‘None of your business,’ she said, trying to push the door closed on him. ‘Now I must get to feeding Tiger.’
He put his foot in the door. ‘Not so fast.’ He hadn’t meant to be combative, but he also didn’t take kindly to being dismissed. ‘Itismy business when you are basically squatting next door to me.’
‘Goodnight, Nic,’ she said.
Frustrated, he stepped further into the doorway to block her next move, grabbing the frame as she slammed the door shut.
‘Aaargh!’ Pain shot through his thumb as his nail became trapped in the gap.
‘Hell!’ She let go of the door. ‘I didn’t mean to lean on it. Well, I did, but only to push you out. Are you OK?’
Nic held his wrist, gnashing his teeth as he tried to internalise the pain instead of hitting out at the door.
Meanwhile she was babbling about how many times she had trapped her fingers in that gap as a kid. ‘The door is deceptively heavy. And full of splinters. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed, along with everything else that’s falling to bits…’ She paused, grabbed a breath, and then looked down at his thumb. ‘Oh no! Nic, has it drawn blood? You poor thing! This needs fairy magic.’ Opening her lips slightly, she allowed his thumb to trace down her cupid’s bow and took him into her mouth.
He watched in astonishment as she licked it like she was eating an ice cream or a lollipop.Or something else. This weird, tender moment took his attention from the pain, and the blood seemed to stop. In fact, the sight of her sucking his thumb like that had sent all the blood in his body downhill. He looked down to see if his hard-on was showing. Fairy magic? This was witchcraft.
‘You stumbled on your laces. It was Tiger’s fault. Your thumb, I just figured it would stop the pain, I—’
‘I’ve renovated countless old properties. Doors are inanimate assassins, always waiting to injure a body part. I’ll be fine.’ Nic excused her, relieved to take back control of his thumb and his dick.
‘Let me get you a tissue or bandage…’ She glanced around the hut.
‘I should go,’ he said, his voice coming out in a strange growl. He turned around, laces trailing, wondering what thehell had just happened. He’d come to ask her about her dead father. Instead, he’d ended up seeing her exposed breasts before she swallowed his thumb. As he walked up the path, he landed on a new train of thought. Could he use this information to his advantage, threatening to report her unless she put in a word for him with decision makers? If she was as local and influential as she claimed, maybe it could make all the difference. As he approached his house, he spotted the new cleaner at the gate and buzzed her in.
‘Oh, it’s you. From the supermarket. I should have recognised your voice,’ he said as he met her at the door.
‘It is a unique timbre. Now what needs doing? You said it was a couple of hours’ work. I came in a cab so I didn’t have to drag this on the bus.’ She patted the vacuum cleaner.
He opened the cupboard. ‘Unnecessary. I have a robot.’
Her eyes widened as she saw the compact gadget. ‘Fuck me, that is cool. Does it mow the lawn too?’
Nic spent a further twenty minutes giving her a full briefing of the house, reminding him of the day he’d been shown around by Aria.
‘Do I need to go through anything again?’
‘Don’t worry, boss, I got it all,’ she said, whistling at the opulence of his stand-alone bath.
‘I very much doubt that,’ he said. But, to his surprise, she worked fast. Sophie was clearly a grafter, and maybe he could use her to clean the marina when it was built. While she cleaned he unzipped a first-aid kit and covered his thumb in an antiseptic wipe, before winding a plaster around it. Then he booked a train to London. He needed to talk to his fatherwithout Theo getting wind of it. He’d get their finances back on track and push this planning through, if it killed him, he told himself, before an email from his brother informed him a rival bidder for another tranche of land had just forced prices up further. Nic messaged back, asking Theo to dig into who it was and how much they’d bid. He fired off some more messages, before allowing himself to recall the moment Aria had kissed his thumb so erotically. He also allowed himself to imagine where else her cute mouth might have ventured, and then gave his head a wobble. Business before pleasure – he needed to stay focused. He wandered into the kitchen to find his cooker dismantled, with every removable part of it in a bowl of soapy water, while Sophie was on the floor scrubbing at the tiles.
