The Story of Us (23 page)

I nodded, suddenly too choked to speak. I hadn't seen this painting in years. ‘We holidayed there, about ten years ago. We stayed in a
gîte
just down the lane from this place,' I said, inclining my head towards the painting. ‘Mum was up at dawn every morning, waiting for just the right light to capture it the way she wanted to.'

He studied the picture with what I felt was just the right amount of concentration. ‘She nailed it.'

I smiled, at the very un-art critic summation. ‘She did that.'

One of his arms was around my shoulders as we spoke, and it seemed perfectly natural to lean against him, but there was nothing I could detect in his hold except the comforting support of a friend.

‘Does she still paint?'

I gave a sigh which was both sad and regretful. ‘All the time. But nothing like this, not any more.' There was genuine sympathy in his eyes, and the hand cupping my shoulder squeezed gently. ‘We eventually ran out of wall space at home, so she started selling some pieces through a gallery in town. She did quite well, actually.' I sighed again, and looked back at the painting. ‘I always liked this one though; I kind of wished she'd kept it.'

The sun was starting its slow descent towards the horizon, and when we returned to the kitchen Jack threw open the glass doors to let in the refreshing sea breeze and lazy slanting chevrons of light. He turned down my offer of assistance as he pulled armfuls of salad vegetables from the fridge, reaching further into its confines to extract some beers and a bottle of wine. He smiled approvingly when I went for the beer.

‘Definitely my sort of a girl,' he said, opening two bottles and passing me one. It was just a figure of speech, I knew that, but I raised the bottle to my lips to hide my smile.

As he chopped and cleaned the salad ingredients, I cleared a space among the accumulation of papers piled on the table, to make room for our plates. A large envelope slipped from my fingertips, scattering its contents, and a collection of colour photographs fell like tarot cards across the wooden surface. I recognised the location instantly, it was the lake we had visited; the photographs were part of Jack's research. I began shuffling them back together into a pile. Each picture was so similar it was hard to see what he'd been trying to capture with the images, and then my fingers stilled as they reached the final four photographs at the bottom of the pile, which had been hidden beneath the others. They were all of me. I opened my mouth to say something, to ask why he'd taken them, and then closed it again, confused.

I learned more about Jack that evening from the things he
didn't
say, rather than the things he did. He spoke of his father, who had passed away; their closeness and how much he missed him were obvious from his voice, which I found really moving. I've always felt you can tell a lot about a person by their relationship with their family, especially their parents; it was one of the things I'd always loved about Richard. I shook my head as though to get rid of an annoyingly persistent insect. I had to learn to stop doing that, to stop relating everything back to him.

Jack was good company; amusing and intelligent and also very skilful at diverting the conversation away from anything too personal. Of course, he had every right to guard his private life, I'm sure a lot of people in the public eye did the same, but it was still frustrating. By the end of the meal, I was full of chilli, buzzing slightly from two beers and had told him probably far more than I should have done about my relationship with Richard, and had gained practically nothing in return.

When Jack went to the fridge and held up another beer with a questioning look, I shook my head. I was driving later and two was definitely my limit. He took one for himself, flipped the top and raised the bottle to his mouth. I found my eyes drawn to the long column of his throat as he swallowed deeply. I stared, strangely mesmerised by the muscles moving beneath the tanned skin. He caught me studying him, and I felt a hot flush creep into my cheeks.

‘What?' he asked, slowly lowering the bottle from his lips and leaning back against the countertop.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Say something
, my brain screamed at me.
Anything. Don't just sit there gaping
.

‘I was just wondering…' My voice trailed away. I had no idea where I was going, or how to finish my sentence.

‘What is it, Emma? If there's something on your mind, just ask.' I gulped noisily, as though I was the one who had just drained half a bottle of beer. Were all crime writers this direct and intuitive, or was it just a Jack thing?

‘Well… you've talked about your work and your life in America, but you've never mentioned if there was anyone special in it… anyone waiting for you back home?'

