There was someone else in the room. He tried to turn his head to see, but as usual, he couldn’t. He could only see what he was allowed to, but he wanted it to be Izzy. He wanted Izzy to be there.
An abruptly, she was. Tilting into reality, lying among the filth of the floor, under him. And he was about to explode into climax.
“Glenn!” she was whispering. “Glenn, what is it?”
He raised his head and smiled down into her eyes. “Nothing,” he said. “Just this.” And he eased rather than pushed into her, once and then twice, in long, slow strokes that shuddered into orgasm.
She cried out, convulsing around him as he spilled into her in spurt after spurt of ecstatic release. Somehow, he managed to roll, to turn onto his back so he could cradle her on top of him. She kissed his mouth with trembling lips, gasping and panting, as the writhing of their bodies came slowly back under control.
“You know what?” she said breathlessly. “I think it would be sexy with you even in a coal cellar.”
“We’ve got one of those,” Glenn said, and she began to laugh.
It was the beginning of a hectic and naughty week. Despite her best intentions, it felt wickedly fun to leave the attic by herself, humming, while Glenn exited by the window and reentered his own room from the roof garden. The next day, when she headed for the attic once more, he simply stuck his arm out of his bedroom door and yanked her inside to make love to her in the comfort of his bed. Like the previous incident in the attic, it was quick, if slightly less desperate and somewhat more civilized. But the pleasure and the ultimate joy were no less.
More, in fact, because as they climbed back into their clothes, he said casually, “The rain’s meant to go off later. We can walk up to the waterfall if you like. If Jack hasn’t seen it, I imagine he’ll like to.”
The invitation warmed her, dissipating before it had begun to form properly any idea that their relationship started and ended with sex. Not that the sex wasn’t overwhelmingly delicious. But Glenn fascinated her on many levels, and she wanted that to work both ways—even if just a little.
And so, when Jack was changed after school, she walked back up to the big house with him. Glenn came out of the front door as they approached and was warmly greeted by Jack, who actually took his hand and Izzy’s as they walked.
Glenn looked totally stunned for a moment. Izzy knew how he felt. She was stunned herself, although for different reasons. Only a couple of weeks ago, she’d refused to bring Jack up here so she could work in school holidays. Now she was happy to see him holding the hand of the most infamous of the ex-cons who inhabited the place. She almost expected Glenn to drag his hand free, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything about it all. He didn’t even look relieved when Jack dropped both their hands to run ahead toward the waterfall.
“I’ve been thinking about the attic,” Izzy said.
He glanced at her, a smile playing about his lips. “So have I.”
She flushed. “I mean, what to do with it. If we repaired the wood, and cleaned the rooms up, your new guys could live up there in January. We’d have to get a move on, though.”
And there was another surprise. She said “we” just as if she was part of the project, not the reluctant cleaner who was only there because she needed the menial work to tide her over Christmas. Somewhere along the line, she’d begun to identify too much with the project, with Glenn, and she wouldn’t have blamed him for resenting it. However, if he even noticed her slip, he gave no sign of it.
“It’s a possibility,” he agreed. “But actually, we’re going to have a couple of caravans at the back. Frog’s bringing his own, and we’ve already been working to make a couple of the outhouses habitable as cottage-workshops. I’ll show you when we go back down. Rab wants to move into one of those, so he can sleep in the loft above his workshop and work at night if he wants to without banging doors and disturbing the rest of us.”
“Oh,” she said, a little disappointed by the obsolescence of her idea.
“But you’re right, we should make use of them, and we’ve left it too long already. I can start clearing stuff out of there. In fact, we can work on it together if you like. When you don’t have other things to do.” He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed. “Like making love with me,” he breathed as Jack dashed back toward them.
“Can Rab do the repairs in the attic?” she asked, trying to ignore the heat of her body. Jack took her hand again, pulling her until she gave in and walked faster.
“He could,” Glenn said without much obvious confidence. “Though he’s more of a cabinetmaker.”
“There’s a joiner in the village,” Izzy pointed out.
“They don’t like us much. We’ll cope.”
Izzy nudged him. “It’s all very well being self-sufficient,” she pointed out. “But you might find it made you more part of the community if you started using their services. After all, you’re expecting them to use yours.”
Glenn glanced at her a little ruefully. “Fair point. I suppose I quite like being a pariah, because then I don’t have to talk to anyone.”
“You have to talk to me,” Jack said.
“Well, no, I just want to talk to you,” Glenn disputed.
“There are a few people in the village you might want to talk to as well,” Izzy said calmly. “If you took the trouble.”
“Like who? Mrs. Campbell at the post office? I think that woman chews lemons instead of gum.”
Jack sniggered.
Izzy tugged both their hands. “Like Morag in the library,” she said severely. “Jamie in the off-licence. Lewis Dunn the joiner.”
Glenn’s mouth relaxed into a smile. “You know, in your own way, you’re just as persistent as Chrissy. But some of your ideas are better.”
Daylight was fading by the time they returned to the big house.
