Page 51 of Anything but Easy
His eyes warmed a few more degrees and he fought the smile that tugged at his lips, but fortunately lost. “Kira, are you trying to make sexy Aga references?”
“Yeah, baby,” my ovaries breathed. In truth, they’d only really heard him saying the word sexy in his deep rumbly voice and that was all they needed. His chest started shaking under my hands and he let out a short laugh then looked at the ceiling.
“Agas are not sexy, Kira.”
“Hmmm . . .” the ovaries sighed as I closed my eyes and leaned forward to breath in his chest. “Sexy.”
His chest shook with another deep rumbly laugh.
“How the hell do you manage to piss me off, scare me to death and make me laugh twice all in the space of ten minutes?”
There was a loud bang at the door, snapping me out of my daze and enabling me to wrest control of my consciousness back from my ovaries.
“The door is paper thin,” Sam said in a monotone voice from the other side of it. “I’m very sorry Mr Lucas, but I didnotwant to hearanyof that and if you don’t mind, I would like to get you to a secure location where I can maybe . . . I don’t know . . . do my job?”
I rolled my eyes. “Chillax, Grumpy Knickers, I’m just–”
“We’ll be five minutes,” Barclay told him, moving across to the wardrobe and dragging my ancient suitcase off the top of it.
“Ah!” I shouted. “Wait! That’s got . . .” It was too late. Barclay had lifted the suitcase down and been showered with about one thousand condoms. All unopened, but still . . .
He put the suitcase down on the bed slowly, it was now only half full of condoms, and then looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” he said, flipping open the top and surveying the plethora of safe sex options (there were even a few femidoms in there and a number of diaphragms for good measure).
“The government – Tory obvs,” I gave him an eyebrow lift of my own, “closed down the family planning centre in Lewisham. These were leftovers I’ve been meaning to cart over to the clinic in St Thomas’.”
He gave me a look.
“What?” I shrug. “I wasn’t going to let them throw it all away. Think how many safe shags this lot could generate.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Kira, why are we talking about safe shags and condoms?”
“We wouldn’t have to if your government hadn’t shut down the family planning clinic.”
He looked at me, shook his head then upended the suitcase to tip the rest of the condoms out onto the bed.
“No more sexy Agas, no more safe shags, no more condoms,” he told me, and his bossy tone made the Murphy ovaries sit up to attention again, ready to take over my weak mind. “Pack.”
Chapter 20
I’ll give you refractory period
Barclay
“I’ll wait here until you talk to him,” Kira told me, a stubborn expression on her face as she stood next to the back door.
I was trying to move her in.
Or rather, I was kidnapping her and installing her in my home. Not an in-character action for me at all, but it was clear that Kira Murphy was doing a shitty job of looking after herself. And after hearing that she merrily stayed in her tiny pigsty of a flat after multiple break-ins, even sleeping in said flat directly after a break in with no bloody lock on the door, I was done.
Yes, okay she could have stayed with her friends, I accepted that, but the woman was a liability. She had no sense of self-preservation and quite frankly, those people were not up to the task of keeping Kira Murphy out of trouble and safe.
No, in my opinion she needed twenty-four-hour security, a complex alarm system and a goddamn bodyguard. All of which I could provide in my home. Plus, the fact that she’d actuallybein my home – I wouldn’t have to wonder where she was all the time and I wouldn’t struggle to get hold of her, given that she didn’t carry her goddamn mobile. Kira must have been the only twenty-something in 2019 not carrying a mobile phone. She told me she has onesomewhere, but I’d have to get the removal people I’d hired to look for it that week, because between the thousands of unused prophylactics strewn over her bedroom and the chaos of the break in, there was no way we were ever going to be able to find it. I asked her if I could ring it and she looked at me like I’d just asked to send an envoy into the Amazon Rainforest to communicate with the lost tribes people. I rang it anyway just to see. It went straight to voicemail. Of course it did. And her voicemail message went something like this:
‘Okay, so if you’re about to leave a message, you don’t know me very well. I don’t check my voicemail. I’d say you can text, but I’m not hot on those either – #sorrynotsorry.’ Yes, that’s right, she actuallysaidhashtag. ‘Anyhoo, if you want to communicate with me you could maybe find me and you know . . . have anactualconversation with me. Give it a try. Let’s do it like it’s nineteen eighty-five. Peace out, cockwombles.’
I’d let my phone drop to my side and stared at her for a full minute after that. An argument about the fact that she’s a bloody doctor and should have a mobile she answers (failing that a professional voicemail message) earned me another eye roll, another ‘Chillax, Sex Badger’ and a long explanation about how she doesn’t do on-calls from home and, if she’s on call in the hospital, she has her work mobile and a pager. At any other time, there was no way to contact Kira. At all. She didn’t even have a functioning landline at her flat. So essentially, if you wanted to contact Kira out of work hours, you’d need a carrier pigeon or a bloodhound at your disposal.
