The Gift (10 page)

‘It’s more like the beginnings of a rampant shagathon, I think,’ Sandy continued, returning behind the counter and stashing the sugar-sachet box beneath it. ‘A bit like you and Greg have. Mostly sex.’

‘Hey, me and Greg are meaningful sometimes,’ the younger girl observed, unoffended. She gave Sandy a wink as she pushed a plate of cake slices into place. ‘It’s just that we like a lot of bonking too.’ She paused and waggled her plucked eyebrows.

‘And experimenting, you know what I mean?’

‘I do, and I’m sorry about the “meaningfulness” thing. I didn’t mean it like that. I know you and Greg are crazy
about each other.’ She glanced at Kat in her sexy, clinging top and tried not to see the image of the other girl half-naked across the kitchen table. But it was hopeless. She kept on seeing it. Until suddenly her mind substituted herself, and Jay with her, instead of the foxy Greg. Would they do that together soon? And other things?

She felt a sort of anticipatory tightening in her middle at the thought of it.

The two of them worked in companionable silence for a while, preparing the café for opening and then, when it did open, serving customers. Wednesday mornings weren’t their busiest, it being a non-market day, but there were still plenty of regulars. People who worked in the various solicitors’ offices, building societies, travel agents and banks calling in for early cappuccinos to go. Shoppers and young mums desperate to get out of the house. Older folk who enjoyed being able to sit out front in summer, and on milder winter days, but who weren’t able to get up the steps when it was cold or rainy. All punters who might switch to the new fun coffee pub or whatever it was going to be when it opened. She sighed.

But it wasn’t really access problems on her mind today. It was Jay. And the crazy way she’d sort of half-agreed to be involved with him.

Yeah, honesty is good. No pretending it’s a romantic silk purse when it’s a sexy sow’s ear.

That was the way to go. No deceiving each other. Just a no-commitment fling while he was in the area doing whatever it was he was doing in the area. As yet, still undisclosed.

Much better for all concerned, she thought, suddenly finding it necessary to scowl at the flower shop they shared the building with as she brought down a couple of lattés for
two of her regulars brave enough for al fresco. There were bunches of out of season rosebuds in galvanised buckets and they stood out like a shout of pink amongst the seasonal arrangements of holly and evergreens, and the potted poinsettias. The roses were super-pretty, but meaningless in a lot of ways. The sort of thing that guilty boyfriends and husbands bought to make their women think they cared when they probably didn’t.

No flowers, just fucking with Jay. Yes, much better that way.

The morning dragged. His fault, she supposed, looking up for the hundredth time when a customer appeared at the top of the stairs. If she hadn’t been waiting for him, there would have been the usual Wednesday prospect of a free afternoon to look forward to, but instead it was all tension and wild fluctuations in her adrenaline levels.

‘He’ll come,’ predicted Kat cheerfully on Sandy’s return from wiping down outside tables that she’d wiped down five minutes ago.

‘Well, if he doesn’t, it’s no big deal. I’ll just chalk him down to experience.’ A knot in her mid-section seemed to suggest otherwise, but still she winked at Kat. ‘People have one-night stands all the time. So I’m entitled to have at least one in my lifetime, aren’t I?’

‘That wasn’t a one-nighter. He really likes you. That was obvious.’ Kat sounded confident, but Sandy’s doubts were growing. After all, wasn’t the longest ‘relationship’ in her adult life based on a meeting that’d probably lasted barely more than fifteen minutes? Was she forever doomed to have these intense brief encounters that knackered her up for the rest of her days?

‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so,’ replied Kat, sidling over to the window
that overlooked the precinct-cum-marketplace in front of the Town Hall. As the other woman peered out, a wide Cheshire Cat grin appeared on her face. ‘Well, speak of the devil!’

Sandy resisted the urge to run across the café and elbow her friend out of the way in order to catch her first Jay-glimpse of the day. For a split second she couldn’t even picture his face, and her heart raced in panic. Ridiculously, instead of him, she saw Prince Charming, kind and smiling as he calmed her down, his lips soft and sweet as he’d stolen that fleeting kiss. Jay’s lips had been sweet last night, but there was nothing soft about him, and even his kindness had a hard uncompromising edge.

