Page 29 of The Trouble With Love

‘Aiden? Aiden? What the hell . . . ?’ I dashed to the front door where Aiden, swathed in layer after layer of coat, fleece, scarf and really stupid hat, met me. ‘Why didn’t you just knock?’

‘I didn’t know if you had company.’ He stamped his feet free from snow and took off an upper layer. ‘I didn’t want to intrude.’ He nodded towards the street. ‘Drove down this afternoon.’

I stared at him. He came into the house and was peeling off more and more layers, like an Ann Summers version of pass the parcel, and had got down to jeans and T-shirt. ‘Stop now. Why are you here?’

‘I wanted to see you. Wanted to talk.’ He threw himself down on the sofa and stretched out. ‘Okay?’

‘Um,’ I said, staring at him. Aiden was good looking in a put-it-on-the-mantelpiece way, small and fine-boned like an oversized china figurine. That had been the attraction, his looks. That, and the fact that he’d been delighted to meet a woman who wanted nothing more than the undivided attention of the contents of his jeans now and again. I’d never asked for dinner or flowers, or even for him to keep in touch — it was easy enough to find him when I wanted to, Scotland not exactly being coast-to-coast with film directors, whatever the tourist board might want you to think. I was surprised he’d managed to find my house; he’d only been here once, passing through on his way to London and stopping off for a night of, as I remembered it, the kind of sex you had to change the mattress after. Looking at him here, staring at me from under his dark-blond hair with a blissed-out expression, I wondered if, maybe, I’d been wrong to keep it going this long. ‘Tea?’ was all I could think of to say.

‘I’ve brought whisky.’ Aiden groped behind him in the pockets of the shapeless coat and brandished a couple of bottles.

I frowned at him. ‘You know I don’t like whisky.’ I’d told him so often enough when we’d last met, but he suddenly seemed to regard whisky as absolutely necessary to all Scotsmen. Could have been worse, could have been haggis. ‘What’s wrong with tea, anyway?’

‘Hey I spent the last five hours freezing my bollocks off in a car. Tea is not going to cut it. But if it’s what you want . . . all the more whisky for me.’

When I went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on, he followed, like a restless dog. ‘This is new?’ He picked up my carefully colour co-ordinated toaster. ‘Nice. Yellow to match the walls.’ He unscrewed the top of the whisky bottle and started tipping it to his mouth.

‘So, how come you’re here?’ I turned my back to him so he couldn’t see my face. I was still shaken by his arrival.

‘Like I said, I want to talk.’

‘But, you were in the middle of filming!’

‘We wrapped early.’ He sounded confused for a moment. ‘Not sure how, things were going to hell when you came up. But everything seemed to . . . click, somehow. So, I had these days free, and, I dunno, got to thinking about you.’ He came up close behind me and wound his arms around my waist. ‘Thinking about you a lot.’ His mouth nuzzled my hair, then down to my neck. ‘Next thing I knew I’m in the car, half way down the motorway.’

‘But the snow,’ I turned around in his embrace and his mouth rose to meet mine. Aiden always had the knack of pressing all my buttons, even if he did taste of Glenmorangie.

‘It’s only round here. Forty miles north, there’s nothing.’ He spoke against my skin. ‘Forget the tea, Holl, let’s go to bed.’

I must admit the clinch with Kai that afternoon had left me with a lot of spare desire slooshing about, and the relief that Nicholas was safe added to that. And once Aiden slid his hands up inside my shirt, it all got added to by his own particular appeal. ‘Okay.’

‘Why did you really come?’ It was snug in my bed, listening to the lack of sound from outside. Even the neighbourhood cats didn’t feel like fighting in this weather, and the lad from two doors down, who usually came home at three a.m., engine revving, had clearly decided that tonight was not the night to be cruising the streets in a souped-up Micra.

Aiden’s eyes were very dark. ‘Told you.’ His fingers were tracing along my arm, raising little hairs. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’ Our faces were very close together, sharing the same pillow. The other one was on the floor somewhere, bounced from its moorings by vigorous sex, along with a set of handcuffs that Aiden had brought with him. I’d kept a hold on the duvet; this was no night for naked sleeping.

‘You keep telling me that. But you haven’t said anything apart from “oh God, do that again” since we got up here.’

‘Maybe that’s all I wanted to say.’

I smiled. His hair was fanned out behind his head so he looked less like something you’d want as an ornament now, unless your decorative tastes ran to debauched satyrs. Which they might, I’m making no judgements here. ‘Want to say it again?’ I slipped my hand down his torso, sliding it over the scatter of lighter hair that lay across his belly.

He grabbed my wrist. ‘This whole shag-buddy thing. I think we should stop.’

‘Ah. Right, noticing you waited until after we’d fucked like rabbits to say that.’ I shook his hand off. ‘A phone call usually suffices.’

He didn’t smile. ‘Holly, the other day . . . I suddenly realised my feelings for you had changed. I think I want more.’

‘You think!’ I sat up and freezing air shot under the duvet like a frightened ferret. ‘Well, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to be sure, before you came all this way?’ I looked down on him, sprawled beside me, skin still flushed with sex. He was gorgeous. Why was every molecule in my body dumb with panic?

‘Yeah, it was really weird, like, kinda romantic. There I was last week, middle of the afternoon and I’m just sitting in my van mid-shoot, minding my own business and suddenly . . . it was like the earth shifted, y’know? And I realised I wanted us to have a chance to be together. Properly, like a couple. That’s why I’m chucking it all in. Giving up on the film stuff. Thought I’d get something round here, maybe an ad agency in York would take me on, with my background. Move in, take it from there.’

Now panic wasn’t the word. Mindless, wordless terror was more like it. Last week? When we did the spell? Oh, please, no . . . ‘But, Aid . . . we don’t really know each other.’

‘Know you well enough.’ A lazy smile spread over his face. ‘We could get married, d’you fancy that? Big white wedding. I saw your church over there, bit posh but it’d suit.’

‘Hold on.’ There had to be a TV show behind this. One of those that sets you up and films your inevitable downfall? ‘Firstly, we’ve hardly ever had a conversation before, I think you’ve just spoken more words to me in one night than in the last three years. Secondly, yeah, the sex is great, fabulous, but there’s more to a relationship than good sex, Aiden. And thirdly, I don’t want to get married.’

The smile was still there. Wasn’t he listening? ‘Aw, come on, Holl. Give it a try. We make a cracking couple. All right, maybe marriage is a way off, but couldn’t you stand coming home to this every night?’ He waved an arm to indicate the bed and the tumbled bed things. ‘Perfect antidote to workplace stress.’

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