He didn’t try to take over as she began to unbutton his shirt, only removing his hands from her body long enough to help her slide the fabric down his arms. He wasn’t wearing his shoulder brace and the fresh pink scar of his recent operation interrupted the smooth line of his collarbone. Leah pressed her softest kiss on the puckered flesh before skimming her hands over the tight planes of his chest, savouring the texture of his skin, her fingertips finding and following the trail of hair down towards the waistband of his jeans.
‘You’re getting behind here.’ Gently, he turned her to face the mirrors, his front against her back, his erection pushing against the curve of her behind through his jeans. ‘Look how beautiful you are.’
Then he watched his reflection undress her.
Leah almost stopped breathing at the intensity in his expression. The slow unzipping of her dress was like liquid excitement down her back. His fingers brushed the sensitive skin he’d exposed, touching, stroking, and following the contours of her spine to caress the tingling nape of her neck then back down between her shoulder blades.
Leah’s heart skipped a beat as, with the smallest of movements, he flipped the catch on her bra.
Gently he gathered both bra and dress together and nudged them off her shoulders. Down her arms. In the mirror his eyes looked nearly black, fixed on the slow falling forward of the summer-blue lace of her bra, the slither of the dress over the curves of her belly and hips. Then, the fabric pooled at her feet, she was naked but for a skimpy thong, her skin tingling in the air.
‘Jeez, you’re something.’ He smiled at her in the mirror as he caressed her, fingertips trailing up to her breasts and setting her on fire.
Leah, feeling as if she were bursting out of her skin at the feel of his hot mouth on the back of her neck, was mesmerised by the sight of his tanned hands on her white body. Hands that cupped and stroked then travelled down over her stomach to hook into the tiny scrap of lace that was all that was left to cover her.
When she was naked, she turned in his arms and began again on him, unbuttoning, unzipping, easing him out. Catching random glimpses of their reflection as skin moved over skin, heartbeats quickening, Ronan touching her almost everywhere and kissing her everywhere else, twining his hands in her hair, groaning as he explored her until she could hardly think, could only react to his hands and mouth.
‘I know we’ve got to work around your shoulder but I’m not sure my legs will hold me upright much longer,’ she gasped, riding a wave of pleasure against his hand.
‘We’ve already trialled a good alternative,’ he murmured. Drawing her with him he seated himself on the edge of the bed and grabbed a condom from the bedside.
Slowly she sank down on him, gasping at the wave of sensation, trying to watch the desire and excitement in his face but seduced into closing her eyes to concentrate on his movements beneath her, inside her, against her, on and on. And on. Tipping her head back, she let the bliss swamp her, gasping, ‘Oops, sorry!’ when she realised from his strangled gasp that she was clinging onto his damaged shoulder.
He gasped a laugh. ‘Worth it. Leah you are – this is –’
‘So gooooood,’ she finished for him.
‘Amazing. Fantastic–’ Then he stepped up a gear and it all became about urgency, about deeper, harder, faster, until the joy took them completely over the edge.
It took a while for Leah to come down to earth, breathing like a train and hooked over Ronan, boneless.
‘Sorry, but shoulder,’ he groaned, and they somehow managed to ease down onto the bed so that Ronan could lie on his right side. He held her close, hands cupped comfortably around her behind. ‘That,’ he murmured, kissing her temple, ‘was off the scale. And your sister did her stuff. We didn’t have a single interruption.’
Leah had just begun to say, ‘Don’t jinx us!’ when the sound of the front door opening and closing floated clearly up the stairs. But the voice that floated up after it didn’t belong to Curtis, Jordan or Natasha.
‘Hello-oh, Curtis? Ronan?’ It was unmistakeably a woman’s voice.
Ronan froze.
‘Who is it?’ Spell well and truly broken, Leah eased away, a chill on her skin that wasn’t wholly accounted for by the open windows.
‘It can’t be.’ Ronan sounded stunned.
‘Are you here, guys?’ the voice called louder.
Leah rolled free and scrambled up to stare down into his stupefied face. ‘Who is it?’
