by Susie Tate
‘I’ve got to g –’
‘Hey there, fellow book lovers.’ Pav’s large frame filled the living room and Millie flinched. ‘So, what great literary works are up for debate today? Hit me.’
‘Don’t tempt me, Willy Fiddler,’ Kira shot back as he flopped down into the seat next to her and poked her in the ribs.
‘Argh!’ she shrieked, retaliating by yanking his jumper down and pulling so hard on his chest hair it looked like she’d actually ripped it out.
‘Hands off the merchandise,’ he said through a smile as he grabbed her hand, twisted it away from her body and poked her in the ribs again. It was then that he noticed Millie, and paused mid rib-poke. As soon as their eyes met Millie looked away. Of course Kira and Pav would be together. They were both so confident, so open and free. Them as a couple made complete sense. But for some reason her chest felt so tight it was a struggle to breathe.
Chapter 11
We’ll see, baby
‘El,’ she managed to force out. Eleanor was watching Mr Martakis with wide eyes, as Millie suspected any self-respecting straight woman would; he was the most watchable man she had ever seen in her life. Right now he was wearing jeans and a dark jumper with the sleeves pulled up to above his elbows. The glance she had allowed herself of his muscled forearms was enough to hollow out her stomach completely. ‘El …’ Her voice this time was slightly choked, but she managed to raise it above a whisper and attract El’s attention. ‘I’m going to … I need to go. Will you be okay? I can’t …’ She trailed off and grabbed her bag closer to her chest, much to Beauty’s disgust.
‘Of course,’ El said, frowning at Millie with some concern. ‘No worries. I’ll be fine. My car’s just round the corner.’
Millie closed her eyes in relief, before a deep voice shattered it.
‘Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Pav,’ Pav said, standing from the sofa.
‘Hi,’ El replied, a blush creeping up her cheeks as she shook Pav’s outstretched hand.
‘Thanks, Libby,’ Millie muttered as she attempted to rise from the sofa. But Beauty’s weight kept her pinned and she stared at the dog in desperation, whispering, ‘I’ve got to go now. Could you … could you move your head … please?’
Beauty’s answer was to bury her huge snout under one of Millie’s arms and fling it out and away from her bag so that it settled on Beauty’s head again. Millie forgot where she was and who she was with for a moment. She smiled, leaned over and buried her face in the fur at Beauty’s neck. Beauty responded by licking the entire side of Millie’s face, and Millie did something she hadn’t done in possibly years.
She giggled.
When she sat back up the whole room was staring at her. She glanced over at Mr Martakis and, bizarrely, his eyes were slightly unfocused, his mouth hanging open. Millie blushed, and then gave Beauty one final squeeze before she managed to ease her legs out from their pinned position.
‘Come on, girl,’ Jamie said as he stepped over to pull the dog away, having more success than Libby through sheer brute force. The dog grunted, head-butted Jamie’s crotch, and then ambled away as Jamie cupped his manhood, stifling a scream. Millie was up and starting to edge towards the exit.
‘Bye, Mils,’ Kira shouted from the other sofa, and Millie managed a small smile for her. ‘Dr M.’ had become a thing of the past over the course of the evening.
‘See you next week, Millie,’ El said, taking a step to the side to see around Pav’s large body. Jamie grimaced through his pain and waved at her as she passed him at the kitchen island, and her breathing started evening out as the front door came into view … until it was no longer in view.
‘Hey,’ Mr Martakis said, his chest filling her vision. She blinked at the corded forearms crossed over it, and swallowed, choosing to focus on his tanned throat. ‘You didn’t say goodbye to me.’
‘Uh … bye,’ Millie whispered, giving him a small, rather pathetic wave; but he didn’t move. She knew what happened in this scenario and was not about to perform some sort of weird dance to get round him in front of the others. Instead she took a step back – maybe there was another exit? She could jump out of the window.
