Red Collar (27 page)

“You all should have your reputations drowned,”
she replied, without an ounce of rue. “I’ll be back soon.” And she rushed out of the door before she could lose him.

“What?” Bridget stared after her in disbelief. “How’d you do that?” she said turning to Lorenzo.

They put out their hands, waiting for her to pay them.

She grumbled as she handed
them back their ten dollars.

Rudy
strolled lazily towards the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, whistling a soft tune. Lorenzo put his arms around Libby, nudging her nose tenderly with his.

“Wait,” Bridget said,
a little stricken with realization. “It’s not officially over yet. I want my ten dollars back!”

“What happens now?” Kate yelled after him.

Clayton turned around in surprise.

“What if I do give us a chance?” she said. “What now?”

He cocked his head to the side, thinking as he stepped closer to her.

“I date you,” he said. “Take you out in perfect, respectable courtship.”

“Is that all?” she challenged, unimpressed
.

“Intr
oduce you properly to my family.”

She bit her lip
s. “Your family, they…?”

“They are the ones who knocked some sense into me. They are part of the reason I’m here,” he whispered, his eyes grazing over her face.

“What’s the other reason?” she whispered back, spellbound by his gaze. No matter how angry he made her, she knew she could never be totally impervious to him. She understood her limitations.

“That I’m
utterly and hopelessly in love with you and I can’t stay away from you,” he replied huskily.

“I like that,” she smiled
, her heart racing inside her. “So are you gonna kiss me or what?”

He cupped her
face, and leant over her. His lips grazed hers and he moaned. He captured her mouth in a sudden frenzy, taking her captive. His tongue warred with hers, exploring her. His lean fingers curved at her hips, melding her to his heated length.

“I’m never letting you go,” he breathed out throatily.

She smiled and tipped herself up on her toes to crush her sultry mouth against his.

Also by Clarissa Cartharn

WINTER’S END

Tormented by the rumours plaguing her once loveless marriage, young widow Emma Winston escapes to Breakish in the Isle of Skye with her two children. But her hopes of a new beginning is shattered as she finds herself torn between the man she once loved, her brother-in-law Richard Winston and wealthy playboy, Chris Cameron, the man who threatens to destroy everything she’s accomplished if he she doesn’t accept his offer of marriage.

Will Emma finally learn to follow her heart?

WINTER’S END

Clarissa Cartharn

Chapter 1

She was once told a good life almost always kept wrinkles at bay.

She caught her reflection in her hallway mirror and momentarily paused at her task, assessing herself and the relevance of the proverb in her life. The tautness in her face successfully disguised her thirty-four years, making her appear to be much younger than she really was. However she would have to attribute it to good genes.

Good life, she had had also. Twelve good years with her husband, Robert. He was the kind of man every woman dreamt of. Tall, handsome, dark-haired with an adorable cuteness which agreed tremendously with the fairer sex.

As she returned to the past, her memory drawing in the small coffee shop next to the town library, it still felt all too surreal that he could have fallen for a girl like her.

Her long, red curly hair was strewn haphazardly over her shoulders. They were layered at odd lengths, the best she could do with a pair of sewing scissors. Her glasses were plopped at the end of her nose as she flipped through another page of her renaissance romance novel.

“Hi,” said a voice.

She looked up to meet the most charming blue eyes she had ever seen.

“Hi,” she returned almost inaudibly.

“Is this chair taken?” he asked.

“Ummm…no,” she said hesitantly, her only hint of surprise visible in her own brown eyes.

“Great,” he concluded. “Then you don’t mind if I join you?” And without waiting for an answer, he pulled out a chair and slumped into it.

She blushed as she realised that he intended to share her table. And as for company?

“I’m Robert,” he said.

“I’mmmm sssorry,” she mumbled, her demure becoming even more apparent.

“Robert,” he repeated with a smile. “My name.”

She quickly composed herself before she could cause any further embarrassment to herself. “Emma,” she whipped out.

“Emma,” he repeated softly, tasting the sound of her name on his lips. “Emma, just Emma?”

She smiled. “For now,” she thought.

*****

She took a brief glance at what she was wearing. A long, plain dark skirt with an earth coloured tee shirt. Her once red hair was now darkened to an auburn and held back into a pony tail with a few strands flying loose around her face. The box she held up in her arms did nothing to help alleviate her poor impression of herself. She sighed. Did Robert really fall in love with this? What had he seen in her to have chosen her over all the women that relentlessly stalked him?

“I suppose I’m attracted to you because you don
‎
’t,” she remembered him say. “You don’t seem to care less of what I do. And I guess that’s kind of attractive. Don’t you think?”

She smiled. She did care but she was far too shy to let him on to it. Instead she entwined her fingers with his as they strolled through the park by the riverside.

She looked away in the hope he didn’t see how much she loved him. She focused on the robin that tweeted in the tree above them, chiming his last hours for the day and on the toddlers that babbled nonsensically in their adorable prams as their physically overdriven parents took their routine jog through the park lanes.

“In fact, there has been something I have been meaning to ask you.” His voice carried elements of seriousness which she had not anticipated.

“What is it, Robert?” she asked equally concerned. She noticed he carried the same frown that he usually wore during his architectural exams. He had an ardent passion for architecture. He would walk with her through the town and point out various buildings and proudly recite their history.

