Irresistible (11 page)

One of the bald men, who is possibly Spencer’s dad, also follows me around, shouting that I’m his “favorite” before falling into a bush. I find it amusing that in normal life he probably runs a company or something.

I’m just going to get a fresh bottle of wine when someone pokes me in the back. I turn around and there’s a large old woman sitting on a chair at the edge of the courtyard. She’s cloaked in silk and looks a little like an angry toad.

“Would you like my strawberry titty?”

“I’m … I’m sorry?”

“This thing.” I realize she’s holding out one of the
miniature strawberry-and-cream desserts in little jars that we’d handed out. She taps the jar with her finger.

“Um, no, thank you. I’m working, so I probably shouldn’t.”

I feel an arm slip around my shoulder.

“Awfully impolite of you to turn down Aunt Beryl’s strawberry titty,” says Jamie.

“Oh, okay.” I hold my hand out, thanking the lady while trying desperately to keep a straight face and not catch Jamie’s eye.

I hold the dessert up to him, speaking quietly. “I don’t want it. Too small.”

“Very kind of you, Aunt Beryl,” says Jamie, flashing her a huge fake smile.

“Don’t give me that crap, you little rogue,” she snaps, every word sending ripples down her chins. “Are you still as useless as ever?”

“I certainly am,” he replies, nodding deferentially at her.

She rises to her feet, and the chair gives a creak of relief. As she starts to shuffle off, she turns to me.

“You hold on to your panties with that one, girl. There’s no hope for him.”

Luckily she doesn’t wait for me to respond. We both watch her go for a moment.

“You can take your arm off me now,” I say.

He slides his hand away, deliberately dragging his fingers across my back. I squirm, trying to conceal the shiver that just went over my skin.

“Has anyone ever told you how creepy you are?”

“No,” he says, smiling. “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”

“What?” I say suspiciously.

“Not my penis,” he says loudly. “I wish you’d stop asking.”

A group of women nearby shoot us wide-eyed stares. I start moving glasses around on a table to look busy.

“Come on. You must be due for a break.”

His eyes shine wickedly at me. My urge to know more about him is too strong, and I know I’m going to follow.

“Okay, but if it’s anything weird, I’m leaving.”

I follow him to the door in the corner of the courtyard that leads into reception, and he heads for the wooden door that I saw on my interview day. It opens onto a spiral stone staircase. In one direction the steps descend into darkness, probably to the network of secret passageways. But Jamie starts climbing upward. I lose count of the steps and my legs start to ache as we near the top. Jamie pushes against another heavy wooden door and then holds it open for me.

I walk through and realize I’m at the top of one of the four towers. The hot days have kept the evenings warm, but there is more of a breeze up here than down in the courtyard.

The panoramic view is made even more dramatic by the moonlight. It’s dizzying. Black outlines of trees. Blue fields. The sparkling lights from the town.

“How do you like the view?”

I look around for Jamie and see him sitting on the edge of the turret, facing outward. My stomach lurches. He could so easily fall.

“Not bad,” I say, staying by the door.

He swings his legs back around so that he’s facing me. The breeze is moving through his hair. He grins at me and then grabs a cigarette from a pack lying on the wall and lights it.

“So whose wife are you after tonight, then?” I cross my arms. “Or will you just be encouraging someone to gamble away all their money?”

“Not tonight.” He looks at me steadily.

I watch him expectantly. His expression is almost defiant, like I shouldn’t be able to force an explanation out of him. We face off for a moment, and then he laughs and turns to see the view.

“I’ve been finding myself less bored lately.” He keeps his eyes turned away.

I look at him from the side. He’s frowning in thought, but giving nothing away about what those thoughts might be. And there’s something at the edges drawing me in. Making me frustrated because I can’t figure him out. Does he really do all this just because he’s bored?

There’s the sound of the door thudding shut and the patter of footsteps. Jamie looks over.

“Desmond.”

Dezzie is walking over to us. I smile at her and she stares back.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Don’t be grumpy, Desmond. Mia’s going to sing you happy birthday.”

“I’m not,” I say hurriedly.

