StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (27 page)

I was saved from further mental circles by my phone ringing. It was Angel, asking if we could meet her and Harvey in the car park. They were ready to go home.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” I asked Rachel, who shrugged.

“Like I have a huge amount of choice. I always kinda knew he’d meet someone eventually. He told me about her a while ago. Said he wanted to marry her. I guess I’m lucky, she could be really awful.”

“Well, she’s not.”

“I know. Is she seriously always so nice though?”

“Yep.”

“Scary.”

“Yep.”

The car park was the brightest place around, and the only people in it were Angel and Harvey, kissing against the door of his car. I coughed loudly, Norma Jean yipped excitedly, and they sprang apart.

“Sorry,” Harvey said, although he didn’t look it.

“I changed my mind,” Rachel said. “Can I stay here with you? Unresolved sexual tension has to be better than listening to these two going at it like bunnies all night.”

I’m not the only one who blushed.

“Get in the car,” Harvey said, and Rachel did, saying a reluctant goodbye to Norma, who appeared to be her new best friend.

Angel suddenly threw her arms around me. “I’m mad at you for not warning me about this,” she told me, “but at least you made me put mascara on.”

I laughed. “Am I forgiven?”

“So totally forgiven. You’re a sneaky cow, but I love you for it.”

My friends say the nicest things.

Harvey hugged me too. “Thanks, Sophie,” he said.

“Well, someone had to get you two talking.”

“How long had you been planning this?”

“Since I called you yesterday.”

“Did she help you find anything out?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe how juicy this is.”

“You can tell me later.”

I tapped the side of my nose. “If I’m allowed.”

“Just who are you working for?”

“Can’t tell you.”

Angel was hugging her arms and stamping her feet. “Sophie, sweetheart, I’d love to stand out here talking but I think I’m going to die of cold. Can we go, honey?” she asked Harvey, who instantly opened the door for her and turned up the heating.

“You’re going to have her in cotton wool by the time you get home, aren’t you?” I laughed, and Harvey shrugged sheepishly.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be a father again.”

“Well, believe it. And for God’s sake, don’t leave Rachel out of this. She’s a good kid.”

“Yeah, she is.” Harvey took my hand. “Thanks for doing all this.”

“Well, you two should be together.” I was slightly embarrassed now. “I wanted to help.”

“And you did,” Angel said from inside the car. “Now why can’t you do this with your own love life?”

“Because I don’t have one.”

“The hell you don’t,” Rachel piped up from the back of the car.

“Quiet, you, or we won’t be going out for dinner,” Harvey said.

“We’re going out for dinner?”

He winced. “There goes that surprise. She’s right, you know. You and Luke have to sort this out. Matchmaker Sophie needs her own match.”

“Yes, Golde, darling.”

One last hug, lots more thanks, and the car moved away, and I was left standing there on my own, Norma looking bored and sniffing around my feet.

Why couldn’t I do that for myself?

I sat down on one of the logs that bordered the car park and got out the recordings Rachel had made. A burble of chatter filled my ears, but I didn’t really hear any of it. Norma Jean had wandered off to sniff out some bunnies in the woods, but I wasn’t looking for her.

I was thinking.

So I find this guy, this impossibly sexy, sweet, clever, funny guy, who makes me laugh and holds me when I’m sad, who does endearingly filthy things to me in bed, who cried when he thought I was dead.

I find this guy, and I let him go, because of a
job
?

The cold was stinging my face, and my gloveless hands, wrapped in the ends of my scarf, were starting to go numb. I said goodbye to Luke, because I thought my job was more important. And then because his job—which he might not even have yet—is more important.

I thought about when I met Luke, properly, and he told me all about SO17 and asked me to join. It was a running joke between us all that Luke had only hired me because he wanted to shag me.

I thought about my first big takedown, when I’d been impossibly scared and I thought I’d get Maria and Macbeth both killed. And Luke kissed me and said he was proud of me.

I thought about when Tammy got run over, and Luke rushed me up to the vet with her, offered to help me with the bill, came to see her when she recovered.

