‘Make love to me now,' she said. Take away the picture I have in my head.
‘Er … okay,' said Matthew, as Jo unleashed her breasts, but in the end, it was only her he satisfied. There was a picture in his own head that just kept getting in the way.
Stevie watched Adam's lips work on the soft skin on the inside of her arm and suddenly felt a greater sting inside her than the now-dead creature had given her. She gently pulled her arm away.
‘I think that might have done it,' she said stiffly, to over-compensate for the swirly, heady feelings that were taking over her brain. Obviously the effects of insect poison. ‘Thank you.'
‘Poor wee thing,' said Adam.
‘Sorry, wasp,' said Stevie.
‘It's a bee,' Adam corrected her. ‘Wasps just keep on stinging, but alas, when a bee does it, it gives its all.'
Stevie felt ridiculously and inexplicably tearful.
‘I didn't even feel him on my arm or I would have knocked him away.'
‘Her,' said Adam. ‘The drones don't have stings. They're only made to mate. It's the women that dae aw the damage.'
‘Bee expert are you now?' said Stevie, the snap in her voice masking the wobble in her legs.
‘My granda' used to keep bees. We lived on honey pieces – bread and honey – when we were wee. He knew everything there was to know aboot bees.'
‘Is there that much to know?' said Stevie.
‘You'd be surprised. I could wax lyrical, or should that be "beeswax" lyrical on the subject – they're marvellous wee creatures. For instance, did you know honeybees dance to tell aw the others where the nectar and pollen is? It's called a waggle dance. And that bumble bees come oot earliest in the year because they're basically wearing fur coats. And did you know that the bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man? Unless you're partial to ant spittle, that is.'
Stevie smiled. Bees with fur coats on, bees dancing. Danny would have been fascinated by all that.
‘I'll go in and get a plaster,' she said, suddenly uncomfortable in the silence that hung warm and heady between them, thick and sweet as the honey in their conversation. She retreated inside.
Adam looked across at Matthew's house. The light had just gone on upstairs and Jo was holding the curtains. She looked down at him, glared, and tugged them shut. Yes, it was the women that did aw the damage.
Chapter 45
Jo had a headache the next day and phoned in sick. Although she put it a little more dramatically than that, Matthew noticed as he eavesdropped over the upstairs balcony. She seemed to sob a little and say she couldn't get in and would explain later. Matthew volunteered to stay off and keep her company but she said she just wanted to sleep it off. For once, he didn't try to change her mind and went out to the car alone. The sight of Adam MacLean's fancy car across the lane greeted him once again, and though he wasn't a violent man, he wanted to rush across to it and smash into it with a sledgehammer.
Later at work, Adam was trying to catch up on some paperwork in his office but his head was all over the place. He thought of little Danny's face lighting up every time he saw him. He thought of his own heart warming up every time he saw little Danny. Then he thought of little Danny's mother and he didn't know what the hell happened to him when he saw her. She was quite the most infuriating woman he had ever met, the antithesis to everything that had ever attracted him in a woman. She was nothing like Jo or Diane, or the others before them, in their tall, slender, cold, dark-haired moulds.
There was a confident knock on his door, and he yelled out his customary, ‘Come awn in.'
It wasn't a member of staff wanting help or keys or a word. It was a woman looking tall and slender, cold and beautiful in a powder-blue suit with long, swishy dark hair and eyes the colour of molasses.
‘Hello, Adam,' said the smiling red lips of the last person in the world he expected to see.
Stevie pulled into the gym car park next to a red Golf. Jo had a red Golf, although it was hardly likely to be her car, thank goodness. At least in the gym Stevie was spared the sight of her destructive beauty, daring her to confront Jo with what she had done. Stevie had once purposefully confronted Linda and come off worst, and vowed she would never again sacrifice her dignity like that, but if she bumped accidentally into Jo MacLean she couldn't guarantee that her primal instincts wouldn't take over, leading her to launch herself at her rival and punch her treacherous, lying face in. She wanted to hurt her more for what she had done to her son's life than her own. It was just as well it wasn't Jo's car, after all.
She transferred the burst of energy that her sudden fury had triggered off in her by managing to do a fifteen-minute run on the treadmill, her best yet. She had grown to like coming to the gym. The physical exercise of running cleared her head – even if it was on a rubber belt indoors and not in the fresh air and the sunshine. Having such a sedentary job, she needed to get her heart pumping a bit more, although it had been on an emotional treadmill that had made it pump quite enough recently. At least it would all be over soon. One way or another.
Matthew had always been smiling in the old days when they had been together. Now every time Stevie saw him, he looked totally miserable. Crazy, really, when he had everything he set out to get. Jo didn't look much happier, either. She was always scowling, which was warped because Stevie had nothing she wanted. Jo had Matthew and his house and, with a snap of her fingers, she could have had Adam and his big house back. She couldn't imagine that Jo was jealous of her figure and short legs, so if she wasn't happy with the lot she had created for herself, then she could rot in hell as far as Stevie was concerned. Some people just wanted what they couldn't have, until they got it – only to find they didn't want it after all.
She had a quick shower and went back to her car to find that the red Golf had gone, and that someone had scraped their key viciously along her driver's side door.
When Matthew got home, Jo was still in bed. She looked really ill actually, pale and puffy-eyed, from a lot of crying.
‘You need to take tomorrow off work too,' he said, soothing her brow.
‘No, I need to go to work tomorrow more than anything,' she said, shrinking away from his hand. ‘Please, Matthew, just leave me alone.'
And so he did.
‘Guess what? Mum got stinged last night,' said Danny, flinging himself at Adam as he came in through the door.
‘Yes, I know, I was there,' he said, attempting a smile, but he felt so tired, so drained.
‘Come on, Danny, let Adam get in through the door,' said Stevie, pulling him gently away.
‘Honey is bees' poo.'
‘Danny!'
‘That's what Curtis Ryder says. And milk is cows' wee. Mrs Apple Crumble made him sit on the naughty chair today for trumping in storytime.'
‘Mrs Abercrombie did the right thing then, didn't she?'
Despite his far from jolly spirits, Adam let loose a lion's-lungsworth of laughter. It felt so good to laugh, he needed to laugh and it felt even better to be home with a family, even though it wasn't his home or his family. Nevertheless, he was grateful for the welcoming presence of a child and the warm no-nonsense of a woman.
‘I don't know where they get these ideas from,' said Stevie crossly.
‘Well, that Curtis Ryder has things a little wrong there,' said Adam. ‘Bees make honey for food, and they have been doing so for millions and millions of years. They collect pollen as food for their young.'
‘Wow!' said Danny.
‘Chicken nuggets!' Stevie alerted her son to the table. Was it her imagination, or had Adam MacLean given special emphasis to certain words just then? She had only seen the man for five minutes today and already she wanted to slap him.
‘So, any mair news from Midnight Moon?' he casually asked later, whilst checking the television page.
‘No, why would there be?'
‘I have no idea why there would beee.'
Stevie put down her sewing. Danny's collars were getting ruined but there would be hell on if she threw this pyjama top away. It was one she had converted from an ordinary blue top to Dannyman super-pyjamas.
‘Why are you looking at me as if you want me to buzz awf?' asked Adam with an angelic smile.
‘You know, don't you?'
‘Know what?' He looked so much the picture of innocence he should have been hung in the National Gallery. Or was it ‘hanged'? Either sounded good to Stevie.