Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  Something in her called to something in him in a way that no-one else had. Was it because she had been the first? The first to get under his skin?

  He didn’t know; all he knew was that he craved her with a passion that would have frightened him if he had had any brain cells free to be frightened. But they were all focussed on her. On the rise and fall of her chest rubbing against his and burning wherever it touched. On the silkiness of the fabric under his hand where he gripped her hip. On her scent, drawing him helplessly closer with the need to breathe it in.

  Surely the time for being circumspect was over. She hadn’t had a drink for the best part of two hours. And neither of them were teenagers any more.

  With a mental promise to kill himself if he ever hurt her (a promise that was easy to make, since he knew Jo would do it for him if he didn’t get in first) he lowered his mouth to hers.

  It wasn’t like the first time. That had been sweet and wine-flavoured and tempting almost beyond bearing. But this was different. This felt as though his heart was in his lips. As though it was reaching out through his kiss for . . . he didn’t know what it was searching for, but it seemed to be finding it. The feel of her mouth beneath his filled his body with stars, and when she gently pulled his bottom lip between her teeth, he clutched her to him as a drowning man would clutch the driftwood that was keeping him alive. And from the way she was clutching him back, he could tell she felt the same.

  In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that neither of them noticed the lift had come to a stop and the doors had opened. But then Jo cleared her throat, and the warning note in the sound somehow managed to break through even Josh’s abandon. Reluctantly, he raised his head, and turned slightly to face his sister.

  Standing outside the lift, hands clasped nervously in front of her, was Jo, flanked by two older women, one fair and one with skin the colour of mocha coffee. With a unity they couldn’t have managed if they’d tried, but which the circumstances drew from them without effort, Kate and Josh spoke as one.

  ‘Mum?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Silence suffused the small hallway and smaller lift carriage. An almost palpable, expectant silence, transmitted in raised eyebrows and sardonic smiles and unabashed curiosity.

  Then the lift doors shut.

  And the lift started downwards with a jerk.

  Kate squawked in surprise and the silence was broken.

  ‘I hit the button for “ground”,’ Josh explained. ‘I thought we might need a minute to get our stories straight.’

  ‘Stories?’ Kate was reeling from the kiss and with his arms still around her, she was having trouble staying vertical, much less understanding cryptic comments.

  ‘Keep up, Kate! Our mothers just saw us kissing. I don’t know about yours, but mine is going to want to know what’s going on.’

  Josh pulled away and Kate’s brain recovered enough to notice that he shared his sister’s habit of pacing while thinking.

  ‘Are we still engaged? Because that’s going to take some explaining.’

  ‘No!’ said Kate

  ‘Okay – you don’t need to sound quite so horrified.’

  Josh sounded insulted, although the expression on his face was more astonished, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just come out of his mouth. Kate hastily backtracked, as the lift came to a stop and the doors wheezed open.

  ‘No, it’s not that, of course; I’d be delighted to be engaged to you.’ Heavens above, when had her life got so complicated? ‘I have been for hours, after all!’ It was a feeble joke and didn’t raise a smile from Josh. No great surprise there. Witty banter under pressure had never been her strong suit. ‘It’s just that my mother doesn’t even know I’ve broken up with Alain, so that might come as a bit of a shock.’

  ‘In that case, the snogging in the lift might, too,’ he pointed out, reasonably, but still unsmilingly.

  Kate covered her eyes with her hands as she visualised it, until the shudder of the lift starting upward again jolted her. ‘You’re right, of course. But that’s easier to explain. Sort of. What about you?’

  Finally, he smiled.

  ‘Much easier. Trust me, you don’t want me to tell my mother we’re engaged. She’d have you in a wedding dress by the end of the week. She wants grandchildren.’

  No wonder – Josh would make beautiful babies.

  Kate shook her head to dislodge the irrelevant, unhelpful, but powerful image from her mind.

  ‘So, summer fling, then? Is that the story?’ asked Josh.

