Abigail Gordon - Chasing Summer

Hopefully he wouldn’t take her abrupt change of mind as meaning she was interested in him, as Molly had suggested. She had a suspicion that he wouldn’t need much encouragement to try to change their platonic date into a less platonic one.

Another disturbing thought popped into her mind. Perhaps he didn’t need any encouragement. Perhaps a man as handsome and eligible as Mike expected his dates to end the evening in bed with him. She hadn’t thought of that.

Salome had no idea what men expected on a date these days. She’d had to put up with a lot of groping as a teenager, and even then boys had expected a girl to come across pretty quickly. She’d had many a wrestle in the back of a car during her dating years, but only once had she given in—the summer she’d turned seventeen. And of course she had thought she was in love. The man in question had been older than her usual dates. At twenty-four, he’d not been prepared to take no for an answer.

But sex had not been the earth-shaking experience Salome had been expecting. Physically she’d felt nothing after the initial stab of pain. It had been a non-event. Things hadn’t improved either, on subsequent occasions, and her boyfriend had quickly dumped her, saying she was abnormal. Salome had been very upset at the time, the only consolation to her lack of pleasure in sex being that she didn’t have to fear she might turn out to be as promiscuous as her mother.

Nevertheless, when Ralph had come along and proposed his platonic marriage, Salome had initially been perturbed. Underneath, she hadn’t given up hope of finding the right man one day, with whom she would be a normal woman, finding satisfaction and enjoyment in making love. But Ralph had been persistent with his flattering attentions and declarations of love and caring, and in the end she just hadn’t been able to say no. After all, he’d covered her main objection by promising that if she ever wanted a child she could have one by artificial insemination or adoption.

And, as it turned out, Salome had never really felt that the lack of sex in her marriage had been any great sacrifice. Admittedly, she did have bouts when she was restless and couldn’t sleep, but she didn’t believe that had anything to do with physical frustration. She’d always been a bad sleeper. She wouldn’t even have associated her insomnia with such a cause if Ralph hadn’t suggested it once.

She would never forget the occasion. It had been the first night Ralph had taken her to Angellini’s. She had come home still flushed and fuming with fury at Michael’s high-handed attitude. Ralph had floored her by saying that her anger was sexual, that the Italian’s high-voltage sex appeal had stirred her blood, that she was angry simply because she wanted him. She recalled laughing at the time. The idea was ludicrous!

Perhaps not so ludicrous now, though, she thought, her mind slipping back to that moment earlier in the day when Mike had touched her...

With suddenly trembling fingers, she had difficulty securing the gold and pearl studs in her ears, her mind still elsewhere as she automatically applied perfume to the pulse-points at her wrists and throat—a musky oriental perfume that she always wore.

‘You look lovely, dear,’ her mother complimented.

Salome snapped out of her disturbing reverie to realise she had been staring in the mirror without focusing. She did so now, studying her reflection and wondering what it was about her that men found so attractive. She didn’t think she was that beautiful. Her face was triangular, her chin slightly squared off at the point, her nose straight with flared nostrils that suggested an unpredictable temper. Nothing irresistible there, she thought ruefully. Her hand came up to trace her high forehead and cheekbones, then dropped to run dismissively over her far too generous mouth.

She couldn’t see why men so liked her hair either, that wild mass of burnished curls which resisted taming no matter what any hairdresser did. Even now, piled securely on top of her head, dozens of tiny curls and tendrils were already escaping.

She scowled and saw that annoyance darkened her almond-shaped green eyes to the colour of slate. Set deep and wide, they were perhaps her best feature, though, without mascara, the long pale lashes were inclined to be insipid. She almost cringed to think how she’d used to make them up, with thick black eye-liner and buckets of mascara. At the moment, however, enhanced by smoky green eye-shadow, grey eyeliner and mascara, her eyes looked exotic and mysterious.

‘The eyes of a temptress’, Ralph used to say, then smile at her.

Those eyes clouded over and she no longer saw her reflection. A wretchedness was clutching at her heart, a bitter taste coming to her mouth. What kind of cruel game had Ralph been playing with her?

‘Mr Angellini doesn’t stand a chance.’

‘What?’ She turned around, her face blank, her mind still distracted.

A coughing sound in the open doorway had both women looking around. Wayne was standing there, dressed casually in a navy tracksuit, a lazy grin on his large pleasant face. Salome had only met him a couple of times before, but, while she thought her mother was making the same old mistake in letting the man move in with her, she had to admit he was Molly’s best bet yet. Around forty, and in the building trade, he had an air of solid decency about him that her mother’s other boyfriends had lacked.

‘There’s a chap at the door looking for you, Salome,’ he drawled. ‘And a Jag at the kerb. Better shake a leg or he might do a flit. He doesn’t look like the sort of bloke who’d have to hang around waiting for birds too often. Don’t you be long either, Doll,’ he directed at Molly, and, without a second glance at Salome, ambled off back down the hall towards the living-room.

His physically ignoring Salome made him go up in her estimation a thousand-fold. You never knew, she thought ruefully. Maybe Molly had cracked it at last.

She smiled at her mother, who was lifting her eyebrows up and down in mock fun. ‘A Jaguar, no less,’ she teased. ‘Glad to see my daughter hasn’t dropped her standards.’

‘Now, Molly, I’ve already told you, I—’

‘Yes, yes, I know; he’s just a friend. I won’t keep on about it. But you will look after yourself, won’t you, in that empty old penthouse?’

Her gentle tone choked Salome up. ‘Of course,’ she managed to get out.

‘And forget silly old Ralph,’ came the firm advice.

‘I’ll try, Molly. I’ll try.’

Mike had apparently been content to wait for her on the front doorstep, but when he saw her coming down the hall, carrying the heavy suitcase, he stepped inside into the light of the foyer to help.

Molly literally caught her breath and ground to a halt, staring at Mike as though he were Tom Cruise in the flesh. Salome could understand her mother’s reaction, even if she didn’t approve. Her own heart had jolted when she’d seen him.

There was no doubt that black did something for Mike Angellini that no other colour did. Not that he was in his dinner-suit. The black woollen suit he was wearing was far less formal—in fact so incredibly modern that Salome was rather taken aback. She had always imagined him to be a very conventional dresser.

But apparently she was wrong. For there was nothing conventional in the loose, front-pleated trousers and the equally loose, cardigan-style jacket. Certainly nothing conventional in his decision to matching both of these with a chest-hugging white polo-necked sweater, either. He looked rakish and dangerous and devastatingly sexy.

Salome’s green eyes remained outwardly calm as they flicked over the tall, smiling figure moving towards her, but her heart was missing the odd beat, and forming in her mind was the awful suspicion that any immunity she’d once had to this man’s attractiveness might be on the wane.