Unbind (38 page)

I sipped the burgundy syrup and groaned, it was delicious. Cai joined me and smiled in satisfaction.

“Vintage pinot noir, you like?” Jennifer tossed me a vacant, meaning-to-be polite smile.

“Gorgeous,” I exclaimed.

A woman brought out trays of crackers, cheeses, warm ham cut so thin I wanted to suck it off the silver plate it laid on. Comfits and condiments were placed between us, as well as sweetbreads and rolls, jars of pickles and olives. It was like tapas, but bastardized in the most wonderful way—for English tastes.

“Just a few nibbles tonight, dears. Have to save ourselves for tomorrow.” Cai and I looked at one another greedily, waiting for her to go first. She had, after all, organised this whole thing. Which in itself was strange, given Cai was the one who really owned this house. I understood why he didn’t want to run it, but he could sell it, surely?

“Dig in, you young things. I know a starved pair of lovers when I see one.” She sniggered, only minutely. It was all she would allow herself.

We piled our plates and between sipping wine, we tasted and remarked on the flavours, the variety. Oh, but… the freshness and the way in which the food hit just the right note! Throughout the meal I vaguely sensed hints of freshly baked minced pies wafting in from the kitchen and had high hopes for more yet.

Jennifer ate a few pieces of ham, a bit of cheese, but got through the wine in a much more cheerful way than she did the food. Cai noticed she wasn’t eating much too, but shrugged it off when I gave him a look he recognised.

“I didn’t tell you in the car,” I began, a smile burning my cheeks. “I got features.”

Cai reached over the table and squeezed my hand. “That’s great. I’m always proud of you, though.”

Jennifer remained quiet, her face looking at her lap. I wondered whether to broach it. Or not. She was the one who looked up with a sheen of wine-induced lethargy, groggily admitting, “Well, Carl thinks a lot of you. Wouldn’t stop pestering.”

Cai’s gaze fixed on me, an inquisitive expression on his face. I never really took my work home, it was something I was very conscious of because he didn’t bring his home either. Why hadn’t I told him of my burgeoning friendship with Carl? Well, the answer to that was easy—Carl was most certainly a friend and nothing more—but only through my eyes. 

Jennifer looked between us and admitted, “She’s fit right in, Kincaid. Just like you said she would.”

He nodded slowly, still gauging my reactions, my expressions. I had to explain, or rather, smooth it over. His blue eyes never dropped from my face, reading me intently.

“On my first day I told Carl that I was a writer and not an image conscious prop—it seemed to evince respect from him.”

Cai’s gaze sparkled, widened, and he smiled. That smile got me, every time. Made my knees go weak, my heart race and my stomach flutter. In that moment if we didn’t have company, I might have asked him to throw me across the spread and ravish me right there, cheese and ham slices sticking to my bare buttocks as he licked and tasted me, then plunged deep inside my body.

I read his smile and what was behind it: the day we met and the words I used that day. I wasn’t ever going to be something I wasn’t. This was who I was. Take me, or leave me.

“Carl is the perfect colleague, but he’s a flirt,” Jennifer told us, looking down at the table with a tiny smirk.

“Carl respects me and it works. I’m lucky I have that in the workplace.” I added that to the argument, or my defence I guess. Why I felt insecure, or guilty, I wasn’t sure. Maybe because Cai was inexperienced and still struggled with his jealousies. I knew I felt jealous when he was away shooting, thinking of him with half-naked models or dolled up assistants eager to give him a blowjob—a quick, little act that nobody need ever know about—but would most certainly break my heart. Yet as soon as we were together again, after a full day’s work or a trip of his, we’d rekindle all that had brought us together in the first place. We had an indescribable force of attraction that obliterated everything else.

“That’s great,” Jennifer said tiredly, not really interested in me gushing over Carl and a job I hadn’t taken for granted, not for a single day. “Listen you guys, I think I shall head to bed. The wine really hit my head and it’s been a long, long day battling those elements and numerous factors.” Her eyes avoided us both as she stood and shooed the pups from beneath her chair so she could move it. She held her head as she wobbled and I almost reached out to help steady her, I didn’t know about Cai. “I’ve had a lovely evening anyway, so goodnight.”

