Chapter 7
Tim
In the car, Tabitha crossed her arms, alternating between being tired and tipsily annoyed at me. I was just about to bring up the show—ask her not to do it—when a shiver shook her body.
“Are you cold?” I turned up the heating. “I have a jersey in the back. Can’t promise it hasn’t got dust and dog hair on it.”
“Oh? You haven’t still got Olly, have you?” Her face softened and she blinked, as if remembering him. “He was a good boy.”
My heart seemed to double in size. She remembered Olly. The three of us had spent two weeks together that summer when we were twenty-five, but I wasn’t sure if she recalled much of it, if at all. “He was a really good boy. No, he died five years ago. This one’s name is Sandy.”
She smiled. “You should bring him over when you’re working. You know Mum and Dad love nothing more than another animal in the house.”
I laughed. Then felt sad. Sandy was being looked after until I got things settled, and I missed him so much.
“Do I have it right?” I asked. “Two dogs, the littlest who greets you in the morning like he’s going to assassinate you but is trying to climb into your lap by the end of the day, a bigger dog with two left legs and wheels on the right, who is the happiest creature I’ve ever met, four mean-girl cats who are like, ‘We’ve got our eyeliner on and are headed to the clubs, so don’t bother us, loser,’ a goat that climbs every tree in the yard, a spitting llama, emotionally very needy chickens, and two pigs that seem both incredibly sensible and popular with the rest of the crew.
” I breathed in after recounting them. “All of whom seem to be allowed into the kitchen.”
She threw back her head, exposing the lovely column of her neck, and a laugh burst from deep inside her.
The sound wasn’t musical or tinkling, nothing delicate like that.
It was guffawing and abandoned and unselfconscious, the real Tabs, and it shot right down inside me.
And unfortunately—inconveniently—somewhere else.
I shifted in my seat, grateful for the near-darkness. Was I attracted to her? No way.
Anyway… Tabs and me? Not going to happen.
“Oh, Tim,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’d forgotten about how you used to make me laugh until I cry.” She sighed. “You counted right. My parents have zero boundaries—they are walking, talking chaos.”
She shivered again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glance over the seat, presumably looking for my jersey. She unclipped her buckle, flung herself over the seat, and grabbed something.
“Whoa,” I said. “I could have stopped.”
She flopped back into her seat, pulled on the jersey wonkily, and clipped back in.
Crossing her arms, she pulled her legs against her chest and rested her chin on her knees, my huge jersey puddling around her. She looked bloody cute.
“I’m mad at you.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “I needed a rebound after the odious Perry, and I had that guy all lined up.”
I snorted. “You didn’t miss much. Under the disguise of too much hair gel, Barbour jacket, and Chelsea boots, he was just a basic rugby fuckboy.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Sounds like someone not a million miles away.”
Her words were off-the-cuff and joking, but they spun uncomfortable shards down my spine. The teasing jibed with her comments and rolled eyes whenever I mentioned anyone female. Even though the assumption was absolutely not true. But for some reason, instead of correcting her, I played along.
“Hey, enough of the slut-shaming,” I scolded her.
“Sorry.” She turned serious. “I am sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t judge like that.”
Another chance to put the record straight—so why didn’t I take it?
“You’ll have plenty of other opportunities,” I assured her. Even though I believed my own words, a disturbing unease coiled inside me at the thought of the opportunities she would have.
She rolled her head back against the seat, seeming a bit low. “Will I, though?”
“What happened with Perry?” I put up a hand. “No. Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“Actually, if it’s okay with you, I do want to hear a man’s perspective. I’m sure it will confirm everything you’ve ever thought about me.”
I nodded. That would only be true if she knew she was way too good for that prat.
“Well.” She took a deep breath. “Perry took up yoga, which was a shock, to say the least, and he started spending an inordinate amount of time at classes. He fobbed me every night this week, and I became very suspicious. I arrived at his house early this morning and found him and his yoga teacher very naked and very, um, entwined.”
I coughed with the shock. “What the hell? I assumed you saw the light and dumped him. Instead…oh God.”
I couldn’t get my head around him choosing someone else over Tabitha.
“Can I tell you something? Be honest with you?” She turned her head to me. I glanced over—her eyes glimmered with the light of many glasses of champagne.
I felt a stab of trepidation. “Tabs, don’t tell me anything you’ll regret tomorrow.”
“Oh, it’s not like it’s a secret. It’s just that… I don’t have much confidence where men are concerned.”
“Why not?” I liked that she was talking to me like this. It felt natural and more like the old us.
She shrugged.
“If it’s because of Perry, the bloke’s a total fucking drop-kick. Turf his opinions from your brain right now. They’re worthless.”
She groaned and squirmed in her seat. “God, how embarrassing. You heard those acerbic comments he made about my weight. And no doubt the corrections and the snickers every time I opened my mouth. I was such a fool to stay with him.”
“I won’t get any points for commenting on that. I’ll just say this—he was not good enough for you. And he was not good for you.” I shook my head furiously, then tried to tone down my anger a little. “What did you even like about him?”
She thought about that for a while then hesitated.
I wondered if she felt it wasn’t the right time to tell me.
“Now I can’t really remember, but we muddled along, I suppose.