His eyes were glazed with astonishment. ‘Selina!’
‘Your wife?’
‘Ex-wife.’ He reached, fumbling, for his jeans and shirt. It was the only time Leah had seen him looking seriously rattled.
Chapter Seventeen
Ronan stormed to the head of the stairs as if in a bad dream. ‘Selina? What are you doing here?’ It wasn’t a warm welcome but when you’d been divorced for three years you didn’t expect your ex-wife to march into your holiday home unannounced. It was particularly unsettling when you were making love to another woman, one you’d pretty much been exploding with desire for.
Selina appeared at the foot of the stairs. Her face was pale and exhausted but there was relief there, too. ‘I was beginning to think there was no one here. Where’s Curtis?’
‘Hanging out with the kids next door.’ Ronan jumped down the stairs two at a time. He stopped short as his bare feet hit the tiles of the hallway and he spied two big bags at Selina’s feet. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Selina’s eyes filled with the easy tears he remembered too well.
Then the front door flew open behind her and Curtis barrelled in. ‘I’ve just had a text from Mum to say she’s in a taxi – oh, you’re here! Hey, Mum.’
Selina threw her arms around him, having to stand on tiptoe to place a smacking kiss on his cheek. ‘Hello, sweetie! Mwah! Bet you didn’t expect to see me.’ She pulled back to regard him quizzically. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’
‘Never mind that now,’ Ronan snapped. Then, mindful of Leah stranded upstairs, changed tack. ‘I’ll make coffee.’
‘But his hair looks funny.’ Selina smoothed down her own salon-blonde tresses as she let herself be ushered into the kitchen.
Ronan grabbed the kettle and turned on the tap as if wringing something’s neck. His heart was a trip hammer as he tried to absorb the abrupt change from having a soft, vibrant, naked Leah in his arms to having his ex-wife pop up in Chez Shea like a pantomime demon. ‘What on earth are you doing in Kirchhoffen?’
Selina pulled out a chair and dropped into it, her eyes huge and tragic. ‘Me and Darren have lost our house.’
Ronan set the kettle down with suddenly numb fingers. The dismay that slithered coldly through him made him entirely omit to comfort or commiserate. ‘The house you put your share of our house into?’
Miserably, Selina nodded.
Curtis, who obviously wasn’t getting the import of his mother’s words, glanced up and grinned in the direction of the hallway. ‘Hey, Leah!’
Ronan heard a swallowed cluck of exasperation. Then Leah’s voice, tight with strain. ‘Hey, Curtis.’ Her desire to get away almost vibrated to Ronan through the air.
Curtis, oblivious to such nuances, swung the door further open invitingly. ‘My mum’s here, look.’
Reluctance in every line, Leah stepped into the room, clutching the bag that Ronan vaguely remembered her dropping to the floor at the beginning of the evening when the perfect hours had stretched out before them like a dream come true. ‘Hello.’ Her smile looked about as natural as Curtis’s hair.
‘Gosh, hello.’ Selina glanced at Ronan. ‘I didn’t mean to–’
‘You didn’t. I’ll leave you guys in peace.’ With another plastic smile and not even looking at Ronan, Leah turned and hurried out. Ronan listened helplessly to the sound of the front door swiftly opening and firmly closing. Considering his audience, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say to stop her. But he knew with an almost suffocatin
g dose of reality that leaving was the last thing he wanted her to do. It felt as if they’d been lovers for months; tonight they’d simply known each other – and, watching her leave, he realised that the electric connection wasn’t something he’d want to end on the last day of August.
Selina looked apologetic. ‘I really didn’t mean to …’
‘Of course not.’ Anger fading to hollow disappointment Ronan made the coffee mechanically. The urgency had gone out of demanding answers from Selina. The shutters over Leah’s gaze had told him what damage had been done.
He listened as Selina and Curtis did their catching up: the holiday, Curtis’s hair, the weather. Curtis gave a jumble of information about the family next door: parents, kids, aunts, accidents and break-ups. ‘Can I go back for a bit? I’ve won twenty-three euros. Michele says we’re finishing at ten.’
