Page 13 of The Trouble With Love

She went out and, I noticed, closed the dining room door behind her. Kai looked at me, properly, for the first time. ‘I’m not that bad,’ he said. ‘More wine?’

‘She probably worries about you.’ I pushed my glass over. ‘I worry about my dad, although I’ve no idea why; he’s a fifty-five-year-old English teacher not a cliff-diver.’

‘You’ve cause to worry about Nicholas though.’ He held up his wine glass and stared through the amber liquid at the light. The wine and his eyes were exactly the same colour, I noticed.

‘Sometimes.’ I spun the word so that it would be clear it was my final comment on the subject, and he noted it with an inclination of the head, which brought a silence during which we both emptied our glasses.

‘I’d better be off,’ I said. ‘Say thanks to Cerys for me, dinner was lovely.’

‘Not hurrying away on my account?’ He came around to my side of the table to set the corkscrew to another bottle. ‘She’s right, it is good to have company. I’m sorry I’m not better at it.’ The cork slid out with a plump sound. ‘Come on, have another drink. I promise I’ll try to think of something to say.’

‘All right.’ I was in no real hurry to get home and, close up, this man was gorgeous. Nicholas had been right, although I’d die rather than admit it; Kai was just my type. He had an air of being very much cleverer than he ever let on, coupled with an exact awareness of himself, that was hugely sexy. There was a kind of careful casualness in the way he sat beside me and passed me the refilled wine glass, brushing my wrist with the tip of a finger as he did so, that told me he’d probably reciprocate if I wound my arms around his neck and kissed that fabulously inviting mouth. With half an eye on his reaction I licked my lips and shook my hair back. ‘Have you thought yet?’

‘Mmmm?’ Result. His eyes travelled from my face, via my chest, to my thighs. ‘What about?’ And now his voice had gained that telltale raspy note that meant he was picturing me naked. Oh, this was going to be almost too easy . . .

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking about?’ I leaned in a little closer, until I could smell the slight earthiness of his skin and feel the gentle heat of his breath against my cheek. Hardly a challenge at all, in fact. I’d have thought that he’d be the one to make the running, the first approach . . .

‘I’m actually wondering what that piece of paper is that you seem to have dropped under your chair.’ Kai jerked his head at the floor and his golden eyes held a knowing amusement. ‘If it’s important, you don’t want to leave it here when you go home tonight.’

Oh, well played, sir! I almost broke into a round of applause at his sudden wresting of the power back from my slightly unsubtle come-on and into his own hands again. And he’d managed to work in a ‘don’t take it for granted that I fancy you’ reference — I was clearly in the presence of a master player of the game, possibly someone even more practised than me. I gave a grin to show that I understood the checkmate situation, and bent down to pick up the much-folded wodge. ‘It’s not important, actually. Well, it sort of is, but . . . it’s like . . . it’s a spell. No, it’s the ingredients of a spell.’

‘Really? Can I see?’ As he stretched his hand towards me I saw for the first time that he had long, slender fingers and the thumb ring was more of an ornament than an affectation. ‘God, someone’s got a sense of humour.’

The earlier pheromone-laden moment was gone, wiped out by his obvious interest in the words on the page and I found myself telling him about Vivienne, about the gathering in the woods, the earnestness of the group. He laid the paper down on the table and looked at me over the top of his wine glass, serious-faced now. His eyes had lost the challenging spark and there was something about the way he listened, something calm but almost empty, as though I had to keep giving him words to fill up the quiet space between us.

‘And you all believe in this?’

‘I don’t. I think Eve is sceptical, but she’s going along with it, I dunno why. Isobel and Megan are deep in.’

He bit his lip. ‘This Vivienne, what is she? Fraud, delusional, a real follower of Wicca? Because mucking about with these things, with this kind of psychological mojo, without understanding what you’re doing is asking for some serious shit to come down on your head.’

‘And you’d know. As a journalist.’

‘I know a lot of stuff.’ A slightly loaded sentence and for a second he looked different, as though I was looking through a crack, into someone else. ‘But I believe less than a fraction of it.’ A twitch of an eyebrow. I couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately cool or whether he was warning me off, and I felt oddly unbalanced. Tried to regroup myself by sipping slowly at my wine and focussing my attention on the glass for a moment. ‘And I like you. I wouldn’t want demonic forces dragging you down to hell when I’ve only just met you. Tell me, do you believe in anything, Holly?’

Did I? What was there to believe in? ‘Why?’

‘Just interested.’

‘Well, of course I do. Death and taxes.’ The room spun slightly. At least he’d said he liked me, so maybe his back-pedalling on the seduction scene was reversible? ‘What made you go into journalism?’ The change of topic just fell into my mind as though it had been posted through the gap in the conversation.

He gave me a slow stare from eyes that shone with a chilly light. ‘I’m a nosy bastard,’ he said and raised his glass to me. While he drank, he never took his eyes off my face but there was no sexual invitation in them now. The man sitting beside me was something other than the leather-clad game player and his look was colder, darker. Full of depths and shadows. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I figure, if you got married at sixteen you probably didn’t go on to A-levels or University, because you’d have a wife and Cerys to support. Which means you didn’t fall into it after an English degree because you couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, like so many people do, so it has to have been a conscious career choice. And that means some serious thinking, because you’d have had to have gone back to studying, as an adult. You’re — thirty-six, wasn’t it? — and you’re working high-profile stuff, so you’ve been in the profession a while.’

‘Have you been spending your spare time thinking about my life choices?’ The tone was light, frivolous, but his eyes said different, the shadows were rising now, coming closer to the surface. He didn’t like this.

‘Just interested.’ Now it was my turn to raise a glass to him.

‘What do you want, my life story?’ Bitter now, I’d definitely touched a nerve and there was no hint of flirtation in his voice any more. I was oddly glad that this wasn’t going to degenerate into a quick sofa-fumble because, despite myself, I was intrigued by this mercurial man. ‘It’s not important, none of it is.’ He flicked my list. ‘Now, do you want suggestions on some of this stuff?’

‘You know how I can come by these things?’

‘Got a few ideas. Lateral thinking, see. I do crosswords too.’ Kai leaned forward over the table, arms propping his weight. ‘See this one? Nail from a demon? Come with me.’

He headed towards the door and I couldn’t help but follow. It was that or stay alone in a room that looked like it had been decorated in shades of O positive.

We tiptoed up the stairs, on the off chance that the overloaded Cerys might have fallen asleep. When we reached the landing, he turned right and led me along a dark passageway, panelled in heavy wood. ‘This is the older part of the house.’

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