Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (27 page)

Jack cast her a look that she couldn’t decipher and said nothing. She began to feel uncomfortable, but there was something about the way that Jack was looking at her that made her stay quiet.

‘I’m sure that you will be like her,’ he said eventually. ‘And good luck to Edith – she’s got the right attitude.’

‘I suppose so, but I do worry that she’s doing too much. I’d like her to slow down.’

‘It won’t matter whether she sits down in her slippers or dances the flamenco,’ Jack said very gruffly. ‘It won’t make a scrap of difference. You don’t get extra years added on for good behaviour.’

Again Ellie sensed that Jack was and was not in the room and couldn’t understand how the conversation had so quickly become so serious. How had they backed themselves into this particular verbal cul-de-sac after a lighthearted discussion about Edith and her
joie de vivre
? She
was going to ask him if there was anything in particular that was wrong, when he said, ‘So, you’re only living with Edith because it makes sense?’

‘Yes.’

He laughed. ‘Few things I’ve noticed about you, Ellie. Good at one-liners; always like to have the last word; dreadful liar.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘In all that about Edith you haven’t mentioned being kind. That you’re doing it because you’re kind.’

‘I’m not particularly,’ she said, trying to deflect his attention. It all felt so un-Jack-like, somehow.

‘Cover it up all you like, Ellie, but you can’t fool me. So, the question is, how did you get to be so kind?’

Ellie blinked at him. He somehow made it sound like a fault.

‘Good genes, I guess,’ she said with a shrug.

He nodded and then her heart did that flip thing because as she watched, his eyes were changing expression again and it was that dark, dangerous look that was holding sway now.

The melancholy that had filled the room earlier had been replaced by something that was making Ellie’s heart beat faster.

She saw his gaze travel down her body. ‘Your genes haven’t only made you kind, have they, Ellie? They’ve given you all kinds of other lovely things too.’

‘Well, I—’ she started, but never got to finish, as Jack
was out of the chair and standing right next to her. She could feel his breath on her cheek.

‘Take this off,’ he said, tugging at her kimono. ‘Let’s have a good look at how well you did in the gene pool.’

How could he get his emotions to turn round like that? Ellie was still a step behind. But if he was trying to confuse her, she could do the same to him. She looked at him and yawned. ‘Sorry, Jack, I don’t feel like taking anything off. That interrogation about Edith has quite worn me out.’ She dodged away from him and out of the door.

She only got as far as the landing before he caught her and had her down on the floor. Her skin prickled all over as he touched her, but he was going to get a fight. Jack tried to pin her down and she was wriggling ferociously and managed to tug her dress from his hips. He pulled her kimono off one shoulder. She grabbed some of his flesh and pinched it. He didn’t even seem to feel it and simply flipped her over on her front and got her other shoulder bare. Ellie reached back and grabbed his thigh and started to squidge her fingers about on it. The effect was instantaneous. ‘No, no, no,’ Jack shouted, and directed all his attention to stopping her hand from tickling him.

She rolled over, pulled her kimono back together and attacked another part of him, ‘Damn it, Ellie, stop it!’ he said, trying to catch her hand.

Ellie got two more good attacks in before Jack managed to catch both of her hands and pin them over her head.
A slight readjustment to his position and he was lying on top of her and she couldn’t move at all.

They were both out of breath, chests heaving against each other and laughing, and then Jack put his mouth over hers and really took her breath away. It was a long, sensuous kiss that made every nerve-ending right down to her toes sizzle.

He pulled his mouth from hers and gave her a stern look. ‘If you promise not to do any more tickling, you can have your hands back.’

Ellie briefly considered that and nodded.

‘Promise?’ he said.

‘Promise.’

Jack let go of her hands and immediately ripped open her kimono and lay on her again, his naked chest against her bare breasts. She felt his hands move down her body and his knee nudge her legs apart.

‘Oh, no, not the carpet burns again,’ she said in a weak voice.

Jack stopped what he was doing and rolled off her. ‘Fair enough. You go on top, then. But you’ll have to do all the work. Don’t just sit there thinking of England.’

