The Gigolo (7 page)

CHAPTER
FIVE

Kara was woken by the sound of her mobile phone ringing. She couldn’t remember where she’d left it. She crawled out of bed with her eyes still half closed against the bright sunlight that was streaming in through her bedroom window.

The phone stopped ringing. Kara opened one eye to look at her alarm clock. It was eight thirty on a Sunday morning. Who the hell was ringing her at this time of day?

She eventually located her phone in the back pocket of the jeans William had given her
. Every time she thought about him and the time they’d spent together her stomach lurched like a love sick teenager.

She checked her missed calls. It
was William. He’d called three times in the last hour. She sat on the end of the bed and called him back.

‘You’re awake at last. I thought you were planning
on sleeping all day.’

‘It’s not natural to be so cheerful at this hour of the morning. What’s wrong with you?’ she groaned
sleepily but she was smiling like a Cheshire cat. She liked the fact that he felt comfortable enough with her to ring at this ungodly hour.

‘Look, I don’t know if you’ll be interested, but I’ve got the day free and I was planning a drive
out to the country – lunch in a little pub somewhere and a lungful of cow shit – strictly fun – off the metre – what do you say?’

‘I would love that, William.’

‘Great. I’ll be there in an hour – you can manage to get ready in that time, can’t you?’ 

‘Of course
. What do you think I have to do – apply my face with a trowel?’

‘I hope not. I was hoping that the Kara Kavanagh I spent time with yesterday was the real thing.’
He hung up laughing.

Kara showered and dressed in lemon coloured capri pants and a
loose white cotton top. She wore white tennis shoes, a baseball cap and tied her hair into a pony tail.

William arrived exactly an hour later. He was driving an Astin Martin
with the top down.

‘I didn’t realise you had such good taste,’ she said as she slid onto the soft leather seat.

‘I think you seriously underestimate me,’ he said as he put his foot on the gas pedal and accelerated out of the city. ‘To be absolutely honest I actually inherited it from my father. So I suppose he was the one with the good taste – and the good luck to have built his little property empire in better economic times than we’re struggling with right now. He’d turn in his grave if he could see what a mess I’m making of it.’

‘
Things will pick up soon,’ Kara reassured him.

‘You look lovely,’ he said resting his hand on her knee. ‘Are you still wearing my ring?’ He said it flippantly
, as if he expected her to say no.

‘Of course,’ Kara replied.

‘No shit!’ He looked at her with genuine surprise. ‘I feel honoured. I really do.’ He reached across the car and put his hand between her legs as if he were trying to feel for it.

Kara unzipped her trousers and edged them down her legs a little way to give him access and he felt his way between her legs as he watched the road
ahead.

‘Damn! That’s so fucking hot,’ he said and when he took his eyes off the road for a second and looked at her she could see the passion in his eyes. He looked at her in a way that no one ever had before. He looked at her with love
in his eyes. She hoped he could see it reflected back in her own.

Kara wanted to ask exactly what it meant
to him because to her it signified some kind of commitment. He had claimed and marked her as his. She hoped he felt the same way but she was aware that men often felt things in a different way.

Kara settled back into the seat and watched him drive. His eyes were fixed on the road
ahead, his mouth closed and set into a serious expression. There was the shadow of a beard still covering his lower face and if anything its presence made him look even more beautiful.

He was wearing a navy polo shirt
that was still creased from the washing machine and faded navy shorts with deck shoes. He looked vaguely nautical.

‘Where are we going?’ Kara asked as the rows of
terraced houses gave way to more greenery and the traffic thinned out a little. Not that she really cared. She could quite happily have sat here all day watching him. The slight twitch in his cheek – the way the muscles in his leg flexed each time he changed gear – the way his shorts fitted so snugly at the crotch. She had a desire to reach across the divide and touch him. Love seemed to have made her slightly reckless.

She touched his thigh. It was firm and warm. He smiled and placed his hand on top of hers and now she watched his thumb idly brushing the back of her hand. This was the comfortable kind of co-existence she had always dreamed of
having with a man – one she had begun to think it impossible for her to find.

‘I’ve booked a table at The Nags Head in Cotley on Thames. Do you know it?’

Kara shook her head.

‘It’s a pretty little riverside village
pub. You’ll love it.’

They arrived just before midday. The car park was packed and people had spewed out of the bar into the garden and on down
across the little lane and onto the neatly cut grass that lined the river bank.

William claimed a small rickety wooden table outside in the sun
. Kara sat down and he went inside to order. He came back with a bottle of chilled Chablis for her. He was drinking mineral water topped off with lime juice.

Kara sipped on her wine and watched children paddling in the water. There was a cacophony of noise that, even though they were amid a crowd, made their table
seem like a private space.

‘Do you enjoy your job, Kara?’ He said it
in much the same way an examining psychiatrist might address a patient.

‘I love it
and I hate it. It’s a challenge but sometimes the pressure gets too much and I just feel the need to escape. This is lovely.’

‘I’m glad I was able to spring you from the pressure
of the city. I guess it doesn’t leave you much time for a social life – rather like me. We’re kindred spirits in this mad world.’  

‘What a lovely thought
.’ Kara felt as if they’d found an oasis away from the rat race.

