The Nearly-Weds (24 page)

‘It’s poisonous,’ she tells me.

Fortunately, Tiny decides to move on anyway as I force myself to try to chill out. Even after we’ve ridden for about half an hour or so, however, I’m still experiencing the adrenalin rush of a would-be suicide standing on Beachy Head with their toes hanging off the edge.

‘The countryside’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Ryan remarks, as his horse drops back next to mine.

‘Oh, yes,’ I say, wiggling round on my saddle in an attempt to emulate the easy-going poise of a Texan ranch-owner who started riding shortly after emergence from his mother’s womb. ‘And no better way to see it, eh?’

‘I’m glad you’ve relaxed a little,’ says Ryan. ‘The kids are having a fantastic time. I’d have hated it if you’d been uncomfortable. ’

‘Me?’ I exclaim. ‘Me? Ha! Uncomfortable? That’s a laugh, eh, Tiny?’

In a gesture designed to show how entirely comfortable and confident I am, I attempt to pat Tiny’s neck. But as I lean over and my hand makes contact, I lose my balance.

In fact, that doesn’t quite cover the spectacular movement involved as I plunge sideways from the saddle, lose a stirrup and am left, part unsaddled and gripping Tiny’s mane for dear life.

‘Waah!’ I yell.

Tiny decides he doesn’t like the idea of a nine-and-a-half-stone lunatic flailing about on top of him like a giant squid. And instead of standing still so that someone can rescue me, he takes matters into his own hoofs – and speeds up.

‘Waah!’ I wail, clinging to his neck.

‘Just stay calm,’ my instructor shouts unhelpfully, as Tiny pounds into the distance and my arse slips even further down the side of the horse.

I can’t concentrate on anything at this point except the thunder of Tiny’s hoofs as I’m thrown up and down like an oversized rag-doll in a tumble-dryer and my muscles burn as they attempt to grip hard enough for me to stay on.

Which isn’t, it turns out, hard enough.

As I feel myself sliding further down Tiny, getting closer and closer to the ground, I fear for my life. My fingers slip through his mane and I know that’s it: I’m about to be snuffed out. Snotty Cindy and her galvanized-steel upper legs will be the last thing I ever see.

But suddenly I become aware of something happening at my side. Someone is riding alongside me. Someone is grabbing Tiny’s reins.

‘Whoooa!’

Miraculously, Tiny slows down. Even more miraculously, he eventually stops.

I release my grip and land in a puddle, like a sack of King Edwards thrown off the side of a cargo ship. I close my eyes, overwhelmed with shock and relief.

When I open them again, Ryan is kneeling next to me.

‘Who was it you took lessons from?’ he asks. ‘Clint Eastwood?’

Chapter 55

I have never in my life had so many bruises. I’m lying in a hot bath, semi-comatose, staring hazily at a pair of legs that might belong to a character from
Reservoir Dogs.
All this from a quiet trek through the countryside on Tiny, the ‘gentle giant’.

I reach for the soap and groan as pain shoots through my side. To be honest, it’s not just that it hurts so much that bothers me. It’s that, despite being completely naked, I look like I’m wearing Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat.

I close my eyes and my mind drifts. I imagine Jason tending my wounds. He was always good at that sort of thing.

A few months after we’d met, I fell down the stairs at a nightclub and, as well as giving me a piggyback to the taxi rank, he took me to his place. While I lay on the couch watching the room spin, he emerged with the most comprehensive first-aid kit I’d ever seen and doused the graze on my leg with Savlon. I don’t know how much help it was medically but it made me feel better.

I’d kill to have him here now. Although I suspect he’d need more than one bottle of Savlon this time.

‘Zoe, do you need any help in there?’ shouts Ryan, through the door.

‘No!’ I yell in horror, scrambling out of the bath and reaching for my dressing-gown. ‘No, no! I’m absolutely fine, honestly. Be out in a sec!’

When I hear Ryan pad away, I peer dolefully into the mirror. I may be clean – no longer covered from head to toe with mud – but my face is so scratched I look as if I’ve been wrestling with a hawthorn bush.

I sneak into my bedroom and pull on clean combat pants, an old T-shirt and my big cosy hoodie – which I love, even though my mum insists it’s the sort of thing you’d see someone wearing while they were robbing an off-licence.

