For several long, delicious moments she let it continue, letting him indulge in the unforgotten sensation of pressing together and communicating through throbbing carnal kisses.
‘Darcie? Darcie! Are you here? Where are you?’
The kissing slowed. Stopped. In the darkness, their racing breath mingled for a last moment. Jake didn’t resist as she broke away to rejoin the real world. In fact, he felt strangely weakened, like Superman getting too close to Kryptonite. But he cursed his sister, who was picking her way towards them, huddled into a coat that looked as if she’d borrowed it from Scott of the Antarctic.
Darcie’s voice sounded oddly shrill. ‘Kelly? We’re over here.’
Kelly wobbled towards them. ‘It’s boring indoors on my own. I decided to come and see whether you guys are having more fun.’
Chapter Eight
Carefully, Darcie began to edge a piece of craquel glass – amber, a favourite of hers – with copper foil. She picked up a wooden dowel, shiny with use, and began to burnish the foil onto the glass.
She worked on in silence, applying the copper foil, burnishing, returning the piece to the jig. She concentrated on getting the fold of foil on a corner just right. Sliding on gloves, she rubbed over the glass with flux to remove any deposits preparatory to doing the initial tack-solder of the last panel of one of the new ‘affordable’ lampshades. She had yet to tin and bead solder the panels together, fix on the ‘spider’ which would take the collar of the bulb, and copper wire the lower profile for strength.
She picked up the soldering iron and wiped the point on a damp sponge, breathing in the familiar acrid smell of the iron heating up.
Her head ached slightly but she was relieved not to be hungover. Jake had been right. The Bailey’s hit had been quick and hard, and had worn off by the time she’d made home.
Then, suddenly, he was there. Because it was a nice day she’d left the door open, and he’d walked softly up to watch her work. Echoes of last night tingled up her spine. In fact she’d been tingling pretty much all morning. Her hands might have been busy with cutting and grinding glass but her memories of last night had been unruly, encouraging the tingles to zip about pretty much unsupervised. But they’d been pursued by the sneaky snaky realisation that the attraction between them not being extinguished by a two-year-old unresolved misunderstanding didn’t meant that the misunderstanding didn’t need resolving.
Yet, if Kelly hadn’t come out last night, the heat that had flared between them …
No. She shook herself. They would hardly have made love on a patch of grass overlooked by the rear windows of about twenty-four flats. They would have had to find somewhere – her house – and … She would have straightened things out between them before letting the heat consume her. Wouldn’t she?
Anyway, Kelly had come out.
She and Jake had pulled apart.
He shut the door softly behind him. ‘I don’t suppose I can just cut through everything else, and kiss you again?’
The tingles exploded.
Carefully, she put down her soldering iron and squared her shoulders. Calmly, she met his gaze. Hungry. Intent. Lighting a fire low in her abdomen. ‘We need to talk, first.’
The heat began to fade. He sighed, folding his arms. ‘We seem to communicate so well without words. That’s not enough?’
She smiled faintly. ‘Not for me. Stuff happened. I can’t put it behind me without dealing with it.’
His jaw flexed. ‘I don’t see that it will help us to rake up that we once spent a hot night in bed together and you said you’d end things with Dean. Then you thought better of it.’
Anger flushed through her. ‘Doesn’t that depend on what I have to say?’
His voice was gentle, but final. ‘I just don’t see the point in stirring all the bad stuff up again, Darcie.’
A cold lump slid into her stomach. Picking her soldering iron up again she smiled, tightly. ‘No. There’s obviously no point. You’re right. You’re always right, aren’t you?’ Distantly, she realised that her hand was trembling, so she set the soldering iron back in its rest because trembly soldering wouldn’t sell well. ‘No more kisses, OK? Again – no point.’
He looked thrown by her vehemence. Belatedly, questions filled his eyes. But she jumped up, almost knocking her stool over, connected up the industrial vacuum cleaner with jerky movements and flicked it into roaring life, fixing her gaze to the nozzle that sucked up the glass debris glittering on the bench, so that he couldn’t read any answers in hers. ‘No point talking to people who don’t listen,’ she muttered.
