“Ahaha, I’m not telling.” He shook his head and made his way into the bathroom. Too late for a shower, he decided on a wash and a brush of his teeth. He took off his pants before he went back into the bedroom and discovered Vairi had decided on where to sleep. Right in the middle. Sleep being the operative word. She was out for the count. With a grin, Raig pulled back the duvet and maneuvered her over enough to spoon in behind her. She gave an incoherent mutter. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he settled. “Good night, my love. Love you.”
He was almost sure he discerned a soft “and you” in return before he cuddled in tightly and fell asleep. Not many hours later he woke up to the raucous noise of his alarm and groaned. Three hours’ sleep was nowhere near enough, but that was what he had managed. Get up and get over it, Raig, he told himself as he got out of bed and moved slowly into the bathroom. Vairi, he noticed, hadn’t stirred. Although how anyone could sleep through the clock’s racket he had no idea. He’d once been told it could be heard three trailers down.
An almost-cold shower went a long way toward waking him up. All of him, he noticed ruefully. The barely tepid water had done nothing to diminish the morning hard-on he had sported when he woken with his cock nestling between the luscious cheeks of Vairi’s butt. He dressed swiftly in an old pair of jeans, with non-designer rips over the knee and thighs and a T-shirt faded by umpteen times in the washer. Those, along with a battered pair of trainers, were perfect for the grunt work needed before the fair opened for business. Raig ran his hands through his hair, decided he really needed it cut, and that a razor had to meet his chin sooner rather than later. Rough ablutions completed, he walked through the bedroom, past a still-slumbering Vairi, and into the kitchen. By the time the kettle had boiled and he had filled the cafetière, he could hear noises from the bedroom.
Raig sensed her the moment she entered the kitchen. He turned to see her, looking to his mind much too awake for someone who had only had a few hours of sleep, never mind the exercise. He indicated the coffee.
Vairi groaned. “Mmm, please. I’m sure it was the smell of coffee that woke me up. Or perhaps it was the fact that I wasn’t being pushed out of bed.” Her eyes twinkled.
“Not out of bed, love, never. Maybe I was just cuddling.”
“Could be.” She moved into him for a kiss. “Well, good morning. What have you to do today?”
Briefly he outlined his day’s work—long, hard and physical. “And as I’ve a feeling I’ll have to kick Jonny’s butt to keep him away from the carousel, I’ll need to be watching him as well. So, my Vairi, what will you be doing? I can take you home now or arrange a taxi for later. Or you can stay and look around. Tonight, you could be my partner at the fair. No rides, well, not the mechanical sort anyway.”
“Er, well, um, I’d better get home at some point, although I’d like a look around when it’s open. But tonight? I’m sorry, Raig, I can’t come to the fair. I’m busy.”
He waited. She didn’t elaborate, and he was damned if he was going to ask what with. Instead he nodded, took a mouthful of coffee and almost scalded himself. Raig set his cup down carefully, even though he wanted to shout and moan, throw it at the wall and drum his heels. Like a two-year-old, he thought, disgusted. He spoke as evenly as he could. “So, is this the big heave-ho? Wham, bam and thank you?”
She looked horrified. “No! Oh, Raig, no, it’s not that. I’ve got a prior commitment. If you want to come for breakfast tomorrow, I’ll cook you my Sunday Special.” She still didn’t elaborate.
He got the idea that he could wait until Sunday, and she still wouldn’t tell him any more. He couldn’t call her for keeping secrets because he hadn’t exactly been as open as he could. Build a bridge and get over it.
“Deal. What is the ‘Sunday Special’? Do you cook it naked?” He made his voice hopeful.
She laughed. “In your dreams, Rake O’Shea. I don’t want hot splatters on my anything. Although maybe a frilly apron could be accommodated, as long as you do the same for me sometime. With a tea towel maybe?”
Now that conjured up interesting ideas. As well as an interested cock. “I’m thinking that idea has possibilities now,” he said, his brogue strong. “So I’ll be looking forward to our creativity. What time will you be wanting me to come?” At her quizzical look, he added, “For breakfast.”
She smiled and laughed. “I’ll be happy to oblige, anytime.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Vairi drank her coffee as she looked at him over the top of her mug.
