Chapter 15
15
A couple of days later, when Finn had got up before anyone else, which meant before six in this house, there was an ear-splitting scream from upstairs. Jumping and spilling hot tea over his hands in the process, he abandoned the mug and took the stairs two at a time. He found Jade dancing around on the landing, a white bath towel clutched around her and her face flushed from the shower.
Behind her, the bathroom door was open and steam was rolling out into the chilly air, but Jade seemed oblivious to this. She was jumping about on the bare floorboards as if they were scalding the soles of her feet.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, trying not to look too interested as she lost part of the towel completely and he was treated to a view of one breast, jiggling tantalisingly as she jumped up and down.
‘Don’t just bloody stand there staring! Do something. Catch it.’
‘Catch what?’ Finn asked, completely at a loss. He took a couple of anxious steps towards her. She’d got herself covered up again, but she was still dancing around like a cat on hot bricks. Then Ben’s bedroom door opened and he came out yawning. Ben didn’t seem at all disturbed by Jade’s antics. He was scanning the floor, which, like the stairs, was uncarpeted. Then, to Finn’s utter amazement, Ben launched himself into the air and landed with both slippered feet on the same spot of floorboard.
‘Got it,’ he yelled triumphantly, straightening up and inspecting the sole of his slipper. ‘Yuk, that was a biggie.’
‘I said catch it, not kill it.’ Jade glared at him and pulled her towel tightly around herself, as if suddenly aware of her state of undress.
‘She’s scared of spiders,’ Ben told Finn. ‘Have you finished, Auntie Jade, ’cause I need a wee.’
‘Nearly.’ She did actually look quite embarrassed, Finn thought as with another cautious look at the squashed black object on the floorboards she fled back into the bathroom.
‘Once when she was staying with me and Mum, a spider fell on her head when she was in the bath,’ Ben told Finn gleefully. ‘She didn’t have a towel. She runned all round the house with no clothes on. It was gross.’ He screwed up his face and Finn suppressed a smile.
‘Women, eh?’ He shook his head and Ben shook his too and they exchanged a man-to-man look. Ben scraped the rest of the spider off his slipper and poked it down a gap between the floorboards, then banged on the bathroom door. ‘Hurry up. I’m wetting myself.’
Finn went downstairs. Gross was the last word he’d have used to describe Jade charging around with no clothes on. In fact, after what he’d just seen, the image was very appealing. He gave himself a mental shake. The more he got to know her, the more he liked her. He didn’t want to blow it by making unwanted advances. He sensed that she would have to make the first move.
To Jade’s intense relief, there were no more dramas in the next day or two, or at least none she couldn’t cope with. Ben was happily back at school, secure in the knowledge that Sarah and Callum were coming home at the end of the week.
‘Even if Callum’s dad wasn’t better, we’d have come back,’ Sarah had told Jade. ‘I can’t believe how much I’m missing Ben.’
Jade hadn’t told her that Ben was as happy as Larry, pottering around with her and Finn.
Jade re-homed four dogs and took in three more. When she phoned Maggie at Puddleduck Farm, she was told that Rosanna had settled in well and Maggie was happy to keep her as long as was needed.
Best of all, Ben didn’t mention Fang again, although he took great delight in teasing Jade about what he called her spider dance.
‘They can’t hurt, you know,’ he said at every opportunity, but particularly when Finn was around. ‘They’re only tinsy winsy little things.’
‘Actually, they bite,’ Finn said in her defence, and she’d given him a grateful look.
Ben was OK, that was the main thing, and she was pleased that Aiden needed so little prompting to agree to come in and socialise Fang as often as he could. Finn had fixed a padlock to the kennel door and given Aiden the spare key to it.
‘I’ll come in every night and take her out from now on,’ the vet had told Jade. ‘That should speed things up.’
‘Well, if you’re sure. Don’t get yourself bitten.’
‘I’ll be fine. Besides, she didn’t actually bite anyone, did she? Don’t suppose she would have done. Finn was probably overreacting. ’
She’d glared at him and he’d changed the subject hastily.
Fortunately, Aiden’s strategy seemed to be working. By the middle of the week, Fang no longer tried to attack anyone who walked past her kennel, although Jade still didn’t let anyone else in with her. It would be a long time before she’d risk that.
Finn seemed to have settled in. She’d started off by telling him what needed doing, but soon realised this wasn’t necessary, so she left him to get on with it. She tended to lock the main gates to the public at about six, but she often had paperwork to do at the end of the day, which she only took into the house if it got too cold in reception. Finn’s days were governed by the light, or the lack of it. He spent the occasional evening at the Red Lion, which was within walking distance of Duck Pond Cottage, but he never came back roaring drunk. As Sarah had predicted, Ben and Finn were getting on well, their mutual interest in art drawing them together.
