The Story of Us (15 page)

Forked lightning flashed through the sky, as dramatic and dazzling as a knife scything through the dusk of early evening. I slowed down almost to a standstill as the deep baritone of rumbling thunder echoed not far behind it. The rain was attacking the roof and bonnet of my car in a miniature machine-gun burst of ferocious wet bullets, and combined with the heavy-clouded dusk, my visibility was reduced to just a few metres.

‘This is ridiculous,' I muttered, realising I was going to have to abandon my mission. Given the conditions, I should just turn around and head back home. A moment later I glimpsed a gap in the hedgerow, and pulled in to a nearby driveway to make my turn. Directly in front of me, lit in the twin spots of my headlights, was Jack's car, parked at the end of a long drive, outside a small stone cottage. I turned off my engine and lights and stared through the downpour at the cottage. It was the type of place they take photographs of and make into jigsaw puzzles. Bay windows flanked the front door, and there was a rustic homely charm to the roughened local stone walls. I could see no lights on inside, but given the weather he was unlikely to be out, although he
had
mentioned that the deserted beach was good for jogging. Perhaps I could drop off the jacket without having to see him at all? I got out of the car and ran to the front door, getting saturated in the process, even though I'd only covered a distance of less than five metres. Beside the oak door was an old-fashioned metal pull which I tugged on, although if a bell rang inside, its peal was lost in the backdrop of thundering rain. I hadn't bothered grabbing a jacket, and the thin shirt I'd worn for work was quickly plastered to my body like a second skin, while the rain continued to effectively jet-wash me, as I stood shivering on Jack's doorstep.

‘Please be out, please be out,' I muttered, already scoping the exterior of the house for somewhere dry to leave the jacket and note, when suddenly the door opened and Jack was in front of me. My first thought was the sort of sound usually made by men when looking at lads' magazines
.
I make no apology for it whatsoever. I'm engaged, I'm committed to someone else, but I am also
not blind
, nor am I immune to what I'm sure was just a purely hormonal reflex action. Jack was naked from the waist up, and the old faded jeans that he must have hastily pulled on over his still-damp body, were sticking to him in places where I had no business looking. But I looked anyway.

‘Emma,' he said with a surprised smile, holding the door wider in welcome. ‘Come in.'

I shook my head, and droplets sprayed around me like a wet dog. ‘No, that's okay, I can't stay. I just came to bring you something. Hang on, it's in the car.'

A well-defined muscled arm reached out into the rain and took hold of my wrist. ‘Well unless it's a dinghy, it can wait until the storm dies down. Now come inside before you drown on my doorstep.'

Short of snatching my arm out of his grip, there was little I could do but allow myself to be gently tugged across the threshold. The hallway was dark and narrow and it was almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the intoxicating cocktail from our damp skin and whatever gel he had just used in the shower.

‘This way,' he urged, as his hand slid down from the delicate bones of my wrist and linked comfortably with mine. I followed him wordlessly down the passageway, wondering how much more spectacularly I was going to fail in my plan to keep my distance from this man. So far, within minutes, he was leading me by the hand into his dark home, half naked, with my clothes clinging to me so revealingly they might as well not be there at all.

The kitchen was a warm cosy cavern, all beams and stone walls, with an old-fashioned Aga throwing out welcoming waves of heat. Instinctively I moved towards it. The only source of light were the last grey shards of the day, splintered by lightning bolts, visible through glass double-doors which looked out over a small garden and the sea beyond.

‘Wow,' I breathed, as the entire sky was lit by an enormous strike which appeared to disappear into the rising swell of the waves, ‘that is an incredible view.'

‘It is,' he commented, his voice stirring the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. I shivered involuntarily.