‘You should remove your boots when you come in. It’s a mint house, this. If it was mine, I would make a no-shoe rule. Me and Grandad only wear slippers indoors. Mind you, he’s taken to wearing his outdoors too. Stepped in a cow pat up to his knees the other day. I hate the countryside sometimes, don’t you?’
Smiling at her chatter, he asked if she lived in town.
‘Yep, at the edge of it, anyway. In the terraced houses near Poet’s Panorama. I look after Grandad these days as he looked after me for so long. It’s a fair arrangement. I get a free washing machine, and he gets his meals cooked. Although, when I say cooked, I mean porridge and pizza, and he complains that both are either too hot or too cold. You live on your own?’ Nic nodded at her question. ‘But you have two sinks in your bathroom. I’m surprised women aren’t queuing round theblock to use one of them. That’s if you are into women. Your shoes tell me you are.’
Good God, would anyone else like to give him their opinion on his shoes? He did have two sinks, though. And four bedrooms. And plans for more houses that were going down the pan. He thought back to his confrontations with his neighbour. Aria wouldn’t put up with being blackmailed.Was he even capable of such a thing?Theo would tell him it was the kind of move their father played. He suspected she wouldn’t be bought out either, as she was stubborn, just like Eddie. But maybe she could be enticed with a business deal that would be good for them both? Like Sophie’s quest to please her grandad, perhaps he could come up with a porridge that wasn’t too hot or too cold for Aria, but just right.
21
Pulling on a sweatshirt and joggers over her scant PJs, Aria stepped out of the cabin to work on her garden. Chill air had cooled the day down, but she was still flushed over Nic’s visit. What on earth had happened? She’d essentially simulated a blow-job.Oh my God.She was mortified. As the superficial man had discovered her secret and now had the power to rip her world apart, giving him agency over her in other ways was not a good idea. She tugged up the remaining weeds on the planned vegetable patch, remembering how delighted her mum and dad were when they discovered fully formed new potatoes under the soil each year, as though they never imagined the situation could reoccur. They’d eaten them as a whole meal with a little butter and salt, oohing and aahing over the taste.
‘There’s nothing in the world like freshly dug spuds,’ Eddie would say, chewing enthusiastically, while her mum said he should set an example and not speak with his mouth full. They’d bicker lovingly and then Mum would produce her famous apple crumble, confessing the secret lay in the cinnamon.
‘It’s like kissing a boy, Aria. Too little and the taste is forgettable, too much and you risk suffocation.’ She longed to be home in the cottage she’d grown up in. No entanglements with the vampire next door, either romantically or transactionally. But then, no summer evenings at the lake. No red kites, willow warblers or chiffchaffs keeping her company from above, to say nothing of the barn owl who often dropped by. No earth like this at her fingertips and no fresh water on her lips. At times, this place was heaven, and Nic could end it with the small piece of knowledge he’d just gleaned. After half an hour of digging and worrying, she poked holes and slotted in seeds, then stood back to admire her work. Over the years, her dad had turned their surroundings into a native hub for wildlife, planting up local species specifically to attract bees and butterflies, and she hoped to do the same. He’d built hedgehog corridors and bird baths – everything to encourage nature to thrive. Aria looked at the poppies coming through again while the bluebells held court further up the hill. She was grateful for Eddie’s efforts and resolved to carry on, whether or not she was evicted. Tiger fetched her his squeaky toy and barked excitedly when she threw it into the bushes to keep him away from the vegetable patch. As the final tourist ferry chugged past, she looked up and waved, aware that no one could see her from here. Picking up a packet of runner bean seeds, she ripped it open and glanced towards Nic’s garden. Was that Sophie? What was she doing at Nic’s house? Envy pricked her like a thorn. She didn’t like Nic ninety per cent of the time, but that last ten per cent? It was intense. The moment they’d shared earlier had been more intimatethan any interaction she’d had since Justin, and, although she’d love to brush it off, she’d felt a connection. She’d seen it in his eyes too. She chuckled as she remembered her parents promising the healing powers of ‘fairy magic’ on a cut or a graze. All she’d done was taken it a step further, but it was different. She imagined probing more of Nic’s body, running her tongue along…
‘Hello, stranger. Stolen any more postcards lately?’
