by Liz Fielding
‘Natasha,’ he called after her. Anything to stop that swaying. Anything to stop her from walking away. ‘Her name was Natasha.’
It worked. She stopped, turned.
No. That was no better. Now, instead of her bottom, he had a full frontal of her heart-stopping bosom, hugged by a close-fitting vest top that swooped low enough to offer a promise of the delights it concealed. He’d caught more than a glimpse that night he’d taken her to the Assembly Rooms when, oblivious of his presence, she pulled off her top to display the kind of bra that had caused traffic chaos when an equally well-endowed model had displayed one on sixty feet of roadside hoarding.
He’d never been turned on by the too obvious sexuality of wide hips, a generous bosom, an old-fashioned waist, but there had been no doubting the effect Ellie’s body had had on him that night.
Or now.
And he kept on inflicting it on himself. While his mind was determined on one course, his body just kept walking into trouble. It was walking into trouble now, he knew, as he took a step towards her.
‘She was tall, fair, slender, always perfectly dressed, never a hair out of place,’ he said, as if by conjuring up Tasha’s pristine pale gold image he could somehow protect himself from a sensual clamour that responded so insistently to Ellie March. ‘She spoke ten languages fluently, another seven well enough to carry on a conversation. She was perfection, and I loved her.’ He stopped six inches from Ellie. Near enough to smell the grass where tiny pieces of it clung to skin damp with the heat. Near enough to feel the warmth of her body.
‘Past tense, Ben?’ she asked, her eyes softening, her voice catching in her throat.
‘Only in relation to my life.’ She waited. For a woman who had a runaway mouth, she understood the power of silence. ‘She was offered a job at the highest level of the United Nations.’
‘And she took it?’
He felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath. Having anticipated some great personal tragedy to equal her own desperate loss, she was shocked by this banal story of raw ambition overriding emotion. No story there for her imagination to get to grips with. No passion. Quite the reverse.
‘No,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘If she’d grabbed for it, walked away, you’d have got over her. You encouraged her to go, didn’t you? Made the sacrifice?’ She nodded, able to understand that. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s love.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s pragmatism. You see a look in a person’s eyes, Ellie, and you know, even while she’s telling you that it’s nothing, even while you’re clinging to that, trying to block out reality, that it’s over. That you’ve already lost. One way or another she was going to leave. It was the life she was made for, and I didn’t want her to feel guilty about grabbing for it.’
‘Pragmatism. Love. They’re just words. It’s the motivation that counts. The feeling that drives the action.’ She paused, as if to catch her breath. ‘And now I’m here, in her place, doing the things she’d be doing. Bringing it all back.’
‘Yes,’ he said, because to lie would be pointless. Then, because strands of dark hair were clinging to her cheek, because she was pink from the sun, because she worried about rabbits instead of world affairs, wrote silly romances rather than reports of world-changing significance, he added, ‘And no.’ He took her hand, turning it over, looking at her fingers, stained with green. ‘You are not perfect.’
‘No, I’m a scruffy feather-brain who’s ten pounds overweight, has no career prospects and…and can only speak five languages.’
‘Five?’
‘I can count to ten in French, Italian, German and Welsh,’ she said.
‘Welsh?’
‘Un, dau, tri, pedwr, pump…Didn’t I mention that my great-grandma was Welsh?’
‘If you did I missed it. But are you sure you can count all the way to ten? I only make that four languages.’
She smiled. ‘Oh, I can do it in English, too.’
Ben heard himself laughing. What had Ellie said? It didn’t matter what you did so long as you did something. And on an impulse he turned his hand so that it was grasping hers. Reaching for the lifeline that she’d tossed him.
‘About those invitations. I’ve been invited to a wedding on Saturday-one that I really can’t avoid. Could you bear to come with me?’ Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, ‘That is if you aren’t already booked to attend in a professional capacity?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t do weddings.’
‘Oh, no. It must be…difficult.’
‘Horrendous. I always find myself offering champagne to someone who was in the same year as me who’s now a rising media star or, worse, is marrying one.’
He knew he was supposed to laugh, but he discovered that he couldn’t quite manage it. Couldn’t quite decide whether her flippant humour was courage in the face of personal tragedy or refusal to confront the pain. Suspected it might just be the latter.
‘This one is in London. My cousin, a contemporary of Adele’s, is getting married for the second time. I have to attend on Addy’s behalf. The groom is a stockbroker, apparently, so you should be safe enough.’ He waited. ‘If I go on my own I’ll stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone will think I’m either a closet gay or a sad bastard who can’t rustle up a partner.’
‘Oh, right. You want me to ride shotgun. Fend off the matchmaking aunts.’A shadow briefly crossed her face. ‘Enough said. There’s just one condition.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I meant what I said about you trying out my cooking this evening. Just a mouthful.’ Her smile, usually so confident, was unexpectedly diffident.
‘It sounds like a win/win deal to me.’
‘Wait until you’ve tasted it before you congratulate yourself. My culinary skills are somewhat limited.’
‘I’ll risk it. I can pick your brains for a suitable wedding present for the couple who have everything.’
