by Kitty French
‘Now that surprises me,’ he drawls. ‘I’d have had you down as a blood-and-guts action movie girl.’
Oh, how I want to say yes, that’s exactly what I am. Throw in a superhero and I’m practically orgasmic, but I just shake my head demurely and then down half of my glass of wine. This lying thing isn’t working out well for me today.
As the movie begins, I try really hard to concentrate on the plot, but Fletch is next to me making the odd note in his pocket book as he watches it and he’s distracting me. I don’t get what’s happening between us. I don’t like him at all, but I react to him like a daisy, spreading my petals in delight when the sun comes out. I recognise the warm leather and spice smell of him before I see him, and he sparks off a swarm of fireflies in my stomach. He detests everything about the life I lead, yet still he kissed me and bought me a pooper-scooper.
I mean, I know what this is. We live in a small town and pickings are slim. We’re physically attracted to each other, and sometimes only another actual human will do, rather than something Ann Summers can supply you with, but why this particular human? I can well imagine my mother’s face tomorrow if I tell her I spent the evening with Fletcher Gunn. She’ll wish she hadn’t been so sniffy about Marina’s Sicilian cousin then, won’t she? Not that I’m spending the evening with Fletch. He just happens to be in the same place at the same time and in the very next seat, even though the cinema is practically empty. It’s not the same as spending the evening together.
The movie is about half way through and I’m about the same way through my bottle of wine when things up on screen suddenly take a turn towards sexy. Scarlett is all tearful and wobbly lipped, and Fletch scrawls something in his notebook and then shows it to me.
She’s probably just won an onion-chopping competition.
I laugh under my breath as Scarlett’s leading man wipes her tears away with his fingertips, then I take Fletch’s pad and pen and write my reply.
He’s probably bought her a shit gift to cheer her up.
Fletch takes the book back and reads my reply, as, on screen, Scarlett’s beau draws her into his arms and kisses her tenderly. I watch them, and horribly, it makes me want Fletch to do the same.
Should I snog your face off now?
I look up at the screen and see the guy unbuttoning Scarlett’s blouse.
Leave it to the professionals. He looks like he knows what he’s doing.
Fletch reads it, then puts his pocket book down on the chair to the other side of him, props his feet on the chair in front of him and flings his arm along the back of my seat. We watch in silence as they make out on the screen and I make headway on my third glass of wine. At around about the point where Scarlett’s bra hits the floor I become aware that Fletch’s fingertips are resting on the back of my neck, so barely-there and casual that it means nothing, but for one tiny second it means everything. It is literally all I can think about. Up there on the screen Scarlett is sighing and rolling around with pleasure while I am perfectly still and silent in my seat, yet still, I think, I win.
It’s after 10.00 p.m. and darkness has fallen when we step outside into the rain again later. It wasn’t a bad movie as it turned out, but as is the tradition with all good rom-coms, the girl got her guy and they lived happily ever after in the end. She didn’t get squiffy on rosé, wonder if the local reporter was stroking her neck or not and then go home to bed alone.
‘Well, goodnight,’ I say as I turn to him on the pavement, doing an awkward half-smile, half-gurn. He looks as if he’s going to walk with me, so I add, ‘you really don’t need to walk me home.’
‘I wasn’t going to. My car’s on the car park at the end of the High Street. I can walk ten paces behind you if you’d rather though.’
Now who feels like a prize cock? Me, that’s who. I flail for a smart answer and come up with zilch. I’m forced to settle for a sarky scowl and start walking, my umbrella held out to shield myself from the pouring rain.
‘Hey, Melody,’ he calls from beneath the shelter of The Regal canopy. ‘Would it count as walking you home if you let me share your umbrella?’
I pause, and then sigh. It really is belting down. ‘Come on then.’
He huddles beneath the brolly, and then takes it from my fingers and holds it at a level that means he doesn’t need to walk on his knees to stay dry. We stand close through necessity and I pick up a fast pace; even Usain Bolt wouldn’t confuse this with a romantic stroll. It’s three minutes and twenty-two seconds until we reach the cobbled alleyway at the side of Blithe Sprits, not that I’m counting the seconds or anything.