“Gap House,” he had once said as they stood before the building in Bayswater. “Designed by Luke Tozer. It’s only 2.4 metres wide really. He built it for his family. Must have been ridiculed whilst doing it. Instead won the RIBA Manser Medal for residential architecture. He saw something in it which others didn’t and he went for it.” He had looked down at her, his eyes swelled with desire.

That same desire had returned once more to his deep sea blue eyes as they stood now in the middle of the park, surrounded by energy driven mothers, babies and birds.

“What is it, Robert?” she repeated.

“Emma…,” he stammered. “Emma…”

“Yes, Robert,” she attempted to remain calm. There was very little that shook Robert and so his wavering stamina was becoming quite concerning.

“Emma,” he said softly. “We…we’ve been seeing each other for what? Almost two years now?”

“One year, eight months and two days,” she thought. But she was darned if she was going to say it aloud. “Yes, two years about.”

“And I now have a good architectural position with Cunningham & Price. And you are a…a…”

“An English teacher at Carlingford High,” she completed for him. “Yes.”

“Yes, yes,” he babbled. “I know I’m not making much at C & P but I definitely intend to find something much better. Much, much better.”

“Robert, I know that. You don’t have to…”

“Emma?” interrupted a voice, not at all like Robert’s.

She turned immediately. “Richard.”

“Emma.”

*****

“Mummy,” said a voice breaking into her thoughts. She saw a reflection of a ten year old boy standing behind her, observing her curiously. “You okay?”

She bounced the box she was carrying and turned to him. “Yes, of course Jai. Now have you finished setting up your room.”

“I have. I thought you might need some help with yours. It's hardly even close to finishing.” He took a turn about the lounge room still filled with boxes of all their odds and ends. Their brown couch was pushed far back to the wall to make room for all the cardboard boxes and their television set which sat on the floor, unplugged, its wires dangling over the top of its huge screen.

“What about Hannah? Where is she?” she asked suddenly noticing that the five year old was nowhere to be seen. It was unusual given that Hannah was always bound with so much energy she hardly could keep her feet at the same place for too long.

“Up in her room.”

“In her room? What is she doing there? She can
‎
’t be fixing it up. She’ll get hurt.” Emma immediately swung to the staircase to charge up.

“Stop worrying, Mum,” said Jai as he opened another box to check its contents. “I’ve already checked up on her. She’s playing with her dolls.”

She looked up hesitantly. She wondered if she shouldn’t call her down. Hannah could be a handful once she was fired up and she really didn’t need that now of all times.

“Probably, I’ll check on her later then,” she contemplated. She needed to finish with the kitchen above all things. That’s where everyone called in when the hunger bugs bit them.

“When are you going to finish with your bedroom?” Jai asked following her into the kitchen.

“Once I set up the kitchen. In the meantime, you could help Hannah set up hers. You might strike being more useful there instead of chasing me up on my bedroom.”

“I’m just wondering where you would be sleeping tonight if you don’t get it done. It is getting dark, you know.”

“I know. Hannah and I will manage on our mattresses by the fire in the lounge. We’ll be camping. Perhaps even a picnic. Just us two women,” she teased.

Jai scowled. “Well, I’m in. Like it or not.”

She ruffled his hair adoringly before he could race-up to Hannah’s room.

“Order us some pizza tonight?” he said as he walked out of the kitchen

*****

The firewood spit in the flames dancing in the small walled cove. Emma looked at the dark figures of her children lying next to her. Pizza boxes were piled one on-top another, evidence of their late night feast. Crumbs of their meal were still visible in the now empty boxes. Her mind instinctively turned to the possibility of rats and cockroaches. She sighed. If there were any, they would probably have been the more established residents of the old house than she.

Her eyes roamed over its beige walls and white ceiling, the shadows of the flames of her stone fireplace dancing on them. There were cracks in the corners of the ceilings, revealing the age of the building. She had been told by the realtor that it was a period home, built in the early eighteen hundreds. It contained four bedrooms, quite generous in size but in essence it was much smaller than the seven bedroom mansion she shared with Robert in London.

Her eyes scanned lower down to the pile of cardboard boxes stacked in the corner of her lounge room. In the dim light, she made out one that appeared to be almost spilling over with books. She smiled. Jai loved his books. She remembered how he had bickered with her when she alluded to donating some of them. There were just too many.

She crawled over to the box and began to sift through the upper pile, arranging them in a neat stack on the carpet floor. She had better. There was a good chance the box would topple over. She had to admit that despite his love of books, Jai had simply thrown the books in the box without a thought.

Humming a tune softly to herself, she dug her fingers in again to dish out another handful. As she turned to place them onto her pile, she caught sight of a worn out cover. It was all too familiar. “
A Comparative Study on John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn.
” She swiped a gentle hand over the cover. It was now well-worn out from overuse and its grey cover had dulled over the years. But the illustration of the Grecian urn was still as impressive today as the first day she had laid eyes on it. It seemed to her that like the poem, the image was also captured in the timelessness of the poem it represented. As she sat staring at it her mind drifted back into her memories and into her apartment she used to share with her roommate at twenty-two…