For a Rainy Afternoon (7 page)

When we finally pulled apart after god knows how long, Jason rested his forehead on mine. “I want to say let’s go slow, I want to say the words that mean we make this part last forever.” I knew there was a “but” somewhere, and I held my breath. “I’ve only… I don’t know….” Somehow the wordsmith had lost his words.

“What?” I prompted gently.

“You want to take this upstairs?” He full-on dipped his eyes as if he was embarrassed.

Yes, yes, yes. God, yes.
“I’d like that.”

A
T
FIRST
we just kissed in the doorway to my small bedroom. The actual space was dwarfed by the large oak bed and sturdy chest of drawers; there wasn’t much room for anything else. So when I stumbled back, it was fortuitous that the bed was right there. Because Jason tumbled with me, and we fell in a flailing heap onto the mattress. There was nothing awkward about the twist of arms and legs, and we slid up the bed as best we could until we lay side by side facing each other. I was lost in those gray eyes, and I wanted more of the kissing. Instead, Jason ran his fingers through my hair, then gripped the length of it, not to hurt, but to hold me still as he leaned up and looked down at me.

“I’ll always picture you standing next to that car of yours that very first time I saw you,” he whispered. “Your ass in those jeans and that shirt, which was like a second skin. I think I wanted this from that moment.”

“You did?”

“It’s not happened before,” Jason admitted. “Something in my head was telling me you were special.”

I couldn’t help but kiss him after making a statement like that, and I reached up and locked my hands around his neck and pulled him down. He didn’t fight the tug and instead sprawled over me and settled very nicely between my legs. We kissed and talked, and this was far removed from any kind of sexual contact I had ever had before. I wanted to climb inside him, be with him, just him.

We shed clothes in a graceless laughing race to see who could get naked first, and I won only because I wasn’t wearing a belt. Finally naked, I arranged him how I wanted him, lying half on me with our cocks hard and heavy against each other. Paradise was just around the corner, and I wanted it badly.

The scent of apples wafted in from the open window along with the bonfire smokiness of the September evening, and I gave myself up to Jason as if we had been together forever.

He kissed a trail from my lips to my throat and across to one shoulder, then the next, followed by some crazy path that went from one nipple to the other.

“It’s impossible,” he muttered against my skin. “I can’t kiss every freckle. I’d be here forever.”

“They’re not going anywhere.”

“Next time I’ll get these ones.” He nudged my left nipple with his lips, then reached up and stole another heated kiss from me.

Next time? I wasn’t sure I was going to survive
this
time. We rolled so I was on top, and I spent the time exploring my new lover. His skin didn’t have freckles, but he did have an interesting birthmark on his left shoulder and a tattoo on the right. I spent the longest time kissing the acres of toned honeyed skin and realized this was as close to perfect as it could get. A light furring of chest hair led to a darkening treasure trail that I followed with my tongue. His erection bumped my cheek, and I had my first up-close and personal look. He was cut, and that seemed exotic and just this side of fucking sexy.

Jason’s cock was dry and warm with just a pearl of precum on the tip of it, and I tasted every inch of it until Jason was writhing under me and warning me to stop. Bringing someone so close to the edge was intoxicating, and I backed off only to start again as soon as his breathing evened out. He whimpered—I swear that was the noise I heard—and he yanked at my arm until I pulled off and slid up his body. He flipped us so he was back in control and wrapped a hand as best he could around us both. I wanted in on it and lamely attempted to find a hook, but all I got was the chance to hold him and lose myself in what he was doing.

We were done so quickly from that point out, with everything that had been building for days being let loose in an instant. When he came he kept his eyes open, stared right down at me, and hell if that wasn’t the sexiest thing I had ever seen. So sexy it had me losing it hot and wet right then. Only when Jason closed his eyes and slumped to the side of me did I realize the truth.

I was falling in love.

W
E
ACTUALLY
made it downstairs to have dinner, but when dinner ended up being cheese and fruit and crackers from the shop, we took it back to bed. How long we sat cross-legged opposite each other I don’t know, but after a while, we lay down side by side. We talked about everything and anything, from Maggie to Jason’s brothers, to the apartment in New York, to being a trust-fund baby, to me and how I came to run the station house.