I thought he was stable.” She bit the inside of her cheek.
“I just really wanted to find someone and have a family, and we’d all live happily ever after in a pink cottage with a rosebush in the front and a dog running around on the front lawn.
And now, I have to start all over. That must sound very stupid and boring to you. ”
That rankled. “Why? You think I don’t want kids? You think I don’t want to settle down?”
Her mouth went hard like she was gearing up for a different kind of fight, and then she withdrew. “Oh, I have no idea.” She fiddled with her gold purse, seeming to want to get away from the subject. “I made so, so many compromises being with him.”
The way she sucked in her lips signaled her embarrassment. “Like what else?”
“Like…” She rubbed her forehead. “Okay. This is what a fool I was. What I put up with. He didn’t ever, you know…”
“Er, no, I don’t know. He didn’t ever…what?”
She slapped my arm. “You know.”
“Don’t whack the driver. And I genuinely do not know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
I gulped. What the heck was she talking about?
“Even drunk, I can’t say it,” she said. “That’s why he dumped me. Such a prude.”
“Fuck him.” I felt my face tense at Perry’s criticism. “We’re both thirty-two years old. Just use your words, Tabitha.”
She smacked a hand over her face.
“It’s sex, kind of,” she mumbled through her fingers.
“We were brought up in a market town surrounded by farms. Animals mating at every turn. In your case, maybe even in your kitchen.”
“I can’t. If it were just mating, I could talk about it. Maybe.”
“What did your regency romances call it? Not bedsport but…?”
“Bedsport.” She cackled with glee. She used to read those romances out loud to me when we were kids.
I’d never told her it was hard for me to read, but I guessed she’d never seen me with a book in hand.
“Good memory. What did they call it? I can’t remember.
Oh… He pleasured her honeyed recesses with his mouth. ”
Damn. Now she’d put that image in my mind, but it was Tabitha and me. Her hand fisting the sheet as she moaned and squirmed while I made my way down her body, kissing and licking her skin…
Stop.
That Perry was a bloody pillock. How could he have resisted Tabitha? “Why wouldn’t he go down on you?”
“He said it wasn’t for him. I said I understood. But he expected, you know…” She rolled her eyes.
“Oh fuck. What a tosser. I thought I hated that guy enough already.” What kind of selfish fuckwit wouldn’t pleasure his woman but expected her to take care of him?
“So, you do it, right? And you don’t complain?” She took a good, hard look at me, albeit with one eye shut.
I looked over at her, and I wanted to say, “Yes, and if it were you, I’d make sure you’d remember it forever.” Why would I even think that? Just me being my usual competitive self, likely.
We were on a bumpy lane, nearly at her house now.
She was blushing up a storm, but I wasn’t shy talking about sex and being upfront. I shrugged. “Yeah, when there’s chemistry. Of course. I want to. It’s part of the whole thing.”
She sighed, and her mouth went tight as though she was still mad at herself. Then out of the corner of her eye, she slid her gaze down my torso, as though she was seeing me in another light.
I shifted on the seat.
Feeling more flushed than was appropriate, I pulled into her parents’ gravel driveway, which was a roller coaster of an off-road experience, and turned off the engine.
There it was. Her parents’ shambolic, ten-bedroom ivy-clad manor house, built in the 1920s along medieval lines, with other styles randomly thrown in.
It was dark outside, but I could make out the outlines of the overgrown garden in front, a wild pond to the side, and the backdrop of rolling green hills and pastures.
As a builder, driving up every day for the past three months, I felt my heart sink, seeing only the work the house needed.
But as soon as I stepped inside, the intricately carved staircase, stone fireplaces, and oak paneling charmed me again.
We’d been confiding, so this was a good time for me to speak freely, which I’d been waiting to do for two hours.
“Tabitha, we can’t work together on the show. I don’t have to explain how collaborating under the constant scrutiny of the camera and a production team would be a terrible experience for both of us. I really want to do this show. Please, could you call them and say you’ve reconsidered?”
She turned sharply, and I could see her breath on the window.
“No.” She swung around to me defiantly. “Just like you, I want to do the show too. End of story. Get used to the idea.”
“Oh fuck.” I dropped my head into my hands.
She didn’t need the money, so why did she want to do the show?
“I don’t understand—are you signing up to torture me?
Get me back for something? I know we haven’t seen eye to eye through the years, but I’ve had such a bad day—can’t you just let me have this? Please?”
“Not everything’s about you, Tim. I’ve had a bad day too.
” Her annoyance turned into something softer as a drunkenly crooked smile played across her lips.
“But you know what would make my terrible, horrible, no-good day better?” Her face lit up, and it was the first time I’d seen a real spark in her eye during the journey.
I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile back. “What would make your no-good day better? I’m up for it.”
Maybe she wanted to open a packet of our favorite chocolate biscuits—Hobnobs—and enjoy a cup of tea in her parents’ old kitchen. Or maybe I could fry her a bacon butty to soak up all the booze coursing through her veins. And bring up the subject of her dropping out of the TV show again.
What was going on with her fingers?
“How about some hate sex?” she blurted, her eyes as glimmery and wide as ponds.
As if in one motion, she unclicked her seat belt, and a flash of red and a lot of bare skin lunged at me.