My lotions and potions scattered and rolled around the room, crashing and clattering as they went. I froze, clutching the table and waiting for my pot of Crème de la Mer, a Christmas gift from Erin, to come to a silent standstill by the wardrobe.
‘Morning, Angela,’ Alex muttered without moving.
This was the problem with wearing lady clothes, as I had discovered. Taking them on and off again was hazardous to my health.
The bed was cool and the sheets were soft as I crawled in beside Alex. For a skinny boy, he was a great cuddle buddy. Broad shoulders and strong arms opened up and wrapped me up inside them as I sank into the bed.
‘Hey.’ He pressed his lips against my hair and yawned again. ‘You’re in bed.’
‘I took the afternoon off,’ I replied, pressing backwards against him, shivering with a happy. ‘Thought it might be nice to see your face.’
‘My face likes your face,’ he whispered. ‘Wait, it’s the afternoon?’
Bless his sleepy, confused heart.
‘You didn’t come to bed until five a.m.,’ I pointed out. ‘So I suppose technically it’s still the middle of the night to you.’
‘You had a meeting today,’ he murmured, reaching for my hand and entwining his fingers through mine. ‘How’d it go?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I admitted. One of the terms of our engagement was full disclosure at all times, which I had a feeling Alex was starting to regret. ‘Delia says it will be OK, though. How’s the record going?’
Alex fumbled for an iPod resting on the nightstand on his side of the bed and pressed it into my hand. ‘Done.’
I rolled over quickly and kissed him square on the lips. ‘That’s amazing!’ I said, kissing him again. Because I could. ‘You’re really all finished?’
‘You know I wouldn’t let you listen to it if I wasn’t,’ he replied. ‘I’m done.’
‘Well done you.’ I pushed my far-too-long-and-desperately-in-need-of-a-trim hair out of my eyes to get a better look at him. So pretty. ‘I’ve missed you. What happens now?’
‘Now I sleep,’ he said, planting a kiss on the tip of my nose. ‘For a really long time.’
‘Sounds fair.’ I helped myself to one more kiss. Delicious. ‘And what happens after that?’
I really hoped he wasn’t going to say touring, because I was very concerned I would be forced to tie him to the bed and never let him leave. No one brought out my inner crazy like that man.
‘I was thinking …’ His bright green eyes flickered open and the lazy smile I’d heard in his words found its way to his lips. I was such a smitten kitten. ‘I might marry my girl.’
I pressed my forehead against his, completely incapable of keeping the biggest, brightest smile ever from my face. ‘Well, that sounds nice,’ I said. ‘Do you have any sort of plan for that?’
Alex kicked the covers away to wrap his bare legs around mine and drew me closer. ‘I have been putting a lot of thought into the honeymoon,’ he said, rolling over until his warm body covered mine. This was the kind of hot and sweaty I was perfectly OK with. ‘There’s some stuff I kinda need to test out.’
It had been so long since we had used our bed for anything other than sleeping, snacking and the occasional True Blood marathon that I felt a mild panic come over me. I couldn’t actually remember the last time we’d both been conscious and coital. I was so nervous, it was like the first time all over again. I was holding my breath and second-guessing my touches, but as I gave myself over to the melting feeling in my chest and the tingling in my lips, I forgot that it was daylight outside, I forgot that my underwear didn’t match, and suddenly, without even trying, it was like the first time all over again.
Amazing.
CHAPTER TWO
I was half awake and completely naked when I heard my phone buzzing in my bag from the living room a couple of hours later. Alex had slipped back into unconsciousness − I chose to believe that my supreme sexual prowess had knocked him out − and so, nosy old mare that I am, I rolled out of bed and into my pants, grabbed my phone and crawled into the kitchen to avoid flashing the neighbours.
Naturally the phone stopped ringing as soon as it was in my sweaty paws, but straightaway I saw a terrifying number of messages and missed calls from Louisa, my oldest, dearest friend in the UK. I swiped my phone screen to open them, refusing to entertain all the horrible thoughts that were running through my head. Of course someone had died while I was at home blowing out work for an afternoon quickie; what else could possibly have happened? Louisa’s texts didn’t really give me a lot of information, just repeated the demand that I call her as soon as I could, and that only worried me more. Louisa and I Skyped once a week as well as texted as often as her baby schedule would allow, and I knew I hadn’t missed a phone date. Since she had given birth to Grace a couple of months ago, we hadn’t been quite as chatty as normal, so seven ‘call me now’ texts at what had to be ten-ish in the evening UK-time couldn’t be good news. I fannied about with my iPhone contacts, trying to get it to call her back, but was cut off by an incoming call.
From my mother.
Someone was definitely dead.
Or someone was about to be.
With a very unpleasant feeling in my stomach, I reluctantly answered the phone.
‘Mum?’ I grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen counter and wrapped it around my chest. It just didn’t seem right to be topless while on the phone to my mother. Thank goodness I’d put on pants. ‘Is everything OK?’
The last time she’d put in an impromptu call was when my dad was in hospital after enjoying a recreational batch of space cakes at my auntie’s house. Ever since, I’d been waiting for the call to say he was leaving her for the milkman or that he had defaulted on the mortgage to fund his crack habit. It was impossible to say which was more likely.
‘Angela Clark, do you have something to tell me?’
The quiet fury in my mother’s voice suggested that my dad wasn’t in trouble but that I certainly was. And I was almost certain I knew why. Louisa’s texts suddenly made a terrifying kind of sense as I put two and two together to come up with a big fat shiny emerald-coloured four.
‘Um, I don’t think so?’ I answered sweetly. Because playing dumb had worked so well when I’d ‘borrowed’ her car in the middle of the night when I was eighteen, only to return it with three exciting new dents. I thought they added character. She thought they added to the insurance premium.
‘Are you or are you not −’ she paused and took a very deep, very dramatic breath − ‘engaged to that musician?’
Sodding bollocky bollocks.
It wasn’t like I’d planned on keeping my engagement a secret from my parents, but circumstances had conspired against me. And by circumstances, of course I meant stone cold terror. I’d called on Christmas Day to deliver the happy news, but my mum had been so mad that I hadn’t come home for dry turkey and seething resentment, and so mad that I was choosing to stay in ‘that country’ with ‘that musician’, that I couldn’t seem to find the right way to tell her I had just accepted a proposal from ‘that musician’ to stay in ‘that country’ for the foreseeable. Then, as the weeks passed by, the more I replayed the conversation over in my mind, the less I felt like casually mentioning my betrothal.
‘Am I engaged?’
‘Yes.’
‘To Alex?’
‘Yes Angela. To Alex. Or at least one hopes so.’
She used the special voice to pronounce my fiance’s name that she