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When she stood, she stretched tall, her arms above her head, and then she stretched back causing her t-shirt to ride up. Her taut, tanned stomach begged my touch. I could see fine blonde hairs covering her belly, bleached by the sun. She saluted me and padded barefoot through the kitchen and into her bedroom. I had a clear line of sight from my seat.
I cleared up and closed her glass doors, going to my living room. Unable to sleep, I switched on the TV and muted the sounds. Pippy had asked if I could redesign the kitchen at the community centre to get more cupboard space and a bigger oven. The local Girl Guide group were kicked out of their hall and needed a new place to meet. Pippy had agreed on the spot, but they needed a decent kitchen for their cookery badges.
I grabbed my sketching pad and drew out plans for their new kitchen space. It would be excellent training for Scottie to learn how to build the kitchen cabinets from scratch. I’d been sitting in the armchair for two hours when I heard the strangled cry of frustration. Stepping towards the window and pulling the curtains to the side, I saw Adaline throw her corkboard over the veranda wall. She watched it sail over and went back to her flat, slamming the door shut. She was letting this event get to her, and I didn’t understand why.
Grabbing my tools from the spare room and some supplies, I got to work on a better way for her to plan the seating for the gala dinner. She could treat it like a game rather than the chore she was taking on. I planned on speaking to my mother and getting her to tone down the demands. I knew only too well how the chairwoman could be when something meant so much to her.
Adaline
I shouldn’t have had that third glass of wine last night, and I shouldn’t have hurled the table plan over the wall. I heard it smash into the skip below. It was too dark to see if it was retrievable. I’d look later after I had seen my tenant’s stunning body emerge from the sea. Callum thanked me each time I came and kept him company while he swam, but it was no hardship at all. I missed him while I was in Canada. It wasn’t just his cooking, but his smiling face, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. His hair was growing back. It looked like he was using clippers on the sides of his head while it grew back. His stubble on his chin grew faster than the hair on his skull. He let the beard grow for a few days and then he’d be clean shaven.
I showered and changed into shorts and a t-shirt. It would make a change to cycle down to the beach. It would be blissful to go when there were no buses and very few cars. Callum took us to a spot to the right of the West Pier to practice his swim. Callum had told me that was where the actual competition would be. I grabbed the blanket and my pouch for the bike and opened the glass doors onto the veranda. In front of me on the table looked like a giant chessboard. The wooden board had a hundred circles of wood with ten holes in each. I stepped nearer and dropped the blanket and pouch on the chair. Tracing the circle of wood, I could see that they moved. They also lifted out and were interchangeable. To the right of the board was a box full of what looked like matchsticks with a groove in the top. Another box had hundreds of small cards that could slot into the upper part of the matchstick. The cards were blank.
“You can write all the guest’s names on each card and then swap the matches around each time the devil changes her mind,” Callum said.
He was close to my ear. Callum had done that after the second day we met. He knew I needed to concentrate to hear him. I thought at one stage that he worked out I was going deaf, but then when I caught him chattering without being near me, I knew he didn’t know for sure. He had a deep tenor to his voice, I could sit and listen to it for hours. Not just because it was one of the few voices I could hear when he was near me. It also wasn’t because his voice gave me the shivers. When he looked at me, I got goosebumps. His touch was soft and subtle, he’d learned to get my attention was to lay a hand on me. Anyone else doing that would have received a not-so-subtle shrug off in response. With Callum, I wanted his touch to linger.
It didn’t help that I’d seen him gloriously naked, it made my desire to touch him more urgent. I thought it only fair since he’d seen me, but the vision I had backfired. I wasn’t the curviest of girls but had a decent cleavage. I hoped he liked what he saw. I could sit and gaze at his arse for days, it was a sculpted work of art. His cock was beautiful too. My mouth watered when I thought back to the image I saved in my head. I wanted him, there was no denying it, but I wasn’t going to make a move. I only wanted to have him in my bed if he knew about my hearing and would not run away. Like all the others did. I had told three casual boyfriends, and all three walked away.
