Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) (9 page)

‘Shush,’ said Jude. There was something in his eyes other
than concern. A warning to hush.

 A new voice somewhere nearby: ‘Oh dear me. What happened?’

I turned my head to see Nathaniel had come out of the
kitchen; he must have seen the accident through the window.

‘She fell,’ said Estelle, who was hovering beside me. ‘All
that milk – too heavy…’ She looked distressed and her hands fluttered over her
belly.

Quickly, I pushed myself upright, in doing so putting my
hand in something disgustingly squelchy. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine,’ I assured
them all, wiping my hand on my jeans. ‘Really. Just embarrassed. Slipped in
chicken excrement. Not my finest hour.’

I looked at Jude, kneeling at my side, his arm around my shoulders
ready to support me should I need it. His expression was a cross between
worried and amused.

‘You’re okay?’ he said.

I gave him a bright smile. ‘Sure. Just a little…’ I surveyed
the gloop on my jeans. ‘Filthy.’

He helped me to my feet. Even when I was upright he kept his
arm around me and he stood close enough that I could feel his breath on my
cheek.

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ said Estelle.

‘Fine!’

‘Still, very distressing for you,’ said Nathaniel
thoughtfully, eying my wet cheeks.

‘Oh no. Just a shock, that’s all,’ I said quickly. ‘When it
comes to pain, I’m pathetic. I cry over a splinter…’

Jude gave my arm a squeeze, and I got the message:
stop
talking
.

‘I am sorry about this accident,’ said Nathaniel. ‘The
chickens are supposed to be in the field by the barn. I’ve no idea why James
has let them out. I’ll take the milk in, and then go and see him. Jude, you
take Scarlett inside and take care of her. I’ll send up a tray with your
dinner. You two just take it easy tonight. Jude, make sure Scarlett rests. We
need her in the very peak of health for that commitment ceremony, don’t we,
dear?’

Nathaniel beamed at me and I managed to smile back, though
my head was screaming,
Peak of health to conceive a baby on the wedding
night. Yeah, I get it.

Jude turned to me and said, ‘Come on then, you. Let’s get
you upstairs and into a bath, hey? And then to bed.’ He left the comment
trailing in the air suggestively and, with his arm around me, guided me across
to the kitchen door.

As we stepped into the kitchen, I turned and saw Nathaniel
was still standing in the yard with Estelle, both of them watching us. I smiled
and then turned and nuzzled into Jude’s side, and he dropped a kiss onto the
top of my head. Then we strode through the hotel, the happy couple, off for a
bath and a lie-down.

Together.

Jude kept his arm around me all the way back to my room.
Only once the door was shut and locked behind us did he let go. I headed across
the room to the sofa and made to slump down, but Jude’s shout stopped me.

‘No! Don’t sit!’

I turned and stared at him, bemused, and he crossed the room
to me.

‘Your, um, rear end. Kind of… mucky.’

Chicken poop. Oh yes.

‘Classy, Scarlett,’ I sighed as I undid the button fly and
tugged down my jeans.

Jude cleared his throat, and I looked up to find him
studying a picture on the wall of a daisy-strewn field as if it were the most
fascinating thing in the world.

‘They’re just legs, Jude,’ I told him wearily, trying to
kick my way out of the jeans that were rucked up around my ankles. Another
mistake, as it turned out, because moments later I’d lost my balance, and with
jeans lassoing my feet together I could do nothing to stop myself crashing
right into Jude and bringing us both down onto the thick carpet in a heap.

We lay for a second, motionless. My head was on his chest, his
arms around me.

‘Sorry – sorry,’ I said, squirming off him. ‘Clearly, it’s
Make an Arse of Yourself Day in Scarlettland.’

As Jude sat up, I pulled the offending jeans off my ankles
and flexed my feet in relief.

‘Are you okay?’

I looked up. Jude was studying me closely.

‘Me? Sure, fine.’

But he was moving in close to me, too close. We were alone,
he didn’t need to –

‘Ouch! Stop that!’

Jude’s fingers, combing through my hair, had quickly found
the painful result of my head-meets-concrete moment.

‘Jeez, Scarlett,’ he said. ‘That’s a huge bump! No wonder
you just collapsed.’

‘I didn’t collapse,’ I fired back. ‘I just got my foot…’

But already Jude had slid one arm under my knees and another
under my arm and he was lifting me gently to the sofa.

‘Seriously, Jude, there’s no –’

‘I get it,’ he said, setting me down carefully and sitting
beside me. ‘You’re okay. You’re always okay. But you’ve a bump the size of a
duck egg on the back of your head, and it must hurt like hell, and we need to
deal with that, okay?’

‘Oh,’ I said. Now that he mentioned it, my head was mighty
sore. And of course, being in Cerulea, there was no need to put up with pain.

‘Sit back,’ he told me. ‘And turn your head to the side.
That’s it. Now just relax.’

He placed one hand on my forehead and the other on the back
of my head, right over the lump. His hands were warm, but as the healing began,
the heat intensified. It was heavenly – so relaxing.

‘Ohhh,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’

I heard the smile in his voice as he said, ‘Shush,
someone’ll hear you and think we’re having fun in here.’