  Kate couldn’t help being amused – in a desperate kind of way – at Josh using the same word that Jo had. It seemed there was no avoiding her ‘fling’ now, even if she wanted to. Which, if it meant being alone in lifts with Josh, she didn’t. She thought she should be shocked at that realisation. But she wasn’t.

  ‘I guess so, except that it’s win—’

  ‘Game face on, then,’ Josh interrupted her as the lift jolted to a halt and he grabbed her hand. ‘It’s showtime.’

  In the end, Josh’s forethought wasn’t needed. At least not during the exquisitely polite and excruciatingly weird fifteen minutes that followed their exit from the lift.

  Their mothers had been dining together, as they often did, and on their way home had dropped in at the flat on the off-chance that their offspring had made it home from the reunion and were available for coffee. Which they were. So they duly had coffee. And made conversation about jetlag and airline food and plans for the weeks ahead. Josh and Kate sat next to each other on the couch. And no-one mentioned the life-size, dressed-for-an-Indian-festival elephant taking up most of the room.

  Finally, Mrs Marchant stood up to leave and looked pointedly at her son.

  ‘Can I give you a lift home, Josh?’

  ‘Oh, I —’ Whatever Josh had been about to say, he thought better of it after his mother caught his eye. ‘Now that you mention it, I was just saying to Jo that I probably shouldn’t drive. I can come back for my car in the morning.’

  Jo rolled her eyes at him behind her mother’s back, but refrained from comment. So, after a flurry of kisses, good wishes and coat gathering, they left, Mrs Marchant bearing her much taller son ahead of her in a brook-no-argument way that reminded Kate powerfully of her daughter. Jo saw them out, then cravenly retired from the field muttering some excuse about something or nothing. And Kate was left with her mother.

  Had it been within Kate’s power to decide when she woke the next morning, she would have made it later. Much later. About three days later, when she’d slept off both the amount she’d drunk and the mortification of having her mother witness her (Kate) snogging her (her mother’s) best friend’s son.

  Or then again, perhaps three days weren’t enough. She might need a few extra days to forget the tea-without-gossip session that followed the snogging and probably the best part of a week to come to terms with the Berocca-and-too-much-information session with her mother that came after the others had gone home.

  But she’d always been an early riser. Once she’d woken up, as far as her body was concerned, it was time to get up. And no matter how hard she tried to close her eyes and convince her body otherwise, it was having none of it.

  So reluctantly, at about eight-thirty, after an hour of fruitless tossing and turning, she dragged herself out of bed and to the kitchen. Jo was still asleep and likely to be so for some time yet. She could get up well before the crack of dawn if her precious gallery needed her to. But outside of that, she had a deep and loving relationship with her bed and it was a foolhardy friend who would seek to disturb her before she was ready to rise.

  Kate wasn’t feeling anywhere near as bad as she deserved to, thanks to Jo pouring water and vitamins into her before they went to bed. But she was still seedy and as much as she needed caffeine – she had not slept well – the intricacies of the grinder and Jo’s Italian espresso maker were proving beyond her. By the time she had circumnavigated the kitchen three times, with
one half of the coffee maker or the other in her hand, without getting any closer to drinking coffee, she was ready to give up.

  In her state, the knock on the door came as a welcome distraction. Not that she recognised it as a knock at first. In direct contrast to yesterday’s cheerful thumping, this knock was a delicate, almost painfully good-mannered tap, executed by someone who knew that those inside were in a delicate state.

  Kate’s stomach performed a complicated dance comprised of equal parts anticipation, apprehension, embarrassing, fuzzy memories and nausea. She put down whichever half of the coffee pot was in her suddenly sweaty hand and padded quietly down the hall to the door, doing a careful sweep for wildlife as she went. But Cleo must have been curled up on her other favourite sleeping place, Jo’s head, as there was no sign of her.