‘How are you getting home?’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
Her eyes strayed from his throat to his chin and she noticed the corners of his mouth tip up as he shook his head slightly. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’ She took another step back and he took one forward.
‘I’m walking.’
His smile dropped and his mouth set in a firm line. ‘No, you’re not.’
Millie bit her lip and gripped her handbag even tighter; her fingers felt like they might snap with the tension. What was going on? Why didn’t he concentrate on getting Kira home and leave her alone? And why was he issuing orders to her? He barely knew her.
She took a deep breath and decided to be honest.
‘I don’t understand,’ she told him, glancing over at the others on the sofas who were all focused on the exchange like it was completely fascinating. Millie was more confused than ever. ‘I am walking and I don’t know … I don’t know what that has to do with you.’ Her house was only a few streets over. It would only take her ten minutes to get back by foot.
‘No,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘You’re not walking home in the dark. I’m driving you. As to what it has to do with me …’ He trailed off and smiled, after which his voice softened. ‘We’ll get to that bit later, okay?’
‘Get to what later?’ she muttered, then tensed as he reached out and put some soft pressure on her elbow to guide her forward. He must have felt her flinch because he dropped his hand, and instead swept it out in front of him, indicating for her to precede him to the door. Millie glanced at their audience again and decided her best bet was not to create a scene in Libby and Jamie’s living room. Maybe she could get away from Mr Martakis on the pavement outside.
She shrugged and walked forward, quickly skirting him and his forearms and avoiding any sort of mind-scrambling eye contact. He was fast though, and by the time she made it to the door he had pulled it open for her. She charged out onto the pavement and turned left. Breathing a sigh of relief when he made no apparent attempt to stop her, she marched forward and let her shoulders relax. That was why, when she felt something brush her neck and fall onto her shoulders, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
‘You forgot your coat,’ Pav said. She turned to see him standing just behind her, a smile on his face and his hands in his pockets. She looked down at her long cashmere overcoat like she’d never seen it before. What was wrong with her? Millie never forgot anything.
‘Right, thanks,’ she muttered, shoving her hands through the sleeves and realising how biting the cold actually was. She tried to smile at him but was unsure of the results. Before she could make an even bigger fool of herself she marched away. Despite the fact she was now power-walking, Mr Martakis’ long strides easily kept pace with her shorter ones and they carried on down the pavement together.
‘I thought you had a car,’ Millie said after a full thirty seconds of silence.
‘Yup.’ Back to silence again.
‘Well … why aren’t you driving it?’
‘Did you enjoy the book club?’
‘Wh-what?’
‘The book club,’ Mr Martakis said slowly. ‘Was it fun?’
Millie thought for a moment. Did she have fun? Fun was not a huge feature of her life and never had been. Had tonight terrified her? Yes. Did she make a fool of herself? Well, no, unless you counted the corridor stand-off with Mr Martakis. She had enjoyed listening to the women’s banter. She’d felt good when Tara thanked her. Libby had held her hand.
‘Yes … I … I think so,’ she told him, and heard Mr Martakis chuckle.
‘You only think you had fun? Well, they’ll have to do better than that.’
‘What do you me–’
‘What book did you
talk about?’ he asked as they rounded the corner. The pace they were going was starting to take its toll on Millie. Mr Martakis didn’t even seem short of breath.
‘We didn’t talk about the book.’
‘I thought it was a book club?’ Mr Martakis sounded as confused as Millie had been and she felt herself smile.
‘I know, so did I.’
They stopped at the crossing and she pressed the button before glancing up at him, still smiling as she thought about the book club that had no intention of discussing books. As soon as their eyes met he blinked and his mouth opened slightly.
‘Jesus,’ he breathed as his gaze roamed her face.
‘What’s the matter?’ Millie asked as she frowned and her smile fell. The crossing started to beep and they both moved away, breaking eye contact. Mr Martakis cleared his throat.
‘Ha! I knew it. I bet half of them didn’t even read it.’
Millie shrugged and bit her lip as she finally turned down her road with Mr Martakis hot on her heels.