I winced inwardly. I should have asked about his book, his favourite food, or how much he made in the last tax year! Anything would have been preferable to prying shamelessly into his personal life. Jack smiled at my cringing discomfort and there was a mischievous glint in his eye.

‘Well there's Fletch, my Labrador, he's kinda special, getting a little wobbly on his back legs now, but he's twelve so it's to be expected. And then of course, there's a couple of horses who—'

I balled up a serviette and threw it at him.

‘Okay. Okay I get it. I'm being nosy and intrusive. I'm sorry. Forget I asked.'

He bent to pick up the cloth, but there was no censure in his eyes as they met mine. ‘There
have
been a few women in my past,' he admitted, ‘but no one I regret having let get away.'

There was an open honesty in his words and face, and I was totally unprepared for it, and for the fleeting twinge of envy I found myself feeling for the nameless women who had passed in and out of his life.

‘You've never thought about remarrying?'

‘No, never. I no longer believe in marriage,' Jack said firmly, and there was a discernible tightness in his voice, which I regretted causing.

‘What? Like it's a myth, or something?' I joked.

The tightness dissolved as his low rumble of laughter filled the room. ‘You're funny,' he complimented, and something inside me swelled at his appreciation.

‘I'm here all week.'

He took another sip from the bottle in his hand before continuing, ‘I've gone down the marriage road once; I don't see myself doing it again.'

‘Been there, done that?'

‘Got the T-shirt,' he completed. There was a rueful look on his face. ‘It didn't fit.'

Well. There was no room for ambiguity on that one. I gathered up our dirty plates and went to rinse them at the sink, unsure why his words had affected me. This man, with his damaged past, wasn't mine to cure or save – that would be someone else's responsibility. For some reason the realisation made me sad.

‘Now, I've got one for you. Why
relieved
?'

It took me a moment to realise he was picking up the threads of our earlier conversation. ‘You've waited
three hours
to ask that?'

‘I'm a patient man, I don't believe in rushing things. I like to take my time.'

My pulse quickened a little at his unintentional
double entendre
and the ridiculous way I'd misinterpreted his words. I looked up to answer him and saw an amused glint in his eye, and suddenly knew better. Words were his tools, and he knew exactly what he was doing with them.

‘Well?' he prompted.

‘Things moved too quickly with Richard and me. And that wasn't just
his
doing, it was both of us.' At least I was honest enough to admit that. ‘When I came home we fell right back into our relationship as though the years apart had never been. And that was wrong, because we weren't the same two people we'd been before. We went from nought to sixty in a matter of weeks.'

I looked up to see if I was boring him, but Jack just nodded, encouraging me to continue. ‘Richard proposed at Christmas, in front of our families, down on one knee… the whole thing. It was completely unexpected and romantic and I just got swept along with it all.' My voice was so weighed down with regret it dropped almost to a whisper. ‘But it was too soon. I just wasn't sure.'

I snapped my lips shut as though I'd said something shameful. It was the first time I'd voiced that private thought out loud. At the time I'd been swept along by friends and family who were so delighted we were engaged that I'd had no room, no space, no chance to say
‘Can't we just think about this for a little longer?'

‘You can't get married to please your family or friends,' Jack declared knowingly, and somehow I could tell that once more our past histories were crossing and merging.

‘I know that.'

We were both quiet for a moment, the room feeling suddenly overcrowded now that both Richard and Sheridan had dropped in uninvited.

‘Enough of this,' Jack announced. ‘I'm meant to be cheering you up, not getting us both crying into our beer. How about a movie? There's a stack of DVDs in the other room. Why don't you pick something out for us to watch, and I'll light a fire.'

He hadn't been kidding when he said he was a fan of old movies. There had to be over two hundred in the box he passed me. I could spend the rest of the evening just trying to choose. I kneeled on the floor with the box before me, while Jack laid kindling and logs in the fire basket.

‘I can't pick. What would you like?' I asked, glad his back was to me because my attention had been split between the box of films and the interesting way his muscles moved beneath the thin material of his T-shirt.