  Josh looked as though he felt as rough as Kate did. He was wearing sunglasses and his hair was wet, although, unfairly, that didn’t make him look bad. It just made it curl even more outrageously. Kate smoothed her own hair self-consciously. After yesterday – was it only yesterday? – she had taken the precaution of dressing and doing her hair before leaving her room. It was only jeans and a ponytail, but it was better than the dressing-gown and wild-woman hair that had greeted him yesterday. It was reassuringly normal. After the extremes of the day before, she had felt a quite urgent need for normal.

  He seemed to approve. He smiled and took off his glasses.

  ‘Oh good, you’re dressed,’ he said, dispensing with preliminaries. Judging by his bloodshot eyes and his presence at that hour of the morning, he hadn’t slept all that well either. ‘It’s not a bad morning out. Cold, but clear. How do you feel about coffee?’

  Well, she definitely needed something before the conversation she had to have with him and, in the circumstances, a stiff whisky was probably out of the question.

  ‘I’d sell a kidney for one. But will anything be open?’

  The vast number of things unsaid seemed to be constraining both of them to very short utterances.

  ‘The place down the street. I’m sure it’s the reason Jo bought this flat. I don’t think the owner sleeps.’

  ‘Let me get my bag.’

  By mutual, unspoken agreement, the quietness lasted through the first coffee and into the next. Josh evidently understood the importance of coffee and silence to the hangover management process. Another thing he shared with his sister. When Jo and Kate had lived together, one thing they had never disagreed on was the role of caffeine in starting the day right.

  But sooner or later, they had to talk. He had to know what he was in for. And she had to know how he felt about it. Just as soon as she’d finished fortifying herself with a chocolate croissant.

  ‘Did your mother give you a hard time about me, after we left?’

  Kate started and broadcast croissant crumbs all over the tiny café table. He hadn’t waited for her to finish.

  ‘About you? No, quite the opposite. In fact, there’s something I need . . . wait. Why do you ask? Did your mum give you a hard time?’

  Josh shrugged. ‘Depends on what you call hard. She just said that you were my sister’s best friend and her best friend’s only child and that I had better treat you right, or I’d have more than you to worry about. She didn’t exactly say she’d put me over her knee, but the implication was pretty clear.’

  Kate pursed her lips to suppress a giggle. At approximately six foot three, Josh had probably outgrown being put over anyone’s knee at least twenty years ago. Although if anyone could manage it, his mother could.

  ‘She didn’t take to the “summer fling” explanation, then?’

  Josh huffed out an exasperated breath. ‘On the contrary, as you put it, she “took to it” all too well. She seems to have a very poor opinion of my record with women. Or an inflated idea of my appeal. She told me that I had better not break your heart.’

  Josh sounded so outraged that, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, Kate couldn’t hold the giggle any longer.

  ‘And what, exactly, is so funny?’

  He still sounded a little outraged, but he was smiling, so Kate felt brave enough to tell him the unvarnished truth. It was either that, or all that they’d been through the night before had burned out her normal caution when dealing with members of the opposite sex.

  ‘Well, Josh, you are gorgeous. I’m sure people fall for you all the time. But I don’t think your Mum needs to worry about me.’

  ‘So, I’m gorgeous, but not to you? Thanks very much!’

  Kate giggled again, then sobered up at the look on his face.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just that I . . . I don’t do the whole love-at-first-sight thing. Or even at second week. I don’t think I know how.’

  Josh had discarded outrage for fascination, with a speed that Kate should have been used to from Jo, but which still managed to disconcert her. He leaned forward; in their close corner, it allowed Kate to catch a hint of the spicy scent that she already associated solely with him. She took a deep breath in before she could stop herself.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know how? If it happens, it happens.’

  Kate felt herself colouring and began to wish she hadn’t started this.

  ‘Not to me. I’m not good at snap decisions.’ She shifted uncomfortably on her seat and leaned back a little so her nose was out of range. ‘Look, Josh, I take a week to choose a new lipstick. If I’m going out to dinner, I book in advance and preferably at a place I’ve been to before, so I know there’ll be something I want to eat. I keep an unopened box of pens in my desk and as soon as I open it, I put a new one in, so I know I’ll never run out.