‘I bet you read it though, didn’t you?’ he said, amusement lacing his tone.
‘Of course,’ Millie said, heat hitting her cheeks when she remembered the report she’d typed up. She involuntarily held her bag closer to her side – she should have known Mr Martakis would notice. He noticed everything.
‘You wrote notes, didn’t you?’ he asked, his voice now vibrating slightly with humour. ‘Come on, let me see.’
Before she could stop him he had somehow managed to fish out the report from the front of her bag. They arrived at her door and she made a grab for it but he held it out of her reach. In her fluster she collided with his solid chest and sucked in a lungful of his clean scent: soap, citrusy aftershave, and man, all mingled into one glorious combination. She leapt back, her cheeks on fire.
‘Stop it,’ she said, wrapping her arms around her middle and feeling like an idiot. Mr Martakis took one look at her face and sobered immediately.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, holding out the papers with one hand and reaching up with the other to push a few strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. She snatched the report back, before turning and racing up the steps to her front door. Her house was in a large Victorian terrace in an affluent area. If Mr Martakis thought that was strange he didn’t say anything. As she extracted her keys from her bag and shoved them in the lock she heard his heavy footfalls jog up behind her.
‘I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t making fun of you. I knew you wouldn’t have gone unprepared to that group and I … I was teasing you. That’s kind of my thing: teasing people.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said in a tight voice when she’d finally managed to turn the lock and heard him sigh. She was about to close the door in his face when his foot moved to block the solid oak in its tracks.
‘I’ve thought about how you can repay me for saving your life at the wedding,’ he told her.
‘Wh-what?’
‘The other day – you said you owed me. Now I’m collecting.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ve read The Field of the Cloth of Gold and I want to discuss it with you.’
Millie glanced down at her report with the title in large letters on the front page, and then back up at Pav in confusion. ‘You want to talk to me about a book? Now? At eleven o’clock at night?’
‘Yes.’ Pav’s chin tilted at a stubborn angle and for a moment Millie pictured a beautiful little boy with dark hair and deep, dark brown eyes adopting the same stance, a boy used to getting his way and not willing to give up until he did.
‘Why?’
‘Love, please just let me in. Talk to me – we’ll only talk about the book, I promise – then I’ll go away.’
Millie was still stuck on the endearment at the start of the sentence. She felt it roll over her like a warm breeze. For some reason she stepped back and pulled the door open.
*****
‘But it doesn’t have to make sense,’ Pav argued through a smile. ‘I think this guy is just fucking with us. He’s a bus driver having a laugh at the snobby literary world for shits and giggles.’
Millie’s eyes flashed.
‘That’s crazy! There has to be a point. It’s a historical reference.’
Pav’s smile grew wider. He’d been there for over an hour now. For the first twenty minutes Millie had been reticent in the extreme. It was only when they started discussing the book and he started deliberately baiting her that she started coming out of her shell. At this stage Pav doubted she even realised how she was reacting. It was like seeing a robot slowly animate into a living creature – and a fascinating, beautiful, intelligent, funny creature at that.
Her house was huge, and he’d yet to see any sign of any other occupants. It was decorated in surprisingly warm colours and had a homey feel despite the fact it was tidy to the point of being disturbing. The throw cushions on the sofa looked like they had been aligned with a ruler.
‘Ah, yes,’ Pav muttered. ‘Let’s refer back to the report, shall we.’
He snatched the paper from Millie’s side and flicked through to the third page. She made a lunge for it, with the very satisfying result that her body pressed against his as he held the pages away from her.
That small, tentative smile was back on her face and he sucked in a sharp breath. Before he’d seen her smile he’d known she was attractive in a cold, clinical, abstract sort of a way. Well-put-together was the most fitting phrase that sprang to mind. But when she smiled she became one of the most stunning women he’d ever seen in his life.
