Hitched! (15 page)

I should take a lesson from George. My chest hurt when I
thought about what it must have been like for him then. Ostracised by his
family, rejected by his fiancée, abandoned by his brother, dropped by his
friends... Anyone else would be bitter and miserable, but not George. That
laid-back manner, that carefree charm, hid more courage than I had ever
imagined.

I wanted to rant and rail about his horrible family, but
instead I leant my shoulder against his. ‘I’m sorry, George,’ I said quietly.
‘You must have been so lonely.’

‘I’ve got to admit I’ve had better times. They all said I’d
never cope left to my own devices, and it was a fair assumption. After all, I’d
had everything handed to me on a plate before. Suddenly I found myself without
all the things I’d taken for granted before: no money, no job, nowhere to live.
Even my car was provided by Challoners. It’s not surprising Annabel wanted out,’
he said. ‘And my chances of finding a job were pretty slim once the word was out
that I was a whistle-blower and couldn’t be trusted to play by the rules—a lot
of doors were slammed closed on me. My family have a lot of connections,’ he
added with a grim smile.

‘Couldn’t you have gone to your grandmother?’

‘I could have done, yes, but I didn’t want to involve her in a
family row. Besides, once they all told me I’d never manage on my own, I was
determined to prove them wrong. And, in the end, it was the best possible thing
that could have happened to me.

‘I’m happy now,’ he said, and his arm lifted to gather me into
his side. Turning his head, he smiled down into my face. ‘Right this moment, I
couldn’t be happier, in fact.’

EIGHT

The air leaked out of my lungs as I looked up at him.
My heart was jerking madly, my pulse thundering in anticipation, and every cell
in my body strained to lean into him.

So I let them.

‘I’m happy too,’ I said. ‘Right this moment.’

I had forgotten my earlier doubts. George wasn’t Charles. He
was a decent man who had done the right thing. He had admitted his mistakes and
had the courage to change. Why had I resisted him for so long?

‘George,’ I said, ‘do you remember that night in your cottage
when we kissed?’

He cast his eyes up and pretended to think. ‘Now let me see,
would that be the kiss I’ve only thought about every minute of every day since
then?’

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ I said involuntarily and he
laughed and tightened his arm around me.

‘How could I forget a kiss like that?’

‘But you were so...normal!’

‘I knew that if I wasn’t, you’d freeze me out,’ he said. ‘I
didn’t want that.’

‘I lost my nerve,’ I confessed.

It was easier to talk in the dark, easier to talk side by side
without those bright eyes on my face. ‘The thing is, you were probably right
about me being screwed up about my father,’ I said. ‘I don’t find it easy to let
go.’ I swallowed. ‘I’m afraid of losing control. It makes me feel the way I did
when my mother died, and I hate it.’

George ran a finger down my cheek, and the tenderness of the
gesture stopped the breath in my throat. ‘I do understand, Frith.’

‘When we kissed, it was so...so amazing.’ I struggled to
explain how I had felt that night. ‘It was stronger than me, and I suppose I
panicked. I thought the easiest thing would be to try and forget all about it,
but I couldn’t do it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since,’ I told George.
‘I’ve been wishing I wasn’t such a coward, and wondering how to tell you that
I’d changed my mind.’

‘Did you think about saying: George, I’ve changed my mind?’
said George, a smile in his voice.

‘It didn’t seem that easy,’ I said. ‘And then I decided it was
probably all for the best. I was afraid you might be disappointed in me, and
then we couldn’t be friends any more.’

‘
Disappointed
?’ His arm fell from
round me and he stared incredulously at me.

At least the darkness hid my flush. ‘I’m not very experienced,’
I said with difficulty. ‘I’m not exciting and fun like your other
girlfriends.’

‘How do you know what my other girlfriends were like?’

‘You said that Annabel was sexy and fun,’ I reminded him with a
trace of sulkiness. ‘I just assumed they were all like her.’

George was shaking his head. ‘Frith Taylor, you have the
self-confidence of a slug,’ he told me sternly. ‘Between them, Charles and your
father have a lot to answer for.’ He smoothed my hair away from my face. ‘You’re
exciting just sitting here, Frith.’

‘Really?’ My heart lifted with hope.

‘Really,’ he said gravely. ‘But now I’ve changed my mind.’

George’s smile deepened at what must have been my look of
dismay. ‘Maybe I
could
be happier...’ He cupped my
cheek with his hand and we leant in to each other at the same time, and when our
lips met I let out a little sigh of thankfulness that I could kiss him at last,
the way I’d been thinking about doing all month.

