Page 124 of (Not) The One
How couldn’t I see that he wanted more than sex?
Please don’t cut me out of the experience.
How did I get to this age without realising I’m an awful human? I try to stifle a sigh. I’m not even looking forward to going to work this morning, and I’ve always considered work my happy place. It’s the corner of the world I can control, and that makes me calm. When I slip into a cute dress or a nice shirt and a tailored pair of pants ready for the office, I’m in work mode. I’m all business and I take pride in my position and in my work—I’m a professional.
There, I’m not the girl who pet sits, or who happens to be the only form of communication between her parents.Discounting their rows.I’m not the twenty-two-year-old who got herself pregnant by sleeping with the wrong man.
But today while at work I won’t be any of the good things. I’ll just be the girl who made the very decent and very lovely man sitting next to her very, very sad.
This time, I can’t stifle my sigh.
‘That sounded very pensive.’
‘Not really. Why were you up so early this morning?’ I ask, turning to him. James’s bed is always a pleasure to sleep in—it’s like sleeping on a pile of clouds—but I’d found no peace in it last night and had woken tangled in the high thread count sheets. Panic and disorientation were quickly followed by the realisation that James wasn’t in bed next to me. He says he’s a light sleeper, that he doesn’t need the help of an alarm clock to wake him because he has his own alarm clock built internally. But I’ve rarely found it to be the case. It’s usually me that wakes first, often with his hand on my breast or pressed between my legs.
But not this morning.
The bed was empty, his pillow cold. But then he’d appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, his broad shoulders almost filling the space. He’d lifted his hand to scratch his cheek, his bicep tanned and taut, and I’d watched a lone rivulet of water snake its way down his body from collarbone down, disappearing as it was absorbed into the downy white cotton towel wrapped low on his hips.
The moment seemed to span the distance between us as I watched him, watching me. And I’d thought for a split second he’d make his way back to bed, that’d we’d reset what had broken between us.
Not broken, but bruised, maybe
But the moment passed when he made his way to the dressing room.
‘I didn’t sleep very well.’ His brow furrows and I see the truth in his words in the dark smudge beneath his lowered lashes. ‘I got a call from the states which necessitated getting out of bed. I just tossed and turned after it.’
‘Oh, yeah. I remember you getting up.’ I was too far gone at that point to even lift my head. ‘Is everythingokay?’
‘Yes. Just another day in the lift of a precious artist. Someone I’m representing, new to the pressures of the art world, and suffering a crisis of confidence. It happens occasionally. I just wish they would learn to schedule their melt downs around British Mean Time.’
‘Part businessman, part counsellor?’
‘And all tired. So much so I’d had the most lurid fantasy while listening to him drone on and on. He was hanging from the ledge of a tall building—’
‘And you were trying to talk him down.’
‘I’m supposed to, but instead, I put my size forty-four shoe over the top of his fingers.’
‘That’s a little harsh.’
‘It’s not all bad. His death would only help increase the value of his catalogue. I’d certainly be richer.’
‘But unable to spend it on account being sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term.’
‘I’m sure once my lawyer has finished describing his personality, and how this is the fourth time he’s interrupted my sleep, any jury would see my point of view.’
I chuckle softly as his phone begins to ring.
‘It’s going to be one of those days.’
James pulls the phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, glancing down at the screen, then at me. ‘I have to take this,’ he says with a note of apology.
I raise my hand—it’s all good—and turn back to my window watching the people pass on foot quicker than the car crawls along this route. But it’s a surprise when James launches into, what sounds like, perfect French. His tone is low, and the flurry of words sound very sexual for a business call. But that’s just the nature of the language, isn’t it? Everything sounds eroticen français.
It almost sounds like he’s purring, dammit, because along with neck kisses, foreign languages do it for me, a spark igniting low in my belly and shimmering across my skin. And I used to have the maddest crush on my French teacher at school. Monsieur Dumas, or Mr Dumb Arse as the other kids used to call him. But not me. The man might have had an unfortunate taste in shirts, and a touch of halitosis, but his accent warmed him to me.
Warmed me in a very particular place.
