And she broke apart. His mouth was still on her as she shattered around him, scarcely recognising the sounds coming from herself, only knowing that nothing would ever be the same again.
* * *
What the hell was he doing?
It took Tak a superhuman effort to stand up, away from Effie, but if he didn’t then he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stop himself from claiming her as his—right there and then, protection be damned.
She was like no woman he’d ever been with before. Her taste was still in his mouth, her exquisite scent too, and all he could think was that he wanted more. He was greedy for her, aching for her. He wanted her completely.
But he couldn’t let that happen. Sex was one thing. Emotions were something quite different. Yet, as impossible as it seemed, where Effie was concerned the two seemed wholly intertwined.
Incredibly, his legs were actually shaking as he made himself move away.
‘Where are you going?’
Her low whisper halted him instantly. Evidence of her climax lingered in her tone, rushing straight to his sex as surely as if she’d taken hold of him.
‘This was a...’ he paused, unable to bring himself to say the word mistake ‘...an error of judgement.’
‘Oh.’
A bright red stain covered her cheeks and neck, but he pretended not to notice as he located her clothes and passed them to her. He wanted to take it back. To tell Effie that she was the most incredible creature. He would never know how he held his tongue. He only knew that if he gave her any indication of how close he was to losing control—if she tested him in any way—he would fail. He wouldn’t be able to resist her.
Such was her power over him. And the worst thing about it was that there was a part of him which silently urged Effie to do just that. Because failing to resist her would, at the end of the day, be a win.
Where was his damned T-shirt?
‘We won’t speak of this again,’ he ground out, trying not to notice how she still sat on the couch, gloriously naked and making no attempt to conceal the soft curves which seemed to call every last inch of his body.
And then she shifted—stiffly, awkwardly, yanking her T-shirt on and concealing herself from him. Tak feared his resolve might crumble there and then. His only saving grace was that she clearly had no idea of the inexplicable hold she had over him.
To hell with his T-shirt. He needed to get out of there.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WALKING INTO THE hospital to check on old Mrs Kemp—a woman she’d brought in on her last shift, who had no family—Effie was congratulating herself on having successfully avoided Tak for four days.
Yesterday’s day off had been spent walking Nell to school, then spending the morning window shopping for things she couldn’t afford. Anything to stay out of Tak’s house. As huge as it was, it had felt small to her, knowing he was off too, that they could have spent the day together.
Today she’d come in to the hospital to see old Mrs Kemp and Tak was the last person she’d expected to see as she hurried on to the ward.
And he saw her instantly.
If only he’d been facing the other direction.
Unable to look away, or move, she simply stood there as he headed over, her throat dry. And Tak just walked closer and closer, until they were almost toe to toe. Not close enough to touch, but certainly enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead. It was oddly intimate.
‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
She could deny it. But he would know. And she didn’t want to look even more pitiable than she already did. The shameful truth was that Tak’s opinion of her had begun to matter. Which only made it all the more ludicrous that she should have opened herself up the other night, thereby confirming just how much of a charity case she really was.
‘What were you doing, talking to Mrs Kemp?’
‘And now you’re changing the subject.’
His voice poured through her, altogether too liquid. ‘I was merely asking a question,’ she replied dryly, impressing even herself.
She might have known it wouldn’t fool Tak.
‘You were asking an obvious question,’ he corrected. ‘But, to answer, I’m here doing the same thing I imagine you are intending to do. Providing a bit of companionship to a lonely, frightened old woman.’
Something shouldered its way into her chest and lodged there. As hard as she tried, Effie couldn’t ignore it. Was it sentiment at his show of compassion?
‘And you came down here just for that?’
‘You did,’ he pointed out. ‘She’s asleep, by the way. Best not to disturb her.’
‘You didn’t really come to see her.’ Effie was sceptical. ‘How do you even know her?’
‘You’re the one who brought her in. How do you think?’
‘They called you for a consult,’ Effie acknowledged grudgingly. ‘She told me she hadn’t hit her head when she’d fallen but I suspected otherwise. She’s okay?’
‘Fine. But I’m also checking over a couple of other patients.’ He quirked an all too astute eyebrow. ‘Is that a more plausible reason for you? Or perhaps you were hoping that I was using Mrs Kemp as some sort of excuse to see if I could bump into you?’
Her cheeks were burning. She could feel the heat. Because the humiliating truth was that a small part of her possibly did wish there was an element of the latter to his visit. How pathetic did that make her?
Not for the first time, she wished she was the kind of person to whom witty retorts came easily. Instead she found her fuzzy brain scrambling for anything to say whilst it seemed more interested in the electrifying sensations that darted all over her body when Tak was near. Just as they had the other night.
