Well Groomed (86 page)

‘He’s won, Tash,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘He’s got the Championship. Now will you let go of my hand, only I think you’ve broken my thumb.’

As Hugo rode out of the ring, Tash was being squashed from all sides as she was hugged and kissed as though she had ridden to victory herself. But she knew that she could never have ridden that round. She wouldn’t have had the nerve to take time out to settle him like that – her head, legs and hands would have gone to pieces.

‘You made him, Tash.’ Gus gave her a hug. ‘You worked and worked to get that chestnut thug here, and that bloody counts. Believe me, that counts.’ For the first time since she’d known him, he gave her a huge kiss on the mouth. ‘I’m bloody proud of you.’ That was a first, too. She almost broke down.

Backing away in a daze, she tried to fight her way towards Snob and Hugo, but now that they had won it was like trying to get to the front of a rock concert.

When Hugo jumped off, there were at least ten people between them including Julia Ditton, desperate for a few seconds of interview before they were cut from live transmission in favour of the rugby. He ignored them all and, giving Snob a brief pat, handed him over to Jenny and shouldered his way towards Tash, face triumphant. Pulling the chin protector from his crash hat with a gloved hand, he dragged it from his head and shook his hair, face dancing with laughter.

‘That horse is something else,’ he whistled as he stopped in front of her. ‘And it’s all your doing, darling.’

Tash gazed at him, her mouth unable to do anything but smile. She kept trying to look serious and sincere as she had intended, but the smile twanged back as though on elastic.

‘Congratulations,’ she laughed. ‘You were utterly, utterly brilliant.’ She longed to add, And I love you, but bit it back with all her might, knowing that to say it would be to open more cans of worms than an angler trying for a world record. Doing that in public – on national television – would be kicking poor, cornered Niall so hard in the teeth that his fillings would end up stapling his stomach. She had to wait until she could tackle Hugo in private, but was so overexcited that she wanted to rugby tackle him into a private room right this second.

Hugo was watching her with a look of such ebullient glee that she found her eyes getting hopelessly lost in his and not wanting to find their way out.

‘You seem to have a new car,’ he said smoothly. ‘So I was rather wondering if you could give me a lift back to Berkshire this evening?’

‘It’s your car,’ she gulped. ‘You won.’

‘I know, but I can’t bear to see you polluting the countryside in that French banger any longer.’ He was already being dragged away by Julia.

Now that, Tash realised, was just the sort of private vroom she needed to rugby tackle him in.

Watching the royal prize-giving twenty minutes later, Tash clapped until her hands were buzzing. Beside her, Penny was weeping buckets. It was the first time Tash had ever known her to cry. She kept claiming it was the pain in her thumb, but Tash thought it had more to do with Gus’s longed-for victory and the financial boost it was going to give the farm’s ailing bank account.

‘I’m so proud of him!’ Penny sobbed, staring through her tears as Gus shook the hand of the Princess Royal. ‘I hardly ever tell the disagreeable bugger how much I love him but I think I will tonight.’

‘Me too,’ Tash laughed, thinking of how many Polos she would stuff Snob with later.

‘’Bout time too.’ Penny turned to her. ‘You’re the only person who hasn’t told Hugo how much in love with him you are this week. The rest of us have been like cracked records.’

THEY WERE ALMOST AT Marlbury by the time Tash plucked up courage. Hugo, who had been swigging from a bottle of champagne throughout, was playing with some of the high-tech dials on the dashboard of the new Mitsubishi that was part of the first prize and alternately blasting Tash’s face with hot and cool air. He was in a hyper-excited mood but had said little except politely to suggest that she change gears when she had done a continuous thirty in second for several miles. Tash was finding the huge new car very hard to adjust to after the wrecks she was used to driving, especially in her current state of nerves.

She pulled up in a lay-by and groped around to turn off the CD player, blasting the volume up to full and shifting the balance around the speakers before she finally silenced it.

‘Hugo, I love you,’ she said, so quickly that she wondered at first if he had heard her.

There was a long pause as he stared at his champagne bottle and then tossed it out of the window before tilting his head to look at her.

His eyes glinted as they studied her face, the black pupils almost drowning out the cobalt blue. As ever, his expression was unreadable.

