Starting Over (29 page)

She laid her hands over his. ‘But I want a shower. I want to be clean and smell good, have breakfast.’ She looked at the clock. ‘I mean, lunch.’ She rubbed her cheek on his bristling one. ‘Before we do it all again.’

He followed her nakedness into the bathroom.

Facing away from the hissing hot water, she closed her eyes as he stroked shower gel across her shoulders. ‘Yesterday, your mother gave me the benefit of insight into your character, how you navigate yourself into the position you want, rather than negotiate.’

His hot, soapy hands worked deliciously down her spine. ‘Yeah? I don’t do her credit.’

Combing out the heavy length of her wet hair, she paused. Men’s voices. Her driveway? She wandered to the top of the stairs. But it was Ratty alone at the kitchen table waiting for the kettle to boil, with only the
Sunday Times
to defend his nakedness, when James Riddell tapped and entered.

James was mid-sentence. ‘These things need to be talked out properly, fences need to be mended ...
Who the bloody hell are you
?’

Tess slapped a horrified hand to her mouth. Her father – and Ratty naked!

Peeping down the stairwell into the kitchen she watched Ratty freeze, unfreeze. Stand,
Sunday Times
judiciously placed, offer his right hand and, manufacturing a precarious dignity, produce the handle he seldom bothered with. ‘Good morning. Miles Arnott-Rattenbury.’

James ignored the hand, mouth a furious slit beneath narrow nose. ‘
Where’s my daughter
?’

‘Here.’ She traipsed down the staircase. James’s expression was a study in outrage. Olly Gray stood slightly behind him, staring at Tess’s bare feet, wet hair, towelling robe. And Ratty. Oh crap, she could’ve done without Olly.

She looked from Olly’s dismay to James’s disgust. Ah well, she was entitled to keep a naked man in her kitchen if she wanted to! Laughter began to simmer somewhere around her breastbone.

And the naked man looked so ... tense. Her mouth curled at the corners. ‘The sitting room, I think. Let’s leave Ratty to dress.’ She motioned her guests to pass into the next room on the
Sunday Times
side of Ratty, listening as he leapt the stairs and thudded into the bedroom. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

Leaving her father and ex-fiancé waiting on the blue moquette, she boiled the kettle and set out white china mugs. Ratty, swiftly dressed, jumped down warily into the kitchen; she grinned and kissed him.

‘I’m only putting up with this for your sake,’ he hissed.

She smothered a spurt of laughter and gave him the tray with four china mugs and a cafetière. ‘My hero!’ Then she raised her voice. ‘Fancy some toast, Dad?’

‘No, I bloody don’t!’ James’s annoyance was obvious in the straight lines of his face, the colourless pinches around his lips. Hating it, hating catching his daughter very obviously with her lover, a lover
he
hadn’t OK’d. Just when, she supposed, he’d thought she’d dipped her toe back into Olly’s waters. Presumably Olly had told him that he and Tess were getting along now, and James had decided to see what he could do to promote Olly’s cause. When had James turned into the kind of father who saw his child as a vehicle for his own preferences? ‘Eggs and bacon then?’ she suggested evenly.

From the sudden light in Ratty’s eyes and the lift at the corner of his lips, she saw that his sense of the ridiculous was beginning to kick in.

But poor Olly looked winded, body tight with it, face slack. She sighed. ‘Sorry, Olly. I don’t expect you’ll be staying very long.’ Settling down beside Ratty on the sofa, she sent her ex-fiancé an apologetic look. She really would’ve preferred Olly not to have been hurt. Wouldn’t she? Yes, she would. Although he had hurt her quite badly …

Olly’s features rearranged themselves as he visibly pulled himself together. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Long enough.’

When he looked down his hair slid forward. She studied him, the clean-shaven beauty she’d thought so bright, insipid now beside Ratty’s dark, stubbly strength and glittering eyes. He lifted his suddenly angry gaze to Ratty. ‘You?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘What d’you want with her, Caveman? You don’t know her.’

‘I know enough.’

