City Girl in Training

by Liz Fielding

  ‘You?’ I said, to distract myself from the revealing way those jeans clung to his hips. From my own rampant imagination.

  ‘I’ll have a Scotch. A large one. Straight. On the rocks. It’s been that kind of day.’

  And it was all my fault. He was my dream neighbour. I had to be his worst nightmare. ‘I’m so sorry, Cal.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said, reaching out as if to touch my cheek again, raising the down in eager anticipation, but his fingers curled back against his palm before he made contact. ‘Things began to look up the moment the lift doors opened.’ And with that he turned abruptly and pushed open a bedroom door. I caught a glimpse of warm terracotta walls, a large creamy bed, before it was shut with rather more force than was usual. As if a sudden weight had been applied to it.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware of holding—long, steady and slow—before going through to the kitchen for ice, standing in front of the open fridge door for a moment to cool down.

  I was hot. Burning where his fingers had touched me. Hot with a longing that was going nowhere. I was the one who should be going, I thought. But I stayed where I was, filling a bowl with ice before carrying it, along with a bottle of mineral water, into the living room.

  Cal’s apartment was larger than the one I shared with Sophie and Kate, and it was clear that no decorator had had a hand in furnishing it. The windows were tall and bare, giving an unobstructed view of the lights of London, beefed up at this time of year by coloured lights from tall Christmas trees all along the river and holiday lights strung from every possible vantage point.

  I’d been trying very hard not to think about Christmas without my family, my friends, Don, and I turned away abruptly to look back at the apartment.

  It was totally masculine. Uncluttered. No porcelain frippery here to cause mayhem in the dark. There was an unadorned hole-in-the-wall fireplace with large leather armchairs placed in the comfort zone. Between them a rich Persian rug lay over wide oak boards polished to a warm glow.

  Above the fireplace there was a huge black and white photograph, bleached almost white to leave little more than the impression of a tiger in shadows. The signature, Callum McBride, came as no surprise.

  What did surprise me was the feeling that this wasn’t a temporary home. Everything, furniture, primitive native art that even I could see was the real thing, seemed to fit the man like a well-worn glove.

  He might be about to move, but his departure didn’t seem imminent. There was certainly nothing to suggest he’d begun packing.

  I filled a Waterford tumbler with ice and poured Scotch over it for Cal. Then filled another with ice and water for myself, holding it briefly against my forehead. I don’t suppose it actually sizzled. It just seemed as if it had. Outside, the temperature was dropping like a stone; maybe Cal had the heating turned up. And yet the heat seemed to come from within and, desperate to cool down, I picked up a cube of ice, tipping back my head to slide it over the pulse hammering at my neck, over my throat, groaning with relief.

  An echoing sound, softer—the merest catch of breath—sent me spinning round. Cal was standing in the doorway in a white bathrobe that threw the deep tan of his throat, his bare legs, into vivid contrast. His hair had been rough towelled and stood up in a tousled ruff. His eyes, hot enough to melt permafrost, didn’t leave my face as he crossed wide acres of floor, his bare feet making no sound as he closed the gap between us.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  You’ve made a total fool of yourself over the man of your dreams. Do you:

  a. sigh, tell him it’s his fault for being so sexy and remind him that if he ever changes his mind he’s got your phone number?

  b. avoid, for the rest of your life, every possible location where you might meet?

  c. change your name and your hair colour?

  d. emigrate?

  e. next time you meet act as if nothing happened? It takes real acting skill but if you can pull it off he’ll think you’re a very cool lady. He might even have a few regrets of his own…

  WHEN Cal was close enough to touch, he reached for the drink I’d poured for him, swallowed half of it, then set the glass down. ‘I was afraid you might be cold,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better come and turn on the fire.’

  Too late. A fire had been smouldering inside me from the moment I’d first set eyes on him. He’d been unwittingly fanning it ever since and his kiss was all that had been needed to turn it into an inferno.

  ‘I’m not cold,’ I said, unnecessarily. The clinging black dress was too tight and I tried to ease the tight, strapless bodice in an attempt to let some cool air next to my skin.

