Page 65 of Enticement
“Do I get to know what happened?”
“He wanted some space.”
“Ross, that’s not what I meant.” She followed him into the kitchen and watched him as he stood before the washing machine and stripped off. Beneath the bright spotlights, she could see that his clothing was speckled with blood and dung from the farmyard he’d been called out to earlier.
Ross stuffed the clothing into the drum and set it washing.
“Was the calf all right?”
“Eh? Yeah. Touch and go for a while because she got her leg stuck coming out, but it worked out okay.”
Although she initially hung back, seeing Ross standing in his pants and socks made her want to hold him. He looked sexy in a vaguely ridiculous way. That and seeing Kit run and Ross follow him had shaken her. For a moment, she’d wondered if either of them would come back.
She offered him the juice carton as a peace offering, which he accepted and swallowed in thirsty gulps.
“I didn’t tell you because it’s not something I like thinking about, and it’s awkward around Kit. You’ve seen how he reacts. I wasn’t deliberately trying to keep you in the dark. I just didn’t want to bring it up and spoil everything when we were all getting along so well.”
“And now? Will you tell me now?”
A dark shadow drifted across the blue of Ross’s eyes, but he nodded. “Make some drinks. We’ll go sit down and talk.”
It was a simple enough story, once they were settled on the sofa nursing steaming mugs of Yorkshire tea. Three of them—Kit, Ross, and Sammie—out by the ruins enjoying a sunny afternoon. “Sammie left to go back to the village to meet Molly. I think they were going out somewhere. Instead of walking back with her, Kit decided to stay out there with me. It was broad daylight and a five minute walk; there didn’t seem any need to escort her. Unfortunately, she never arrived home. The first we knew of it was when the police hammered on Flora’s door demanding to see Kit. Molly had reported her missing.” He turned to her, and cupped his hands around the outside of hers. “Kit was devastated. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for not walking her home.”
“And you’re absolutely sure he didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance?” Though it felt insensitive to ask, she needed to be clear on that point.
“I’m positive, Evie. One hundred percent.”
“What about indirectly?”
“Meaning what?”
“Like she was pregnant or something.”
Ross shook his head. “I don’t think so. She was real careful about that stuff, and she’d have told Kit. And he wouldn’t have stayed with me if that’d been the case, and I was with him the whole time from the moment she left until the police arrived.”
Evie cocked her head, considering that hereto unknown bit of information and what it meant. “Then technically you were both the last to see her.”
He nodded.
“And when you say you were with him, what, you were just hanging out?”
He started to nod, then stopped and nervously wetted his lips. “Do you remember I said there’d only been one time between me and Kit before he came back from Japan? Well, that was it, Evie.”
“You were shagging when she went missing?”
“Things came to a head that afternoon. We’d been pussyfooting around each other for ages, both too afraid to make an actual move. It was okay while we were doing the threesomes thing, but then Kit starting seeing Sammie and it started getting awkward. I think he thought it’d be different, that she’d jump at the chance of a three way relationship, but it was never actually going to happen.” His eyes glazed a little, as if he were seeing flashbacks of the past. “I lost count of the number of times I watched the two of them make out, but it never progressed to me joining in. She liked teasing me, and she was a rampant exhibitionist, but that’s as far as it went. For all her talk, when it came down to it, her tastes were spectacularly vanilla.”
His hand fell upon Evie’s leg, his fingers curling. Evie squeezed his hand between her thighs, reassured, but still curious. “Why didn’t you both just admit to what you were doing?”
“Because it wasn’t like it is now. It wasn’t comfortable between us. It was awkward and new. And it felt wrong. That and admitting it to the police was bad enough. I’m not sure the rest of the village knowing would have helped. There were a few vocal villagers like Molly and Tony who actually accused him of murdering her, but most of them were just disgusted at him for letting her walk home alone. Telling them he’d done it so that he could indulge in gay sex with his best mate would only have further damaged their opinion. And now, I don’t think anything short of actually finding her will make things right.”
“I assume people have tried to find her?”
“Don’t start digging, Evie. I know you like puzzles, but this one is best left.”
She saw his point. Absolutely. But that didn’t stop her scanning through all the missing persons sites on the internet the following morning. Of course, all she turned up were more tales of woe, but they gave her a better perspective on what Kit surely felt. She kept trying to imagine what it would be like if Ross simply never came home one night, but the ache that started in her chest at the very notion of it stopped her exploring the idea.
“Were you crazy?” she asked the absent Sammie. “Why the hell would you walk out on Kit and Ross?” She couldn’t envisage one good enough reason for ever doing so. They were far too bloody scrumptious.
