Chapter 12
Alistair
Do not think of her in your shower.
Of course, the moment I heard the squeal of pipes through the wall, it was all I could picture.
I stood. Paced her worn little rug. My hand squeezed around my phone, the metal biting.
Don’t think of her in your shower and you can jerk off later.
I almost laughed because I couldn’t even safely do that when, I knew with absolute certainty, I’d come to the thought of her face.
That felt wrong. Crossing an invisible line.
Fuck. I dragged a hand across my mouth.
That threadbare T-shirt was currently a crumpled mess on my floor.
Her blonde hair darkening with water, sticking to her shoulders, her curved body growing hot and pink beneath my shower spray.
Would she use my shower gel? My shampoo?
Wash away that sugar-syrup scent that hit me square between the eyeballs every time I got within touching distance?
Of course she would. All she’d carried with her was a towel and clean clothes. When she returned, she’d smell like me. My pulse thundered at the prospect.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if that would make my recent . . . attraction better or worse. It was like owning a pet gremlin: just when I thought I had it under control, it got wet and the bloody thing multiplied.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” I hissed to myself.
I shouldn’t have held her hand. Definitely shouldn’t have kissed her. Shouldn’t have volunteered to spend more time with her at all. This was pointless. A distraction I didn’t want.
Needing something to do, I closed the connecting door with a firm click, like I could shut my temptation away on the other side of it.
There, this thin scrap of wood and plasterboard should help.
Now what? Memorise her bookshelves? Roll around in her bedsheets? Steal a lock of hair to add to a shrine while “Creep” by Radiohead blasted? Might as well let the gremlins have some fun now that they were out to play.
“Why are you in my house?” Teddy’s groggy voice cut any thoughts of theft off at the knees.
In rumpled pyjamas, bunny hanging precariously from her fingertips, her pointed stare could give Gollum a run for his money. “How long have you been standing there?”
“I heard you call yourself a fucking idiot.” Excellent. She said it without inflection too, as though this was how she began every Saturday morning, with her strange neighbour in her home, ranting at himself like a madman.
I rolled my tongue over my teeth. “Maybe we keep that between us, yeah?”
“Okay.” She didn’t move.
I pointed over my shoulder to the door. “Your mum is using my shower; she’ll be back in a few minutes.” She nodded. We continued to stare at each other. I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Was she waiting for me to dismiss her? “Don’t you want to play with your toys or something?”
“I just woke up.”
So . . . no?
Didn’t kids usually want to play with their toys all the time? What the hell did I know?
“What would your mum do if she was here?”
“Hug me and ask if I slept well.” Oh good, I was getting the full list. “Then she’d brush my hair because it gets tangled at night.” She pointed to what did look like a very ratty braid. “After that she’d make me breakfast.”
“Let’s start there. What do you eat?” I moved into the messy kitchen, swiped the mess from Isla’s baking into my hand, then dumped it into the bin. Teddy turned on the spot, tracking me like a well-trained hunter.
“I don’t know. Whatever Mummy makes for me.”
I opened cupboards at random, finding nearly all of them empty except a jar of instant coffee I snagged for myself.
“Which is? Toast, cereal, fruit? Give me something, kid.” Christ, I was bad at this.
Now I realised why Heather never asked me to watch the twins.
The ten minutes I spent with my child patients was not the same thing. At all.
“Cereal.”
“Excellent.” That I could work with. Grabbing the half-full box Isla had been eating from, I ignored the sugar content listed on the side of the box and poured a bowlful, adding the last of the milk from the fridge.
“Come get it.” I set it on the table, then I flipped the kettle on, busying myself with scrubbing the flour from the kitchen counter while the water boiled.
Over my shoulder, I saw the offer had finally released the constraints on Teddy’s limbs.
She set her bunny on the table, dragged the chair out and climbed up to the table, slurping a mound of chocolate hoops into her mouth.
I made my coffee while pretending not to notice that the spoon I’d given her was far too big.
Mug in hand, I took the seat across from her. “Your cupboards are pretty bare. Where’s the rest of your food?”
Her tiny shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
She stopped eating, considering like I’d asked her a real question and not made some shitty sarcastic remark I’d known would go straight over her head.
“I learned about space at summer camp.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me.”
She slurped another mouthful, chocolatey milk staining the side of her mouth.
“On Mars, the sunsets are blue instead of orange. That’s why I’m colouring them in blue.
” She pointed to an open colouring book.
I barely even glanced at the neatly coloured-in stars and planets, instead zeroing in on the stack of bills in the middle of the table.
“Very cool,” I said, leafing through them without picking up the pile.
Gas and electric, car insurance, phone bill.
Each one was stamped with a red “Final notice”.
Fuck. The truth of Isla’s situation sank heavily in my gut.
No wonder she was so desperate to win the Cairn & Crust. “How about this one: if you could fly an aeroplane into space, it would take over three years to reach Saturn.”
Her eyes bugged wide, and the now-soggy loops slipped from the spoon with a splat. “Three years? I wouldn’t get there until I was ten!”
“Wild, huh?” Despite the ugly feeling beginning to snake through my bloodstream, I couldn’t resist smiling as her face lit up.
Kids were way too fucking easy to impress.
“How old would you be when you got there, Ali?”
“Yeah, Ali. How old would you be?” The husky voice came from behind me.
Isla. Nudging the stack of bills aside with my elbow, I turned slowly in my seat. A show of casual disinterest.
She wore a floaty pink skirt, so bright it should have been illegal. A T-shirt that was ever-so-slightly cropped. Enough jewellery to set off a metal detector. Her hair was wet and braided. Skin bare and freckled.
Three things happened in quick succession, like they did every time I spent more than five minutes with her. Heat prickled down my spine. My stomach lurched. And I reminded myself that I wasn’t a good-enough man to care about this woman and her problems.
Isla clapped her hands together, turning her attention to Teddy. “Right, sunshine, time to get dressed. Daddy isn’t collecting you until this afternoon, so how about we play a game at the food market this morning? Whoever sells the most pastries gets ice cream?”
Teddy’s mouth twisted. Considering. “Is Ali playing?”
She included me so quickly.
A strange feeling curled in my chest. I pushed the chair, unable to say anything but, “Of course.”