Did you resist a ransacking from the heir to the estate?
Full disclosure, I’d definitely have thrown him one despite his apparently evil tendencies.
Amy sighed and put the phone back down in favour of assessing the extent of her hangover. Pleasingly, she didn’t feel too bad.
Like an idiot, she’d confided to Kit yesterday evening that she and Sam had a) been sent on a joint research mission by Carolyn, and b) thanks to her casual ineptitude were stuck sharing a room. When he’d responded, she’d felt briefly convinced she could hear him laughing all the way from London.
Right now, Amy could hear the shower running in the bathroom and prayed that Sam had had the foresight to take his clothes in there with him. Seeing him in a towel would be mortifying. Worse than mortifying, if she was truthful with herself.
In fact, the meresoundof the water was provocative. She forbade her mind to wander for fear it would conjure images of damp, golden skin, rippling back muscles, soap-soused shoulders … At that moment, her stomach seemed to fall out of her body and down through the thick, patterned bedroom carpet. She put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes. No, no,no. This couldn’t happen.
For a mad moment, she considered texting Nisha for her official definition of ‘stomach drop sensation’. It would have been pointless, of course; inevitably, the response would have been something along the lines of ‘Ahhh, you just know it when you feel it!’
So, Sam was hot. He was attractive. This news was hardly revelatory– she could handle it. And it didn’t mean she had to amend her views on what they were to each other, which wasnothing.
In fact, Amy reasoned, she should probably have expected that at some point she’d feel physically drawn to him again. There was precedent. She was a grown woman, she hadneeds… Though she had to admit it was a very long time since they’d felt quite so urgent.
She picked up her iPhone again and sent a message to Kit, as if to ward off her own lustful thoughts.
Amy: Obviously there has been ZERO ransacking. First, we have to work together thanks to Carolyn. Also, I DON’T LIKE HIM.
To Amy’s amazement, Kit’s reply was almost immediate. She surmised that he hadn’t been to bed yet and would probably crash at some point within the next half hour.
Kit: Just like you couldn’t even remember his name? Lololol
Amy stuck her tongue out at the phone screen, then buried her face in her pillow.
To Amy’s intense relief, Sam emerged from the bathroom fully clothed. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks to whichever force was on her side this morning.
Unfailingly polite as always, Sam offered to walk up the high street and fetch them both coffees so she could shower and get ready in private. More than half an hour later, just as she was putting the finishing touches to her makeup, he returned with a double-shot cappuccino– her morning favourite.
After a hearty breakfast, she and Sam made their way to the festival HQ. They discovered the event was spread across several locations in the Robin Hood’s Bay area, all of which were within easy walking distance of one another. Having been provided with maps and wristbands that guaranteed their entry to various ‘scary stations’, they set off for a talk entitled: ‘The Undying Appeal of the Bloodsucker’.
In support of Matthew’s claim that the whole village was full of festivalgoers, almost everyone Amy and Sam saw was in full costume or sporting an item of clothing that declared their allegiance to a specific author or story. She lost count of the amount ofChild of the Night,Doctor of DoomandValley of ShadowsT-shirts she saw; there was even a drinks cart selling cocktails that looked horribly like cups of real blood.
She and Sam snapped photos of every quirky stall, souvenir and festival feature they saw, noting that the event’s presence on social media was key to its success. Not only had Instagram and TikTok done a lot of heavy lifting when it came to promoting the festival; excerpts from the day’s headline sessions were being streamed live and there were competitions running that rewarded engagement with particular hashtags.
After a scary story-themed lunch in a local restaurant– a seafood pasta dish masquerading as some kind of entrails stew, which Sam thought was hilarious and Amy felt was in very poor taste– they meandered through celebrations of sci-fi horror, psychological terror, slasher fiction and post-apocalyptic novels.
Amy marvelled at the scale of it all. Hundreds– probably thousands– of readers were united in their enthusiasm for books that would rob most people of the ability to sleep for a week. Several well-known authors were here: writers whose names she recognised and whose work she knew, despite not having any professional or personal interest in the horror genre.
‘What do you make of it all then?’ Sam asked her as they grabbed plastic cups of ‘Psycho Chef’s Sour Citrus Punch’– otherwise known as fresh lemonade– on their way back to the B&B’s car park.
‘I think …’ Amy began, making a face as she took a sip of her strongly acidic drink, ‘that we have alotof work to do if we’re going to pull off anything as successful as this. But I also think a romance festival could be even bigger and better.’
‘Agreed,’ Sam said, sucking lemonade through his straw and immediately breaking into agonised coughs. ‘Bloody hell, that stuff’s undrinkable.’
Amy laughed. ‘I actually quite like it. Once you get past the initial eye-popping sensation, it’s very refreshing. Trust you to want something sweet and sugary.’
‘Nah,’ Sam said playfully. ‘Yet more evidence that you’ve got me all wrong, Ms Perry. Why would I want cloying and syrupy when I could have spiky and bitter? In food and drink, as in life, I’ve always had a fondness for the astringent.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Amy said, refusing to consider this comment’s possible subtext. ‘I’ll remind you of that next time I see you spooning three sugars into your tea– which Ididnotice at breakfast, by the way.’
‘Touché,’ Sam grinned, clambering into the passenger seat of Grace’s Nissan and buckling his seat belt.
On the way home, Amy took care to keep the conversation impersonal, encouraging Sam to fill half a notebook with thoughts and ideas they could share with Carolyn on Monday.
After dropping him back at Rowton Hall, she went home to the cottage and readied herself for bed, trying to keep her brain from buzzing– instructing it to stop raking relentlessly over little things he’d said, the shape his lips made when they were wrapped around a wine glass, or how weirdly intimate it had felt to shower in a room that smelled like him.