But he must have read her lips. ‘OK, let’s talk,’ he said, raising his voice over the angry noise of the vacuum.
‘No point,’ she repeated.
Darcie couldn’t avoid Jake during the following week. Auntie Chrissy had little attention to spare for the gallery shop, so excited was she about her trip. She and ‘the girls’, as she called her fellow travellers, planned to set their camper van wheels spinning towards the Eurotunnel early on the next Sunday morning. Each afternoon she popped up in Darcie’s workshop, saying, ‘We’re having coffee, aren’t we? I’m dying to tell you about …’ And brought Jake with her.
Perfectly understandable, Darcie told herself. He was not only working alongside Chrissy as she passed over responsibilities to him, but he’d known Darcie most of his life, so why would Chrissy even check if Darcie minded?
He could have made excuses and stayed away, Darcie thought, darkly. But he never did.
And if Jake felt awkward around Darcie, he hid it well. His grey eyes were veiled when they rested on her. He was polite, but he talked to Kit, Stu and Wendy more than he talked to her, learning the particular attractions of models, wicker or pottery, and how he was going to sell them, making them smile and laugh and open up to him. He’d always been able to switch on the charm. Darcie remembered her mum saying, ‘That boy will get by on his personality. He can talk to anybody.’ Perhaps dealing with guests who could have bought the spa dozens of times over had polished the skill.
He joined the chorus thanking her for the coffee when the break was over, but then he usually left. Even when he lingered one day to study the stock she had building, making her wonder if it was an excuse to hang on as the others went to close up for the day, he just said, ‘You’re outselling everybody, your affordable stuff is walking off the shelves.’ And strolled out, hands in pockets.
Ross returned late on Wednesday, banging the doors of Ben’s parents’ car, shouting his thanks, bursting into the house with his case and backpack, a wind-up bull under his arm. He paused when he saw Darcie, uncertainty flickering over his face. He was tanned, his jaw line emphasised by boyish stubble and Darcie experienced a funny folding of the stomach, knowing that he was growing up and away from her and Jake’s words floated through her mind: You’ve had a horrible time. Turning into a mother for a teenage brother would get to almost anybody. It’s huge. OK, it was a huge responsibility – just not horrible. Since they’d lost their parents, she was much more than a big sister. She was all Ross had until he was old enough for independence.
His wellbeing had to be her main concern. She’d turned on her ‘mothering’, for Ross and if she had no idea how she was going to turn it off again, well she’d push that worry aside for now. Her priority was to banish any lingering suspicion and resentment, not allow it to eat away at the closeness that had, till now, allowed her to watch over Ross without turning into a hated authority figure.
She’d spent the evening, whilst she waited, not-watching TV and failing to stop Jake Belfast’s face from floating into her mind. But Ross barging in grabbed all of her attention. She leaped up and threw her arms around him. ‘You look great! Did you love it? Were Ben’s parents OK?’
After only the smallest of hesitations, he hugged her back, his cheek rough against hers. Her heart expanded with relief as he grinned and returned to the real Ross, the pre-outburst Ross, pouring out the story of his holiday in th
e sun, how Ben’s ‘oldies’ had been difficult to convince that fifteen was almost adult, the beach had been awesome and the under-18 clubs wicked.
Darcie took the bull and the backpack to carry up to his room, letting his words flood over her, and her heart lifted for the sheer joy of having him back in the house, which had seemed so empty without him.
OK, so things weren’t going to work out with Jake. No change there, then. They hadn’t worked out before. She was used to it. He was so intransigent, so black-and-white … she couldn’t see things working out in the future, either.
Ross: he was her future. At least short term.
When he paused for breath, she put in, ‘Has Casey been OK while you’ve been away?’ to ensure that Casey didn’t become a taboo subject between them.
Frowning, Ross pulled out his phone and flicked at the screen. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her.’