“So why do you think she chose you to run the place?” Jason asked. He was threading and unthreading our joined hands, and the action was more than a little distracting.

“Something about being an artist and being rootless, maybe she just saw that I needed somewhere to make a life.”

“And what about your art?”

“What about it?” I was good at playing dumb when I wanted time to consider an answer. I rolled up and rested my chin on his chest, our joined hands trapped between us.

“Can I see some of it?”

I knew he would ask that. I just knew it. The standard answers, including “one day” and “tomorrow” and “I don’t have anything good enough,” all failed to match what I wanted to say. Instead I leaned over him and opened the second drawer of my bedside cabinet and pulled out one of my many sketchpads. I could recall with clarity every single image inside, and I turned to my favorite, a simple watercolor of Apple Tree Cottage viewed through the orchard. Still supported by him, I held up the painting.

“There you go,” I said in my most dismissive tone. I was giving him permission to hate it if he wanted.

He blinked at the image as if he couldn’t properly focus, then he took the sketchbook off me and awkwardly turned the pages with one hand. Finally with a sigh of annoyance, he loosened his hold of my hand and wriggled out from under me before sitting cross-legged opposite me. I copied the pose and waited expectantly for what he was going to say about my art.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. The blush started deep inside me. He was staring at my candid sketch of Maggie and her friends at coffee, and he’d called it beautiful. He flipped to another and then back to the painting of the cottage. “There’s something quirky in every painting, isn’t there?” he said cautiously.

I wanted desperately to reach over and take the book from him, but I didn’t. I was much more naked sitting there than just as a result of not wearing clothes, and I waited for the axe to fall.

“I don’t know which one is my favorite,” he finally offered, “this one or the one of the old ladies and their cups and saucers and cake.”

“You like them?” I hated myself that I even put the question mark at the end of that short statement. But even a first in art doesn’t guarantee people would like my stuff.

“Not only is the artist cute, sexy, and in bed with me, he’s also talented. You’ll have to do the cover for my book. You have to. The one of the old ladies—”

“Maggie. That’s Maggie with her friends. They meet up every week for coffee here, like a book club, and they exchange books.”

“The expressions on their faces… it’s wonderful. You should sell some of this art.”

“I do. Well, I have some in a gallery in Buckingham, some landscapes, some of Stowe Gardens, the usual. And they sell. I make a couple hundred a month off them.”

“You could be bigger than that,” Jason insisted, and my heart fell as he talked up this big plan for getting me in City galleries. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t about money; all I wanted was my village and what he wanted for me was the bright lights of success. Of course he would. He’d said money was no object for him, and I imagined he would want that in a partner.

He wants what I can’t be. What I don’t want to be.

I agreed with whatever he was saying, and then we curled up against each other and he fell asleep a long time before I did. Someone in this bed with me was a whole new experience, and I wished my headspace allowed me to relax. As it was, my sleep was fitful and I woke early. I realized I didn’t know what to say to the man next to me, and I did the only thing I could think of.

I ran away. Showered and dressed, and with Jason sleeping through all of it, I was downstairs by seven. I rearranged displays, organized the counter, sorted the papers left outside the door, and checked the time. Seven twenty-five.

Only another hour and thirty-five minutes until we opened.

J
ASON
APPEARED
just before nine, and he had that look of confusion I’d seen on many a boyfriend’s face when I couldn’t face them for one reason or another.

“You okay?” he asked as he pulled me close for a morning kiss. He tasted of toothpaste and sunshine and smelled of shower gel and god knows what that had me hard again. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong about the art thing,” he said firmly. “I know how hard it was for people to tell me I should try to get published. I hated them for it.”

And there it was. He knew what he’d said, and he knew how I’d reacted. He understood. And just at that moment when the first person knocked on the door to be let in, I knew for sure.

I was in love. In the space of a week. Love.

Go figure.