‘Cheeky,’ I scolded, and he laughed.

‘There,’ he said after a while. ‘Good as new.’

I opened my eyes and caught the remnants of a blue glow
emanating from his hands as he dropped them down to his lap.

He scrutinised me. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Good.’

‘Pain gone?’

I nodded. ‘Thank you. Are
you
okay?’

‘Yes. Healing a Cerulean isn’t half as draining as healing a
human.’ Still, he slumped back heavily on the sofa. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘when
you fell outside, you were talking about Twycombe and Nathaniel heard. You have
to be careful, Scarlett. You have to make them think you don’t even
dream
of the past now.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that when I lay
there, I flashed back to –’

He held up a hand. ‘Okay. I get it. No need to say it.’

It
being Luke.

Still, after these months with him, he was threatened by the
spectre of my boyfriend past. I couldn’t blame him. The future beyond getting
off this island and finding Sienna was the one subject we never broached, and
it hung between us, ominous and hazy.

Jude stood abruptly and said, ‘I’ll run you that bath,’ and
he strode off into my en suite.

I sat for a little while, gathering myself, and then joined
him in the bathroom, where already the powerful taps were sending clouds of
steam into the air and the bath was filling fast with…

‘Bubbles!’ I exclaimed. ‘Wow.’

Jude was perched on the edge of the bath and he looked up at
me expectantly. ‘You like bubbles, right? The other day there were bubbles in
your hair when we watched telly after your bath.’

‘Yes, I like bubbles,’ I said, eying the fast-rising mountain
in the bath. ‘Um, just out of interest, how much bubble bath did you add?’

‘Well, all of it,’ said Jude. ‘Isn’t that the idea?’

‘Oh boy,’ I said. ‘You’d better shut off those taps before
we have a flood.’

He did so quickly and we surveyed the vast expanse of
bubbles together.

‘Too much?’ he said at last.

I laughed. ‘When it comes to bubbles, who could have too
much? But FYI – a capful next time is enough.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’ve never had dealings with…
bubble bath before.’

I saw him eye my bare legs, and then he looked away quickly.
I realised what he meant: a girl, he’d never been around a girl like this
before. Then I wondered – had he kissed a girl? Properly? The furthest we’d
gone was causal pecks for the benefit of the others. I glanced at his lips.

‘Easy mistake!’ I said quickly. ‘For the uninitiated. One
bath equals one bottle. I did a similar thing myself in home economics class
once. Thought garlic bread called for an entire bulb of garlic. No one went
near me for a week after that. Still, kept the vampires at bay…’

He laughed and stood and made to leave, but in the doorway
he turned and looked back at me. ‘Sure you’re okay now?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Mind if I sit out here, just in case? What with it being
Make an Arse of Yourself Day in Scarlettland, I can only imagine what kind of
drama you could create in a slippery bath.’

I rolled my eyes but nodded.

‘And afterwards, the usual? Shall I cue up
Friends
ready?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’

Watching
Friends
had become our thing. Somewhere back
in January we’d started at episode one of two hundred and thirty-six, and now
we were almost done with the ninth series. There was little else to do in
Cerulea in the evenings, other than sit downstairs with Evangeline and
Nathaniel and the others and chat or play board games; and after a day of
putting on the act, often both Jude and I were happy to retire after dinner. We
figured it made sense to do so anyway – loved-up couples like alone time, after
all. It had become our custom to pull the sofa in either room in front of the
TV screen, and then curl up at either end, usually with snacks to hand (I
preferred Nathaniel’s home-dried apple rings; Jude had a thing for popcorn).
Friends
was the pet show – it was funny and kitsch and easy viewing, and it was safe
territory: no epic romance, no tear-jerking drama. Sometimes we mixed it up
with a little
Big Bang Theory
too.

Leaving Jude to prep the room, I pushed the door ajar. A
quick glance in the mirror confirmed that the edge of my t-shirt more than
covered my underwear – perfectly decent. Clearly, when it came to girls, Jude
was out of his depth. He must be a virgin, I realised. If I wasn’t staying here
to make babies with him, would he remain that way indefinitely? Poor bloke;
what he was missing…

An image of Luke sent a flush to my cheeks, and I quickly
grabbed a hairband and pulled my hair back into an unnecessarily tight topknot.
Then I stepped – carefully – into the bath and sank back. The water only
reached halfway up my body, and I was essentially bathing in a bubble cloud.
But the steam had warmed the room, so it was bearable, and like a small child I
played with the bubbles, squishing them, mounding them, throwing them.

‘Okay in there?’ Jude called.

‘Yup,’ I called back.

Funny, I thought as I flicked bubbles across the room, I was
in here, naked, and Jude was right out there, not even a locked door away, and
yet I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Just like I hadn’t felt awkward being
bare-legged around him. What was that? I wondered.

‘Scarlett?’ he called again.

‘What?’

‘Just checking. You went quiet.’

Clearly, I wasn’t going to get a long, peaceful soak today,
so I stood – carefully – and stepped out of the bath. I unhooked the towelling
robe from the back of the door and slipped it on. Tying the cord tight around
my middle, I emerged from the en suite.

