done, giving in to impulse over sense. Well, done it she had, and the only option she had now was damage limitation. Communicate a don’t-care attitude and make it clear this wasn’t going to lead any further than it had five years earlier.
‘Don’t be getting any ideas,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at his obvious inability to take his eyes off her. ‘I might have let myself get sucked into your whole ‘loophole’ argument. But hey, it’s Christmas right? I figure I’m allowed a little fun. You could be gone as soon as tomorrow. This is never going to be more than a day or two. So…’ she took a deep breath, stood up, looked down at his amused expression ‘…same as last time. No looking forward or back. This is only ever going to be a fling. No strings, no thinking outside the moment. We enjoy it while it lasts and when it’s done, we go our separate ways.’
She smiled into his gorgeous grey eyes and invested everything she had in the guard she’d honed to perfection over the years. She wasn’t about to lose her heart to him. Not when she’d just about managed to hang onto it the first time. She was even stronger this time around, she was prepared. She’d built herself a career, a future, that didn’t rely on anyone else and which therefore couldn’t be lost or messed with. She wouldn’t be giving up any of that on a whim.
‘Deal?’ she prompted.
Tom leaned forward and grabbed her around the waist, sweeping her into an arc over his body until she was lying on her back on the messed-up bed, and he began to unravel the sheet from her body inch by delicious inch.
‘Deal,’ he said. What else would he say? What else could this ever be? In the New Year he’d be taking on further responsibility, another step in his life plan, no room for impetuousness or rash decisions – he had people relying on him. What the hell else could he do – tell his sick father to stuff it, that the medical practice would have to manage for the first time in fifty years without a Henley at the helm because he wanted to jet out to warzones and charity work?
Just like last time, all she wanted from this was a fling. And just like last time, that was all he had to give.
The vibration of his phone brought Tom round and he automatically reached out to grab it from its customary spot on the bedside table without even really waking up. One semi-conscious hand closed over it just as he leaned a smidge too far and then there was a disorientating jerk as he managed to stop himself falling out of bed at the last moment by slamming a hand and foot out onto the floor.
Why the fuck was the bed so tiny?
No sun streaming in through billowing muslin curtains across the glass door that led out to the verandah. Instead the room was shrouded in the semi-darkness of a dawn in winter, in London. It thudded into his sleep-fuzzed brain then in one big tumble and his eyes widened in shock.
Grounded flight at Gatwick. Bonkers British weather. Lavington Hotel.
Except when he stayed at the Lavington the room was always one of their best suites and the bed was always a king-size. He turned over as best he could on the foot-wide chunk of single bed that was available, and there she was. His stomach gave a crazy flip at the sight of her.
She’d been curled up against his back like a child, hogging at least two-thirds of the narrow bed. The sheet was bunched up around her waist, revealing the long slender legs that made his pulse race just by looking at them. The soft swell of her breasts was visible above a twist of sheet that she clutched to her chest and her light brown hair fell softly against her cheek. No wonder the bridge between sleeping and waking had seemed blurred. She really was the stuff of dreams.
Somewhere in the small hours they’d finally fallen asleep after screwing every ounce of energy out of each other. And for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he felt alive. He reached out to stroke her cheek, just for some confirmation that she was actually real and not some figment of his imagination. Her skin was cool satin. She shifted slightly in her sleep and he moved off the bed as gently as he could so as not to wake her.
His mind shifted back to the previous night. Her crazy rules. Live in the moment, no regrets.
The impulsiveness of being with her was intoxicating, a soothing antidote to what had become his suffocating, stifling life. It felt like sweet freedom, and he wanted to savour every second of that, because he knew it couldn’t last.
He moved away from the bed, and went into the tiny ensuite to check his phone. A voicemail message from his mother in Barbados (‘…when are you arriving, Darling? Everyone’s been asking after you…’) The age-old sense of responsibility tugged at him. Under normal circumstances that message would have brought a surge of exasperation at the unexpected delay, anger even that he was letting everyone down.
He checked the weather app on the phone, all ready to see the tiny snow icon that had dominated the wretched thing the day before. He frowned. No sign of the blanket fog lifting but there was no more snow on the way for now, and that meant the airports would be back in action pretty soon, right?
The information should have had him jumping for joy. So why the hell was he closing the app down with a sinking sensation of disappointment coursing through him?
He moved back out of the bathroom and glanced across the room at her, shoving the disappointment aside. This was a fling. It couldn’t be more. She didn’t want it to be more, he couldn’t give more. They’d made the situation clear the previous day. They barely knew each other beyond the physical, hardly enough to base even the most short-term future on.
He could cross the room right now, slide his hands under the sheet, pull her against him and pick up right where they’d left off. That would be all she expected, those were the parameters they’d agreed to.
Instead, he found himself picking his way quietly around the room, collecting up his clothes and trying not to trip over her insane mass of belongings. She didn’t stir in the semi-darkness, and he didn’t expect her to since it was still too early for winter light to brighten the room, but he let the door snick shut quietly just in case.
****
The cold silver of winter morning gave the room a muted light that woke her up slowly. The usual second of disorientation that always happens when you stay somewhere new for the first time kicked in. It wasn’t something that had ever bothered Ella. Moving around so much for craft fairs and just her itchy-footed desire to keep moving before things went tits-up meant she was used to adapting quickly to new places. Travelling heavy helped of course. She sometimes wondered what it said about someone that everything in their life with sentimental attachment could be squashed into a couple of suitcases.
Tom slipped back into her mind on the back of that second when she found her bearings, just the way he had done every morning at first after she’d left five years ago. How long had thoughts of him persisted? Not long. She was good at bricking things up in her mind, was a past master at it in fact. Crushing of memories combined with telling herself it hadn’t been all that. A tried and tested self-preservation exercise.
He wasn’t here.
The bedroom was a pigsty, clothes and half-unpacked belonging all over the place, where she’d never got around to putting them away since he’d come back to her room, after that interim goodbye that neither of them had been able to stick to. Not a single item belonging to him fell into her sightline.
She threw the sheet back and crossed to few paces to the small en suite. The shower unit was bone dry. It was as if he’d never been here at all, as if he’d disappeared.
Which, her fully-awake mind now insisted, was clearly the point.
Now she knew what yesterday had been about for him, why he’d pursued her so insistently until she agreed to first coffee, then dinner, then bed. After the delicious night they’d spent together it turned out that it had all been about closure. She’d walked out on him five years ago, leaving him hanging. For Pete’s