‘Nicely put,’ he finally said.

A car swept past the lay-by, shaking the new Mitsubishi in its slip-stream and sending up a great splash of water from the road which whipped the windscreen before starting to slide away, leaving a snail’s trail of dripping dirt. Tash watched its progress and licked her lips nervously.

‘Just thought I’d say it.’

‘Thanks.’

There was another long pause. She fiddled with the ignition keys. She had never felt so disappointed in her life.

‘Right then.’ She slotted them in and started the engine. ‘We’d better get you to this party Lisette’s hosting. I’m sure you two have a lot to chat about.’

Hugo leaned slowly across her and cut the engine, pocketing the keys before leaning back in his seat again.

‘Is that all I’m getting?’ he muttered.

Tash’s libido was all over the place as a result of his leaning across her. She had been certain that he was about to ravish her and had been all geared up to ravish him in return. Now they were back to square one and her heart thudded into its resting place in her chest like a cricket ball landing in the wicket keeper’s glove.

‘What more did you expect?’

Another car splashed past as he lit a cigarette.

‘Well, if you’re asking for a date, I’d expect a bit more than a window in your dowry,’ he sighed, clicking his lighter shut, his hands shaking. ‘Unless you’ve forgotten, you’re rather booked up this week. For a start you’ve got a twelve o’clock appointment pencilled in to marry Niall O’Shaughnessy next Saturday.’

‘Yes. Well, it’s all a bit of a mess.’

‘So I gather.’ He took a deep drag and turned to look at her.

‘But I’m not really marrying him,’ Tash said encouragingly. ‘Just pretending to.’

‘How original. The bride wore white lies.’ He seemed remarkably unsurprised by the news and extremely on edge, eyes still searching hers as though there was an iridologist’s treasure map written on them. ‘I suppose you’re waiting until there’s a total eclipse of the honeymoon to tell your family?’

‘Oh, God, I’ve made such a terrible hash of things,’ she groaned, sagging back in the seat.

‘I know that.’ He looked away, the end of his cigarette glowing like a warning light as he took another sharp drag.

‘You do?’ She was finding his reaction to her dramatic pronouncement of love not at all encouraging.

‘Tell me,’ he gazed out of the windscreen, eyes narrowing as though squinting into sunlight, ‘have you decided to come out with this now because you really do love me, or just because Niall’s rejected you and gone off with Zoe Goldsmith?’

‘Niall didn’t reject me!’ she wailed, pride flaring. ‘We rejected each other. This wedding was a ludicrous idea in the first place. It’s been like some sort of bad dream for months, with neither of us wanting to go through with it. Our relationship was never strong enough for marriage. It wasn’t even strong enough for us to live together. How could it be when I was hopelessly hooked on you throughout?’

Hugo chewed his thumb, still staring through the windscreen as though fascinated by the graffiti-emblazoned road sign ahead, its wording obscured by thick black spray-paint contesting a proposed by-pass.

Catching up on their head start now, the Lime Tree Farm lorry suddenly drove past in a cloud of spray, making the new car rock from side to side in its slip-stream. Not recognising the new Mitsubishi, Ted – who was driving – didn’t even hoot. Tash watched its tailgate disappearing, the new Mogo motif on the ramp already coated with mud.

Turning to look at him again, she felt an involuntary corkscrew of lust. As ever, he turned each of her limbs into tendrils that wanted to wind their way around him and cling there for ever.

‘I’ve been in love with you for years, Hugo,’ she croaked. ‘I’ve grown up with it – like a birthmark. However hard I’ve tried to scrub it away, it’s still there.’

‘Glad you’ve enjoyed the experience so much,’ he muttered.

‘You haven’t exactly made it easy,’ she sighed. ‘Especially recently.’

‘Well, you have rather given the impression that you’re determined to marry that bloody feckless Irish drunk.’

‘I know.’ Tash bit her tongue.

‘Even though he’s patently madly in love with Zoe Goldsmith.’

‘I know.’ Tash bit her tongue harder.

‘Christ, Tash, I even resorted to calling your sister and telling her that the reason Niall had only bought you a rolled gold wedding ring was because he was rolling Goldsmith.’