“Good. That would be weird,” says Dezzie. She leans forward and plucks a cigarette from Jamie’s pack and runs toward something I hadn’t spotted before—a wooden shelter that’s been propped up in a ramshackle way against the turreted wall. She disappears inside.

Jamie jumps up with a flash of annoyance on his face. I follow him over to the shelter. We’re on the part of the tower
nearest to the courtyard, so can hear a hum of chatter from the party below.

We hear the click of a lighter, and then a small puff of smoke billows out from the shelter. Jamie stoops and looks into the entrance.

“Desmond, don’t be an idiot,” he says.

“I learned it from you,” she replies evenly.

“It’s different,” he says, frowning.

She pokes her head out and blows smoke in his face and then retreats back inside. He follows her.

I’m intrigued, despite Dezzie’s hostile glares, and I hover at the entrance.

“Come in, for God’s sake,” snaps Jamie, still clearly rattled by Dezzie’s smoking. He pats a cushion next to him. This is some sort of den. There are piles of books and comics in the corner, some dusty plastic boxes that look like they contain toys, and a shoebox that, when I peer at it, I see has
Hands off
written on it in Sharpie.

He sees me looking. “The profits of smuggling. Chocolate, mostly.”

“So this is a Radleigh secret, then?” Despite really wanting to not think it’s cool, I do.

“Not anymore,” Dezzie sighs.

“Pa discovered it a few years ago,” says Jamie through his cigarette. “He knows where to look for us now, so we don’t usually have too long.”

Dezzie flicks on a flashlight and bathes the whole place into a warm yellow light. I realize that the sloping roof wall is covered in chalk. There are games of hangman, scrawled messages, an unflattering cartoon of a man’s face with
Dick
written under it. A heart with the letters
J
and
C
inside.
I suddenly register a detail I saw when I first sat down—empty wine bottles. Next to them, burned-down candles. Jamie must have brought Cleo up here.

With a jolt, I realize that I have no way of telling the time. My fifteen minutes are probably up. But then the sound of the door opening, much more forcefully this time, makes Jamie and Dezzie both freeze.

Dezzie’s hand clutching the cigarette waves in panic. I lean over, grab it from her, and jam it into my mouth. The crunching footsteps stop outside the entrance to the den. I duck down and come slowly out to face him.

Richard Elliot-Fox definitely has elements of Jamie about him. His posture is brimming with easy confidence, and I can tell through his shirt that he’s tanned and muscular, even if he does have a little middle-aged belly going on. His thick blond hair is carefully crafted into ripples, with none of Jamie’s messiness. And instead of those deep, dark eyes, his eyes are small and mean.

“Hello!” I wave cheerily. I point to the cigarette in my hand. “Smoke break!”

Jamie has followed me out. He stands next to me, and when our eyes meet, he smiles at me gratefully. Dezzie emerges from the den, smiling sweetly at her father.

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t indulge your filthy habit around my daughter,” he says icily. “And that goes for you too,” he snaps at Jamie. He turns to Dezzie, and his face softens slightly, although his eyes remain cold. “My darling, if you could bring yourself to put in an appearance at your own special occasion, Aunt Beryl has no children of her own and enough money to fund the rest of your education.”

Dezzie rolls her eyes and trudges past him.

He waves his hand dismissively at me. “Aren’t you supposed to be handing out sausages or something?”

“I am.” I nod politely. I stub out the cigarette and Jamie takes it from me, clearly realizing that I don’t know where to put it.

As I walk back across the tower roof, I hear Richard’s low, cold voice continuing, although I can’t make out what he’s saying. When I reach the door, I turn back for a moment. Jamie is stony and silent; then, in the middle of Richard’s speech, he gives a loud yawn.

Richard leans forward, pointing a finger right in Jamie’s face, and even from here I can see Jamie’s expression darken.

Jamie rolls down the window as we speed along the road back into town. He drives a flashy sports car, of course, but I have no idea what kind. Silver and fast.

“You didn’t bring your gorilla tonight, then.”

“No, he’s off mountain biking,” I reply without thinking. “I mean, just call him Dan … And he’s not mine.”

“I thought you were with ‘Dan’?”

“We’re not …” I pause. I don’t know what we are really. “I like his silly jokes.”

Jamie looks like that’s the most appalling thing he’s ever heard.