‘You're cold,' he observed, and I saw his eyes fall to my soaking wet shirt. He plucked a warm folded towel from the Aga, but instead of just passing it to me, he stood before me and swept it around my shoulders like a matador with a cape. He should have let go of the towelling edges, or I should have taken a step backwards. But neither of us moved. I heard a slight rasp in my breathing and felt a crazy, almost irresistible urge to reach out and lay my palm on the muscled wall of his chest. His eyes were fixed on mine, and I saw his pupils dilate. Caroline's warning echoed hollowly in my mind. I shouldn't be doing this, and neither should he. I found the strength to step away, and the moment I did the spell was broken. I rubbed the towel briskly over my sodden clothing, while he reached for a T-shirt that was draped over the back of a chair. I tried not to be aware of the interplay of muscles as he stretched and tugged on the short-sleeved garment, but it was hard not to stare.

‘I'm sorry,' he apologised, ‘I can't offer you a hot drink or anything. The power went down in the storm.' That, at least, explained the darkened house.

‘That happens quite a lot around here,' I said, happy to talk about power cables, the national grid, freak weather conditions, in fact anything at all except that moment of intimacy that we were both trying really hard to pretend hadn't just happened. ‘Still, at least you have the Aga to cook and boil water on.'

‘Am I going to come across as a really stupid dumb American if I now say – huh?'

This was better; this was much more like the banter we'd enjoyed at lunch the other day.
This
was harmless and trivial.
This
I could cope with. I scanned the dimming kitchen for a kettle, but could only see an electric one, so I pulled a cast-iron saucepan from a nearby stand. ‘I'll show you,' I promised, filling the pan with water. ‘Then every cliché you've ever heard about the British and their tea drinking will be proved true.'

He laughed, and brought me tea bags, mugs, and then milk from the fridge. ‘As you're such an Aga expert, would you consider helping me with these later?' he asked, pulling out a tray from the fridge which held two enormous steaks. ‘I can't leave them to spoil, and who knows how long we'll be without power.'

I eyed the huge slabs of meat in amazement. ‘That has to be half a cow you have there.'

‘I'm an American,' he reminded me with a smile. ‘Originally from a small town in Texas,' he continued, his accent broadening, to make his point. ‘I can't let you Brits claim all the clichés.'

As I waited for the water, I held my chilled hands out to the radiant warmth of the range. My top still felt uncomfortably damp.

‘Let me go and find you something dry to put on,' Jack offered, disappearing into the dark hallway. He was back a few minutes later with a soft grey sweatshirt, bearing the logo of Harvard University, which he held out for me. I ran my finger over the insignia and raised my eyebrows in admiration, ‘The Texas boy did good,' I said with a smile.

‘I had supportive parents, and great teachers,' he replied modestly, and I liked the way he didn't claim credit for his academic success, even though I'm sure he had earned it.

I shook open the sweatshirt and slipped it over my head, trying to ignore the fragrance of him, which lingered deep within the fabric.

‘I can turn around,' he offered chivalrously, as I began to unbutton my wet top beneath the roomy sweatshirt.

‘No, that's okay,' I assured him, yanking reluctant buttons through holes that didn't want them to leave. He watched with mild amusement as I proceeded to attempt to wriggle out of the shirt in a series of inelegant contortions, which involved diving down the neckline and up the copious sleeves of his top. I was getting a little hot and flustered, and there was every possibility that I was now stuck inside the stupid shirt.

‘Need some help?' he offered politely, his lips twitching.

‘No. I'm fine,' I insisted, and then winced as a muscle twanged painfully in my neck. I gritted my teeth in determination. ‘I saw this once in a film… it looked much easier than this.' I also didn't remember the actress grunting quite as much as I was doing.

‘
Flashdance
, I believe,' he replied smoothly.

I stopped my contortions for a second and looked up at him. ‘I'm impressed.'

‘I told you, I like movies.' He had. I'd forgotten that. Finally I was free from my troublesome garment, and heaved a huge sigh of relief as I pulled the wet shirt out from beneath the Harvard top.

‘But, if I remember it correctly, the girl in the movie was actually taking off her
bra
,' Jack stated.

I gave a small satisfied smile, reached up my sleeve and pulled out the wet lace undergarment, like a magician producing a rabbit.

‘Now
I'm
impressed,' he said.

