Our Little Secret (20 page)

I back away. Marnie smiles at me from the wall.

40

Edward comes home the following evening, by which time I’m emotionally exhausted. I’m so starved of actual in-the-flesh human attention that the moment I hear a car on the gravel drive, I shoot downstairs and pretend to bump into him.

He’s friendly, but tired, he tells me as I follow him into the kitchen. He doesn’t meet my eye.

Seeing him for the first time since I danced with him, and then he told me to go to bed, makes me feel breathlessly nervous. Is he still cross with me? If he is, will he mention it? More to the point, has Marnie said anything to him? About me dressing up? Does he know she gave me that vibrator? I feel the weight of the secrets I’m keeping pressing against my chest.

He’s wearing a cool blue jacket, jeans and smart leather shoes, and I’m reminded of the man on the plane. The man who was fucking the air hostess. Except that Edward is much better-looking and I can’t imagine him doing that kind of thing for a second.

‘How are you?’ he asks, as he flips through a pile of papers on the side. I lean against the counter, waggling my foot. I feel caught out.

‘Fine, thanks,’ I tell him, but my breath catches. I cover it up quickly. ‘Thank you for the clothes,’ I say, quickly. ‘I love them all.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, like it’s no big deal. Which I guess it isn’t for him. He doesn’t look at me.

I so want everything to be OK. I desperately don’t want him to hate me, but standing here, I feel wobbly. My whole world has changed since I last saw him. I’ve dumped Scott, my boyfriend of three years, and in doing so upset all the security I have at home. I have untethered myself, and this free-floating feeling is so scary. I want desperately for Edward to catch hold of me, hold on and stop me floating away.

I’ve been telling myself all day that my decision to be honest with Scott has nothing to do with Edward. Because nothing is going on between us – or ever will be – but seeing him again makes me realize that my heartache of the past twenty-four hours or more has actually been
entirely
to do with him. Because of that night. Because of how he changed me.

He looks up then. My stomach tumbles over itself as his green eyes bore into mine.

‘Seriously? You don’t look OK,’ he says, although I can tell he’s not being unkind.

‘I’m fine.’

‘I hope you didn’t get lonely here by yourself?’

I shrug nervously. ‘A bit.’

I don’t tell him that I cried myself to sleep last night. That I felt bereft this morning, and more at a loose end today than I’ve ever felt in my life. That I really don’t know what I’m doing here – or why it’s such a big deal that I can’t seem to relax.

Then he puts the papers aside and looks at me properly.

‘What’s happened?’ he asks, walking towards me.

How can he know? How can he tell, just by looking at me, how I’m feeling? Nobody has ever been able to do that before. Am I really that easy to read? I think of him at the art gallery: how he watched me, how we seemed just to be able to communicate. Except that I got it all wrong, I remind myself.

I can tell that he’s offering a shoulder to cry on. Not that I will ever be putting my head on his shoulder again. But even so, his soft gaze melts me. I have to grip onto the counter to stop myself from taking the three steps needed to be in his embrace.

I shrug and take a shuddery breath. ‘I spoke to Scott,’ I tell him. Up until I saw him, I hadn’t intended to tell him this news at all, but something about the way he is – his intensity – makes me feel that I have no choice but to tell the truth. ‘I told him it was over between us.’

‘Ah,’ Edward says slowly, as if he understands everything. ‘Well. You did the right thing.’

Did I? I’m not so sure. I nod, fighting back tears. ‘I know. But he was angry and . . .’ I blow out a long, pent-up breath. ‘He said some things that weren’t very nice.’

Edward smiles sympathetically and searches out my eyes, but I’m determined not to cry. I don’t want him to think I’m the crybaby, out-of-control nanny.

‘Huh. Well, I guess that’s understandable. If I were Scott, I wouldn’t want to lose you. And men . . .’ he shrugs and gives me a cute smile, ‘we say dumb stuff when we’re cornered.’

And as he looks at me, I suddenly realize that he’s apologizing about the other night and that we’re not talking about Scott at all.

I nod and bite my lip. And right there and then I realize I don’t want to discuss Scott with him after all. I don’t want to bore him with the details of my calls with Tiff, and how she tried, but failed, to understand what’s going on.