‘This is me,’ I say unnecessarily, seeing as we both know that perfectly well. He steps out of the force of the rain for a second as I fold the umbrella down.
‘It is,’ he says. Rain spikes his dark lashes as he bunches his shoulders high and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. Maybe it’s the romantic movie, or maybe it’s my man-drought, or maybe it’s the bottle of wine on an empty stomach, but all of a sudden and out of nowhere, I want him with a force that knocks the breath from my body.
‘Kiss me like I’m Scarlett Johansson?’ Shit. I hope for my own sake that I forget I said that by morning.
‘Fuck, Bittersweet,’ he says, low and quiet. He sounds serious enough to be almost angry. ‘I was so close to walking away.’
Then he pushes me back against the wall and presses his body into mine, his hand flat on the wall beside my head as he kisses me in a way that Scarlett Johansson can only dream about.
I drop my umbrella and slide my hands inside his jacket. They somehow end up inside his T-shirt too, and I gasp in shock at the warmth and sudden intimacy of his skin under my palms. I think I actually whisper ‘oh my God,’ and his breath quickens as I slide my hands up and fill them with his glorious broad shoulders.
‘You’re trouble,’ he mutters, then kisses me again, deeper, faster, sliding his tongue over mine as he slides the hairband from my hair and musses it with his fingers.
‘And you’re lethal,’ I say, my eyes locked with his as he lays his hand flat over the base of my throat.
‘Don’t ask me in for coffee unless you mean with breakfast,’ he says, cocksure, making me laugh softly.
‘In the whole wide world, we’re the two people who should not have sex the most.’
‘That doesn’t even make sense, Bittersweet,’ he says. I can hear the humour in his voice as he moves his hand down to cover my breast. ‘You should probably stop talking now.’
I close my eyes and soak up the pleasure, because, annoyingly and inevitably, he’s ridiculously good at this stuff.
‘We’re really very incompatible, from the neck up, Fletch,’ I say, trying to remember the conversation I had with Marina but then he puts his hand underneath my shirt and back over my breast, only this time his fingers are stroking my skin and it feels like someone just switched me on from the inside.
‘I like how my name sounds when you say it.’ He kisses the skin just below my ear. ‘Say it again.’
I won’t, of course, but then he eases the cup of my bra down and closes his thumb and finger around my nipple and I say it anyway. I might even have said it twice, and my hand moves around to slide down his chest. He’s just so damn hard and hot. I curl my fingers over the waistband of his jeans and tug him closer against me. He dazzles me, and I arch into his hand and his mouth.
‘Your clothes are in my way,’ he says quietly, and then with the confidence of a man who has done it often, he reaches up and flicks my bra open. Fletch’s easy, self-assured voice is a problem to me; it’s giving me goosebumps and shivers and is turning me into a woman who makes out in alleyways. I won’t let this go too far, but oh my God he’s just put both of his hands up inside my shirt and he’s holding my bare breasts in them.
‘Ask me in, Pretty Face,’ he whispers low and urgent into my mouth as he slides his thumbs over my nipples. ‘Ask me into your bed, Melody, and I’ll say yes.’
‘Fletch,’
I start, and he seems to sense what I’m going to say because he groans and nips my lip.
‘Don’t say no. Don’t tell me we have incompatible brains, because from the neck down we’re best fucking friends. Don’t tell me you can’t stand me, because your body is telling me that right now you can stand me plenty. I’m not suggesting we pretend we understand each other, or even that we like each other, but the need to screw you is keeping me up at night, Bittersweet.’
He’s had me backed against the wall and his hands have been full of my breasts the entire time he’s been speaking, and when he bends his head to mine and kisses me some more I feel sexier than Scarlett fucking Johansson. I don’t want to stop him, I really desperately don’t, but the small bit of my brain that isn’t drunk on either Fletcher Gunn or rosé wine wants, no needs, to say something.
‘I don’t have casual sex.’ The words slide into the night air, and in reply he lifts my shirt and bares my breasts.