“Just because you haven’t, like, laughed at or told a joke in your life,” I mutter.

Jamie gives me a look—a frown with a lot of pouting.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you actually do anything besides pout at people?”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Okay, I didn’t go to, like, finishing school, so—”

“If you had been to ‘like, finishing school,’ you would at least have learned to speak properly.”

“I don’t care if I don’t speak properly.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m normal.”

He lets out a small nasal laugh.

“Ooh, was that a tiny laugh?” I say in a mock-excited voice, and he smiles—a real, unplanned smile.

“No.”

There’s a silence for a while, and then we’re approaching the traffic circle near my house. I tell him it’s the first exit. He slows the car to a halt in the middle of the road, but it hardly matters since the whole town is deserted.

“Do you like swimming?”

“Um, I suppose.”

“Let’s go swimming.”

He revs the engine and we move off again. He misses the first exit.

“Wait, I—I don’t have my stuff …” He swings past the other exits and back onto the road we came down. We’re heading back to Radleigh Castle.

Just swimming. That’s fine, isn’t it? It’s exercise. Exercise that means I’m standing next to Jamie in my underwear.

I’m struggling to trace back the steps that led to this. The castle was silent when we walked past on our way from the parking lot. The party ended at one, and as Jamie walked me to his car, I saw Julia being firm in ejecting any stragglers. Any of the guests who overdid it would by now be feeling very sorry for themselves in the back of their parents’ cars, hoping vomit doesn’t stain a dinner jacket. There’s no one else around.

I scrunch my feet on the plastic coping around the pool. My arms are firmly crossed over my body. The lights in the main house are all off, and it feels like I’m completely surrounded by darkness.

“I’m freezing.”

“Get in, then. It’s heated.”

“Do you bring lots of girls back to your pool?”

“Yes,” he says and launches off the side in a clean dive into the water.

I can’t make myself jump in, so I go to the metal ladder in the corner and start climbing in backward.

“God, you’re going about as fast as my grandmother.”

His hands appear at my waist and pull me back. I slip down into the water. He brings his head close to mine, so he’s whispering into my ear. “Do you want to know what I do to every girl I bring back here?”

I don’t say anything and swallow, trying to slow my breathing.

“She’ll hold on here.” He puts his hands over mine, closing them around the handrail.

“I’m behind her.”

I can feel his mouth on the back of my neck.

“Her breathing gets faster.”

He moves closer. His body is touching mine. I feel electricity running up and down my legs.

“She bites her lip.”

The tingling is centered now within me, pulsing. “She cries out for more.”

The feeling rises with every breath and I turn my head. Our lips are an inch apart.

And Dan’s face comes crashing into my thoughts.

A horrible, guilty feeling weighs down on me and I duck down under the water. As I sink, Jamie’s stomach and shorts and legs flash past me, and the urge to pull him on top of me throbs everywhere.

I swim past his legs and away, coming up to the surface on the other side of the pool.

“There. I’ve done my swimming,” I say, trying to keep my voice level.

He laughs. “And now Scrabble?”

For the second time in two weeks, I wake up on Jamie’s sofa. He offered me the bed, but considering he probably meant with him in it, I insisted on the sofa. He wakes me up at six thirty and I mumble that I don’t have work. His response is to tap the side of my face with his hand until I open my eyes.

“What?” I say as a fresh wave of guilt breaks over me.

He nods toward the door. “Put some clothes on and come outside.”

I sit up groggily and get to my feet. “I am wearing clothes,” I say. I follow him out and am hit by a breeze that reminds me that by “clothes” I mean only Jamie’s sweater and boxers.

Another fresh, clear day.

The air outside is crisp, and the grass around the pool is damp. I see streaks of pink reflected in the water and then I look up and gasp. Ruffles of pink cloud cover the sky, shot through with flashes of blue. The castle is a majestic silhouette, and the trees twist in shadowy shapes behind it.

I follow Jamie’s dark figure as he makes his way to the grounds at the back of the castle. He lies back on the grass. I lie down next to him. And we look up.

All I can see is the sky. I let it overwhelm me and switch off all the thoughts and worries in my brain. I feel Jamie shift next to me, moving closer. And then he takes my hand.