Restoring Grace (42 page)

After three mouthfuls she really had had enough
and
his plate was emptying. 'That's enough,
really it is. But
it was nice.'

‘Yes, it was,' said Flynn. He was looking into
her eyes and didn't seem to be talking about food.

‘
I'd better
make some more tea or something,' said
Grace
eventually, thinking she should break the invisible
thread between them.
Not because she wanted to, but because it felt dangerously intimate.

He put his hand on hers
to stop her moving. Then, his
hand still there, he got up himself,
came round the end of the table and drew her to her feet.

His arms around her were
so strong they made her feel
weightless. Her
eyes closed in spite of her efforts to resist
the swimmy feeling, the dizziness, the sensation of being in his arms
gave her. His kiss tasted of bacon and beans
and made
her feel like heaven.

She struggled a little, clinging on to sanity with the last
remaining fragment of her mind. This would be so embar
rassing
in a minute. This might spoil their odd, tenuous relationship. It was too soon
after Edward.

He shifted her so she
fitted more neatly into the shape
of his body and she forgot about
Edward, about being embarrassed, and relaxed into his kiss.

Either it went on for a very long time, or she
lost all sense of time. When he finally released her mouth, but not, thank
goodness, her body, she felt boneless, brainless, and insanely happy.

She forced herself back to reality. It's only a
kiss. Nothing to get fussed about. People kiss each other all the time, it
doesn't mean a thing.

As if sensing her doubts he pushed his hand
into her
hair and looked intently at her.
She could almost feel his
eyes on her face, taking in each freckle, the
line of her
mouth, the mole on her
cheekbone. She lowered her lids,
embarrassed by the intensity of his
expression.

‘Come on,' he said and, keeping his arm tightly
round her shoulders, he walked her out of the kitchen, along the passage, into
the hall and up the stairs.

‘What are you doing?' she laughed, knowing
perfectly well what he was doing.

‘I'm taking you to bed,' he said, opening the
door to Ellie's bedroom and rejecting it. Another few paces and he found her
bedroom, recognising it by its simplicity.

‘Are you coming with me?' she whispered as he
hesitated on the threshold. She knew he wouldn't cross it unless she invited
him. And she knew that she didn't want this insane, gooey, sleep-deprived
feeling to end.

‘Only if you want me to.’

Grace sighed. 'I know I'll
regret this in the morning,
but yes I do.'

‘
It is the
morning. And I don't want any regrets. I don't
want a single unhappy
thought about me crossing your mind. Do this with your brain fully engaged. I'm
not seducing you when you're tired and vulnerable. Think about this, Grace.'

‘
Oh, shut up,' she whispered, taking his hand
and leading him into her bedroom.

Chapter
Seventeen

 
Ellie turned on to her back to get
more comfortable on
Ran's futon. It was in
his spare room, which was used
for a
lot of other spare things apart from a bed, and
initially she'd slept, but the hardness of the mattress had
woken
her. Now she lay and thought about the humiliations of the evening.

She'd been so sure she could seduce him! He'd
said that thing about her dress being distracting, so he must fancy her a bit.
But did the jeans and top take away all
her
sex appeal? She hadn't had time to go through all her
little tops, to find the one that didn't make her
arms look
fat and showed a bit of
cleavage without clinging too
much round her stomach, but she'd been
moderately
content with her look as she
pulled her fleece on over the
top. Her excitement as she ran down the
stairs to Ran,
waiting in the hall, was more
than she'd felt over
anything, seemingly for years.

Once inside the house,
after the fiasco of the keys, Ran
had been quite host-like. He'd
offered Ellie a hot drink,
which she'd
accepted, not because she yearned for cocoa,
but because she wanted to watch him make it, and make
him watch
her watching him.

This was the moment, she'd decided. It was now
or never. If she couldn't make him have an affaire with her now, she'd never
make it. She was in his house, ready, willing and eager. Only a monk would turn
her down in those conditions.

She'd pulled
her top down a bit, so her cleavage showed just a bit more than normal.
Flattery, that was
the answer with most men.
Tell them how clever they are
and they think you're gorgeous.

‘
I'm so glad it was you
I got work experience with,'
she began, deliberately lowering her voice
a little and
making it breathy. 'I mean,
supposing some charlatan had
taken
me on? Those panels might have been in the hands
of any old amateur.
They could have been ruined. With
you, I
know they'll have the best possible treatment.' She
was about to add,
'because you're the best,' but decided it was over the top.

Ran paused in the process
of mixing cocoa into a paste
with cold milk. 'How do you know I'm
not a charlatan?’

Ellie hesitated before
replying. Her instinct was to snap,
'I'm not a complete fool, you know!'
but she knew this would not help her cause. 'I do know a little bit about you,
you know,' she said cooingly, determined not to sound at all acerbic.

‘Do you? Well enough to tell, just from the
adverts in the
Yellow Pages,
the good
picture restorers from the bad ones?'

‘
Well, not
just from that, obviously, but when I met you,
I knew the paintings
would be in good hands.'

‘
You were
intending to restore them yourself when you
first met me. It could have
been fatal. They could have disintegrated completely.'

‘Oh, surely not.' She lowered her head and
looked at him out of the top of her eyes. She'd never actually tried
this technique before, but then again, she hadn't
tried to
seduce anyone before, and although she'd been an avid fan of
Marilyn Monroe films when she was in her early teens, she wasn't sure she'd
studied them with quite enough concentration.