Resist. Don’t be too keen. He might look up and see you.

The next moment, she was edging her way into the space at the window beside Kat.

Oh … oh my God. Did I really fuck him?

Jay was strolling around the precinct with a camera around his neck, taking pictures here and there. He looked perfectly at home in the centre of Kissley, even though he was a stranger. A tall, faintly forbidding, beautifully but casually dressed stranger in jeans and a dark and very expensive-looking winter jacket, with a black T-shirt beneath it.

And other women were watching him as he snapped a shot of the Town Hall festooned with its currently unlit Christmas decorations, then the War Memorial, surrounded by wreathes, and then, strangely, the empty supermarket that was such a bone of contention. One or two of the pushchair mothers forgot their fractious brats for a while and stared his way, nudging each other, pointing from a distance. At that range they probably couldn’t see the fine
scarring on his face, but Sandy doubted that it would bother them if they could see it. Those stigmata of his accident, and the obviously world-class plastic surgery that had followed it, were a part of his dangerous appeal.

Look all you like!
she told the giggling women.
I had him last night. He was inside me. He came inside me. He made me come.

Something inside her cried,
He’s mine!
And immediately she told herself not to be silly. Jay belonged to nobody but himself.

But still, he was magnificent, and she couldn’t stop herself scoping out the crotch of his strategically worn jeans and thinking about the big warm cock that nestled inside them. He’d be soft now, but still sizeable. Prepared for action at the slightest encouragement. Just as she was, she realised, aware that just looking at him had made her wet, made her ready.

As he stared at the supermarket building, he pursed his lips and frowned. She wondered what was making him angry. He looked irritated. Vexed. It would be nice to think he was cross on her behalf, but she doubted it. He’d probably forgotten all about her tale of woe once they’d got to the heart of the matter between them.

Sex.

The heat and wetness in her pussy seemed to surge and she caught her breath, wondering how soon it would be before he fucked her again. Or did something else to her.

Noises on the stairs broke into her reverie, and she and Kat turned as one to see a group of workmen who were working on resurfacing a nearby car park trooping into the café. Reluctantly she abandoned the window. One last glance revealed no sign of Jay, however. He’d obviously
moved on, probably up one of the several streets that led away from the centre of the town, where the Christmas decorations were sparser than those in the precinct, but just as kitsch

We must trim up soon
, she thought, attempting to focus on the business in hand rather than the foibles of sexy scarred strangers.
Nearly everybody else in the precinct has acres of tinsel
.

The next fifteen minutes or so were fun, in a way. The car-park guys were flirty but good-natured, and Kat was in her element. Sandy couldn’t help but laugh at the frisky repartee. They were good customers too, apparently stockpiling soft drinks, cakes and sandwiches to last them the rest of the day.

She was just being propositioned herself, asked when she got off work, when a shudder ran up the entire length of her spine. It was like the sensation of a hard stone being dropped into water, sending ripples over her skin.

There was no need to look around. She just knew.

‘Customer for you, Sandy.’ Kat nodded towards something over Sandy’s shoulder, her face wreathed in smiles.

Sandy turned, surreptitiously wiping her suddenly sweaty palms on her jeans. The sight that greeted her was a shock. She’s expected Jay, of course. Sixth, seventh and eighth senses had known it was him. But what she hadn’t foreseen was the bunch of roses. For a big hard man, he held them lightly and they looked strangely natural in his grasp. Most guys were nervous and awkward when presenting floral tributes or bribes to the feminine object of their interest, yet Jay didn’t seem uneasy or uncomfortable in the slightest as he strode towards her, dwarfing the room in the way the car-park workmen never had.

‘I hope you like roses.’

Every eye in the café was riveted upon her and Jay, and there was a wolf whistle from the general direction of the work gang, accompanied by commentary.

‘Eh up, flowers! What’s he after, luv?’

‘Get in there, my son!’

Jay grinned good-naturedly and held out his offering, peace or otherwise.

‘Thanks, they’re lovely.’

And they were. Just a cheapish bunch from the shop down below, but they were soft velvety blooms, that seductive peachy pink and heavily scented.

