Gut Feeling (2 page)

‘Lee. Hi,’

‘Hi Ash,’ he replied, showing off his perfect teeth. He still looked drop-dead gorgeous, she thought, as he stood there wearing the same cocky smile.

‘Nice place.’ He gestured up towards her front door. ‘I bumped into Sam; she told me where you had moved to.’

‘Did she now,’ Ash said not too happily. ‘And what do you want, Lee?’

‘To see how you are, Ash?’

‘Fine, I’m fine, can’t you tell?’ She also gestured up towards her front door.

‘Yeah, looks like you are—new home tucked back from the main road. Nice.’ He looked past her at the cobbled stone forecourt. ‘Still got your MG?’ He nodded at the garage doors beneath the stone steps that lead up to her front door.

‘Yes thanks.’

They stood on the cobbles, Ash not wanting to invite him up but curious as to what he wanted from her.

After a while Lee looked hard at her. ‘Ash, I’ve been a fool. I can’t live without you.’ He moved closer to touch her face taking off his shades to reveal his sharp blue eyes. ‘I still want you.’ He moved her hair behind her ear.

‘Lee don’t.’

I
can’t
let
him
seduce
his
way
back
in
to
my
life
like
this.
Not
again.

He stared into her eyes, longing to kiss her full plump lips. She let him stand close for a moment, feeling the passion before moving away.

‘I can’t,’ she said quietly.

‘Can’t what?’

‘I can’t be with you again—too much has happened. I’m happy with my life now, Lee.’

‘Do you still want me like you used to, babe?’ He looked dead into her eyes, demanding her full attention as if she were one of his clients who didn’t understand what was at stake.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you think about us making love like we used to?’ he asked, stepping closer again. ‘Ash, I can’t get you out of my head at night—your smell, the way your body moved under mine, the noises you made when we were making love.’

‘Stop!’

But he had moved her against the garage door, bending to kiss her, pushing his body hard against hers. In the heat of the moment she kissed him back for a split second, then broke away.

‘I want you to go,’ she said, straightening her top.

‘Ash, it’s still there—our life together,’ he pleaded with her.

‘Yeah, Lee—until something else takes your fancy,’ she shouted, running up the step to her front door. ‘Now just go—and leave me alone.’

‘I’ll prove it to you, babe. Just give us some thought.’

‘No. I’ve met someone else.’ The words fell from her mouth without her thinking. She slammed the door behind her.

Lee stared up at the door for a moment then turned to walk away, rolling his eyes. Ash stood with her back against the door, her heart pounding, her head in a spin. She put her keys on the table in the hall and picked up the phone to ring Rachel, a childhood friend and her closest confidant. But then she decided against it and put the phone down again. She couldn’t call and offload her problems about Lee again. She needed to move on from him.

Be strong, she told herself, she would be seeing her soon anyway and could confined in her about Lee then. Ash hoped he now had the message and would stay away. She walked over to her couch and slumped down. She couldn’t let Lee do it again. He was bad for her—she knew this—but she had to admit that deep down she loved the excitement, the power he had over her.

She stood up.
Snap
yourself
out
of
it
—
you’re
twenty-six
years
old
and
in
control
of
your
own
feelings
, she said to herself, and then walked quickly into her bedroom, remembering she still had to get to Leon’s apartment to meet everyone for dinner. Perhaps she should call Rachel and tell her she was running late, but she wouldn’t mention the Lee incident, not just yet.

* * *

‘You’re late.’

‘I know I’m sorry.’ Ash kissed Leon on both cheeks then followed him inside.

Leon was a wealthy bachelor friend whom Ash had met one day as she stood admiring an abstract sculpture in the Tate Modern, when she had first moved to London. He seemed to know what the large plastic egg-shaped object was trying to convey and after that accompanied her round the gallery, explaining each individual piece of work to her. By the end she had established that Leon didn’t actually work at the gallery but was an art dealer, which explained his vast knowledge of art.

