Slightly Foxed (31 page)

vivid blue.

"Thank you." I didn't just mean for the walker's guide. Jay

had purposefully let me see her devotion to Leo. She hadn't

even tried to hide how much she cared, and that was

courageous, to say the least, when I could have destroyed

her dream with just one sentence. But then, she was leaving

anyway...

My sandals were soaked by the time I reached the line of

trees which marked the edge of the river. So I took the shoes

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off and carried them, enjoying the freedom. It did mean I had

to tread more carefully. The grass, which looked so silky-soft

and innocent, concealed pockets of thistles and rocks. When I

finally attained the bank of the river, I was high-stepping like

a chorus girl.

I collapsed in the sandy-floored bower formed by a willow

tree stretching its arms towards the water, and stared into

the river's rippling shadows. A breeze fingered the back of my

neck as I propped myself up on my elbows and a few birds

flickered through the air. Flies swarmed above the water. The

river's surface moved like lazy cellophane.

"Hey." A shout assailed me from the far side of the river,

the sound snatched at and tossed around by the passing

breeze. "Hey. Alys!"

I struggled to sit up, panicked into the here-and-now by

the use of my name.

"
Piers
?" Seeing him here, facing me across the narrow

band of river, dislocated me. Piers belonged in Yorkshire.

Despite the fact that he wore a countrified version of his

normal clothes, he still looked out of place. Wrong. "What the

hell are you doing here?"

"There was a call. It's bad news, Ally."

Oh God.
Florence
.
Something's happened to Florence
.

Before I was really conscious of my movements, I was wading

towards Piers, my shoeless feet nearly numb on the stony-

floored bed of the river. When I looked up from my stagger I

saw that he too had entered the water and was sluicing his

way towards me.

"What's happened?" I gasped.

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Piers touched me very lightly on the cheek. "Mrs.

Treadgold. She died this morning."

The water reached just over his knees, midthigh on me,

tugging gently at our clothes. A cloud of mayflies racketed

around our heads in the silence. "She's dead."

"Yeah. You okay?" Piers shifted as stones moved under his

feet, some of the dancing insects tangled in his hair and he

raised his hand to dash them out.

"I think—I don't know." Another kingpin in my surety of

life had been removed. "She'd been ill, Piers, and I didn't

even know. I didn't even
notice
." I looked up into his face.

"Am I really such a cow? So neglectful? Mrs. T keeps...
kept

giving me advice and I don't even think I took it."

More stones moved, slippery undersides were revealed. I

found myself sliding, put out a foot to stabilise myself, and

the world turned over.

I grabbed at Piers instinctively, felt his arm go out to catch

me and then both of us were down in the water, flailing and

gasping at the cold contrast. I resurfaced, arms whirling and

grasping, and I found myself with hands full of Piers's T-shirt,

gripping on for dear life as I coughed and sucked at the air.

His skin was cold where his T-shirt rucked, colder than mine,

and I realised this was the first time I'd ever touched him,

skin to skin. I didn't let go.

We splashed our way to my bank while he muttered and

swore to himself in Spanish. When we finally flopped onto the

sandy bank-top, he wrenched off his T-shirt and flung it

disgustedly at his feet. "Fifty-three fucking pounds, now it's

only good to clean the car." God, but he had a nice torso.

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I looked down at my own T-shirt. "Seven fifty, and I

reckon it's got a good few years left in it."

Piers stared at me for a second, then shoved wet hair out

of his eyes and smiled. "Yeah. Serve me right for being such

a poser."

"I didn't say that."

"No. But you think a lot of stuff that you don't say, Alys.

You're like—like a kind of book, where the pages are just

open enough to read some of the words, but you can't get the

whole story. And, by the way, you are not a cow. Or

neglectful."

"Mrs. Treadgold was so good to me." Tears felt hot against

my chilled skin. "I should have been there for her more. I

should have talked to her more."

"Years you've been keeping it all inside, Ally. Years. Years

of hiding so that no one would find out what you did or find

out how screwed up you'd got over it all."

He'd hunched up, arms around his knees, bare back

curved. His backbone protruded through the skin, vanishing

up into where his hair fell over his shoulders. I found this

oddly affecting. "You need to learn to talk to people."

"Why did you come?" I said abruptly, trying to stop his

train of thought. "You didn't need to drive all this way. You

could have rung. And anyway, how did you find me?"

"Got the address off the 'net. Went to the house. You

weren't there but this woman said you were headed out this

way. I guess I picked the wrong side of the river." Piers

looked at my still-ringless hand. "You've not told him yet?"

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It was either lose my temper or start crying again. I chose

anger. "Oh right, so you're here as the front-line deputation

of the Alys-mustn't-marry-Leo brigade, are you? I bet Jace

put you up to this, did she?"

Piers muttered something.

"What?"

He stood up. I thought for a moment he was going to face

me, but he turned his back again and leaned against the tree,

staring out over the field, his breathing rapid. I couldn't keep

my eyes from the rise and fall of his rib cage. He muttered

again.

I gave up. Unfolded my arms and pulled myself upright so

that I could stand beside him. "For God's sake, Piers,
what
?"

"I said—" This time he turned round and I nearly stepped

back. He looked as though he was about to throw up. His

normally pale skin looked grey, his eyes were absolutely

huge. "I'm not here for anyone but me. Self-interest kinda

thing, y'know?" He took a gulp of air. "
I
don't want you to

marry this guy."

