by Cathy Bussey
Then suddenly she saw him coming towards her. He hadn’t shaved since he left and was dressed all in black, and as soon as he noticed her shuffling at the front of the rail his face lit up with that radiant, heart-stopping smile.
‘Rikki,’ she gasped. ‘You’re here.’
‘I’m here,’ he said softly.
She bit her lip and fidgeted, her stomach full to bursting with a tornado of butterflies, her palms clammy, her heart thundering.
‘Sorry that took so long,’ he said. ‘I got stopped at immigration, who seem to have no idea what “racial profiling” means.’
He moved fractionally closer to her and she could feel the heat coming from him, rolling off him in waves, surrounding him like an invisible forcefield.
She should say something. In fact she should have a pithy speech all ready about how she was — about how he was — about how they should — but apparently her brain had disconnected from all rational thought whatsoever and all she could do was gawp at him.
‘Oh god,’ she gulped. ‘You’re so hot.’
For christ’s sake, she thought. Is that the best you can do?
But it was enough for Rik, who moved forwards again and took hold of her head with both hands, and then finally, finally, he kissed her. Faith’s eyelashes fluttered closed and her lips trembled under his as recognition rose joyfully within her, flooding her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
She seized him right back, kissing him furiously, desperate to get him as close to her as she possibly could. He felt full of that raw, primal energy, his mouth hot and insistent, his tongue dancing over hers in a way that felt vaguely familiar and shockingly new and it was making her head spin, sending blood coursing around her body and roaring in her ears. Her heart had taken off like an express train, hammering against her ribs and his was crashing just as fast in his chest. She could hear his shallow breathing in her ears, and her nostrils were full of the scent of him and her hands were full of him too, curling into his hair, wanting to draw him even closer still. I’m never letting you go, she thought. Not now, not ever.
Rik seemed to want to take in as much of her as he could too, his hands moved from her hair to her shoulders and then down the soft, bare skin of her arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. He bit her lip, drawing a sharp gasp from her and a loud retching noise from just behind them.
Faith pulled away and buried her face in Rik’s chest, her shoulders shaking helplessly.
‘For the love of god,’ somebody from the throng behind them said, ‘get a room.’
‘Yeah we need to go,’ Rik said, and Faith, her head still firmly pressed against him, could hear he was giggling madly too. He put his arm around her hustled her swiftly through the airport. ‘Where did you park?’
‘Short stay.’
They had reached the lift, and he jabbed at the call button repeatedly while Faith put her head against his chest again, too impatient and overwhelmed and bursting at the seams with longing to do anything other than breathe him in. As soon the doors creaked open he pushed her in and kissed her again and she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back until she could barely breathe. The lift stopped halfway down to the basement and an elderly couple who had been about to get in blanched and stepped back pointedly, and as the doors clanged shut again Faith thought it was just as well because it was all getting very X-rated. He had her pressed right up against the metal wall and she was arching her body up to him in a brazen invitation and there was a great deal of urgent grabbing and muffled gasping going on from both of them.
The lift doors opened into the basement car park.
‘Where’s the car?’ he mumbled against her lips.
She gestured towards the darkened corner where the Land Rover was glowering, looking very much like it would rather not be interrupted.
Rik picked her up and she hitched her legs around his waist, hanging onto him like a monkey so she could kiss him as he carried her across the car park. He put her down on the bonnet of the car and pulled her right up against him and Faith felt a jolt of pure, electric longing shoot all the way through her and she made a strangled sort of groan deep in her throat. Rik put his hand in the pocket of her shorts, running his fingers over the soft skin of her upper thigh before fishing out her keys.
‘We need to get in the car,’ he said, burying his head in her neck and so he could kiss the delicate skin just above her collarbone, grazing his teeth over it, sending more sparks shooting through her. He edged his hand along as ineptly as a teenager, fumbling the key around the lock while his other hand had slipped underneath her top and was moving far more assuredly over her burning skin, sending all her nerve endings leaping and firing into life. Oh come on, she thought frantically, and finally he managed to get the door open and pulled her into the car and onto his lap.
