Cold Heart (24 page)

She marched off down the beach, stopped and yelled for Tiger, but Burton was throwing a stick in the opposite direction. She turned and yelled again for the dog, but he was already galloping away.

Burton turned to face her. ‘Okay, that was your turn. You mind if I have mine now?’

‘What?’ she yelled back at him.

He strolled towards her, and said nothing until he was within a foot of her. ‘I said, it’s my turn now to fill in a few things about me.’

‘You think I want to know? ‘

He tilted his head to one side. ‘I sincerely hope so. Now where was I? Oh, yeah, forty-five, been married and divorced, joined the army at eighteen, educated by them, qualified as a lawyer and . . . of uniform, couldn’t make it out, so joined the cops. This of any interest at all?’

‘No-should it be?’

He came a fraction closer. ‘You free for dinner?’

‘No.’

‘Tomorrow?’ He reached out and drew her close to him.

‘No.’

‘I suppose a fuck is also out of the question?’

She turned away. ‘Very funny.’

He moved behind her and put his arms around her, pressing her close to him. ‘You sure?’

‘Don’t play games,’ she said quietly.

‘I’m not. I just don’t know what I should say that’ll make whatever I said before you told me to get a cab back okay. It’s a hell of a long way, and my car’s at your place.’

She turned in his arms, tried to break free from him, but he held her tightly. Her body was rigid, her face set, but he wouldn’t release her, and gradually she let her body relax against him.

She rested her head against his shoulder, loved the smell of him mixed with the sea air. He rubbed his chin against her fine, silky blonde hair. ‘You smell so good,’ he said, and she eased her face round, inch by inch until their lips met. His kiss was so sweet. Then he cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ve wanted to do this . . .’

He never finished as they kissed passionately, and slowly sank to their knees. He pulled her down beside him, until they lay side by side, Lorraine caught in the crook of his arm, her body pressed against his. He moaned softly, and she nestled against him: there was no need for words, no need to know anything more about each other. Lorraine was filled with rushes of emotion and couldn’t talk.

Tiger bounded up and dropped the stick on Burton’s chest: keeping one arm around Lorraine, he picked it up with the other hand, and held it high for a moment before he threw it towards the sea.

‘You free for dinner, Mrs Page?’ he asked.

‘I guess so.’

He rolled over to lean on his elbow, looking down into her face. ‘Then let’s go eat.’

She traced his face with her hand. ‘Sounds good to me.’

He bent his head, and gave her another sweet kiss. She could feel that he was aroused, and her whole body ached – a fuck was not out of the question, not at all out of the question, but he was one guy she knew not to treat like a one-night stand. This man, Jake Burton, she knew she wanted more from, more than she had believed she would ever want again. She was falling in love, but had so little confidence in herself that she couldn’t accept that he was attracted to her, and just might want commitment from her too. It was too much to hope for, so she made herself play cool. ‘There’s a great Chinese near the apartment,’ she said huskily, not able to be quite as offhand as she would have liked.

‘I could handle that,’ he said, then sprang to his feet and whistled for Tiger, who was further down the beach where he appeared to be digging his way to Australia. Lorraine sat up, shading her eyes against the evening sun, to watch Jake bend forward as Tiger loped towards him and clip on the lead. She liked everything she saw, and it scared her.

Kendall was ready, everything was set. She struck the match and let it drop to her feet. She expected things to happen as she had seen in movies, a thin blue tongue of flame, spreading and building steadily before bursting into an inferno, and began to panic that it wasn’t catching. She didn’t want the smoke alarms to go off before the fire took hold, so she bent down, fanning it with her hands, but still only a single, pale blue flame spluttered weakly. She bent down further, and used the hem of her skirt to create a draught. The flame still seemed about to go out. She leaned even further forward, struck another match to throw towards the spirit-soaked rags she had stuffed into the trash can and padded around it.