‘I’m not asking you for casual sex,’ he says, catching his lip between his teeth in almost pained pleasure as he looks intently at my body. His eyes say I yearn for you, and his mouth says ‘I’m asking you for intense, uncontrolled, filthy sex. The kind of sex you have once and then spend the rest of your life getting over.’
Could anyone in the world refuse that? Why would they? He’s just morphed into a potty-mouthed Mr Darcy, and I’ve always been a sucker for Jane Austen. I’m going to do it. I’m going to take Fletcher Gunn upstairs to my flat and let him give me the most mind-bendingly amazing night of my life, and then I’m going to go back to hating him again in the morning. And that’s the plan, right up to the moment when I hear the bell above the door to Blithe Spirits and then my mother’s voice in the street just around the corner, along with a deeper male voice I’d know anywhere. It’s Leo.
‘Shit!’ I whisper-gasp in panic, dragging my shirt down as I jump guiltily away from Fletch. ‘Shit.’
He pushes both of his hands through his hair and stares at me, his breathing ragged and harsh. His baleful eyes tell me that he knows that our night of filthy uncontrollable sex has just gone up in smoke.
‘Quiet,’ I mouth, holding my finger up to my lips. I don’t know which out of my mother and Leo dislikes Fletcher Gunn more, and I definitely don’t want either of them to find me half-cut and fooling around with him in the alleyway. He rolls his eyes at me as if I’m an idiot, and it strikes me that he doesn’t want to be found in a compromising position with me either. Should I be offended? I can’t muster it, because I’m under no delusion that this thing between Fletch and me is anything but inconveniently combustible chemistry and best kept between the two of us. Or not actioned at all, which now I’m out of the lust-trance he cast over me, seems like the best option all round. I just need to get him out of this alleyway without being seen.
* * *
‘I’ll speak to Melody,’ my mother says. ‘I’m sure she’ll help once she knows.’
What’s he up to? And what the hell is he even doing at my mother’s dinner party in the first place? My chest burns with unanswered questions as I tiptoe backwards and press myself against the cool brick wall. Fletch does the same, and we stand there side by side in the shadows and listen to my mother bid Leo farewell.
‘Don’t leave it so long next time,’ she practically purrs. I can tell from her tinkle of girlish laughter that she’s had a couple of glasses of my grandmother’s champagne, which is all it takes to relax her defences; she clearly gets her lightweight drinking-genes from her father rather than her mother.
‘Should I nip round and see if Melody’s home yet?’ Leo asks, and I peel my lips back in an exaggerated grimace of horror that probably makes me look like a character from Wallace and Gromit. I can’t even breathe as I stare into the darkness at the end of the alley.
‘We’d have heard her, I’m sure,’ Mother says lightly. ‘I’ll make sure she gets in touch soon.’
I hear him murmur his goodnights, and then listen to his receding footsteps with my hand over my banging heart ready to catch it if it bursts out of my skin. When I hear the bell over the shop door jingle, I finally let my breath out in one giant whoosh.
‘I didn’t think it was possible to dislike Leo Dark more than I already did.’ Fletch’s voice is hollow in the dark alleyway. ‘I was wrong.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘So how did the dinner party go?’ I’m in my mother’s kitchen playing innocent devil’s advocate, if indeed there can be such a thing. Sunlight streams through the open window in front of her by the stove, highlighting her sleek silver hair as if she’s an angel, which she categorically is not. What kind of mother invites her daughter’s ex-boyfriend to dinner and doesn’t think to mention it in advance? She’s meddling, and I’m going to call her on it.
‘The paella was an unmitigated success,’ she says, placing a big plate of bacon and eggs on the table before me. ‘How was your date?’
I consider how to respond. I lied to you about having a date to get out of your dinner party. I’m fairly sure that would go down like a rancid oyster. I had an unplanned, thoroughly unexpected, filthy-hot date with Fletcher Gunn. And that one would have me wearing my breakfast. ‘He didn’t turn up,’ I say, eventually.
‘What?’ Oh, she looks furious, but thankfully she’s furious with my imaginary Sicilian boyfriend rather than me so I’ll take that as a win.