Ellie narrowed her eyes and before he could stop her, she had him in her hand, holding him perhaps more tightly than was absolutely necessary.

‘Be very, very careful with that,’ Jack said in a strangled voice. ‘I use that all the time.’

‘Oh, I will, Jack, don’t worry,’ she said, teasing him and enjoying the way that he had shut up and stopped being so domineering.

‘Trouser pocket … condom,’ he said a few moments later in a broken voice.

Ellie found Jack’s trousers and then, when she had made him ready, she manoeuvred herself over him, holding herself out of reach.

‘You know, you could do with being less bossy,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh.’ Jack took her hips in his hands and tried to pull her down to get some contact, any kind of contact.

‘Yes,’ she said, resisting his efforts. ‘Try negotiating a bit more. Don’t be so bullish.’

‘I’ll try and remember that, Ellie,’ he said, his face screwed up with frustration. ‘Now, will you stop talking and damn well sit on it?’

She swayed her hips and moved a little lower. ‘Would there be a “please” anywhere in that last statement?’ She started to laugh and then laughed even louder at the sight of Jack grinding his teeth and glowering at her.

Suddenly she stopped laughing and sat down on him in one quick movement and Jack winced and said, ‘Ah,’ and then closed his eyes. She felt his strong fingers splayed out around her hips and it seemed to her that this was the only place in the world where any woman with any sense would want to be sitting. The sensation was
incredible; she didn’t think it was possible to get any closer to him than she was now.

Ellie could not explain how, in less than three days, she had got herself into this, sitting astride Jack Wolfe’s groin absolutely naked and not giving a fig about it. She didn’t know, but she felt wanton and wanted and right at this minute she wasn’t going to think about next week or even tomorrow. She was going to concentrate on showing him what she was made of.

‘Right, Jack,’ she said, ‘I’m thinking of England now.’ She gave a little jiggle and was pleased to see his eyes shoot open. ‘Yeah, I’m really thinking of England.’ She leaned down and kissed him. ‘But you know what, Jack? I can only bring to mind the dirty bits.’

Jack walked along the road and kicked a drink can out of the way. It was nearly dawn and there was nobody else about. No damned taxis anyway.

It served him right that he had to walk most of the way home. He must be completely stark, raving mad. That was meant to be a shagging visit. Not a sitting in the garden eating curry visit, or a talking about Edith visit, or even a rolling around on the carpet giggling visit.

He was starting to lose it here.

He dug his hands in his pockets and walked on. And he had carpet burns all over his backside that hurt like hell. Mind you, he’d got them in a good cause … That
was something, the way she’d looked naked and jiggling about. He’d envisaged a quick, hard ride, but she’d kept him just off the boil for ages. He was practically begging her at the end. He’d been on the point of yelling out, ‘Barcelona,’ himself.

Jack shook his head. It was a good last workout, but that was it. It was over. Finished.
Finito
. If he stopped it now, he could walk away without it bothering him.

He wished he hadn’t got bogged down in all that stuff about Edith, though. And then telling Ellie how kind she was … Mind you, she was, incredibly. Sort of old-fashioned in a way how she cared about Edith. Completely unselfish and—

He came to a halt. What the hell was he talking about? This was exactly why this had to stop.

Tomorrow he’d ring her and explain that he was calling it a day and he expected her to be a grown-up about it when she came back to work.

He had no choice: all the danger signs were there. When you started wanting to find out more about them, that was definitely time to bail out.

Yeah. That was it. Definitely.

Ellie remained in her seat with her eyes closed after the rest of the audience had left. She didn’t want to lose this feeling. It had been brilliant from the moment the actors had walked on to the stage until the last one had stepped off again at the end. A magical evening: Regent’s Park in summer, the sun going down and a Shakespearian comedy in the open air. It had chased the thought of Jack away for a couple of hours, apart from when the lovers were reunited at the end. Then he’d shot straight back into her mind and she’d found herself wondering what he would look like in a doublet and hose.

