by Fiona Walker
‘Nobody else around to dust them,’ she giggled.
‘Shame the marriage was never consummated.’ He let out a theatrical sigh then pressed his lips to Beccy’s head, breathing in its shampoo scent. She used Johnson’s baby shampoo – he had seen the bottle in the bathroom and always found it fitting because her attitude was so childlike. He thought wistfully of Faith and her boyish body, now so cruelly denied to him.
Beccy’s surprisingly womanly body was getting decidedly hot and bothered against his. ‘You really think it’s a shame?’
‘Nobody dusting my beautiful Limey’s knick-knacks?’ Lem exclaimed, still camping it up. ‘A crying shame: you were built for luxury. You need a woman who does.’
‘I need a man who does more than my husband,’ she corrected, wriggling out of the hug and blushing furiously.
Lemon kept hold of her arms. ‘Your husband would do anything for you, you know that.’
They exchanged a lingering smile, Beccy bashful and cautious, Lemon suddenly cocksure, his excitement mounting as he looked at his sidekick from an entirely new perspective. He’d been barking up the wrong tree all year, he realised, trying to climb the prickly acacia rather than the weeping willow. Lemon was no druid, but Beccy was no flower fairy, as he’d learned in recent weeks. All that flakiness hid a stubborn will. She still refused to accept that Hugo had taken advantage of her at the Moncrieff’s party, although it was obvious she was deeply damaged by it. Lemon was starting to tire of the constant comfort she craved. Tonight, however, he saw the perfect antidote to her neediness and his own ongoing sex drought. He was now feeling so cocksure that his pyjama bottoms had developed a front canopy.
‘Do you love me?’ Beccy asked suddenly, putting him off his stroke.
‘Yeah,’ he said vaguely.
Beccy’s heart, so bruised from seeing Tash cradling Lough in her arms while her beloved Hugo was away, beat hard and fast against her ribs. Lemon was safe and familiar; he surely deserved access to that secret part of herself she’d never quite let loose. It was kicking so hard against the stable door now, she had to free it. Libido-ration beckoned.
Two dressing gowns were dropped in record time.
Beccy found him surprisingly confident and adroit. She had spent a decade trying to find herself, but within minutes Lem was finding parts she never even knew existed.
‘I’ve only had a couple of lessons, but I had a very exacting tutor,’ he panted.
‘I thought you were a virgin too?’
‘We’re neither of us virgins now,’ he said a moment later as he thrust eagerly inside her.
Soon Beccy didn’t care whose cherry had been picked first, if it felt this thrilling. When she caught sight of their reflections sliding together in the wardrobe mirror, illuminated by just the dim bedside light, she let out a gasp of pleasure.
Lemon joined in, howling like a coyote.
As her body went from unexplored territory to conquered empire, Beccy could almost feel her mood shift from black clouds to blue sky. She was making love. She loved Lemon.
Five minutes later, he was ready to go again. Unlike Faith, Beccy’s enjoyment increased with each encore.
What Lemon lacked in stature, he more than made up with in eagerness and ability to go again and again. Beccy simply couldn’t get enough of his stubby, wide and very active spring-loaded cock.
They were still making love at dawn, the horses kicking hungrily for breakfast outside.
‘If Faith’s your tom-boyfriend, what am I?’ Beccy asked leadingly.
‘You’re my best-girlfriend.’ Lemon, pumping away happily, kissed her nose.
Beccy felt marvellous. She had a boyfriend. It didn’t quite soothe away the panic she had felt at seeing Lough and Tash embrace, but it made life a whole lot rosier.
When he issued his last coyote wail of the night, rolled off her and sagged back against his pillows, sated and jubilant, she covered his sweaty face with kisses. ‘I’ll go and put out morning feeds,’ she offered, ‘then I’ll come back and cook you breakfast before we muck out.’ She went out, humming ‘Two Souls’.
Waiting in bed, Lem reflected that, for a gay man, he was getting an awful lot of girl action – certainly more than his straight boss. If Lough wanted to get hooked on a married women, that was his loss. Goey virgins were where it was at.