He tasted so good, he felt so good. I gasped as his fingers
slid around and tangled in my hair, holding me to him, snarling up my senses
until I couldn’t tell touch from taste, couldn’t tell if I was hearing his soft
murmurs or feeling them drift enticingly over my ears. Was that the crisp smell
of his shirt beneath my palms, the taste of his lip searing my skin?

Time stretched and swirled, while the summer night wrapped
itself around us and the sweetness swirled higher and higher. Gasping with need,
I pressed into George’s unyielding body, and let his hands unlock my last
defences.

‘Frith?’ he said raggedly, blizzarding kisses down my throat,
and I arched into him with a shudder of pleasure.

‘Yes?’

‘Tell me you’re ready to forget your plan for tonight?’

Forget the plan? This was what I had wanted, but still I felt
as if I were on the edge of that abyss, looking down from a dizzying height and
wondering if I dared to leap out into the air, wondering if I could trust George
to catch me or if I would fall as if I had fallen before.

‘The plan’s still there,’ I said, running my hand over his
shoulder, wanting to make sure he understood. ‘I’m not going to give it up
completely. But that’s for later. I don’t have a plan for tonight.’

George got to his feet and reached down a hand to help me up.
‘I do,’ he said.

* * *

We never got round to closing the curtains. I was woken
early the next morning by a stripe of sunlight across my pillow. I stirred and
rolled away from it, and found my face pressed against George’s warm shoulder.
Mumbling something, he turned over, and left me to contemplate his broad,
smoothly muscled back.

What had I done?

Heat stole through me as I remembered
exactly
what I had done. My body was still thrumming with pleasure,
but my mind was now on full alert and it was no time at all before all those
insecurities I’d turned away the night before started crowding in again.

Had I been exciting enough for George? What if he had just been
amusing himself all along? Last night might have been wonderful, but what would
he think when he saw my unimpressive breasts and my round tummy and my very
ordinary legs in the cold light of day? What if he took one look and rolled away
in disgust?

And even if he didn’t, how was I going to concentrate on my job
now, always wondering if he was going to appear, wondering if we would make love
again? It would be even harder if I knew we
were
going to make love. How on earth could I focus on budgets and building schedules
and drainage systems when I’d be thinking about the night to come, about his
hard hands and his mouth and his strong, sleek body?

This was
exactly
why I hadn’t
wanted to get involved before! I reminded myself, far too late. My previous
boyfriends had never cost me a moment’s distraction from the job.

I needed to think about applying for a job overseas, too. Hugh
would be coming back to work before too long, then what would I do? I couldn’t
hang around Whellerby, waiting for George to get tired of me, as he surely
would. Last night might have been heart-stopping for me, but why should it have
been anything special for George? He was so obviously an experienced lover and I
was...I was just ordinary, in that as in so much else.

I gazed at his back, my hands twitching with the need to lay my
palm against it for reassurance, to slide it down his flank and feel the sleek
warmth of his skin. I wanted nothing more than to burrow into him and forget my
career, forget my independence, forget everything but the spiralling pleasure of
touching and being touched.

But that was exactly what I shouldn’t do. That was the mistake
my mother had made. She had learned her lesson when my father left us, and I had
learned mine when she died. It was dangerous to rely on anyone else for your
happiness. You had to make your own life and be independent. A career would
never let you down.

That was why I had worked so hard to get qualified. That was
why I had a plan, and why I should stick with it. My plan might not be fun or
spontaneous or exciting, and the thought of it might not make my bones melt with
anticipation, but it was safe.

My plan meant saying goodbye to George, sooner or later, and it
was only now that I realised just how hard that was going to be.

Without turning, George reached an arm behind him and patted my
hip. ‘Stop fretting,’ he said.

‘I’m not fretting,’ I said fretfully.

‘Yes, you are.’ He rolled over to face me, and my heart turned
over at the sight of him, rumpled and smiling and lazily satisfied. In the early
morning light, his eyes were a deep, warm blue. ‘I can feel you vibrating away
like a tuning fork. You’re supposed to be relaxed, and instead you’re making the
whole mattress jiggle with tension,’ he said, and then went into a whole thing
where he pretended the bed was shaking with it, throwing himself around and
going completely over the top as usual.

‘I’m not that bad!’ I protested, laughing in spite of myself.
‘It’s just—’

George stopped me by laying his fingers against my mouth. ‘It’s
just that it’s the weekend,’ he finished for me. ‘It’s just that the sun is
shining and it’s going to be a lovely day. It’s just that we’re naked together
in a comfortable bed, and the one thing we don’t need to worry about is feeling
awkward because it wasn’t very good between us last night.’

