She could feel his chest rising and falling, pressed up against hers. His breathing seemed shallow and too quick – maybe from the exertion of playing and singing. Rachel realised her pulse was racing too, but she had nothing like Tom’s excuse.
Whatwasthis? What was shedoing? She didn’t know. They were still looking at each other.
Then, in a matter of seconds – maybe less than a second – something shifted between them. Rachel marvelled at the thousand shades of blue and grey in Tom’s eyes: sea, sky, storm clouds. Cornflowers, turquoise, stone.
Greg had been right: they were beautiful. She felt like she’d never seen them properly before – never looked at them in the right light.
‘So …’ Tom whispered. ‘Do you think we have everyone convinced?’
‘I reckon so.’ Rachel nodded. But neither of them moved.
Tom dipped his head and something inside her lit up like a flare. She tilted her face, arching her neck back and throwing her weight onto her tiptoes. He spread his hands on her back, pulling her further in.
Tom touched his lips to Rachel’s. Lightly.Toolightly. This was the merest pressure: the sort of force you might use for brushing a feather off bare skin, or lathering shampoo into a baby’s downy hair.
She kissed him back harder, without hesitation, pushing her hands into his sandy hair and opening her mouth. He drew away almost immediately, moving his hands to her upper arms so he could steady her.
He was right to. Her head was swimming.
The look on Tom’s face was incomprehensible. Was he shocked? Embarrassed? Angry?
Without thinking about what she was doing or why, Rachel moved forward, closing the distance he’d just opened up between them.
Tom kept his head up, several inches out of the way of hers. He wouldn’t look at her, let alone kiss her – but he let her bury her face in his T-shirt as she held on to him.God, he was tall … And he really did smell good.
Rachel’s legs felt less solid than they were supposed to, and she let herself collapse against him a little. He absorbed the extra weight without comment, not even shifting his feet.
When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find they were still in the piano bar. Nothing and no one had changed and – while she wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything different – that somehow seemed surprising.
‘Feeling a bit wobbly?’ Tom murmured.
‘Yes, actually,’ Rachel said, nodding her head. It was still resting against his chest.
‘I daresay endless birthday fizz and industrial quantities of amaretto have got something to do with that,’ he said into her hair. He was smiling, though; she could hear it in his voice. Rachel didn’t argue, but she wasn’t sure tipsiness alone could explain why her legs felt like they’d liquefied.
‘Maybe we should get you home,’ Tom said. ‘It looks like people are starting to head off anyway, and this place will be closing soon. I’ll go and find Anna. Let’s sit you here for a minute.’ He twisted around, then helped her onto a nearby chair – so subtly and gently that nobody watching would have noticed she wasn’t totally stable.
Then there was a large, cold glass of water next to her and Tom was on the other side of the room, extracting Anna and Will from their conversation with Theo. They looked grateful.
Greg and Carlos, she saw, already had jackets on, and Kemi was scrabbling under a table for her zebra-print coat.Good, she thought. Rachel was ready to go home, but it was never a good look to get so lashed that you had to leave your own party before it was really over.
Suddenly, and without warning, Jack pulled up a chair beside her – so close their knees were touching. He was also ready to leave, his jacket back on but unbuttoned over the fine-knit V-neck jumper he was wearing.
‘Thanks for inviting me,’ he said. ‘This was fun – though Anna doesn’t seem to have missed me much.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ Rachel replied, ignoring his reference to Anna’s frostiness. ‘And for my birthday present too. That was lovely of you.’
She waited for him to say goodbye, then stand up and go. He didn’t. Instead he let out a huge sigh, as if he’d just lost a fight with himself.
‘Tom seems decent enough,’ he said.
‘Decent?’ Rachel snorted. ‘He’s so much more than decent. He’s wonderful, and …’ She didn’t complete the sentence out loud, but in her head she said, ‘… and he doesn’t deserve to be used like this.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Jack muttered, waving his hand as if to bat the thought of Tom away. ‘He’s madly in love with you. Any fool could see that. He looks at you like you’re the sun coming up. But I’m not giving up on you. There’s something between us, and he doesn’t get to win without a fight.’
Rachel realised her mouth had fallen open. Jack smiled, confident that this brazen statement of intent was responsible for her shock. Then he kissed her – technically on the cheek, but far closer to her mouth than anyone reasonable would have deemed appropriate.
He got to his feet, then said, ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
