‘Do you want to?’
He turned his head towards her. ‘No, Ally, I don’t.’
Ally felt herself on the edge of a cliff, but could she take that one step further?
‘I don’t want you to go either .?.?.’
The space between them felt charged like an electric field as Ally noticed her heart pounding in the silence. He took her hand and, raising it to his lips, explored her palm with his tongue, sending electric shocks through her body.
‘Come here,’ he murmured, pulling her towards him.
She felt his stubble as his mouth searched for hers, his tongue probing. She felt him pushing her onto the sofa as her body yielded to the weight of his powerful frame pressing down onto her, taking her breath away. Oh help, is this madness? She checked herself, as they felt for naked skin under each other’s clothes.
‘Wait .?.?. no .?.?. Pete, I can’t .?.?. I didn’t mean this.’
He looked surprised. ‘Neither did I.’
Ally scrambled up, the sensible part of her brain making a last-ditch attempt to keep every other part of her in check.
‘I mean .?.?. we work together, it’s .?.?.’ She found her feet carrying her distractedly into the bedroom, but as soon as she got there, she realised it wasn’t where she wanted to be at all, pivoted and headed straight back into the sitting room.
‘I don’t want you to think I’m the kind of girl who .?.?.’
Oh God, she’d just turned into an addled teenager. Pete held out a reassuring arm. ‘Ally, it’s OK. We don’t need to do anything. I just want to be here with you.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Come back here.’
So she did.
* * *
She woke with a start to see the digital clock by her bed showing that it was 9.15 a.m. So .?.?. that’s right, she was in her own bed. The bedroom door was ajar and, turning on her side, she could see the crumpled duvet, a patch of white fur and a foot sticking out.
So, Pete and Patsy were still in her living room. She felt a wave of relief. Waking to find herself alone would’ve felt desolate, even with the company of Harry and Sally.
Did we .?.?.? She mentally checked her body. She could still feel the touch of his hands on her skin, but no, they’d definitely stopped short. And that was good, she assured herself – it left her still clutching a modicum of control. Some people might consider it irrelevant but to her it made a difference.
Throwing back the duvet, Ally realised she had a choice between her off-white matted fluffy dressing gown, with the hot-chocolate stains which wouldn’t come out, and the grey silk kimono with the butterfly pattern she’d bought after reading an article calledFight the breakup blues.
She wedged open the bedroom door to find there was basically no floor space left. Patsy had found a patch of duvet and was now snoozing adorably on his back so, creeping behind the kitchen counter, Ally put on the kettle and began to prepare a cafetière of coffee, before filling a jug of milk to heat in themicrowave. She heard a groan as Pete emerged from under the duvet, while Patsy gave a luxurious yawn and stretched his legs to twice their usual length, the cosy new situation suiting him perfectly – way better than the icy-cold van.
‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Too many options,’ Pete muttered sleepily.
‘Cheeky bugger! Well, I’m making coffee.’
He pulled himself up and leaned against the sofa, smiling and gazing at her with his tossed hair and five o’clock shadow. She was finding his sheer physicality a little overwhelming so she returned a shy smile and turned away to fuss over the ground coffee.
Calm the feck down, she scolded herself. But Rosemarie was right: underneath the grime he was a total ride. Now, what was she going to do? The truth was, Francis had never had this effect on her, maybe because he’d never felt unavailable. Oh, why was she kidding herself? Francis was lovely, but if he were a type of coffee, he’d have been mild blend. They’d started off doing it twice a week, which had settled down to once, and then down to whenever they had time, which turned out to be rarely. With him, she’d never found herself trying to control her breathing or her tingling nerve endings.
‘You look nice.’
She liked the flatness of his comment. Pete was cool. He knew not to try too hard. On cue, Patsy got up and padded across to her to say good morning. Ally leaned down and buried her face in the cockapoo puppy’s fleecy coat. It seemed the safest place right now. Not because Pete was dangerous – she had no fears of that – but because he was male. There was an animality about him, disguised beneath his work clothes. As Rosemarie had said, Pete was a heavy-hitter down on his luck. But surely a guy like that couldn’t be bullied by some gold digger? What was the weak spot that she was somehow manipulating?
But right in that moment, they were both there, and she was feeling whatever resistance she had held on to last night dissolving in his grey eyes.
