Page 54 of All Summer Long

Alice did a mental double take, both at the audacity of his question and the fact that in those three short words she’d learned that he probably wasn’t a stranger to Robinson. That accent was pure country, a perfect match for the music still rattling the windows. ‘I was just about to ask you the same question,’ she said loudly, wrapping her dressing gown around her body and belting it securely. ‘Do you think you could turn the music down?’

He looked as if he might say no, and then swung around and strutted off, the cheeks of his backside jumping aggressively in his tight pants. He managed to look indignant, even from the back. Alice pulled out a chair and sat down then breathed out a sigh of relief when the music stopped abruptly, and then another one when the guy returned to the kitchen fully clothed.

‘I’m Alice McBride,’ she said, when he looked at her in speculative silence. ‘I own this house. Robinson rents it from me.’

He absorbed the information, eyeing her shrewdly. ‘I’m Donald Marshall. Marsh. Robinson’s manager.’

They regarded each other across the table, weighing up each other’s status to see who’d come out on top.

‘Would it be rude to ask you what you’re doing in my house?’ she said, going for the direct approach because she sensed that this wasn’t a man who cared to beat around the bush. He looked her up and down, making her wish she had something more suitable on than her nightclothes because he was clearly drawing his own unsettling conclusions.

‘Oh crap,’ Marsh said, looking in physical pain. ‘Do not, I repeat, do NOT tell me that you and he are hitting the sheets.’ He smacked his palm hard against his lined forehead. ‘Oh, now that hasreallysoured my milk.’

Definitely not a man to beat around the bush, then. Alice wasn’t certain how to respond, or what Robinson would prefer his manager not to know. Besides, he was just plain rude.

‘There’s coffee in the cupboard above the machine,’ she said shortly, standing up. ‘I’m sure Robinson will be over in a while.’

‘You do know he has a wife, don’t you?’

Right. Gloves off, then. Alice picked up the Pyrex dish of disgustingness from the table and crossed to the bin.

‘I know he’s separated, yes. If you expect me to feel guilt or sympathy for the woman who cheated on him then you’re fresh out of luck.’ She flipped the bin open and dropped the bowl and its contents in.

‘Is it money?’ Marsh looked at her with his cold, seen it all before grey eyes. ‘How much will it take?’

Alice looked at him, incredulous. ‘You think I’m after Robinson’s money?’

‘I should have known he’d get himself into trouble,’ Marsh said, almost to himself. ‘Where’s he hidin’ his sorry excuse for an ass, missy?’

‘He isn’t hiding. He’s sleeping,’ Alice said mildly. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that she was going to tell this man where Robinson was.

‘He’s awake now,’ a familiar, if a little gruffer than usual voice said from behind her, and when she turned she found the man in question himself standing in the doorway. He looked rough; tired eyed, wearing last night’s clothes he’d obviously dragged on in a hurry and his hair said he hadn’t looked in the mirror on the way out of the Airstream.

‘You owe Alice an apology, Marsh. That was out of fucking order.’

Marsh looked thoroughly unrepentant. ‘I’ll reserve judgment on that,’ he said.

Alice headed over to the door, moving past Robinson. ‘Headache pills in the cupboard in the corner,’ she said softly, not touching him because she didn’t know how to be around him in front of Marsh.

He solved her dilemma by sliding his hand into her hair and kissing her brief and hard. He tasted of last night’s whisky and of desperation and uncertainty, and her stomach performed a slow somersault because even like this he took her breath away.

‘See you later,’ she murmured.

‘Count on it,’ he said, stroking her arm tenderly as she walked away. He closed the door behind her, and she walked away with a growing sense of foreboding that no amount of coffee was going to wash away. Halfway across the lawns she turned around and changed her mind about going back to the Airstream.

‘Another cowboy in just his pants? They’re not fond of clothes, this lot, are they?’ Niamh laughed twenty minutes later, having heard the whole sorry story as they sat out on the rickety iron bistro chairs on her tiny back patio. The old blue cobbles made the chairs even more unstable, and Pluto wasn’t helping by nudging Alice’s leg, asking her to play with the damp, dirty ball he’d dropped at her feet.

‘Yeah, but this one wasn’t sexy without his clothes on,’ Alice said, miserable.

‘Or pleasant with them on, either, by the sound of it,’ Niamh said, offended on Alice’s behalf as she distracted Pluto with scraps of toast crust from her plate.

Alice shook her head and tore her toast in half without eating any. ‘Not a bit.’

Niamh watched her friend over the rim of her mug. ‘So what’s really on your mind?’

Sighing heavily, Alice let the words fall out. ‘I’m not ready for him to leave me yet.’

Niamh nodded, and after a while said, ‘He might not.’

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