Dream a Little Dream (28 page)

‘And that pretty much brings us to the point where you rang to tell me he was about to swipe the lease from under my nose.’

‘And you flew onto the scene like Batman.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I was scared that if you’d got into a fight, you would have suffered a cataplexy episode.’

His smile was crooked. ‘I took a very light hit, but once I’d leaned on the wall for a minute I’m pretty certain I could have thumped him.’ He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘You didn’t have to protect me. I know you kick arse when you feel the need. But don’t kick the arses that are mine to kick.’

‘Sorry.’ Liza looked at their hands, entwined, his large and capable, hers small, clean and hygienic. Whilst they’d been engrossed in the story of Kenny’s perfidy, Crosswind had skulked up onto the sofa and was lying with his head on her lap, very still, like a dog that wasn’t allowed on the furniture and was hoping not to be noticed. He was warm. Comforting. She swallowed. ‘Do you still love Natalie?’

Dominic shook his head. ‘The betrayal stung like fuck, though. I accept her version of events, and she’s so obviously suffering huge amounts of guilt and remorse. And anger over letting herself be manipulated, because being a dupe doesn’t suit her self-image. But my feelings for her have gone.’

Liza tried not to feel glad, because it wasn’t as if she was in a relationship with him. Although loving a woman who’d left him for his supposed best friend wasn’t what was best for Dominic, so she let herself feel glad for that, at least. ‘And you threw Kenny out?’

‘When I came back here, his room was already empty, the flat and car keys were on the bed. Maybe he’s moved his stuff into the hotel, to be near Natalie and maybe make an opportunistic move.’

‘So what’s happening with The Stables?’

‘Anybody’s guess. When I told Natalie the figures I was going to go ahead on, and that Kenny seemed to have comprehensively outbid me, she was horrified. I expect she knows that that means he lost his head. But she clammed right up when I asked whether she could extricate herself financially. I suspect she’s already put her money in his hands – and Kenny still wants The Stables. I left them hissing at each other.’

‘So between us, we have to fuck it up for Kenny.’ Liza squeezed his hand again, relishing the idea of victory over the perfidious Kenny. Then, when Dominic didn’t respond, peered into his face. ‘Don’t we? You still want the place, don’t you? Imogen and Fenella are really behind your bid – they were hacked off when I had to break the news that Kenny might get The Stables, not you, in case he wants them out.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ve been veging here, floating in my own misery, little constructive brain activity going on, consciousness being an annoying time between naps. But I’ll start taking my meds again, tomorrow, and get my head round everything.’

Scandalised, she jerked up, unsettling Crosswind just when he’d got back to sleep. ‘Shouldn’t you take them now?’

He eased her back against him. ‘No, that would keep me awake all night. I’ll take them first thing tomorrow. And I’ve told you everything I know about The Stables, so you have to finish your wine.’

Making a mental note to ring him and ensure he kept that promise, then deleting it because that would be Miranda-ish, she drank, beginning to enjoy the coolness sliding down her throat. ‘I’ve never had wine administered like medicine before. One glass and I’m beginning to get a buzz on.’ She snorted a laugh and Crosswind jumped to his feet, taking waggy possession of her lap and trying to lick her face.

Immediately, Dominic clicked his fingers. ‘Crosswind, bed.’

‘He’s all right,’ began Liza.

Crosswind paused, hopefully.

Dominic clicked again. ‘Bed!’

With a sigh and a hanging tail of reproach, Crosswind eased to the floor and slunk sadly over to a round blue beanbag in the corner.

‘Poor Crosswind!’ Liza protested, laughing up at Dominic. And their gazes tangled. Her blue eyes widened, lips parting.

He felt the familiar tightness in his jeans at the thought of how those soft lips felt on his. On him. ‘I don’t suppose that would work with you?’ he suggested, softly.

Predictably, she narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Click your fingers at me and I’ll snap them off.’

