Love: A Messy Business (4 page)

As Colin turned and jogged athletically off back to the scene of the accident, Kate caught herself focusing on his bottom as it made its way down the road.  It was an enjoyable sight even though her soggy state had not exactly put her in an amorous frame of mind.  He soon returned, riding the bike, and wobbling like crazy as he did so.

“Crikey!  How do you even ride this thing?  It’s got a mind of its own.”

“Oh, I have it well-trained.  It doesn’t like anyone else riding him, though.”

“Him?  Does “him” have a name?  And how do you know it’s a male bike anyway?”

“Well, of course it’s a male bike, you idiot!  Look at the cross bar – it goes straight across.  All male bikes have that.  Didn’t you know that? A female bike has a cross bar which slopes down so it’s easier to get your leg over.”

“Oh, I’m all in favour of that!” smirked Colin, with a little twinkle in his eye.

“All men are.” replied Kate. “It’s highly unoriginal.  Anyway, his name is “Mike.”

“Mike-the-Bike?” ventured Colin, brightly.

“Exactly.  He belongs to my dad really, but he hasn’t ridden a bike for years, so I use it instead.

“Well, you’re a better cyclist than me, there’s no doubt about that.  That seat is like sitting on a bloody razor blade.”

“Ah, that’s when having some extra padding on the bum comes in handy.”

“Nonsense.  Your bottom is absolutely perfect….”  Colin paused mid-sentence, realizing that he was revealing the fact that Kate’s rear had been something he had paid attention to.  “…I’m sure…” he added a bit lamely.   “Well,” he went on hurriedly, changing the subject, “I guess it’s a case of welcome to Ashton House!”

As Colin walked up to the front door, patting his pockets for his key, Kate realized that she was about to enter the house of a man that she really barely knew.  And not just any old house – Ashton House – which once was, and maybe still was, one of the most notorious houses in the entire country.

CHAPTER FOUR: AN UNAUTHORIZED EXPLORATION

Kate had just a few seconds to make a decision.  Should she walk through that front door when it was opened, or make some kind of excuse and scarper?  The history of Ashton House was the first thing to consider. Putting her logical hat on, the fact that something had happened there in the past was totally irrelevant in terms of a risk today, wasn’t it?  She usually prided herself on keeping calm and thinking straight, but she couldn’t quite shake the nagging feeling that she should be running a mile.

And then there was Colin.  It came down to a basic decision of trust.  Did she trust him?  She knew that she wanted to trust him, that was certain.  But was that desire logical?  Was it only because she actually quite fancied him and was hoping it might all lead somewhere? And, hang on a minute. Had he planned all this?  Had he been waiting for her to arrive, perhaps knowing that she would be passing by soon after closing time?  Was Colin Love a sexual predator and she was his next victim?  All of these thoughts and questions flashed through Kate’s mind in an instant. She fought the rising fear and focused instead on her education.   From a psychological perspective, were there any clues, any danger signals in what Colin said or how he had acted?  She couldn’t think of any and the chances were that, if she couldn’t think instinctively of any, then it was because there weren’t any.

Realising that Colin had now opened the door and had turned, with an enquiring glance, to see why she wasn’t right behind him, she took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, smiled nervously and walked up the path.   Walking over the threshold of the door into the vestibule felt like crossing a symbolic line like the Rubicon.   The door itself was a beautiful oak door, thick and heavy and it made quite a sound as it closed, quite an ominous sound given Kate’s edgy frame of mind.  Colin, however, seemed quite relaxed.

“Right then.  I had better put the kettle on.  Would you like a shower, then?  You can borrow one of my shirts if you like, so you’re not putting that filthy shirt back on.”

Kate considered the question.  On the one hand, there was nothing she would have liked more than to take her clothes off and enjoy a warm and soapy shower to get clean.  On the other, she really didn’t like the idea of stripping naked in a strange house and taking a shower, especially given that she had been watching “Psycho” on the telly last month.

“Err, no, I don’t think I will actually, but thanks anyway.  I’ll manage.  But I wouldn’t mind using a towel to dry off a bit.  I’ll have a soak in the bath as soon as I get home.”