When Ellie did get to her feet, she bent down to scoop up her programme from where it had fallen on the ground. She had told herself she was not meant to be thinking about Jack. It had been a fantastic few days, but anybody who thought they were going to get more from Jack than a very good seeing-to was crazed. She guessed the next
time she saw him would be at work and they would both have to pretend nothing had happened.

Ellie left the theatre, walking through the groups of people milling about outside. She was glad she hadn’t invited anybody else along. Even Jack. Going to the theatre on her own was a great big treat. Sometimes you didn’t want to paw over it afterwards, listen to other amateur critics dissecting something you’d loved.

She turned towards Baker Street tube station and found she was thinking about Jack again, wondering what he was up to. Madness. Judging by his non-appearance last night, their liaison had been a three-and-a-half-day wonder. That probably put her just above the legion of women who had enjoyed one-night stands with Jack. She pulled a face at how she had managed to end up joining Jack’s army of admirers. Pathetic.

Still, at least she’d gone into it with her eyes open. Jack sleeping with her and then losing interest wasn’t like finding out Sam had become bored with her. Jack had merely done exactly what he always did. Ellie rolled her programme up tightly, shoved it in her bag and decided not to let the thought of Jack ruin a lovely evening.

And then there he was walking towards her. Ellie tried not to look surprised, tried to look as though it was a natural place to bump into him. She felt the soppy smile slide on to her face and could not get it off.

‘I was just passing,’ he said, ‘and I remembered you’d
be here tonight. I was basically just driving by.’ He fixed her with a look that dared her to point out that Regent’s Park was not on his way home unless his satnav was seriously confused.

They stood there as people jostled past them and Ellie wondered what the hell was going on. She was exceptionally pleased to see him, her stomach was churning about already, but what did it mean?

‘I was going for the Tube,’ she said as casually as she could.

‘Well, OK, but I’ve got my car here, you know, if you want a lift.’ He looked away from her while he was speaking, as though it was nothing to him, one way or the other, if she took him up on his offer.

‘Well, I could, I suppose,’ Ellie’s voice said, while her brain shouted, ‘Yessss!’

They walked off side by side and Ellie made polite conversation about the play and every now and again Jack asked a question about the actors. Once they were in the car, though, the conversation died and Jack appeared to be getting angrier and angrier about something. He was frowning more than normal.

‘I didn’t realise the upholstery in here was red the other day,’ she said eventually to fill the empty space between them.

‘It wasn’t. This is a different car. I only got it yesterday.’ He shook his head as though he couldn’t quite believe
that she was so stupid. ‘Didn’t you notice it’s a completely different model? Not to mention colour?’

‘Evidently not,’ she said softly to the window.

They drove on and her conviction that Jack was fuming about something grew stronger and stronger. Finally she said, ‘Jack, have I done something wrong?’

She thought he hadn’t heard her, or wasn’t going to answer, and then he simply said, ‘No. Forget it. I’ve had a bad day, that’s all.’

Ellie turned to look out of the window again. She wasn’t going to ask him about work. If she asked him about work, then the knowledge that she had done a foolish thing would come rushing back into her head. While she was on holiday, she could keep that uncomfortable thought at bay. She could view Jack as a bit of an adventure. Work would come hurtling towards her soon enough; she wasn’t about to rush and meet it.

Thinking about the play and the warmth of the sun on her skin was the safest thing to do. Then she realised that nothing she was seeing out of the window looked at all familiar.

‘This isn’t the way home,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Where are we going, then?’

‘I wanted to see what the car could do. It’s a nice evening – I thought we’d go for a drive in the country.’ He scowled. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said gently, to try to disarm his scowl, and then she lowered the window and closed her eyes as the wind blew her hair around.

When Ellie felt the car slow down, she opened her eyes. They were driving down a lane off the main road and after a while it turned into a dry dirt track. And then Jack stopped the car. Ellie thought that they might be visiting someone who lived at the end of the track, but then Jack turned to her and asked, ‘Ellie, have you ever had sex in the back seat of a car?’

He was giving her that dark, dangerous look.

‘What? You can’t mean here? Now?’ she squawked at him.

‘Yes. Right here, right now.’