Carrot and Coriander (12 page)

He stood, began to pace. For a brief moment she thought she saw a flare of temper, but he was clearly making an effort to control it. “No, actually, I didn’t know how you might react. How was I to know that?”

“You lied to me. On purpose. You asked me to trust you, and I did. I did as you asked, everything. I trusted you, and all the time you were lying.” Fury at him, and crushing disappointment at her own gullibility warring within her, Rachel’s tone was sharp. It matched her words.

Raking his fingers through his hair, Callum came back to sit at the table, clearly struggling for calm. “Christ, Rachel, you’re mixing a lot of stuff up here. You can trust me. And I wasn’t lying. If I’d realized you wanted, needed to know, I’d have explained about being in prison. But I never gave it a thought. And it’s over, past. It’s not who I am now. You have to believe that. Hell, I love you.”

Her head snapped up. She was losing her grip on her temper, tenuous as it had been from the moment she set eyes on him today. She was bitter, and she was hurt. “Love! Love me? You don’t even know me.”

“Of course I fucking know you. I know every inch of you. Intimately.” His tone was low, heavy. Menacing. And he was clearly having as much trouble as she was controlling his anger.

“You bastard!”

“Well, that too. Do you intend to hold that against me as well?”

“You lied to me. You tricked me into sleeping with you.”

He was angry in earnest now. “Sleeping? I think you mean fucking don’t you? You let me fuck you every which way, begged me to. And you bloody loved it. I didn’t trick you or con you. There was no bloody stopping you once you got going. Once you got a taste for it. You couldn’t get enough.”

Rachel’s hand shot out, connected to his cheek. She didn’t know where the slap had come from. She had never, never, in her entire life, struck anyone before.

His head snapped to one side, his mug flying across the room to shatter on the tiled floor. Rachel leaped to her feet and stood, shaking, waiting for him to retaliate. He didn’t. Instead he whirled away from her, strode to the worktop on the far side of the kitchen, leaned on it, and hung his head. There was no sound other than his breathing, deep, heavy, slow, as he reined in his temper. At last he straightened, turned to face her.

“I probably deserved that, but can we call it quits now? I shouldn’t have said those things, I didn’t mean any of it. And you know all about me now, and—I
do
love you Rachel.”

Shocked, as much by her own reactions as by the revelations about him, Rachel sank back into her chair, gazing at him through her tears.

“I can’t. I just can’t. This is— This is…carrot and coriander. For me, that’s all there is.” Her voice was a whisper, as she gave her answer

“
What?
” His face incredulous, he stared back at her. “You’re safe wording. Bloody safe wording? Over
this
? But, that’s ridiculous. It’s got nothing to do with…”

“It’s got everything to do with it. You’re a thief…”

“Used to be, yes. Not now.” His tone made it clear he was furious again—maybe always had been, maybe dangerously so.

Rachel was scared, felt she had good reason, and she needed this to be done.

“Still. You’re still stealing. If not cars, then what about tax. National insurance. Professional indemnity?”

His face was a mask of incredulity. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about cash in hand, no paperwork, no accounts. I’m an accountant, for God’s sake. A tax accountant.”

His glare was long and hard and chillingly angry now. “What you are, Rachel, is a fucking hypocrite. You knew all this yesterday, and the day before. And last week. It didn’t stop you putting on that slinky little pink number, or your sexy black thong, and letting me tie you up. You had a good time, even if I am a thief.”

“Maybe I was a hypocrite—but not now. No more. It’s all about honesty. And trust. You broke mine, and now I can’t trust you. So that’s it. Carrot and coriander.”

Again, the silence stretched between them. Rachel waited, she’d said her piece, said what she’d needed to say, and now she waited for him to leave. She hoped he’d just go, and dreaded having to ask him to. He waited for her to realize she was over-reacting, to come to her senses. Neither moved, neither spoke. The seconds ticked by, grew into minutes. Eventually, Rachel knew it was going to be down to her. She looked up, caught his gaze one last time, that beautiful, deep blue gaze, and she opened her mouth to ask him, to tell him.

He was there ahead of her. “I’m going. Gone. And I’ll finish your bloody rockery. Soon. And there’ll be no charge so your bean-counting conscience will be clear. Goodbye, Rachel.”

