Never Too Late (29 page)

His face creased into a smile. ‘Brilliant! How about

moving into the bedroom, then, before I fall off this thing.’

‘You mean, you have a bedroom too?’ she asked in mock

astonishment, looking around the airy living room. ‘I

thought this was it?’

In retaliation, he burrowed his fingers into her ribs,

tickling her mercilessly until she pushed him off the

couch.

‘Brat:,’ he said, getting up off the floor. ‘For that, I’m

going to make you sleep on the wet patch.’

‘What wet patch?’ demanded Cara, swinging her feet to

the floor.

The wet patch we’ll have created in a few minutes,’ he

replied, bending down and taking her nipple in his mouth.

When Cara opened her eyes, she felt momentarily disorientated.

The room was dark but the streetlight that shone

through the thin curtains in her bedroom wasn’t on. The

darkness was suffocating and she panicked, sitting up in

the bed in terror. Her breathing got faster, she was

panicking.

A hand slid out of the crumpled duvet and took hold of

her arm.

‘It’s all right, Cara. You’re with me.’

Ewan. She was in bed with Ewan after a glorious,

glorious evening. Relief washed over her and she burrowed

under the covers, aware of how cold it was outside the bed.

Ewan’s naked body was warm and he held her close, still

half-asleep but wanting to curl his body around hers.

Spooned together in the warmth, Cara closed her eyes and

dozed.

She was tired and she should probably go home soon.

After all, they both had work in the morning. She had to

be in early. She wondered what time it was and how

difficult it would be to get a taxi back to the flat. It had to be after one in the morning anyway.

Then, as her ears adapted to the sounds around her, she

became aware that the noises outside Ewan’s flat weren’t

middle of the night noises. They were early-morning

noises: the hum of heavy traffic, the sound of people

walking up and down the street outside. She sat up again

and looked at Ewan’s side of the bed where a small Mickey

Mouse alarm clock sat. Mickey’s big hand was at eleven

and his little hand was nearly at eight. Which meant five to eight and very, very late for work.

‘Ewan!’ she said. ‘We’ve overslept.’

‘Don’t care,’ he replied, stretching luxuriously and pulling

her back down into the bed. His lips fastened on hers,

his hands slid down her body to see if she was as aroused

as he was.

Cara surrendered to his caresses in an instant. Who cared

if they were fifteen minutes late in to work? she thought,

wrapping herself around Ewan’s warm, naked body.

Twenty-five minutes later, she was standing in Ewan’s

shower, jets of powerful water streaming all over her. What

a shower! It even had a massage function. The one in her

flat barely had a shower function and you needed to spend

ten minutes under its limp drip to rinse the conditioner off

your hair.

‘Need any help?’ inquired Ewan silkily, sticking his head

around the curtain and giving her his best lascivious grin.

His face was covered with shaving foam and he was

brandishing a sponge.

‘We’ll never get to work if you get in here with me,’

Cara said, flicking water at him.

‘Spoilsport.’

He retreated and Cara turned her face up to the

powerful stream of water and let it wash over her. It was

hard not to compare this morning with the last morning

she’d woken up with a man in bed beside her.

Although comparing Eric and Ewan was ludicrous. Their

names both started with E, she giggled to herself, but that

was where the similarity ended. Eric was a huge, alcohol

induced mistake but Ewan … he was something different.

Something special.

Shed loved snuggling up beside him in bed; loved

talking to him softly when they’d finished making love.

She adored the way they fitted together so perfectly, the

way her frame fitted exactly into the curve of his body, the

way his arms held her tightly while he talked nonsense into

her ear.

And, more importantly, she loved the way he understood her. He’d been so right about her immediate instinct being to run away after they’d made love. But wrong that it

would happen with him. For the first time in years, Cara

didn’t want to run away from a man.

‘You’ll wash yourself down the plughole if you don’t

come out soon,’ he yelled from outside the shower. ‘I’ve

made coffee for us.’

What to wear was the next problem. For her meeting

with Bernard, Cara knew she couldn’t turn up wearing her

ratty jeans but she didn’t have time to go home and

change.

‘Wear one of my shirts and I have a pair of black denims

that are pretty respectable,’ Ewan offered, as he pulled on

a white T-shirt over grey casual trousers. ‘You could try

them.’

Dressed in a crisp black cotton shirt that was way too

big for her and a pair of beautifully ironed jeans that were

very snug, her damp curls tied back, Cara looked smart.

Ewan sprayed her with his Eternity for Men, kissed her on

the nose, then stood back to admire her.

‘Beautiful. And sexy. In fact, we’ll have to get out of here

quickly or I’ll want to jump on you again.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Cara said. ‘Not until we’ve had breakfast

at least,’ she amended.

It took them five minutes to swallow two slices of toast

each and gulp the remains of their coffee down before

hurrying out the door.

With Ewan’s car at the train station, they got a bus to

pick it up then drove through endless traffic to the

office.

‘Maybe we should keep our relationship to ourselves,’

Cara said delicately as they sat in a line of cars with five

hundred yards to go before they reached Yoshi Advertising.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ewan, his hand comfortably

resting on her thigh, fingers idly sliding up and down the

black cotton.

‘Well …’ she paused ‘… just not talk about it until …

well … until we know each other better or …’ She was

really floundering now. ‘Until we’ve been together for

longer.’

Ewan didn’t look pleased at the idea.

‘You mean, hide that we’re going out?’ he demanded.

‘Not hide, just be discreet. Bernard might not like it,’

Cara added.

‘Fuck Bernard!’ Ewan replied venomously. ‘He doesn’t

run our lives.’

‘He’s certainly trying to ruin mine,’ Cara said gloomily.

‘He makes my life hell whenever he can.’

