It had been stupid of him to imagine Ross would still be unattached after all this time. The thing was, he hadn’t really been thinking all that straight when he’d agreed to come home. If he had, he’d never have stepped onto the plane. Sure, Flora’s legacy was a nice bonus, but he’d never been all that enthralled by money. It had its uses, and he did like to look good, but he didn’t long for riches in the way some did.
“I’ll pay for all this,” he said and was pleased to find she didn’t argue.
Although Evie’s presence in Ross’s life had been a surprise, he had to admit she’d been a pleasant one. In truth, he’d have been sorry if he’d come back and found Ross alone. His friend was too nice a guy to deserve that sort of loneliness.
“I’m all done, apart from some wine, if you are?” Evie said.
“Not quite. I still need shaving foam and stuff. I’ll catch you up.”
Nose down, he strode away, his mind flicking over all the events they already shared and before long he was fantasizing about licking the ice cream from her skin again. A little farther down the same aisle he stopped for a few other little essentials. Leastways, he suspected they’d be essential if his sixth sense was anything to go on.
“Planning on getting lucky?” Evie asked when she caught him waving a bumper pack of condoms.
“Yeah. Maybe I am.” Kit glanced from the packaging to her and held her gaze just a fraction longer than was entirely polite. She coloured immediately, a fact she rather endearingly then tried to hide behind her hair. “Let’s go,” he said and chucked the package into the trolley.
Rose Cottage stood on the very edge of the village, set apart from the other nearby properties by several acres of heath land and a severely overgrown hedge. Once inside its wrought iron gateway, they found the lawn of what had clearly once been a colourful showpiece garden now pitted with molehills, and the flowering borders reduced to a collection of weeds. A huge pile of refuse sacks stood to the left of the front door, filled with decaying vegetation and bits of old carpet the local cats had peed on.
“Apparently they sent a clearing firm in after she died,” Kit remarked as he stared absently at the scarred façade of the former manor house. A moment later that half-whimsical expression had turned to horror as he found the remains of a rat tucked amongst the rubbish. “I guess it was pretty bad if this is what they left behind.”
Hesitantly, Evie patted his shoulder. If it had been Ross, she’d have taken his hand in order to offer that extra bit of reassurance, but just touching Kit’s shoulder seemed decidedly risqué. He turned towards her. “I’m all right. It’s just a shock seeing what’s happened to the old place.” His gaze fastened upon the right wing of the rambling building, where the loft space lay exposed to the elements. Even from this distance the roof beams were clearly rotten and speckled with mould. “That used to be my room.”
“You lived here? I take it there was a roof back then.”
“Over the summers. My folks travelled a lot whereas I preferred to stay put. Ostensibly, Aunt Flora looked after me, but it was a bit of a two-way thing. She was barking mad. The product of a different era, I suppose.”
“Lots of memories for you here, then,” Evie observed. The whole garden seemed tinged with melancholy too, and she wasn’t sure she liked this solemn, maudlin version of Kit. She crossed her arms protectively across her chest, feeling the winter chill start to nip at her clothing and wondered if there was a non-dangerous way of getting him to smile again.
The rumble of a car passing outside the gate startled them both, forcing a burst of nervous laughter from her throat. “Maybe we should go inside,” she said and hurried towards the front steps before he had the chance to lead her by the hand. Something told her that when it came to the physical, Kit remained a consummate flirt, regardless of the downwards swing of his emotions.
She waited by the front door for him to dart up and join her and stood back as he turned the key in the lock. The discomforting stench of mildew and bleach assailed them in the hallway. Evie clasped her hand across her nose, wondering if both her lungs and nostrils would ever forgive her. She even contemplated sitting in the car, but Kit didn’t seem ready to give her up. Instead he guided her through the rooms, lovingly describing their former glory. Thankfully, the noxious smell quickly dispersed, or else she simply stopped noticing it. For some time they wandered aimlessly between rooms, poking into corners and peering at what little remained of the furnishings as if they were taking part in some alternate-universe version of Through the Keyhole.
“It’s a big job,” she observed. Bits of plaster and wiring littered the upstairs corridor, and fallen leaves carpeted several of the rooms. There were floorboards missing and huge patches of damp crawling up the Hessian wallpaper in the old study room. “Bit different from your place in Japan, I bet?”
Kit turned on the kitchen tap. It sputtered a bit, and then spurted clean water. “That’s something, at least. Yes, it’s different from Japan, about as far removed from Shinjuku as you can get, but it’s better than I’d been led to believe. Sure there are a few big jobs that need doing, but most of this is cosmetic.”
Evie turned a full circle in the centre of the room, her arms raised in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I wouldn’t even know where to start on this.”
“The roof.” Smouldering coals lit in Kit’s eyes, the prospect of transforming the place clearly having pressed his buttons. “I’ll need to get the place weather tight first, and remove the rest of the rubbish. After that, I’ll probably start in here and work up. With any luck the Aga’s still functioning and just needs a service.”