She remembered barely getting to her room and slamming the door behind her before her legs had given out and she’d collapsed to the floor. She’d had no idea what had just happened. Or, more to the point, she’d known what had happened, she just hadn’t understood how she’d let it happen. And with Tak Basu.
Forget the sex, she’d instructed herself as the familiar flush had soared through her. She would be able to over-analyse that particular turn of events later, and she certainly hadn’t been ready to deal with that yet. What of the things she’d told Tak? Things she hadn’t told a soul in almost fifteen years.
Eleanor Jarvis.
She’d hugged the name to herself like a favourite comforter. The woman after whom Effie’s daughter had been named.
Eleanor. The woman who had seen her potential and convinced her to try for Oxford University, even though the kids in school had called her thick or stinky or a heck of a lot worse because she might not have been able to get home to have a shower for days. Even the teachers had let their distaste for her outward appearance blind them to the clever child she’d been underneath.
Eleanor. The woman who had been about to adopt her. To finally make Effie a part of something good. Something loving. Something special. Before a car crash had stolen Eleanor’s life away. Hit by a drunk driver on her way home from the snooker hall one night.
And with that the driver had stolen away the last life-line at which Effie had been grasping. Gone. Snuffed out. In a single instant. Even now Effie still relived the pain, the loneliness, the suffocating blackness, whenever she thought about that night.
Which was why, the day after her daughter’s birth, she’d made a point to banish those memories from her mind. Never to let herself go back. Only to look forward.
That she should remember Eleanor at that moment, after Tak had...done things to her, had been bad enough, but that she should have unravelled so instantly at the memories had been so much worse. Yet none of that had compared to the confused storm raging inside at the idea that, of all people, Tak Basu, her colleague, should have been the one to rake up all these memories.
She
’d glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. Little point in trying to go to sleep. Even though her tiredness had gone bone-deep, she’d known sleep would still elude her when her head was on that pillow. Her head had been too full. Her brain too feverish.
In the end she’d sneaked down to Tak’s home gym for a run, relieved to have the place to herself.
Unlike right now, when she couldn’t seem to get any privacy from him if her life depended on it.
‘You’re very welcome to join me if you want,’ he offered.
As if he somehow knew that her life, aside from Nell, was her career. Nothing more existed. It hadn’t for over a decade.
‘Sorry.’ She forced herself to sound jovial. ‘I have things to do. With Nell.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
Effie balked. Think fast. Faster.
She glanced up at the TV by the nearest bed. Some baking show. Perfect.
‘We’re making a cake,’ she announced, before her brain had even had chance to get into gear.
‘A cake?’
‘Sure.’ Hell, why not? ‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘Only that in all the time you’ve been staying at my home I haven’t seen you cook once. I thought you didn’t know how.’
‘There’s a huge difference between cooking and baking, you know,’ Effie managed loftily.
‘Indeed?’
Why did she get the impression that he was deliberately setting her up.
‘What’s that then?’
‘Well...’ She floundered. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Anyway, I have to go. Things to buy and all that.’
Before the shops closed and preferably before Nell decided to go out for the evening with a couple of friends. And if she could grab someone who actually knew the first thing about baking, then she would do that, too.
* * *
‘Mum, you can’t be serious! We’re not spending a Saturday night baking fairy cakes together. I’m thirteen, not seven!’
Effie took it as a win that for all Nell’s exclamations her daughter was still hovering at the door to the vast high-tech kitchen, as though a part of her wanted to come in.
‘The flat will be ready soon, and then we’ll be back home. I just wanted to do a personal thank-you to Hetti and Tak.’
‘But a cake, Mum? You’re not exactly the world’s best baker.’
Which they both knew was an understatement. It was something Eleanor had promised to teach her. Before she’d died.
‘What else are you going to do, Nell?’
It wasn’t easy to make herself sound blasé. Not when a part of her was so desperate to find things to do—any time she found herself at a loose end—which were so family-orientated it would ensure she wasn’t alone with Tak for the rest of their stay here.
Because he was right that what had happened between them the other night should never have transpired. Worse, since it had happened she hadn’t been able to stop replaying it in her head. And even worse again was the fact that in her re-runs the fantasy went far beyond what had happened in reality.
She was wrecked. Bedevilled by a man who wanted nothing more to do with her. And the pain which scraped inside her was inexpressible.
She could pretend it was because of the echoes it had of the one other man with whom she had been intimate—the boy who had fathered Nell. But she knew it was more than that. Tak was more than that. In her whole life she had never imagined meeting anyone who made her body dance and resonate and exalt the way he had succeeded in doing.
So if she could just get through the next few days without having to see him, or at least without having to be alone with him... It was the only antidote she could think of.
‘I thought maybe you might like to have a girls’ weekend with me,’ Effie said, and laughed brightly.