Thinking about Lough and his fixation on Tash, Lemon’s eyes narrowed, but he no longer felt so threatened by the situation. Wrapped in a post-coital glow, he felt invincible. Hugo had stolen a gold medal from under Lough’s nose. He’d taken advantage of Beccy who was so vulnerable. That he deserved to have his charmed life wrecked had never been in doubt, so Lemon could hardly complain if Hugo’s wife now performed that duty with her characteristic lack of guile, cuckolding the arrogant Brit by mounting the most talented rider in the world. Any romance between Lough and Mrs Beauchamp would never last, after all. They were both far too easily led. Lemon had more chance of living happily ever after with Beccy.
The thought made him chuckle as he settled back beneath the bedcovers and looked forward to his cooked breakfast.
Outside, still humming ‘Two Souls’, Beccy wafted around on a cloud.
Staying up all night and falling in love might have improved her mood immeasurably, but it had done nothing for her concentration. She gave horses the wrong feeds, reeling around happily, still smelling Lemon’s body on hers. Dancing into Heart’s stable, she plonked his feed bucket at his stamping feet. A moment later his hooves were lifting off the ground.
Beccy screamed as the horse, scenting escape, made a lunge towards the open door. Instinct told her to stand up, but suddenly his chest was right in her face.
She stood, frozen in horror. Before she could move a pair of arms closed around her and rugby-tackled her to the ground, pinning her there as the horse jumped clean overhead and clattered away across the yard, whinnying delightedly.
The arms let go and Faith looked up at Lough’s furious face. For a moment, the déjà vu was so intense it almost blinded her.
‘You okay?’ came a bullet-shot enquiry.
‘Yes,’ she spluttered.
He was gone in an instant, grabbing a headcollar and crossing the yard to catch Heart and lead him back. He looked furious. ‘You should never leave his door open. You know that.’
She nodded, moving to one side of the stable as he led in the overexcited horse, and feeling very silly. Her face flamed so much she was surprised the shavings bed didn’t combust around her.
Lough waited for her to go out before following her and bolting the door. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ His eyes studied her red face. ‘You look a bit spaced out.’
She nodded again, feeling incredibly awkward. It was the first time she’d been alone with him at close range since he discovered she was behind the texts and phone calls. She stared at her shoes.
‘I’m really okay,’ she gabbled, her mouth starting to bolt faster than Heart from the door. ‘Really, really okay. Fabulous, in fact. Never better. Thank you for asking. Appreciate it. And thanks for rescuing me back there. Super job. You’re so amazing with horses.’ She peered up at him, hoping she’d said enough to convince him.
Lough’s rare, guarded smile touched his eyes and mouth. ‘It’s easy.’ He gave her a mock salute and walked away.
Beccy caught her breath. ‘It’s easy,’ she repeated. Suddenly ‘Two Souls’ had been replaced in her head by ‘All you Need is Love’. Over and over again that four letter word repeated tunefully within her. She reeled back against the clambering roses, knowing that she really was very much in love. It was knowing who, exactly, she was in love with that troubled her.
Chapter 50
Sylva admired her latest Cheers! photo-spread. This week’s issue was emblazoned with the lines ‘Skinny Sylva Denies Anorexia Jibes – “I am just a healthy, campaigning and hard-working mum in search of true love” she tells Cheers! exclusively from her lovely Cotswolds retreat.’ On the front cover was a hea
vily airbrushed photo of a coppery, fake-tanned Sylva beneath a fluffy baby blue Cossack hat, her arms around two small, fluffy-hatted boys and in front of her, for the first time, an exquisitely pretty girl in a pink Cossack hat on which Sylva was resting her chin. Inside were pages of her fake château shot from lots of flattering angles in the snow with Sylva and her kids tobogganing, playing snowballs and looking like a re-enactment of an Abba video.
Her cabbage water, green tea and vitamin tablet diet had gone rather too well and now she was in danger of emaciation. Barely even a size four, and now weighing just under seven stone, she knew she had to start eating soon. Her periods had long since stopped, her face was getting hairy and her breath was starting to smell of acetone. Any more punishment and her very expensive veneers would begin to fall out. Her sex drive had vanished, but that was no bad thing as her ambition to bed a pop star had also diminished. In fact, she hadn’t eaten a full meal since Dillon had come to lunch all those weeks ago.