The important thing is that I’ve severed myself from home. Cut them all off like a limb, and seeing Edward has now staunched the flow of pain. It’s all been worth it because he knows I’ve been brave.

‘Drink?’ he asks.

‘One,’ I say pointedly and smile shyly. I’m speaking in code, too, and he knows it. I’m talking about the other night and how drunk I was.

‘Sure,’ he says, smiling more broadly this time. It feels like the air has been cleared in the gentlest, most subtle way possible. He looks at me again. ‘Actually,’ he says, rolling his shoulder, ‘I’ve been in back-to-back meetings all day and I need a stretch. I fancy a swim. Will you join me?’

41

I’m first in the indoor pool. I went upstairs to change, opting for my black swimming costume from home rather than my new bikini. As I bicycle my legs in the perfectly clear water at the end of the pool, watching the reflection of the water dance against the ceiling, I remind myself that I am to be strictly professional. There must be no physical contact whatsoever. Edward is with Marnie. I am their employee.

End of.

But this little inner lecture is cut abruptly short when Edward appears from the corridor. He’s wearing dark-navy swimming trunks, which don’t look daft like Speedos, or pikey like swimming shorts, but are somewhere designer and chic in between. They show off his tanned, muscled legs and his astonishing swimmer’s physique. I check him out, comparing him to the memory of the guy in the movie.

It wasn’t Edward. I see that now. Edward is slightly stockier than the man in the film. But even thinking of it – making the comparison – ignites that forbidden horny memory. I try very hard and shut the door on it.

Seeing him practically naked only proves what a great figure of a man he is. He drinks heavily and eats gourmet food, but his waist is trim and there’s no sign of a pot-belly.

He’s hairy, too. But in a good way. Scott always used to wax his chest, preferring himself smooth, and lamenting old men with hairy chests, but Edward’s chest and stomach are covered in soft, dark hair, which just makes me want to touch him even more.

He jumps nimbly into the pool and gasps a little at the temperature of the water and laughs, and I look at the dark, intimate hair of his armpits as his palms recoil from the surface of the water. I want to tell him that, compared to the pools back home, this is a bath.

He strides towards me at the end of the pool. I can’t help my eyes darting to his nipples. I see them pucker and stiffen. I wonder what it would feel like to flick my tongue over those sensitive buds.

Stop it
, I yell at myself silently.

‘So you swim a lot, right?’ he says, pulling the black goggles around his neck up towards his face. I suddenly remember the lie I told in my interview about how I swam to keep in shape.

‘Probably not as much as you,’ I say, nodding at him. I’m referring to his perfect swimmer’s physique and we both know it, but somehow the compliment is too personal. He ignores it.

‘First to twenty then, Miss Henshaw,’ he says, ducking under the water.

It’s no contest, of course. He’s faster and has a much better technique than me. He cuts through the water in an effortless crawl, his body streamlined, his feet hardly breaking the water. I feel a childish urge to wave at him or pull a face as he passes me in the water, but he’s concentrating hard. Like everything he gets involved in, he seems completely absorbed. I long to be the focus of his attention again. I get the impression that he’s forgotten I’m even here.

He wipes me out on the first ten lengths, but then he slows down and I start to catch up. As I swim, trying to remember my best technique, I remember how good it feels to do serious exercise.

I’ve been lolloping around the house for two days, moping in my relationship-ending blues, but what I should have been doing is swimming.

But I’m like this, I remember. Whenever I exercise, it feels so good that I vow I’m going to repeat the experience daily. That I’m going to exercise
all the time
. It’s the same with sex.

Don’t think about sex
, I caution myself, but the pornographic image of the black dancer in the photograph taunts me, all mixed up with the man in the movie.

Edward wins by a length. I thought for a moment he was going to let me win, so I try extra-hard to beat him. I’m panting, and my cheeks are pounding, when we finish.

‘Not bad,’ he tells me, completely unruffled. ‘You’re fast.’

‘You’re faster.’

‘You thought I’d let a girl beat me?’ he teases.

I flick him playfully with water. ‘You would, if you had any chivalry,’ I tease back.

He grins at me and hauls himself out of the pool, his biceps flexing. He grabs a towel and dries his hair, making it go all spiky. He looks boyish and coy. Even so, I try to rip my eyes away from the rivulets of water that run between the dark hair on his stomach.

