Page 72 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
Chapter Nineteen
Thea heard an exclamation of surprise from upstairs, followed by the sound of the shower turning off. It wasn’t an electric shower, but the sudden outage must have surprised Ben as much as it had her. She put her hand out and took a couple of tentative steps forward. Her foot hit something, and the gentle snuffle told her it was Scooter, though the dog clearly wasn’t as alarmed as she was.
She edged round him, felt the door frame against her palm and stepped into the living room. The cloud cover meant there wasn’t any moonlight, no red dots or digital clocks on anything because they’d all been wiped out by the power cut.
‘Ben?’ she shouted, edging towards the stairs.
She heard the bathroom door open. ‘Thea?’ he called down. ‘Are you OK? What happened?’
‘I think it must be the storm. I didn’t do anything to trip a switch, though I suppose we should check, just to be sure.’
‘Under the stairs? That’s where mine is. Do you have a torch?’
‘I have my phone.’ She crept over to the coffee table, where she’d last seen it, and fumbled about for it. The relief as she felt its smooth surface was immediate. She unlocked it and switched the torch on, glad of the weak light it let out. She swung it in the direction of the cupboard, and its glow found Ben, coming slowly down the stairs.
Thea froze, and a voice inside her head said that now would be a great time for the power to come back on, because he had a blue towel wrapped around his waist, and that was it. Seeing him like this felt a lot more intimate than it had at the beach, where they had been surrounded by other people. Now it was only her, gazing on all his lean, tanned muscle, and she felt as if the red wine had sucked every ounce of moisture out of her mouth. She swallowed, then tried to clear her throat as he came to join her.
‘In here?’ he asked, his hand on the knob of the small door set into the wall beneath the stairs.
‘Yes,’ she scraped out. He smelled of her coconut and pineapple body wash, which she loved because the fresh scent woke her up every morning. On him, it was like the most moreish cocktail.
Ben pulled open the door, and the light from Thea’s phone illuminated his broad, muscled back. She drank it in all over again: his wide shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, everything strong and smooth and—
‘Can I have your phone?’ he asked. She held it out to him and he took it, oblivious to the storm of sensations she was experiencing.
‘You’re right, no tripped fuse. It must be the weather.’ He shut the door and turned to her, his bare chest pale in the glare from her phone.
‘No lasagne then,’ she said. ‘No film either, unless … I might have enough battery on my iPad for us to watch one. But we’d have to huddle up.’ Her eyes slid back to his chest, and this time it was Ben who cleared his throat.
‘I should put some clothes on,’ he murmured.
Thea nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. Yes, I think that would be a good idea.’
Somehow, they had moved closer. His hair was damp, and it sent water droplets sliding tantalisingly down his skin.
‘Thea.’ He sounded breathless all of a sudden, as if he’d hefted a whole floor’s worth of laminate boards up a very steep slope.
‘Hmmm?’
‘I think we should …’ Their eyes held, and even though the light was faint and weirdly distorted, Thea thought she saw at least fifteen emotions pass across Ben’s face. Then he closed his eyes, looking pained.
‘This might be a good time to test how well you’ve fixed my bed?’ Her voice came out a lot smaller than she’d intended, and she clenched her hands into fists. She wanted to be confident in this moment.
Ben’s eyes shot open, and she saw him swallow. ‘That’s the best idea I think anyone’s ever had,’ he said quietly, but she knew, from the way he was looking at her, that he was going to turn her down.
Shame started as a creeping coldness in her stomach, spreading up and down and outwards. She dipped her chin. ‘But you don’t want to.’
His touch was light, but she let him tip her chin up to meet his gaze.
‘It’s Sylvia,’ he said. ‘If the power’s out in the whole town, and she’s stuck in that rickety old place in the dark, the storm howling—’ As if to back him up, rain spattered violently against the windows. ‘Let me call her.’
Thea loved how thoughtful he was, but it didn’t entirely banish the sting of his rejection. He took her phone upstairs, so he could see the way to finding his own, and she leaned against the sofa. Scooter was lying next to the coffee table, his breathing loud and even, sleeping through the crisis.
She expected Ben to return fully clothed, but he came back still wrapped in the towel, carrying both phones. She was about to make a quip about him torturing her, but he handed her phone back and then, his hand gently around her wrist, pulled her onto the sofa with him. Thea went to put some space between them but he tugged her closer, bringing his arm around her so she was pressed against him, her back to his bare chest.
‘Ben?’ She turned to look up at him, and he gave her a soft kiss that sent waves of sensation all the way to her toes.
‘Let me check Sylvia’s all right,’ he said. ‘With any luck the power cut hasn’t extended that far, and she’s fine. Then, instead of putting my clothes on, we can work on taking yours off instead. If you want to?’ His smile was as gentle as his kiss, and had an equally powerful effect.
