by Joss Wood
‘Superficially.’ Compared to what he’d gone through, his stab wound was minimal. ‘Anyway, I’m off for a few weeks unless—’
She knew the drill. Journalists were only ‘off’ until the next story came along. ‘Unless some huge story breaks.’
Jack nodded his agreement. ‘So, I thought I’d stay in Cape Town for a bit longer.’
‘In my house?’ Ellie heard the squeak in her voice and winced. She sounded like a demented mouse.
‘Well, I could move into a hotel, but I spend enough time in hotels as it is and I’d rather pay you.’
Ellie stopped in her tracks and turned to look at him. ‘You’d pay to live with me?’
What exactly did he mean by that? What would be included in that deal? Not that she believed for one minute that he’d make her an offer that was below-board, but she just wanted to make sure... And really, how upset would she be if he suggested sleeping together? Since she was constantly thinking about sex with him...not very.
His grin suggested he knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘It’s a simple transaction, Ellie. Someone has to get paid to put my butt into a bed and I’d prefer it to be you and not some nameless, faceless corporation.’ Jack stepped forward and his thumb drifted over her chin. ‘A bed, food, coffee. No expectations, no pressure.’ Damn.
‘Oh.’ Ellie dropped her head and thought she was an idiot for feeling disappointed. You don’t want to get involved, on any level, with any man—remember, Ellie? Especially a man like Jack. Too good-looking, too successful, too much. Rough, tough, unemotional and—the big reason—never around.
But she wanted him. She really did.
Jack dropped his hand and Ellie was glad, because she didn’t know for how much longer she could stop herself reaching up and kissing him, tasting those firm lips, feeling the rasp of his stubble under her lips, her fingers. She watched him walk away and after two steps he turned and looked back at her.
He must have seen something on her face, because his steps lengthened and then his hands were on her hips, yanking her into him. His mouth finally touched hers sweetly, gently, before he allowed his passion to explode. His quick tongue slipped between her lips, scraped her teeth and tangled with her own in a long, deep kiss that had no end or beginning.
One hand held her head in place and the other explored her back, her hip, the curves of her bottom, the tops of her thighs. Ellie slid her hand up his back, under his loose T-shirt, and acquainted herself with his bare flesh, the muscles in his back, that strip of flesh above his shorts and the soft leather belt. He was heat and lust and passion in its purist, most concentrated form; causing her nipples and her thighs to press together to subdue the deep, insistent throbbing between them.
He kissed her some more.
Ellie wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally lifted his head and rested his forehead against hers. ‘I’m burning up, on fire from wanting you. That’s why I haven’t kissed you before this.’
‘Why did you kiss me now?’ Ellie whispered back, her hands gripping his sides.
‘Because you looked like you wanted me to—really wanted me to.’
She really had. And she wouldn’t object to more.
Jack stepped back, linked his hands behind his head. The muscles in his arms bulged. ‘I can’t take you to bed... I mean of course I can. I want to. Desperately. But it would be the worst idea in the world.’
It didn’t matter that she agreed with him. She wanted to know why he thought so. ‘Why?’
Jack’s mouth twisted. ‘I’m not good for you. I’m hard and cynical, frequently bitter. I have seen so many bad things. You’re arty and creative and...innocent. Untainted.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Ellie pursed her lips. He made her sound like a nun. ‘You’re not a bad man, Jack.’
‘But I’d be bad for you.’ Jack dropped his arms and stared out to sea. ‘I am not a noble man, Ellie, but I’m trying to do the right thing here. Help me out, okay?’
Ellie lifted her hands in puzzlement. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’
Jack glared at her. ‘Well, for starters you could stop looking at me as if you want to slurp me up through a straw. Sexy little dresses like that don’t help—and you’re very lucky that you kept possession of that thing you call a bikini this afternoon. Short shorts and tight tops are out too...’
‘Would you like me to walk around in a tent?’ Ellie asked sarcastically, but secretly she was enjoying the fact that she could turn him on so quickly. It was a power she’d never experienced before, a heady sensation knowing that this delicious man thought that she was equally tasty.