“Oh, absolutely.  There are plenty of towels in the cupboard just up on the landing.  Just go up the stairs and turn left and you can’t miss it.   Just pick any you fancy.  There’s a bathroom further on down on the left.  It’s probably a bit messy so you’ll have to excuse that – I wasn’t expecting visitors of course.”

“Oh, of course.  Don’t worry about that.  I’m not exactly clean either.  I bet I look a right state.”

“Not at all.  I’ve always said a truly beautiful woman doesn’t need fancy clothes or lots of make-up to look sexy.   You look pretty great to me.”  As he spoke, Colin looked Kate straight in the eye to see how she would respond.

Kate didn’t quite know how to respond to what was a blatantly obvious compliment.  Should she feign indignation or show she was flattered?  Instead, she decided to keep things light.

“Oh, I bet you say that to every girl you meet that’s covered in dirt and mud.”

“Not all of them,” said Colin under his breath.

“What was that?

“Oh, nothing.  Right, I’ll get the tea brewing and you go and get cleaned up a bit.”

Colin headed off down a narrow hall-way to the kitchen.  Kate made her way slowly upstairs, taking in as much of her surroundings as she could.   Looking around, there wasn’t much to give away whether Colin lived here alone or with someone else.  In fact, the place was furnished very spartanly and there was little in the way of personal effects.  Still, Kate thought, he hadn’t been here that long and he was probably planning to put his stamp on the place over time.

She reached the top of the stairs, which must have been three times as broad as the ones at home, and soon found the cupboard that Colin had told her about.   It was huge, an antique that probably was as old as the house, and was probably big enough to hold a hundred towels.  Even so, Kate was shocked to discover when she opened the cupboard door to find roughly that amount inside.  How odd!  Why on earth would anyone need so many towels?  There was enough to keep an entire football team happy, two football teams even.   Perhaps they had been left in the house when it was sold and Colin hadn’t got round to getting rid of most of them.

Anyway, Kate selected a couple of the best towels and headed for the bathroom.  Even before she turned the light on in the bathroom, she caught a whiff of something and wrinkled up her nose instinctively.  At first she thought it was one of “those” bathroom smells, but this was a really odd smell that she had never encountered before, and certainly not in a bathroom.  There seemed to be different elements to it. Tomato? Vinegar? Coffee?  Maybe there was a problem with the drains which was producing the smell.  It was a common problem in houses that were this old. Kate soon forgot about it when she turned the light on and saw herself in the mirror.  What a complete and utter mess.   Her face was streaked with dirt, her hair had flecks of mud stuck in it but, worst of all, she now realised how transparent her shirt was and how clear a view of her nipples Colin must have been enjoying. 

“Bloody hell, no wonder he was paying me compliments.  I look like I’ve been in a wet T-shirt stroke mud wrestling competition.”

It was lucky that Kate had always been quite comfortable with her body; otherwise this would all have been completely mortifying.  In fact, the thought of Colin getting turned on by her body was a bit of a turn-on for her as well.  She peeled off her shirt and looked at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that to see how her chest looked from different angles.  They were certainly God’s gift, she thought, and hopefully they would be getting unwrapped by Colin at some time in the near future.   For no more than fifteen seconds, she closed her eyes and imagined that Colin was behind her right then, nuzzling gently into her neck with lots of kisses, his big strong hands resting on her shoulders and then massaging them deeply and tenderly so that she went quite weak and either unable or unwilling to support herself.  And then, as she dropped slightly lower, he lifted her up by moving his hands to her front and cupping a breast in each hand and massaging them, applying a little pressure and rubbing to her large nipples, which were already very erect.  As big as his hands were, they were not quite big enough to take all of each breast into them and he grunted in pleasure at the privilege of exploring such a spectacular landscape.

Kate came back to her senses all too soon and realized that she had better get on with the task in hand before she really got carried away and started a full-on self-pleasure session. The dirt and mud had penetrated through the thin shirt onto her body in a few places, so she ran the tap to get some warm water to wash them.  After applying some soap to them and starting to rub her breasts clean, she thought she had better close the door just in case Colin happened to come to check how she was doing and accidentally stumble on a very welcome sight.  Her bottom half had escaped relatively unscathed (it wasn’t really that big a puddle) so all that remained to be done was to give her face a quick rinse and rub her hair to dislodge most of the dried mud that was hanging there like over-sized, discoloured dandruff.  She realized that she hadn’t yet been given one of Colin’s shirts as he had mentioned.  As she didn’t want to put her dirty shirt back on again, she wrapped the second towel around herself and decided to see if she could find where he kept his shirts.  He had said she could borrow one and hopefully he wouldn’t mind if she was able to find one herself.

