life—why? It went beyond starting a business in London. And family in other parts of the world? Had Abigail once lived in Australia and left the sister there? Where were the details? The stories?
He wanted to believe that time would loosen her lips, that she was being cautious about her boundaries until she knew him better, but it was more likely that she was always this closed. Or that something had happened which had made her this closed. Either way, he could reflect on that another time. Right now, she was making eyes at him over the rim of her wine glass, and looking very open to the possibility of moving this party into the bedroom.
Dillon drank his wine quick enough to make her smile. Partly because he was impatient, partly because he didn’t know what to say between mouthfuls. It had been a long time since being with a woman had mattered this much. Years, really, since he’d picked his words with care and hoped to endear as well as seduce.
She drank slowly. Measured sips that made him focus on her mouth.
She didn’t appear to have many words for him either.
Abigail set her glass down on the side table. There was still a decent amount left but she appeared to have lost interest in it.
Need had him moving closer. Desire had him reaching for her.
Then there were bells. Jangling, echoing sounds that rang through the moment.
Both of them stilled.
It took him a couple of scattered thoughts to realise that it was her phone. In all the time they’d been together he hadn’t heard it before now. No-one texted her, no-one called her. Until, of course, this moment of moments.
Abigail eased away and stood. ‘Sorry, this must be an emergency.’
This reinforced his feeling that she didn’t get many calls.
Her purse was in the kitchen. She was gone less than a minute, but she carried a troubled expression back with her.
‘Was it an emergency?’
‘Sort of,’ she replied vaguely. She sat and boosted a smile onto her mouth. ‘Where were we?’
Although dissatisfied with her evasion, Dillon took pleasure in reminding her exactly where they were up to. He reached for her and pressed his mouth over hers. The kiss was languorous, then teasing, then slow and deep again. When she caught his bottom lip between her teeth and smiled, he had the insane thought that he would let her keep it if he could. Both lips, even. Because they belonged to her now anyway.
Her body was everything he’d fantasised it would be. Responsive, soft and curved. He pulled it against his own and it—she—came willingly. She was like warm butter, fluid and sweet. And moreish.
So moreish.
And there was something else. Something between the kisses and the sighs and the smiles and the murmurs, which felt … clean. It wasn’t sexy in the traditional sense, and it wasn’t literally true either; both of them smelled like road fumes and dust and sweat. But this whole passionate exchange brought to mind fresh sheets and white pages. The taste of something new and pleasing, and the scent of something discretely but undeniably alluring.
There was a new beginning here. One unsoiled by his mistakes.
And he wanted that white page just as much as he wanted all the colour in her life, and all the colour that she was.
Dillon sweetened the kiss, and it felt like removing a log from a fire set to incinerate them both. He heard her soft protest and felt her body’s impatience, and he smiled against her mouth, but they had time. He didn’t want to rush this.
Overcome with a need to speak to her, Dillon eased away. Her eyes took a moment to open, and when they did they were unfocused, which flattered him.
He needed to tell her something. About how he was feeling, maybe. Or about what he wanted. He thought she might appreciate hearing a compliment.
‘You make me …’ Alive. Ecstatic. ‘Smile.’
Okay. Not too bad. But not too great either.
He tried again. ‘I feel …’ Heady. Reanimated. Revived. ‘You’re so …’ Everything. You’re so everything.
She smiled.
He blinked at her.
A long moment passed.
‘Did I actually say anything just then?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘You started saying a lot of things, but I’m a bit speechless too.’ She kissed him. ‘And you also make me smile.’
He touched a finger to his temple. ‘There’s a lot going on in here.’
She laughed harder.
‘I’m really trying to impress you,’ he said, and the words were long and high-pitched, delivered like a complaint.
She inched her head back to better regard him. ‘You’ve impressed me enough to get me on this couch. You’re doing fine.’
He made a show of considering this then appearing pleased with himself, and was rewarded with another lovely roll of laughter from her smiling mouth. He moved in to kiss her again. Enough clumsy words. He’d just have to show her how all-consuming these feelings he had for her were growing to be.
But his lips only got a fraction closer to hers before the moment ended.
Spectacularly.
Tolkien landed between them.
Before Dillon could process the cat’s arrival, its tail flicked against his eyeball and he was reeling back, his body subconsciously moving and responding to the intrusion. His hand moved instantly to cover his face, and by the time Abigail had seized the cat around the middle and hefted it onto the couch cushion beside her, Dillon’s right eye was blinking like a strobe light, and as watery as that one time he’d watched Saving Private Ryan.
Abigail was making noises of surprise. He could feel her fingers touching the back of his hand, and god damn it the moment was gone, because it wasn’t a touch of desire. She was asking him questions. ‘Do you need to wash it out? Can I get you anything?’
Before he could answer she was laughing.
He glared at her with his good eye and she doubled over, clutching at her middle.
‘I think I will wash it out,’ he grumbled. If only to give himself the time and space to think how to recover this moment.
She took his hand and he followed her up, onto his feet.
‘The bathroom’s in here,’ she said, with only a hint of amusement now. She stepped backwards, leading him towards the only other door in the flat. ‘Through the bedroom.’
Dillon’s spirits lifted. Hello. Maybe all was not lost.
He lowered his hand from his eye and blinked her into focus. She looked nervous, but somehow also self-possessed and confident. They hurried—laughing—across the room, in time to close the door on Tolkien’s perplexed little face.
Chapter 15
Mother dearest
The boardroom table had become a garden bed of sugar flowers and cupcake crumbs. Three bouquets—one gold, one silver, one bronze—and one delphinium centrepiece that played up the blues and greens of the company’s logo, had been dismantled by curious fing
ers and consumed by smiling mouths.
Abigail stood behind her creations, her hands clasped behind her back, and waited.
The Lloyds TSB communications and events team had welcomed her into the room, asked all the questions and made her sweat. Now all eyes were on the CEO. Hibiki Joshuyo, a robust, balding man with a large nose and a down-turned mouth, had bustled in—clearly between meetings—to give the final sign-off, but then failed to leave.
His eyes were as bright as starlight. There was a small streak of green icing in the corner of his mouth that no-one had dared point out to him, and Abigail didn’t need his words to know she’d got the job.
He was enchanted.
‘The gold bouquet should be bigger,’ he said, comparing it to the others. ‘Much bigger.’
‘That wouldn’t be a problem,’ Abigail said easily.
Mr Joshuyo appraised her. ‘They would be fresh?’
‘Baked that morning.’
Behind her back, Abigail’s fingers tightened together, then released. Right now she didn’t know how she would bake and decorate fifty-four bouquets and centrepieces in a single day, but she would figure it out. She was at a tipping point: demand was beginning to exceed her output, which meant she needed more staff.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
Abigail’s breath caught in her throat. It felt like a thousand cachous rolled through her body and pooled around her stomach.
Good. Yes. Two simple words that meant thousands of pounds and unprecedented exposure in a corporate environment. Winners bouquets for staff awards, centrepieces to be delivered after the main course. It would be a brutal workday but it wasn’t until November next year—she had plenty of time to figure out a production line.
‘Ms Mullins, was it?’ Mr Joshuyo asked, rounding the table. He extended a hand and she unhooked her fingers to shake it.
‘Yes.’
‘My staff will love these, they’re exceptional. This is perhaps highly irregular, but I dare say you’re popular with children, also?’
Have Your Cake Page 16