I’d forgotten about those. God knows what state they’re in, but it looks like that’s where I’ll be bedding down for the night. Better than some crummy motel or travel lodge, and better than driving the length of the country overnight.
That there is a lack of local accommodation has to be good for business, I suppose. Not that Tremaine House will be offering stays for anything other than an elite clientele. One thing’s for sure, the sooner the helipad is installed the better it’ll be for everyone concerned.
The tide looks fairly low as I pull the truck onto the greying road, and my phone is still in hand as it chimes with another text from the same comedienne.
Enjoy slumming it.
I consider texting back, offering to send her a picture of meslumming itwhilestroking it, just to piss her off, but accelerate instead.
It takes only a few minutes to cross and getting to the house, probably another ten on top of that through very circuitous country lanes. Out of all of the properties I’ve seen, the ones we’ve bought or are in the process of acquiring, this one’s my favourite, though maybe it shouldn’t be.Especially as it should’ve been mine already.It’s a Georgian villa built with symmetry and proportion in mind. And, as was the fashion almost two hundred years ago, constructed with sandstone extracted from a nearby quarry. A moss covered fountain sits in the centre of a circular driveway and you can almost imagine the horse drawn carriages being pulled to a stop there. A dozen or so steps lead up to a portico and a massive pair of Scottish oak doors, their patina darkened by the years.
My footsteps are light on the well-worn steps, the old hinges creaking as I push open the door. The place looks... different. Tidier, for sure, but not quite habitable. It’s no longer the genteelly tired residence my mother brought me to every summer since I’d turned twelve, and not yet the striking escape it will become. Work had begun on the reception area and the residents bar had also begun to take shape, at least until Beth had her wee tantrum. It’s less chaotic looking today, and even half finished, it doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to see how it’ll eventually all come together. Of how the rooms will be filled by parties booked for weekends of hedonism and champagne, in the house perched above a sandy beach the likes of which you won’t see anywhere else. Sure, it’s not a tropical beach where the sun is always shining and the drinks are dressed in fruit and thatched parasols. It’s a beach where, dependent on the weather, the ocean is anything from a deep blue to a stormy grey, where you can watch the storm clouds rolling in like the hounds of hell before chasing your way through the dunes to avoid the thunderous downpour.
I’m not a man known for poetry, but there’s something about this place that is both tranquillity and mayhem all in one day.
That I can smell the ocean makes me almost think I can see it, so I follow my nose along the hallway, through the out-dated kitchens to the back courtyard. From here, I can see the beach in the distance, a lone figure standing on the sandy shoreline.A woman.There shouldn’t be anyone on the beach—it’s private property, and inaccessible from anywhere but the house—but that’s not what pulls me closer. No, that would be the pull of a fantastic pair of legs. You’ve got to love leggings, well, in some circumstances—these circumstances—covering the loveliest bum I’ve seen in days. The wind coming off the North Sea can be brutal during the summer, let alone this time of year, yet she’s dressed in nothing more than a t-shirt. I notice this as she pulls back her arm as though to throw something into the ocean, her arm dropping by her side almost as quick.
Blonde strands blow across her pink cheeks as she turns, her eyes as blue as the pair of Hunter wellies covering her feet and calves. Eyes that, I realise with a jolt, are familiar. Blue and glistening now, though the last time I’d stared into them they were glassy from another cause. I don’t bang the same woman twice, said no man ever—not without good cause. And let’s just say, in this case, I’d be up for more than seconds.Fuck, thirds.
Well, hello, American Rose.
‘You can’t... be... here.’ Her words are almost whipped away by the wind but not so much that I don’t grasp her bewilderment, because it’s also written in her expression.
My gut tightens pleasantly and things don’t seem quite so bleak. Misery loves company, so they say. You know who else loves company? My cock.
‘I think,’ I say stepping closer, ‘you’ll find that you’ve got that the wrong way around. And while you’re a sight for sore and sorry eyes...’ My gaze deliberately roams over her body as she folds her arms across her chest hiding cold-prominent nipples. ‘... I’m pretty sure it’s you who’s trespassing.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one that shouldn’t be here—whatareyou doing here, anyway?’
Fiery. I can deal with that. Fire keeps you warm. Burns pretty good.
‘Don’t stress it, titch. I’ve got designs on more than your body today.’ I say this light-heartedly, though I can’t seem to make my gaze behave, because those legs? They’re fucking fantastic and I’d like to feel them wrapped around my head. ‘I’ve got a meeting at the house.’ I look pointedly at my watch, hoping to keep her eyes from dipping to my crotch.Doesn’t do to look too eager.
‘If you’ve a meeting up there,’ she says, gesturing towards the house, ‘I’d know about it.’
‘Aye?’ I feel the corner of my mouth twist. A temporary site manager Kit said; nothing about a fucking assistant.
‘Yes.’ She pulls herself taller, slipping something from between her fingers into the breast pocket of her t-shirt, and she shouldn’t have done it if she didn’t want my gaze to return there.Jesus, pay attention; eyes up top.‘I’d know about it because—’
‘I’m looking for your boss,’ I say, forcing my gaze back to her face and cutting her off. The sooner I get this meeting over, the sooner we can start the business of getting reacquainted. Intimately. ‘Why don’t you take me to meet him and then maybe you and I can catch up. Over dinner, say?’
Her arms remain folded, and as her left eyebrow rises, I get a good look at her pissed off face. I cut her off as she opens her mouth to respond.
‘I’m looking for Fin.’
‘Ah.’ Her hands fall to her sides, one shoulder lifting slightly. ‘Then you’ve found her.’
Then is... Fin her surname? Would that make the new guy her so called ex-husband, or make her not divorced at all?Thoughts, lightning fast, slip through my head before I recall Kit saying he’d employed a guy by the name of Fin Hayes, not someone with the surname Fin. What kind of coincidence is this?
‘No, I’m looking for the site manager, Fin.’ Not the fit-girl-Fin.
Her neutral expression hardens; her mouth pursing and her brows drawing down. For some reason this makes me chuckle. She looks like an angry kitten.
‘That’s funny, huh? And I suppose that would be because I’m a woman? That I couldn’t possibly be managing a construction project on account of possessing a fully functioning vagina.’
My smile breaks into a bloody great grin as she makes the head of an arrow with both hands—an arrow pointing south to her pussy, no less. I just manage to stop myself from agreeing that her vagina is indeed fully functional, and that as a fully-fledged vagina enthusiast, I confirm her pussy is top shelf. That is, if pussies were available on shelves, which is something I don’t want to imagine right now. Chuckling now, partly at myself and my ridiculous thought pattern, I try to keep a straight face, conscious that our second encounter isn’t going so well.
‘I was thinking,’ I say, holding up my hand to ward off her ire. ‘Seriously, I was thinking more along the lines that you can’t be the person I’m looking for seeing as your name is Rose.’
