TheExaminerhad been the only interview she’d managed to line up since her epic resignation in Mr Angus’s office – which she’d come to think of as being less like the triumphant clarion call for feminism in journalism that she’d hoped it was and more like an embarrassing, irrational rant and a catastrophic, career-ending error in judgement. She couldn’t think about it without wincing and every time she did, Mr Angus’s words rang louder in her mind. ‘You need to ask yourself if you’re really cut out for a career in journalism,’ he’d said, and she’d gone and proven him right by screeching in his face like an angry teenager.
The only way to drown out the mortifying effects of his words was to berate herself with a few of her own, and so she did. She’d always felt like an imposter in the newspaper industry but nobody else had noticed until she’d stupidly outed herself that day. Now everyone knew Mirren Imrie was an unemployable trouble-maker.
Thank God for dour old Kenneth at the bar. He’d hired her with no questions asked and she was at least supplementing her minimum wage with nightly tips. With no writing jobs forthcoming she could stay in town for a little while, pay her way, and help Kelsey out by being a security presence on the boat at night as well as contributing to Norma’s rent, even if the barge wasn’t ideal, with the drunks passing by noisily after midnight.
She reminded herself as she left theExamineroffices that she still had a place to lick her wounds and time to figure out where in the world she was supposed to be and just exactly what it was she was destined to do with the rest of her life.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long’
(Hamlet)
December the twenty-third and the morning was dark. Kelsey had found she couldn’t sleep any longer and had climbed up to the roof terrace to keep watch for Jonathan’s arrival.
The streetlights shone on roads wet from the sleet showers overnight. The wind was bitingly cold though her grey flannel pyjamas. She switched the summer fairy lights on and the coloured bulbs sparkled all around the low wall that enclosed the little patio high up over St.Ninian’s Close. An early bird on the lawn below sang out alone and no lights came from any of the surrounding houses. The commuters would still be asleep for another few hours.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she was beginning to think this wasn’t her best idea – she’d be greeting Jonathan with knotted, windblown hair and a frostbitten nose – when she saw the yellow light of the cab as it crawled along the narrow residential street lined with parked cars.
Her heart had already skipped beats at two other approaching cars and one milk float this morning but this time she was sure it wasn’t a false alarm. It was him. He’d come back to her.
They’d planned, back in the summer, to meet again at the pink café by the marina where they’d first laid eyes on one another, and it had burst Kelsey’s romantic bubble to realise Jonathan’s flight would land in Birmingham at two a.m. so it wouldn’t be possible. Jonathan had reassured her that it didn’t matter where they met as long as they were together again, and so she’d devised a plan B and waited romantically for him by moonlight, like she had the day they finally declared their love for each other and Norma had delivered him up to her in a cab and then driven away, leaving them alone together.
The cab was now pulling to a stop and its door swung open in slow motion. After a moment, the unmistakable shape that was Jonathan Hathaway emerged into the gloomy December morning. She would recognise him anywhere and from any distance; he fitted the exact shape and dimensions of all her desires, and her nerves thrilled with the recognition.
No thoughts ran through her mind, only feelings moved her as she watched the cab pulling away leaving Jonathan to drag his suitcase to the side of her building. When he stepped into a shaft of light from a streetlamp she saw he was looking up at her and smiling with wet, sparkling eyes.
She let the key fall from her hand and without hesitating he caught it in a fist as though he’d known that’s what she’d do, and then he was gone, lost in the dark shadow of the building wrapped in its blanket of ivy.
Her breathing stalled as she listened to the sound of the key in the lock downstairs followed by the bump of his case over the step, and she found she was moving too, padding down the ladder from the roof terrace, pulling the hatch closed behind her, and listening for his feet bounding three at a time up the unlit staircase.
She stood rigid by her door, consumed with her body’s answering awareness of his approach until there he was in front of her like an apparition, his hair falling over his forehead, his sharpened eyes penetrating hers, and his arms already reaching for her.
Wordlessly, he pulled her close to him with strong hands and his mouth claimed hers. Relief flooded her frame. They’d spoken enough these last months and there were no words more pressing than the hard kiss he was giving her.
As he half-walked, half-lifted her through the door into her apartment, still feverishly kissing her, she couldn’t help but moan against his lips. The effect of the sound upon him was like lightning bursting from the heaviest storm cloud. He exhaled a deep primal moan into her mouth and her very core tightened in response. Toppling him onto the bed Kelsey fell with him. She had him wrapped in her legs in an instant.
‘Oh God, I’ve missed you,’ he said breathlessly into the hollow between her neck and collarbone where, as he brushed his lips in a slow sweep over her skin, a thousand nerve endings prickled and sparked. Kelsey bucked her hips beneath him, grinding against the hard answer of his arousal through their clothes.
‘Take all of this off.’ Her voice was low and insistent as she pulled his thick woollen jumper over his head followed by his t-shirt. The sounds in his throat quickened at the touch of her hands and her nails running over his bare back.
‘I want you so bad,’ he said, bringing her eyes into focus.
She found her vision swam dizzyingly with the sense of his weight upon her. For a brief moment they held each other’s gaze and their swollen lips broke into breathy smiles. Together at last.
Kelsey wasn’t going to waste a second of their reunion and was already wriggling out of her pyjamas. In the twinkling white light from the little Christmas tree by the bed she saw his neck and cheeks blushing red before he brought his mouth down soft and slow to her throat, moving in a trail of hungry kisses along her clavicle, lingering over the sensitive dip between her collar bones then down over her breasts. The great shattering groan he gave at the sensation of her nipple between his lips drove her nearly to madness and sent her hands searching for his belt buckle. She wouldn’t wait a moment longer; there was time enough for leisurely, painstaking love-making, but this wasn’t the moment. His eyes followed her hands yanking his jeans down over his hips. When their gaze locked again his mouth panted and his eyes burned with wanting.
She saw the fight in him as he forced himself to pull away, never dragging his eyes from where she lay on the bed completely naked, completely his.
He was reaching into his jeans pocket and, rifling through his wallet, cards and coins spilled over the bed, making them both laugh at his eagerness to locate the foiled packet now between his fingertips.
The moment’s pause where Kelsey bit at her lip and Jonathan searched her face for consent contained all one hundred and ten days of impatient waiting. She nodded almost imperceptibly and he was inside her, her calves wrapping around him, driving him on, the muscles in his shoulder blades flexing and moving, their names on each other’s lips, their cries building in the quiet of the midwinter morning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