‘That might work,’ Jack replied.
Ellie pulled in a breath as he stepped forward and took her much smaller hand in his. His expression turned sober.
‘El, I like you, but I think you have enough going on in your life without the added pressure of an affair with me. I need to write your father’s life story and I don’t know how objective I’m going to be if I am sleeping with his daughter.’
Ellie kept her eyes on his and gestured him to continue. Everything he’d said so far had made sense, but she could still feel his lips on hers, his big hands on her skin. Taste him on her lips.
‘It’s been a long time since I just liked a woman, enjoyed her company. Can we keep this simple? Try to just be friends? That way, when I leave, there won’t be any...stupid feelings between us.’ Jack stared down at her fingers. ‘You know it’s the smart thing to do.’
Ellie sighed and wished she could be half as erudite as he was. Sure, words were the tools of his trade, but he made her feel as thick as a peanut butter sandwich when it came to expressing herself. Only two words came to mind, and neither were worthy of this conversation.
‘Yeah, okay,’ she muttered.
Jack smiled and ran his thumb over her knuckles before dropping her hand. ‘So, will you go to the camping store for a tent or shall I?’
‘Make sure it’s a pink one.’ Ellie looked around and her expression softened. ‘Oh, we’re here!’
‘Where?’ Jack asked as she grabbed the edge of his shirt and tugged him across the road.
Ellie walked up to some wrought-iron gates and wrapped her fingers around the bars, looking at the dilapidated double-storey building.
Jack tugged on the chain that held the gates together. ‘What is this place?’
‘It was a library at the turn of the century, then it was turned into a house, but it’s been empty a couple of years. I’ve heard a rumour that old Mrs Hutchinson is finally considering selling it. Restored, this building would be utter perfection. Two storeys of whimsy, with balconies and bay windows galore. Its irregular shape reminds me of a blowsy matron in a voluminous skirt and a peculiar hat. Romantic, eccentric and very over the top.’
Jack immediately picked up where she was going with this. ‘You’re thinking of this place for the bakery?’
‘It’s just around the corner from the present location, with ample parking space. I took a box of cupcakes to the Town Planning office and...well, bribed them into letting me take a look at the building plans. There is a lot of space, but not too much...enough to hold the bakery, the delicatessen and a proper breakfast and lunch restaurant.’
Jack put his hands on his hips. ‘It’s difficult to comment without seeing the place. Let’s go in.’
Ellie pointed at the sign on the fence. ‘“No Trespassers”.’
‘If I obeyed those signs I’d never get a story,’ Jack said, and pulled at a rusty iron post on the fence. It moved, and he gestured Ellie through the gap he’d created. ‘You’re slim enough to climb through here.’
‘And you?’
Jack grabbed the top of the fence with his hands, yanked himself up and held his body weight while he swung his legs onto the railing. Within seconds he was on the other side and his breathing hadn’t changed.
Ellie shook her head as she slipped through the fence. ‘If you’ve split open your cut you’re going to the
emergency room,’ she told him.
‘Yes, Mum.’ Jack grinned and led her up to the huge front door. He pursed his lips at the lock. ‘No breaking in through this door.’
‘We’re not breaking in through any door!’ Ellie stated as he pulled her away from the front door and around the house. ‘Seriously, Jack, that’s a crime!’
Jack peered through a window. ‘Relax, there’s nothing to steal, so if we get caught we can plead curiosity. I’m good at talking my way out of trouble.’
‘Jack!’
Jack stopped at a side door. ‘Good. Yale lock. Pass me a hairpin, El.’
‘You are not going to... Hey!’ Ellie slapped her hand against her head where Jack had yanked the pin from her hair. ‘That hurt!’
‘Sorry.’ Jack opened the pin, inserted it into the lock and jiggled the handle. Within a minute the door swung open to his touch. ‘Bingo.’
‘I cannot believe that you picked that lock! Who taught you that?’
‘You really don’t want to know.’
Ellie looked curious. ‘No, tell me. Who?’
‘Your father, actually.’