Jade was still curious about the photo that Finn carried around with him, but she put it to the back of her mind. She didn’t want to pry into his personal life, although from the way he was with Ben, she guessed he’d been close to a child once.
‘Perhaps he’s got one hidden away somewhere?’ Sarah suggested during one of her nightly calls.
‘Maybe,’ Jade said, hoping he hadn’t. She knew he must have some baggage – you couldn’t get past thirty without it – but she hoped it wasn’t a child. She didn’t like the idea of him having a child he no longer saw. It didn’t fit with her impression of him, which was what, exactly, she mused as she was pinning one of Ben’s paintings up on the wall of reception one morning after dropping him off at school.
A cough behind her made her turn and Finn came into the room with what looked like another of Ben’s paintings in his hands.
‘Have you seen this, Jade?’ His face was serious as he laid the painting on the reception table and she looked at it, realising she hadn’t, and feeling a twinge of jealousy that Ben had shown Finn before he’d shown her.
The picture was of a small white dog with a patch over one eye, crudely done, but unmistakably Fang. The dog was in a kennel. Above it, Ben had painted blue sky and a big yellow sun, but the kennel itself was dark. The dog was crying giant tears that had made a large blue puddle at her feet.
‘Ben said she’s sad because everyone hates her,’ Finn said quietly.
‘I didn’t realise he was still thinking about her.’ Jade could feel coldness spreading through her. ‘When did he do this?’
‘Last night, I think. Jade, to be honest, it’s probably a good thing. It could be his way of dealing with it. Getting it out of his system. Painting can be very cathartic.’
She frowned. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes, and I should know. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’
Jade wondered if he meant painting as a catharsis or just painting. She couldn’t imagine Finn needing to paint to get something out of his system. He always seemed so comfortable with himself. He was one of the few men she’d met who exuded calm. She glanced at him, dying to ask what he meant, but not sure if this would be misconstrued as prying.
He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking and went on in a voice that was lighter. ‘Ben’s going to be really good one day. Look how he’s used different blues for the tears in the dog’s eyes, and the tears on the ground, and another shade for the sky. Most kids would use the same colour. Blue’s blue, but he hasn’t done that.’ As he spoke, he pointed to the various bits of the picture, his grey eyes lit with enthusiasm.
Jade stared at him, realising that in the last few careless sentences he’d told her more about himself than he had since he’d been here. She’d never seen him look so animated.
They were standing so close their arms were touching and suddenly she was very aware of him. The fresh outdoor scent of him, his hands smoothing out the painting on the desk. She hadn’t noticed his hands before. Strong hands, with long fingers, which were grubby at the moment from whatever he’d been doing outside. She felt breathless. Involuntarily, she stepped away from him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this. What was she feeling, anyway? Attraction? Lust? Yes, definitely both of those. She felt as though she could rip all her clothes off, and his, and make love to him, right here on the wooden floor.
Shocked at herself, she tried to concentrate on what Finn was saying.
‘He should be taught. Properly, I mean. He has a natural talent that should be developed.’ He glanced at her and she felt heat in her face, but Finn didn’t seem to notice. He was too caught up in enthusiasm for Ben’s painting. ‘Do you think his mum would mind if I taught him properly? In my spare time, I mean. I don’t want to affect his schoolwork or anything.’
‘I don’t suppose she’d mind at all. I’ll ask her when I speak to her later.’ To Jade’s surprise, her voice came out quite normally. ‘Thanks – I – er – just need to get something from the house.’
Outside, she took deep gulps of fresh air and wished her heart would slow down a bit. Fancying Finn McTaggart was a bad idea. A very bad idea. He’d not said anything about getting himself another job, but they’d agreed this was a temporary arrangement for both of them. It was only a matter of time.
Besides, he was too much of a free spirit to stay in one place for long. When she’d first met him, she’d thought him self-contained to the point of coolness. But every now and then it was as though he allowed his guard to drop and she saw great chinks of warmth in him. When he’d been talking about Ben’s painting, there had been real passion in those grey eyes of his.
‘Hi, Jade.’ Dawn was just getting out of her car in the yard. ‘What’s the matter? You look all hot and bothered.’
‘I’ve just been talking to Finn about Ben’s painting. He’s got hidden talents.’ She hadn’t meant to say that at all. She’d meant to say, ‘Finn’s said Ben’s got hidden talents,’ but somehow it had come out wrong.
‘I wouldn’t say they’re that hidden,’ Dawn said, grinning. ‘If I were twenty years younger, I’d be making a play for him myself.’ She arched her eyebrows, gave her blonde perm a little pat and glanced through the reception windows to where Finn was still standing by the desk. ‘What’s he been doing to you in there?’
‘Nothing,’ Jade said, escaping to the cottage before she could dig herself in any deeper.