No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

was like a girl in a Klimt painting, the rich colours of the scarf in all its sumptuousness surely something you would want to gaze at forever but no, you barely noticed them, because all your attention was captured by the beautiful face, the shining green eyes, the glowing skin…

He winced at himself.

But she met his eyes in the mirror and smiled.

They sat together on the sofa that night, and Kirsty put her head on his shoulder and told him it had been the best birthday ever.

‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it,’ he said. And after a while: ‘I know you’ve had some really awful things happen to you, and no, I’m not going to ask you to talk about them. I know you don’t want to. But – you have the rest of your life ahead of you, you know? I reckon it’s going to be pretty good.’

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and he cursed himself again for an insensitive idiot. Saying he knew she didn’t want to talk about it was bringing it all back for her, wasn’t it? She was probably thinking about it now. But then: ‘I reckon maybe it is,’ she said.

That night, Bram woke in the dark to a waft of air and an expanding triangle of light moving across the floorboards from the opening door. A figure flitted into the room and over to the bed, and then the mattress sank slightly as she slipped under the covers. There was a soft drift of hair across his face; a warm body against his.

‘Hello,’ she said.

His heart was pounding so hard he was sure she would feel it knocking against her.

He felt her fingers, exploring his face, trailing across his lips, and he reached up and touched the fall of her hair, slippery as silk. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she answered him at once. ‘I love you.’

I love you I love you I love you. The words seemed to chase themselves around in his head so he could hardly make sense of them, he could hardly comprehend what she was saying.

‘Do you?’ he said, stupidly.

‘Of course.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.

Of course?!

He ran his fingers through her hair, pushing it back over her shoulder. ‘And I love you,’ he said. ‘But neither of those things means that you have to do this.’

‘I know. I want to. I’m sure, Bram. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want to be with you.’ She touched his lips again, as if to silence any objection. ‘In every way there is. It’s like you’re already a part of me. An indivisible part.’

How many times had he fantasised about this moment? But the reality – it was almost more than one human being could handle. There was the intense physical pleasure of what they were doing, the release of all the sexual tension that had been building up over the weeks and months, but this was magnified and at the same time dwarfed by the overwhelming, dizzying, unimaginable joy of what was now possible between them. Now they could have what no mere friends could have, the closeness that came with, but was so much more than, a physical relationship.

It was as if they had been sitting companionably together in a nice, warm, dark cave through a long winter, but now summer had come, and she was taking his hand and pulling him to his feet, and they were running together into the light.

14

The Inverluie Hotel bar was just as bad as Bram remembered, but Max was looking about him as if they’d just stepped into the Ritz. He’d jumped on David’s suggestion that the two of them go to the Inverluie ‘for a bit of grandad and grandson time’, and Bram and Kirsty hadn’t had the heart to say no.

‘Don’t get him drunk, Dad,’ Kirsty had said sternly as they’d left.

David had waved a hand at her as they’d jogged down the verandah steps to Max’s car. David was leaving his own car at Woodside and they’d leave Max’s overnight at the hotel and get a taxi to drop them at their respective homes afterwards.

As Max’s red VW Polo disappeared off down the track, Kirsty grabbed Bram’s arm. ‘I’m not happy about this. I’m not happy about the way Max has latched onto Dad. If Dad said jump, Max would ask how high? Could you go with them? Make sure nothing happens?’

So Bram followed them in the Discovery. He soon caught up with them on the single-track public road that wended its way through the trees. Max was a cautious newly qualified driver, thank God. But as Bram hung back to give him plenty space, the Polo accelerated and began to pull away.

Bram could just imagine David in the passenger seat, telling Max to put his foot down. Max’s innate caution obviously won out, though, and when they hit the A road he slowed back down. Bram had caught up with them in the car park at the Inverluie.

Now, walking up to the bar with the blank TV screen looming over it, trying to summon a friendly smile for Willie, who was looking at them as if to say What the hell would you want to come here for?, Bram had a horrible feeling of déjà vu, as if he was fated to repeat this moment over and over again. And yes, there was the staring family at the nearest table, still watching the dead TV.

‘Hello, Willie!’ Bram put a hand on Max’s shoulder. ‘You met my son, Max, at the – um – at the party, didn’t you? And you know my father-in-law, David?’

Willie tipped his chin at them and swiped at the bar with a dirty cloth. ‘What a party that was.’

Bram could feel himself colouring. He was sure the starers were now staring at his back. Along with everyone else in the bar. ‘Yes, sorry about the… the rather abrupt finish. I lost it,