Chapter 5 #3
She grabs the little notebook that had absorbed so much of her attention during the meal, crumples up the paper she was working on into a soggy ball and pulls her chair away from the table.
‘Good night.’
She doesn’t end her sentence with “and I hope never to see you again”, but she may as well have. But Scott can’t heed that right now. No decent bloke would leave a woman in that state to find her room in a huge hotel like this.
‘Wait up,’ he shouts, and he pounds up the stairs behind her.
He catches up with her by the second turn on the hotel’s sweeping staircase. He’s a little winded from the climb whilst she appears unphased by the exertion. He wonders what she does for exercise. Running? It would explain her toned body.
‘H - … H- ….’ What is her name? ‘Please stop. Look. I’m sorry.’
She slows down to accommodate his pace and turns to face him. Her dress (silk?) shimmers against her thighs whilst his soaked trousers cling to his legs like limpets.
‘Look. I’m sorry. Okay. I do that sometimes. Go heavy on the statistics.’
The corner of her lip lifts slightly.
‘You don’t say.’
'Can we start again?' he says. 'Please?'
She slows the pace and allows him to walk alongside her for a few more flights of stairs.
Initially they climb in silence, but eventually, she begins to open up, asking about Brianna's course and chatting to him about Georgia and her particular needs. It makes him feel like she trusts him now, enough for him to say what’s really on his mind, at least.
‘So I’m wondering …,’ he ventures, because, where’s the harm in just saying it aloud, ‘… maybe you need to think about what might fill the gap that Georgia leaves behind?’
They arrive on the fourth-floor landing. She pauses and turns to him, her green eyes wide. Her dark hair falls like silk over her right shoulder.
‘What do you mean?’
This feels like a test. He matches his step to hers as she walks along the corridor and comes to a stop at what he can only assume is her bedroom door.
She turns to face him. He glances at her muscular body and her pleasingly symmetrical shape.
Isn’t there some statistic about beauty?
The more symmetrical a face, the more objectively beautiful they are perceived to be?
Statistics even have a place in the laws of attraction. Focus, Scott!
‘The thing is, you’re an attractive, intelligent –‘
Her eyebrow arches.
‘Well, I’m assuming intelligent given you’ve got a daughter going to university ..’
Her cheeks redden slightly. Is she pleased with the complement? Annoyed? It’s impossible to tell.
‘So, what I’m trying to say, is why not get into the dating game? Or get a dog? Something new. Just for yourself?’
It should be an eminently supportive and helpful suggestion. But apparently it’s not. Her eyes flare.
‘Really? You think I should begin dating do you, Mr Reynolds? Is that why you chased me up the stairs? To come on to me? It wasn’t quite enough for you to grope me in our daughter’s kitchen?’
‘Well. No … I …’
Is it wrong to say she’s not his type? But he’d definitely consider it? She is after all, extremely attractive. Statistically speaking, of course.
Suddenly an awareness dawns on him. Is he standing too close?
He can see the rise and fall of her chest, enclosed in the light fabric of her dress, and can feel the heat coming off her body.
If he reached his hand out by just a few centimetres, his fingertips could skim her breast. It’s as though she notices at the same time.
He takes a step into the corridor; she moves so her back is pressed against her bedroom door.
Suddenly the space between them feels vast.
‘Thanks for your suggestions Mr Reynolds, but for your information I’m pretty much done with men.
The last couple I’ve had serious relationships with have either rebounded back to their wives when they couldn’t cope with a gripey baby, or dumped me and my daughter in preference for a more fun-filled Covid bubble.
So I’m not exactly into the dating game as you call it.
You show me a man who doesn’t abandon his woman when the going gets tough, and I’ll show you an illusion. ’
Ouch.
Scott’s thighs freeze as heat from his legs is pulled to evaporate the water soaked into his chinos. Her eyes flit to his thighs and he sees her swallow.
‘And as for your once-in-a-lifetime offer of a one-night stand, well I can see that you’re attractive and affluent and good with people, but I doubt the sex would be quite so mind-blowing as to distract me from the void left by my only daughter leaving home.
It wouldn’t be that impactful. Would it? ’
Is now a good time to point out he wasn’t exactly offering her a one-night stand? Or that it could indeed be extremely impactful, as she puts it? Perhaps not. Heather opens the door, slides through the gap and closes it with a bang, leaving him soaked and rather humiliated in the corridor.
The smell of her perfume, something jasminey and light, lingers in the air.