The Cheers! team had done a good job, however. She certainly looked incredibly slim, but despite the hollow cheeks, lollipop head and unnaturally tiny frame, a combination of clever styling and winter layers made her look more captivating than ever. The newly dark hair worked fantastically against winter whites and her trademark baby blue. Sylva was pleased with the results. Mama, however, was not.
‘Dillon Rafferty should be in these pictures by now!’ She threw the magazine back at Sylva when shown it.
Sylva sucked her teeth. ‘I think he is not the right husband for me, Mama.’ She’d found their play-date lunch wholly tedious. ‘My campaign is a big success. The Rockfather has agreed to open all his paths and donated woodland to the local people. He has been so very generous.’ She dared herself to say it. ‘I think maybe we have chosen the wrong Rafferty?’
‘Nonsense!’ Mama was incensed, astounded that her daughter would dare question her judgement. ‘The plan is perfect as it is. Saddle the horses, maika. You will ride to the farm now. The villagers in Oddlode post office say Dillon’s at home this weekend.’
‘The horses have already gone out,’ Sylva sighed, having long since handed over the reins of now pony-mad Zuzi’s daily hack to a deputy.
Dillon had done nothing but drive his new scramble bike around his farmland for days on end.
He sped out of the orchard in a flurry of mud and zipped along the headland of the biggest pasture field towards the woods at the far edge of his boundary, where a gate accessed a neighbouring farm’s overgrown water meadows. Taking the gravel track alongside the low-lying marshy wasteland, he headed up towards the public byway that led to the ridge.
Riding the bike made him feel better about the Nell situation, but it didn’t make it go away. He was reliably informed through his loyal PA mafia that his publicity team was now gearing up to take control of their biggest artiste’s love life. If Dillon slipped any further into an antisocial depression because his current relationship was well past being on the rocks and was now washed up, bloated and decomposing on the foreshore, they would step in like eco-warriors to replace it with a sunset scene. It was like being a panda in a zoo. If he dumped her, he knew he’d be prey to every publicity-hungry PR team with a matching mate. At least having Nell around gave him protection from that, even if he could hardly bear to be in the same room as her. This week, she’d taken herself off to Amsterdam to visit her ex, Milo. It was obvious she was trying to make Dillon jealous. He only wished he cared more.
He was sweating heavily under his leathers, which felt constricting and uncomfortable. Braking briefly, he unzipped the top half and pulled it down, the rugby shirt beneath clinging wetly to his arms and chest. He’d put on weight lately, a sure sign that he was unhappy. His record label was on his case to shift it, and shave off his winter beard, blaming his slipshod image for slipping sales. To show willing, Dillon had installed a range of state-of-the-art gym equipment in the newly converted milking parlours. Yet he hadn’t even taken the plastic wrapping off the treadmill, bench press and weights, unlike the scramble bike that he put to work as soon as it came out of the delivery truck. Its angry engine was the perfect accompaniment to his thudding head as he sped around his farm and beyond, high above the valley. It was the closest thing to riding a horse that he had found, and he loved it.
He pushed the throttle as far as it would go, skidding and skittering over potholes and through puddles and he climbed the track, shooting around a dog-leg and then, far too late, seeing a woman and a child riding towards him.
The back wheel slid away and, despite the breakneck speed, in that strange, suspended snatch of time just before impact Dillon had time to spot his landing on stony ground, to curse the fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet and that his leathers were dangling around his waist, and to register that he definitely knew the woman and her child. Then he hit the ground at such speed that he started sliding, rolling and turning over like a rag doll toward a blur of horse legs.
The air was knocked from his already stinging body with an almighty punch as something landed on him. He heard hooves pounding away. The weight was still pressing down on him. His bike engine was ticking over nearby, its sedate 250cc putter strangely incongruous after such high drama.
Groggy but conscious, with a mouthful of mud and blood, he took a while to realise that the woman who had been riding had landed on top of him. She was now calling out at the girl in a foreign language, seemingly telling her to stay calm, that she was okay, that she would help her down. But she was tangled up in Dillon’s loose leathers, one slim ankle having slipped into the armoured sleeve and jammed so that when she went to stand up, she collapsed back down on him.