  ‘I like certainty. I like predictability, even in little things. And love isn’t a little thing. Not to me. There’s no way that I could fall in love that quickly.’

  Josh frowned.

  ‘But last night —’

  Kate hastened to interrupt him, face burning.

  ‘—last night I wasn’t exactly myself.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to mention anything you did.’ He lowered his voice and leaned even closer and Kate thought frantically that he didn’t need to mention what they’d done last night. If he got much closer he might find himself repeating it.

  Which answered one of the many questions she had woken up with (apart from where Jo kept the aspirin). It hadn’t been the champagne. She might not fall in love easily, but this weekend was teaching her that she could fall in other things very quickly indeed.

  And she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. Her feelings were quite unequivocally for it. What she wasn’t sure of was what she thought about it, without the inhibition-removing influence of way too much wine. She tried to ignore the sensation of his knee pressing into the side of her leg and focus on what he was saying.

  ‘I was just going to say that last night you told me that you had a crush on me from the moment you saw me. What was that if it wasn’t love at first sight?’

  He sat back and Kate breathed more easily. ‘That was being a teenager! I could afford to let my hormones run the ship back then.’ It would have been more truthful to say that she hadn’t had a choice back then. But she did now. And she needed to remember that. ‘I didn’t have to think about the future, or what comes next. But I’m not a teenager any more. I grew up.’

  ‘Hmm. Sounds like you need to grow back down again if that’s what growing up has done to you. Snap decisions driven by hormones might not lead anywhere sensible, but they often lead you to fun places.’

  Which, in a way, was the same advice that Jo had given her. That she needed to let herself off the leash a little. That’s what this ‘fling’ business was supposed to be about. And she couldn’t deny that it had its attractions. Not with a lot of them sitting opposite her. She just wasn’t sure that it was as simple as they made it out to be. Especially not now that their mothers were involved.

  ‘But hold on – if you never
fall in love quickly, what did you tell your mum about me?’ Josh went on, ‘I don’t mind being thought of as your rebound holiday romance, but if you’re not at least a little in love with me, what does that make me in this scenario? Your bit on the side? The benefits you get when you’re not even friends?’

  He was back to looking outraged and Kate was smitten with guilt at what she was doing to him. Especially given what she was about to ask him. But at least she could reassure him on that point.

  ‘Oh no! No, my mum doesn’t think that at all. She thinks —’

  ‘She thinks what, Kate? What did you tell her?’

  Josh had leaned in again and Kate wriggled, but she’d already pushed her seat as far back into the corner as it would go. She couldn’t get away from her physical response to him and she was uncomfortably aware that large parts of her didn’t want to.

  ‘I didn’t tell her anything!’ She managed to sound both squeaky and breathless. She took a breath and tried to bring her voice down off the ceiling. ‘She just assumed and I didn’t stop her.’

  ‘Assumed what, Kate? Am I engaged again? Because you know that’s going to get back to my mother and trust me, you have never seen the proverbial hit the fan the way it will if she thinks that I got engaged – to you – and didn’t tell her.’

  ‘No! No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . . I told my mum, weeks ago, that I would probably have some news for her, next time I saw her, on the relationship front.’

  Josh leaned back in his chair and Kate couldn’t read his expression. Strangely, it was even more disturbing than when he was close and intense.

  ‘Because you thought you were going to be engaged. To him.’

  ‘Yes. Jo told you that?’ He nodded. Kate swallowed her embarrassment and resolved to have words with Jo when she got the chance.

  ‘But I didn’t tell Mum that, just that there would be news and that she’d be happy about it. I thought she would be! But when she saw us last night, she assumed that my news was that I was going out with you. And she was thrilled about that. Turns out, she never particularly liked Alain. You, on the other hand, she finds lovely.’