He had persuaded Ash to have a coffee with him and even though he took the hint that she was not interested in sleeping with him, they had remained friends. Leon’s father was African and his mother English, giving Leon a deep brown shade to his skin. His parents now lived in Oxford in a manor house that was open to the public so that people could enjoy the beautiful architecture and the family’s large and valuable art collection.

The fact that Leon was bisexual was something he assumed was hidden from other people, especially his friends, and as none of them ever asked him, he liked to think that they imagined him to be a straight, one hundred per cent, red-blooded heterosexual. He sometimes wondered, though, whether his doggedly bachelor lifestyle might have given them pause for thought.

Indeed, unlike his father, Leon had no wish to marry and settle down in the country and instead lived, courtesy of his father, in a magnificent two-storey apartment overlooking London Bridge and the Thames. The view from the balcony was spectacular and all the rooms were exquisitely decorated with expensive works of art, both sculpture and paintings. The sofa in the lounge was in the shape of an enormous black kidney, big enough for at least seven or eight people to lounge on at the same time, but it looked more like an odd-shaped bed as it had no arms. The artworks were all originals, mainly bought at auction, and the discreet lighting worked with the soft colours on the walls to make the large spaces feel warm and homely

Ash and Leon had made new friends as a result of their friendship, namely Rachel—Ash’s closest friend who now loved Leon as much as Ash did—and Juliette, or Jules for short, one of Leon’s closest friends, who was now equally close to Ash. Jules worked for a well-known magazine company and had been heading up a team in Madrid for the launch of a new app magazine for the modern woman. She had been living in Madrid for the past year and was due to fly home in two days’ time. Over the years the four of them—Ash, Leon, Rachel and Jules—had become a close-knit group.

‘Come on Ash, you minx—get a move on. I cooked you know.’

‘You lie, Leon. Don’t lie to me—I’m not one of your lady friends.’

‘OK
whatever
, so I had someone do it for me, but I paid. Anyway come on, sit, eat and shut up. Rachel was telling me about some model girl that OD’d on drugs.’ He pushed Ash down on to a high-backed glass chair in the dining room.

‘Hi, Rach,’ she said, straightening her chair. ‘So who are we talking about?’

‘One of Jules’s models—’

‘So anyway, tell me who did it,’ Leon cut Rachel off.

‘With the candlestick in the drawing room,’ Ash smiled sarcastically.

‘Funny Ash—for you anyway.’ Leon returned the same smile.

‘
So
. . .’ Rachel intervened, ‘I called Jules today to see what time her flight was due in etcetera, etcetera, and she was at the hospital. She told me she had just finished some big advertising campaign for something to do with the magazine and had gone to an after party and one of her models had put too much white stuff up her nose and collapsed in the club,’ Rachel took a breath.

‘No way that happened.’ Ash looked generally concerned.

‘Did she die?’

‘Leon!’

‘What, you asked what happened. I want to know if she died or not.’ He rolled his eyes and turned to Rachel for the answer.

‘Don’t know. Jules had to go. Some nurse told her to get off the phone. Well, that’s what Jules said as I can’t understand Spanish. Anyway she said she would call me when she’s landed.’ Rachel took a sip of wine, looking back at Leon.

‘Rach, that is as big an anticlimax as the fifty-six-year-old woman I shagged last week after discovering her plastic surgery was face only.’

‘Leon, you’re a sick man,’ Rachel laughed.

Rachel had grown up with Ash, and gone to the same independent, prestigious private school, but left with better grades and went on to pursue a career in London for a leading retail company. She was now a buyer in children’s clothing for the well-known high street brand Hop Scotch. Ironically Rachel was probably the least maternal woman on earth, with no serious relationships and no desire to find one either.

‘So did she tell you anything else—any big gossip? I’m talking tabloid press gossip,’ Leon continued.

‘Nope, I don’t think gossip was big in her mind at that point somehow, do you?’

‘Guess not.’ Leon dropped his shoulders.