‘Fine,’ Ronan said, before Selina could block it.
Curtis leaped up, then halted, his gaze falling on his mother. ‘But are you staying? Or …?’ He looked uncertainly between his parents, probably beginning to grasp the out-of-the-blue and unprecedented character of his mother’s visit.
Ronan forced a reassuring smile. ‘I doubt your mum’s going anywhere tonight.’
‘Cool beans.’ Curtis beamed and loped from the house in Leah’s tracks.
In the silence he left behind, Ronan studied the woman he used to call his wife. It was odd to see her dressed down in jeans and flat shoes. Her usual look was more about heels and bling. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
Ready tears began to ooze from her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go. You know how ill Dad is since his stroke; it’s not fair to put on Mum when she has him to care for. I had a bit of cash so I took the Eurostar to Paris then the train to Strasbourg, the tram, then a taxi from Muntsheim.’
Mentally, Ronan translated. There’s nowhere else I wanted to go. At my parents’ I’d be expected to help with Dad’s care. I’ve stayed out of contact so you couldn’t stop me coming; likewise the taxi instead of phoning for a lift.
‘What happened with your house?’
She gulped back more tears. ‘Darren’s business got in trouble and his loan was secured on it.’
Ronan’s heart felt like a rock. Nothing would be served by reminding her that what she’d lost was the lion’s share of the house he’d once called his. When you married someone, you shared your worldly goods. When you divorced, the law didn’t allow you to take those worldly goods back. He forced himself to focus on the present situation. ‘Where is Darren?’
She blew her nose. ‘He did a moonlight and left me to sort it all out. I tried to tell the building society that it was all Darren’s mess but they didn’t care. They were all “penalty payments” and “arrears charges” and “the mortgage payments are still your responsibility”. So I handed the keys back.’
He rubbed his shoulder, which was pounding now. If he’d still been upstairs with Leah he wouldn’t have felt it half so much. ‘You must have co-signed the second mortgage on the house.’ He had a lot more questions as to whether voluntary repossession had been the best option and whether there’d be anything left for Selina after the house sale but it would be cruel to fire them at her now. She needed time to regroup and, perfectly obviously, he couldn’t turn her away. There was nowhere for her to go.
At least she seemed sincere when she burst out, ‘Ronan, I’m sorry! You must hate me for landing myself on you and interrupting … whatever I interrupted. But I’m desperate.’
‘I understand.’ No doubt he’d have to add helping Selina sort out her mess to his other worries. ‘Take your stuff up to the spare room. Get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘That’s fantastic of you! But where are you going?’ She looked alarmed as he started towards the door.
‘To talk to Leah.’
Ignoring her expression of surprise tinged with resentment, Ronan was soon clambering over the fence, ignoring fresh protest from his shoulder at the way he was treating it this evening. Eschewing good manners, he let himself in through the gîte’s kitchen door. Knocking or telephoning first seemed to be asking to be politely barred.
He half-expected to find Leah in the kitchen, baking something comforting. But there was only Alister, tapping at a laptop, pausing, his fingers in the air above his keyboard, as Ronan strolled through with an unceremonious ‘Evening’.
Ronan halted only when he reached the door to the salon, which he knew to be Leah’s present abode. He knocked. ‘It’s me.’
Silence.
After a moment he turned the handle, intending to discover whether she was refusing to answer or there was no one in the room.
Leah lay on her bed, phone to ear, hair fanned across her pillow.
She glared balefully at him. ‘Looks like I’ll have to ring you back,’ she said to whoever was on the other end of the call. ‘Yes, he is. Yes, I’m sure. And I don’t need you being smug about having called it right, OK?’
He watched her press the red end call button. ‘I’ve come to explain.’
‘You don’t need to.’ She didn’t bother to sit up, just lay as if exhausted by events.
‘We are divorced.’
‘I know.’
‘I had no idea that she was about to turn up but it seems she has nowhere else to go.’
‘I heard.’
