Kiss and Tell (90 page)

‘Sure.’ She went in search of scissors, reminding herself it was just like trimming a horse’s feathers. She’d cut the hair of plenty of male riders in the past, and had yet to ravish one.

He sat at the end of the kitchen table. The laptop was tuned to streaming of the afternoon’s dressage tests from Kentucky, one of which was Rory.

Tash climbed up on chairs redirecting every halogen light to shine on the work in hand so that Lough looked as though he was about to be beamed up by Scottie. It was luminously unromantic. He kept his eyes firmly on the computer, watching an American rider trot into the arena. The picture kept freezing as the live feed stalled.

Still playing for time, Tash drained her wine and went to pour herself another but the bottle appeared to be empty. She took a new one for the fridge and poured them both brimming glasses that splashed everywhere as she carried them over.

Then she took up position behind Lough. She was stupidly nervous, hands shaking so much that she was worried she’d cut off his ear.

His hair slithered through her fingers, heavy as lined satin curtains, as she set to work, running a comb through each section, slipping her fingers to either side of the lock of hair and feathering the scissors along the ends, snip-snip-snip.

He smelled shower-fresh, of warm skin and cool deodorant, toothpaste and shaving gel, but undercut with a masculine wood-smoke tang.

Tash leaned past him to reach for her wine, jumping as her breast
rubbed against his arm. Even through a heavyweight jumper and thick wad of bra, her nipple fizzed disloyally. She dripped wine on him and set to work again, hands shaking even more.

Dark hair gathered underfoot as she worked, all too aware of the broad angles of his shoulders catching on her belly, his breath against her wrists as she cut that long forelock, the soft shell curls of his ears, the curve of his wide neck. She could see the edge of his tattoo poking out from his T-shirt neckline, matched with the wide inked bands visible on his arms.

On screen, the rider jerked forwards in stop-start images. Then they lost the pictures and the feed cut to the scoreboard and audio only. Neither Tash nor Lough noticed.

As if in a dream, her fingers fluttered closer and closer to the tattoo as she trimmed the fine hairs on the nape of his neck, perfecting the neat v-shape there.

But the tattoo was a decoy. It was the hollow at the base of his jaw that pulled her in, without warning, her left hand landing there lightly, as though just stilling his head to keep cutting his hair, if it weren’t for the thumb, with a life of its own, sliding up under his ear.

In a flash, he’d lifted his arm and clamped a hand over hers.

They both stayed stock still for a moment, watching the pale screen of the computer lined with scores, and listening as a cheerful American commentator announced that it had just started raining heavily over Lexington.

At last Lough spoke, barely more than a whisper. ‘You feel the same way.’

‘You must go,’ Tash said, her voice weird and unnatural in her head, almost drowned out by the pounding of her blood.

‘You feel the same way.’

She tried to pull her hand away but he held tight.

‘I can’t think straight around you any more,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t breathe straight. I want to kiss you all the time.’

Tash certainly couldn’t breathe now. All she could think about was kissing him.

‘And into the stadium, in the pouring rain, comes a young Brit we’ve not seen here before, Rory Midwinter …’ announced the disjointed voice on the laptop. ‘Seems to be having a few problems getting the horse to the arena there, but backwards on two legs is fine as long as they get all the moves right when they’ve entered at A …’

Lough’s hand warm on hers, frozen in time, they stayed silently rooted to the spot like statues, neither of them listening as the commentators talked through Rory’s test. The voices droned on, talking about superb transitions and great showmanship. Tash barely took in a word, able to think of nothing but Lough’s lips and hers finding each other.

When a distorted round of applause from the computer speaker heralded the end of the test, they both jumped with surprise.

‘What a great effort from the young Brit after such a near-catastrophe at the start – and the worst weather of the day. The scores should be on the board any moment …’ the commentator promised.

There seemed to be an interminable pause.

‘He gets fifty or less, we kiss,’ Lough breathed.

‘I don’t make bets like that,’ she managed to croak, despite a crazy urge to agree. ‘That’s Hugo’s weakness.’

‘We have that in common, at least.’

Tash bit her lip, fighting to think straight. ‘What is it you two bet on?’

‘You, of course.’ Lough’s fingers had started to slide up her forearm.