  He reached out and gripped my wrist, stopping me. ‘God help me, Philly, I’ve tried. I’ve really tried, but you make it very hard to be good.’

  Good? What on earth was he talking about? ‘I… I was h-h-hot…’ I stammered. I’d never stammered in my life…

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, taking the ice from my hand, running it over his own face with the flat of his hand. Over his lips.

  I knew how he felt. My lips were hot, too. Hot and swollen and throbbing.

  ‘I’ve just risked pneumonia,’ he went on relentlessly. ‘Standing under a cold shower to very little effect only to find my self-sacrifice undermined by a girl who belongs to someone else taunting me with her body.’

  ‘No! Why would I—’

  ‘Playing games,’ he said.

  ‘No, really. I told you. I was—’

  ‘Hot. I heard you.’ I jumped as he took the ice from his lips and touched it to my temple, a gesture of such intimacy that I felt exposed and vulnerable and I closed my eyes in an effort to shut out his anger. ‘How hot?’ he demanded.

  I was about to burst into flames. ‘Cal, don’t—’

  I’d made him angry. I didn’t know how, or why. If he’d been any other man I’d have felt nervous, afraid even.

  ‘Here?’ he persisted, letting it slide along the edge of my jaw.

  ‘Cal…’ I protested weakly, my knees buckling beneath me. I was on my feet only because he still had my wrist clamped in his strong fingers, because he was holding me up. ‘Please… I’m sorry…’

  Sorry that he didn’t desire me in the way I wanted. My skin was too tight for my body. My nipples were trying to escape from my dress. I wanted to tear it off, to have his cold hands on my body, holding me, touching me everywhere…

  ‘Here?’ he demanded, mercilessly, stroking the ice slowly down my throat, along the line of the brief bodice, over the mounds of my breasts so that the melting ice trickled in icy runnels down a cleavage that was threatening to burst out of its confines.

  ‘Yes!’ I shouted back, at last finding my voice. ‘Yes, yes, yes! Are you happy? Does it amuse you to turn me on like the Blackpool illuminations? To have me panting for you?’

  ‘I’m not gay, Philly,’ he said, his voice a harsh warning. ‘But I guess you’ve worked that out for yourself.’

  ‘What?’ I opened my eyes. His eyes glittered back with a raw and basic desire. Not? Not gay? Not…The questions could wait; I wanted action, not talk, and I laughed. ‘You can’t begin to know how relieved I am to hear that,’ I said.

  ‘Philly, listen to me! I want you to understand. You thought you were safe, but you’re not. Right now you’re playing with fire.’

  ‘I’m already in flames,’ I told him and I reached up, put my hands around his neck and pulled him down to me. ‘Burning up.’ And I kissed him. Shamelessly. Without reserve. Giving it everything I’d got.

  For a moment he resisted, fought the shock of raw desire that I saw flame in his eyes. Held me off so that he could see me.

  ‘You smell so good,’ he said. Then, mercifully, he pulled me close, held me as if he would absorb me into his own body. ‘So sweet.’ And then his mouth, cold and tasting of Scotch, came down hard on mine, taking me somewhere dark and primitive where there were no thoughts, only feelings.

  I had been so sure Cal had taught m
e everything there was to know about kissing when he’d rescued me from the blind date that Sophie had planned.

  I’d been wrong. That had just been the trailer.

  This was a master-class.

  The release of my zip was a blessed relief. His mouth on my breasts, pushing away the flimsy lace as he sank to his knees, his tongue slowly circling my nipples, sucking on them so I wanted to scream out loud with the pleasure of it, trailing across my stomach, promising ecstasy, was only the most temporary relief. I felt wicked and beautiful and wanted. I felt like a woman and I wanted to become one. Truly. Now. I wanted to be naked and I wanted him, ached for him inside me.

  ‘Cal—’ His name was an urgent whisper, pleading, demanding. Demanding things I didn’t know how to ask for. ‘Please—’

  Maybe he misunderstood the catch in my throat. Or maybe my voice just reached through the thick haze of desire that clouded his eyes, breaking the spell. But he groaned as if in pain.

