Aimee said to break it, lifting her hair up onto her head to cool her neck. She was more breathless than Marshall had been after his jog.
‘I had to come,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and serious.
She looked up at him, alarmed.
‘No,’ he hastened to answer her. ‘Nothing’s happened. But when I told you I wouldn’t be good company because of feeling low over Mrs Deutschkron’s prognosis, I realised…I can already tell this isn’t going to come out right!…that that was exactly why I should want to see you, and why I did want to see you. Damn!’
‘Marshall?’
‘I was right. It hardly sounds like a compliment, does it? That I was down, so I wanted to inflict it on you and added your house to the route of my evening jog. Oh, but, Aimee, I don’t want to waste any more time on explanations! I don’t! This is what I want…’
He pulled her into his arms slowly, with grace and care, as if it was something he hadn’t done in a long time but had no doubts about the rightness of doing now.
Coming up against his chest, still breathless, Aimee had no doubts either. Her body and her heart were responding more strongly than she’d thought they had the power to do. Her heart was pounding, in fact, and her breathing was light and fluttery. They were both a little sweaty and damp, both dressed in soft clothing that clung intimately.
But before she had time to map the places their bodies touched with such electrifying effect, he was kissing her. Not the rather courteous, old-fashioned press of his lips to the corner of her mouth that he’d given her on Sunday evening, but a real, honest-to-goodness, hot, passionate smooch.
It felt…wonderful! And very quickly much more than a smooch. A…A…There wasn’t a better word in any language she knew.
Oh, stop thinking about it, Aimee!
She did, and just gave herself to the endless moment instead. Slowly, his arms came fully around her, one hand resting against her hip at first, then sliding across to lazily trace the curve of her rear, still satisfactorily taut and shapely beneath the close-fitting leggings.
Marsh’s other hand had crossed her back and kneaded her shoulder, and she had to arch and stretch her neck up to reach him with her own mouth, creating a strangely pleasant feeling that she’d topple backwards if he didn’t have her so tightly and preciously enclosed in his arms.
His face was a little rough. His body was firm, and still hot from his run. His mouth was confident, as if now that he’d jumped in at the deep end he’d remembered that he was good at this.
And he was good at it! She hadn’t realised until now that kissing was a talent like any other, and some people had that talent in spades.
He had a better talent than she did, too, of keeping track of a conversation, because when he finally broke away to ask, ‘Do you understand that it’s a compliment, Aimee?’ she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Of course a kiss was a compliment!
‘I mean the fact that I needed to come,’ he explained, after seeing her confused expression. ‘It wasn’t planned. I was jogging and I was heading in this direction, and it suddenly just wasn’t possible not to come down your street and front up at your door and demand a cup of tea.’
‘You haven’t done that yet.’
‘Can I do it now? This business of Mrs Deutschkron is still eating at me.’
‘Oh, Marshall!’ She reached up and pushed a stray lock of dark hair, thickly threaded with grey, back from his forehead. ‘Of course it is! I’m so sorry, and here I am, dancing away like a maniac.’
She stroked her fingers down his jaw and neck, felt the beating of his blood briefly, then let them rest softly on his shoulder as she searched his face.
‘Don’t apologise,’ he said. ‘You hardly know her, and probably know nothing of her history.’
‘No, I don’t.’
He opened his mouth as if to launch into a story, then shook his head. ‘We won’t talk about it tonight. That’s not why I came. I really just wanted…’ he paused, then looked straight down into her eyes ‘…to be with you, Aimee.’
‘I’m glad,’ she managed breathlessly. ‘Come through, and I’ll make the tea.’
The mood had changed, but it was just as pleasant. They sat at the big kitchen table, talked about all sorts of things and drank their tea, warming their legs and hands in front of an old-fashioned electric fire.
It was the kind, at least fifty years old, that was shaped like a fireplace and had fake coals lit from beneath to make them ‘glow’, and was so ugly and silly that it had acquired the status of an antique by this time, and Aimee was perversely fond of it. It had once belonged to her grandmother. She liked it for practical reasons, too. A July night in Sydney could be chilly.
Marshall seemed to appreciate it. He stuck his bare legs out until they were so close to the heat that they practically sizzled, and when he finally looked at his watch and took note of the time his jaw dropped. ‘It can’t be ten!’
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But it is. I’ll drive you home.’
‘No…’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘I won’t be annoying and argue the point,’ he conceded. ‘A ride home does sound a lot more pleasant than a jog, now that my legs are so warm and relaxed.’
They went out through the lounge room side by side, and there wasn’t quite enough room as they passed the sideboard. He bumped it, and the glasses and china inside it rattled.
So did the half-empty wineglass she’d put down on the top of it two hours ago.
‘Oops.’ He reached a hand out to steady the glass and noticed the wine still sloshing inside. There was a tiny pause, then he said lightly, ‘You never finished it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered him. But it came out just a little too hastily, and then she only made it worse by adding self-consciously, ‘I don’t often drink alone.’
‘Oh, no, I wasn’t suggesting…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, and there was a tinge of awkwardness in the atmosphere.
Why did I say that? Aimee scolded herself inwardly. I don’t often drink alone, but saying it only made it sound as if I did.
The moment passed as she reached the front door and opened it to let in a draught of chilly air.
‘Brr!’ Marshall said. ‘Definitely too cold for running shorts!’
They talked about the weather for the whole car journey to his place. Only five minutes between their two houses, so it wasn’t so disastrous a subject, but Aimee still felt an odd discomfort and disappointment. Was she still smarting over that silly exchange about the wine?
Surely not! What was it, then? It had something to do with the wine.
Outside Marshall’s gracious old house his kiss was brief and he didn’t ask her in.
Driving home alone, Aimee probed at what she felt in the same way that she might have probed at a sore tooth with her tongue, and finally concluded in her mind. It’s still early days. That’s what rattled me about him noticing the wine. For a moment there, he did wonder, and it’s early days in what’s going on between us. We’ve both lived full lives before this.
She thought about her twenty-six year marriage to Alan. It had been a relatively happy one. She’d entered into it with too many stars in her eyes, of course, at the age of twenty. Then they’d weathered some disappointments, disagreements, coolnesses, ongoing differences in outlook that they’d never really addressed. That sort of thing changed a woman’s perspective, influenced the person she became.
Neither of us comes without baggage, Aimee realised. We both have