“All right there, wee man?” Jim greeted Jack with some delight. “What would you say to some mince and tatties?”
“Yes, please!” Jack replied with an enthusiasm that seemed to be good for the chef’s soul.
“Jim’s an artist in the kitchen,” Glenn explained. “He loves trying out all those complicated recipes he read about and watched interminable TV programmes about in—eh—in the old days. But sometimes he just wants what his mammy used to make.”
Izzy lifted her gaze to his. This was something she had to think about, if Jack was going to spend time up here. She couldn’t and shouldn’t lie to him, but sins of omission were beginning to mount to that level.
When Jack followed Jim into the kitchen for some juice, she said to Glenn, “I think I have to tell him what you’re all doing here. I don’t want him hearing it at school and getting all defensive for his new friends without all the facts.”
“Tell him what you need to,” Glenn said at once. He wandered into the dining room, adding, “I wasn’t covering up. Just not sure what you want him to know.” He bent and took two glasses, a bottle and a corkscrew from the dresser at the side, closed the door with his knee and set the glasses on the table.
“Truth,” Izzy said.
“Usually best,” Glenn agreed, unscrewing the cork from the bottle, which turned out to be red wine. He sloshed wine into both glasses and pushed one toward her. “Cheers.”
She sat down across the table from him and raised her glass, and since there was no one else in the room, she smiled as wickedly as she could as she replied, “Bottoms up.”
Glenn lowered his glass, his eyes suddenly hot and cloudy in the way that made her want to tear her own clothes off. Or his. “Fuck, yes,” he said.
“Well, that’s one word I don’t want Jack to hear,” she teased.
“Yes, well, good luck with that one,” he said ruefully.
“You’re really good with him,” she said. “Hell, you didn’t even swear in front of me until I took you by su
rprise by skulking in your bedroom.”
“I like you to skulk in my bedroom.”
“So do I,” she said, and then Jack was walking into the room, his juice sloshing dangerously up the side of the glass. Since Izzy was the one who cleaned the floor, she didn’t bother telling him to be careful.
Jim’s mince and potatoes turned out to be extremely tasty, and Izzy was happy to complement him. He blushed and grinned. Jim was the only one who ate with them, since it seemed to be between the most popular “sittings”. And he more or less bolted as soon as he’d finished.
“This is good,” Jack said, polishing his own off.
“Better than sausages?” Izzy asked. “Better than chicken nuggets?”
“Even better than pizza!” Jack insisted. “Hey, Glenn, you should come to ours for tea, shouldn’t he, Mum?”
Glenn leaned back in his chair, his face expressionless. Although he curled his fingers around the glass, he didn’t lift it.
“Yes,” Izzy said. “If he’d like to.” And this time around, having a man in her flat, she felt no need to invite Louise and Morag for safety.
It struck her then that the reason she always felt completely safe here among men she was pretty sure were no strangers to violence, despite what Chrissy had told her about none of them being violent criminals, was because of Glenn. And that was weird, because Glenn was the only one convicted for violent crime. A crime he didn’t commit, although by his own admission there were others he had.
She couldn’t imagine Glenn hurting her deliberately. And she just knew he would never lay a finger on Jack. Or any other child. You couldn’t change who you were at heart. Maybe Glenn did have violence deep inside him. Perhaps there had to have been for him to have done what he had when he was young. But Glenn, it seemed to her, had grown. He’d learned self-control and developed his own code of honour in the absence of any of his father’s or contemporaries’ that made sense to him. Even more surprising, she suspected it was a code everyone here now lived by. Perhaps that was the deal.
And Glenn, being Glenn, was more than capable of enforcing it.
Yet there he sat, unable to accept a child’s invitation to tea.
Chapter Thirteen
The following morning, as Glenn strode down the village High Street, a couple of women gossiping outside the post office scuttled across the road to avoid him. He’d have ignored that as he always did, except that his constant if automatic observation showed him several avid faces through the post office window, all gazing at him with something very like expectation.
Well, that’s different. Okay, I’ll play. He stopped and gazed at the notices stuck up in the window. This was where Chrissy had advertised the job Izzy now had. Today’s offerings were a very old notice about a missing cat, a new one about a double bed for sale, and an open letter addressed to Mr. G. Brody and the inmates of Ardknocken House.
Inmates.
This would be the petition Izzy had once mentioned. In bald rather than over-descriptive language, it asked said Mr. Brody and inmates to kindly vacate and move on, since the residents of Ardknocken and the surrounding countryside felt threatened and insulted to have such an institution on its doorstep. Ardknocken was not, it said, a suitable refuge for murderers and ex-convicts, so they, the undersigned, kindly requested Mr. Brody to close the facility forthwith.
There were about six signatures, although a hand-scrawled PTO at the bottom implied more on the other side of the paper. Glenn wasn’t convinced.
His lips twitched. What exactly were they expecting now? That he charge down the High Street, lashing out at the unwary and wrecking cars in his rage? Before packing up and going back to Glasgow with his gang of crooks and killers?