‘I can’t throw her out.’ He was conscious of repeating the same point in different words but Leah was so oddly unemotional that he wasn’t sure she was getting it. He wanted to join her on the bed and cradle her against him but hesitated at the remoteness of her thousand-yard stare.
‘She’s Curtis’s mother,’ she finished for him. Slowly, she rolled to her feet, but it seemed as if that was only so that she could keep the bed between them.
He tried a different tack. ‘She’ll leave again.’ He hoped, when he’d worked out the best way to effect that.
‘Where will she go?’ Her golden eyes were sombre. ‘I heard her say she’s lost her house. If she’s come all the way to Alsace, after you’ve been divorced for so long, she’s in trouble.’ She edged back another step. ‘Your wife might be ever so ex, but she’s Curtis’s mum and in your house. That’s not a situation I’m remotely interested in messing with.’
‘But–’ Ronan scoured his mind for some persuasive argument, something that would counter her implacable, unanswerable logic.
She waited.
Then, very softly, she said, ‘I think you need to go home, Ronan.’
After he’d gone, Leah fell back on her bed and screwed her eyes shut against visions of Selina’s unhappiness; Curtis’s beaming pleasure at being able to introduce his mum; Ronan’s astonished hurt as, after holding Leah’s gaze for what had felt like a year, he’d turned and silently left her room.
In her hand, her phone began to ring. ‘Sorry,’ she said, putting it to her ear. She knew it would be Scott, too impatient to wait until she re-established the conversation.
‘What the hell did he want?’ he demanded, wrathfully.
‘Came to apologise.’ She shut her eyes. ‘But it’s all moot. I don’t want to be involved.’
‘Right.’ Scott hesitated. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’ Drearily.
‘No, you’re not. How fucking craptastic. Had you actually just–?’
Fresh misery welled at the all too vivid memory of her clothes sliding off her body and Ronan sliding into it.
‘Yeah.’ She tried to wish they hadn’t. But failed.
Sprawled on the games-room sofa, Natasha frowned. ‘Your mum’s here? Why?’
Curtis thought she looked cute when she was confused. ‘She says she’s lost her house.’
‘Lost her house?’ Michele looked so astonished that white showed all the way around her brown eyes.
Natasha’s eyes did the exact same thing. ‘Like, she can’t find her way home?’
Curtis paused, suddenly uncertain. Till now, he’d processed events of t
he evening sketchily. 1) Mum texted to say she was in Kirchhoffen; 2) she was!; 3) he was surprised, but glad; 4) his dad got that waiting air of wanting to speak to his mum without Curtis listening; so 5) he’d returned to the gîte.
Michele explained in his stead, voice hushed and sympathetic. ‘It usually means the person can’t afford to keep the house.’
‘Oh,’ Curtis, Natasha and Jordan said together.
Curtis grappled with the concept. ‘So what happens to it?’
‘The bank or building society sells the house to pay back any money owing on the mortgage.’
He grappled harder. ‘So, like, my mum’s homeless?’
Natasha’s eyes grew rounder than ever. ‘Doesn’t that mean you are too?’
‘Of course not.’ But shock rippled through him. ‘I live part of the time with my dad, anyway …’ It literally hadn’t occurred to him that his mother losing her house meant she didn’t have a home any more. And her home was his main home. The reality washed through him. Dimly, he recognised the feeling as that of being scared.
Jordan chimed in. Even he was wearing an odd expression, as if comprehending things that Curtis wasn’t. ‘Will your mum live with your dad? Where’s her boyfriend? At your dad’s house, too?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Because surely someone would have mentioned if Darren was moving into Chez Shea, too? And surely it would be totally weird? Curtis gave up trying to compute complicated thoughts about husbands, wives and boyfriends and snatched up the euros he’d won. ‘Thanks for having me round,’ he mumbled.
Michele gave a bright smile. ‘Try not to worry.’
There was nothing like adults telling you not to worry to make your stomach gurgle. Curtis hurried out into the garden, clambered over the fence and burst through his back door. He found his mum making a sandwich in the kitchen, jumping guiltily as he burst in. ‘Are you homeless?’ he demanded.
Just for the Holidays Page 21