“It’s okay,” I responded as carefully as I could so as not to let any of the love escape into words. “I’m sorry I freaked out.” The knock came again, and I reluctantly pulled away. “Duty calls.” I smiled at Jason, and he kissed me quickly before wandering off into the kitchen to write. I could’ve started every working day like that.

Since it was Saturday, the post office was only open until midday and the shop closed at four. Finally faced with Saturday evening and all of Sunday off, I stretched tall and walked my fingers on the low ceilings. I needed a beer and a kiss. Probably a kiss more than a beer, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself out loud. I stole the kiss, pulled a beer from the fridge, and sorted through the pile of mail that had been redirected down from Apple Tree Cottage. I had that job because, as Jason said, I was the expert at it.

Jason saved whatever he was doing and closed the laptop. “Andy phoned, said he’s managed to empty out the attic at the cottage. He’s dropping stuff to us later, some toys and things.”

“Cool.” I discarded the junk mail and put two utility bills to one side. “I really ought to call the solicitor to talk me through the bills and things,” I said absently. The last letter was a plain white envelope addressed to Maggie, and I tore it open and pulled out the contents: a check for £633.20 and a letter from a company whose name I recognized. I couldn’t for the life of me recall where I had seen the name before. Then a couple of words jumped out at me.
Publishers
.
Books
.
Monroe Kitchener
. And a summary statement. The attached check was for second-quarter income, or so it said. Legal name, author name, breakdown of income. What the hell?

Abruptly I knew where I had seen the name. I left the kitchen and dived into the small front room with the view of the old railway siding and picked up the closest book I had been rereading. One of those from Maggie’s box. Holding it aloft, I was back in the kitchen and placing the book next to the check.

“Maggie was a writer, just like you,” I announced. Because that was the only thing that made sense. “She wrote under the pseudonym of Monroe Kitchener.” Then it all made sense. The way she would share her love for these books, the way she obviously had income no one knew about. Hell, were Jason and I going to be getting checks like this every month? What would we do with the money? I sat down heavily, and fondness mixed with regret. If only I’d known, we could have talked about it. I could ask her what made her stop writing. Then I had another wave of inspiration.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked. He was wearing a shocked expression similar to the one I knew had to be on my own face.

“Can I use your laptop?”

He didn’t hesitate, just opened it and switched it on. Then he turned it to face me, and I immediately went to Google and typed in the title of the last book in the series of ten books she’d written. There were a lot of matches, and I flicked through a couple until I came across what I needed to know. With my chest tight, I leaned back in the chair.

“When did your great-gran die?”

Jason frowned in thought. “The year my grandparents met, I think.” He closed his eyes, then opened them as he answered, “1964.”

I turned the screen back to Jason, and he glanced at it, although he didn’t need to as I explained what I found.

“
Autumn Rains
, Maggie’s last book, was published in 1964. Then nothing. Coincidence?”

“You think she stopped writing when her sister died?” Jason leaned on his elbows. “That’s really sad. I wonder why?”

“Not sure we’ll ever know.”

Andy arrived at just after four with a cardboard box full of knickknacks—nothing of great value or worth to anyone other than those who might have had a sentimental attachment. There was a tiny china doll dressed in a faded pink sleep suit, a few tobacco tins full of beads, and a moth-eaten blanket. Seeing the box made me sad, and I couldn’t help the emotion choking my throat. Maybe Maggie had sent the rest of her stuff away, given it to charity, but somehow the box was a final underscore that she was gone from there. When Jason hugged me, I leaned on him for every second of understanding he could give me.

“Grief isn’t for the dead,” he began in a soft tone. “It’s for the ones left behind.”

He was right.

S
EPTEMBER
MOVED
into October, and even though Andy had made the cottage habitable to the point that Jason could’ve moved back in, he stayed exactly where he was. Somehow his clothes were in my drawers, his shaving stuff in my bathroom, and suddenly nothing was “I” anymore but “we.” I hadn’t said the L-word, but neither had Jason. I just knew it was a matter of time. We ran together in the mornings, I worked, he wrote, I created art in my spare time, and we frequently had dinner at the Red Lion.