Chapter 12
Sean
Everything about the day was too hot. From the morning tension in his boxers at the memory of Cherry padding around the house in her pyjama shorts last night – long, toned legs taunting him – to the unseasonably warm weather, to the hassle his workmates were still ladling on about him getting married in New York. News travelled like lightning in Kinshore, and Sean hadn’t even been the one to deliver it to them. It was at the cooperage before he was.
‘Two days?’ Billy McDonald, a young apprentice, clarified for what seemed like the hundredth time. ‘How it that even possible?’
‘It is if she’s a smoking fox and in New York,’ Sean said.
‘What, so in New York you can marry someone after two days if they’re a smoking fox?’ Billy wasn’t the brightest tool in the box.
‘No, you can get a licence to marry at short notice. You decide if your wife is a smoking fox.’ Sean rolled a barrel over to the door, chuckling at Billy’s misconstruction.
‘If anyone was going to marry after kenning someone five minutes, I’d have put money on it being you, Butler,’ Billy called after him.
‘Thanks, I think,’ Sean shouted back. ‘What can I say? If you know, you know.’
And if you and your wife both know you’re made for one another, but she thinks she’s going to ruin your life, what does it turn out that you know?
Fuck all.
‘Butler, there’s someone here to see you.’
Sean looked up from the barrel he was working on, hoop driver and mallet still in his hand, and nearly dropped both of them.
Fucking hell!
Standing in the yard was Cherry, denim hugging her hips, a vest top so tight and low cut that her breasts were rising up like the paps of Jura, giant rose gold hoops in her ears drawing attention to that swanlike neck, a baseball cap affiliated to some poker website, and sunglasses shielding what he knew to be tantalising starlight in her eyes.
This was his wife.
She was a phenomenon.
Except she didn’t want to be his wife.
She had a funny way of putting him off their marriage, turning up here all got up like a cooperage cheerleader.
‘Alright.’ Sean placed his tools by the door and meandered over to her, as casually as he could. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes. How did you walk through the village looking this good?’
‘I used my legs.’
‘Seems obvious now you mention it… Anyway, what’s up? Thought you’d be working today?’
She shrugged. ‘On a day like this, it seemed like a waste, so I thought I’d visit my husband. Seeyou,my darling.’ She lifted her fingers to his face and let them trail lazily through the sweat and dirt that were layering there, as they did every day.
It was bloody hard to concentrate when she did that, and Sean just about managed to form words. ‘Tease. It’s nice to see you, though.’
‘You, too. And since we’re meant to be madly in love, I brought you a sandwich.’ Cherry held out the small brown bag. ‘Like a doting wife would.’
Sean reached for her offering, surprising himself at how much this gesture threw him. Had she really walked the two miles from his house to the cooperage to bring him a sandwich? ‘Thanks ever so, sweetheart.’ He peered inside the bag. ‘Smells delicious.’ It truly did.
‘Hope it tastes as good as it smells. So, I suppose a real married couple would kiss now.’ Cherry removed her sunglasses so Sean could see the flirtatious glint they’d been hiding. ‘The husband thanking the wife and wishing her a lovely day and all that.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to be married to me.’
‘I thought you wanted us to appear madly in love all the time.’
She had a point. It would be wrong to accuse Cherry of hypocrisy when all she was doing was keeping up her side of the bargain. The stipulation was his. He’d just expected any kisses to be incidental rather than orchestrated. Still, he could manage to kiss his wife.
