Hot Pursuit (12 page)

Outside, a raucous summer squall had rolled up off the Bristol Channel, and was currently backcombing the trees, bringing with it great sheets of driving rain. Maggie, snuggled up under her king-size duvet, was way beyond tired, with only her guilty conscience holding her eyelids open. Wide open.

She had been in bed ten, maybe fifteen minutes now.

‘Go,’ Nick had said, waving her away after she’d finished her tea. ‘I’ll be just fine. Really. It was my own stupid fault. Go on, go to bed, you look all in. I’m a big boy and after all it’s only for tonight. I can always buy a sleeping bag tomorrow if Coleman doesn’t come and get me –’

Outside, the wind ran round the bins, tipping the lids. Rain lashed against the windows, Mother
Nature cheerfully doing Hammer House of Horror movie impressions. Maggie’s conscience poked her again; that poor man lying there in the dark, all alone, cold, probably freezing by now. She surrendered, sighed, got out of bed and, pulling on a shapeless tee shirt and dressing gown, headed out into the hallway.

She tapped on the door to the boys’ room. ‘Nick?’ she whispered. ‘Are you still awake?’

It was dark now, with just the light of a watery moon sneaking in through rain-crazed windows.

‘Uh huh, what is it?’ he said thickly, although Maggie couldn’t work out exactly how awake or asleep he was.

‘Nick, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but would you like to come and sleep with me. In my bed, I mean – I mean, that’s not an offer – you know, I don’t mean, er –’ Maggie reddened, while struggling to find the right words. Any words. ‘And it’s raining outside.’ She sounded pretty pathetic, she thought grimly.

‘Come in,’ Nick said, and as Maggie opened the door wider he switched on the bedside lamp. He looked ridiculous. He was curled up on the bottom bunk covered in sections by the plaid picnic rug and two beach towels with dolphins on them. He was bare-chested, with one long, slimmish but nevertheless muscular leg peeking out from under Flipper’s artful beak. His feet hung over the end of the bed.

‘So, do you want to come and sleep with me, then?’ Bugger; that wasn’t how she’d meant to say it. Maggie reddened up to a nice shade of rose the instant the words were out.

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he said, with a slow sleepy grin.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ Maggie muttered as he followed her back into the main bedroom. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

Under his amused gaze Maggie very carefully arranged a wall of pillows down the middle of the bed.

‘I can take a hint, you know,’ Nick said as he clambered in alongside her and pulled up the duvet. He was dressed in black cotton boxer shorts – she tried not to think too much about that – and en route from his room he had pulled on a tee shirt, too. Ummmm, yes, nice bum and very nice legs purred the salacious part of her brain as she switched off the light.

As soon as she was horizontal Maggie closed her eyes and willed her mind to let go. After all, Nick was warm and comfy now. Her body was still hanging on tight to consciousness by its fingernails. If it would just let go and jump, Maggie knew that sleep would catch her on one of those big rubbery mats that fire crews always had in American films. She closed her eyes tighter and tried hard to block Nick out.

He smelt nice. Nice in a warm, musky, male
way that made her mouth water. It had been so long since she had slept with a man. Maggie stiffened as the thought gelled and then Nick moved, snuggling down, settling, rolling into a comfy space.

Damn. She lay in the dark for what seemed like an eternity, eyes resolutely closed, worrying that he might move closer, worried that he might not. For God’s sake this was even more ridiculous than leaving him freezing in the spare room, complained one side of her brain, while the other side whined and struggled away from sleep’s hold like a badly behaved child. What exactly did Maggie know about Nick Lucas anyway? He could wait until she was sound asleep and then do God knows what to her. Why hadn’t she left him in the spare room? Eh? Could she explain her reasoning? A peck on the cheek and a hug was neither a promissory note nor a guarantee of good behaviour.

Alongside her, Nick let out a long sigh and then rolled over. If he started to snore now she would murder him herself.

‘Maggie?’

His voice sounded odd and overly loud in the darkness.

‘Yes? What do you want?’ she hissed.

‘This isn’t going to work out, is it? I appreciate the gesture but it’s like trying to sleep next to an ironing board. I can feel how tense you are from here. Why don’t I just go back in the spare room,
I don’t mind. Honestly.’

‘No, you’re okay, I’m fine,’ she lied.

‘No you’re not. I’m not going to jump you. Honestly – I promise – it’s just that I haven’t slept with anyone since my wife left. It feels odd sleeping with someone I don’t know.’