‘Anything. You decide. Or just do a lucky dip.'

I did as instructed. ‘
Charade
,' I declared, holding up the thin plastic case for his approval.

‘A European woman who falls for a mysterious American. Interesting choice.'

I got up from my knees and passed him the box with the picture of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant on the cover. ‘I haven't seen this in ages, and I adore her voice.'

He slid the disc into the player, before turning back to face me. ‘I prefer yours.'

I didn't know what to say, so decided not to say anything at all. Jack sat down at one end of the two-seater settee, stretching out his impossibly long legs in front of him. The seat was easily wide enough to accommodate us both, yet I hesitated and turned to a solitary armchair beside the crackling fire.

He patted the vacant cushion on the settee beside him in invitation. ‘Come and sit here.'

I don't normally respond well to being told what to do. I have a stubborn streak in me that's a mile wide. I like to be in charge, I like to make my own decisions. Jack looked up from the comfortable cushions; his expression revealed he knew exactly what I was thinking.

I sat down beside him.

There are worse things than falling asleep in someone's house when you've been invited round for dinner, and one of them is to do so with your head resting in your host's crotch. Unfortunately, I did both.

I was dreaming. We were in France, in the
gîte
near the old farmhouse, and my mother was anxious to go and paint, but I kept insisting that first she should brush my hair for school. It was the usual crazy kind of dream, the type that makes absolutely no sense.

One minute we'd been watching Cary and Audrey chasing around Paris, trying not to fall in love or get themselves killed, then the warmth of the fire, the beers from dinner, or just the fact that I hadn't slept properly since I-don't-know-when, overcame me. I didn't wake with a start, quite the opposite. My eyes opened gradually, focusing on a curious metal shape directly in front of my face. I blinked slowly, baffled as to what it was and what it was doing on my pillow. The pillow, which incidentally felt weirdly contoured and not terribly comfortable. The metal shape confused me: it was like one of those magazine puzzles of an everyday object photographed from a weird angle. From where I was lying it looked just like the pull tag on a zip.

Sleep left me in an instant as I bolted upright from his lap, smacking him painfully in the jaw with the back of my head. Several swear words filled the air (I'm not sure who they came from), and we were both still rubbing our individual areas of impact as I scrambled to my knees.

‘Oh God, Jack, I'm sorry,' I said, truly mortified.

‘For what? Using my lap as a pillow, or for trying to break my jaw?'

He stopped rubbing the injured area, and there was indeed a large red mark where my head had connected with his face.

‘I must have nodded off,' I said, which was hardly an Einstein-worthy observation. I looked over at the television and saw only a blizzard of white grainy snow. ‘The film's finished?'

‘Nearly two hours ago.'

‘Why didn't you wake me?'

‘Well, to begin with I thought you were just… getting comfortable…'

The flush started at my chin and didn't stop until it had reached my hairline. ‘Then, when I realised you'd actually gone to sleep, it seemed a shame to disturb you. You looked like you needed the rest.'

‘I'm so sorry,' I repeated.

He reached over and patted my shoulder in a friendly chummy fashion, not in the way you'd expect a man would do to a woman who, only minutes earlier, had had her face buried in his groin.

‘Don't worry about it.'

I glanced at my watch and saw it was after midnight. ‘It's so late. I should go.'

‘Not without a coffee first,' Jack said. ‘I want to be sure you're wide awake before you get behind the wheel of your car.'

He left me to prepare the caffeine fix, and I sank back down on the settee, still cringing inwardly when I thought of how I'd snuggled up so intimately against him while I slept. I ran my fingers across the cheek which had nestled against him, and could feel the grooved indent from the seamed fly on his jeans. Rubbing furiously at the creases, I went to check out the damage in an oak-edged mirror hanging on the wall. My face definitely looked squishy from where I'd been lying, and my hair on that side was messed up and a little tangled. Strangely, on the other side of my head, the long auburn strands were perfectly straight and tidy, pushed back from my face and lying without a lock out of place behind my ear, almost as though they'd been smoothed and stroked into position.