Wordlessly she watched him go, saw the door swing gently shut behind him, listened to the crunch of his boots on her gravel outside, the growl of his engine as he started his van, reversed out of her drive, and the soft rumble as he drove away.

Then, Rachel dropped her face onto her arms, rested on the flat, hard pine surface in front of her. And she wept.

Chapter Twelve

Rachel had wept most of that day. And the next. Jacob, baffled and scared, had cried too. His mummy’s mood was infectious. She hadn’t been able to face Caroline again, not yet, so she’d phoned to say that Jacob had been vomiting. And the pair of them had spent the day sniffling and eating jelly. Jacob had brightened first—jelly would usually do that for him.

By the end of the week Rachel was managing to push files and papers around in her office, and Jacob was once more joining his little playmates for breakfast. But no year end accounts got done, which was probably a good thing as Rachel’s professional reputation mattered a great deal to her, and her current level of competence was somewhere in the cellar. By the following week she was managing simple data entry and answering emails. A week later she could pass as nearly normal, though Caroline observed helpfully that she looked like shit and needed a holiday. Rachel kissed Jacob and scurried away to bury herself in double entry book keeping. And sternly refused to think about Callum. At all.

She didn’t expect to see
him
again. After all, word would get round, wouldn’t it, and in business a professional reputation was everything. If Caroline knew about the sexy local gardener’s dubious past, it was a knocking bet that he’d be the talk of the school gates—for a few days at least. No one would trust him, no one would hire him. He’d have to move somewhere else, con his way into some other neighborhood. Wouldn’t he?

Apparently not. She spotted the black van regularly, parked in a driveway here, against a curb there. And she saw him too, often bare chested, that sexy tattoo flashing as he bent, lifted, loaded, dug. His hair grew longer, became just a little bleached in the sun. His torso became more bronzed, more lean, more sculpted. Not that she was taking that much notice. Why would she?

And why would she be that bothered that he apparently had a new girlfriend these days as well? That’s if Rachel ever had been his girlfriend. They had never actually gone anywhere together. Never done anything except enjoy sweaty bouts of incredibly kinky sex. He had moved on, would be treating his lovely young girlfriend, the slender girl with long legs and even longer chestnut hair, to delightful sensual interludes. No doubt she was the one now enjoying his attentions with whips and spanking crops and bloody nipple clamps. Not that she of the long legs and long hair looked the type exactly, but what did Rachel know? She was just an accountant, and a bloody stupid one at that.

Occasionally she knew he spotted her, but he didn’t react. No wave, not even a curt nod. He ignored her totally. And that hurt the most. How could she be so painfully aware of him, while he seemed oblivious to her?

Weeks stretched into months. The weather cooled, that bronzed torso remained hidden under T-shirts, then sweatshirts, then a tough-looking waterproof jacket. The girlfriend came and went, more often than not he worked alone. But business must be good, she thought, when she spotted him driving a new van, well, newer. And she cried again the day Caroline mentioned that the sexy garden-god had rented the basement flat in her uncle’s house.

How come she was the only one who felt his criminal record and cavalier approach to business ethics was a problem? No one else seemed to care unduly, and now he’d managed to move into her neighborhood. Shit. Fucking shit.

* * * *

One morning, about eight months after she’d ordered him out of her kitchen and her life, Rachel ran into Callum. Quite literally. She crashed into him as she was trying to manhandle Jacob’s small tricycle, with him on it, through Caroline’s front door. Bending down she never saw the door open. Never saw the tall figure in work jeans and boots until she head-butted him in the groin.

“Sorry, I…” Rachel straightened, embarrassed, the required, habitual apology at the ready. Then she saw whose balls she’d nutted, and in a fleeting, uncharitable moment, wished she’d head-butted him harder. And just a little more accurately. He grunted, rubbed, and was okay.
Shit!

“Good morning, Rachel. Jakey. How are you?” Unfailingly polite, his smile dazzling, he crouched to admire the trike.

The small boy beamed, delighted to see his old friend again. He still talked about the butterflies they’d visited together the day his mummy had stayed in bed.

“Hey, I didn’t realize you two knew each other.” Caroline’s happy chatter reached Rachel’s ears. She turned, her mind a blank as she searched for some sort of response.

