‘It’s bigger and has built-in cable TV but there’s something I miss about this one. How about you? Any problems?’ And he sounded as if he really wanted to know.
‘It’s a mixed experience, isn’t it, moving? You wait for the right place, endure the formalities, can’t wait for moving day. But then you realise how much work there is.’ She waved at a pile of plastic-coated chipboard. ‘That will eventually be a shelving unit –if the instructions are to be believed –where I can put all the stuff from these boxes. Which will only leave me with too much rubbish for the wheelie bin.’
‘How about I give you a hand? I’m good with flatpacks.’
‘That would be amazing.’ Her heart leapt. ‘I’m not even going to pretend to protest, I want it done too much.’ After a short search she located her toolkit –four screwdrivers and a hammer –and watched him lay out the lengths of shelving. The muscles of his upper body flexed as the shelves formed themselves up under his capable hands.
The complete unit looked twice as big as when she’d bought it and it didn’t take long to distribute her belongings across the capacious shelves. ‘I can see the carpet,’ Lizzy sighed happily as the last box was emptied.
He began gathering up the rubbish. ‘I’ll stuff this into my car and drop it at the tip. It’s on my way home.’
‘You’ve been such a star. I hope you’re very happy in your new flat.’ She felt a pang that the afternoon was over and was going to miss Jax’s thoughtful gaze. Not to mention the smile and the snaky hips…Would it look totally desperate to thank him with an offer of dinner?
He slid his arms into his jacket and saved her from the decision. ‘Could I take you out tonight? If there’s no boyfriend on the scene, that is.’
‘No.’ Pleasure skittered down her spine. ‘I mean yes. Yes, I’d like to. No, there’s no boyfriend.’
Slowly, he smiled. ‘Later, then. Pick you up at eight?’
He was back at eight, less tousled and more edible in black trousers and a shirt the colour of twilight, complementing perfectly her strappy dress in darkest mulberry. A hungry expression crossed his face. ‘You look…amazing.’
When he looked at her like that she felt amazing. It was the beginning of a heart-thumping, stomach-dropping, body-tingling evening when it felt as if time extended itself especially for them as they discovered a shared love of Thai food, white wine even when they should be drinking red and jolly pubs rather than raucous clubs. The air fizzed between them like shaken champagne.
But, finally, after dinner, after drinks, after a late, long, hand-in-hand stroll around the moonlit village so that he could show her the village shop and the pub –both of which she was already well aware of –at last she was opening her front door and stepping into her sitting room, Jax beside her.
‘Coffee?’ Her voice was husky.
He caught her, pulled her gently against him. ‘I’d rather kiss you.’
Her eyes closed as his lips brushed her cheekbones, the corners of her mouth. She shuddered as his tongue ran slowly along her upper lip.
And then her hands were pulling him deeper into the kiss, her body pushing against the hardness of his in a scalding rush of desire.
His arms tightened fiercely.
She let her head fall back as his mouth dropped to her throat and she forgot that she was no first-date pushover and wondered instead whether it would feel seriously weird to him to make love to her in the bedroom that had been his until so recently. It was shocking behaviour.
The middle of the night. Lizzy drifted out of sleep, Jax’s body warm and firm against the length of hers, fairies’ footsteps prowling down her naked back.
She squirmed against him. Amazing that the fingertips of such a big man could be so feather-light, flushing her with fresh appetite as they trickled across her shoulders, her neck, down to her ribs.
She kissed his neck, nibbling his throat and flicking her tongue into the hollow below his Adam’s Apple. She heard his breathing quicken, felt the feather-light touch vanish as his hands became firmer and more demanding.
Morning. Lizzy found Jax kissing her awake, giving her one of his magical smiles when her eyes fluttered open. ‘Lizzy, can we talk about –?’
But she was already kissing him back and whatever he’d meant to say was postponed because this was something special, something awesome. Something new.
They breakfasted at noon in a cosy café in Bettsbrough with cane chairs and green chequered tablecloths, eating pain au chocolat and drinking Costa Rican coffee. A sultry day, the pain au chocolat sweet on the air.
