Pressure Head (29 page)

“How did Lionel dig up the dirt on Merry in the first place?” I asked as we drew into my road.

“He didn’t. That’s the sad part about it. I mean, yes, he was blackmailing the Reverend—but he didn’t have a bloody thing on him.” Dave shook his head. “Poor bastard—God knows what he thought Treadgood had found—apart from the gay thing, but let’s face it, you could tell that just by looking at him. Seems all Lionel had to do was just
hint
about secrets Lewis might not want spread about, and the Reverend was bending over backwards to do anything Lionel wanted. Guess we’ll never know what it was really all about, now.”

I swallowed. “No. Guess not.”

Oh, Merry, Merry, Merry. I didn’t like to speak ill of the dead—or even think it—but Christ, what a fucking car crash of a life.

At least he’d seemed a bit happier after we’d spoken. Maybe now he’d finally found some peace.

I slept like the dead for what was left of the night and woke up late to the sound of someone banging on my front door. The cats were milling around in the hallway when I went downstairs, Merlin peeking nervously out from behind Arthur’s solid form. From the general size and shape of the figure behind the frosted glass, I had a pretty good idea who was out there. My heart gave a little jump, like Merlin at his most skittish, as I went to open the door.

“About bloody time,” Phil grumbled. He was still looking a bit pale, or maybe it was just the contrast with the dark circles under his eyes.

I couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him. “Well? Are you coming in or what?”

“See you put on some trousers to come downstairs today,” he said, stomping through the hallway. It sounded like he disapproved.

“You might have been the postman. Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Course, that’d have been one way to scare them off,” I added, thinking about it.

“Or get yourself into even more trouble than usual,” Phil groused.

“Hey, it wasn’t me who was tied up in the boot of his own car,” I reminded him.

Without warning, he spun around and pulled me to him, crushing my bare chest against the soft warmth of yet another cashmere sweater. Maybe he had his own herd of goats. “Do you want to be?” he growled.

“Have you seen the boot space in a Fiesta? I might not be large, but even I wouldn’t find that a lot of fun.” I pretended to think. “The back of my van, on the other hand…”

“Kinky little sod.”

“I do my best.”

“That a promise?”

“Hey, are you really up for any of that sort of thing? When did they let you out of hospital?”

“I let myself out. Nothing wrong with me a bit of bed rest won’t cure.”

“I didn’t think it was
rest
you had on your mind. Bed, yeah, but—” The end of my sentence was swallowed as he kissed me.

Soon things were getting nicely out of hand. Phil’s sweater lay crumpled on the hall carpet, and my jeans were undone and with one of his hands shoved inside. But just about then, my brain finally woke up and reminded me I had a couple of unanswered questions. “Wait a minute,” I said, pushing Phil off me—or trying to; it was like trying to move a mountain. A big, blond, horny mountain. “Oi, gerroff, will you?”

“What?” He backed off about a millimetre and stood there, face flushed, breathing hard.

Gazing into those darkened eyes, it was a bit of a struggle to remember what I’d wanted to ask him. “I just—what is all this, all right? You and me. Is it about me being able to find stuff for you, or you feeling guilty about my hip, or what?”

“Does it matter right now?”

I had to look away. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it does.”

Strong fingers took hold of my chin and gently turned my face back towards him. “I’m not going to lie to you. The way I feel about you—it’s complicated.” His thumb stroked my cheek in a soothing rhythm, and he smiled suddenly. “Doesn’t help when you go around saving my life either.”

“Why didn’t you call me before you went out there?” I asked, because that had been bugging me worst of all. “Decided you didn’t need me anymore?”

“No, you twat. I was going to confront a bloody murderer, wasn’t I? Why the hell would I want you putting yourself in danger?” Phil’s gaze darted down to my bandaged arm. “Christ, when I saw he was about to shoot you, and you just bloody stood there…” He broke off and took a couple of deep breaths.