He laughed. ‘So very Liza.’ Then slid his arms around her and scooped her onto his lap, burying his face against her neck, breathing in the scent of her skin, feeling her body soften against his, pulling her closer, closer, as if to absorb her. His lips trailed up her throat, over her jaw line, until they found her mouth. ‘Scary, gorgeous, hot Liza,’ he whispered, ‘come to bed with me. There’s no Stables to get in the way between us any more, and I want you like crazy. I want you every time I get within a mile of you. You drive me nuts.’ His hand slid up her leg and into the fabulous heat beneath her dress and he went dizzy with the softness of her.

She pressed up against his hand. ‘You drive me nuts, too.’

‘In a good way or a bad way?’

Her lips brushed his, soft as breath. ‘Both.’

‘I know that feeling. But I love it. I want us to drive each other nuts all night.’ And then, massive relief, he felt her hand slide into his shirt, her palm skim over his ribs. He groaned against her mouth. Instantly, Crosswind sprang on top of them, whining, ears flat, tail beating, as anxious as any self-respecting dog whose human was making strange noises.

Dominic laughed, breathlessly. ‘We’d better move this into the bedroom. He’s at an impressionable age. Down, Crosswind!’ He managed to dislodge his furry bodyguard and manoeuvre both him and Liza to their feet without breaking bodily contact, though Liza had lost one shoe and her dress was up around her waist. He managed to scoop the shoe up. Those shoes were hot and made her a much more Dominic-friendly height. He had plans for her in those shoes.

‘You’re not too—?’

He tensed. ‘You’re not about to ask if I’m too tired,
are you
?’

‘Too
hungry
,’ she contradicted, indignantly, but not convincingly.

He steered her across the room. ‘My appetite,’ he closed the sitting-room door, careful of Crosswind’s disgruntled fluffy face, ‘is not for food.’

She giggled, as they made the bedroom and he slid the zip of her dress sinuously down her back and tugged the straps down her arms. Then the dress was on the floor and she was helping him slide out of his clothes, urgency making her fingers clumsy.

But her hands remembered grace as they glided over his burning nakedness, exploring. Skilled, sensitive fingers, that passed over him as if seeking messages through his skin. He wanted this woman like he’d never wanted another; Liza, who could halt his breathing with a flick of her tongue or a movement of her hips. She rubbed herself against him and he gasped at the pure pleasure of skin on skin.

Her body was firm in his hands as he pulled off her underwear with more enthusiasm than finesse. Smooth. Pulsing. Beautiful in every curve and tremor of her flesh. Then he was discarding his plans for the hot shoes, tipping her backwards onto the bed and was on top of and sliding inside her.

And the world whirled and shrank until there was just him and this woman, this room, this moment in time. And he needed nothing more.

Liza was jolted awake several hours later, as she found herself being bundled unceremoniously out from under the duvet and into thin – and chilly – air. Crashing to the carpet with a thump. ‘
Oof!
’

‘Get back!’ Dominic’s words, from the bed above, were slurred, but recognisable.

Rubbing one burning elbow and a throbbing knee, blinking blearily at the first fingers of grey daylight reaching through a crack in the curtains, Liza tried to understand what had just happened. OK, she was lying on the floor beside Dominic’s bed. Because …? Because he’d just shoved her out of it. She sighed. ‘Think you’re having a nightmare, Dominic.’

Silence.

Then Dominic peered over the side of the bed, hair hanging over his eyes. ‘Liza?’

‘What did you think it was?’

He groaned. ‘Scorpion. Sorry. Come here.’ Strong arms reached down and helped her off the carpet and back under the warm duvet, snuggling her against the warm ridges of his body, kissing her hair, her eyelids, stroking the length of her spine. ‘I chucked you out of bed?’

‘It’s all right.’ And she giggled, snuggling still closer, seeking his warmth.

‘There’s nothing right about that.’ He kissed her hair.

She glanced at the clock then settled against his warmth, head on his shoulder, ready for him to clunk back into sleep until his alarms began their morning fanfare. On the other hand … that was only twenty-seven minutes away.

Experimentally, she let her hand skate over his chest, and down, circling a questing fingertip around his navel. Slowly, sloooowly, down … down.

‘Mm, yeah,’ he rumbled, his arm tightening around her, his breathing quickening. ‘I’m not even going to question whether this is a dream. But it’s sure as hell not a nightmare.’

‘And if it is a dream, we’d better get busy before you wake up.’