‘Burn, you bastard, burn,’ she muttered. She hated Harry Nathan with such venom. She would beat the bastard at his own game by claiming the insurance money – she was going to be all right. Now she was leaning further towards the fire, flapping her skirt furiously, and then the flames suddenly shot upwards so fast that she stumbled backwards and fell on her side. Her skirt was alight, and she was trying frantically to beat out the flames. Next moment she screamed in terror – her hair was on fire, and she could smell it burning. No matter how much she shook her head, or hit it, it kept burning. Her hands were still covered in white spirit – they were burning too, and then she was engulfed in flames as the alarms began to scream their warning. The fire roared forwards, spreading fast now, moving in every direction, and surrounding Kendall. She turned this way and that, screaming in terror as the flames leaped higher and higher, and the thick, dense smoke burned her eyes, blinding her.

Greg heard the alarms ringing, and looked out of his shop window, to see smoke spiralling upwards across the street, from inside the Nathan gallery’s yard. He rang for the fire brigade and then took off across the alley as fast as he could, flung open the gates and burst into the yard as the fire erupted skyward, like a bomb, through the workshop roof. He could hear terrible screaming from inside, and ran to try to wrench open the workshop door, but was at first forced back by the billowing smoke. The horrific, high-pitched shrieks went on and on.

At last he got the door open, but smoke and flames obscured his vision as he shouted Kendall’s name.

Suddenly she seemed to launch herself towards him, her mouth wide in terror: she was burning alive, her clothes, hair, her entire body alight.

Greg dragged her into the yard, wrapping his coat over her head in an effort to suffocate the flames, then to the gate to get them both out of the reach of the fire. The flames were now shooting out of the workshop, spreading, as she had intended, towards the gallery itself.

She was curled up beneath his jacket, which covered her face and the top part of her body, but he could see the terrible burns to her legs. As he lifted away the coat from her, he felt a rush of hysteria – his coat was smouldering, on fire from her body, but the sight of her face made him catch his breath. Her hair was burned to the scalp, and her face was a gruesome mass of burned flesh and blisters. But she was alive, and her eyes pleaded with him. She was trying to say something, her fingers plucking at his arm. Greg didn’t know what to do: his panic made him scream for her, and once he had started screaming he couldn’t stop, his cries drowning her awful, low moans of agony. Behind them, the fire reached the main gallery and even though the sprinklers had come on automatically, nothing could hold it back.

Within minutes the fire engines and the ambulance had arrived. Greg watched, shaken and distraught, as the paramedics gently lifted Kendall onto the stretcher. He asked if she was alive and one of the men looked down at her and nodded. She was alive, but she had already inhaled so much smoke that he knew there was little hope of survival.

The gallery alarms were ringing, police and fire sirens wailing, and the sound of the plate-glass windows cracking and shattering made it impossible to hear what her last words were. Kendall died, painfully moving her burned lips and using the last breath in her smoke-filled lungs to whisper the word, ‘Bastard.’

T
HEY HAD ordered too much food by far, choosing every dish they had wanted to try but never ordered before, so that half-empty cartons of Chinese takeaway littered the kitchen counter and the coffee table. An exhausted Tiger lay flat out, his head almost resting on Burton’s foot. Jake stroked his head just behind his right ear, and the dog growled contentedly, wanting more.

‘You’ve won him over,’ Lorraine said, leaning back. There was about a foot between them on the sofa, but she wanted to be closer, wanted to feel his arms around her again.

‘Good, that makes life easier,’ Jake said, then gestured towards the cartons. ‘Will he eat the rest?’

‘
Will
he?’ she laughed, but fell silent as he reached for her hand.

‘So?’ he said softly, his fingers laced with hers.

‘So,’ she repeated. The gap was still between them.

‘So,’ he said again, then loosened his hold on her hand to turn towards her. ‘Can I stay?’

Lorraine said nothing, and he began to stroke her arm, circling her slender wrist with his fingers. Then he drew her towards him until she rested against him. ‘Yes, I want you to stay,’ she whispered, nestling against his shoulder. She could smell Chinese takeaway, and sand, and sea, and him, and his chin rested against the top of her head as she slipped one arm around him. He reached down and drew her leg across his lap, gently stroking her calf as he eased off her shoe. It fell onto Tiger, still at their feet, who grunted and got up sleepily to walk a few feet away before he sighed loudly and slumped down, head on his paws, watching them intently with his pale blue eyes.