She was abrupt, but never impolite. I sensed her eagerness to please but be unreadable, too. She was an enigma, like Carl said.

“More for us,” Cai excused her, watching as she walked away slowly, her aged body weary from a long day, possibly a long ride… or something.

After we ate our fill, the servants came to clear up for us, the butler’s bib and tucker making me feel wildly underdressed. I don’t know, it was just a custom I wasn’t used to.

We retired to a drawing room that was styled in a similar fashion and both sat in large, leather wingback chairs pushed close to the roaring, open fire nearby. The manservant popped his head around the door and asked if that was all. Cai nodded, enthusing, “Happy Christmas, Dirk. We got it.”

Cai’s slight gesticulation was a relief for the man in the penguin suit, relieved of his duties. The door shut behind him and I looked at the fire, thinking longingly of my earlier fantasy of having Cai throw me over the table and spread me over the buffet.

“You have that look in your eye,” he warned, so he’d spotted my thoughts.

“What look?” I demanded, my eyes still trained on the large, billowing red flames. He let it go and I reached my feet over so he could massage them on his lap. He removed the fluffy, white socks I wore over my tights and tossed them over to where I’d left my boots on the edge of the rug.

“Did you notice she seemed, ill? Or, I don’t know… out of it?”

“What?” He seemed confused.

“Jennifer hardly ate a thing,” I elucidated, “she stumbled from her chair which might not seem odd, given the wine she had, however she stumbled the rest of the way across the dining room too.”

Cai looked into my eyes and gave no answers, not verbally or otherwise. So I pursued the issue. “How do you usually spend Christmas?”

He chewed his inner cheek and a momentary shift in his concentrated gaze made me realise it wasn’t a comfortable question for him. “I stay in Florida or LA, anywhere warm. It’s a nightmare in New York City at Christmas… all that fucking snow!”

Didn’t we know it.

“So, what does Jennifer normally do?” I quirked a brow; I really was interested in the woman.

“No idea. I think, well… I think it’s odd she got us together like this, don’t you?”

I pursed my lips. “I honestly don’t know. I thought seeing as though you’re her nephew, you’d be the one to enlighten me.”

His eyes widened which was Cai’s body language for, ‘I can’t talk. I’m thinking.’ He reached over to an end table, grabbing a mince pie from a stacked plate. Some tumbled down and icing sugar puffed into the candlelit, smoky air.

So, food was the prop between us, the one thing stalling our confessions, for that night anyway. I smiled gingerly and joined him in enjoying a bite or two. He poured some brandy from a decanter and handed me a dram.

“Cheers, to us,” he announced, and the fiery bite hit the back of my throat pleasingly. Once sated, he asked, “Now, tell me what you were thinking of back at the table earlier, when you gave me that look.”

I gave him
that
look and he repeated, “Yeah, that look. I’ve had that look thrown at me too many times tonight, not able to do a goddamned thing about it… until now.”

I smiled mischievously and sat back in my chair, watching as he uncoiled his beautiful, powerful body, sliding to the floor on his knees.

He rolled my jumper dress up my legs, past my thighs, and then reached for the tops of my tights, pulling so I had to sit up and let him drag them from my waist down my thighs. Legs bare, he kissed my feet, then up my calves. In the warming, sensual light, Cai’s eyes radiated heat and love. His long lashes fanned into large shadows across his hollowed cheeks and I got wetter just staring into his eyes. He pulled the dress over my head and there was no more time for thought, or worry.

“I wanna make love, right here,” he patted the carpet beside him, rocking back on his heels. He pulled his sweater over his head and I met him on the ground, on our knees, chests pressed together. We undressed each other until we were both naked and then he laid me on the mat, hovering at my entrance as he told me, “I don’t fear a thing when I’m with you.”