Suddenly, Jax beat the space over Lizzy’s head. ‘Wasp!’
Lizzy grabbed a menu. As the wasp buzzed her she swatted wildly, sweat bursting out on her forehead. ‘Get rid of it!’
‘Don’t panic. Stay still.’ The wasp was drunk that late in the summer and Jax was able to do something dextrous with a glass and a menu then release the wasp through an open window.
Lizzy felt stupid as soon as the danger was past. ‘I must seem like a wimp, but I go into anaphylactic shock if I get stung. I swell up and have to shoot myself with adrenaline and get to casualty within fifteen minutes. If not…’ She gave a wobbly smile.
‘Oh no!’ he breathed. Colour drained from his cheeks.
She frowned. ‘It’s OK. The allergy thing’s scary but I carry my adrenalin with me.’ She patted her bag.
He didn’t smile. ‘We need to talk about it. I’ll settle up and we can walk to the park.’
Puzzled, she watched him cross the room to the till. Was he one of those people who couldn’t handle the least mention of medical things? That could be a problem because when the worst happened she had to grab the adrenalin pen and plunge it into her thigh. She didn’t have time to mop anybody’s squeamish brow.
Jax’s phone rang. He’d left it on the table.
‘Jax…?’ she called to him. But he’d finished at the counter and was just disappearing into the gents. She hesitated, then picked up. ‘This is Jax’s phone.’
‘Isn’t he there?’ a man’s voice said. ‘I’m Tom, could you tell him we’re meeting at the Pig and Trough in Bettsbrough tonight if he’s up for it?’
‘Pig and Trough, tonight,’ she repeated.
‘And did he find Rosie?’
She paused. ‘Rosie?’
‘Never mind, I’ll ask him later. Thanks!’
Jax returned. His colour was nearly normal again and he took her hand as they threaded their way through the tables and out into the sunshine.
She told him about the call. It would be cooler not to ask but she couldn’t resist. ‘Who’s Rosie?’
He halted, his eyes sombre. ‘That’s what I needed to talk about.’
She waited. Traffic rumbled past, blowing her hair across her face.
‘Right. Well. Um…on the day I moved out of your flat, her tank must’ve tipped so the lid slipped and she scampered off. I suppose she was scared.’ His eyes were wary. ‘And…look, this doesn’t sound good, but when you found me at your door I was going in to see if I could get her back without you having to know. We watched you leaving and I thought I had at least half an hour.’
‘Who scampered off?’
‘Rosie,’ he said. ‘My rose hair tarantula. Tom’s an enthusiast and I bought Rosie from him.’
‘Tarantula!’ For the second time in half an hour she felt sweat burst across her skin.
He led her over to a stone bench. ‘I know I should’ve been honest but I was trying to protect her. It’s not her fault she freaks people out. I was scared you’d buy cans of bug spray and nuke the place. She’s probably in the ducts for the air heating. It’ll be really bad if the heating comes on –she needs moisture as much as heat –’
She made an inarticulate noise in her throat.
He slid his arm around her. ‘It seemed the best way of getting Rosie back safely…But when you told me about your allergy, I realised I had to own up.’
‘But that’s outrageous!’
she burst out, mind racing, face scalding with fury. ‘You bastard! You slept with me –to get Rosie back.’
He recoiled. ‘Absolutely not! I slept with you because you had me absolutely gibbering with desire –’
‘Don’t touch me!’ She leapt up and in seconds was across the road, running as if she had to burn a million calories before nightfall. Her heart felt like mince. His behaviour had been so much more shocking than hers.
The first text message came through before she’d even driven home:
Pls don’t think I slept with u bcos of Rosie. Last night was best ever.
Yeah right, Lizzy replied.
Pls don’t nuke Rosie. Give me chance 2 find her. She’s black and about 10cms. Don’t pick her up, he warned.
Fat chance!
Despite rumours, tarantula bites are only like bee stings. Bee stings threaten my life! she exploded.
Argh! I’m sooooooo sorry.
She thought suddenly of the fairies’ footsteps she’d felt on her naked back during the night. Urrgh! Yuck. Ick. Ick!
