‘I always wanted to know what it would be like,’ she murmured.
He turned to look at her. ‘You did? Why didn’t you ever say?’
‘Because as you said earlier, the time was never right for us.’ His every instinct told him that he should call a halt to their conversation, that the words they were exchanging were too loaded with want and need to lead them anywhere but regret.
But a far greater instinct made him take the bottle from her and put it on the table next to the lantern. Then tracing a hand across her cheek, he kissed her. Just as he had wanted to when they’d been students. And today when he’d spotted her hiding beneath that large brimmed hat. Funny that his desire for her had never quite left him.
They should have stopped after the first kiss, and after the second and third. But by then an unstoppable force had taken hold of them and throwing the woollen blankets on the floor, he unzipped his trousers while she removed her tights and silk underwear. The lower part of her dress fitted her so tightly he joked it was like trying to remove a surgical glove from her as he hitched it up over her thighs. He made love to her in a glorious explosion of breathless passion, not caring what the consequences would be. He didn’t give a damn what Naomi’s motives were for wanting to cheat on her husband with him. So what if this was her way of exacting revenge? He didn’t care.
If there was a price to pay, and there usually was, so be it.
At the sound of a care assistant asking him if she could help him, Ellis was catapulted back to the here and now. He made his request and a vase duly found for the flowers and filled with water, he returned with it to his mother’s room.
‘There you are,’ Rose said as he put the vase on the sideboard next to the television she seldom watched. ‘We were beginning to think you’d found somebody better to chat with.’
‘I was giving you time to gossip about me,’ he replied.
‘And don’t think we haven’t done just that,’ said Naomi with a laugh.
About thirty minutes later, and with a small wave of her hand, Rose said, ‘It’s been lovely having you both here, but now I’m tired and should like to sleep. Do come again, Naomi.’
‘I will. I promise.’
‘I’ve enjoyed having somebody new to talk to.’
‘Thanks for that vote of confidence, Mum,’ said Ellis, going over to kiss her goodbye.
‘Take Naomi somewhere nice for lunch,’ she said, her head already tilting to the side as exhaustion overtook her. ‘And get on with planning the rest of your lives.’
‘We’ll try,’ he said, kissing her once more.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Everything all right, Martha?’
At Jason’s question, and his appearance in the doorway of her office, Martha gave a small start, which she tried to conceal by clearing her throat, and then coughing. How long had he been standing there? Probably long enough to know that she hadn’t been working, that she had been staring out of the window watching a pigeon building a nest on the ledge of the office building directly opposite. The gap between the two buildings was no more than a couple of yards and Martha had often wondered how difficult it would be to lay a plank of wood from one window to the other and use it as a secret escape route. If one felt so inclined.
With Jason now stepping inside her office and plainly in the mood for one of his ‘chats’, she wished wholeheartedly that she could escape. Or be like her sister when she’d been little. Willow had gone through a phase of believing that if she closed her eyes, she was invisible. It had driven Martha mad because no matter how much she told Willow that she could see her, her sister refused to believe her. Even if Martha resorted to pinching her, she would somehow force herself not to react. That ability of Willow’s as a young child to deny truth in favour of make-believe was an early sign that she was destined always to stick her head in the sand and refuse to face anything she found unpleasant.
A hardened realist, Martha smiled back at Jason as he sat down and waited for him to state the reason he had wandered into her office. As if she couldn’t guess.
‘How’s the pitch going for Topolino?’ he asked.
Yep, there it was.
‘I don’t have anything concrete right now,’ she said, ‘I’m just tossing a few ideas around at the moment.’
‘Care to share them?’
‘Well, the good thing as far as I can see is that by acting as quickly as they did, they’ve minimised the damage to their reputation. So that’s the angle I want to pursue, the speed with which they moved to put their house in order. I’m thinking that we should definitely make a big thing about their efforts to monitor all aspects of their supply and production chain. No stone unturned, that kind of thing.’
‘Sounds good,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘let me know when you have anything more specific. Oh, and keep me posted on the nest-building project going on out there,’ he added, throwing a look at the window.
Damn!She needed to get her act together. And fast. No more gazing out of windows and being distracted by thoughts of wishing she was pregnant.
And no more thinking about Mum and what the hell was going on with her. With any luck this imagining to be in love was just that, a trick Mum’s mind was playing on her. It was probably a form of delayed shock at Dad dying so unexpectedly; a need to fill the void his death had created in her life. So maybe this was something they just needed to humour her over, let the moment run its course and then Mum would realise the mistake she had made.Or the mistake she was in danger of making. After all, she was an attractive proposition; a widow who lived in a beautiful house and who had, thanks to Dad’s diligence, a sizeable financial portfolio at her disposal. But if this Ellis character was an opportunist on the lookout for a wealthy widow, he’d better think again!
All would be revealed at the weekend when they would finally meet him. Willow had at last agreed that she could spare the time to meet this coming Sunday, but had thrown a spanner in the works by saying the weather was going to be really warm and wouldn’t it be so much more fun to be at Anchor House, and with the beach to enjoy, instead of being at Tom and Martha’s, as she had originally planned? Rick had apparently been keen to spend the day at Mum’s, too. Tom had reminded Martha of the olive branch she was supposed to be extending, so had gone along with it.