Kate took off her shoes so that she did not make any noise on the wooden floorboards that might alert Colin to the fact that she was wandering about upstairs.    She felt a shiver of excitement as she approached a closed white door with an ornate brass door handle on it, not that she expected to find anything exciting – it was partly the fact that she was effectively snooping around in someone else’s property and partly because this was Ashton House.  As quietly as she could, she opened the door and stuck her head around it.  She didn’t want to put the light on in case it could be seen from downstairs and give the game away.  There was some yellowy light from the streetlights as well as some light from the moon, but it wasn’t really very much.  Still, Kate could tell that this was not a bedroom.  In fact, there didn’t seem to be any furniture in there at all.  That, in itself was not especially surprising, given that Colin was a new occupant.  But was what surprising was that the floor seemed to be completely covered in white ceramic tile, like a bathroom might be – but this room had no toilet, bath, or sink.  Even odder, Kate could tell from the shiny reflection of the light, that the walls were also completely tiled.  She felt the need to confirm what her eyes were telling her by touching the smooth surface. 

A chill ran up her spine once again as she speculated whether this was anything to do with the history of Ashton House, although she couldn’t think why, based on the facts that she knew about what had happened there.   Kate could also smell something in this room as well – it was a similar smell to what was in the bathroom, but there was also a smell that was a bit like paint.  She put her nose to the wall and smelled again – yes, that was where it was coming from.  It seemed that the tiles had been newly installed and the grout around the tiles was still quite fresh.   Why would anyone completely tile a room in a house?

Kate moved on to another room, in the hope that this one was where the shirts were.  But no, this was another room, not tiled this time, but the floor seemed to be covered with a dark, plastic tarpaulin.  The room wasn’t completely empty though this time – there was something in the middle, something quite tall and quite wide, probably just a bit bigger than a telephone box. It was totally covered by a sheet.  Kate simply could not resist looking under the sheet to see what was underneath it, but the tarp made a really loud scrunching noise as soon as she stepped on it and she did not dare to go any further in case it exposed her wanderings.  Reluctantly, she stepped back and closed the door, before looking for another room to explore.

However, she did not get the chance for further discoveries as Colin called up from the bottom of the stairs.

“How are you getting on?  All cleaned up?”

“Almost.  But I just need one of your shirts, like you offered, remember?”

“Oh, of course.  I totally forgot.  I’ll come up and get you one.”

Colin bounded enthusiastically up the stairs two at a time and headed off into the opposite direction on the landing, which is where his bedroom must have been.  He came back half a minute later clutching a crisp, white shirt.

“Here you go.  It will be far too big for you of course – it’ll probably be more like a dress to you, but this is the only size I have. 

“This will be fine.  I’ll wash it and drop it back to you tomorrow, of course.”

“Oh good heavens! Don’t bother going to all that trouble.  I hardly ever wear white shirts these days, so you may as well keep it.

For some reason, it struck Kate that there hadn’t been any white towels in the cupboard either, now that she thought it about.   Mustn’t be a fan of white then, she thought – and then immediately remembered the new white tiling in one of the rooms.  Hmm, this was very confusing.   There was no time to dwell on it though, as the less time she spent out in the hallway with only a towel to cover her top half the better.  Given the luck she seemed to be having that evening, there would be a sudden wardrobe malfunction and the next thing she knew her girls would be venturing out on an unauthorized escapade.

“Oh, right. Well, if you don’t mind – thanks very much.” Kate returned to the safety of the bathroom and put the shirt on.  It was, of course, too big.  But it was clean and dry and that was all that mattered.  She noticed it had a faint but noticeable smell about it, some type of aftershave in all probability.   It was a bit strange to be wearing a man’s shirt, but it felt sexy somehow, as if there was some kind of connection between them because of it.