That evening, stalking into the Pig and Trough, she found Jax gazing at the footie on the big-screen telly, an island of misery within a sea of cheery men.
His face brightened when he saw her but fell again when she slammed her spare keys on the wooden tabletop.
His mates fell abruptly silent.
‘I’m going to stay with my sister,’ she snapped. ‘You can bloody well find Rosie. You’ve got four days before I need to be back.’
‘Lizzy –’ he tried, eyes pleading.
She cut him off. ‘Go find her, Spiderman.’
It took three days.
Three days to spend with her married sister, Kay, Kay’s slightly annoying husband, Niall, and their two daughters, Melissa and Rhiannon. If she’d thought Kay’s house would be a haven in which to sulk peacefully, she’d been mistaken. On the first evening, Kay sent Niall to the pub and got the children into their pretty pink pyjamas and to bed in record time, then flumped down beside Lizzy, clutching a bottle of wine.
‘So what’s up?’
Lizzy inspected the glass Kay had shoved into her hand. ‘Nothing.’
Her sister snorted, taking a healthy slug of white. ‘“Nothing”,’ she mimicked. ‘The kind of nothing to send you here with a face like a trout? C’mon. Give.’
So Lizzy confessed all: Jax, the instant attraction, the sleeping together on the first date, the spider.
Kay’s eyes grew round. ‘Lizzy,’ she breathed. ‘The first date? You were used.’
‘I know!’
‘You should’ve nuked the flat, anyway.’
‘But he said it wasn’t fair on Rosie…’
Kay snorted. ‘He slept with you to get his spider back. That’s really impolite.’
‘Well…he said not. He said, “Absolutely NOT!”’
‘Believe him?’
Lizzy shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Then they looked up tarantulas on the internet and shrieked at the pictures of the business end of an oversized arachnid. Lizzy went clammy with horror and even Kay looked unsettled. ‘You’d better stay clear of that.’
On the third day, Jax texted: Hooray! Rosie safey off yr premises. Return any time. Jax xxxxx
Lizzy snorted. He could keep his kisses.
There was a man outside her flat.
He was sitting on the floor with his back against the door, reading a book.
‘What have you lost this time?’ she demanded grumpily. He smiled faintly. ‘My place in your affections.’
She let her bags drop to the ground. ‘I might not have come home till late.’
‘I would’ve waited. I’ve been here since six.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve spent the day on my doormat?’ She was almost impressed. ‘Even though you had the key?’
He extracted it from his top pocket and handed it up to her. ‘If you’d come home and found me in your flat I think there would’ve been blood on the carpet.’
She snorted, scraping the key into the lock. ‘Don’t confuse me by treating me with respect at this stage. I suppose you’d better come in. But you can’t be long because I need to do a food run to the supermarket or I won’t eat tonight.’
He stood in the sitting room, watching her flicking through her post with cautious, hazel eyes. He needed a shave. It looked really hot.
‘I should’ve told you about Rosie. But people get very freaky about tarantulas; I had to protect her.’
‘So you said.’
‘Once we got together, I didn’t want anything to spoil it and half the time I wasn’t thinking straight. But I want you to be very clear that what happened between us was no scuzzy plan on my part to gain access to my spider. Lizzy, I’m so attracted to you.’
She felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes. Her voice came out low and furious. ‘Then you shouldn’t have made me feel like a convenient moron.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’ He twisted a painful smile. ‘I just wanted you a lot.’ Silence. ‘And you wanted me,’ he added, softly. ‘Before you knew about Rosie.’
She shrugged, trying to look as if she couldn’t remember.
Slowly, he fished his car keys from his pocket and made for the door. Lizzy willed herself not to blink the moisture out of her eyes and down her cheeks. He turned back. ‘Oh yeah.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, it probably won’t happen.’
‘What?’
‘It’s just…sometimes, if tarantulas creep away like Rosie did it’s because they’re about to lay their eggs.’ He frowned. ‘You’ve got my mobile number if you see any spiderlings. Ring me and I’ll come round and…well, do my best.’ He looked as if he had no clue what this might entail.