We sat at his small kitchen table sipping our tea in the dwindling light, and watching the storm as it raged around the cottage. It felt as though we were ensconced on a safe island or in a harbour, protected not just from the elements, but also from all other dangers and worries of the world outside these walls. Jack made me feel safe whenever I was in his company. That had to be tied up with him rescuing me, didn't it? Yet that didn't quite explain this curious feeling, as though I'd just found my way home after a really long journey.

Sheridan
. The name rang in my head like a tolling bell. His home was with
her
, not me. I put my mug back down on the table with a little more force than necessary, causing him to turn back from his study of the lightning to look at me.

‘Do you have storms like this in Texas?' I asked, clumsily forcing the conversation to remind us both of his home and life elsewhere.

‘I don't actually live in Texas any more. We moved to New York when I was a child.'

‘And is that where you live now?' I asked artlessly, all pretence of subtlety thrown out of the window to join the storm. He studied me for a very long moment before answering, and I guessed he'd been interviewed by enough professional journalists to easily recognise a probing question when he heard one. And let's face it, mine was hardly ingenuous.

‘I grew up in New York City and lived there for most of my adult life. Then, a few years ago, when the books started becoming successful, I bought a small ranch in upstate New York, and that's where I live now.'

It was rapidly growing too dark to see anything in the kitchen, so Jack pulled a box of candles from a cupboard beside the sink. I heard the scratch of a match, before he picked up our conversation. ‘And what about you? Do you and Richard plan on staying in this area after you're married?'

I swallowed a little uncomfortably at his question. Was there an implied criticism in it, or was I just being overly sensitive? ‘Yes, well, it's where our families and friends live, it's where we work.'

He nodded, but again I thought I could see a glimmer of disappointment at my answer. It made me angry; he had no right to judge me, to judge
us
, for being provincial. There was nothing wrong in that.

‘So how long have you two been engaged?'

‘Just since Christmas.'

He lifted a candle and positioned it on the window ledge by the sink, providing just enough illumination for me to see his look of surprise. ‘That recently? I somehow got the impression you two had been together for much longer.'

‘We've been together since we were teenagers, but we broke up for quite a while. I went away.'

Jack continued the task of placing the lit candles at strategic points around the room. The flickering flames cast dancing shadows on the rough stone walls, making the room look like an enchanted grotto.

‘So where did you go when you were “away”?' he asked, clearly no longer interested in discussing my relationship.

‘London to begin with, and then my job took me to Washington for eighteen months.'

He turned to face me, with a look of surprise. ‘I take it you don't mean your work at the bookshop?'

I smiled at the thought. ‘No. I was in marketing.
Am
in marketing,' I corrected, hating the way I had recently started to refer to my chosen profession in the past tense.

He looked at me curiously, waiting for me to continue. ‘I've had to take a little… career break… a sabbatical, I suppose you'd call it.' I paused, feeling, as always, uncomfortable when I had to explain this. ‘My mother hasn't been very well recently, so I moved back home for a while to help my father look after her.'

There was admiration and understanding in his eyes. ‘Until she gets better?' he questioned.

I paused at his words. ‘Actually no, until she gets worse. Or at least bad enough that my dad will finally be able to accept what is happening to her, and let her go.' I looked up, trying hard not to let the tears spill over. My words might sound tough, but
I
certainly wasn't, and never more so since the car accident. ‘It's Alzheimer's,' I said, only the words were a bit muffled, because somehow – and I don't remember how it happened – I was being comforted in his arms and my mouth was against the wall of his chest.

He offered no words, and I was really glad that he hadn't trolled out some well-meaning and ineffectual platitude. For a man who made his living using words, he certainly knew when they weren't required. I really liked that. Eventually, feeling more than a little embarrassed, I pulled away.

‘So,' I asked, with a false cheery smile and tear-stained cheeks, ‘do you still want me to have a go at cooking those steaks?'

I rummaged around in the drawers of the range in search of a griddle pan, while he began to make a salad. We worked together in companionable silence, as though this was just one of many meals we had prepared together. That was the strangest thing: that none of this – as unfamiliar as it might be – felt
strange
at all. A couple of times I glanced up and caught him looking at me with an expression that was difficult to define, but the closest I could get to it was a kind of pleasantly surprised mystification. I felt the same.