His eyes were almost completely black as he stared at her.
‘Do you think we’ll get arrested?’ Not that it mattered if they did, because there was no way either of them were stopping now.
‘I won’t last long enough for us to get arrested,’ Rik said. ‘Just to manage your expectations.’
She dissolved giggling, clinging on to his shoulders, giddy with euphoria.
‘You really haven’t changed,’ she said. ‘Not where it counts.’
They were both silent for a long time afterwards, and Faith curled herself up on Rik’s lap and listened to the sound of their breathing and pressed her head into his chest so she could hear his heart beating, and then she closed her eyes and felt him underneath her and his arms around her. He stroked her hair and she wished she could freeze time and stay in this moment with him indefinitely.
‘Oh, I missed you,’ she sighed eventually. ‘I missed everything about you.’
‘I missed you too.’ He kissed her forehead, which was drenched with sweat.
‘That was worth waiting nine years for.’
Rik looked extremely pleased with himself. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That was quite something.’ He leaned his head back against the headrest and she knew she hadn’t seen anything even remotely approaching the blissful expression on his face all summer.
‘I really do love you,’ she said.
‘I love you too,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I know how not to be in love with you.’
Faith felt her heart pulsing and lifting and soaring, sending an entire fleet of hot air balloons floating all around her body.
‘Oh, thank god,’ she said fervently. ‘I would have understood if you didn’t but I am so, so, so glad you do. Did you talk to Lucinda?’
He nodded. ‘I actually split up with her at Jason’s wedding. Could have picked a better time I suppose, but I needed to be straight with her.’
She was astonished to feel a pang of sympathy for Lucinda. ‘I do feel a bit bad for her. She’s only human, it’s not her fault she fell for you.’
‘It wasn’t that serious,’ Rik said, stroking her hair again. ‘She wasn’t you. I should have ended it with her the second I saw you on the driveway again.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
Rik smiled ruefully. ‘I was pretty angry with you, and at that time I had no idea you thought I’d cheated on you. I thought the only reason I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about you must be because I hadn’t seen you for so long. Emotional memory, timewarp, whatever you want to call it. I didn’t want to chuck away another relationship because of you.’
‘So you really didn’t know?’ she asked. ‘That I was still in love with you?’
‘I knew you wanted to make things right, and that you did seem to have cared about me, back then and now,’ he said. ‘But let’s just say I’ve been burned before.’ He squeezed her absently. ‘You really did break my heart.’
‘You broke mine too,’ she said. ‘Unintentionally. God, what a waste, all those years we spent —’ the thought made her sad all of a sudden and she tailed off.
Rik was silent too. There’s still sadness h
ere, she thought, and loss. But it looks like we’re finally on the same page, finally in it together.
‘It is a shame,’ he said slowly. ‘But although at first I was convinced that was completely your fault, I did realise that wasn’t true. It was odd the way you literally disappeared straight after that weekend. I should have known there was something else going on.’
‘You weren’t to know,’ she said. ‘It was a complete shock to me that my dad was having an affair so there’s no way you would have guessed.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘but I knew you and I should have realised there was a reason you had just gone to ground. You weren’t the only one who was a bit too proud.’
She ran her hands up and down his arms, which fit so perfectly around her. ‘I’m so glad, Rik, I was so worried you were going to say it had been too long, or that you really had no interest in me any more.’
He kissed her forehead, then her cheek. ‘It’s always been you, Faith.’
‘You could have told me,’ she grumbled. ‘At any point over the last week.’
‘What, in a text?’ He kissed her cheek again, then her lips. ‘Not like this?’ His lips were warm and soft and utterly irresistible. ‘Or this?’ Faith sighed as he kissed her again, slowly and deeply, turning the blood in her veins molten hot and all her joints heavy and fluid. His eyes were closed as if he’d surrendered completely to a daydream, either a long-forgotten one or one he’d had just seconds ago.