Lizzy curled up her toes. ‘Would I be able to see them?’
He opened the door. ‘Well, there would be about three thousand.’
‘Three thousand?’ Her heart began to thump out of her chest and she had to clutch the kitchen counter at the thought that in her heating system there could be three thousand eggs all ready to hatch into three thousand baby Rosies.
In a moment he was there, pulling her into the safety of his arms. ‘You’d better come to my flat while we decide what to do. I can cook you dinner and we’ll look up how long it takes for tarantula eggs to hatch.’
‘But you’ve got Rosie at your flat,’ she wailed. Then stopped. ‘Hang on!’ She pulled back to regard him narrowly. ‘For a girl spider to lay eggs, doesn’t there have to be a boy spider involved? Did you send Rosie to stud or something?’
He bit his lip. ‘Um, I’d “forgotten” about that bit.’ He tried a smile. ‘I was going to suggest you came to my place until we were sure yours was clear. Rosie’s boarding at Tom’s indefinitely.’
She stared. ‘You’ve sent Rosie away?’
He frowned. ‘Of course. I’ve looked up anaphylactic shock –it’s really dangerous, Lizzy. I’m not exposing you to a health risk like that. You could die, you know.’
‘I do know! Why do you think getting stung freaks me out?’ But Lizzy’s glare softened at his sincerity. And suddenly she was melting inside. ‘You must be lonely in that big flat all alone.’
His eyes gleamed with sudden hope. ‘I am, incredibly. Even though Rosie wasn’t a great conversationalist, I liked having her around.’ Slowly, he dipped his head until he could brush her lips with his. ‘But I’ll send her a “Be Happy in Your New Home” card –if it means you and me can be together.’
She flooded with sudden heat. ‘You’d give up your spider for me?’
‘Tom’s a bit shocked but, yes. In a heartbeat.’
She sighed as she slipped her arms around his neck. ‘That’s the kind of shocking behaviour I can deal with.’
Feel The Fear
Alison May
Alison May
ALISON MAY was born and raised in North Yorkshire but now lives in Worcester with one husband, no kids and no pets. There were goldfish once. That ended badly.
Al
ison has studied History at the University of York, and worked as a waitress, a shop assistant, a learning adviser, an advice centre manager, and a freelance trainer, before settling on ‘making up stories’ as an entirely acceptable grown-up career plan.
Alison has been a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association since 2011, and won the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy in 2012. She has a degree in Creative Writing and now writes contemporary romantic comedies. Her debut novel, Much Ado About Sweet Nothing, was published by Choc Lit in November 2013.
You can follow Alison on Twitter @MsAlisonMay, and find out more about her at www.alison-may.co.uk
Feel The Fear
Eleven hundred hours. Situation review: I can’t see it. It’s not in its place by the skirting board. I pull my feet onto the chair and scan the room. A movement catches my eye. It’s there. It stops close to the wall between the fireplace and the TV stand. I think it’s looking at me.
I take a deep breath. I can do this. It’s not watching me. It’s not taunting me by being here. I imagine Neil’s voice, ‘It’s more scared of you than you are of it.’
I try to forget that Neil lied about everything, and pretend that, on infestation issues at least, he was an upstanding and reliable purveyor of truths. I pull a flip-flop off and take careful aim. Bravery is what is required here. I lower my feet onto the floor and lean towards it. I launch the shoe as hard as I can towards my captor. It lands four inches short. The thing scuttles along the wall towards the TV. As soon as it moves, I jump back into my chair and pull my feet into the safe zone.
Situation review: Line of sight to the thing? Check. Still breathing? Check. Number of shoes? One. The thrown flip-flop is lying out of reach, deep in no-man’s-land. Only a fool would go back for it. I hug my knees and look at the clock: 11:04, Saturday morning. That’s good. I’m not at work until Monday, so I can totally just stay here. It’s fine.
There’s a magazine on the arm of the sofa. I lean out of my chair and grab it. See. This is OK. I’m having a nice relaxing Saturday morning, chilling out, reading my magazine. I try to concentrate on the fashion spread. It’s tricky when one eye is on permanent watch duty.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 24