I come, Gordon Parker, and I’m going to vigorously defend my right to listen to ‘Paint It Black’ in the privacy of my own home at eight o’clock in the evening, although I may agree to turn down the volume a notch or two!
She opened the door.
‘Uh…’ Marshall Irwin began awkwardly.
Aimee gasped, and it was probably fortunate that she didn’t have any pockets in her old black cotton and Lycra leggings to stuff the wineglass into, slurp of Chardonnay included. ‘Marshall! Come in…’
He looked achingly good, incredibly masculine and a lot better than Mick Jagger. He’d obviously been jogging, though he was only slightly out of breath. A dark blue T-shirt clung closely to a sinewy and nicely muscled frame. Loose black twill-weave running shorts showed off legs that were no strangers to exercise. They were brown, knotty, strong and roughened by dark hair. It was only two weeks until Sydney’s well-known ‘City to Surf’ race, which he entered every year.
In the surgery, he usually wore glasses. Aimee liked the aura of experience and wisdom which the rectangular wire frames lent to his face. At the moment he wasn’t wearing them and she could see his eyes, and it was starting to be a distinct possibility that she liked those even better than the glasses. They were blue, like the blue of willow-pattern china, steady and twinkling and…uncertain.
‘Should I?’ he said. ‘You look as if you’re…’ He stopped.
Having a party? Oh, hell, this was embarrassing! Lonely widow, dancing her heart out in the dark. Secret women’s business, indeed!
‘I’m not,’ Aimee said. ‘At least, I was, but…’
‘Sorry?’
‘Please, come in!’ She practically dragged him through the doorway by both hands, with the wineglass pressed between her fingers and his. ‘I was…dancing, that’s all.’
‘Paint It Black’ came to an end, and ‘Pretty Woman’ came on instead. Following her down the hallway, Marshall laughed. ‘Dancing? All by yourself?’
‘I know. It’s—’
‘Delightful! It’s absolutely delightful, Aimee,’ he repeated softly, and before she knew it he’d taken the wine-glass from her hand and plonked it down on the sideboard, then whirled her to face him. He took her hands in his and began rocking along with her to the jaunty, driving beat. He was good at it, unselfconscious and naturally attuned to the rhythm. ‘Do you do it often?’
‘No!’ she denied frantically, then added, opting for greater honesty, ‘But I often feel that I should. When I do it, it’s so nice. Not really a lonely feeling, dancing alone, because it’s so exhilarating, and I usually phone Sarah or someone afterwards, and anyway William only left home at the beginning of the year…’
‘Did he join in?’
‘No, he laughed at me! But in a nice way. He thinks the Rolling Stones are dreadfully old-fashioned. He likes Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins and Powderfinger.’
‘I’m impressed at the way you can reel off the names!’
The home-made tape came to an end, making the last few notes of the song wobble before they cut off, and the silence was too sudden. They both stood in the centre of the room like boats beached by a low tide.
‘Ah-h-h!’ Aimee said to break it, lifting her hair up onto her head to cool her neck. She was more breathless than Marshall had been after his jog.
‘I had to come,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and serious.
She looked up at him, alarmed.
‘No,’ he hastened to answer her. ‘Nothing’s happened. But when I told you I wouldn’t be good company because of feeling low over Mrs Deutschkron’s prognosis, I realised…I can already tell this isn’t going to come out right!…that that was exactly why I should want to see you, and why I did want to see you. Damn!’
‘Marshall?’
‘I was right. It hardly sounds like a compliment, does it? That I was down, so I wanted to inflict it on you and added your house to the route of my evening jog. Oh, but, Aimee, I don’t want to waste any more time on explanations! I don’t! This is what I want…’
He pulled her into his arms slowly, with grace and care, as if it was something he hadn’t done in a long time but had no doubts about the rightness of doing now.
Coming up against his chest, still breathless, Aimee had no doubts either. Her body and her heart were responding more strongly than she’d thought they had the power to do. Her heart was pounding, in fact, and her breathing was light and fluttery. They were both a little sweaty and damp, both dressed in soft clothing that clung intimately.
But before she had time to map the places their bodies touched with such electrifying effect, he was kissing her. Not the rather courteous, old-fashioned press of his lips to the corner of her mouth that he’d given her on Sunday evening, but a real, honest-to-goodness, hot, passionate smooch.
It felt…wonderful! And very quickly much more than a smooch. A…A…There wasn’t a better word in any language she knew.
Oh, stop thinking about it, Aimee!
She did, and just gave herself to the endless moment instead. Slowly, his arms came fully around her, one hand resting against her hip at first, then sliding across to lazily trace the curve of her rear, still satisfactorily taut and shapely beneath the close-fitting leggings.
Marsh’s other hand had crossed her back and kneaded her shoulder, and she had to arch and stretch her neck up to reach him with her own mouth, creating a strangely pleasant feeling that she’d topple backwards if he didn’t have her so tightly and preciously enclosed in his arms.
His face was a little rough. His body was firm, and still hot from his run. His mouth was confident, as if now that he’d jumped in at the deep end he’d remembered that he was good at this.
And he was good at it! She hadn’t realised until now that kissing was a talent like any other, and some people had that talent in spades.
He had a better talent than she did, too, of keeping track of a conversation, because when he finally broke away to ask, ‘Do you understand that it’s a compliment, Aimee?’ she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Of course a kiss was a compliment!
‘I mean the fact that I needed to come,’ he explained, after seeing her confused expression. ‘It wasn’t planned. I was jogging and I was heading in this direction, and it suddenly just wasn’t possible not to come down your street and front up at your door and demand a cup of tea.’
‘You haven’t done that yet.’
‘Can I do it now? This business of Mrs Deutschkron is still eating at me.’
‘Oh, Marshall!’ She reached up and pushed a stray lock of dark hair, thickly threaded with grey, back from his forehead. ‘Of course it is! I’m so sorry, and here I am, dancing away like a maniac.’
She stroked her fingers down his jaw and neck, felt the beating of his blood briefly, then let them rest softly on his shoulder as she