In the meantime, I would ogle his body and dream of him fucking me against the wall, one hot steamy night when it was too hot for clothes.
I had that dream last night.
“I don’t know what to say, Callum, you must have been up all night making this. Are you sure you want to go for a swim? I don’t want you to drown.” I said. It was true I didn’t want him to drown, but I also wanted him to stalk out of the sea and march towards where I was sitting like he had done all the other times.
“It didn’t take me long, I’m a carpenter, it was easy to do,” he said and pulled my hand away from the box of sticks and held onto it. My fingers linked with his, we played around, touching and connecting then letting go. My nerves were on fire with his touch, and I couldn’t look at him.
“Thank you,” I whispered and picked up the blanket and pouch. This time I looked up.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. My hair was in a tight bun this morning. I wanted to let it fall loose so he could spear his hand through the strands and hold on tight at my nape so he could kiss me the way he wanted. I cursed my ritual of keeping my ears clear of any obstructions. He dropped his hand slowly, stroking my neck and then pulling his hand away. He kept his gaze locked on mine. The rising sun shone on his face, making his eyes lighter than they normally were. I was captivated, stuck in time as I enjoyed his silent approval.
“Shall we get going?” I asked, clutching hard to the blanket.
“Yes, and if you don’t undress me with your eyes when I walk out of the sea, I’ll buy you breakfast.”
Busted.
Callum knew. Instead of answering with a lie or the truth I laughed and pushed past him. When I got to his living room door, I turned. “And if I fail at admiring you?”
“I get a kiss,” he said.
So, that was a win both ways for me. Openly coveting Callum’s body and a kiss for the privilege was a bargain. I could buy my own breakfast, a kiss would be worth it.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times before he smirked and walked passed me. I closed the veranda doors and followed him out of his flat and out through the side door. We walked in single file along the narrow pavement to the back door to the yard. I waited on the street as he wheeled both of our bikes out. I was daydreaming about what his kiss would feel like, and he was prising the keys out of my hand to unlock the door.
I attached my pouch to the back of my bike seat, and Callum put his wetsuit in the saddlebag on his bike. He took the blanket from my hands and stuffed it into the other saddle bag with his towel. We cycled in tandem to the seafront as there were a few cars on the road. We chatted about his project at the community centre and how he would make the new kitchens work. He would make a model first. He’d used some of those materials to make my gala table plan last night. I loved my gala table plan, and I loved that he referred to her asdevil woman, even though I knew he must have known her well.
When I first aired my feelings about her, I caught the wince on his face. For all I knew it could have been an aunt, and I had insulted his favourite family member.
We locked up our bikes to the cycle posts, and he bought me a coffee. Trudging down the pebbled beach, I took my usual spot and made myself comfortable. I got the stopwatch function ready on my phone and tried to hide my gaze from watching him change into his wetsuit. It was the shorts version. It was also sleeveless. His defined arm muscles flexed as he yanked up the wetsuit over his thighs and arse and then he zipped himself up.
He gave me a cheeky wink as he ran down the pebbles barefoot and dived into the waves. The sea was like a millpond. Other days it was choppy, and the white horses came crashing to the shore. It didn’t faze Callum one bit, he carried on swimming like his life depended on it.
I had to wait until he hit the red buoy and then time him until he swam to the other buoy, half a mile further out to sea. He swam back and forth more than a dozen times. After an hour, he swam back to shore and then took the long stroll up to meet me. Callum’s stare was different today. The intensity set my stomach flipping and made me clench my pelvic muscles. I throbbed at the same time my heart thumped in my chest. He pulled down the zipper at the back and peeled his wetsuit to his waist. His chest was bare, and now he stood at my feet holding his hand out. I swallowed at his request and set the phone down on the blanket. I took his hand and let him bring me to my feet.
“A deal is a deal,” he said, lifting my chin with his fingers. “I believe you openly appreciated my body, Adaline, would you agree?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak, not knowing if we would kiss.