I slid my arms around his waist and pulled him close to me again. Someday soon, we were going to have to have words about this obsession of his with protecting me.

But for now, I reckoned I had all the answers I needed.

About the Author

 
JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and the paranormal, and is frequently accused of humour.
 

Find JL Merrow online at:
www.jlmerrow.com

Look for these titles by JL Merrow

Now Available:

Pricks and Pragmatism

Camwolf

Muscling Through

Wight Mischief

Midnight in Berlin

Hard Tail

Finding love can be a bumpy ride…

Hard Tail

© 2012 JL Merrow

His job: downsized out of existence. His marriage: dead in the water. It doesn’t take a lot of arm twisting for Tim Knight to agree to get out of London and take over his injured brother’s mountain bike shop for a while. A few weeks in Southampton is a welcome break from the wreck his life has become, even though he feels like a fish out of water in this brave new world of outdoor sports and unfamiliar technical jargon.

The young man who falls—literally—through the door of the shop brings everything into sharp, unexpected focus. Tim barely accepts he’s even
in
the closet until his attraction to Matt Berridge pulls him close enough to touch the doorknob.

There’s only one problem with the loveable klutz: his bullying boyfriend. Tim is convinced Steve is the cause of the bruises that Matt blows off as part of his risky sport. But rising to the defense of the man he’s beginning to love, means coming to terms with who he is—in public—in a battle not even his black belt prepared him to fight. Until now.

Warning: Contains an out-and-proud klutz, a closeted, karate-loving accountant—and a cat who thinks it’s all about him. Watch for a cameo appearance from the Pricks and Pragmatism lovers. May inspire yearnings for fresh air, exercise, and a fit, tanned bike mechanic of your very own.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Hard Tail:

The bell above the shop door tinkled, and Matt Berridge fell into my life.

Literally.

I’d been staring at that glass door, willing someone to come in and stave off the killing boredom before I stuck a bicycle spoke through my neck out of sheer bloody ennui. So when a broad-shouldered, shaggy-headed lad in mirror sunglasses loped into view, I was all eyes. He wore lived-in jeans and a purple Weird Fish T-shirt, with a battered biker jacket over the top. He looked like he’d just got back from a festival somewhere. At least, he looked like I imagined a guy who’d just been to a festival might look. I’d never been to a festival. Too busy with exams and work and getting married to a girl I didn’t love.

When he pushed open the door, I barely had time to mentally punch the air—and then he was gone, well-shaped arse over tit.

I’d swear it was nothing but his own feet he tripped over. With a soft cry of “Argh—shit!” he sprawled into the shop on his hands and knees. I didn’t realise who he was at first—I just hurried out from behind the counter to help the poor sod up. But when he looked up from under that dark mop of hair, it was obvious. At least, if you had the inside information I did. The sunglasses, which I now noticed were scratched, hung from one ear, and there was a massive, purple bruise around his right eye, which was swollen and half-closed. I winced involuntarily when I saw it, then hoped like hell he hadn’t noticed.

“Hi,” I said as he staggered to his feet, holding on to my arm. “I’m Tim.”

“Oh, right—you’re Jay’s brother? Good to meet you.” He smiled lopsidedly, adding dimples to the freckles already sprinkled on his lightly tanned face. I could easily imagine him as a beach bum somewhere like California, although given the South Coast accent with a hint of a West Country burr, I was guessing Cornwall was probably nearer the mark. “Sorry about that. I’m a total klutz, ask anyone. I’m Matt.”

“I guessed.” I gestured to the black eye—and then cursed myself for being so tactless. Obviously he was self-conscious about the bruising, or he wouldn’t be wearing shades. “I mean, Jay said you’d, er, had an accident. Sorry.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” He suddenly flashed a blinding grin. He had perfect teeth, except for one on the top left that was endearingly broken. “You don’t look like him. Jay, I mean.”

