Anything but Vanilla(45)

And finally he smiled. ‘The beauty sleep didn’t work, then?’

She looked at him. He was dressed for the part in a pair of immaculate and expensively cut tennis shorts and with a white polo shirt, every stitch firmly in place, clinging to his wide shoulders, but while the shadows, like bruises, that had lain beneath his eyes were gone, no one could call him beautiful. The underlying structure was good, high cheekbones, a firm jaw, but the nose had taken some knocks and in the bright sunlight she could see a series of fine raised scars on the side of his face, suggesting the lash of sharp, toxic leaves, that marred his cheek.

She wanted to run her fingers over them, smooth them away...

‘I’m sure the photographer will give you a Photoshop glow if you ask him nicely,’ she said, curling her fingers tightly into her palms as he turned to watch the girls giggling and putting on a show for the photographer.

‘Thanks, but it would take a lot more than that to get me into your chorus line.’

‘How much more?’ The words were out of her mouth before she had the sense to close it.

He didn’t look at her, but one corner of his mouth lifted in a lazy smile. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ he said, and her heart bounced like a tennis ball being tested by a champion about to serve for the match.

‘Don’t worry about it....’ The ‘don’t’ got stuck in her throat and the rest of the sentence never quite made it. She cleared her throat. ‘An insect,’ she said, flapping her hand as if to waft it away. His smile deepened. ‘The thing about a chorus line is uniformity,’ she struggled on. Everything about Alexander West was bigger, more dangerous than the students who hadn’t quite made the leap from youth to manhood. ‘You’d just make it look untidy.’

Worse, his maturity, his broad shoulders and muscular thighs, calves developed from walking miles in difficult terrain, would make them look ordinary. Not that she had seen how great his legs were when her heart had leapt. All it had taken to send it leaping about was the sound of his voice.

‘I was going to get my hair cut, but I thought this was more urgent.’

He’d remembered what she’d said? Without thinking she put her hand on his arm. ‘You’ll do.’

‘Will I?’ And finally, he turned those hot blue eyes on her and she snatched back her hand as if burned before, not knowing what to do with it, she self-consciously tucked back the untameable curl. What was it about this man that made her act like a teenager? She hadn’t done that since she was seventeen...

‘Just this once. Hair above the collar next time,’ she said, going for teasing, but not quite making it. ‘I’m guessing, since you’ve come dressed for the part,’ she said, giving him a casual once-over, just for the pleasure of looking at his legs, ‘that you’ve been to the ice-cream parlour.’

‘I called in for the books. I was going to put together the accounts.’

‘And you got sandbagged by Basil and Lally?’ So he was here out of guilt. But he was here... ‘How are they doing?’

‘Fine, although your grandmother seemed disappointed that I wasn’t wearing beads.’

She smothered a groan, wondering what exactly her grandmother had said to him, thinking how good it would feel to hide her face in his chest, breathe him in, let his hand slide from her shoulder to her back. Well aware just how bad a move that would be.

‘I’m sorry about that. She tends to say the first thing that comes into her head.’

‘Someone must have put the thought there.’ Thank you, Graeme... ‘You have her smile.’

‘Yes.’ It used to get her grandmother into trouble, too... ‘I mentioned that you were a friend of Ria’s. It’s that New Age thing.’

Floaty, hand-dyed clothes, lots of exotic jewellery.

‘It’s okay. I got it. Have you heard from her?’

‘Ria?’ She shook her head. Why on earth would Ria call her when she could call him? ‘I did find a postcard she sent me from Wales. It had a story on it. The legend of Myddfai.’

He grinned.

‘I’m not pronouncing that right, am I?’

‘Not even close. It’s muth as in mother, vi as in violet.’

‘Oka-a-ay...’ Like she could ever have guessed. ‘Would she go there, do you think?’

‘Why? Are you planning to go and look for her?’ he asked, not answering her question.