I walk through the living room and on to the veranda, where Ryan is attempting to win back the Hershey bars he lost to Ruby earlier. Samuel is finishing a drawing he and his sister have obviously been working on while I was in the bath.

‘Hey, that’s a nice picture,’ I tell him. ‘What is it?’

‘It Zoe,’ he says proudly. ‘Zoe and a horsy.’

Samuel’s artistic skills, even with Ruby’s help, are abstract. But I can work out enough to see that they have drawn a horse – with what appears to be a large heap of yesterday’s catering slops next to it. Apparently that’s me.

‘You weren’t impressed with my riding skills, then?’ I ask, ruffling his hair.

‘You not meant to fall off, Zoe,’ he tells me.

‘How’re you feeling?’ asks Ryan. ‘You look a lot better after your bath.’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I reply. ‘I feel like a total prat but, hey, I’m used to that.’

‘It’s almost endearing.’ He grins. ‘Not quite. But almost.’

‘Oh, well, that’s not bad, I suppose. I mean, I’d prefer devastatingly sophisticated – but almost endearing is probably more than I could have hoped for under the circumstances.’

There must be something about the air in this part of the state, because at bedtime the miracle that happened last night is repeated and the children go happily to bed with little fuss.

‘Are you bribing them or something?’ I ask Ryan.

‘A full day of fresh air was all they needed,’ he says. ‘Plus the fact there’s no more chocolate left.’

‘What do you fancy for dinner?’ I ask. ‘It’s my turn – you cooked last night.’

‘Hey, don’t worry. You go chill out.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Sit down. I’ll bring you some wine. I bought a nice bottle earlier.’

Ryan goes into the kitchen as I flip through Gerald Raven’s CD collection. There aren’t a hell of a lot of classics, but I do find a dusty
Best of Billy Joel
CD. I put it into the player and skip the first few tracks until it reaches my favourite. ‘She’s Always A Woman To Me’ still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end – even though it hasn’t appeared on Radio 1’s play-list for at least thirty years.

I head outside to the veranda and breathe in the countryside. Soon, Ryan appears with a glass of red wine the size of a soup bowl. ‘I love this song,’ he says.

‘Me too,’ I reply. ‘It’s the most perfect definition of how completely
bonkers
love can be, isn’t it?’

He laughs. ‘I may not have used the word “bonkers” but you’re absolutely right. He loves her not just
in spite
of her flaws but
because
of them. That takes a real dreamer. I can relate to that.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘You don’t strike me as much of a dreamer, Ryan.’

‘No? Aw, maybe you just don’t know me very well.’

Then something occurs to me. How can it be that, despite the bruises, despite the complete loss of dignity, despite everything else . . . I feel weirdly happy?

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Oh, nothing. Well . . . I was just thinking that, you know . . .’

‘What?’

‘I’m enjoying being here.’

He smiles again. This time, it’s a broad, unequivocal smile the likes of which used to be such a rare sight on Ryan’s face. ‘I’m enjoying you being here.’

Chapter 56

It’s one a.m. I’m drunk on life. Oh, okay, and a fair amount of red wine.

Tonight, by the now fading glow of an exhausted oil lamp, Ryan and I have talked about everything from whether Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
is worth reading (he assures me it is), to whether soccer is the world’s superior sport (he assures me it’s not). We’ve been through whether most people still believe in marriage and whether or not Botox is a good thing. We’ve discussed whether Brits and Americans have more in common than Brits and other Europeans, and speculated on whether Ruby will grow up to be president (her last but one ambition) or Hannah Montana (her latest).

We’ve talked about Ryan’s childhood in Michigan and mine in Liverpool, the two summers he spent travelling (once to the Far East and then to Australasia), and a weekend I once spent in Barcelona.

‘So, come on, secretive Zoe,’ he asks, topping up our glasses. ‘What’s your big love story? What exactly is the deal with you and boyfriends, lovers, significant others?’

‘I’m not secretive.’

‘Come on,’ he says, raising an eyebrow. ‘What else could have brought a beautiful, bright young woman halfway round the world?’

I’m stunned.

‘What’s up?’ he says worriedly. ‘Did I say the wrong thing?’

‘You think I’m beautiful?’ I ask, immediately cursing myself.