Prompted by his optimism, Evie opened the lower oven door. Something scuttled within, retreating to the darkness beyond the assortment of blackened pie tins. Just as quickly, Evie slammed the door. “You may have to terminate a few rent agreements first.” She scurried back from the oven.
“Evict the squatters, you mean.” Kit’s face further brightened with laughter. “I can’t believe you’re scared of mice. How do you cope with Ross? I bet the cat’s not the only thing he’s brought home.”
“That’s different. I do like animals. I’m just not keen on wild rodents.” She continued to back out of the kitchen, her spine rigidly straight and her toes curled within her boots. Kit followed her into the former lounge, where he flopped onto the decrepit sofa, making the springs whine. It and an ancient iron bed upstairs were the only two real pieces of furniture left in the place.
The way Kit looked, sprawled out before her like a bounteous gift, made her hesitate about taking a seat next to him. Nobody had really turned her head since Ross. She’d taken herself right out of the available market and settled contentedly, feeling neither the need nor desire to even notice other men, but Kit was damn near impossible not to notice. The fact that she’d already been intimately acquainted with his rather spectacular anatomy only exacerbated the effect. There were years worth of erotic fantasies waiting to be constructed around him lying in the guest bed at home, offering himself up to her mercy, but she didn’t need that sort of chewed-up emotional guilt. Far better that she continued enjoying sexual escapades with Ross and kicked any images of getting too intimate with Kit out of her head. Truthfully though, that was a lot easier said than done. It took hardly any imagination at all to envisage him slipping his hand down his body and unzipping his fly in order to touch to his cock.
She wondered what he looked like when he came. Quietly restrained? Or did he let his emotions out in a violent explosion? Ross exuded passion like a force of nature. Outwardly, Kit seemed more refined, less earthy somehow, and more teasingly urbane, but that didn’t really give her any insight into what he was truly like beneath the surface.
“Penny for them,” Kit remarked.
“Eh?”
“You’re staring. That or you have some sort of weird zombie eye disorder.”
“Zombie what?”
“Nothing, forget it.”
Somethin
g kept her focus fixed upon him, despite the observation, which in turn made Kit sit up. “What is it?” he asked. “Did that mouse tell you all about my evil deeds?”
“What evil deeds?”
“If you need to ask, I guess not.” He slumped back down again, his hands clasped behind his head so that his elbows stuck out to the sides.
“Were you and Ross the village tearaways?” she asked.
Kit’s brows furrowed. He turned partially onto his side and curled his legs up towards his body. “We got into all sorts of trouble, just like most teenage boys. Scrumping apples, nicking asparagus, twanging bra straps, all the normal stuff.” He counted them off on his fingers, turning one down without remark and leaving the little finger noticeably standing.
“And later you broke hearts,” she said, curling the last finger down for him. The contact stoked a shocking fire in her innards, quelled a moment later by the hollow look in Kit’s eyes. The realization struck her that he hadn’t just drifted away from Kirkley in search of adventure. He’d run, all the way to Japan at a guess, with no intention of ever coming back.
Despite the dark swarm in his eyes and the thickness in her throat, Evie had to ask. She couldn’t just ask him straight out why he’d gone though. If she did, judging by his current expression, he’d probably just tell her to go fuck herself. Instead, she twisted the question round, eventually asking, “What was Ross like the last time you saw him? Tell me about the last day you spent together.”
“What do you damn well want to know about that for?” His knees got even closer to his chest, until he was virtually hugging them. “Nothing happened. We had a few beers together out by the ruins.” The tone of his voice suggested that far from being an unremarkable occasion, it’d been positively influential. She’d have to remember to ask Ross about it later, to see if he clammed up in the same way he had over Kit’s job, which was something else she still hadn’t had a satisfactory answer over.
“Tell me something else, then. How did you and Ross first meet?”
The hunch vanished from Kit’s shoulders, and he uncurled a little from his foetal position. “God knows, Evie. I was probably only five months old. What did I do to suddenly warrant the inquisition?”
“It’s not an inquisition.” She perched on the sofa arm. “It’s called getting to know you. It’s what normal people do in place of innuendo and exposing themselves. They ask questions. You are living with us. I have a right to know a bit about you.”
The mini rant finally earned her a grin. Kit pushed his fringe back off his face, revealing a thin silvery-white scar just above his right eyebrow, on which her attention honed in, until he let his hair fall back into place. Scars always came with stories, not that she expected him to be very forthcoming over that one given his current record. “You want a story, right? I’ll give you one. About Ross and myself and a camping trip.”
“You go camping?”
He sniffed and looked rather put out.
“Okay, you go camping. Tell me.”
“It was part of what I like to refer to as the summer of sin and seduction, when—”
“The what!” Evie lurched forward, which resulted in Kit’s explosive laughter filling the empty room.
“You know, it hardly seems fair to be telling you about this when Ross isn’t here. Maybe we should save it for later.”
“Oh, no, you’re not wriggling out of it.” Evie battered his knees until he budged along the sofa far enough for her to sit comfortably without touching him. “Start talking, buster, or you can pack your bags and move into this dump right now.”
“Are we agreeing the rent criteria here?” he quipped. “Tales for torment? Your guest bed’s lumpy as hell. I reckon this one’s good for a month.”