Lorraine sighed as Burton massaged her leg, his hand slowly moving higher, inching up her thigh. He continued to caress her, running his hand under the high-cut leg of her silk panties to find her with his fingers and feel she was wet for him, her legs parting. He slid from the sofa and began to ease her panties down. She made no effort to stop him, wanting him to do what he was doing and more. She rested her head back against the sofa as he knelt in front of her, opening her wider, and then began to kiss first the inside of one thigh then the other, kissing closer and closer to her until he bent his head and she felt his tongue inside her. Lorraine moaned and lifted her pelvis a fraction, wanting him deeper, and he continued to lick and suck her, pulling her shirt out from the waistband of her skirt so that he could slip his hand over her ribs and under her bra to feel her breasts and her hard, aroused nipples. She came quickly, her body shuddering and her thighs tightening around his head until at last he moved upwards, dragging her underwear off her body, and taking her breasts in his mouth as she moaned with pleasure.

They kissed with passion, he lifted her from the sofa, carried her to the bedroom, kicked open the door, stumbling slightly in the darkness, and laid her on her bed. He stripped off his clothes in front of her, unself-conscious about his nakedness, and he noticed the rows of slender candles at her bedside. He asked where she kept the matches. She watched his lean, muscular body bend forward as he lit each candle in turn. She was about to undress when he turned and knelt on the bed. ‘No. Let me do that.’

He allowed her to do nothing to help him as he took her clothes off, kissing her as he removed each garment, until she lay naked, smiling up at him. He held up his hand and disappeared, returned with her cigarettes and put them on the bedside table before he lay down beside her. He continued to caress her, tracing the scars on her arms with his fingers, and turning her over to see the uneven white tissue of the other scars on her back. He didn’t ask about them, but kissed each one, becoming more and more aroused as he touched her until he eased himself on top and into her with a long, low moan of pleasure.

He made love to her first, a sweetness to his fucking, waiting for her to climax with him, and then they had sex, roughly, but he was an experienced lover, never losing her. There was no fear between them, and no questions asked as they whispered endearments to one another, enjoying the heated sex, their mutual lust. When Jake moved Lorraine to sit astride him, she moaned, arching her body back to bring him deeper inside her, and when she lay beside him he was able to arouse her again, until they lay curled side by side against one another, her back pressing into his chest, their legs entwined. Lorraine was tired, not wanting to speak, and eventually she felt the rhythm of Jake’s breathing change. He was asleep, one arm round her, and she felt cocooned by his presence, lulled by his steady breathing, until her own matched it and she drifted into the perfect sleep of physical exhaustion.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Jake murmured, fully awake as Lorraine stirred, his arm tightening around her.

Tiger had inched his way onto the bed, and Jake turned round as the massive dog pushed him slightly out of the way and rested his head on the pillow.

‘I told you he liked you,’ Lorraine said drowsily, falling back to sleep almost instantly. Jake wasn’t so sure about Tiger’s presence, as the dog’s hot breath on his neck meant that his fangs, too, were close, but he was too tired to argue, and just moved closer to Lorraine. He listened to her soft rhythmic breathing as she had listened to his, and noticed that Tiger’s was now audible too. He had already taken more than his share of the bed, and yet Jake somehow liked the warmth of the big dog beside him, and in fact, he was liking everything about this night - especially the woman cradled in his arms.

He woke with a start to the smell of fresh coffee and the chink of china. The duvet had been carefully tucked around him and he looked at the clock on the bedside table, then relaxed - it was only five. There was plenty of time to take a shower, get dressed and go back to his place to change into fresh clothes. He didn’t look much like a division commander as he joined Lorraine in the kitchen, swathed in a sheet, and she looked up and smiled shyly, indicating the coffee. He liked the fact that she was wearing only a towel, and that her face was devoid of make-up, her cheeks rosy. He went to her and put his arms around her, kissing her neck.

‘Good morning.’

He felt something thump against his bare foot, and looked down to see Tiger wagging his tail. ‘Morning to you.’ He scratched the dog’s ear. ‘Does he always sleep in your bed?’