CHRISTMAS DAY WAS largely informal too, just lots of eating, drinking and some films in the den later in the afternoon. I thought it was all so surreal and didn’t understand how or why Jennifer was happy enough to spend Christmas with just us two, when she most likely had dozens of friends in high places desperate to give her a fantastic day. She wasn’t the gooseberry, exactly, but we would have been happy enough cuddled on the couch by ourselves.

In bed that morning, Cai had gifted me a diamond necklace that I was told was insured, but it still freaked me out. “Wear it always,” he had insisted. In the den I twirled the jewels in my hand and marvelled at the spectrum of baubles and fairy lights nearby reflected in the platinum settings. Each room downstairs had a tree and garlands on the fireplaces but except for those, seasonal decoration was sparse.

What did you buy the man who had everything? Seven pairs of custom-made silk boxers with comic-strip variations I chose myself, that’s what. I did think it was adorable and strange he always wore comic strip underwear but how could I judge? I wrapped them all individually so his face was priceless after he opened each consecutive little packet to find another dainty pair of weightless silk drawers. Funny. He loved my gifts and also loved waking up to find me in his
real
present—a sheer, scarlet babydoll with white fur trim.

I kept expecting Carl to be proven right, you know, like he’d almost said, ‘You might come back from there kicking and screaming.’

It wasn’t the case at all. Jennifer was peaceable and chilled out. She walked her dogs that morning, leaving a note for us on the breakfast table that stated:
Happy Christmas! Enjoy the salmon, it is a delight. Taken the dogs, back soon. Lunch at two. We’ll get the Queen’s speech on Sky afterwards
.

I half laughed to think that I was with an American man whose only member of family was so English. He’d gone and gotten himself an English broad, too. Indeed, lunch was a traditional turkey with all the usual trimmings—minted stuffing, pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, bread sauce, sprouts, parsnips… the works. It was my first foreign Christmas but it wasn’t even as though I was in a different country—I felt comforted, relaxed, wondering whether maybe I was being lulled into a false sense of security.

Nursing our eggnog as the evening crept on,
It’s a Wonderful Life
played on the cinema screen, our butts firmly set into the cushions of a sectional sofa. I glanced at the fireplace clock and caught the time—five p.m. already.

A servant (I didn’t honestly know what else to call them) brought cheese and port around this time, with all the trimmings. Again, Jennifer picked at this. A grape or two, a cube of this or that, and quite a few drams of the gloopy, gorgeous port. I was inebriated and stuffed, lethargic and hazy from staring at either fires or the TV screen. I didn’t think we’d make love that night, my belly was just so full I needed all my energy to digest. The dogs had been so naughty over lunch that the servants had taken them to the kitchen to stow them there for the rest of the day. Jennifer didn’t seem to have any energy for them, either.

She hadn’t eaten much over lunch and I decided to remark on this (or hint at it) because it was more than just her fashionable conscience, I knew. Every time she brought anything near her lips, her mouth curled and she seemed to hold her breath.

“The food is really delicious, Jennifer. Is it local? Who sources it?” I politely offered.

She didn’t turn to face me, just muttered out of the corner of her mouth, obviously in a bid to humour me. “Claire arranges all that with local suppliers, only ordering from the city if she needs something a bit rarer. She’s been doing it since before my sister had this house. Would be stupid to change a routine that obviously works well.”

I sighed as I chewed through large, red cherry tomatoes, the sweet juices exploding on my tongue, mixing well with a corner of ricotta cheese.

“I agree, what she’s served up so far has been absolutely delicious.” The turkey at dinner slid down my throat, the parsnips were drenched in honey and sesame seeds, the pigs in blankets were not those processed things off shelves but real, farm-bought sausages and bacon—all of it like that, just too good, too yummy!

Cai looked at me underneath his thick brow, cautiously waiting for Jennifer to add more to the conversation. I side-winked him alone but he didn’t return any kind of response.

“The port’s better, so is the wine. It’s all that helps the pain, these days.”