I shrug regretfully as I pick up my knife and fork. ‘I watched the movie anyway. It was okay.’ I’m going straight to hell.
‘But you should have come home,’ she cries, waving the spatula at me. ‘You know perfectly well that I could have made room at the table.’
I burn to say Where at the table? Next to Leo? but I just chew on my bacon and try to make a ‘shucks, why didn’t I think of that’ face.
‘Yeah, I should have. Did you have a fun evening?’
She frowns. ‘Well, yes. A funny thing happened, actually . . .’ she pauses and twists her mouth, the way she does when she’s thinking how to phrase something. ‘We had a surprise visitor arrive just before we sat down to eat.’
‘You did?’ I round my eyes and stop chewing, like a Disney princess about to be given vital news.
‘Leo called by again.’
‘Leo? Leo Dark?’ I ask nonchalantly.
She nods. ‘He came hoping to see you, but he stayed for dinner anyway.’
‘So you hadn’t invited him to the dinner party, he just happened to come at the exact moment that you were serving up the paella?’ I don’t know whether to believe her or not. She sounds convincing, and she looks convincing, but then I am sitting here lying through my teeth so what’s to say that she isn’t too?
‘You know I had an empty seat, he filled it. It was no trouble really, but Melody I really think you should talk to him.’
I frown, and then huff a bit. ‘Wasn’t it only a few days ago that he was still in your bad books for the way he treated me?’
She looks torn and sits down at the table opposite me. ‘Well, yes, of course, he was. He is,’ she stresses. ‘It’s just that he’s taken such a lot of responsibility on, you know with the TV, and those girls as well.’
My ears prick up. ‘The twins?’
She nods. ‘Did you know that he pays all of their costs to be here; their rent, their food, everything.’
I mull on this for a second. ‘Yes, but you know they’re the founding members of his Twitter fan club?’
She nods. ‘He told me that they switched their affections to Leo after Finbar Honeyman took out a restraining order against them. Tricky situation, from what I can gather.’
‘Hold up a second.’ I frown, thoroughly confused. Finbar Honeyman does a similar job to ours somewhere up near the Scottish Borders – I’ve come across him occasionally at conventions and events and he’s even more egotistical than Leo.
‘Nikki and Vikki were Honeybunnies before they were Darklings?’ I think that might be one of the most bizarre sentences I’ve ever uttere
d, but stay with me. Leo and Finbar Honeyman are self-styled rivals both on Twitter and in life, so I’m fascinated to hear that the twins switched allegiances from one to the other. Oh hang on . . .
‘Finbar Honeyman took out a restraining order?’
Mum leans in towards me as if she’s sharing a top secret. ‘Apparently, they were a bit too obsessive over Finbar, terrorised anyone who dared to say anything negative about him. Menacing threats on Twitter, abusive and threatening messages on Facebook, that kind of thing. The police ended up getting involved and banned them from ever going near Finbar again. And so they switched their attentions to Leo.’
‘Okay,’ I say slowly, thinking back to the incident in the cellar at Brimsdale Road. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to give them a second chance. ‘And now he’s paying for them to live here as his personal assistants?’
‘Between you and me, Melody, I don’t think he had any choice. By the time all of this came to light they were already here and in charge of his . . . Darlings, is it?’
‘Darklings.’
‘They turned up on his doorstep with their suitcases and presented themselves as his dream team. He didn’t know a thing about the whole Finbar debacle until they’d got their high heels firmly under the table.’
I don’t tell Mum that they’ve been on my doorstep in tears too, but I’m starting to build up an idea of how those girls work and I’m seeing them in a whole new sinister light. It sounds very much to me as if Leo has wound up with a couple of crackpot obsessive fans that he doesn’t quite know how to get rid of. I expect he’s caught between being wildly flattered by their attention and worried that they’ll go all Kathy Bates on him and start smashing his ankles with a sledgehammer if he cuts them off.
‘Melody, sweetheart,’ my mother sits down with her cup of tea in her hand and sweeps her long silver hair over one shoulder as she studies me, ‘I hate to say this but I think Leo came here to warn you to watch your back around them.’