Ellie rolled her eyes and Jack just grinned as he placed a hand on her lower back and pushed her inside.
‘I so didn’t need to know that!’ she muttered.
‘Relax.’ Jack placed his hands on his hips and looked into the room to his right. ‘Kitchen through here—an enormous one, but it needs to be gutted. God, Ellie, the ceiling is falling down!’
‘I never said it didn’t need work. Look at these floors, Jack. Solid yellow-wood.’
Jack looked at the patch of direct sunlight on the warped wood and at the hundreds of holes in it. ‘White ants, Ellie, white ants. I bet the house is infested with them.’
‘Are you always this pessimistic?’ Ellie asked as she opened doors on either side of the passage.
‘I just think you should slow down to a gallop. I can see the look in your eye. If you could you’d slap the deposit down,’ Jack said. He picked at a piece of wallpaper and a strip came off in his hand. ‘Before you even consider doing that I suggest you get an architect to look at the place, and a civil engineer to check that it’s not going to fall down.’
It was sensible, unemotional advice—but sensible was for later. Right now she wanted to feel, sense, imagine.
Jack ducked his head into another room and Ellie heard what she swore was a screech. ‘Did you squeal?’ she called.
Jack hurried out of the room. ‘Girls squeal. Men...don’t. A rat nearly ran over my shoe! I hate rats!’
‘Well, you squeal like a girl, and I’d rather have rats than white ants,’ Ellie replied as they stepped into a massive hallway which was dominated by a two-storey-high ceiling and a thoroughly imposing staircase. Coloured sunshine from the stained glass inserts next to that imposing front door threw happy patterns onto the wooden floor.
‘Okay, this is amazing,’ Jack admitted.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ Ellie said, falling hard.
Nothing had prepared her for the immediate visceral connection she felt to this property. She walked to the bay window behind the staircase and looked out onto the wilderness beyond, with its overgrown shrubs and trees. She could easily imagine the rambling, once stunning gardens that surrounded the house, like carefully chosen accessories on a red-carpet dress. Ellie walked the area downstairs and quickly established that the place could, without a huge amount of construction, be adapted to house the bakery.
It just took imagination—and she had lots of that.
‘Why hasn’t someone converted it into a restaurant? A bed and breakfast? An art gallery?’ Jack asked when she rejoined him in the hall.
‘Many have tried. Many have failed. Mrs Hutchinson hasn’t ever been prepared to sell. She doesn’t need the money and this building was her childhood home.’ She shrugged at Jack’s enquiring face. ‘Basically, she’s bats. The town fruitcake. She’s refused offers—huge offers—for stupid reasons. Perceived lack of manners, not polishing your shoes. One man wore too much jewellery.’
‘She sounds bonkers,’ Jack said.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Ellie said briskly, and tipped her head to look up at him. ‘Let’s finish with the breaking and entering. I could murder a drink.’
Jack followed her down the passage back to the side door, which he yanked open for her. ‘Technically, it was only entering. We didn’t break anything.’
‘Semantics,’ Ellie said as he pulled the door shut behind him and they headed back down the winding driveway to the road.
‘You really are a bit of a pansy, aren’t you?’ Jack leapt over the fence and jammed his hands in his pockets as he waited for her to climb back through the gate.
She was just straightening up when she heard a car approaching and slowing down. Ellie looked up and straight into the eyes of the driver, who was looking at her curiously.
‘Oh, dammit.’
Jack looked from her to the disappearing Toyota. ‘Problem?’
Ellie slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. ‘That was Mrs Khumalo, the busiest of St James’s busybodies. Soon it will be all over town either that I am having secret trysts with a married man, or that I am buying the property, or that I’m joining a cult and this is going to be its headquarters.’
Jack laughed as she stomped down the road. ‘Cool. As the great Oscar Wilde said, “There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.’
‘Grrr.’
* * *
They fell into an easy silence on their walk home from the pub, and Ellie enjoyed the fact that they could be quiet together, that neither of them felt the need to fill the space with empty words.
