With shaking hands and a regrettably empty glass, I peered over the edge at the Peeping Tom and gulped. An honest to God, audible, cartoon character gulp. Pervert or not, he was the most handsome man I had ever seen with my own eyes, and that was coming from a woman who once spent an evening in the company of the UK’s second most popular Channing Tatum impersonator. He was a lovely chap called Darryl. Couldn’t dance to save his life but he tried his best.
But this man? He was something else. Tall, tanned and wearing nothing but swimming trunks and a smile, his bare chest glowed in the golden hour light, his muscular arms held up in mock surrender. And the body wasn’t even the half of it. His face was a masterpiece. Full lips, square jaw and piercing green eyes, all anchored by the kind of perfectly masculine nose sculptors had been trying and failing to recreate for centuries. Michelangelo could never. When he shook his dark,messy hair out of his face and our eyes met, I almost fell over. It wasn’t fair, people shouldn’t be allowed to walk around looking like that without a paper bag over their head and a siren blaring to warn us normals. He was a living, breathing, possibly peeping safety hazard.
‘I wasn’t spying on you,’ the half-naked man called out. ‘I swear.’
‘Then what were you doing?’ I challenged.
His lips curved upwards on his irresponsibly beautiful face.
‘Birdwatching.’
What an incredibly shit lie.
‘I was looking at the bushtits when I saw a red-tailed hawk land in that tree,’ he added. ‘It’s up in those trees over there. Can you see it?’
‘Who are you calling a bushtit?’ I replied, my cheeks turning pink as I put down my glass and leaned over the edge of the terrace, searching for this alleged bird. ‘You’re full of it, I can’t see anything.’
He held out his hand and cocked his head back towards his own garden. ‘She’s definitely in there, I think there’s a nest. Come down here and I’ll show you.’
‘Are you going to kill me and eat me?’ I asked, peering down at him and trying not to be blinded by his beauty.
‘Not on purpose,’ he replied. ‘I’m vegan.’
It was still a pretty tempting offer. On the one hand, I didn’t know this man from Adam. Suzanne was away, I didn’t know anyone else in the city, no one knew where I was and no one was expecting to hear from me, so if this Bill-Oddie-wannabe-slash-demigod turned out to be a serial killer, I’d be completely on my own.
On the other hand, what a way to go.
‘Everyone has at least one flaw,’ I muttered, decision made. ‘OK, let’s see these birds. How do I get down?’
‘This way, I’ll show you.’
He jogged over to the back corner of his garden and I followed, keeping to the edge of Suzanne’s terrace, tapping my hand along the fence to remind myself this was really happening and not some jet-lag-induced fever dream. Unless it wasn’t, in which case I would be very happy to never wake up again. Right at the edge of the terrace, where the platform met the hillside, I saw a shallow set of stairs cut into the ground below.
‘If you climb over the fence, you should be able to get down,’ the most handsome man in the world assured me. ‘There’s an exposed tree root you can use as a handrail if that helps.’
‘Nothing will help,’ I muttered, throwing one leg over and trying not to look down as I straddled the fence. ‘I’m not a naturally graceful person. Or flexible person. Or good at climbing. Sorry, why am I doing this? Does your house not have a front door?’
‘My grandpa used to go up and down those stairs every day until he was almost eighty so I think you’ll be OK,’ he replied as I heaved my other leg over the fence and hurled my body at the side of the hill, clinging to the snarled knot of exposed root. ‘I’m here. If you fall, I’ll catch you.’
I dug my fingers into the dirt, my body pressed against the hillside like a cat that had collided with a patio door. All I had to do was concentrate on what was directly in front of me: muck, tree, fence, steps. I would not look at the city skyline behind me, I would not lookat the underside of the terrace above and I would not look at the exposed nipples of the man below. I stared straight ahead, moving slowly, determined not to wonder whether or not that odd, musty odour I kept getting a whiff of was me.
‘There you go!’ I heard the Adonis say as my left foot found solid ground. ‘You did it!’
Bolstered by a sudden burst of confidence, I turned around too quickly, beaming with pride and buzzing with adrenaline, only to slip off the last step and fall straight into his arms.
‘I did it,’ I cheered weakly, my face nestled against his broad chest. He smelled as good as he looked; a mixture of warm skin, sunscreen and a woodsy, leathery scent that made me ovulate fourteen days early. Either he’d been building an armchair naked in the forest or I needed to buy shares in whichever company made that aftershave.
‘You do know you’re not wearing any clothes?’ I said, fingertips still glued to his pecs. He was so solid. I’d never laid hands on anyone so physically dense before and I had to admit, I didn’t hate it.
‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have put on a tux,’ he replied. I prised my hands off him and tugged at my jeans and T-shirt in a vain attempt to sort myself out. Not that he was even looking at me, his deep, beautiful green eyes were firmly focused on the treeline. ‘They’re so cool; almost any time you hear a hawk in a movie or on TV, it’s a red-tail. Classic raptor cry, gotta be one of my top ten favourite birds of all time.’
‘I don’t know if I could even name ten different kinds of birds,’ I replied, refocusing my efforts and searching the skies for signs of life. ‘You’re sure it’s up there?’
He nodded without taking his eyes off the tree.
‘Positive.’
‘How big is it?’