‘OK,’ she said shakily when they finally broke apart. ‘That is a better way to tell me than by text.’
‘We had better stop,’ Rik said reluctantly. ‘I think we’d be pushing our luck trying to get away with another round.’
She put her head on his chest again and they stayed there a little longer in contented silence until she felt her eyelids becoming heavy. ‘We had better head off. This is way beyond the remit of “short stay” and Paul will be foaming at the mouth if we’re any later.’
‘Can I drive?’
‘You want to drive my car?’
He grinned wolfishly. ‘I quite like it.’
‘I knew you would.’
Paul appeared the second Rik cut the engine, brandishing a trowel in a manner Faith could only describe as threatening. It had rained that morning, a passing shower in preparation for more later on, and the sun was blinking through clusters of greying clouds. The scent of flowers and damp foliage was rising in the air, sweet and fresh and heady.
‘What took you so long?’ he demanded as they got out of the Land Rover. ‘You were supposed to be back ages ago.’
Rik grinned wickedly. ‘Just catching up.’
Paul looked at Faith suspiciously and she treated him to a radiant, face-splitting smile. ‘Well at least you’ve cheered her up,’ he rumbled. ‘She might actually do something about that mud-pit she calls a garden now.’
‘I need Rik to come and help me this morning,’ Faith announced, ‘because it’s going to rain later,’ she sent up a silent thanks to the ever-unpredictable British summer, ‘and I really need to finish up before it does.’
Paul harrumphed. ‘All right then. Push off and finish the garden, and whatever else you need to finish.’ He looked momentarily amused. ‘About time you two got your act together.’
Faith thought she had never had such a perfect day. They hauled up the last of the dandelions and put the final plants in the pond and did all the fiddly little tasks that normally drove her crazy but suddenly seemed impossibly fun and interesting with Rik next to her interrupting her every thirty seconds to kiss her and tell her how much he loved her.
‘Why are most of the tools broken?’ he asked, eyeing her pile of shame which included several forks, the notorious watering can and more weeding and de-dandelion-ing implements than she cared to count. ‘What have you been doing to this place?’
She pulled a guilty face. ‘I might have been a bit rough once or twice. Especially if Lucinda was around.’ She scowled. ‘That watering can in particular took a great deal of Lucinda-related punishment.’
Rik giggled.
‘It’s not funny,’ she said. ‘She was constantly drivelling on about your sex life, it was awful.’
‘God, really?’
‘Not explicitly,’ she said. ‘Just lots of giggling and vague references to your wild weekends of passion.’ She pulled a disgusted face.
‘We didn’t have any,’ he said, putting the watering can down. ‘Which with hindsight was a pretty big warning sign even before you showed up again.’
Faith felt weak with relief. ‘But she’s so beautiful. I just assumed you were swinging from the chandeliers on a nightly basis.’
‘We were not,’ he said firmly, pulling her into his arms. ‘We both just tried to pretend it wasn’t an issue, then she decided we should make an effort and stop blaming the fact we were both tired from work but by then,’ he sighed. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you soaking wet in your see-through vest and while there were teenage levels of raging hormones going on, none of them were to do with her.’ He giggled sheepishly. ‘There’s no way I would have been too tired from work if it was you I was coming back to.’ He kissed her quickly.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘Because we have lots of time to make up for.’
Lots of time, and lots of things. Everything, in fact. Everything they had set in motion all those years ago, everything they should have gone on to do, and to be, everything they had been trying to find with somebody else, they now had all that ahead of them. Together.
She gazed at him wordlessly, filled with happiness to her very core. It’s really him, she thought. He’s really here. Any time I want I can just reach out to him, and time I want to I can just kiss him and tell him I love him, and tomorrow morning I get to wake up with his arms around me.