Maggie snorted. ‘We’re not exactly sleeping now.’

‘What I meant to say was –’ Nick began, but Maggie was way too quick for him.

‘And at least you’ve got a good excuse for feeling a bit odd. I haven’t slept with anyone since, since the last ice age. Or maybe even the one before that.’ She was annoyed by the sound of her voice; it came out brittle and sharp and needy despite the veneer of humour.

There was a long, pregnant pause and then Nick said, ‘Do you want a cuddle?’ He spoke quietly into the stillness.

Maggie sighed. ‘God, yes.’

Nick made as if to move closer.

‘But I’m not going to have one,’ she snapped, thrusting a pillow into his chest.

Nick laughed. ‘You really are completely and utterly crazy.’

The affection in his voice made something tighten low down in her belly. Maggie groaned. God, this was all she needed.

‘Go to sleep,’ she snapped and with that rolled over, taking most of the duvet with her.

It was barely light when the alarm clock beside Nimrod’s bed went off. The rolling, roaring beep was raw and insistent and inescapable. He groaned and stretched, slamming the button down, collecting his thoughts – an instant later Nimrod’s eyes snapped open and he smiled, his expression cold and lizard-like. Today was the day, he could feel it; the waiting was finally over.

‘Wakey, wakey campers,’ he called to Cain, as, naked, he rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. His companion grunted and turned over, pulling the bedclothes up over his head. In the corner of the room the TV was still on, sound down, picture flickering like manic candlelight.

Nimrod savoured the sensations of the cool shiny tiles under his bare feet and admired his body in the full-length mirror beside the hand basin. He had an all-over tan, a belly like the underside of a turtle, and the rest of his frame
was nicely muscled up without being too obvious or too heavy. Nimrod struck a Mr Universe pose and smiled wolfishly at his reflection. From the other room he heard the sounds of Cain stirring and climbing out of bed. Not long and it would all be over and done with.

He stepped into the shower and switched it onto full blast, letting the needle points of hot steamy water drive away any last remnants of sleep. He soaped his body with the tender caress of a lover. When he had washed, Nimrod turned the dial to cold. A long, long time ago, one of his instructors, a man who professed to be a psychic and who had taught him martial arts, had explained to him that a cold shower first thing in the morning cleansed and sealed the aura, the electrical field that encased every living thing. Cold water made a warrior stronger, more alert; he was less likely to be caught out if his aura was crystal clear.

Nimrod gasped as the water hit him. It was like a body blow driving the breath from his lungs. He hoped the psychic was right because whatever it did to his aura it always gave him a blinding headache.

Curled up on a damp wooden bench in the West Brayfield Memorial Jubilee Pavilion, Bernie Fielding dreamt that he was stretched out on the village green just outside the post office in
Renham. It was raining hard and he was stark naked, and so it appeared was Stella Conker-eyes – although it had to be said she didn’t look best pleased with the situation. Funny things, women. Bernie thought she looked bloody gorgeous. In the dream he was cold, partially covered in damp leaves, and the grass was wet and some old lady kept poking him in the back with her umbrella, telling him that he really ought to get himself covered up – he should be ashamed of himself. It wasn’t decent. Hadn’t he got a home to go to? Bernie was just explaining to her that in fact he hadn’t, when it struck him he was asleep, dreaming, and on his way back to the surface.

Very slowly, Bernie headed up towards consciousness, opened one crusty eye and took a look around. The sports pavilion was filling with pre-dawn light, tentative fingers of vapid yellow picking their way through the piles of damp netting and stacks of metal-framed chairs.

It was unnaturally early for Bernie to be awake and his mouth tasted as if something had died in it overnight. Bernie stretched and instantly regretted it. There was still something jabbing into his spine – which on closer inspection turned out to be an old football boot – and every bone in his body ached as if he had been kicked. For a few befuddled seconds he couldn’t quite work out what the hell he was doing in the pavilion but then, very slowly, it all came back to him in
glorious detail. Maggie, James Cook,
Gotcha
, the gasmen, and what felt disturbingly like a guilty conscience.

Moaning, Bernie pulled himself up onto one elbow and looked out of the dusty, cobweb-decked windows at the new day. The prospect of heading off into the grey, drizzling misty morning didn’t cheer Bernie up one iota. But the sooner he started the journey to Somerset the sooner it would over, and there would be lots of lorry drivers on the road at this time of the morning who wouldn’t give a shit how rough he looked.