I thought about when someone smashed his head into a concrete wall, breaking his skull, and I thought for sure he was dead for several days, until I came home and found he’d been asking for me since he woke up in hospital. I thought about the tears I’d cried over this man, this man who woke in the middle of the night and stole a boat to come and rescue me from the sea, who booked an expensive holiday to follow up a lead on a case neither of us had any obligation to, who kissed me sweetly and looked at me with eyes that were so hurt I wanted to cry.

I thought, I always knew I was a bitch, but not that much of a bitch.

My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my bag with numb fingers.

“Sophie? Where are you? It’s seven o’clock.”

I looked at my watch. How long had I been out here? The recording had ended and my ears were full of white noise. I’d heard nothing. Norma Jean was asleep by my feet, her fur full of pine needles.

“I was listening to the tape,” I said.

“For two hours?”

“Apparently.”

“Are you coming home? I got pizza.”

I swallowed hard, and made my decision.

“I’m coming home.”

It seemed to take forever to get there, and I was half running; Norma Jean had woken from her soporific state, running alongside me happily. Sometimes I wished I was a dog—everything makes you happy, whether it’s a bowl of tripe or a walk in the rain or a manky bone or just someone saying hello to you. No worries. No sexual politics. Just total adoration of the people near you and no obligation to do or be anything at all.

By the time I reached the villa I had it all planned out. I let myself in, unsaddled Norma Jean and towelled her off. I took off my boots and tights, washed my hands in the little cloakroom off the lobby, then took a deep breath and walked into the living room.

Luke was watching football and he only glanced up at me as I started taking off my outdoor things. Hat, scarf, coat, in a heap on the floor. Luke didn’t look at me, he knows how messy I am.

Then I took off my top.

Then
he looked up.

“Two things,” I said. “I’m totally cured of the blood poisoning.”

He frowned warily. “So you said.”

“I’m totally healthy. It’s perfectly safe for me to have sex with anyone I like. You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”

And please God, let him try.

Luke was looking at me steadily. I was glad my bra was pretty.

“Why did you tell me it wasn’t safe?”

“So you wouldn’t want to have sex with me.”

Luke sighed and dropped his head back on the sofa. He muted the TV and the silence was suddenly very loud.

“At the risk of sounding like a horny teenager,” he said, “
why
don’t you want to have sex with me?”

I unzipped my skirt and pushed it to the ground, stepping forward away from the pile of clothes.

“This brings me to point two,” I said, trying to breathe in, hoping my legs weren’t too pink from the cold and that I didn’t have a horrifically unsexy pantyhose mark at my waist. I saw Luke’s pupils dilate a little, which I took to mean that I didn’t. Good.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

Despite the pupil thing, Luke looked like he fully agreed.

“You know when you say something a lot, and after a while you just stop thinking about it and say it, and then you can’t really remember why you started saying it in the first place?”

Luke stared. “Sophie? What are you talking about?”

I took a deep breath and walked forward quickly before I lost my nerve. I kissed Luke, as hard as I ever had before, kissed him with longing and passion and desire and quite a good dollop of desperation, too, given that I was kissing him in my underwear and hadn’t done that for month upon month.

And Luke pushed me away.

“What are you doing?”

Miserably, I straightened up, feeling hot shame and embarrassment flush through me. “Trying to seduce you,” I mumbled, through lips that still tasted of Luke, “and apparently failing.”

Luke looked at me for long enough to make me feel like a total idiot, filling up those bits that hadn’t felt stupid enough already. I turned to go up the stairs, towards some clothes and away from him, but Luke was on his feet and grabbed my arm before I even saw him move.

“Why are you trying to seduce me?”

Well, duh.

“Because I want to sleep with you.”

“But you didn’t before.”

“No.” My honesty almost made me laugh. “I wanted to, but I didn’t think I should.”

“And now?”

Now I want to ravish you until you beg for mercy
.

I chewed my lip to stop from reaching out and chewing his. “Now I don’t give a fuck about ‘should’.”

Luke’s fingers squeezed my arm. “If you back out again, so help me I’ll damn well shoot you.”

