“Let me check my diary for the vast amount of social engagements I have coming up,” Keren said. “Oh hang on. There are none. Yes, I’ll be there. Besides, someone will have made cake.”
“You never know, Sam might ask you out for a date on Wednesday,” Rayah said. “You could be filling yourself with a different form of…”
“Keren, can I have a word?”
She turned round, Rayah pausing too. Scott stood behind them, still holding his guitar.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “Ray, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Rayah shrugged. “Try to not have the police out for a second time in one night.”
Keren didn’t respond or look at her, she was too busy trying to read the man in front of her, but she’d have made more sense out of him if he was written in Swahili.
“What word do you want? It’s late and I have an early emergency clinic tomorrow.” Mondays were days she would open early. Weekends often saw the worsening of tooth pain of people who had put off a trip to the dentist, broken teeth and lost fillings. She found opening at seven and offering an online booking system helped ease the rest of the week.
“Sam,” he said. “Zack mentioned him.”
“Did he now? And what business would it be of yours? Or Zack’s for that matter?” She shut the door to the outside. The rest of the bar was empty, apart from Bez who was finishing clearing up.
“Because first it’s Oliver, now it’s Sam. Next thing I know you’ll be going out with Alex… Or actually, no, Alex is from Severton. It needs to be someone to get you out of here. Do me a favour, if you need to talk about your love life and how shit this place is, don’t do it in my bar where you can rub it in my face because I don’t want to know all of this.” His guitar was down, his dark eyes flashing, his mood completely different to how it was when he’d been performing.
“Hang on, Scott,” she said, all that heat that had been smouldering for the last few days finally bursting into flames. “I’ve spent the evening sitting with a woman telling me how big your dick is and how good you are at using it. And this after you kissed me twice in the last two weeks? It’s all bullshit, this fucking ‘I wanted to ask you out years ago’? You’re just fucking with my head like normal. I bet you just want to get my name notched on your bedpost so you can say you managed to get the girl who hated you to sleep with you…”
“That’s not fair, Keren. You heard Marley bragging about sleeping with me, not the other way round. When have you ever heard me talk about sleeping with any woman? That’s not my style.” He sounded hurt again, as if she really wasn’t getting him, or didn’t know him.
But she didn’t know if she did.
“What right do you have to tell me what I can talk about and where?”
Bez had left the bar. Possibly to hide in the old bomb shelter out back.
“I don’t. But since when have you been the sort of woman who deliberately hurts someone?” His words lacked fire. In fact, they sounded tired.
“Scott, I’m not trying to hurt you…”
“You’re not trying not to either.”
He kind of had a point. “Why are you so bothered about Sam?” She moved closer to him, smelling his aftershave, seeing his biceps pull against the hem of his t-shirt.
“Why were you so bothered about me sleeping with Marley?” His voice dropped lower, quieter.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I thought you were cheating on her…”
He shook his head. “That’s bullshit. I heard what she said and she made it clear that we were just hooking up. Something we haven’t done for at least three months.”
“Okay. Then maybe I was jealous.”
His smirk was downright dirty. “Jealous of what?”
“That she got to experience your big old ego.” She felt herself smiling.
“Myego?” He stepped closer to her. “You know what, Keren? I don’t want you to date Oliver or Sam or any other fucking man. I don’t want you to leave Severton.”
“What do you want then?” she said, hating being this close to him, hating how it made her feel. How it made her want him.
“I want to know how it feels to be inside you and what it’s like when you come on my cock. I want to know what it’ll take to get you to stop hating me.”
Her breasts were almost touching his chest. His heat radiated from him. She shouldn’t be here on her own with him. Ten years they had managed to go without being alone. Either he’d walked out or she’d found somewhere else to be busy.