He kissed me then, a long, lazy kiss that left me boneless with
pleasure and then lifted his head to look down into my face with those eyes that
saw a little too much for comfort. ‘Please tell me you’re not worrying about
that!’

‘No,’ I promised him, not entirely truthfully. I was worrying
instead about it being
too
good. I was worrying
about how I was going to miss him when I left. ‘I’m not, really I’m not.’

I must have been a better liar than I thought because he
smiled, and my heart swelled.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘because it’s too nice a day to be worrying
about anything.’ He lowered his head until his mouth brushed mine. ‘I think we
should find something else to do instead. What could we possibly do to stop you
fretting?’

How could I fret when his warm weight was pressing on me, and
the friction of skin against skin was making every nerve ending jump and spark?
Throwing up its hands in defeat, my mind let my body take over, and sank
unnoticed beneath a surge of need. I would think later. I hooked my leg over
George’s, slid my arms around his neck and pulled him closer.

‘I’m sure we can think of something,’ I said.

* * *

‘Ready?’ I slotted the key into the ignition and turned
to George in the passenger seat. He was all hunched up, like a grown-up in a
child’s toy car.

‘Don’t you need to wind up the rubber bands in the engine
first?’ he said.

‘There’s no call to be rude about Audrey,’ I said cheerfully,
adjusting the rear-view mirror. ‘At least she starts.’

It had been a sweet moment when George had turned up the
evening before, his usually good-humoured expression darkened with a scowl. The
alternator on the Land Rover had gone, and if we were going to get to his
grandmother’s birthday party Audrey was our best hope.

Only he didn’t call her Audrey. He called her ‘that heap of
scrap metal sitting outside your cottage’.

I was secretly nervous in case Audrey didn’t, in fact, start,
but for once she obliged, and I settled back into the driving seat trying not to
show how relieved I was. I didn’t crow too much, though. I knew George was tense
about seeing his family again.

‘I can’t believe I’m going to turn up to Letitia’s in a car
with eyelashes,’ he grumbled as we rattled down the lane.

‘Think of it as being lucky if you turn up at all,’ I said,
mentally crossing my fingers that Audrey would survive the long drive south. She
was fine for little country lanes, but even I couldn’t claim that she was a good
car for a motorway. I just hoped that she would get us there.

‘What did you decide to get your grandmother as a present in
the end?’ I asked, changing the subject. We had been throwing ideas around for
the past six weeks with George unable to make a decision one way or another.

‘You mean, apart from you?’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of tying a bow around my neck?’ I
said and was glad to see George grin.

‘Now, that’s an image I’d like to hold onto!’ He shifted around
to try and make himself comfortable in the old bucket seat. ‘I found an old
photo of me with Mabel,’ he said, answering my original question. ‘I’ve put it
in a frame. It’s not much, but I think it’ll mean something to her.’

‘That’s a great idea!’ I said, impressed.

‘I hope she’ll like it.’ He slanted a look at me as I held
primly onto the steering wheel and kept my eyes on the road. ‘Maybe we could
keep the idea of you with nothing but a ribbon round your neck for
my
birthday.’

I fought a smile. ‘When is it?’

‘October.’

My smile faded. ‘I don’t think I’ll be here then.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sure Hugh will be better soon,’ I said brightly. ‘I’ve
already started applying for other jobs, in fact.’

When I checked the mirror, I just caught his brows snapping
together. ‘What other jobs?’

‘I told you,’ I reminded him. ‘The next step in my plan is to
work on a major construction. I had a reply from the consultants on the new
Shofrar airport just yesterday, in fact. They said to get in touch again when I
was free to move out there, so that was good news.’

I had spent most of the night before trying to convince myself
that it was good, anyway.

When my mind had returned that lovely, lazy Sunday, I had come
to a decision. I was going to stick with my plan—no question about that—but
while I was in Whellerby, which was, after all, part of the plan, there was no
reason I shouldn’t make the most of my time there.

As long as I didn’t lose my head completely, as long as I kept
the boundaries clear and didn’t get too involved, it would be fine. Or so I told
myself. But that first night with George had turned into the weekend, and the
weekend into a week, and the more time passed, the harder it was to remember
that I would be leaving.

The day I found myself drifting off in the middle of a
technical discussion with Frank, I knew I had to get a grip. I was supposed to
be thinking about reinforced steel joists, and instead my mind was on George and
how he could make me gasp with pleasure one minute and laugh the next. I think I
must have had a slack, silly smile on my face, because I caught Frank looking at
me strangely. Mortified at having been caught behaving in such an unprofessional
way, I went straight home that night and started applying for jobs.