Speculating.
Now what? This woman, this amazing, intriguing, gorgeous woman was going to have to accept sooner rather than later just what she meant to him. And understand what he meant to her.
“Why are you looking at me as if I’ve grown horns?” he asked with interest.
Her eyes drifted down to his crotch and back up again. “Ah, is that what it is?”
“Tease.”
She nodded. “Yup. So do I get a guided tour? I need to be away by midafternoon, but I’ll wander into town for an hour if you can spare time for me later on this morning.”
“For you? I’ll make time.” He put his mug into the sink and slopped water over it before he left it on the drainer. Even that was more than he usually managed on a Saturday morning. “Everything should be running before eleven, so if I come back for you then?” He dried his hands on a scrap of towel.
Vairi nodded.
“Help yourself to anything you want, although I think my boxers might be a bit large.” Raig winked. “Mind you it’ll put some very interesting scenarios in my mind and help me get through the next few hours.”
“Oh, bragging, are we? I have nice, clean”—she bent forward and lowered her voice—“sexy undies. I’m not saying I’ll be wearing them, but I’ve definitely got them.” She paused and leaned away. “If I go out, will I be able to get back in?”
In answer he opened a cupboard above his head and took out a small pouch. “Trailer keys. Right, I’d best be off before I’m accused of slacking. I’ll meet you here as near to eleven as I can make it.” He kissed her long and lingering and, as ever, had the body-clenching reaction of his nipples turning as hard as iron and his cock rock-solid and fighting his jeans to be contained. Hell, Raig, go before you come. And don’t say that out loud, for the Lord’s sake.
“Later, love.” He whistled cheerfully as he swung out of the door and walked briskly across the dew-dampened grass to the Ready Room. Phil had beaten him to it.
“Well,” his manager observed. “You looked fucked. Well and truly. Not get much sleep?” He was amused and it showed.
“Yes, yes and no.” Raig looked him in the eyes and covered his mouth as he yawned. “There will be no comments. No jokes, no fooling. She is important. I never believed Da about how he felt when he met Ma, and now I do. I just need to make Vairi understand she does as well.”
“Good luck.” Phil’s tone was sympathetic.
Raig nodded. “I’ll be thanking you because I’ve a feeling it’ll be needed. Now what’s to be done?” He tried to put Vairi out of his mind and concentrate on work. He was partially successful. The curve of a globe on the side of a stall reminded him of the curve of her breast as she lay on her side, the color of a backcloth the shade of her eyes. A laugh by one of the stallholders reminded him of her laughing down at him as he rose above her. Raig, my lad, you’ve got it bad. Every bloody thing reminded him of her.
It was just after eleven when he returned to his trailer. Vairi was sitting on the steps, chatting to Jonny. Raig almost stopped in his tracks. The surge of jealousy he felt when he saw them laughing together rocked him. Then she looked at him and smiled, and the green-eyed monster in him dissipated. Whether she knew it or not, that look spoke of love and togetherness.
“Jonny’s been keeping me company.” Vairi stood and brushed her hands down her jeans as she did so. Jonny grinned. “Telling me all your secrets…”
Raig’s heart missed a
beat.
Jonny doesn’t know. No one except his close-knit TV team did.
“More like she’s been stopping me from trying to work like you wanted. She’s a clever one, your woman, Raig. Even wanted to know where your tattoos were.”
Raig saw her eyes flash and stepped in before Jonny found out what it was like to be on the receiving end of her clever tongue and be scarred for life. “Then I’ll be thanking her, Jonny, for you’ll not be going anywhere near the rides or the stalls today, or it’ll be me you answer to. Understand? And I’ll be lookin’ forward to my Vairi finding the tattoos herself.” There was enough of a hard tone in his voice for Jonny to register the intent and know he was serious about all he said.
Jonny sighed and Raig relented slightly.
“You can go to the Ready Room this evening if you really want to, but until then you stay in or around the trailers. Okay?” He looked steadily at Jonny until he nodded.
“Good. Right, I’m off to show Vairi around. I’ll catch you later.” He swung Vairi up off the step and gave her a deep kiss. As ever, his cock showed immediate interest and reluctantly moved her away from him. “Let’s go.” He encouraged her across the grass to where the fair was waking up.