Liza was flabbergasted when Kenny phoned The Stables to speak to her.

‘Coming straight to the point,’ he breezed. ‘If I take The Stables over, will you run the treatment side for me, like you were going to do for Dominic?’

She fought down the impulse to snap, ‘Not in this lifetime!’ Or, ‘So you’ve managed to keep your deceitful bastard hands on Natalie’s funds have you?’ Because, with a burst of joy, she saw an opportunity to make things right for Dominic. Spinning her mental cogs, she lied without hesitation. ‘Massively interested! Can you come in for a meeting? How about one o’clock? The centre’s quiet, then, because most of us take a quick break.’

‘Great!’ He sounded triumphant.

Liza replaced the phone on a grim impulse to dump him on his arse, hard.

Assuming a beaming smile, she popped her head around Imogen’s door. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the guy who put in the top bid for The Stables, and he wants to talk.’

Imogen’s eyebrows went up. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

Liza shucked off any guilt at deliberately misleading her friend, crossing her fingers that the end would justify the means. ‘If you want to hear what he has to say, be in reception at one.’ And she shot off to spin the same strategic arrangement of the truth to Fenella, Pippa and even Nicolas, who’d shown his face for the first time in days.

So, when one o’clock rolled around, not only Liza awaited Kenny King in reception.

He halted just inside the door at the sight of four more people than he’d expected, lined up in an expectant row.

Liza grabbed his hand as if she couldn’t wait to drag him over the threshold, resisting an impulse to dig her nails into his flesh, actually feeling queasy at how willingly she’d accepted this guy as Dominic’s friend without noticing the craftiness that lurked in his eyes. ‘Kenny! Let me introduce you to the other therapists, Imogen and Fenella, and Pippa from the front desk. You know Nicolas.’ She turned to her friends. ‘Kenny’s come to ask me to run the treatment centre side, if he takes over The Stables.’

Kenny smiled uneasily at an exchange of hopeful glances that followed this bald pronouncement.

Liza took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t work with untrustworthy, deceitful shits.’

Kenny took a second to react. Then his brow lowered with a snap. ‘Then I’ll have to get someone else to.’

‘Fine. Your first port of call will probably be amongst the other therapists in this centre, won’t it? But as Imogen and Fenella are my friends, I’ve already had to tell them that you let Dominic Christy put months of work into a business plan for The Stables, then stole all his ideas and went behind his back to put in a higher offer. And you got his girlfriend pregnant, lied to her about your business methods and got her to put a lot of money into the project.’

Kenny looked slightly panicked. ‘Just wait—’

‘Eeeouuuw.’ Fenella folded her arms and glared at Kenny.

Imogen shook her head in disgust. ‘And don’t ask me and Fen. Why should we manage the place for you? What’s in it for us? How can we trust you?’

‘I’ll make sure that—’

Liza steamrollered over whatever Kenny was trying to say. ‘Nicolas, do you know that, without Natalie, he doesn’t have all the money he needs?’

Nicolas paled. ‘He hadn’t mentioned that.’

Shifting from foot to foot, Kenny popped in, ‘Because I am with Natalie, so it’s not relevant.’

Liza just smiled, sweetly. ‘Oh, don’t talk such balls. I expect she’s starting action to get her money back from you at this very moment, you lying, cheating bastard.’ And she felt a rushing exhilarating whirl of satisfaction at the fury on Kenny’s face.

It seemed an endless day, once the excitement of fucking things up for Kenny was over because, no matter how many times Liza tried Dominic’s phone, it went straight to voicemail. She knew that he’d taken his meds that morning – as she’d watched from his bed as he did so. Miranda-ish or not, she felt a need to know he was OK.

She sent him texts, but the only messages that popped up on her phone were from Rochelle and Angie sending her
s because of her abandonment of the evening before.

Grinning, she returned:
Sorry but did have a reason 4 sneaking off & he was worth it
and received
Whoop!
and
JJJJJ
in response.

When she finally drove up to number 7, her heart lifted to see a man seated on her wall under the streetlight. But then crashed to her green Chelsea boots because the man wasn’t Dominic.

It was Adam.