‘Oh, no problem. Buy them a goat.’
‘A what?’
‘You said it. They’re not spring chickens, and presumably they’ve both been married before, so they’ll have everything they need for their home.’
‘Er, yes?’
‘So buy a goat, or some tools, or a share in a mango plantation in their name for some Third World family who aren’t so fortunate. If nothing else it will give them something to talk about at dinner parties.’
‘Where on earth did you come up with an idea like that?’
‘Maybe I’m brighter than I look,’ she said. Then she shrugged. ‘Or maybe I read it in a magazine. I’ll find you the website address. You can check it out for yourself.’
A wedding? Ellie stripped off the grass-stained clothes she’d been wearing-nothing elegant or perfect about them-and then turned to look at herself in the mirror.
Not tall. Not fair. Definitely not slender, she thought, pinching the excess at her waist.
She pulled off the band holding her hair in a ponytail and it fell in an untidy mess around her shoulders. Not even a hint of Lady Gabriella, let alone the fabulous and perfect Natasha with her seventeen languages-she was bound to be fluent in all of them by now. Just an over-abundance of Ellie March.
What on earth was she going to wear to a posh London wedding? What would Lady G wear?
She pulled a face. She wasn’t even going there. Ben had invited her and that was who he would get. Not her pretend alter ego, and definitely not a second-class Natasha.
Through the open window she heard the mower start up and couldn’t help looking out.
Ben had changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He had fabulous legs, she thought. Not white pasty things that had never seen the sun, but the well-muscled legs of a sportsman, with a sheen of fair hair that glinted in the evening sun.
She drew back as he turned the machine, flexed her hand, feeling again that moment when he’d caught it, turned it into his, held it palm to palm in his and she’d felt a shiver of heat, shocking i
n its urgency, drive deep into her body.
She’d desired him, wanted him-not in that meaningless, fancying-a-good-looking-bloke way that she joked about with Sue, not just physically, but totally, in a way that she’d never thought possible again.
No. It was more than that.
With Sean it had been different. She’d known him all her life. Fought with him in primary school, assiduously ignored him when she was ten and eleven and twelve. And then at thirteen he’d smiled at her, and she’d blushed, and then he’d blushed, and after that it had always been Ellie-and-Sean.
They’d done their homework together, gone to the school disco, shared their first kiss, fumbled through their first sexual encounter together, done everything together for the first and last time.
They’d never been parted.
She’d felt safe with him. Had known that he’d never do anything to hurt her.
Except die.
This was different.
Something had been driving her today. Some restless, reckless need to provoke Ben, make him notice her, make him look at her, and she’d stirred him up like a fool poking a stick in a wasp nest.
She hadn’t expected him to come right back at her, daring to suggest she was running away from her past rather than grabbing for the future she wanted.
As if.
Well, she’d told him, and then she’d walked away. Easy.
Except he didn’t understand the rules. He’d come after her and done the one thing she couldn’t ignore. He’d asked for her help.
Nothing difficult. Just go with him to a family wedding. It wasn’t the invitation that was a problem. Or even that it was a wedding. Okay, so maybe she’d shed a tear for herself, but she wouldn’t be alone.
It was the fact that for Ben it would be duty, nothing more. While for her…
She swallowed, suddenly scared.
It had been so long, more than three years since Sean had died, and there had been no one since. Flirting, yes, but only in a jokey way with men she knew, who were safe, who understood that she didn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t call her on it because they knew that she had always belonged, would always belong, to Sean.
Somehow, though, Ben Faulkner had slipped beneath her defences. When had that happened?
She switched on the shower, stepped under the water and let the hot water pour over her, scrubbing at the green stains on her fingers, scrubbing her nails, shampooing her hair as if she could somehow clean him from her pores.
It didn’t work.
When eventually she stepped from the shower, wrapped a towel around her, tucking it in above her breasts, wrapped another around her hair, she could still feel her hand in his.
Feel the callused roughness from where he’d climbed out of Kirbeckistan. The scars.
Feel the electric charge of his skin against hers, an answering flutter deep in her womb. A sensation that excited her, stirred her, made her long to reach out for something dangerous, something that scared her witless.
Because Ben Faulkner was not like Sean March. If she allowed herself to fall in love with him, he’d hurt her in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine-because he’d never love her back.
She swallowed, sat down on the bathroom stool, leaned forward and tugged on the towel so that it hung down over her face.
If?
Too late for if. Too late from the moment she’d lain against him as she’d caught her breath, feeling the beat of his heart. Too late from her first ‘idiot’.
It was the first word she’d said to Sean when, five years old, he’d knocked her flying as he’d raced into school one morning. After that, no matter how they’d ignored one another, there had always been a consciousness between them, an awareness of the other.
They’d kept their distance. Scowled. Sniped. Mocked. Circled each other until one day they’d come face to face, alone in a corridor. And, with no one else there to see, he’d smiled at her.
‘Sean?’ she whispered desperately. ‘Where are you?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
BEN, despite every intention of staying well away from the kitchen, couldn’t settle. He’d finished cutting the grass, put away the mower. Taken a shower. And then, somehow, he found himself standing in the kitchen doorway, watching Ellie as she chopped onions. She said nothing, did nothing to suggest she knew he was there.