Still resting against the hot skin of his neck, Tash’s hand trembled. She snatched it away and stepped back.

Turning to face her, he stood up, his chair tipping over with a clatter against the flagstones, sending the dogs scuttling away. His eyes burned into hers.

On the live feed, the voice suddenly announced that Rory’s final penalty tally was just over forty points, putting him in second place for the day, ‘well in advance of any of the rest of the Brits to have gone, but with more to names including Olympic gold medallist Hugo Beauchamp to come tomorrow …’

The kiss was without warning or ceremony – a hot brand straight on to her lips, a hand on her neck and a body against hers. She felt her weight go for a moment, her feet struggle to stay under her, the pit of her belly pulled out like a drawer only to be filled with lit fireworks and slammed back in.

But all the time her heart was beginning to panic, desperate to run away and hide. She held up a hand. He gripped it, fingers lacing with hers, pulling her tighter, his lips opening against hers now, a
muscular tongue tasting the first soft millimetres of flesh on the inside of her lips.

Just for a split-second, Tash abandoned herself. She yielded, welcomed his body hard against hers, his tongue in her mouth, his fingers on her skin, and welcomed her craving to drag him between her legs. But even as this strangeness, this newness of kissing Lough overwhelmed her, the wave of lust was already retreating, her hand had starting to struggle against his, pushing him away, her heart hurting in her chest.

Then the phone rang and the remaining lust cut off instantly, like a switch.

Lough gripped on to her. ‘Ignore it.’

‘It’ll be Hugo.’

‘Ignore it,’ he urged, his lips still touching hers.

But the moment had gone. Her whole body felt scalded by disgrace and self-loathing.

She pushed him away.

Lough was a strong, athletic man and no lightweight, but he was caught off-balance; Tash rode up to eight horses a day and had arm muscles as strong as a rower’s these days. She didn’t know her own strength, and her thrust could probably have pushed over three muggers simultaneously.

She watched in horror as he stumbled backwards into the fallen chair, throwing an arm behind him in a futile attempt to grab the table edge. He crashed down against the flagstones, and his head made contact with the floor with a loud crack.

Tash screamed, her hands over her mouth, tears instantly rising in fear and panic.

Lough groaned and rolled over, blinking up at the ceiling, his huge, dark eyes flicking quickly across to Tash, clearly checking that she wasn’t standing over him with a cosh waiting to finish him off. Then he slowly sat up. There was blood dripping from his newly shorn hair.

‘Oh Christ, I’m so sorry!’ She stooped down to him.

‘Leave it!’ He hauled himself up, clutching his skull. A moment later, and he’d disappeared out into the night, slamming the door behind him.

The phone was still ringing, echoing around the house.

Unable to think straight, Tash picked up the call.

It was Hugo, now breathlessly running from the dressage arena to the stables alongside Rory.

‘Did you see it? He rode an absolute blinder,’ he enthused. ‘The horse was really far too hot, but all that work we’ve been doing paid off. He stayed focused and kept going forward, didn’t get defensive and fight him. It was bloody superb to watch. Darling little Faith sobbed her heart out. Rory’s about to go and do the press conference now, and absolutely loving all this American razzmatazz. God, I wish you were here.’

‘I wish I was there too,’ she said with all her shame-soaked heart.

Later, Tash crept out to do night-check like an SAS commando, dressed in dark colours, her eyes darting left and right in case Lough jumped out and demanded to know what the hell she was doing, playing mind games with him. But she needn’t have worried. A low light was glowing in the lodge cottage and Lough showed no sign of coming out. His own horses had already been rugged, hayed and watered.

At the crack of dawn the next day, he and Lemon loaded his two up-and-coming advanced horses as planned and set off for Belton Park in Lincolnshire. Tash waited in the house like a coward until they were gone. She was entered on River, but had called the organisers to withdraw, claiming that she couldn’t leave the yard so short-staffed that close to Badminton. The truth was that she was still far too frightened of riding around a track at that level to tackle it, and of being anywhere close to Lough.

In the kitchen Veruschka was squawking in Czech, having discovered last night’s chicken still in the top oven of the Aga, and now charred to a crisp. Acrid smoke billowed around the room.

