I could put down the centre,’ he offered.
‘Sounds a good idea.’
It didn’t seem such a good idea when I looked at the nightdress Jenny had brought me. It was nightwear for a bride, low at the front and transparent everywhere. It forced me to reconsider the situation.
Jack undressed in the bathroom. When he returned and saw me dressed for the night, his eyebrows went up. I looked awful—shapeless and sexless. But that was probably a good thing.
‘Don’t tell me Jenny brought you that old sack?’
‘No, this comes from Selina’s maid. Jenny’s nightdress wouldn’t fit me.’
‘But you must be the same—’
He stopped quickly and I saw his face change as he realised that there was more to this than being the same size.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes—right—’
He was actually turning pink, which I reckoned didn’t happen very often.
He had some trouble finding his pyjamas, which puzzled me until I realised that he probably didn’t wear them much. They were white silk, and he looked just as good in them as he had in everything else. They were also semi-transparent, which might have been why he got into bed quickly, looking even pinker.
I climbed in the other side, wishing I could have worn Jenny’s sexy nightie. In these surroundings, and getting into bed with a man whose body I already knew so incongruously well, it would have been the right thing to wear. And if it did leave me half naked—well, he was getting used to that too.
I reasoned it wouldn’t have been fair to give him the wrong impression. Hell! What wrong impression? We’d got past that stage in the first five minutes.
So here I was, lying in bed with the sexiest man I’d ever met, with a pillow between us, trying desperately to think pure thoughts.
It was very, very difficult.
I wondered if he was having the same trouble.
Perhaps not, since he’d just seen me dressed in sackcloth and looking like King Kong’s mother.
Pity!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude, no matter what previous events might suggest. I’ve lived around some very charming people. Too charming, some of them, and they could leave you wishing you hadn’t listened to a word they’d said. But it had been fun while it lasted.
I’m not what Vanner thought, but I like do fellers. I flirt and fool around, dress to catch their eye, and when I’ve done that—well, things happen. Nice things.
Unfortunately my romances have tended to be very short-lived, for reasons I can’t go into here. But I knew a fantastic guy when I found myself in bed with him, even with a pillow between us.
‘All right to turn out the light?’ he asked, in a voice that I thought sounded tense.
‘Yes, fine,’ I said.
He turned it out and for a while we both lay in the darkness, listening to each other’s breathing.
I had a problem. I usually slept naked, and the sackcloth I was wearing made me as hot as fire. Well, something did, anyway. And I began to sense that it was the same for him, if his movements were anything to go by. He tossed and turned and finally pulled off his pyjama jacket.
So then I had to start thinking pure thoughts all over again.
But I had my moment. Half an hour later, after a lot more fretful tossing around, he suddenly leapt out of bed and shot into the bathroom as though all the devils in hell were after him. A moment later I heard the unmistakable sound of a shower.
I slept happily after that.
I awoke first, in the early light, and propped myself up to look at him.
He looked fantastic asleep, even with a night’s growth of beard. It was thick, dark, and gave him the air of a pirate.
He was bare-chested, not having replaced the pyjama jacket. I wondered what else he hadn’t replaced, but from here I couldn’t see. What I could see was that he really did have a hairy chest. Rich and curly. Just as I like it.
He opened his eyes.
‘Hi,’ he said. Then he became aware of his chest. ‘Sorry about this. I just—’
He was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by a cheery voice calculated to freeze the blood.
‘Coo-ee! Is anyone awake?’
‘Oh, Lord, it’s Grace,’ he said desperately.
‘I’ve brought your coffee,’ came the voice through the door. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Just a minute, Grace,’ he yelled. ‘I’m not decent.’ Under his breath he muttered, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’
‘What?’
‘My jacket. Oh, there it is on the floor.’
He leaned down to scoop it up, accidentally revealing the answer to the question that had been troubling me. He’d probably left them in the bathroom.
Inspiration seized me and I grabbed the pyjama jacket from his hands, tossing it back onto the floor.
‘Are you crazy?’ he hissed.
‘No, but you are,’ I told him. ‘You’re supposed to be nuts about me, and you’re sleeping in that? Come on—make it look real.’
As I spoke I was pulling the pillow out of the bed, tossing it away, then stripping off the sack and pushing it down the bed where nobody could see it.
‘Push the sheet down to your waist,’ I said, and when he did so I put my arm around his neck, trying not to be too aware of the length of his naked body against mine. ‘Now we look real.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘That’s the spirit.’ He raised his voice. ‘OK, Grace.’
I don’t know exactly what Grace had expected to see, but it must have been a lot less than what she did see—because she looked as if she’d swallowed a hedgehog, prickles and all. I nestled against Jack, smiling at her as she stood there with a small tray bearing two coffees.
I’ll say this for her: she got her act together fast, fixed her smile on with steel rivets, and approached the bed.
‘I hope you two slept well,’ she said, like any hostess greeting any guest in the morning.
‘Well,’ I mused, ‘I wouldn’t exactly say slept. But it was a wonderful night.’
As I finished I gave an inane little giggle, and, if I say so myself, I do ‘inane’ very well. I have a large repertoire of giggles, to be produced on demand, but the jewel in the crown is definitely ‘inane’.
It got to
