Page 35 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“Oh.”

“It’s a good film. Maybe you shouldn’t have that one.” He walked over and snatched it back, quickly finding a plain white one in the box and throwing it over.

“Ok. If you say so.” I continued to chuckle as I took off my boots, before stopping at my belt buckle when he hadn’t yet turned around. Twirling my index finger in a circle, I gave him a hard stare until he begrudgingly spun to face the window, while I stripped out of my jodhpurs and polo shirt and down to my underwear.

“I knew you’d take off your clothes for me at some point.”

“Funny. Keep your eyes forward, Fraser.” The T-shirt swamped me, but the jogging bottoms must have belonged to an actual giant. “This isn’t going to work.”

He faced me again, a strange light in his eyes, his expression serious and broody for a split second, before his usual boyish expression appeared. “You’re a strange little hobbit, aren’t you?”

“I’m five foot five and a half. So, above average, thank you very much.”

“That is a curiously specific yet still vertically unimpressive answer,” he replied, laughing.

I went to put my hands on my hips in a matronly way, and the jogging bottoms began to slide down my legs. I quickly grabbed them, bunching the excess material protectively around my middle.

“There’s a tie cord in them somewhere. Just tighten them up?” Teddy suggested.

Pulling the white string as tight as I could, wriggling and puffing from the exertion, with angry, exaggerated movements, I persisted for a few moments under his wry gaze. And yet they were still miles too big, leaving a void of space between my body and the waistband. “Now what?”

Teddy sighed as he came over to me, taking the string from my fingers and pulling tighter, his knuckles grazing the skin of my stomach as he worked. He practically lifted me off the floor as he yanked the waist as small as it would go, knocking me off balance, so that I fell forwards, hand braced on his chest.

Glancing at this point of contact, the place where my palm was conveniently nestled over a rather impressively firm pectoral muscle, Teddy tutted. “I thought we agreed no touching?”

I was flustered. Who wouldn’t be? I was fairly sure that even Emmeline Pankhurst would have copped a bit of a feel at this point. He was annoyingly and unbelievably toned.

Stepping back to roll the jogging bottoms up so I could find my feet, I put my boots back on and tied a 90s-style knot in the hem of the T-shirt so that it no longer fell to my knees. “Ta da. Haute couture, DIY style.”

Teddy smiled a soft, genuine smile until the T-shirt slipped off my shoulder, revealing my bra strap, and he swallowed.

“Let’s get to it. You’re going to learn how to mix plaster today, Dr Havens.”

Good grief.

He wasn’t going to start with something easy then.

“I thought I was here to make tea?”

“Tea break’s over.”

With a resigned humph, I followed him out of the kitchen and up the grandiose curved wooden staircase. Shafts of sunlight reached like fingers through the bannisters, highlighting the dust motes that danced in the disturbed air around us, a miniature universe of twinkling stars swirling in space. Crossing the expansive landing, we entered one of the empty bedrooms where bags of plaster and buckets of water were already lying in wait.

“Lucky me, getting you to undressandcome up to my bedroom. This is proving to be quite a day.”

Teddy was tracking my movements with an amused expression, leaning against the doorframe as I wandered around, boots clumping loudly on the bare floorboards.

“Have you dialled the wooing up to advanced levels?”

“No, we’re still just covering the basics.”

“God help me.”

Teddy grinned his best mischievous grin, flashing teeth and dimples as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And yet my insides were spinning, shifting me off my usual centre of gravity, propelling me towards inevitable doom, and into a whole series of fantasies about his mouth. I had to bloody well stop this.

“Well, maybe we need to focus on fundamentals in plastering and not flirting,” I said with a frown, pausing by the open window where I had a good view of the surgery, my flat peeking out over The Rectory’s walled garden. The glorious, delicate scent of the dog roses that climbed the honey-coloured stone of the house and wound around the sill gently wafted under my nose, and I inhaled deeply.

“Right, let’s get to it.” Teddy was busy lifting sacks of plaster, his T-shirt pulling tight over his arms as he manhandled everything into the middle of the room. “It’s a one-to-one ratio of plaster to water, ok?”

---