‘They do a delicious homemade chicken liver pate here. I ordered for both of us – I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, that’s perfect.’ Kara had a warm glow that seemed to reach from the very tips of her toes to her rosy, wine flushed cheeks.

Their food arrived
. The pate was arranged in cute little individual terrines surrounded by the most wonderfully aromatic warm crusty bread and fresh salad. They ate and chatted and soaked up the sun on their faces until the crowd began to thin.

‘I think it’s time we made a move.’ William sounded as reluctant as she was to break the spell that had been cast over them.

Kara excused herself and headed to the ladies. She’d drank most of the bottle of wine and it was going straight through her.

William was waiting with the car door open when she emerged from the darkness of the little olde
-worlde pub and they headed back towards the city.

They’d been travelling for just over an hour and Kara was bursting for a wee but they were still driving through open countryside.

‘I don’t suppose you know of any public loos around here, do you?’ Kara was unfamiliar with this part of the country.

‘Not for a good few miles yet. I’ll stop in a gateway.’ He grinned
at her mischievously.

‘That’ll have to do.’ Kara had her legs crossed and was fidgeting in her seat.

‘That’ll teach you to drink so much wine,’ he scolded playfully.

He pulled into the open gate of a wheat field proudly displaying the bread company it was growing the crop for. William waited in the car with the engine running whilst Kara ducked behind the hedge and squat down out of view. The relief was blissful.

The car engine stopped. She heard a door slam and then the sound of his footsteps rustling through the undergrowth.

‘Don’t look,’ she shouted
, embarrassed that he would catch her squatting in the grass with her panties around her ankles.

‘Too late,’ he grinned down at her with his arms
crossed over his chest.

‘Go away!’ she gesticulated with her free hand. ‘I don’t want you to see me like this.
’

‘Why not? You look delightful, Kara.’

‘It’s gross!’ she said as she wiped with a tissue and threw the damp paper into the undergrowth.

‘It’s life – we all do it. None quite so delightfully as you but we all have to do it.’

Kara pulled up her panties and wriggled back into her trousers under his gaze.

‘A gentleman would have turned his back instead of ogling me in such a compromising position.’

‘I’ve never claimed to be a gentleman and I was enjoying the sight of my ring dangling from between your legs. It was a…um…stirring sight.’

Kara’s gaze fell to his crotch and to where his erection was straining aga
inst his shorts to break free. She reached out and lowered his zip. His cock sprang free and she encircled it in her fist as she tilted her face up to his.

William covered her mouth with his own in a hungry kiss and lowered her to the ground. Their bodies disappeared beneath the gently wafting stalks of wheat and the musty aroma
of the harvest ready crop filled Kara’s nostrils.

William unbuttoned Kara’s tight capri pants and wriggled them down her legs along with her panties
. They got stuck around her ankles and they laughed as he struggled to pull them off her feet. He discarded them somewhere behind him to struggle out of his own shorts.

Kara lay back and watched
him, squinting in the afternoon sun. It felt good to feel its warmth on her naked thighs. She opened her legs in invitation as William lowered himself on top of her and took a shuddering breath as he slowly pushed himself inside her. It was their first time and to be doing it in the middle of a field full of gently wafting wheat made it feel magical; as if they were alone on the planet, serenaded by the gentle rustle of the wheat.

‘
I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, Kara Kavanagh.’

Kara sank into the bliss of William’s expert
lovemaking, grabbing his hips as he thrust and pushed her into the baked dry soil beneath her. It was raw and rough and full of lust and they explored each other’s flesh with eager fingers and hungry tongues. And then they lay together replete amid the crushed blades of wheat as the sun sank lower in the sky and a light breeze cooled their skin, neither of them wanting to break away from the moment of intimacy.

It was William who finally got to his feet and pulled on his shorts.

‘We best get out of here before the farmer catches us bucking like rabbits in his field.’ He tried to untangle the mess he had made of her clothes that he had pulled off with such haste.

‘Give them here,’ Kara laughed and she brushed off dirt that had embedded itself into the flesh of her bottom when William was forcing her into the ground with his thrusts.

They drove back to the city in a kind of comfortable, post coital mood, occasionally chatting and reaching out to make physical contact with each other but mostly silent.

Kara was a little sad when he pulled up outside her house.

‘Come in for coffee?’ she asked, meaning stay the night and make love to me until morning.

‘I’d love to – really
, but I have work to do.’

Kara didn’t questi
on him further. She leaned over, they kissed and then she climbed out of the car.

‘Bye.’

‘Bye gorgeous,’ he replied.

Kara was smiling when she looked at her reflection in the hall mirror. She also looked decidedly dishevelled
, with straw in her hair and dirt marks all over her white cotton top. She stripped off her clothes and took a long bath.

What’s happen
ed to me?
She laughed as her fingers idly toyed with William’s ring between her legs and she cursed when she remembered what she’d cancelled on Friday evening in favour of having dinner with William instead.

Kara reluctantly pulled herself from the bath when the water began to turn cold. She
pulled on her dressing gown and wandered down to the kitchen. She was feeling uncharacteristically hungry. Sex obviously agreed with her metabolism – perhaps she should do it more often.

Kara toyed with William’s card. She longed to ring him just so that she could hear his voice but she didn’t want to scare him off by appearing to come on to
o strong so she found a frozen cottage pie and heated it in the microwave, instead.

CHAPTER
SIX