He looked straight at her and grinned, as if all his wishes had been granted. In that smile, she saw the boy who had sprayed plaster between his fingers, and nearly melted. This man.
‘Yes, please. That would be great.’
‘Okay. Can we clear something up from last night?’
‘Go on…’ Kam’s tone was tentative now but he was still looking at her, and without knowing what she was doing, as if she had no control over her body, her arm jerked up and she found herself stroking his face.
Oh sugar, she thought about pulling back but he hadn’t flinched. If anything he was smiling. Okay, this was good. Um… she still needed to sort out last night.
‘Okay, I want to apologise for kissing you on the beach yesterday.’ She did try and move her hand away now, but Kam reached up and clasped it, keeping her hand on his face.
‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to pull away. I really didn’t. I spent most of last night lying awake and regretting it. But Pips, you were so drunk, and I care about you so much I didn’t want a drunken fumble to spoil our friendship. You’ve become my friend and I was terrified we would mess that up. Not to mention the whole working together thing.’
They both dropped their hands down from his face, but their fingers remained entwined, resting on the duvet.
She knew it! He did want to kiss her. Stars and unicorns and silver sparkles were all exploding in her head.
He did want to kiss her. He was just being a bloody gentleman.
Well, there was a time to be gentlemanly and a time not to be, and this surely was the latter.
‘I’m not drunk now.’
‘Sure?’
‘Pretty sure. Not drunk and still very keen.’
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
He was stroking her hand in little circles as it lay there. Was this going to be it if she leaned in this time?
Pippa leaned forward and said again, ‘Kam, I’m not drunk but I am right here.’
Kam leant in, ‘Pippa, what if we mess work –us– up?’
‘And what if it we don’t? What if we just forget all our worries, every niggle about the future and our plans and just enjoy now? Right now.’ She lent even closer and he moved to meet her.
She shut her eyes, and as she did so she felt his lips touch hers, tentative at first and then deeper, more searching and a lot bolder.
Oh, Kam Choudhury, not such a gentleman after all!
Chapter Thirty-seven
Kam stood in his doorway giving Pippa a long, lingering kiss goodbye. He had one hand on the small of her back and was holding her so close that you couldn’t have fitted a whisker between the two of them. He’d quite like to keep it this way forever.
The weekend had been spectacular. They had spent the whole of it inside his flat, with him only nipping out to buy bits and bobs with which to treat her, cooking for her as she wrapped herself in a sheet and watched, occasionally getting up to help him or to kiss him. They would fall into bed again giggling, eyes never off each other. Dinner took three hours from conception to completion so good was she at helping.
They had spent the rest of it entangled together, making love and talking about everything under the sun. He had felt before that they knew each other; after this weekend he was convinced he knew no one better and that no one knew him as she did. His plans for his future shelved, Pippa was what he wanted his life to revolve around now, but he knew she had talked sense when she had broached their next steps, when she had turned her blue eyes on him – the same bright blue as the sea that day in Porthcurno – and reminded him that they needed to be careful, that if they weren’t, gossip would spread like wildfire. She had asked if it would affect his job prospects and he’d told her about Rosy’s warning. At this, she had laughed as she imagined his embarrassment; and then she had became serious as she told him how she would love for him to stay at Penmenna, and how this weekend, if known about, could make that less likely. He knew she was right and he wanted to say he didn’t care. But he did care, he wanted to stay.
She also pointed out, and it hadn’t occurred to him, that the minute they became talked about, her mother would know, his mother would find out too and the pressure piled upon them would become as heavy as the Earth itself. Pippa wanted to keep what had happened just between them a secret for now, a secret they would hug to themselves throughout the next half term, reverting back to being professional, appearing to be friends, colleagues and nothing more. Then in July they could see how things lay. When they no longer had to work side by side, they could see if they felt as they did now, and have six weeks just like this weekend, to spend together with no outside distractions.
He knew she spoke sense.
Now on the doorstep, their weekend coming to a close, they paused their kissing and stared at each other all happy, and safe in the knowledge that neither would have rather spent the last twenty-four hours any other way.
‘Thank you for a fabulous day. And night. And morning.’ He could hear mischievousness in her tone as she spoke. ‘I had the best time and I shall see you in school, Mr Choudhury’. Pippa stood up on tiptoes and whispered it in his ear, a smile on her face that summed up all that joy one feels at having a new lover, new plans, and shared secrets.