Donning oven gloves, Tash carried the smouldering remains outside, where she wandered around uselessly, wondering where she could put it to cool that was out of the way of the dogs.

Beccy trailed across from the yard to see why she was wafting about, carrying the smoking pan like a religious censer. ‘Is that a Heston Blumenthal recipe?’

‘Yes, cremated chicken,’ Tash said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s all the rage at the Fat Duck.’

‘Did you and Lough have an argument last night?’ She watched as Tash finally dumped the roasting tray on the flat tiled roof of the old coal house.

‘Not exactly.’ Tash looked cagey.

Beccy was feeling both lost and strangely liberated without Lemon, who would be away for three days. They’d shared a disappointing meal the night before, which she’d ended up paying for, and which gave her indigestion because she’d eaten so well at Haydown the previous evenings. She barely got in a word at the Olive Branch as Lemon, who claimed to have forgotten his wallet, ran down British event riders non-stop, talking with his mouth full and snapping his fingers at Angelo for more wine every ten minutes. At first she’d been relieved to get away from the Lough and Tash dynamic, but she was secretly annoyed that she hadn’t got to cut that luscious black hair, and doubly annoyed that Lemon had spent so much of their evening saying how much he hoped his boss screwed up Hugo’s marriage. Afterwards, she’d had a stitch throughout their lovemaking, and Lemon had wanted to enhance the action by watching porn on the computer, which made her feel like a bit of a sideline rather than the main event. When Tash had first suggested that Lemon might not be ideal boyfriend material, Beccy had been livid, but now she was starting to see her point.

‘Lem treats me like a child, sometimes,’ she said, making a falteringly start at opening up to her stepsister, ‘like I don’t understand what’s going on in the real world.’

‘Nothing is going on,’ Tash said quickly.

But Beccy was concentrating too hard on her own heart to notice how defensiveTash was being. ‘He likes making trouble – it excites him – but at the same time he wants to protect me and keep me in my doll’s house. I know I’m a bit of a daydreamer, but I’m wise enough to see that what’s happening’s not right.’

‘It’s really all perfectly innocent,’ Tash blustered again.

‘It’s not, though, is it?’ Beccy sighed, still thinking about the porn. ‘It’s so obvious he’s only really in it for the sex.’

‘You think so?’ Tash bleated.

‘That and the home cooking,’ she nodded, ‘and wanting to get one over on Hugo.’

‘Oh God.’ Tash covered her mouth.

‘I want a boyfriend who looks after me,’ Beccy went on, ‘and who I can truly love, but he can be so selfish sometimes. He’d rather check his email than watch me undressing. This week, I
even caught him sending a text when I was giving him a blowjob.’

Tash squinted at her in confusion. ‘Beccy, are we talking about Lem here?’

‘Of course, who else would it be?’

‘Nothing – my mistake.’ She shook her head. She looked as though she hadn’t slept all night, Beccy realised.

‘How do I make men love me?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Oh Beccy, I only wish I knew.’ Tash stretched out a hand to cup her face, although Beccy predictably ducked away.

‘You hardly have that problem,’ she muttered. ‘You have two men in love with you. What’s your big secret?’

To Beccy’s surprise, Tash looked as though she was going to cry. Shot through with an unfamiliar compassion that for once blotted out jealousy, she reached out and clutched her stepsister’s arm. ‘You’re not going to leave Hugo, are you?’

‘No!’ Tash gasped in horror. ‘Of course not. Everything will be fine.’

‘Good.’ Beccy smiled, surprised by how relieved the news made her. For all her fantasies that Hugo would one day fall in love with her, she had never really believed that the Beauchamps’ marriage could crumble. Now that cracks were snaking up the walls and plaster raining down, she suddenly found herself wanting to rush around erecting scaffolding.

Arm in arm, they walked back to the stable yard.

‘Why haven’t you taken River to Belton today?’ Beccy asked casually. ‘Is it because of what’s happening with Lough?’

‘Not at all,’ Tash answered too quickly. ‘And nothing’s happening, I told you. She’s just not ready. Besides, I can follow progress in Kentucky better from here.’

‘Who d’you think’ll win?’

‘Hugo.’

‘Honestly?’

Suddenly uncertain exactly what she was being asked, Tash looked across at that innocent china doll face. ‘Hugo will win.’