Page 60 of The Cocktail Bar
Chapter Thirty-One
RIVER
“How about some pudding?”
Terry rubbed his hands together with the intensity of Ray Mears about to start up a bush fire.
“Not for me, thanks, Dad,” said Georgina.
“Why what’s up with you, my love? That’s not like you at all. They’ve got chocolate brownie, your favourite. And you’ve not touched more than a drop of your wine since River poured it.”
“I’m just not feeling my usual self, that’s all.”
Fear wrangled with River’s stomach then, not that he had much of a sweet tooth either himself, but he certainly wouldn’t be doing anything that gave Terry chance to insinuate that he and his daughter were like two peas in a pod. But then he remembered she’d had a miscarriage. If indeed that was even true – since it was highly likely she’d faked the entire idea of a pregnancy. So then she was simply feeling a little drained, that was all; in which case surely the most sensible thing would have been to stay at home.
“Well, I’m having the lemon cheesecake,” River announced, “Al, are you joining me?”
“Don’t you go telling me you’re dieting too, Alice,” said Terry. “You’re skin and bone as it is.”
River could sense the red mist that was the inevitable envy in Georgina’s frown without even needing to look at it for validation.
“Okay, why not, it’s been years since I’ve had a cheesecake,” Alice replied.
“Oh my God, Al, do you remember the size of that slice we had after Lennie took us all ice skating at The Rockefeller Center in New York that December?”
“For heaven’s sakes, don’t let it be that colossal!”
Alice laughed and River joined her, the chemistry between them fizzing and popping across the table, until Heather, Terry and Georgina, the rest of the diners besides, could have been spectators of a merry-go-round, one they were unable to hop onto to join them, their curious faces blurring at the edges while the figures at the centre fell ever deeper into love’s inescapable centrifuge.
“Are you ready to place your orders now?” The waiter semi-snapped them out of it.
“What… what… um… what about you, Heather?”
River’s heart skipped a beat as Alice leaned in closer to his mum, her eyes unable to leave his.
Was this it, her reciprocation that she was equally smitten; her invitation to permanently be that little bit more than just good friends?
He felt a twinge of shame as he remembered Georgina was also sitting at the table, but wild horses couldn’t have broken this public interchange. How were they going to contain themselves when they got back to the caravan tonight? God, he didn’t want them to contain themselves! He wanted all of Alice, now, every inch of her body. Why of all the inconvenient bloody moments in time did she have to make it clear to him she wanted him too, sat in a country pub surrounded by villagers and tourists and well-meaning ‘family’ and waiters taking orders for cheesecake whose indigestible morsels would cloy at the throat because frankly, some people had very different things on their minds?
“I think I’ll go for the steamed ginger pudding, no custard though… well, unless you have lactose-free, organic in the kitchen?”
“Sorry, we don’t.” The waiter’s eyes were scrunched up now, mouth resembling an exasperated bullfrog.
“Typical, any pub remotely outside of Glastonbury and the words ‘allergy’ and ‘organic’ are received as if I were speaking in tongues,” said Heather. “It’s okay, I’ve brought my own supply.” And she bent then to rather embarrassingly retrieve a small ethnically-printed carton from her bag. “No point in me checking if you’ve subbed sugar for stevia in the pudding,” she continued, “then again, I’m pretty sure your chef wouldn’t dream of baking ginger with a white refined sugar… oh well, if it’s muscovado or golden granulated, it’s hardly going to kill me, just this once I suppose.”
“I’ll join her,” said Terry, adding an apologetic facial expression to the waiter. “So that’s two steamed ginger puddings, just to be clear. Good old regular custard for me though.”
The waiter disappeared with a sigh, and Georgina pushed her chair backwards then, too.
“Sorry… got to run to the ladies,” she announced, standing quickly with one hand pressed over her stomach.
Thankfully, Alice hadn’t noticed. Something about her had changed this afternoon. She was dazzling, not that her beauty ever escaped her for a moment, even when she was sobbing into strawberry-stained hands; those irises had the power to captivate, overruling the puffy red rims of her eyes. In fact he would go as far as to say she’d changed so much, that if he wasn’t completely mistaken, her now un-booted foot was travelling the length of his thigh, caressing it sensually, sending a lightning bolt up his denim-clad legs, through his boxer shorts and beyond.
Oh hell.
This was good, it was very good; it boded well for the kind of future he had recently thought he could only dream of. But at this precise moment in time, it was hardly convenient, and it was all he could do not to develop a sudden ingenious code language which would see them wink conspiratorially to find their individual excuses to leave the table – in exchange for one of those giant, bouncy looking haystacks in the field beyond.
If she was this naughty now, what was she going to do to him later?