I just stared at him.

"Okay, Alys, here's the thing, right?" Another gulp. "I'm in

love with you. Can't help it, don't fucking
want
to help it, it's

how I feel." Some colour had returned to his face now, faintly

brushed across his cheekbones. "That's all. You can throw

things and scream now, if you want."

I closed my mouth with a click. Somewhere, deep inside

me, it felt as though someone had wrapped my heart in a

warm blanket while somewhere else, somewhere more

primeval and certainly farther down, there appeared to be a

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firework party in progress. My eyes were stapled to his bare

chest, the silky coil of hair dead centre which ran down to his

belly. And beyond. Oh God, don't let me even
think
about

beyond. This wasn't right. I shouldn't be looking at Piers like

this.

"Do you think I should?" I stammered. "Scream, I mean?"

"Well." Piers moved closer. "If you did, then I wouldn't be

able to do this." His head tilted down, against all probability

mine tilted up, and our lips met. There was enough passion,

desire and good old down-and-dirty sex there to satisfy any

world-stopping criteria, but there was also an underlying

softness. If I'd had any of my mental faculties to hand instead

of having them flapping around inside my head like a bunch

of stoned budgies, I would have said it was a kiss of promise.

His mouth tasted sweet, faintly of peaches and there was

something succulently alluring about his naked chest pressed

against my damp T-shirt.

Eventually, and reluctantly, I pulled away. Piers let the

hand he'd had tangled in my hair fall to his side. "I can't do

this. It's just too weird. I mean—you and me? What planet

did you come from, Piers?"

"Because, why? Why not you and me? Because you've got

this Leo sitting on the sidelines, all saddle soap and tight

jodhpurs?"

A glance down at Piers's wet jeans, clinging tighter to his

thighs than any jodhpurs. My heart was swooping about

inside my chest. "I thought—but—you're my
friend
."

"Four years, Ally. Four years I've wanted you. If friends

was all I was going to get then it was still worth it. So, if

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you're gonna marry your guy, at least I've told you how I

feel."

"Have you really thought about this?" I said, quietly. "I

mean, what about your girlfriend? Maybe you're reacting to

breaking up with her?"

He let out a hoot of laughter. "Ally, sweetheart,
Sarah

didn't exist
. And yeah, I've really thought about this. I've had

four years to think about it."

"What do you mean Sarah didn't exist? No one that thin

could be a figment of my imagination." I was rather carefully

avoiding the issue here.

"I invented her. I gave myself six months, yeah? Six

months without a woman, to see if I could either talk myself

out of love with you, or find out if you could ever feel

anything for me—and you kept on and on about me being

with someone. You never took the hint, did you?"

"I didn't know," I exclaimed. "You never did or said

anything to make me think that you—"

"Reckon? Anyway, Sarah. I wanted to make you jealous.

Thought it might be my last hope. So once I'd pulled her

outta the air, I had to find someone."

"So that poor girl, her name wasn't even Sarah?"

"Yeah, it was. She'd been hanging round a while. So I—"

I let out a breath. "So
that's
why you told me she was

from Manchester and she said she was from Durham?"

Piers gave me a grin which was manic bordering on the

completely insane. "Finding a girl from Manchester called

Sarah at short notice. Well, have you ever tried it?"

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"Surprisingly enough, no. But all that trouble, just to make

me jealous? All those hints that there was someone but it was

difficult?"

"That was
you
. And difficult hardly fucking covers it!"

"Oh, Piers," I said helplessly, as ideas and implications as

well as memories and feelings all flooded into me together.

"Did it work?" He stood so close that I could feel him

breathing. "Did Sarah make you jealous? Did you think about

her with me, that it could have been—
should
have been you?"

I couldn't help myself. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was

pleasure, maybe it was the sheer ludicrousness of the

situation, but I started to laugh. Proper, head-back, gut-

wrenching laughing. "You shit, Piers," I managed to gasp

between hoiks of laughter. "You pure, unadulterated
shit
."

"It did work then." He started laughing as well. "Okay,

yeah, I'm a complete bastard, but I had to do
something
or

I'd lose you altogether." The laughing stopped. Was replaced

by—what? Expectation? The molecules of the air hung heavy

between us. It was almost too much of an effort to breathe.

"And I couldn't face that. Not losing you to that wanker."

I felt obliged to speak in his defence. "Leo isn't a wanker.

He's kind and sweet and..." I was running out of justifications,

"...good."

I'd asked for it. I really had. Piers put his head on one side

and looked at me out of eyes that burned. "Ah," he said

softly. "But I'm not just
good
." I had nobody else to blame, I

really didn't. "I'm a fucking
revelation
."

He was, too. Tore down all the inhibition borders, shredded

away every last self-preserving boundary and quite

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unashamedly made me surrender my soul to him. There

under that willow tree we had sex so hot that I was surprised

sheets of molten rock didn't stream from the hills and the

river itself didn't catch light and flame like a Sambuca. Piers.

My God,
Piers
. It shouldn't be happening, his fingers shouldn't

know how to tease me like that. I shouldn't arch under the

feel of him sliding inside me, and I
definitely
shouldn't be

screaming his name. It felt dangerous, it felt threatening but

most of all
it felt right
.

Tongue-to-tongue we lay, a rough description of the

explosive sex scribbled in the dusty sand beneath us; the

passion and sympathy we'd found in each other had surprised

both of us. Eventually Piers raised his head and blew my hair