Rik was looking around the garden. ‘Paul was totally off the mark calling this place a mud-pit. It looks amazing.’
It did. The new pond and rockery had settled perfectly, the lawns were grander and more sweeping than before, and although the newer features and juvenile plants still had plenty of room for growth, Faith could already picture how the plants would all come together and spill out and over into each other, forming a riot of colour, height, scent and texture.
‘It turned out OK in the end,’ she said.
‘I knew you’d do a great job.’
She smiled happily. ‘You were right. I really can’t go back to my old job after this. I’m going to go to college and study garden design instead.’
‘Good,’ Rik said. ‘Plenty of horticultural colleges in Cornwall.’
Faith’s heart leaped. ‘I haven’t looked. Should I?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled at her and she thought she would follow him anywhere. ‘You did say you wouldn’t leave my side and I’m taking that extremely literally. And they want me over in Hamburg full-time for at least six months after Christmas so you’ll have to crack on with the studying or transfer and do it out there. Do you speak any German?’
She shook her head. ‘Not a jot.’
‘We’ll get you one of those ghastly audios and you can drive me crazy asking me the way to the supermarket.’ He giggled. ‘We can learn all the dirty words and bark them dictatorially to one another during no doubt extremely quick sex.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked anxiously.
He nodded. ‘Very sure.’
‘Oh,’ she said in wonder. ‘I can’t think of anything I want more, dictatorial sex included. Can GT come too?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But we’ll have to neuter him and get him a passport and he’ll have to have lots of horrid jabs.’
‘I’ll hold his paw,’ she said. ‘Where shall we go after that?’
‘Wherever you want.’
‘Oh, I love you,’ she sighed. ‘I know I keep saying it but it’s only because it’s true.’
‘You can say it all you like,’ he said. ‘I’m never going to get bored of hearing it. Are we done here?’
‘All
done.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I can think of something else I’m never going to get bored of either.’
‘I can’t believe you’re going tomorrow,’ Minel said to Faith a week later. ‘It feels like you only just got here.’
The sun was setting over Hollyhocks, bathing it in a warm, dusky glow, and abandoned plates were scattered across the already yellowing grass. GT was methodically working his way around all of them, licking up any remains frantically, his tail wagging. Beside him trailed a tiny, adorably silky Springer Spaniel puppy, its floppy ears drooping into the plates as it copied GT’s pillaging.
Paul had gone straight out and found the puppy, a female who Minel flatly refused to name Tacklette, that morning and Minel was already hopelessly besotted.
Sara, who was dangling her feet in the swimming pool, shot Faith a forlorn look. ‘All those hot surfer dude types,’ she grumbled. ‘Wasted on you.’
‘Wasted,’ Faith agreed happily. ‘You’ll have to come and work your way through them instead.’
Sara rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose that’ll give me something to do while you and Rik continue your unstoppable sex binge.’
Faith blushed. She had been trying very hard not to appear too hopelessly besotted with Rik in front of Sara, not wanting to highlight her friend’s newly-single status with a nonstop PDA. Sara had told Faith and Minel that Tony had accepted her decision without question. ‘He just said he was sorry I wasn’t happy, that he thought it was for the best, and that was that.’
‘You will still come and visit, won’t you?’ Faith pressed. ‘And I’ll come back here much more often, I promise.’
‘You had better,’ Minel wailed. ‘I’ve got used to having you around again. And Rik, and you two are so madly in love and completely perfect for each other it’s beyond adorable. Although,’ she grimaced, ‘the sex binge is a bit off-putting.’
Faith blushed guiltily again. ‘It’s not like we’re doing it in front of you.’
‘No,’ Minel said, ‘but it’s fairly tedious getting halfway through a conversation only for you two to find something completely innocuous to get all wound up about and then slope off to the cottage giggling like teenagers. Or the hay barn.’ She looked at Faith suspiciously. ‘Did you sleep in there last night?’