‘You’ve hardly known her five minutes! You know
enough
? You don’t know her like I do! Bet you don’t even know ...’ He cast around for an example, conjured up, feebly, ‘You don’t even know what “Tess” is short for!’

Ratty shook his head, sipping his coffee and stroking Tess’s bare feet with his own. ‘That’s true,’ he agreed amicably. ‘Teresa?’

‘Therese!’ Olly said triumphantly.

‘Really? Very glamorous. Very suitable for a lovely, talented lady.’ Dangerous, rigid, bland courtesy. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you went?’

Olly switched his gaze to Tess. ‘Really? Him?’

She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’ The mug rattled on the tray, the kitchen door slammed behind Olly Gray.

Tess met her father’s eye. Grinned. Oh dear, in its way this was fun. Fun! It was lovely to have Ratty so obviously in her corner. ‘You haven’t, by any chance, lent Olly money?’

James broke the eye contact, leant forward to replace his empty mug on the tray. ‘It’s quite a small matter.’

She crowed with delighted laughter and slapped the arm of the sofa. ‘I thought somebody must have, he had more to chuck around than he ought to considering the job he’s got. You’ve seen the last of that, then. Olly’s financial control has slipped a bit – ask Guy!’

For several seconds James glared ferociously. Then the lines of his face softened, he looked down, examined his tie. Almost smiled, reminding Tess how he could be. ‘I had thought you might feed me,’ he suggested, changing the subject.

Ratty slid in. ‘Perhaps you’ll join us for a meal at the pub?’

James turned on him a glare that should’ve melted steel. ‘Thank you. Are we dressing for lunch?’

It might have been thoroughly uncomfortable, the tension. Tess might have felt anxious, torn, burbling herself stupid to cobble together a conversation.

But not today. Not with Ratty’s knee pressed against hers; closely shaved, sharply dressed, sleeves-down Ratty across the brass-topped table. Not now she was in love, not in
her
local where people tossed her congratulations about the Feast – was it only yesterday? Hadn’t it gone well? Which evening was the photo due in the paper, wasn’t Carola brilliant? Warm and safe, she belonged. James, in a buttoned-up shirt and a V-necked sweater, looked beige and out of place.

And where she might have felt worried by her father’s pensive silences, tried to coax conversation from him, now she shrugged, held Ratty’s hand across the table and listened to him talking to Bren from
Port Road
as to whether it was possible to drop the gearbox out of a Vauxhall Cresta without a pit. Thought about how good he’d been in bed with those hands which looked as if they ought to feel like sandpaper, but didn’t. Watched his lips. Felt her legs go funny.

James wouldn’t be ignored for long, of course, sipping Perrier and awaiting his roast chicken. And, as she anticipated, sure enough he launched suddenly into a snap of questions, palpably designed to discomfort Ratty. ‘I understand you’re self-employed in the car trade? Where? Your own premises? Rented or owned?
Wholly
owned? Really?’ James, of course, was pretty much into property himself.

Ratty stepped into James’s pause for breath. ‘Plus my place, Pennybun and three houses rented out.’

James lifted yet-to-be-convinced eyebrows. ‘Tick and a gold star,’ he mocked, leaning back to allow Janice from behind the bar to set a chicken dinner before him, cutlery in a red gingham paper napkin. ‘Forgive my enquiries,’ blandly. ‘But you seem close to my daughter.’

Ratty grinned. ‘I forgive you entirely. And, just to ease your enquiries on their way: yes, I love your daughter – enough, even, to suffer this interrogation.’

James gave a puff of outrage.

‘You might also like to know that I’m brave enough to communicate with her directly – not by
e-mail
. I won’t belittle her and particularly I won’t be
slapping
her face. I consider her entirely loveable, gorgeous, talented and able. Just to cover all your
enquiries
.’

James’s sharp laugh splintered the following silence. ‘You
cocky young bastard
!’

‘And I love her enough to have a
go
at getting along with you. Shall we have a Chablis with this?’

‘I’m driving. Well, perhaps just a glass.’

