Page 12 of Loving Jemima

His companion took his arm and Ellie let her eyes stray for a second. The woman was tall, with long dark hair, deep blue eyes, and impossibly long eyelashes. She was the kind of woman that magazines would call an English Rose. For a split second Ellie thought to smile at her.

But the woman wasn’t looking, she was asking the man if he was alright and so Ellie turned back to her fight to get to the bar.

???

“Is this really our kind of place?” Jem asked.

“It has alcohol, loud music, and many people who may be willing to indulge in pleasures of the flesh,” Rolly said. “What makes you think this isn’t our sort of place?”

“It’s on the wrong side of the river, for a start,” Jem said. She looked around at the writhing mass of people. “And there’s not a free table in the house.”

“All the better for dancing,” Rolly said. “And stop being such a spoilsport, Jem. You might be right about it being not quite our sort of place, but that means it’s certainly not the kind of place that anyone else we know would go to. Which in turn means you’re safe to lure flies into your web. Or whatever it is that you women do together.”

“It has little to do with spiders, I can assure you,” she said. But he was right. There was not a single recognizable face in the place, and that, in the end, was probably what mattered. And there was alcohol. “Drink?”

“Allow me,” Rolly said, sliding out into the crowd with surprising grace.

She watched him go and reminded herself that she loved him. She did, in her own way. Rolly had been her secret keeper for as long as she could remember. Ever since one awful party when they were both fifteen and he had tried to kiss her under a snooker table and she had tried to kiss him right back andneither had been able to hide their mutual disgust.

Up until that point, Jem had been sure that whatever she was feeling it would go away with time. It had been Rolly’s kiss that had informed her in no polite terms that boys were definitely not what she was into.

They’d grown together, kept each other’s secrets, until Rolly had had the courage to tell his father and then Jem had been there for the fallout.

“Here,” Rolly said, back in an instant with two large shots clasped in his hands. “Drink it fast, it’s not Grey Goose.”

Obediently, Jem took the glass, tilted it back, and drained it in one.

“Steady on,” said Rolly. “That was a triple. Thought it’d save me going back to the bar.”

“I’ll get the next one,” Jem said, eyes still stinging from the first.

“In a while,” Rolly said. He was smiling at a small, dark man who was dancing nearby. “I’m going for a dance first.” He paused for a second. “Make your choices Jem, we’re not hanging around here all night. If there’s someone you like, well, you know how it works.”

It was a bit like being taken to the dog park and being allowed to run around without a lead for half an hour. Jem knew exactly how this worked. Once every month or so, she and Rolly would sneak away and come to a place like this and she’d… find someone. Just for a couple of hours, or a night maybe.

It wasn’t exactly romantic. But it satisfied her urges and meant she could sit through dinners with men like Luca without actually scratching their eyes out.

Rolly disappeared into the throngs on the dance floor and Jem let her eyes stray over to the bar, nobody catching her attention until suddenly someone did.

She was standing at the bar, one foot up on the rail, one elbow on the bar. Her hair was gloriously dark and messy, all curls and waves that begged to be tangled between Jem’s fingers. Her profile was sharp, her body was curved, not too skinny, hips thatneeded to be held, cleavage that just peeked out of a sensible work shirt.

Whoever she was, she fit in here about as well as Jem did. There was no leather, no feathers, no sequins, just someone in dark pants and a white shirt. Someone who’d come straight from work. Someone who was probably here for the same reasons that Jem was.

Jem left her empty glass on the edge of someone else’s table and moved toward the bar, not taking her eyes off the woman. She looked… like someone who needed corrupting perhaps. Jem could feel her heart beating under her skin at the thought of it.

“Hello.”

The woman turned and smiled a little and Jem could see that her eyes were dark. A little sweat had collected in the hollow at the base of her throat. “Hello.”

Jem let her eyes obviously stray up and down. “I’d ask if you come here often, but I’m afraid you’ve probably heard that more than once tonight already.”

“I shouldn’t think anyone’s heard that since about nineteen seventy five,” the woman said crisply. Her voice was deeper than Jem had expected.

Jem grinned now. A fighter, she liked that. The woman wasn’t going to make this easy and Jem thrived on a challenge. “Buy you a drink?”

The barman slid a cocktail over to the woman just at that moment. “Already got one,” she said, lifting her glass.

Jem could feel the moment inexplicably slipping away. Shit. “Feel like some company while you drink it?” she tried, thinking that she might be starting to sound desperate.

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