“A fortnight.”
“Without prying?”
“Prying as part of the flow of conversation is allowed.”
The look he gave her—a wickedly calculated glare—suggested he had a more visual form of snooping in mind.
“All right, if you’re sure you’re ready for this.”
She probably wasn’t, but without him even having breathed a word of the tale, she was on tenterhooks to hear it. Kit settled himself with his legs crossed and his fingers steepled before him, the tips of his index fingers pressed to his generous lower lip. “Every year we used to escape for a week, fly south a bit, and try and plan a music festival into the jaunt. They were always good times, away from all the gossips in the village. I swear there are people around here who count how many toilet rolls you buy. Anyway, I think you can imagine we were rather like two exuberant puppy dogs let off the leash for the first time. Ross was still living at home, and he never took anyone back to his place, and I was still rooming here for the summers, contending with Flora. My aunt was never the biggest respecter of privacy. She once came into my room and watched the entire EastEnders omnibus while I was in bed with someone. Needless to say, the lady in question and I didn’t do much besides look meaningfully at the ceiling for an hour.”
“Not at each other?” she asked. “But you were telling me about Ross.”
Kit continued. “It was the last night of this particular festival. Really late. We’d both turned in, when this girl starts calling among the tents for Ross. Turns out that we’d been chatting to her earlier on and she’d taken a bit of a shine to Ross, because no sooner had he replied than she was in the tent and crawling up to the head end of his sleeping bag to plant a great big smooch on his lips.” He turned his black gaze upon Evie again, looking her over as if he were about to drink her down. “Ross has never understood his attraction to the ladies, and he’s even crapper at turning them down. Not that I think he wanted to in this case, and well, you just don’t when the lady in question has gone to quite such lengths to find you.”
“Nothing to do with him being pinned inside his sleeping bag?”
“He wasn’t,” Kit clarified. “It was too warm to sleep completely zipped up, and she wasn’t a big woman. Nicely curvy, though.” He glanced at Evie in a way that suggested a figure not dissimilar to her own. Ross put her at ease about her abundant curves, but not everyone was quite so appreciative and she’d had her fair share of snide remarks over the years. Kit was probably into fine-boned, petite women, much like the Japanese ladies he’d no doubt dated. Only his next remark didn’t really tally with her assumption.
“She had this delicious way of shimmying her arse like she was a flamenco dancer or something that just made you want to grab hold and squeeze.” His fists tightened so that his knuckles bulged before his tone turned wistful. “Ross wasn’t stuck, but I was. Stuck inside a scrap of canvas with two smooching lovebirds, and in danger of becoming a mattress for their antics if they ever rolled over. I’d just figured that I’d better take a stroll and do some stargazing, when Ross happened to catch my eye. His date was whispering frantically into his ear. I couldn’t make out what, but that look stopped me dead in my tracks. Stay,’ he said.”
The moment Kit said the word Evie guessed where the tale was headed, and it wasn’t anyplace she’d ever envisioned Ross having been. She knew all about his kinks and turn-ons. They’d shared and acted out more fantasies than she could easily count, so that falling back on old favourites had become second nature when they were both tired. But Ross had never given any hint that he’d ventured along this particular avenue, and the knowledge that he’d kept it secret smarted more than learning he’d shared past lovers with Kit. Though looking at him and remembering the way in which Kit had casually loitered in the doorway watching last night, that wasn’t such a surprise.
If she had any sense, she’d stop Kit now and forget the whole issue, but of course she didn’t. She sat, riveted, gnawing the skin around her thumbnail.
“I stopped unzipping my sleeping bag, and Ross and I sat and looked at each other for a few seconds, and I looked at the girl, and instead of specifically making a decision, I just didn’t move. They fell back into kissing again, and I watched,
not really sure if that was all I was supposed to do, or if joining them had been part of that odd request.”
“But you did,” said Evie, trying to picture the woman with Ross and spectacularly failing to do so. She just kept seeing herself. “What was she like?”
“She had on one of those gypsy tops, the type that’s all ruffled around the top, and slips off the shoulders all the time. And a skirt, an itsy bitsy little tie-dyed thing, she’d been wearing with pink spotted Wellies during the day.”
The description gave Evie no clearer image of the woman. Instead she imagined herself in the ridiculously flirtatious getup, writhing against Ross’s hard body. As Kit’s words continued to pull her into the story, she could smell the organic scent of earth, mixed up with a hint or two of aroused male. The inner space of the tent lay in darkness but shadows flickered across the outside of the canvas, bodies moving nearby. A thread of music played somewhere in the distance. It coalesced with the faraway hum of the traffic. Kit’s eyes shone like black diamonds, longing scored across their surface. He leaned over and pressed a whisper light kiss to her bare shoulder, causing a zing of electricity to shoot up her spine. Completely immersed in the role, Evie turned, breaking the kiss with Ross in order to meet Kit’s gaze. Still holding her lover tight, she opened herself up to Kit, kissing him in a slow, deliberate way, so that warmth and desire swept across her body.
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