She sighed. Oh,
Adam
. Caught up with Dominic and trying to fix things for him at The Stables, Adam and his stalky tendencies had hardly been spared a thought.

For his own sake, he needed to stop haunting her and move on with his life. And for her sake and the sake of nights like last night, she needed him out of hers. She’d drunk the symbolic glass of wine.

As she jumped out of her car, he smiled from his perch on the wall. ‘Liza, I still think we ought to talk.’

‘You’re right.’

For an instant, surprise flashed in his eyes. Then pleasure. Triumph. Scrambling off the brickwork, he met her in the middle of the pavement.

Firmly, she took one of his hands in both of hers, and gazed into his eyes. ‘Adam, I’m really sorry that I made you so unhappy. I’m sorry that I was drunk when you asked me to marry you and was so rubbish, the way I handled it. But asking me publicly, it kind of left me nowhere to go.’

His smile was replaced with a frown. ‘I was showing how much I love you.’

‘Were you?’ She squeezed his hand. It felt thin and dry. ‘Or were you trying to make me feel unable to refuse?’

His eyes shone with sadness. ‘Look, you can’t just return me like a pair of shoes you’ve changed your mind about. You made me look like an idiot. You made me ill. You pushed me into a stupid act of self-harm.’ He retrieved his hand and yanked back his sleeve, brandishing the shiny pink ridges in his flesh. ‘I’ve lost some of the use of my fingers in this hand, Liza. I haven’t got a job, or anything.’

And, abruptly, she identified another emotion in the gleam of his eyes. Anger.

She stepped smartly back. ‘I didn’t push you into anything.’ She tested the words on her tongue. Actually, they felt right. ‘Slashing your wrist was more emotional blackmail. To get me back.’

‘Even if that were true, it didn’t work very well, did it?’ He shook his head in sorrow, towering over her, following as she stepped back again. And again. ‘You must be such a hard person.’

‘Adam—’

‘You don’t deserve to be happy. And that’s why I’ve been hanging around.’ He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. A shadow of misery covered his face. ‘I realised you wouldn’t come back. So I wanted to make you unhappy, like you made me. Like he told me. He was on my side, he said.’

‘
Who
?’ Liza halted, leaving them toe-to-toe on the pavement like confrontational teenagers.

His smile was un-Adamlike. Unpleasant. ‘That day you were on the radio and I met you at The Stables and then you turned your back on me. Kenny stayed and had a chat, said he hated to see good blokes treated badly by bitchy women.
He
didn’t turn his back, even though we’d never met before. He was great. He took me for a drink the next night, told me how miserable you were that I’d found you. He said, keep it up. You’re getting your own back, mate. She gave you a hard time and so you should give her one.’

‘That bastard!’ Liza gasped, her blood boiling. ‘And you’ve been making me feel bad to punish me? Kenny just wanted me upset to keep me out of a business deal. He wasn’t on your side at all, you stupid arse! He was using you. You’ve been manipulated. He’s been manipulating everyone.’

Fury blazed in Adam’s eyes. When he jerked back, Liza leaped back, shocked into thinking, for an instant, that he was going to lash out.

But Adam was gazing in horror over Liza’s head at Mrs Snelling’s window. ‘Who’s the scary staring woman?’ he breathed, sounding more like the old Adam.

Mrs. Snelling threw up the sliding sash, looking as if she was about to pop a vein. ‘Young man, kindly stop your intimidation. Really! That woman is half your size. What are you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t intimidating her,’ Adam began, uncertainly.

Electing not to debate whether Adam entirely deserved such unreserved criticism, as Mrs Snelling was so unexpectedly swinging her battleaxe in Liza’s favour, Liza grabbed the opportunity to sidle in the direction of her front door.

Mrs Snelling obviously wasn’t in the mood to listen to protests. ‘Don’t be so untruthful! I’ve been watching you loom over that young woman and I’m not one to stand by and watch such cowardly intimidation.’

Liza left Adam to stutter stunned objections as he backed away, while she slipped away indoors and danced upstairs to run herself a hot bath, trusting that Dominic would turn up soon, and wanting to be warm, clean and serene when he did.

What she hadn’t bargained for was that he’d be spitting with rage.