Page 29 of Enticement
She hitched her trousers up fast.
All she could think of was Ross, his hurt. The awful sense of betrayal he’d feel. It’d be easy to lay the blame at his feet, saying he’d brought Kit into their home, and almost encouraged a close relationship between them, but Evie wasn’t so conceited that she couldn’t recognize when something was her fault. And hers entirely. She was a grown woman. She’d made her own decision, and there’d been no point at which she couldn’t have said stop.
The threat of tears stung her eyes. Evie hurriedly blinked them away.
“Say something.” Kit leant towards her, concern softening his features. “Anything. Tell me I’m a bastard if you like.”
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Because like everyone, I want what I can’t have. The only difference is that I’m not afraid of tumbling a few obstacles in pursuit of my goal.”
“I’m your best friend’s girlfriend.”
“So you both keep reminding me, as if that’s the most important hurdle.” Without being asked, he lifted her back over the wall, before hopping over himself and leading the trek back to the car.
Evie followed him up the slope, her mind in confusion and her heart racing. What had she done? What was going on?
“What do you want?” she asked as he fished the car keys out of the slowly thickening layer of snow.
Kit shrugged, his head still at her hip height. “Do you want taking back to work?”
“Yes, yes, I do.” She watched him straighten, broad shoulders squaring up to her and his expression setting into blank concentration. “But don’t ignore me. I asked what you wanted.”
“And I heard.” He got into the car and revved the engine.
Evie crossed her arms, her guilt transforming into anger at him. She hated the way he’d studiously withdrawn from her questions. Her mum was a pro at the tactical silence. It wasn’t a trait she looked for in her friends.
Getting back into the car with him without having received an answer felt like defeat, but she didn’t put it past him to drive off and leave her if she prodded too much. Well, maybe not leave her exactly, but she reckoned he’d think nothing of driving down the road a bit and making her jog after him.
They drove back to Melton Manor in silence. Kit pulled into the staff car park and she opened the door to get out without them having exchanged a single word, having reclaimed her phone from the glove compartment.
“Evie, wait.” Kit leant over and grabbed her wrist. “I didn’t… I wasn’t deliberately ignoring you. It’s just I don’t have a straight answer to give you. It’s complicated. I guess I want more than friendship between us.”
“That’s too bad,” she replied as she jerked her wrist free of his grasp. “Because that’s all that’s on offer.”
Having slammed the car door, she walked away with the words “fuck you” echoing inside her skull. She did want more than simple friendship. She did desire him and would savour every delicious moment of their encounter on the hilltop over and over during the coming days. It’s just that it wasn’t possible to have him and Ross without someone, perhaps all of them, getting hurt. She had to write off what had just happened as an anomaly and focus on ensuring it never happened again. Besides, she sure as hell didn’t want anyone as mutable and secretive as Kit occupying space in her heart. She couldn’t deal with anything other than openness in her relationships, which was another reason why that the line about him and Ross was obviously bollocks. Ross would have told her if anything like that had gone on, especially after she’d brought up the incident of the threesome in the tent.
Chapter Seven
Kit went straight home to Ross and Evie’s place from Melton Manor and set about clearing the drive of snow. With a spade in his hand, it was easy not to think. He could thrust, shovel and sweep on autopilot in much the same way he’d helped keep the bar clean in Tokyo. The less glamorous side of working as a host was the unfortunate cleaning chores, hours of sweeping and swilling floors, and polishing brass plaques according to the weekly rote. No one escaped it. Not even the top earners who were raking in enough to hire maids to clean their own apartments.
He hadn’t really thought about Japan since he’d got here. Maybe he was actually starting to miss the busy social whirl and easy routine of his life there. It had been the right time to come home though. He knew it in his bones, and despite endless complications he kept making for himself, it was going to work out somehow.
The phone rang, and Kit dashed inside to answer it. “Moshi-moshi,” he said out of habit. When the greeting was met with no response he added a more dubious, “Er, hello.” The silence stretched out for several more seconds, although Kit could hear the caller breathing on the other end of the line. A sense of unease rippled across his shoulder muscles making them feel tight and achy. “Who is this?” Not expecting a reply, he was just about to cut the sinister caller off, when the disconcerting breathing transformed into a sanctimonious purr.
“Christopher Skye. I know what you are. I know what you did. Don’t think you can get away with it. Justice is coming. An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. We’re watching you.”
Click. Kit slammed the phone back into the cradle, then pressed random buttons in order to end the call. “Damn. Damn. Fuck!” He kicked the edge of the sofa, startling Mimmy, who darted out from behind it and ran up the curtain.
The kitten looked down on him, eyes full of curiosity and scorn. “Sorry,” Kit mumbled, reaching for her. For the first time ever, the tortoiseshell moggy shied away and dug her claws into the curtain when he tried to pick her up.
Kit raised his hands in frustration and scrunched up his hair. “Okay. Okay, you think I’m a bastard too. I get it.” Overwhelmed, he turned on the spot, seeking an escape route that didn't exist, and never would as long as he stayed in Kirkley. There were no convenient magic portals and no diversion that would neatly bypass his former life here. “Sammie, why?” He stumbled forward to the fireplace until his head hit the mirror above, skin connecting to the silvered glass.
What he needed was a convenient rewind, a method of exploiting Einstein’s relativity theory so he could make different choices and say different things. Not that he was sure any changes he made would make a difference. People believed what they wanted to believe, and they’d decided long ago that he was the devil incarnate.
Sometimes he almost believed it of himself.
Kit raised his head and focused on his reflection, humourlessly checking for horns. Of course, there were none. He sighed. He wasn’t looking quite so polished anymore. The last week and certainly today had both taken their toll. Dark smudges ringed his eyes, courtesy of his screwed up sleep pattern. Adjusting to a different time zone and to daylight hours combined with more generalized fretting meant he was awake most nights until five a.m. He’d been taking afternoon naps over at Rose Cottage, but really that had to stop. It was only exacerbating the situation.