‘They reminded me of you,’ said Jay, as she took them. ‘All moist and pink and fragrant.’ His eyes dead level, commanding hers, he licked his lips, the action slow, drawn out and lascivious.

Oh, way to be subtle, you swine!

So, not romance at all, just a sexual prompt, reminding her of his mouth between her legs. Not that she needed much reminding. The things he’d done to her and with her had been burning in her imagination and her memory since he’d left. She couldn’t stop thinking about them, even if she’d tried. And she hadn’t actually tried all that hard anyway.

‘I’ll put them in water,’ she said briskly, trying to get a grip. ‘What can I get for you?’

His mouth, the one that had wreaked so much havoc, quirked in an evil smile.

‘Besides that,’ she added crisply.

‘A tall black coffee, please, and something sweet and sticky. Whatever you’ve got. I’ll take pot luck. I’ll be over here.’ He nodded to a table by the window, the one where she’d watched him from earlier.

Face nearly as pink as the roses, Sandy marched away, flinging over her shoulder, ‘Right you are. Kat will bring you a coffee and a mince pie over, while I deal with these.’

Male laughter, from the workmen and from Jay, rumbled through the room as she scuttled off along the little corridor to the cloakroom. There was a flower vase under the sink in the W.C. for café patrons.

The odour of potpourri already filled the little cloakroom, and that coupled with the roses meant the confined space smelt like an old-fashioned nineteen fifties call girl’s boudoir. Sandy opened the top window a little way, afraid the heady mix would make her dizzy.

‘Flowers! Why did you have to bring flowers?’ she muttered, fumbling with the stems and slopping water on the marble counter surrounding the sink. The little room had an intimate ambience and, though she’d never before thought of it as sexy, she did now. Thanks to Jay Bentley, she thought of everything as sexy today.

The roses made her think of writhing on a bed, surrounded by their petals, like in that famous film image. She’d be naked and he’d be working his way up from her toes to the zones he’d visited last night.

The water made her think of being naked in a shower with him, bonking hard against a white-tiled wall, tears of relief and pleasure blending with the torrent streaming down her face.

As she stood in front of the vanity unit, bizarre fantasies floated through her mind. Looking in the mirror, she was a courtesan, preparing for her lover, a mysterious man who’d come from nowhere bringing roses and effortless pleasure with him, and offering no background, no explanations.

‘What are you doing in Kissley, you git?’ she demanded
of the absent Jay as she mopped up the spill with tissues and flung them in the bin. ‘I know you’re here for me today – at least I hope you are – but I still don’t know how you came to be here in the first place. Ouch!’

She’d pricked her finger on a thorn. And deeply at that. She sucked hard at the little wound while she arranged the roses haphazardly with one hand.

Aware that she was hiding, she tried to hurry, and then pricked the same finger again when she started using both hands.

‘Fucking botheration!’

At that moment the door swung open and Jay appeared, almost filling the narrow space.

‘Can I help? You seem to be having a bit of trouble.’ In a smooth sly movement he was in the cloakroom before she could answer, and had quietly back-heeled the door closed behind him.

‘It’s OK, thanks. I just don’t get flowers that often so I’m not a very good arranger.’

‘Everything looks beautiful from where I’m standing.’

In the mirror his dark flint-coloured eyes were brilliant as they flitted from her throat, to her breasts, to the delta of her sex in her snug-fitting jeans.

Sandy started laughing. She couldn’t help herself. He was so blatant.

Jay laughed too, amused by his own clichés. Reaching around her, he took the rose she was holding and placed it adeptly in the vase, then repositioned a couple of others. The result was perfectly balanced, just the arrangement Sandy had been searching for.

‘Is there no end to your talents?’ Her voice wavered, had no power in it. Her hands were shaking, and she
couldn’t have gone on arranging the roses if she’d wanted to. She placed her hands on the counter, convinced she’d fall if she didn’t, her knees were so jellified.

‘Oh, you don’t know the half of them, Princess, believe me.’

Powerful arms came around her, hands rising to her breasts, claiming them, cupping them. In the mirror his lush but hard mouth curved in the frame of his dark beard. He pushed his crotch against the cleft of her buttocks, acquainting her with supreme hardness.