‘He will if you let him,’ Ewan said succinctly.

‘Don’t be cross,’ she begged him. ‘I’d just prefer us to

keep our relationship to ourselves for a while, not let it

become the biggest bit of office gossip since Bernard’s

secretary was caught in the men’s toilet with a client.

Can’t you understand that?’

She couldn’t bear to be the centre of attention, with

people giving her knowing glances, the way they had all

those years ago. Keeping her private life just that was too

much of a habit to be abandoned now.

With shameless disregard for the laws of motoring,

Ewan leaned over and kissed her firmly on the lips. ‘I

understand. I don’t want to keep it a secret too long,

though, Cara. I want to shout it from the rooftops. I want

to be able to take you out to lunch every day and go for

walks with you and …’ he stopped and grinned ‘… drag

you into the men’s toilets myself!’

‘And get us both fired?’ she laughed, but felt bizarrely

nervous in case anyone from Yoshi saw them together in

the car. It would be just her luck for Bernard to be driving

along in his Jag and spot them kissing. She could imagine

what he’d say: ‘No relationships between staff— one of you

will have to go,’ or something to that effect, and Cara

would be out on her ear, jobless and referenceless. She

couldn’t risk that. ‘I’ll hop out here in case anybody sees

us. I’ll phone you later, OK?’

‘And pretend to be my aunt in case anybody else

answers,’ he said drily.

‘I won’t be your aunt tonight,’ Cara said huskily, a

promising look in her dark eyes.

She clambered out into the heavy traffic, eyes darting

around looking for Bernard’s distinctive maroon Jag. He

hadn’t: been able to get the vanity plates he wanted:

BR 1.

Zoe reckoned he should have got DCKHD - abbreviation

for dickhead. But the car was nowhere in sight.

Cara marched along the road and swung into the lane by

the office, hoping nobody would notice her new clothes or

the gleam in her eyes. She couldn’t wait to tell Zoe.

because they were nursing horrible hangovers. And Olivia

and Stephen were barely speaking at all.

Rosie was sick of the lot of them. She fidgeted in her

pew at the front of the church, hands jammed in the

pockets of her pony skin jacket. She could feel the new

packet of Marlboros in her right pocket, still encased in

their shiny paper. For her grandfather’s wedding, she’d

splashed out and bought twenty instead of ten and now

they were just screeching to be smoked.

Well, she reasoned, after driving down in the car with

her aunt and mother, both of whom were simmering on

about Gas Mark 7, she reckoned it was going to be a long,

long day and she’d be glad of the comfort of a fag. She

wanted one now, in fact. But you couldn’t leave the church

while you were waiting for the bride, could you? Only if

you were sitting down the back and could sneak back in

unnoticed after she’d arrived. Rosie wished heartily she

was sitting down the back and not beside her silent and

bad-tempered extended family.

looking at the two elderly ladies sitting beside her, both

dressed in their Sunday best.

Grandpops looked great, she thought, pleased for him.

In a smart grey suit with a cream rose in his buttonhole,

he looked elegant and distinguished. Definitely not like a

man in his late-sixties. Standing talking to his best man

at the altar, he kept turning around and giving her

encouraging winks, his kind eyes twinkling at her. She

winked back.

Rosie sneaked a look at her watch under the guise of

stretching out and flexing her wrists. Her mother would

kill her if she saw Rosie openly looking at the time.

Ten past two. Vida was ten minutes late. Still, you were

allowed to be late to your own wedding. Rosie decided

she’d be at least half an hour late if it was her wedding. Not

that she had any plans to get married. But if she did, she’d

rather enjoy making them all wait for her so she could

sweep up the aisle fashionably late, blowing kisses to

ex-boyfriends and making them wish they were the lucky

bloke at the altar.

Bored, she admired her chrome-coloured nail varnish for

about the hundredth time. It was seriously Space Age and

she loved it. Cara had given it to her before they’d started

out that morning.

Rosie couldn’t see why her mother had got in such a tizz

over Rosie keeping them waiting an extra five minutes

while she painted her nails with it. They were leaving way

too early anyway.

Mind you, any time would have been too early to

travel with her mother and Cara. The atmosphere in the

car had been awful, so Rosie had plugged herself into

her personal stereo and ignored them pointedly ignoring

each other.

Her mother had addressed one sentence to her aunt.

Namely: ‘I hope Vida isn’t wearing white.’ To which Cara

had replied: ‘Well, you’re wearing it to your wedding,

aren’t you?’

After that, Rosie had given up all hope of reconciliation

and had buried herself in an old Ella Fitzgerald tape that had belonged to her father.

She was keeping out of it.

Why couldn’t her mother see that Cara didn’t want a

fight but wanted to make friends? And why couldn’t Cara

see that her mother hated being in the wrong, hated being

criticised and had no idea how to apologise without feeling she’d let herself down in some way? God, Rosie just wished the pair of them would grow up.

Evie couldn’t help admiring the flowers. In a wicked

thought she’d immediately regretted, she’d half-hoped the

Ballymoreen church would be done up like a bordello with

a riot of mismatching bright blooms vying with each other

for supremacy, maybe with some garish ribbons thrown in

for good measure. It would have been proof that Vida

Andersen wasn’t the queen of taste she pretended to be, a

Martha Stewart clone.

But there wasn’t a clashing crimson, lilac, delphinium

blue and daffodil arrangement in sight. Instead, the mellow

stone of the old church was decorated with velvety roses in

the palest ivory, tied up with fragile grey ribbons. Very

elegant. Evie had to admit it looked lovely.

She caught her father winking at Rosie. Her daughter,

who hadn’t stopped fidgeting since they’d sat down,

winked broadly back. Evie leaned forward and shot a

glare along the pew in her direction but Rosie was