If I had a pound for everyone who’s ever reminded me that there is one good-looking guy in the family, and I’m not him… I’d still be pissed off about it. “Well, that’s the wonders of genetics for you,” I said, trying not to overdo the fatalism and come off like a self-loathing loser. “Some kids get the looks. Some get the brains. Me, I got the knobbly knees and the tendency towards early greying.”

He peered at me, his good eye narrowed nearly as much as his swollen one, and laughed. “You’re not greying!”

“No, but I will be. I take after my dad, and he went grey before he was thirty.”

“Yeah? How old are you now?” Matt asked. It was a bit of a weird effect, the cheeky grin on the battered face, but I couldn’t help smiling along with him.

“Twenty-eight,” I admitted.

“Looks like you’ve got two years to live it up, then,” Matt said, folding up his sunglasses and shoving them in his jacket pocket, adding another scratch with the zip along the way. “Wait—you’re married, aren’t you? That’s what Jay said.”

“He did?” Jay talked about me? I wondered what else he’d said. “Um. We’re actually not together anymore. Kate and me, I mean.”

“Shit.” Matt hung his head. “Sorry. Put my foot in it again. I’m always doing that.”

“Don’t worry,” I said quickly. “It’s fine—I mean, obviously, it’s… Um. We’d grown apart,” I finished lamely, trying to reassure him it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

“Oh. Right!” Just like a light switch, the smile was on again. “Right, well, I’d better get to work. Anything new come in?”

I looked at my watch. “Not in the fifteen minutes we’ve been open, no.”

“Right! I’ll get out the back, then.” And just like that, he was gone.

I’d never have thought a broken leg would turn out to be the most important event in my life. For a start, it wasn’t even my leg.

But it still managed to be responsible for moving me from London to Totton. It’s all right; you’re allowed not to have heard of Totton. It’s just a small town near Southampton, out past the Western Docks and across the Redbridge Causeway, over the very tip of Southampton Water. If you keep driving on through, which most people do, in another ten minutes you’ll reach the New Forest, home to a million pubs and ponies. It’s about as far from London as you can get, philosophically speaking, although it only takes an hour or so on the M3. Particularly if you’re bombing down the motorway like a bat out of hell because you’ve just heard your big brother’s in hospital.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t just Jay’s accident that set things off. After all, I hadn’t even heard the news when my marriage broke up.

It happened on a dreary, grey Monday evening, just after Kate had got in from work. I’d been home all day, having recently fallen victim to the merger of my firm, Falstaff & Bird, with a much larger accountancy business. Merger being, of course, merely a polite euphemism for the Falstaff & Bird partners selling the rest of us down the river. Half my department had been made redundant when the two firms combined, and the rest—the lucky ones—forced to relocate to the Williams Way offices in Canary Wharf. Everyone I’d spoken to since the axe had fallen had sounded shell-shocked by the speed of it all and wiped out by the commute.

Kate, being a lawyer, was more or less immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Come to think of it, slings and arrows were pretty much her bread and butter. She was home late that day, and looked tired as she dumped her briefcase in the hall. I wondered guiltily if I should have tried to cook something—but then again, if she’d already been having a bad day, it’d be a bit mean to make it even worse. “Want to get a takeaway?” I asked.

Kate didn’t meet my eyes. “Just a minute, Tim. I just need to pop upstairs.”

“Okay,” I said, a bit puzzled—after all, we had a perfectly good downstairs loo if that was what she needed. I wandered back into our tastefully designed living room and closed up the laptop I’d been busy tweaking my CV on, then unfolded the
Financial Times
from the job pages. It wasn’t like there’d been anything in there, anyway. Then I sat down on the cream leather sofa and wondered if it’d be worth turning the television on while I waited. The phone rang, and I leapt up to answer it—only to find it had stopped before I got there, presumably fielded by Kate. I sat down again and stared at the bookshelves on the wall by the conservatory. Not much there apart from Kate’s collection of modern literary fiction, the books all strictly ordered by binding and most of them unread. She’d deemed my pile of old-fashioned crime paperbacks far too scruffy for the living room.