The light flickers on Ryan’s face making him unfeasibly perfect. His eyes are like clear, deep pools and his strong features contrast with the softness of his mouth. Just looking at him makes my question seem ridiculous. Yet he frowns. ‘Of course you’re beautiful, Zoe.’

It’s only as my eyes meet his that I notice how hard my heart is now pounding. As heat spreads through my blood, the wine I’ve consumed buzzes through my body, and I find myself unable to concentrate on anything but the contours of Ryan’s face.

With my body tingling outrageously, the next thing I know is that Ryan is closer to me than he was a second ago. He reaches out and puts his hand behind my neck. As he pulls me towards him I find myself going willingly – and soon his cheek is next to mine, our skin is touching and his breath is whispering against my ear. ‘Of course you’re beautiful,’ he murmurs.

My eyes ping open as my head swirls with thoughts. Sane, sensible, pre-half-a-gallon-of-Zinfandel thoughts.

This is
my boss,
for God’s sake. My boss.

This is wrong on so many levels.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But before I know it something happens that I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to. Which, at this precise moment, I don’t.

Ryan’s lips brush mine, sending shockwaves through me. As we melt into each other, I submit to his taste, his touch, and feel as giddy with lust as I am with wine. His fingers run across my back, setting off tiny fireworks on my skin, and his lips caress my neck, leaving behind a faint but delicious trail of wetness. His arms surround me. They feel amazing.
I
feel amazing. And yet . . .

‘Ryan, I—’ I pull away, breathless. ‘I’m not sure we should be doing this.’ I don’t mean it to sound as corny as it comes out.

His eyes are so filled with desire that another bolt of lightning shoots through me.

‘I know,’ he replies, and I pull him towards me.

Chapter 57

I wake up with a start in the middle of the night. No, a near cardiac arrest.

Ryan is on his back with his arms round me. Our legs are entwined like the tendrils of a hundred-year-old oak tree. I lift my head from his chest. We’re in his bedroom. It’s pitch-black. I’m still drunk. The facts of this situation hit me as if I’ve been walloped in the face with a frying-pan.

I am in bed with my boss.

I am in bed with Ryan Miller.

And all I’ve got to cover my modesty are a teensy pair of knickers, a Liverpool women’s ten-kilometre-run T-shirt and about four hundred bruises.

I take a deep breath in an effort to slow my heartrate. It makes Ryan stir. He pulls me tighter to him so my face is snuggled into his neck. I know what I should do. Scrap that – what I’ve
got
to do. I’ve got to leap out of bed, leap into my
own
bed, and reconsider my employment options at the first opportunity.

As if sensing my thoughts Ryan, still half asleep, kisses my head and rubs his foot against my ankle. I close my eyes and submit to the shiver of electricity it sends through me.

At least I didn’t have sex with him.

He stirs again, his hand lazily moving up my T-shirt and I feel a wave of heat between my legs.

Thank God I didn’t have sex with him.

His fingers brush my breast, his lips finding my cheek as my skin tingles with excitement.

Having sex with him would be totally, utterly, completely disastrous.

I feel a growing bulge pressing against my hip and hear myself let out a tiny groan of pleasure.

I sit bolt upright with my hands on my head.
‘Ryan – I absolutely, definitely can never, ever have sex with you!’
I squeal.

He sits up in shock, as if a chorus of can-can girls has high-kicked its way into the bedroom. It takes him a moment to catch his breath. ‘Okay. No problem,’ he says softly, brushing a hand over my hair. ‘No problem.’

He kisses my head and we lie down again as he pulls me towards him, cuddling up to me.

At least that’s cleared up.

Chapter 58

I spend the next day trying to behave normally – as if last night never happened. It’s the only professional thing to do.

This is quite difficult, given that I also devote a large amount of time to replaying Ryan sliding his warm palm across my thigh. And slowly moving his hips against mine. And doing all manner of entirely inappropriate but knicker-wettingly sexy things that make me blush every time I think of them.

Disconcertingly, he acts with nothing but composure all day. And while it would be going too far to describe him as cool, I don’t get a sense that he’s overjoyed about what happened either. He behaves as he did yesterday. To look at him, you’d never guess it had happened. Which I know is the precise effect I’m aiming for but, dear God, how does he do it so well? Why can’t he give a little more away? And what the hell does he
think
about the whole thing?