‘Why?’ Her daughter frowned, unconvinced.
‘Why not?’
Nell twisted her mouth from side to side as if weighing up the options. ‘Where did you even get that stuff, anyway? I can’t see Dr Lover-man having a ready supply of fairy cake cases and all that.’
‘I went shopping this morning. I also bought popcorn we can throw into the microwave as we gorge on fun chick-flicks on that enormous cinema screen downstairs.’
‘What is going on with you?’ Nell cried. ‘You don’t even like baking.’
‘I do,’ Effie objected. ‘I just like eating what’s at the end of the process far more than the actual process. Now, can you just show me how to crack these eggs into the flour without getting shell in it?’
They were halfway through a mess when Tak walked in.
‘How’s the cake-baking?’
‘Fine!’ Effie declared a touch maniacally.
‘Awful.’ This from Nell.
He advanced into the kitchen with a grin and Effie was suddenly hit by an incredible urge to throw the electric mixer at him. If he was lucky she might actually turn it off first.
‘What seems to be the trouble?’
‘Nothing.’ Effie tried again. ‘No trouble.’
Nell eyed her impatiently. ‘Mum has no idea how many eggs, or how much butter, flour and sugar to use. She also thinks any kind of flavouring is a luxury, rather than a prerequisite—including vanilla.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m fine,’ Effie repeated, in a way that suggested that if she told herself enough times she might actually make it so.
‘You’re really not, Mum.’
‘Effie, come on. Let me help.’ he said. ‘I’ve made a fair few cakes in my time—including birthday cakes.’
Nell, it seemed, had heard all she needed to.
‘Fab. Here.’ She had untied her apron and whipped it off in an instant. ‘You take over. If I spend any more time in here with Mum one of us isn’t going to make it out alive. And I’m afraid it might not actually be me.’
‘Sorted.’ Tak nodded, taking over as though there was nothing else he’d rather be doing on a Saturday evening. ‘Okay, Effie, what do you want me to do?’
He really did look delectably divine, standing there.
‘You can cream the eggs and sugar,’ Effie managed at last, and she knew he’d heard the catch in her voice when a tiny frown creased his forehead.
She reminded herself that he couldn’t read her thoughts. That only she knew the delicious secret she was holding inside at this moment.
* * *
‘You’ve really made cakes?’ Effie asked, after they’d been working together for a while.
‘I have. Growing up, I found that baking cakes with Hetti and Sasha was a good way to get them to talk about any problems that they were having in school.’
‘Is that how you knew the best way I should handle Nell?’ The words tumbled out clumsily, as if she knew that if she didn’t just say it she might lose her nerve. ‘That night at the ball when we were talking about the shoplifting? Do you remember?’
‘I remember.’
He should shut her down. Tell her it was none of his business. He would have done with anyone else. But Effie was different—even if he couldn’t explain what made her so. A part of him wanted to tell her, and therein lay the dilemma. Because if he told her then he knew—just knew—that it would change things.
She would change things.
She would change him.
‘Don’t forget I have sisters,’ he offered at last. ‘Both of whom were teenagers in every sense of the word. I remember what it was like.’
‘But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’ she asked softly. ‘You don’t just remember things in the abstract, the way an older brother might recall. You understand. The way a parent who has really been through it might.’
Something dark and cutting and raw scraped within his chest, making even breathing become difficult. ‘I have never been a parent. And I never intend to
be one.’
‘Which is what makes it all the more curious,’ Effie whispered. ‘The way you knew what to say that night. The way you couldn’t stop yourself from checking that we were okay. The way you’ve taken charge of us now and brought us to your home.’
‘It’s simply looking out for a colleague.’
Any other person might have heeded the warning note in his voice. But not Effie. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Perhaps you want to think carefully about antagonising the person who has provided a roof over your head.’
It was a jagged threat couched in the silkiest of tones. He hated himself for playing the game.
But instead of acknowledging the danger and stepping back Effie stepped closer. Metaphorically and physically. Her voice slid under his skin.
‘Or you’ll do what? Throw me out on my ear? I don’t think so; your sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it.’
How was it that he could barely breathe? His lungs were too constricted?
‘You’d be foolish to mistake my professional attitude for my personal one. Where my job is concerned I take my responsibilities exceedingly seriously. But you must know that where my private life is concerned I dodge responsibility at every turn.’
‘The trouble is I don’t believe that.’
‘I can’t make you.’
He made himself lift his shoulders. In all his life no one aside from his siblings had ever made him want to reveal his true self before. No woman had ever got to him like this. What was it that made Effie so different? Like a law unto herself.
He could see something was whirling inside her, even if he couldn’t be sure what that something was.
‘Do you ever slow down?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Not if I can help it.’
It was possibly the most honest answer she could have given him.
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