‘Here and in one piece,’ I announced.

Jude looked up at me and his face was quickly split by a
massive grin.

‘Er, Scarlett…’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, crossing to the chest of drawers.
‘The robe is ghastly – lime-green; really, is that anyone’s colour? I’ll find
something to put on.’ I started rooting around in my underwear drawer and
picked out some knickers, and then my hand reached for a bra and I paused. Did
I need one? Until now, I’d had a policy of remaining fully dressed around Jude.
But I’d just bathed, and we weren’t going back downstairs tonight. Pyjamas? I
wondered.

‘Um, Scarlett?’

‘Yep?’ My hand closed on a bra – pink and lacy; the last
clean one in the drawer besides the blue one, which cut in uncomfortably.

‘You’ve, er, got a little something…’

‘What is it?’ I spun around.

Jude’s eyes were wide, and I traced the trajectory of his
look to my hand. Which was clutching the lacy bra.

‘Oh, oops, sorry!’ I spun back and shoved the bra back into
the drawer and was about to turn around when I – finally – caught a glance of
my reflection in the mirror above. There, on my chin, was the remains of a
bubblicious Santa beard. I scrubbed it off with the arm of my gown.

Behind me, Jude was laughing.

‘Quit it!’ I snapped. And with that I grabbed some clothes
and marched off.

In the bathroom I caught sight of my reflection again –
seriously, there were mirrors everywhere; how had I missed the beard? – and I
watched a smile spread slowly across my face. And then transform into a frown
as a memory surfaced:

Luke and me in the hallway of the cottage, the day of our
first proper date. I’d overslept badly and got ready for him in five minutes
flat, and had forgotten to check my appearance in the mirror before opening the
door to him with bird’s nest hair and smeared mascara and a gruesomely bloody
leg thanks to a shaving cut. He’d been just like Jude – a little embarrassed, a
lot amused. And I’d been… smitten.

Oh God. Luke.

No,
I told myself.
Don’t think about it, not now.
Just get through the days and do what you have to do to get out of here.

‘Scarlett?’ Jude called. ‘You haven’t slipped on a bubble
and knocked yourself out on the toilet-roll dispenser, have you?’

I smiled. ‘Sounds like me. But no, I’m just changing.’

I grabbed my clothes. And groaned. In my haste to leave
Jude’s company, I’d robotically picked up the pink bra and matching panties,
and a pair of pyjamas. Not nice, roomy, baggy pyjamas, but a tight pink vest
and cropped cotton leggings. Hell. I couldn’t face going back in there and
rummaging some more for clothes, and my only option in the bathroom was
chicken-crud jeans. So, gritting my teeth, I pulled on the pink ensemble. My
reflection in the mirror confirmed my suspicion – the pyjamas left little to
the imagination, clinging to every contour of my figure which, even after a
couple of months of Nathaniel’s healthy-eating regime, remained curvy. Well, I
reflected, at least it wasn’t a negligee.

I pulled the band from my hair and brushed it out, and then,
having given myself a long, hard, stern look in the mirror, I strode back into
the bedroom and joined Jude on the sofa. I saw his eyes widen a fraction, and I
wondered what was going through his head –
So we’re at the
wearing-nightwear-together stage, are we? What does that mean?
I pulled a
cushion onto my lap to hide behind. On the screen, the opening credits of
Friends
were paused, leaving a young Matthew Perry frozen mid-dance in a fountain
wearing a dodgy waistcoat.

‘You set?’ Jude asked.

I nodded, and we settled down to watch TV. The end of series
nine. Monica and Chandler dealing with infertility. Ross developing a crush on
a superhot fellow geek. Phoebe being, well, Phoebe. And Rachel? Rachel falling
for her friend, Joey.

So much for
Friends
as the choice for brainless,
non-emotive TV watching.

To compensate for my discomfort, and to chase away the
thoughts of Luke/Jude plaguing me, I laughed a lot. Out-of-control ping-pong
tournament? Hilarious. Random bloke from Chandler’s work interrogated as a
potential spermtastic donor? Hilarious.

Finally, though, hilarity gave
way to silence, and when the final scene of the series rolled, I could only hug
my cushion hard and look on with helpless fascination as Joey and Rachel
finally locked lips.

‘Oh!’ said Jude. ‘Joey? But I thought she’d end up with
Ross.’

Jude was a rare sort – a person who’d never watched
Friends
before.

‘Well, there is another series yet.’

He turned to me and said earnestly, ‘So is it Joey or Ross,
then?’

‘Her friend or her
friend-she’s-always-loved-and-always-will-love – what do you think? Which one
should she end up with?’

It was a loaded question, but I couldn’t be sure whether he
realised that. He seemed so relaxed, resting back on the sofa cushions with his
hands interlocked behind his head and his long, lean legs sprawling out in
front.

He thought about it for a while and then said firmly,
‘Joey.’

I nodded slowly. I’d thought he would say that. She should
pick the friend, not the love of her life.

‘Because he’s loyal and dependable and gentle. Because it’s
easy with him,’ I said quietly. It was an apt description of Joey. And of Jude.