‘Now, now, Dr Morrison. Just let me get to the relevant paragraph. I believe you said –’
‘Don’t call me that.’ Millie was no longer smiling and she withdrew back to her side of the sofa. Even worse, he lost the eye contact he’d been enjoying for the last half hour at least, as she looked down at her feet and tucked her hair (over the course of the hour her hair had worked its way out of its confines and settled over her shoulders and down her back) behind her ears.
‘Hey,’ Pav said softly, lowering the report back down into his lap and leaning towards her to try to catch her eyes again. ‘What’s up?’
‘I just …’ She trailed off and he noticed her hands clench into small fists again. The sight of her knuckles turning white and the tight set of her mouth made his chest clench. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. I’m being silly.’
‘Don’t call you what?’ Pav asked, his head tilting to the side, and Millie sighed.
‘Dr Morrison,’ she whispered. ‘Everyone calls me Dr Morrison. It’s like they …’ She made a visible effort to unclench her hands and rubbed them both down her legs. ‘It’s like they want to keep me at a distance. Like they don’t want to interact with me in any sort of meaningful way. And I’m so …’ She shook her head and moved forward to stand. Just as she was rising from the sofa, Pav caught her hand.
‘Okay, Millie,’ he said, tugging her back down to the sofa so that she was right next to him. Her wide eyes met his for a moment before she quickly looked away. ‘No more Dr Morrison, all right?’
Of its own volition, the hand that wasn’t holding hers on the sofa moved up to touch a lock of her hair that was hanging by her cheek. It was so soft, like satin. He breathed in and the scent of her shampoo and some sort of complicated perfume filled his senses. ‘You have such gorgeous hair,’ he muttered.
‘D-don’t be ridiculous,’ she stuttered as his face moved closer, just a few millimetres from the side of her head. ‘I … I … It’s mousy.’
Pav felt like he was drugged. He literally couldn’t help himself as he closed the small gap and kissed her silky hair before taking a deep breath in.
‘It’s golden chestnut,’ he told her as his lips moved to the shell of her ear and she sucked in a shocked breath.
‘That’s a … a … another way of saying mousy,’ she whispered. Fear threaded through her tone but also something else … something like antici
pation.
‘Look at me,’ he said against her neck, and she shuddered. His hand moved from the side of her head to her cheek and he put steady pressure on it until he’d turned her face to look at him. His forehead rested against hers for a moment. ‘You could never be mousy,’ he muttered against her mouth, and then he kissed her.
She flinched at the contact and he slid his hand back through her fucking fantastic hair to the back of her head to turn her where he wanted her. His other hand moved across the soft material of her jumper from her stomach to her back. She was stiff in his arms for a moment before his mouth started moving softly against hers.
‘It’s okay, baby,’ he said against her lips. Somehow that flipped a switch. She melted into him as soon as the word baby left his mouth. Her hands, which had been clenched in her lap, now moved: one into his hair and the other onto his bicep.
Then she kissed him back.
This was not a confident kiss; is was not an experienced kiss; and God knows Pav had kissed more than his fair share of confident, experienced women. But it was, hands down, the most unbelievable erotic experience of his life. He hadn’t even moved past first base but he was more turned on by this simple kiss than he ever had been before. So when she suddenly tore away from him and launched up from the sofa to run around it to the other side he was stunned and it almost felt like he was in physical pain.
‘Baby, what on –’
‘D-don’t you b-baby me!’ she cut him off, her face flushed with colour and her hair wild around it, which had the unfortunate effect of enhancing her beauty and making Pav’s pain level ratchet up another notch. ‘Y-you with your “babies” and your “loves” and your st-stupid forearms.’
Pav frowned. ‘My forearms? What on earth do my forearms have to do with anything?’
‘I’m not your love though,’ Millie said, and her body started shaking as she stood her ground.
‘Okay,’ Pav said, keeping his voice calm and level and standing slowly from the sofa. ‘Okay, let’s go back to the beginning here. Tell me what I’ve done to upset you, all right? We’ll work from there.’