They sat eating the carefully prepared Italian pasta with plum tomatoes and mozzarella then moved into the lounge so the caterer could clear the plates, then they all binged out with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, watching the music channel and talking. After the ice cream was gone and it had been washed down with two bottles of red wine followed by two of white, they decided to call it a night and rang for a cab. Air kisses were exchanged at the front door and Ash shared a cab with Rachel, who had to be helped in as she wobbled off balance, sending Leon into fits of laughter.

‘Leon, you’re not helping here.’

‘Sorry Ash.’ Leon rushed to help Ash put Rachel into the front seat and fasten her seatbelt.

‘You’re both stinking drunks,’ Ash laughed, ‘you know that, don’t you.’

Ash raised herself to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Thanks for having us over.’

‘Any time, babe—and maybe if you ate less ice cream and drank more, you too could get strapped into a cab drunk.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind Leon.’

* * *

By the time Ash had closed her front door it was one in the morning. She was content that she had had another good night with friends, doing what she wanted to do as a single woman, making her own happiness, and also still getting to bed at a decent hour which she usually tried to do. Ash signed as she thought about her brief encounter with Lee, she hadn’t bothered to bring it up at diner and would try to forget it happened. She had also kept her date to herself as well. It would keep she thought as a smile brightened her face.

She pulled back the duvet and climbed into bed, sliding down into the cool, crisp sheets. Although Ash was only twenty-six and now single, all-night parties and staying out till the early hours didn’t appeal to her. She liked to have fun but didn’t like to have to endure the next morning’s hangover. That didn’t mean that Ash never over-indulged with alcohol—just not all the time like the others tended to do.

Chapter 2

‘O
uch!’ Dave gritted his teeth in pain.

‘What d’you do?’ shouted Peter from his room up the hall.

‘Stubbed toe,’ was all Dave could say through the pain as he clutched his foot.

Dave had been living with his twin brother Peter ever since their parents had split up three months after their eighteenth birthday. Dave and Peter decided that rather than choose who to live with, it would be kinder to move out with each other. They had the same view of life and by the time they were twenty they had gone into business together as window glazers. It was always clear from a young age that Dave had the brains and Peter the gift of the gab. Their parents still both lived in Cornwall in the same village and had learnt to become friends. Both had married again but never had any more children.

Dave and Peter now lived south of the river in Wandsworth, overlooking the Common. They had moved to London at twenty-one when Dave found a yard for their business. They both jumped at the chance to set up in London and turned profit within the first year. They had bought their first flat by the age of twenty-three and sold it for a profit three years later in order to buy another larger flat somewhat closer to the yard.

They now owned a top-floor three-bedroomed flat in an old Victorian converted house, with sweeping views of the common but unfortunately the mortgage was proving to be a strain, so they were now on the lookout for a flatmate to rent the third bedroom to help ease the pressure. Peter had put forward the idea of a female roomy on the pretext that she could cook, drink beer and like football; also she would have to be reasonably hot. Obviously both brothers were in favour—Peter more so than Dave, who suspected that women like that did not actually exist.

One week had passed and Dave had spoken to Ash every day on the phone since they had met. It was as if he couldn’t get enough of her; their conversations would last for hours; sometimes they would just talk total nonsense and she would laugh at all his sarcastic jokes that his brother teased him over for being too dry. But Ash got them; she had the same thought process as he did and so found his comments funny. Dave found her a breath of fresh air—she did not play games, there was no worrying about calling her too much, or worrying that he came across too keen and if he sent her a text she would reply straight back, none of this twenty minute rule some people did so that the other person might think they were busy or not being overly keen. Not Ash, she was different.

Peter came down the hall to help Dave get to his feet. He was still holding his toe in pain and rocking like a mental patient.

‘So where are you taking her?’ Peter heaved his brother to his feet as Dave hobbled into the lounge then dropped on to the sofa, ‘And don’t make her scream too loud later, I’ve got Sasha over tonight and she’s a bit prudish.’

‘Sasha hey, things must be bad on the lady front if you have to resort to lame Jane.’