‘Ow!’ he wailed. That hurt more than falling off the bike.
A little voice called out: ‘No, mama. Je mu! Je to šlovek. Sylva je princ! On je princ!’
Hooves were suddenly banging about close to Dillon’s head again.
‘No, Zuzi, no!’ the woman cried.
He peered up in time to see a set of mud-splattered pony legs nearby and then, to his surprise, a little girl fell very gracefully from the saddle and landed in a heap alongside them, her pretty eyes fluttering shut with what he could almost have sworn was a giggle.
‘Zuzi! Zuzi!’ The woman was shrieking and crying out in panic, starting to flail about and inadvertently kicking Dillon in the kidneys and ribs.
‘Woah, woah – steady on!’ He quickly unzipped the waist of his leathers so that the jacket came free and she could scramble away to pull out her leg. Then, in a blur of flying dark hair and red Puffa jacket, she rushed to the girl, who opened her eyes and smiled. Gathering her into her arms, the woman burst into tears.
‘Hana?’ Dillon struggled upright, recognising Sylva’s sister at last.
She started spitting something incomprehensible at him in Slovak.
She had a nasty gash on her forehead and lip, he noticed, but landing on him seemed to have cushioned her from serious injury. Little Zuzi, meanwhile, was sitting up happily and watching her mother shout at Dillon with interest. She looked terribly pleased with herself for some reason.
Despite her recent protestations, Mama was secretly starting to harbour doubts about her marriage plans for Sylva. For all his soft cheese, Dillon Rafferty was a hard target. She had even begun to leaf through her Husbands file for alternative ideas.
But then, like a miracle, he appeared through her daughter’s electric gates in a huge Land Rover with Hana and Zuzi bouncing around beside him as the car sped over the cattlegrid to park directly in front of Le Petit Château.
Mama hastily dragged Sylva away from executing fifty ab flexes with her personal trainer just as Hana marched in, covered in cuts and bruises, and brushed past them without a word, carrying Zuzi in her arms. The little girl, who was smiling widely, gave her aunt a big thumbs-up.
Mama thrust Sylva outside to corral Dillon.
‘You must come in,’ she offered half-heartedly, aware that she was covered in sweat, had no make-up on a
nd was wearing an unflattering Lycra workout suit.
‘I can’t.’ He backed off nervously. ‘I’m due to pick up my daughters at Birmingham airport in an hour.’
‘Even better!’ Sylva responded to Mama’s sharp prod from behind. ‘Why not bring them here to play with Zuzi and the boys this week?’
‘They all got on so well last time,’ Mama droned behind her like an eager bumble bee.
‘Sure, the girls would love to see Zuzi. But you must come to West Oddfield this time.’ Dillon headed towards his car. ‘They can all splash in the indoor pool. Bring the family – Hana, too. Just no cameras, okay?’
‘Sure. Great!’ Sylva waved him away casually.
Behind her, Mama waited until his car was out of sight before letting out an excited shriek and punching the air. ‘Go upstairs and get out all your bikinis,’ she ordered Sylva. ‘We will choose something together.’
Sylva trailed upstairs, leaving Mama looking up to the sky and thanking the saints.
‘You have done a very good thing,’ she told Hana when she went back into the house. ‘He will be your brother-in-law soon.’
Hana gaped at her. ‘No! He is not at all right for maika.’
‘He is, and your opinion is not wanted on the subject. Now shoo.’
Hana shook her sore head as Mama bustled her away. Dillon was a very good man, but not the one to make their pretty kitten happy. She could hear the boom-boom of music upstairs in Sylva’s dressing room, and then raised voices as mother and daughter argued about what she was going to wear to ensnare Dillon Rafferty. Hana was suddenly reminded of their family apartment in Bratislava; Mama and Sylva had been like this then, so close yet forever scrapping. And even the music had been the same – the band that her step-father had loved, with its sexy, grinding rock anthems and bad-boy reputation. Mask, she remembered. The band had been called Mask.
Nell retied the scarf around Giselle’s neck and kissed her daughter on the nose, pointing out a windmill as their boat chugged from Volendam to Marken, an antiquated Dutch fishing village where, Milo promised, some of the inhabitants still wore traditional costume.