Relief washed over me. “No backing out. I need this,” I said, and the note of desperation in my voice made Luke smile. “I’m sorry about before. I was stupid. I’ll—” I stepped a little closer, “I’ll do anything to make it up.”

I looked up at him, making my eyes wide, and Luke slowly smiled. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“You could start by taking your bra off.”

I don’t know why people say apologies are hard.

Chapter Fifteen

Once upon a time, a man called Luke Sharpe kissed me in front of half of Stansted Airport, and I knew right there and then I had to have more of him or I’d die. It took a while but I had him eventually and figured I’d be sated for a while.

But then, everyone says that about their first hit, right?

Even when I’m exhausted, I want more. He’s just delicious. He makes my blood hot and my skin tingle. There are no words to say how damn good he is in bed.

“I missed you,” I mumbled sleepily to him, and Luke smiled and stroked back my hair.

“I was never very far away.”

“Too far,” I said, snuggling closer. It wasn’t just the sex I’d missed, it was being close to him. I adore being held in his arms, lying next to him, feeling his chest rise and fall as he breathes.

“Sophie,” Luke said, and from his tone I knew nothing good was going to follow.

“What?”

“I have to know. Why did you sleep with Docherty?”

He sounded so worried. I shrugged in his embrace. “I was depressed and he was there. Thought he might take my mind off breaking up with you.”

Luke’s fingers were tight against my skin.

“Did it?”

“No.” I turned my head and kissed his jaw. “Nothing did.”

“Even hospitalisation for blood poisoning?”

“Surprisingly, even that failed to cheer me up.”

He squeezed me tight for a sec, his actions betraying his offhand tone. “But surely it was distracting?”

“Like a hole in the head.”

He relaxed his grip and sat up, leaving me lying there in a tangle of warm sheets.

“Where are you going?”

He grinned and chucked me under the chin. “I’ll be right back.”

I watched him take that fine arse down the stairs, where he apologised to Norma Jean for corrupting her, which made me laugh.

When he came back up he had a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

I raised my eyebrows, and Luke looked a little sheepish.

“I was sort of going to try seducing you anyway,” he explained.

“With champagne?”

A little half grin that made my skin get hot. “With champagne, with chocolates, with candles, with a bloody striptease if I thought it’d get me anywhere.”

I laughed, picturing it. “Really?”

“Really. I’ve been having fantasies about you and that Jacuzzi in there.” He held out a hand to pull me to my feet, and pressed the icy champagne bottle against my breast.

“Ow! Oh, you
bugger
…”

Luke grinned and towed me into the bathroom, where the big round spa bath was filling up with bubbles. He popped open the champagne, prompting a round of predictably smutty comments from me (it’s a form of Tourettes, I’m sure), and handed me a glass.

“If,” he said suddenly, holding said glass away from my reach, “if this is not going to just be about tonight.”

“It’s not.”

“This is going to last longer.”

I thought about that for a brief second. Was this it? The Big Thing?

I looked at Luke and just wasn’t afraid any more.

“Whatever you want,” I said, and meant it.

It was when I turned to inspect the bubble controls that Luke suddenly grabbed hold of me and yanked me upright.

“Ow,” I said, pointedly. “What was that for?”

“What the hell happened to your back?”

He turned my head so I could see over my shoulder into the mirror. Jesus. My back looked like an Impressionist painting.

“That,” Luke said, “was not there before.”

Indeed it was not. I reached round and touched the big purple bruise that ran from shoulder to thigh. It felt more tender than before. “I guess the massage must have brought it out.”

“Bloody hell. Does it hurt?”

I shrugged. Then I winced, and Luke kissed my neck.

“Poor baby.”

“I guess that means no more lying on my back.”

Luke looked horrified. I laughed.

“Where’s your imagination?”

Wherever it had been, we found it in the Jacuzzi. I am not going to tell you what Luke managed to pull off in the bubbly water, but man, it was good.

“So,” Luke said later—much, much later—“what was on that tape?”

“Muh?”

He laughed. “Tape. Little flat thing with spindly holes?”

“Meh.”

“Makes noise. Like people trapped in a box.”