Two hours later, he was disgruntled and didn’t really know why. Unless it had something to do with a massive, rock-hard erection and an incipient need to screw his lady senseless. Vairi had charmed everyone he had introduced her to, looked deliberately vague at the innuendo and sharp cracks bandied around, then with a hug and a kiss left him with the comment, “Breakfast any time after nine.”
He watched as she got into the taxi and was driven away. Something bugged him, but he was damned if he knew what it was. Meanwhile he had work to do.
Half an hour or so later his phone vibrated. Is it Vairi? Has she changed her mind about the evening? Eagerly he fished it out. Groaned when he saw Denny’s name flash up. Time to face the music.
“Hi, Denny, how’s it going?” There was an indignant squawk on the other end of the line. Shit, fuck and all other epithets, it isn’t Denny, but Lorna. “No, no, I don’t know. Lorna, for fuck’s sake, ask her.”
“I did.” The voice sounded well pissed off.
Shit, he didn’t need the phone to catch what she said, she was yelling loud enough for the whole site to hear. He checked he wasn’t on loud speaker. He wasn’t.
“She said you spent all night having red-hot sex, the best she’s ever had. Told me she was now a fully paid-up cougar. You bastard, how could you do that to my mum? Red-hot sex.”
“Well, if you don’t know how red-hot sex works, Denny is not the man I thought he was.” Raig was exasperated and let it show. “Hello, Lorna. Your mum is a big girl now. If she says that’s what we did all night, that is what we did.”
“But she’s my mum,” Lorna wailed. “I can’t get the picture out of my mind that my mum…you…stuff.”
He laughed. “Double standards or what, Lorna? Seriously, she’s well able to stand up for herself. You asked me to show her a good time. I’m thinking I did that. Right enough of this. I’ve got to go.” He cut the call. Red-hot sex, eh? Nice one. Raig remembered Lorna’s indignation and smirked. None of your business, he thought as he continued his inspection of the site. Tough if your idea had reared up and bitten you on the bum. Maybe she would think twice about interfering with other people’s lives in the future.
Maybe. Ten minutes later, his pocket was vibrating again just as he was finishing his conversation with the stallholder of hook-a-duck. He had smiled as he approached, remembering Vairi’s comments. He took out his phone. As he had supposed, it was Vairi. Had she had the indignant phone call? It seemed she had.
“Honestly, Rake. How old do they think I am?” she asked in exasperation, even though humor colored her voice. “I got hell because I’d not rung her. Why I needed to ring her, I haven’t got a clue. Hell again, because I pointed out they set us up. Then I evidently added insult to injury, because when she asked me what we’d been up to I said ‘red-hot sex’. And I’m running late, but I just wanted to warn you, you’ll more than likely get a phone call. Tell her to mind her own business. Now gotta fly, see you in the morning.” The line went dead before he had a chance to ask “fly where, and why”.
Raig shook his head, amused at how one night had fired up so many peoples’ emotions. So where was the call from Denny then? It didn’t materialize. Just a text, with ‘Oh ho, I’m in shit. Keep your head down’. He was too busy to do anything else. Dog-tired and irritable. It had been one of those days. The dodgems’ generator failed, and some arsehole had smashed over a dozen lights around the coconut shy with several badly aimed balls. A lost child was eventually found under a tarpaulin, although not before the police had been alerted, and someone had tried to take the cash from the candy floss stall, only to be head butted by the five-foot-nothing octogenarian called Wendy who ran it. The wannabe thief was persuaded not to press charges for Wendy’s so-called assault, because, as he was told between hoots of laughter, no one would believe him.
Eventually he sat in the Ready Room with Phil and waited as Jonny got them all a beer from the fridge in the tiny attached kitchen. He heard an exclamation, a burst of noise and a “yee-ha”. He raised an eyebrow to Phil, who shrugged. “Jonny listening to the radio.”
The noise got louder. Jonny pushed open the door, three bottles in one hand and a radio in the other.
“Needed.” Raig drank deeply. “What a day.”
“Don’t you mean what a last night?” Jonny inquired slyly, and Phil laughed as Raig held his bottle in the air as a toast.