She didn’t have to.
There was an awareness between them, something palpable in the air when she was home, that seemed to fill the house. An echoing hollowness about it when she wasn’t there, like a room without a carpet.
His first reaction to that had been a how-dare-she? anger. It wasn’t her place. She didn’t fit. Wasn’t right. Natasha had been an expert in the minimalist Japanese style of flower arranging. Ellie favoured the infant school nature table style of floral art. She just stuffed anything she fancied in a jug. Leaves, daisies, even dandelions for heaven’s sake.
The way she draped stuff about the place, disguising the wear, softening the edges.
He’d held his tongue, well aware that the more time he spent with her, the harder she became to ignore. Witness the arrival of Roger and Nigel. She just drew him in, involved him, made him laugh…
‘Can I do anything to help?’ he asked.
‘Just taste the finished dish,’ Ellie said, not looking at him, but instead concentrating on chopping the onions to add to an already promising array of ingredients.
‘So what are you cooking?’ he asked, ignoring her discouraging tone, helping himself to a beer from the fridge and, with the door still open, turning to her. ‘Can I get you something?’
‘No, thank you.’
He shrugged, let it go, leaned his hip against the table as he snapped the top, took a drink, helped himself to a couple of shelled pistachio nuts from a dish. ‘It looks interesting,’ he said, refusing to be dismissed. It was, after all, his kitchen.
She flickered a glance in his direction. ‘Could you please go away? This is going to be difficult enough without an audience.’ Then, ‘Stop that,’ she said, slapping his hand with the back of her broad-bladed knife as he took another dip in the nuts. ‘Everything has been weighed.’
‘Chicken, nuts, spices, baby onions.’He picked up a small dish with a few threads of something red in it. ‘Is this saffron?’
‘Yes.’ She sighed, stopped chopping and, clearly hoping that if she satisfied his curiosity he’d leave her in peace, said, ‘It’s a Moroccan dish. That lot over there-’ she pointed with the knife ‘-is going to be couscous with herbs and nuts and pomegranate.’ She glowered at him as he took another nut. ‘Assuming there are any nuts left.’
‘I won’t eat them all,’ he assured her.
She shook her head. ‘Oh, go on. You might as well enjoy them. I’ll probably ruin the whole thing anyway.’
‘Nonsense. What are you going to do with the chicken?’
‘The plan is to make a tajine of chicken, caramelised onion and pear.’
He scarcely hesitated before he said, ‘That sounds interesting.’
‘“Interesting”. Good word.’ She still didn’t look at him, just lifted one shoulder in an awkward little shrug. ‘One of the women I clean for suggested it. She even loaned me her recipe book. She said the important thing was to keep it simple…’
‘This is her idea of simple?’
‘She said that even a fool could make it. I didn’t like to tell her that my sole experience of planning a meal consisted of choosing a topping for my pizza.’
‘Well, that’s an art,’ he said, wondering what it was about cooking that she found so stressful. ‘There’s the vexed question of anchovies for a start.’
‘Oh, please!’ she said, seizing on this distraction. ‘You have to have anchovies.’
‘Of course you do.’
Now, he thought. Now smile.
‘And for pudding?’ he pressed, when she didn’t.
‘Oh, no problem. Lemon tart, crème brûlée, a chocolate roulade.’
‘Three?’
‘I wanted to see which went best.’
‘Right,’he said. Then, ‘And we’re going to eat tonight?’
‘Relax. They’re in the fridge.’
‘They are?’He hadn’t noticed the scent of baking, the inevitable mess that quantity of cooking would entail. He turned and opened the fridge door again. True enough, three perfectly prepared puddings were sitting out of harm’s way on the top shelf. ‘They look good.’
‘Baking is serious cookery,’ she said. Then she sniffed, and he realised that the reason she wasn’t looking at him was because she’d been crying. ‘Actually, I bought them.’
Well, yes. Obviously.
‘Hey, all the best hostesses buy their puddings.’
‘They do?’ She sniffed again, and he didn’t think it was because she couldn’t handle a sponge cake.
‘Are you okay, Ellie?’
‘Fine,’ she said. She coaxed the smile into life, looked at him. ‘Just a touch of hay fever.’
‘Right,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘Is that recent?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The hay fever. You didn’t seem to have a problem when you were cutting the grass.’
‘Oh, no. It must be the onions, then.’
The onions might have set her off again, but, unless she was seriously allergic to them, the puffiness of her eyes, the redness of her nose, suggested that the tears had been flowing for some time. Maybe asking her to go to Emma’s wedding with him hadn’t been such a great idea-which was a shame because, against all the odds, he was now rather looking forward to it.
‘So,’ he said, with a gesture at the table, ‘what’s all this in aid of?’ She looked at him fast enough then, those big brown eyes startled wide. Her cheeks almost as pink as her nose. ‘You said you’re trying this out. I assumed there must be some big occasion coming up.’
‘Oh…’
She continued chopping the onion, and he winced as the blade narrowly missed her finger.