“Yes, we… I…”

“Rachel gave me some accountancy advice a while back. Isn’t that right?” Callum spared her the need to make up a lie. Rachel reflected bitterly that he did seem to be particularly good at getting his story straight. Still, she supposed, there was some truth in what he’d said. Accountancy advice was one way of describing their bitter exchange of views. She nodded, mumbling that she had work to do, she was very busy, had to be off. And not for the first time, she made a run for it from Caroline’s house.

* * * *

There was no sign of him when she called at five o’clock to pick up Jacob. She couldn’t help it, she had to know what he’d been doing there. As far as Rachel knew Caroline was happily in lust with Maisie, her long-time companion and occasional live-in lover. Still, Callum was temptation on a stick, and she should know.

“I want some decking out the back. Somewhere for the kids to play in the summer. It needs fencing in, and some nice safety surfacing down. He was giving me a price.” Caroline was airily indifferent, and Rachel was pleased she appeared to read nothing more than idle curiosity into the question.

“Yeah. Cash in hand no doubt.”

Caroline glanced at her, surprised at her waspish tone. “No. My accountant wouldn’t stand for that. You should know, since that’s you. No, this needs to go through the books. VAT, the lot.”

“But I thought you said he couldn’t be trusted. Prison record, and all that.”

“Oh, that was ages ago. He’s a reformed character, and everyone deserves a second chance. He’s a nice guy, lives at my uncle’s house now so he’s a neighbor. Almost family you could say. And he does a good job. Very decorative too.”

Rachel stared, her mouth hanging open. “Decorative? I thought you, I mean, well…”

“Yeah, yeah, but a girl can drool for nothing. And you can stop looking at me like that - I bet you’d not kick him out of bed.”

No she wouldn’t. Hadn’t. Well, not until…

Christ, what a mess. And why him? And she’d done the right thing. Eventually. Surely she had. So why did it feel like everyone else knew something she didn’t? And why was she so fucking miserable while everyone else just got on with their lives around her?

Chapter Thirteen

Rachel was still contemplating the general fucked-upness and injustice of life late that evening as she glared balefully at the empty wine bottle perched on her kitchen table. There’d been half a glass left in the bottle when she started, and she wondered about maybe opening another, but told herself that would be just plain silly. And greedy. And dangerous—what if Jacob became ill or something and she needed to drive.

Shit. This was so not like her. She was an accountant, for god’s sake. A businesswoman. A responsible parent. Not a drunk. Not a woman who’d let herself get totally fucked up by a pretty boy with a dodgy van and a mean way with a shovel. And a pair of nipple clamps. Christ, it was months ago. Why did it all seem like yesterday? And how come it still hurt so much? And how come Caroline was getting a nice play area while her back garden was a mess? Life just seemed so bloody unfair.

On impulse, Rachel reached for her phone. Scrolling back through her text history, she found that exchange from nearly nine months ago when she’d contacted Callum to ask him to build her pretend rockery. The message was curt, short. And, she thought, perfectly clear.

I need decking.

She hit send, and went to find that second bottle of cabernet syrah after all. She was still hunting around for the corkscrew when her phone pinged to let her know she had a text. She picked it up, keyed in the unlocking code, and saw that it was from him.

I daresay. But in what sense of the word?

What? She re-read her text, and grinned despite herself. Her fingers tapped the keys again.

Both. I’m sorry. I need somewhere for Jacob to play.

She hit send, then thought of something else and keyed in another message.

I miss you.

His reply came just under a minute later.

I miss you too. Tomorrow. I’ll measure up and give you a price.

Rachel smiled. She went to bed. The second bottle of cabernet syrah remained intact.

* * * *

The following morning she dropped Jacob off at Caroline’s and went home to wait. This was not a sexy underwear sort of meeting, she knew that, but still she chose her outfit carefully. A calf length full floaty skirt, and a soft cream blouse—elegant, feminine, not too dressy. And not too obvious.

He didn’t arrive first thing, and she assumed he must have had another job on. Made sense she supposed. He was busy these days, much in demand. He was probably at Caroline’s, knee-deep in decking, although his van had been nowhere in evidence earlier, and she
had
looked out for it. Impatient, she wondered if she should get on with some work, but eleven o’clock saw her still in her kitchen, folding miniature T-shirts and putting the kettle on for yet another cup of Earl Gray.