Chapter Nine
Jake looked around the Westbourne Gallery Shop. The stands held displays calculated to entice visitors to pour money into the till and take home as much as they could carry.
But rain, pounding against the windows, made an influx of morning visitors unlikely. It was Sunday, usually the busiest day, and Chrissy had already phoned him, excited and squeaky at being carried off in a camper van. After work, he’d move his stuff into her house in Pebble Lane, which would, at least, provide him with a bed he could spread out in and get him out of his sister’s hair. But he wondered, bitterly, how come Chrissy was the one heading for the open road whilst he was stuck in a shop. He sighed.
A shop was so not him. Soooo not.
He thought of the spa in the forest where the moneyed people went to play. His job had let him be the guy who made the spa experience whatever the guests wanted it to be without ever doing any particularly onerous work himself. SpaGrimmlausch’s budget had allowed for a small army of staff for him to direct around the plush serenity of what had once been a burg, a gothic mini-castle, scented with fragrant oils and lotions indoors, pine trees out, where the weather didn’t matter because, once inside the tall grey walls, the guests could ignore it.
Not like here, where he was staring through the window of a shop without customers across a rainswept yard to where Darcie would be bending her head over her work.
He thought of her face after he’d kissed her beneath the stars, eyes a sultry window to her soul.
But he’d seen those big Bambi-eyes two years ago, when she’d rocked on top of him in his bed, luminous with excitement as he held her gaze and moved inside her, feeling as if his heart was slowly being fucked from his body.
It had only taken one dance with her for him to realise that the feelings had never gone away.
He hunted around the shop for distraction, wishing he hadn’t spent so much of last week helping Chrissy sorting and stocktaking, so that the work was still there to do. He headed for the stock room and tidied some cardboard boxes. Turned on the computer in the alcove between the stock room and the shop that served as an office. Checked his email. Paid a couple of bills.
Nearly lunchtime. A handful of customers, tiring of waiting for the rain to let up and venturing out to do something with their Sunday. One bought a set of Darcie’s coasters. Another lull.
Four more customers, women in their fifties, laughing at Kit’s expression mugs, examining Wendy’s wickerwork, spotting buildings they knew in Stu’s local landmark tiles. Pausing, awed, in front of the most fabulous of Darcie’s lampshades, cream lotus flowers and pale blue sky. ‘Better not pick it up,’ murmured one. ‘It’s too expensive to drop. It’s like a rainbow in glass, isn’t it?’ She turned to Jake. ‘These shades aren’t made here, are they?’
‘Of course,’ he assured her, airily. ‘You can meet the creator, if you like. She’s working this morning and she never minds chatting to visitors. I’ll lock the shop for two seconds and take you over.’
And as he led them through the downpour like a duck with ducklings, he wondered how long it would be before he admitted to himself that he’d taken this job because of all the opportunities to see Darcie.
Darcie looked up as her door flew back and strangers surged in, laughing, shaking back their hoods, flicking rain from their hair. Automatically, she smiled a greeting. All of the artisans made the visitors, their livelihoods, welcome.
‘It’s pouring down!’
‘We’ve just been admiring—’
‘This gentleman said you wouldn’t mind—’
A taller figure filled the doorway behind them. Jake. Raindrops glistened on his cheekbones and spotted his shirt darkly. ‘These ladies would like to meet you, Darcie. They like your work.’ He spoke easily, warmly, as if there had never been an instant’s tension between them.
Taking her cue, she pushed forward the half-built lampshade in front of her. ‘Would you like to see what I’m working on? I’ll explain the technique, if you’d like that. It’s a commission and the client wants what he calls “church window colours” of ruby, leaf green and royal blue, as his house is a converted chapel in a nearby village.’
The women crowded around the bench. ‘If you don’t mind?’
‘That would be—’
‘Your work’s so—!’
Darcie began her spiel. ‘Stained glass is created when metallic salts are added at the time of manufacture. As well as in churches, it’s used in houses and public buildings. It was particularly popular in art deco buildings, and you can find several original examples around the Wellbourne Workshops.’