  ‘Philly…I’m sorry…’

  No-o-o!

  ‘Don’t stop,’ I begged. If I could have heard myself I’d have probably been shocked at such a wanton response, but my senses had been totally subsumed under the urgency of touch and taste. Nothing existed but the honeyed sweetness of Cal’s mouth taking me to places I’d only ever dreamed about, the smooth, warm flesh of his neck and shoulders beneath my hands, the manifestly urgent need I’d woken in him, that he in turn had fired in my veins. ‘Please…don’t stop…’

  But it was too late. He was already in retreat, on his feet with space between us, chill air where a moment before there had only been heat and we had been one.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ he said.

  ‘Yes…yes, we can…’ That he wanted to was plainly evident even for someone of my limited experience, making this rejection all the more incomprehensible. Painful.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you’d just admitted that you could,’ I said bitterly as I realised that he meant it. Then I put my hands to my mouth, shaking my head. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t say that. I’m the one who should be saying that. I thought I could handle this, but I was wrong.’

  I didn’t want him to be sorry. I just wanted him to keep holding me. Well, he was, but only to steady me, and as soon as he was certain that I had control over my limbs, that I wasn’t about to collapse in a heap on his beautifully polished floor, he relinquished even that link. I’d never felt so alone in my life as in that moment when he stepped back, putting clear space between us. Then, before he could change his mind—or I did anything to change it for him—he turned abruptly, crossed the room, picked up the whisky glass and drained it.

  It seemed like a good moment to tuck myself back in my bra, haul up the dress that was bunched around my waist. Only when the zip—horribly loud in the silence—had clicked back into place did he turn to face me.

  ‘You’re alone,’ he said. It sounded like a life sentence. ‘Vulnerable and alone and this is wrong. You should go home. Back to Maybridge. To Don.’

  ‘I’m never going back,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t mean that, Philly.’

  Didn’t I? Where the words had come from I wasn’t sure—only that I was speaking the truth. I’d spent my whole adult life thinking I was in love with Don and yet here I was, just one day away from him, throwing myself at another man as if the end of the world had just been proclaimed.

  Something was wrong, but it wasn’t Cal. It wasn’t this. Something in his stance warned me that he didn’t want to hear that.

  ‘You’re just angry with him for letting you come to London without him,’ he said.

  I would have laughed if I hadn’t been afraid that I might cry instead. There was no point in being angry with Don. I’d tried that, yelling with frustration when his mother had put a spoke in our plans for the hundredth time. He’d just looked like a puppy caught with a chewed slipper—sorry, but helpless.

  There was only one man in the entire world I was angry with and he was right in front of me.

  ‘And you think this is me getting even? Is that it?’ He didn’t answer, which could only mean that was precisely what he thought. ‘You think that’s why I was going out with Sophie?’ I demanded, refusing to let him get away with silence.

  ‘You were pretty much stripped off—’ from the safety of the far side of the room he gave me a swift head-to-toe glance ‘—and ready for action when I waylaid you on your way out tonight.’

  ‘And you thought you’d save me from myself, did you? For Don? Well, I’d say that was really noble of you except for one thing.’ I gave him the look right back, starting with his bare feet, the soft white bathrobe that a moment before had been enfolding me, brushing against my bare skin. Almost losing my nerve, as I finally met his gaze head-on, looked him full in the eye. ‘When you walked in here just now you looked pretty much ready for action yourself.’

  ‘No, damn it—’

  ‘No, damn you, Cal.’ I snatched up my bag, digging out my phone even as I headed for the front door. I was already half in my coat by the time he caught up with me, slamming his hand against the door to stop me leaving.