Tash almost bit the tip of her tongue clean off. ‘You told Sophia that?’

‘I’m not particularly proud of it.’

Looking at Hugo’s profile – the outline of which she could draw in her sleep and suspected she did on regular occasions – Tash felt as though her heart strings were frantically trying to knit one, purl one as they began to pull the wool from her eyes. His face was totally unmasked and riddled with doubt.

‘When you announced that the wedding was still going ahead last night,’ he said edgily, ‘I couldn’t fucking believe it. Everyone’s been telling me this week that you and Niall are kaput. Even Lisette is certain you two are all set to call it off at the party tonight. From the way you were talking to him on the phone, I thought that bastard was threatening to kill himself if you didn’t agree to go through with it.’

‘You thought what?’

‘Last night I was convinced Niall was threatening to kill himself if you didn’t marry him,’ he repeated, still sounding irritable. ‘So was your mother come to that – probably still is for all I know.’

‘Mummy thinks Niall’s going to kill himself?’ Tash was aghast.

‘I was rather hoping he bloody would, to be frank,’ Hugo muttered. ‘This mess is all his fault. I can’t believe what a total fucking cock-up he’s made of it. Talk about putting you through the Bushmills and then taking you up the Jacob’s Creek. All he needed was a couple of Alka-Seltzers and a bloody good lawyer. Instead he’s made things ten times worse by stalling. Thank heaven for Zoe – without her Lisette would be financing twelve more movies out of this fiasco.’

‘So you know? About Lisette suing him if we don’t get married? About the stage-show Niall’s planning next Saturday?’

‘I do now, although I bloody nearly missed jumping off this afternoon trying to find out. Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me what was going on, Tash? I could have helped.’

‘I wasn’t sure you wanted to,’ she said hollowly, thinking of Snob. ‘After all, you’ve practically bitten my head off every time I’ve come close to telling you how much I adore you.’

‘I haven’t!’ he snapped.

‘There you go again,’ she sighed. ‘If I wasn’t absolutely out of my mind bonkers about you, I’d have gone off you long ago for being so horrible to me. I should be hitting you right now, not hitting on you.’

He looked at her, eyes burning with shame. ‘I wanted to punish you for putting me through so much fucking agony,’ he said. ‘For not loving me as much as I love you.’

‘You do love me then?’ she gasped, almost expiring with relief.

‘Don’t state the bloody obvious,’ he muttered.

‘But you’ve never told me.’

‘Wasn’t sure you wanted to hear it.’

‘How can you say that?’ she wailed indignantly. ‘I think I’ve loved you since the first time I ever saw you – handing Bea Meredith a spiked drink at my sister’s engagement party. You were giving her this smile that was so downright wicked that I think she would have drunk it even if it was the chalice of poison at Hamlet’s sword fight.’

He took another sharp puff of his cigarette and then tossed it out of the window, turning to her at last, eyes almost liquid with relief.

‘I love you to bloody distraction,’ he breathed, ‘even if you are always rabbiting on about English literature. Christ, Tash, if you only knew the self-control I’ve had to exhibit over the past few months! I thought you really were going to marry him. Everyone kept banging on about this bloody wedding, and all the time I was so eaten up with jealousy and anger I just lashed out at you. I even convinced myself that you were using me to get back at him for playing around. After all, you knew how much I felt for you.’

Looking into his beautiful, sincere face, Tash found a great smile wrapping its way around her cheeks.

‘You really think I knew how you felt?’ she watched his eyes.

They didn’t flicker. ‘Of course you did. It was obvious,’ he said rather indignantly, groping for another cigarette. Then he turned to her again, all wide-eyed concern, cigarette dangling from his mouth. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, Hugo, I do love you,’ she laughed, removing the unlit cigarette from his lips and throwing it to one side.

Kissing him was like bungee jumping – such a terrifying prospect that one hovered on the precipice for far too long, feeling sick with fear. But on jumping, it was one of the most exquisite sensations she had ever experienced.

As his mouth yielded to hers and his tongue slipped between her lips, Tash wound her hands around his warm, strong neck and allowed herself an all-time indulgence, slithering her fingers into his hair and letting its silken weight caress the soft flesh between each one. She had never felt this high, horny or happy.