Jack took the keys from her hand and opened the front door for her, nudging the dogs out of the way with a gentle knee so that she could walk in first. In the hallway Ellie dropped her bag on the side table and placed her hands on her back, stretching while Jack examined the life-size nude painting of a blonde on a scarlet velvet couch on the opposite wall. She wore only her long hair and a waist-length string of pearls...and a very come-hither grin.
‘I can’t stop looking at this painting.’
Since it was a nude painting of a gorgeous woman, Ellie wasn’t surprised. Most men had the same reaction.
‘Who is that?’
‘My best friend Merri.’
Jack stepped up to the portrait and lightly touched the canvas with the back of his knuckle. ‘I meant the artist. The way he’s captured the blue veins in her pale skin, her inner glow... God, he’s amazing!’
Ellie felt a spurt of pure, unadulterated pleasure. ‘Thanks.’
Jack’s mouth fell open. ‘You painted this?’
‘Mmm. I studied Fine Art at uni and lived in London for a while, but I couldn’t support myself by selling my art so I came home and started work at the bakery.’
‘It’s brilliant. But you left out quite a bit between uni and coming back to Cape Town.’ He touched the frame with his fingertips. ‘And this is more than something you pass time with.’
Ellie felt the familiar stab, the longing to immerse herself in a big painting that sucked her into a different dimension. ‘It used to be my passion. It isn’t any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘I painted that just before I went to the UK. I’d finished uni and was going to conquer the world. I was so in love with art, painting, creating. I was...infused by art.’
Jack sat on the bottom stair and patted the space next to him. Ellie sat down and rested her arms on her knees, looking at Merri’s naughty smile.
‘Were you always arty?’
Ellie shrugged. ‘I think I started when I was about six. I remember the first time I fell into a drawing.’
‘Tell me.’
Ellie felt her voice catch. ‘Mitchell was home. He’d just come back from somewhere in Africa. He was working in his study—nothing strange there—and the door was o
pen. He was reading aloud an article he’d written...he did that. He read all his articles aloud.’
‘He still does.’
‘It was a report on the genocide happening in Rwanda—Burundi—somewhere like that. The report was graphic, horrific...’ Ellie shuddered and felt Jack’s strong arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. This time there was nothing sexual about his touch. It was pure comfort. ‘Mitchell called it like he saw it: women, old people, children. Severed heads, limbs...’
‘I know, sweetheart. Skip that part. Tell me about the art.’ Jack rested his chin on her hair, shaken by the idea of a little girl hearing that. Damn Mitch and his stupidity. The man was a talented journalist, but as a father...useless.
‘I couldn’t get the pictures his words conjured out of my brain and the only thing I could think of to do was draw. Happy things—butterflies, princesses. I had nightmares for a while, and I’d wake up and hit my desk to paint or colour.’ Ellie sighed. ‘Mitchell could never censor himself. He had no conception of sensibility—that young kids didn’t need to know that sixteen Afghan rebels had been executed and their decapitated heads paraded through the streets as a warning and that he’d witnessed it. It drove my mother mad that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut in front of me.’
‘But you had your art?’
‘I did. He reported on brutality and war, violence, and I tried—still try—to counter that by producing beauty. It used to be through oils. Now it’s through cake and icing.’ Ellie shrugged and managed a smile.
Jack saw her staring at Merri’s portrait and caught the pain and sadness in her eyes. There was more to this story or he wasn’t a journalist. ‘Why did you give it up?’
‘Can we skip this part?’ Ellie asked with a wobble in her voice.
‘I’d really like to know.’ Jack lowered his voice, made it persuasive.
‘You ask me all these questions but you won’t talk about yourself,’ Ellie complained.
True. ‘I know. I’m sorry. But tell me anyway.’
‘Short story. He was the owner of an exclusive art gallery in Soho.’ Grigson’s, Jack remembered. The short blond from that photo in his room. ‘He offered me an exhibition, told me I was the next big thing. I fell deeply, chronically in love with him. I found out later that was his modus operandi. I wasn’t the first young artist he’d seduced into bed with that promise.’