Izzy was right. So was Chrissy. It really was time he interacted more with the locals. He swung around and opened the post office door.
Ignoring the shocked faces that gave way before him, he walked past the general store part of the establishment and around to the post office counter and the notice window.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, although there was no need. The people who’d gazed out at him in hopeful glee from safe inside when he’d stood on the other side of the glass now backed off with a totally different expression on their faces, all but tripping over themselves in their eagerness to get out of his way.
Behind the counter, Mrs. Campbell stood firm, although her eyes were wide as saucers, and she made an odd whimpering noise that brought Mr. Campbell in from the back to glare threateningly through the counter window at Glenn.
Glenn ignored them all, untaped the petition and placed it on the counter in front of Mrs. Campbell. He took the pen from his pocket—the same cheap pen with which he’d got Izzy to write her number on his hand—and inscribed two letters at the bottom of the page in bold, black capitals.
NO.
Then he replaced the pen in his pocket and calmly retaped the petition to the window. There were no other signatures on the back. Smiling amiably at Mrs. Campbell, he made his way back through the gawping villagers toward the door. On his way, he caught sight of a face he knew better—Izzy’s friend from the B&B. Louise? Although she looked as stunned as any of them, her eyes were alight with something bright that might just have been amusement.
He nodded to her without stopping. “Hello.”
Her lips parted with shock. “Hello,” she managed in a weak voice as he passed on to the door.
That dealt with, he carried on with his mission to the Dunn house. Chrissy had tracked the location down to number 4 Harbour Road, which turned out to be one of the older cottages. Glenn, who’d started paying attention to such things since acquiring Ardknocken House, noticed it could do with a lick of paint. And there was a lot of moss on the ground that the birds had clearly been pushing out of the guttering. Signs of neglect, or too little time or money to do anything about it. Glenn walked through the gate and knocked at the front door.
It was opened by the red-haired boy who’d asked him for cannabis on the beach. The boy’s eyes widened in terror, especially when Glenn said, “Morning. Is your dad in?”
An inarticulate plea in his eyes, he opened and closed his mouth with no sound coming out.
“Neil?” came another, older male voice. “Who’s at the door?”
“Someone for you,” Neil said and bolted up the stairs.
“Hurry up or you’ll miss the next bus too!” his dad called after him, then back to Glenn. “Late for school,” he explained. “Again. What can I do for you?”
As he spoke, Glenn could see the recognition register on his face, followed by the usual wariness.
“I’m Glenn Brody—staying up at Ardknocken House.”
“Aye, I know.”
“You’ve been recommended as a good joiner. We need some work done in the attic—replacing rotten floorboards and a couple of fallen beams, that sort of thing. Wondered if you’d come and have a look, give us an estimate. There’s no rush, because we’ve still to clear a load of junk out of there before anyone can work on it.”
While he talked, the man seemed to get over his shock and click into work mode. After all, work around here must have been pretty hard to come by—as borne out by Dunn’s next words.
“I’m working in Glasgow for the next couple of days, but I’ll drop by when I come back, if you like.”
“Fine. If I’m not around, any of the guys will show you up to the attic. Thanks.” Glenn nodded and turned away.
He was almost at the gate before Dunn’s jauntier, “No problem,” reached him.
A combination of sweeping and vacuuming yesterday had removed the worst of the loose dirt and cobwebs from the attic. When Izzy found the time to go up there with a bucket of soapy water on Wednesday, she found a quilt had been dropped onto the cleanest space on the floor. Her body stirred. Clearly, Glenn had plans to meet her here.
Si
nce Glenn seemed to have already taken away the old pipes and cables and other obvious junk, Izzy set about scrubbing the trunks clean before opening them to see what was inside. One contained old dresses, mostly 1920s style. Some of the material was rotting, but others might be saleable.
She turned to the next one. Assorted junk, which would be harder to sort. Candlesticks, picture frames… Being shut up in the trunk had preserved them from the worst of the dust, so she began to bring the items out one by one, just as the window rattled and Glenn stepped in.
Her heart still gave the funny little leap it always had on sight of him. Now, the attraction had developed into greater knowledge, the excitement of seeing him had only intensified. She knew what he could do to her, what she wanted to do to him, what he liked. She loved watching her effect on him when they made love, and that moment just before he came, when self-control finally shattered…
Just a little breathlessly, she said, “I thought you were going to use the stairs now we’re officially working on this together?”
“Yes, but I wanted to sneak just one more time.”
“I see you prepared,” she said, nodding at the quilt. “Will that not be a bit of a giveaway if anyone else comes up here?”
He looked at her steadily. “Why should they come up here? What have you found?”
“Some old dresses you might be able to sell to a costume specialist. One candelabra, possibly silver, maybe old, this picture frame…” She dragged out a large, ornate frame and leaned it against the costume trunk where Glenn was examining the candelabra. “Where’s your nearest antique dealer?”
In His Wildest Dreams Page 15