Hate to Love You(85)
“I’m sorry, James. You probably have plans with the beautiful Vanessa and need to get back.”
Damn, I sounded jealous. Gently, James tilted my chin up and brushed his lips against mine. “She’s my cousin,” he said.
He scooted forward and scooped me up in his arms, lifting me effortlessly. “You need to sleep.”
Up the narrow stairs we went, pausing at the top.
“Where?” he said.
“Last door on the right.”
James side-stepped us through the door and set me down on my old bed. Off came my shoes before he tucked me under the duvet. I wanted to tease him and ask if this was what he did with Ryan but my mouth refused to form the words.
He kissed my throbbing forehead, a gentle, lingering touch that sent a pleasantly warm buzz through my body and numbed my headache.
“Sleep, baby, I’m staying the night,” he said, and my mind obeyed his firm command.
I had grown up wired to the sound of my parents’ front door and when it shut softly at dawn, my eyes automatically popped open. I knew instantly where I was and that I was alone. The sound of a car door shutting and an engine purring into action made me jump to my window. I watched James’s Porsche until he indicated left and drove out of view. Then I stared into the street, bemused and hungry.
Stomach first, picking apart James’s surprise visit second. I went to the kitchen and found a home-cooked macaroni and cheese and a note in James’s straight-forward hand.
I grinned and took my plate to the sofa. Swanky kitchen or not, I wasn’t going to eat there. I hoped crying my eyes out constituted a “profoundly deep and meaningful foray into the past” because I was getting the hell out of my parent’s house as soon as I showered and never revisiting them again.
Other than a slight rumple of the cushions there was no sign James had stayed the night. Little waves of pleasure worked their way around my body, zinging me with a sort of silly happiness I’d never felt before.
I wasn’t supposed to feel delighted James had stayed with me but my heart didn’t care. It accelerated and expanded without a thought for my guilty conscience. But at least there was something I could do for James that showed how much his visit had meant to me.
Chapter Nineteen
Flamenco Meets Disco Porn
I went back to work on Tuesday and presented James with the gift I’d bought for him in Brighton. He looked at it as if I’d handed him a half kilo of greasy chip paper.
I had made Tarzan traipse around Brighton’s vintage bookshops searching for Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha until we finally found a flawless copy. I wanted James’s Quijote to chase those windmills without tripping over creases in the page. The book cost me fifty-five quid but I wasn’t annoyed because of the price.#p#分页标题#e#
James’s shoulder had frozen over again and I didn’t know why. And he wasn’t the only one acting strangely towards me. Conversations hushed and people looked away when I approached. The atmosphere in Flintfire was so dense you could scoop it up with a spoon and fling it, and I was getting pelted with dark looks and curt responses. I was used to being stared at and talked about but this felt different.
Word had got out my parents had died and a few people pretended to care so they could talk to me and pass on what I said. Perhaps I should have forced myself to read their eyes or asked Velma what was going on, but therein lies the road to paranoia. If I probed everyone who looks at me sideways I’d end up never leaving the house. Besides, James’s mind was the only one that mattered and he was avoiding eye contact.
Had I dreamed his visit to Brighton?
I thought he had held me in his arms, kissed me and called me “baby.” That must have been a different person because the man double-checking my travel arrangements for Valencia had a pole stuck up his arse again.
Oh for fudge’s sake! Why couldn’t I just ask him what his problem was like the feisty heroine in my current romance novel?