  I didn’t bother to point out that he’d just told me to go home. I just flipped open my phone and punched redial. My fingers were shaking too much to attempt anything more complicated and it wasn’t as if it mattered who answered.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Calling a taxi. Then I’m getting on with the evening I’d planned. It could be Tony’s lucky night—’

  ‘The hell with that.’ And Cal twitched the phone from my hand and held it to his ear for a moment. Someone must have answered because he said, ‘Sorry, wrong number.’ Then he flipped it shut before handing it back to me, barely able to suppress a grin.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve also got the number of a taxi firm a lot closer than Maybridge.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your last call was for a taxi to take you to the station?’

  ‘Don couldn’t take me.’ I was pretty angry then, too. ‘Something more important came up…’ And then, to my embarrassment, a tear slid down my face. Before I could dash it away, Cal had brushed his thumb over my cheek.

  ‘He must be some kind of man to have kept you for so long with so little care.’

  Maybe I’d just clung like a limpet. Refusing to let go, to accept that he didn’t really want me at all, but was just too kind to say so.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded as Cal reached behind me.

  ‘Helping you into your coat.’ He fed my other arm into the sleeve as if I were a two-year-old rather than twenty-two, holding it together in front of me. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now I can think clearly.’

  He seemed like a man with his thoughts seriously under control to me. My own were nowhere near as composed, but, clutching what was left of my dignity to my heaving bosom, I made a move to leave. He didn’t release me and I said, ‘Please, I should go.’

  ‘Where?’ I raised my eyebrows, hoping to convey without words that it was really none of his business. No matter how much I wanted it to be. ‘Really?’ he persisted.

  ‘To bed,’ I admitted, after a tussle with my conscience. ‘With a cup of cocoa and a good book.’ War and Peace might be just about long enough for me to forget this humiliation, my complete loss of self-possession, but I wasn’t banking on it. ‘You’re welcome to join me but you have to bring your own book,’ I said flippantly. Well, he wasn’t going to take me up on the offer, was he? No one was.

  ‘I thought we were going out for supper?’

  ‘Did you? Was that before or after we had sex?’ Well, that took the smile right off his face. Actually it wasn’t so much a smile as a gentle, maybe-we-can-start again sort of look. He was fooling himself. We could never go back to where we’d been. Just good friends. ‘I guess if it was after,’ I said cruelly, ‘we’d have had to call out for a
pizza again. Thanks, but I’ll pass, this time.’

  ‘When did you last eat?’ he persisted.

  ‘You sound just like my mother.’

  ‘When?’

  I did that big sigh thing. ‘Sophie and I had a mid-shopping snack at the sushi bar in Harvey Nicks. Fabulous.’

  ‘Her choice, I imagine. Very low calorie.’

  ‘Well, I would have probably gone for scrambled eggs on buttered toast, given the choice,’ I admitted. ‘But low calorie is good. At this rate my jeans will soon do up without straining the buttonhole.’

  ‘Your jeans are just perfect the way they are.’ I pulled a face. ‘I mean it!’ he said angrily and I flinched. He tightened his grip on my coat. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. But you’ve got to be hungry.’

  Oh, yes. I was suffering from the kind of misery-induced hunger that only serious quantities of junk food could assuage. And I still hadn’t been shopping. Well, not that kind of shopping anyway.

  ‘Maybe I’ll have another go at the cheese on toast,’ I said, a little shakily. I found being this close to him very disturbing. I really needed to get away.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I’m not prepared to risk that.’

  ‘The cooker’s fixed,’ I protested and then, in a determined effort to change the subject, I said, ‘What happens about the bill for that?’

  ‘It’s covered by the maintenance service contract, but I can’t guarantee to jump you to the front of the queue again.’

  ‘I… Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Just sit down and try to stay out of trouble for two minutes while I get some clothes on.’ I opened my mouth to protest. ‘Please.’

  I closed it again. ‘Please’ was good, although he wasn’t letting me go until I promised to obey him. Maybe he thought I’d make a run for it the moment his back was turned. He could be right about that. But then I’d have to move out, or spend the next few months tiptoeing around to avoid him. On tenterhooks every time I set foot outside the apartment. Using the stairs instead of the lift. And if I went back to Maybridge, grovelled to my manager, begging to be allowed to stay, what would I do with all those expensive new clothes?