He walks towards the side of the pool, where I’m still in the water, trying to catch my breath. He’s holding out a light-blue towel to me, shielding my body, as if he doesn’t want to look. I clamber up onto the side, inelegantly failing to do so in one, and levering myself up with my knee.

For a second, as I walk towards the outstretched towel, I think he might wrap me up in it, but instead he lets go of one side and I grab it, wrapping it around myself, feeling self-conscious.

‘I’m going in the sauna,’ he says, as I wipe my face. ‘Come, if you like.’ It’s not an actual invitation as much as a factual piece of information, as if he’s trying very hard to keep everything on a strictly professional basis.

I nod. ‘I will in a minute. I just want to shower first.’

It’s a lie. I want to check my face. I don’t want to realize later that I’ve got panda-eyes from where my make-up has smudged.

In the small toilet cubicle I hitch myself up in my swimming costume, remembering Marnie doing the same thing the other night with the corset, but the effect is not nearly the same in a swimming costume. I look at myself in the mirror and give myself a hard stare. Maybe it’s the exercise, maybe it’s being with Edward and everything being OK after the other night, but I feel better. More than better. I feel excited.

I rinse my hair in the shower and take a deep breath. Then I head for the sauna. This is good, I tell myself. This is professional, yet fun. I can do this. There’s no harm in being in a sauna with him, is there?

42

Edward is sitting on the top slats, his eyes closed. He has a small blue towel wrapped around his waist, but I see a sliver of flesh running from the top to bottom of the edge of the towel. He’s taken off his swimming shorts.

He’s naked beneath the towel.

I stare at that intimate stripe of hip, then deliberately rip my eyes away.

I creep in, not wanting to disturb him. He looks like he’s meditating or something, surrendering himself entirely to the heat. I lie down on the bottom bench, my head as far away from him as possible, near the door, and stare up at the pine ceiling. From where I’m lying stiffly, I can only see his lower legs. Through the pine slats I glance over at the stripe of blue towel
.

In seconds I can feel my heartbeat in my skin. My swimming costume dries out and sticks to me. I try to get comfortable, turning over and lying on my front instead, feeing a bead of perspiration trickle between my breasts.

There’s a low gasp and I sense Edward leaning forward. I peek over my shoulder. He’s got his elbows on his knees. His head hangs down.

‘This is the best bit,’ he says, with a low sigh. ‘There’s nothing like a sauna.’

I don’t tell him that this is very different from the saunas I’ve ever been in. There was one that Tiff and I went to once, in a holiday park in Whitney, but the man in it was clearly a pervert and so smelly we had to retreat. I’ve never been in a private, pristine sauna like this before.

My temple is wet where it’s leaning on my forearm. I watch the rivulets of sweat drip down my other elbow. I feel every pore of my skin. The heat throbs. I hear my breath booming in my ears.

Through the tiny gap, under my arm, I look at Edward’s leg. Is his towel still on? I imagine what’s below. I imagine him hanging down over the edge of the wooden slats. I picture his semi-erect cock and plump, juicy, suckable balls . . .

Stop it
, I tell myself, forcing the thought away, but something about the heat just makes me horny. I can’t help it.

I can feel the blood pulsing in my abdomen now, and lower, between my legs. I’ve never been this close to anyone so sexually attractive and not been able to touch them.

Suddenly, Edward gets up. He’s naked and, although I’ve been expecting it, it’s still so shocking, it’s like a slap. He’s standing near the coals with his back to me. He’s naturally naked, though, not showing off, as if this is perfectly normal. I guess it is, in a sauna.

Secretly, I feast my eyes on him. I know I should close them, but I can’t stop staring at the swell of his buttocks, the smoothness of his back. He has a line where he’s been sunbathing. But somehow that only makes it more wonderful to see this intimate part of him. I picture my hands clawing the pale flesh, pulling him closer inside me . . .

I can’t breathe – especially as now he chucks some water on the coals and there’s a hiss of steam.

‘Do say if it gets too much,’ he says. His voice is low and soft. ‘I like to go as far as I can stand it.’

Is he talking about the sauna?

He turns and I close my eyes. I can’t bear to look. I can’t trust myself to look at him fully naked. What if he has a hard-on?