But, as they huddled closer, the door flew open again and Ross and Ben fell in, dripping rain from their sports bags. ‘We’re drenched,’ began Ross. Then, seeing Darcie wasn’t alone. ‘Oops. Sorry.’ And, then, to Jake, ‘Hey. Kelly’s brother, right?’
Jake nodded. ‘Right. Hey.’
Darcie smiled her apologies at the visitors. ‘Ross, whatever made you come out in this weather?’
‘You!’ Ross squelched across the wooden floor. ‘You said you’d leave me the £40 I need for the rugby trip. I’ve got to pay it at two o’clock training today. Ben paid his before we went on holiday.’
Ben nodded, scrunching his shoulders against drips sliding from his hair. ‘Deadline today.’
‘Rats! I forgot all about it. I meant to go to the ATM last night and leave you the money, this morning.’ Darcie cast a hunted glance at her watch and an apologetic one at the visitors. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to make a quick dash to the ATM—’
‘It’s OK,’ interrupted Jake, ‘it’s pointless shutting up your workshop, Darcie. My wallet’s in my jacket, at the shop. Come with me, Ross. Your sister can pay me back when she’s replenished her cash supply.’
‘Cool,’ said Ross, turning instantly to follow the source of money out of the workshop. ‘Bye, Darcie.’
‘Oh, but—!’ Darcie began. But then she was staring at the closing door and the ladies were still there looking expectantly at her, so she swallowed her frustration and managed a smile as she began to talk about cutting and grinding glass.
But, damn it to hell. She didn’t want to be beholden to Jake Belfast.
Chapter Ten
Bemused, Ross surveyed the bounty spread out on the kitchen table – mobile phones, handheld games consoles and MP3 players. He looked levelly at Casey. ‘They’re not nicked, are they?’ Casey had been waiting like a parcel on the doorstep when he’d arrived home after rugby practice. He was glad he’d showered off the mud and sweat in the clubhouse.
She opened her eyes very wide and tossed back her black hair. ‘You know that I’ve got a mate who reconditions stuff. Kids sell him their phone so they can get a newer one. Or buy a new iPod off him if they’ve lost theirs and daren’t tell their mums, like Ben. My mate’s got loads of stuff at the moment and wants to shift it.’
Ross checked out one or two of the phones, they seemed pretty up-to-date for trade-ins. ‘So what’s the deal?’
‘Here’s a price list. You get twenty per cent of
everything you sell. If you discount something, more fool you, he still gets eighty per cent of the list price, any discrepancy comes out of your cut.’
Ross’s palms were uncomfortably clammy as he picked up a Nintendo DS and checked that it worked. ‘And you’re sure they’re not nicked?’
She flung her arms up. ‘C’mon Ross, I thought you were up for this. I told him how you’ve got so many friends you’d be sure to shift some stuff.’
He picked up an iPhone. ‘What’s his name, your friend?’
‘It’s no one you know.’ She pulled a lock of hair forward to plait it.
Ross put the phone back and folded his arms. ‘If he hasn’t got a name, I’m not selling his stuff. It’s dodgy.’
Casey sighed. Ross began to shove the stuff back into her bag. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘Ross, don’t get heavy.’ The hand squeezed persuasively. ‘Colin Jones, OK? His stuff’s not nicked, but he doesn’t pay tax, that’s why he doesn’t want his name mentioned.’
His skin tingling where she touched him, Ross covered her hand with his. ‘Why are you so keen to help him?’
Casually, she extricated herself. ‘He pays me a fee for everything you sell. Money to put credit on my phone and buy stuff I need when my mum’s skint, OK? Now stop being such a dork.’
If Ross had to go to school, Rowland Community College was OK. It had a good computer suite and sports facilities, and there were no more despotic teachers or thuggish kids than at any other school. And Casey went there, though he didn’t normally see much of her in school. She was one of the invisible sixth formers who found their own areas to lurk in.
Ross swung in through the students’ entrance of the humanities block with his backpack dangling negligently from one shoulder, and made for level 2, where his locker stood against a wall.
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