“And that as well, though in very different ways. I am knackered. In every which way.”
“Stop bragging.” Jonny switched the radio louder before sitting in a chair and crossing his booted feet. “We need to listen to this program. Eddy Nelson, the lorry driver, told me about it. Says it’s funny, sexy and damn good. I got the last half hour last week. It was all about eunuchs. And apricots, though not together.”
“Thank God, you had me worried.” Phil held up his bottle in a salute. “Fine then, let’s listen. Okay with you, Raig?”
He nodded. “If I fall asleep, it’s not because I don’t think the company is scintillating, I just can’t stay awake. Who’s the host?” He wasn’t really interested, asking more for the sake of staying in the conversation.
The radio told him before anyone else.
“Hello. Midnight already, and it’s me again, Cracking Carry C with Saturday Night Sounds, for all you people of the night. Before I get going, did any of you watch the TV program about the exposes of those sex traders? Really informative. I hope they don’t do what they threatened to the intrepid reporter. We need more like him. It’s no wonder we only know him as the Irishman eh? Bet he’s really a cockney. Anyway, I just want to dedicate this first song to him, because, as he said, that’s how he first got a hint of what was going on. So, to the Irishman, workers, insomniacs and lovers of good music and chat—boy, do I have all that and more tonight—let’s start off with Marvin Gaye and I Heard it Through the Grapevine. Because tonight, our grapevine is full of fruit.” The instantly recognizable notes filled the room.
Witty, Raig thought, as he tried to conjure up an image of the seductive-sounding Carry C. However, all he could see was an image of Vairi, her voice talking to him. And she’d seen his programs in the past? That was interesting. Pity he couldn’t ask her more about how she felt. But then he knew more than anyone that he had to keep a low—as in invisible—profile. The people he exposed wouldn’t think twice about putting him in the foundations of a motorway bridge. Man, you’ve got it bad, he told himself. The music died away and he had to force himself to sit back and relax instead of straining forward as if the radio could give up her secrets. He saw Phil looking at him with a smile, Jonny openly laughing.
“Sexy voice, eh?”
He nodded, took another mouthful of beer and a handful of crisps from the bowl on the table. Anyth
ing to stop him opening his mouth and putting his feet in it with banal comments. He listened as she began speaking again. She did sound like Vairi, just after she came. Interesting.
“Well, people, Stevie has just saved the evening with a chocolate croissant and a large, extra-shot cappuccino. I’ve been a wee bitty busy today, and I need my caffeine. I told him if his wife ever gets fed up of him leaving wet towels on the bed and boots him out, he can become my official coffee maker any time.” She chuckled throatily and Jonny moaned.
“Man, what that does to me.”
“Down, boy,” Phil said and Raig groaned humorously. He felt the same way. Was he getting the hots for an unseen, unknown woman, just because she sounded like Vairi? Sick, Raig, sick.
“Er, maybe I’d better explain, to any of my new listeners, his wife is my best friend, and we’ve been friends since primary school. Him and wet towels are her bugbear.” Carry C laughed, deeply and soulfully. “Ah, bless, he’s gutted I only want him for his coffee-making skills. Evidently he makes a mean bacon sarnie as well. Never experienced that. Now, enough of Stevie and on to my week.” There was a violin playing softly in the background. Raig was half sure he had heard the music recently. Whatever. He was reacting to it. Not the best thing with his two friends in the room and ready to comment.
“So,” she spoke as the violins faded. “What a week it’s been. Super injunctions being bypassed. Harry Seville marrying for the fifth time, my producer swearing off pot noodles—again. And the fair in town. Guaranteed to give you the ride of your life. Any comments on any of this week’s news, just email them to us. Although talking of rides…” She paused, and Raig cracked up. Talk about innuendo. He couldn’t understand how Jonny and Phil didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but by their expressions of interest but not enlightenment he guessed they didn’t.
“Anyway,” she continued. “I have a dilemma to put to you. Is it perfectly acceptable for an older woman to go out with a younger man? Like lots of years? More than ten. I have a friend who wants to know. So, listeners, Friends of the Night, what do you think? You have the email address, let’s try to help her. Whilst we’re doing that, here’s Fairground Attraction and Perfect.” The music increased and her voice faded.
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