Ran sighed, and Ellie realised he must be
really tired. Being tired had never affected Rick's desire for sex, but Ran was
that bit older. It might be different for him.

That would be so annoying!
Her one chance to get him
 
into bed and he turned out to be too
tired! She must try harder.

She wiggled on her stool,
put her head on one side and
gave a little
lopsided smile. It probably made her look
like a
complete idiot, but it worked for Marilyn.

‘How much sugar would you like in your cocoa?'
he asked.

Unfortunately he didn't
turn round, so he didn't see the smile or the wiggle. Was he aware of what she
was
up to? Perhaps he wasn't
looking so he wouldn't be
tempted! Perhaps if she said
something really witty he would have to look at her. As long as it didn't make
her
fall off the stool, she could always
wiggle again. She
trawled through her memory of Lauren Bacall and
Humphrey Bogart films. They were famous for their one-liners. There was bound
to be something. Sadly, Ellie couldn't even remember any of the films, let
alone the
dialogue. Could she make something
up? Something
about him being enough
to sweeten the most bitter
drink?

‘
Well?' he snapped.

‘
Two, I think,' she
said hastily. 'I usually have drinking
chocolate.’

He went back to his stirring. How seductive was
that little remark? 'I usually have drinking chocolate!' They'd
be using that to lure people on to porn sites on
the
Internet! Who could resist? Irritated with herself, Ellie decided to
postpone her plans until the cocoa was actually in her hands, then she could
look over the mug at him and, provided she didn't get a chocolate moustache,
that might be quite appealing.

At last - it seemed to have
taken hours - he handed
her a mug of cocoa. 'Would you like
a biscuit?'

‘
No, thank you.' Then she
wondered if that had been
a mistake. After all, if he was intent on going straight to bed, being
forced to stay up while she ate a digestive would give her some valuable extra
time. 'Actually,' she said, 'can I change my mind?’

He gave her the sort of long look that teachers
gave to pupils when they'd heard a totally unbelievable story as
to why their homework was not going to be handed
in.
It was considering, contemplative and not encouraging.
'If you take your cocoa and your biscuit to bed
with you,
you can have the whole packet, but I'm not in the mood to play
games.'

‘What do you mean?' Her velvet tones developed
an edge of acid. 'I asked for a biscuit, not a Scrabble tournament!'

‘You know what I mean, Ellie. You're trying to
seduce
me. And while I am not unattracted to
you, far from it -
I think you're a
lovely, bright, sexy girl - I am not going
to take advantage of your
wild hormones and let you do something you may regret.'

‘
What do you
mean?' she said again. 'My wild
hormones?
What's that all about?' She had a vision of
her hormones as animals,
pacing up and down behind
bars, lashing
their tails, attacking anyone who came near.

‘
You're pregnant.'

‘
Not in my head! It
doesn't affect my brain! It's only
the size of a peanut, you know!'

‘According to my sisters, the brain is one of
the first places it does affect.' He frowned. 'And I'm not sure it doesn't stay
affected, but that could just be them.'

‘I am not out of my mind!' She was furious. 'I
know perfectly well what I'm doing!'

‘That is as may be, but you'd better content
yourself
with cocoa and biscuits because
I'm not going to take you
to bed.'

‘But why not?' Ellie felt all the indignation
of the ideal candidate being rejected for a job; she wanted feedback and very
possibly compensation as well.

‘Because I'm not interested in casual sex with
a very young woman who may not be emotionally completely stable.’

Ellie only just stopped herself throwing the
cocoa at
him. She slid off the stool and it
slopped over the edge
of the mug on to her jeans. She squeaked.

‘I don't think you realise the risk you're
running with this sort of behaviour. Other men might take advantage of you.'

‘I - I am not emotionally unstable!' she
spluttered, incensed at his suggestion that she would throw herself at just
anyone. 'I'm pregnant! The two things do not necessarily go together!' As the
words came out of her mouth she remembered how her first symptom, even before
she'd thought of taking a test, had been suffering from what had seemed like
very bad PMT.

‘
Go to bed,
Ellie. You'll feel very relieved in the morning
that nothing happened.’

Ellie had flounced out,
indignation having to do instead
of dignity.

She had found her way
round the various bits of equip
ment and on to the futon with very
bad grace, and deter
mined to get herself
into that bloody man's bed if it killed
them both.

Now, awake in the early
hours, she considered her situ
ation. Was Ran right? Would relief
be her strongest
emotion in the morning? Or
would she regret a lost oppor
tunity?
Mind you, it wasn't
her
lost
opportunity - she had
done her very
best to maximise it - it was Ran's. But while
she was still in his house, while that sliver of opportunity was just within
her grasp, should she get up and get into
his bed?
Having taken all her clothes off first, perhaps?
Put like that, her decision was easy. If she did that, he'd
just think she was a tart. Perhaps she should
have explained
her desire to have an
affaire before pregnancy and mother
hood took over? Then he might have
understood, and taken her in his arms, and thence to bed. She felt like crying.
It had all gone so horribly wrong, and it seemed extra painful after their
lovely day out together. She
punched her
pillow into a shape less pancake-like, turned
on to her side and tried
to think about something other
than Ran. It
was impossible. He filled her brain. Oh, God!
She hadn't fallen in love
with him, had she? That would be awful! Just put him out of your mind, Ellie.
Let go; move on.