Read Online Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair by EJ Lamprey - Free Book Online Page A

herself and with him. The taxi arrived and she climbed inside on rubbery legs, heat flooding her cheeks, and wrapped the cloak around herself as she huddled in the furthest corner. He sat as far from her as he could after giving the driver the address of the Lawns, staring out of the window, his profile alternately shadowed and washed with the streetlights as the taxi accelerated down the road.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he told the window, as they started onto the M9, but she couldn’t respond, still alternately hot and cold with humiliation. Dressed like a hooker, kissing in the street , kissing Donald like a hooker in the street . . . she shuddered, and shuddered again, and wrapped the cloak tighter so it would look as though she was shivering with cold.
    He finally turned to look at her. ‘I should never have done that.’
    ‘Heat of the moment.’ Her voice was infuriatingly husky and she cleared her throat, adding lightly, in as close to an excuse as she could make for responding as she had, ‘You’re an unexpectedly good kisser.’
    ‘So are you.’ His voice quivered on the cusp of laughter. ‘Thanks.’
    He was laughing at her? Her chin jerked up sharply.
    ‘Ditto. What about your car?’
    He shook his head. ‘I’ll collect it tomorrow, and my coat, when I return Angie’s stuff. I have to come through anyway.’
    Neither spoke again, although the journey to the Lawns lasted a good fifteen minutes. He paid the driver, got out the taxi and offered her his hand to climb out. At his touch she quivered again, and dropped his hand as soon as she was sure of her balance in the ridiculous heels. In silence they walked to her door and stopped for an awkward beat before he said, slightly hoarsely, ‘I have to walk Odette.’
    ‘Good night,’ she returned coolly and turned to unlock her door, but he didn’t walk away. She felt herself shaking again, fumbling to fit the key in the lock. Finally it turned, and she gratefully grasped the door knob to get inside, to escape.
    ‘Edge—’
    ‘It’s okay. Honestly. Forgotten.’
    ‘Edge, please look at me.’
    ‘I don’t want to,’ she said childishly, but reluctantly turned around. Against the dim late-night lights of the walkway his hair was still unruly, his face shadowed.
    ‘The gay thing—I’m not gay. I never have been. I want to come back after I’ve walked Odette. I want to explain.’
    ‘There’s nothing to explain, Donald. I completely understand. None of my business—’
    He was suddenly too close, and there was a fragment of time when he questioned; when her face tilted up to his in a response she couldn’t control. He opened the door behind her even as he was kissing her; they were inside, mouths locked as they stumbled backwards, and when her treacherous knees failed her they fell entwined onto her sofa. Her very blood was fizzing, as though it had been replaced with champagne, and the thud of her heartbeat was deafening, and this time it was she who pulled away.
    ‘That’s not,’ she was breathless, ‘a very clear explanation.’
    ‘I’ll try to make it clearer,’ he offered and his voice held triumph, and relief, and an echo of her own enormous surprise.
    ‘Go walk your dog, Donald.’ She tried to rescue the status quo one last time. ‘It’s the leather talking, you’ll regret this tomorrow.’
    He leaned back on the sofa and laughed breathlessly.
    ‘Edge! It’s not the leather.’ She could hear the smile in his voice as he added teasingly, ‘Take it off. Please. Just to be sure.’
    Her breath caught and his teeth gleamed briefly in the faint light from the doorway.
    ‘ Yes , you’re partly right. You look like my teenage wish list in that outfit, and that hair, even that bizarre makeup which, I have to tell you, tastes extremely peculiar. But it’s you, not the outfit. Under my skin like a burr from when we first met and promptly quarrelled, and I never quarrel. I swore to myself I’d never risk our friendship. God, I was