A spectator at this joust between irritation and staunch self-belief, Tess chewed slowly. This was good, she was enjoying it.

She turned the conversation. ‘So, how’s your development of the old tied cottages in Middleton going?’

James ever enjoyed an opportunity to talk about his own affairs. ‘Good. Only one left unsold, plenty of interest, won’t be long.’

She folded her napkin. ‘How’s Mum?’

‘Worrying about you.’ James leant in to exclude Ratty. ‘I
hope
you’re not going to be sorry over Oliver.’

She slapped the napkin down in exasperation. ‘I’ve finished being
sorry
over Olly! When he dumped me I was
sorry,
when I miscarried I was
sorry
. Though, with the way things have gone today perhaps I ought to be singing “
Who’s Sorry Now
?”’ She tried not to smile at Ratty’s sudden snort of laughter. ‘Stop poking your beak in, Dad. There’s no future for me and Olly.’

‘You can’t blame me for trying to hint if I think you might be making a mistake, Therese …’

She met her father’s gaze. ‘Happily, in common with everything I say, and everything I do, I don’t need your permission to make my choices. If you want to ally yourself with Olly, that’s your privilege. It might be nice if you’d respect my choices, though.’ Colour high, she picked up her cutlery from the middle of an astounded silence.

Ratty covered her hand. ‘More wine, Princess?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Mr Riddell?’

‘No!’

Ratty tilted Tess’s chin, meeting her furious eyes. ‘I love you when you’re angry.’

She couldn’t help but smile. It took charge of her mouth and her eyes and floated her heart.

The chicken was crisp then succulent, the roast potatoes golden (peppered liberally to make the punters drink more) but Tess couldn’t wait for the meal to be over, for James to get back into his Volvo and go.
Go
!
So she could wrap her arms around Ratty and feed on his strength, his maleness and the heat he radiated, which made her want him. After all, she’d only just gained the privilege.

But now James was frowning. He cleared his throat. ‘What’s this about slapping?’

She glugged the last of the wine and waved the bottle at Janice to be replaced. Oh no, she wasn’t getting into the slapping thing at this late stage. ‘The cherry pie is good, if you’re thinking of dessert.’

‘Slapping?’

‘Or perhaps fresh coffee? Revive you for the drive home.’ Please go.

‘
Slapping,
Therese?’

She groaned, smoothing back her hair and screwing up her eyes. Sight easier to be calm if James would stop winding her up. ‘Yes.’

James placed his cutlery very precisely together. ‘I don’t believe it.’

Her eyes opened to slits. ‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me? Why ask when you’d already decided what to believe?’

‘Don’t you be like that with me!’

She made her voice ultra-low and soft, disguising the fury that was bubbling in her chest. ‘I’ll be anything.’ She sat forward, seeing him sit back. ‘I’ll be anything I please. Yes, Olly used to slap me to win an argument, he’s bigger, see, could hold me with this hand and hit me with that. Like this. Look, hold with the left, slap with the right. Quite hard. Enough to make me cry. Then he could make it up to me, once I was back in line. That’s your Olly! Of course, he said he’s sorry, now.’

Only Ratty finished his meal, watching Tess, freeing a hand to cover hers. Solid, silent, ready for anything.

The thought made her smile and his smile flashed back.
I’m with you, Princess,
said the lopsided twist of his lips,
you’re doing fine,
was the gleam in his sea-like eyes. She relaxed. What did James matter? What did Olly matter? Or Guy, who’d remained traitorously close to Olly when Olly had been behaving badly? None of them mattered.

She had Ratty.

This man, dark and sexy, strong and decisive, was on her side. It was in his reach across the table, in his eyes, in his expression and in the hand that gripped hers. James couldn’t spoil it.

Ratty held out his glass as she refilled her own. ‘You’ll be drunk.’

‘Would that worry you?’

‘No, I can carry you.’

He probably would, too. With his grins and leers, his mechanic’s hands, even his obstinacies and sarcasms, he was a hundred times Olly. ‘You’re very real,’ she told him suddenly.