Bernie tidied himself up as best he could, combed his hair, and then clambered unsteadily back through the pavilion window. Banging his elbow on the way out, Bernie stopped long enough to pull on his jacket and have a pee up against the bike shed. The steam rose up from the damp grass as if he had uncovered a vent straight to hell. Shivering, Bernie made his way back towards the village and the main road.

Nothing stirred, not even the birds were awake yet. It felt as if he was walking into a ghost town, and for a few seconds Bernie wondered if he might still be asleep. He looked up and down the deserted main street; there wasn’t a car in sight. He shivered again as the cold nipped at his bones. It had to be at least a mile walk down to the nearest worthwhile road. Bernie sniffed, stuck his hands in his pockets and set off towards the new
day. It struck him that being good really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Danny Coleman woke up with a peculiar sense of pleasure. Somewhere in the disconnected bliss of sleeping and dreaming he had had an idea on just how to fix the whole Nick Lucas problem once and for all. One that would suit everyone, including the women currently banged up on both sides of the Atlantic. Danny let the idea run through his head frame by frame and wondered why nobody had thought of it before. If you can’t beat them, join them. He smiled wolfishly; although the smile still didn’t warm anything above his mouth.

A few miles further south, Robbie Hughes was up as well. He couldn’t bring himself to speak to Lesley as he got into the car, or maybe it was the other way round. He wasn’t sure. He had seriously considered leaving her behind at the hotel to teach her a lesson. He would have, too, until it had occurred to him, as he tried to sleep despite the clank and groan and wheeze of the hotel’s central-heating system below the room that he had booked for her, that he had left his bloody car keys on the bedside table in his suite.

Not that he had planned to spend the night in the little room over the kitchen. He had been trying to make a point. After a lot of fruitless
banging on the bathroom door and pleading, Robbie had announced that he’d had quite enough of her behaviour and that she was being unreasonable and childish and that he was fed up and hungry. He was going to go and eat and by the time he came back she had damned well better have calmed down. Oh yes. All right, so maybe he had shouted at her, but that had been in the heat of the moment. He was creative, passionate, in tune with his emotions – isn’t that what she had said about him once? Well, it was a doubleedged sword. She had annoyed him but he wasn’t cross with her now, quite the reverse. He wanted nothing more than to spend a nice quiet evening in her company. Just the two of them – all alone together.
Now
would be good. Lesley?

When it was obvious that he wasn’t making any headway at all, Robbie had snatched up a swipe-key card from the bedside table and stalked out of the bedroom, slamming the door angrily behind him, which had immediately locked. Locking him out.

Robbie had glanced down at the card in his hand, knowing even before his focus sharpened that he had picked Lesley’s key-card up by mistake. Standing out in the corridor, incandescent with fury, he had considered fetching the night porter to let him back in, but then again he didn’t want to draw attention to his sleeping arrangements. The red tops would have a field
day if they found out he was shafting Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes. There was nothing they liked better than the chance to expose a public figure’s feet of clay, or any other part of his anatomy come to that. And Lesley wasn’t the first – God alone knows what would happen if the story ever ran. It would probably open the flood gates.

‘I had Robbie Hughes’s love-child. I
was
Robbie Hughes’s love-child. Three-in-a-bed romp for TV’s Mr Clean.’ God, Robbie groaned, he could just see the headlines now. No, he would go and sleep in Lesley’s room and hope she felt terrible about it. Bitch. He’d remember next time and take someone else instead. Oh yes. Lesley should realise by now that Robbie Hughes was not a man to be trifled with.

The early-morning call in his cupboard had been fifteen minutes late. Robbie couldn’t remember booking one for Lesley’s room – mainly because he had assumed it would be empty – so he had come to the conclusion that Lesley must have rung the night porter when he didn’t show up to meet her at the arranged time. There didn’t appear to be any hot water in his room and the selection of towels that hung limply over the bathroom rail smelt as if they had been there since D-day.

So by the time Robbie got down to the hotel car park – still wearing the shirt, pants and socks that he had worn the previous day – he was
absolutely fuming, while Lesley was sitting triumphantly in the front seat, all clean and smug. She certainly looked as if she had had a good night’s sleep, and was clutching an empty carton of fresh coffee. His coffee – standing on the driver’s seat – was stone-cold and scummy. Oh, she would pay for this.

As Robbie got into the car he held out his hand. Lesley dropped the keys into them and in stony silence they drove out of the hotel yard.

He noticed as they pulled out into the street that sellotaped to the dashboard was a large sheet of paper on which was written, in thick marker pen, the road numbers and junctions that would take them down to St Elfreda’s Bay.

He sniffed. It would take a lot more than that to appease his wrath. Lesley looked at him and tried out a little smile. Robbie’s face remained impassive; she was going to have to try an awful lot harder than that if she wanted to make up for last night.

Maggie Morgan drifted slowly back towards consciousness, eyes still closed. She sighed and then eased her bum back into the lap that was snuggled up around her, relishing the comfortable weight of the arm casually draped across her waist. Bliss. It felt so good that she almost purred with the sheer pleasure of it.

She loved the warm, cosy feeling of early
morning spooning almost more than anything else. As the thought formed, Maggie froze. Purring? Spooning? Hang on a minute. That wasn’t right.

Full consciousness splashed over her like a bucket of cold water. Maggie opened her eyes while her mind did a complete recce of the current situation. It appeared that she was spooning with Nick Lucas, the man in black cotton boxers who she barely knew, and who sometime during the night had obviously illegally crossed the piled pillow checkpoint and was currently indulging in a spot of unscheduled snuggling. The bastard.

Struggling to ignore how good it felt, Maggie let the indignation roll through her. She was about to say something but before she opened her mouth she looked again at the far side of the bedroom and hastily recalculated her position in relation to the wall – and reddened. Unfortunately it seemed to have been her who, overnight, had climbed, unconscious, into enemy territory. The pillows were all on what had formally been her side of the bed – most of them on the floor. Her rogue body had been very busy while she was asleep.

Apprehensively, Maggie shuffled through the card index of her memory to see if there was anything else that she ought to be ashamed of, and was relieved when the search came up empty.

If she could just slither out from under Nick’s
arm. Maggie, holding her breath to make her body even thinner – who was she kidding, just slightly thinner – squashed herself down into the mattress.

He was sound asleep, his arm almost a dead weight. He’d never know if the movement was really quick and smooth. She’d just have to wriggle her bum a bit, move away from his…Maggie reddened furiously. It didn’t bear thinking about where her bum was currently snuggled. Maybe she could slip out without him noticing; pretend to be sound asleep, groan a little and then just roll over. How hard could it be? Except that it felt quite nice – no, not quite nice, very nice. Very nice indeed. Damn.

Nick, still sound asleep, moaned softly and pulled her closer. Closer? Maggie stiffened, her eyes wide open now. What the hell was he playing at? His lips and face settled close to her shoulders as if he was breathing her in. Maggie groaned quietly. If only she hadn’t woken up and had just left their bodies to get on with it. Nick snuffled, then his hand slid artfully up from her waist over her ribs and under her tee shirt.

Under her tee shirt? Good God, she barely knew the man. Her stomach did that funny nippy flippy thing as the sensation roared through her, at which point Maggie squeaked, some kind of moral fail-safe cut in, and she was out of bed like a whippet out of a butcher’s shop.

Back in the bed, Nick yawned and blinked and
then focused on her. ‘Morning,’ he said sleepily, rubbing his eyes. ‘You all right? You sleep okay?’

‘Who, me? Yes, fine, I’m just fine. You want a cup of tea?’ she said, far too brightly and far too quickly, but at least got it all in before Nick had a chance to recall any purring or snuggling or spooning.

‘That would be great,’ he said thickly. ‘What time is it anyway?’

‘Um, I don’t know – seven, maybe half past? It’s early yet, there’s no need to get up –’

Nick stretched, while Maggie made a conscientious effort not to look at just how broad his shoulders were or stare at the nice flat area of hairy belly exposed between the bottom of his tee shirt and the top of the duvet. Damn, if only she could have just pretended to be asleep.

‘I have to ring Coleman and let him know where I am, and that I’m safe.’

‘Do you want to use my mobile?’

‘Thanks,’ said Nick. ‘You know, I had the strangest dream this morning.’

Maggie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She just hoped that Nick had enough sense to wait until she left the room before getting out of bed or recalling his dream.

‘Tell me again, why exactly are you doing this? Why don’t we just ring the AA and be done with it?’ growled Robbie. ‘This is what I pay my annual
subscription for. Roadside rescue, roadside recovery –’ He stamped his feet and flapped his arms angrily. The day hadn’t quite had the chance to warm yet, and there was a nippy little wind blowing across the motorway that took his breath away now that they were out of the warmth of the car.