‘Well, we kind of almost… you know, at the castle library the other night and it didn’t ruineverything. We’re still best buds, you just said so yourself. So…’ He shrugged, somewhat casually, but she could see through his calm exterior.
She remembered the sensations of his mouth upon her. His breathing ragged, the insistent, assured way he’d made his way over her skin with his lips. She gulped. ‘What if we do, you know… and it’s… moreish?’
The burst of laughter from Harri drew out her own, and they both folded over and cackled, letting the tension lift.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said, swinging her elbow towards his arm but making sure to miss. ‘What if we really… clicked. What then?’
‘Annie Luna, are you asking me what if we had amazing sex and we both properly liked it?’
This version of Harri, forthright and bold and rosy-cheeked, was all new to her. Her brain lit upon an image of him laying his weight down upon her in her big white bed, his eyes alight like they were now. She whipped her gaze away from his, scuffing her boots on the gravel, taking a breath.
‘When you put it like that it sounds stupid,’ she told the ground. ‘But you know what I’m getting at. I have to leave in…’ She didn’t want him to know she’d calculated their remaining time, or that she was counting it down in secret. ‘…a day or two, and I don’t want to fly home feeling sad.’
‘Because you can’t have any more of this?’ Harri grinned, sweeping his hands down his cardigan. He’d done it to make her laugh, but it was also kind of hot. ‘If it’d help at all,’ he was saying, ‘I could always try to be less good. Don’t know if I can, but I’d give it a go.’
She slapped his arm and they both laughed, but the tension was hard to deal with. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she told him.
‘No, you’re right, it is ridiculous.’ He said this so primly, and in the strongest Welsh accent, like he was telling himself off, it made her laugh again.
‘Argh!And it’s infuriating!’ she said, pulling her body tight. ‘We can’t just… do it.’ The space between them felt suddenly wider. How had it been so easy in the library?
‘In the library, we’d been drinking,’ she told herself aloud. ‘And on empty stomachs too, like total amateurs. And it was after dark and there were candles and a roaring fire and… it was a big old gothic castle for Christ’s sakes.’
‘And now it’s a Wednesday lunchtime and we’ve got book inventory to be getting on with back at the shop?’ Harri added, not without a sorry frown.
‘Exactly. The moment has passed.’ Yet, as the words left her lips she knew that if he just reached for her and kissed her, right that second, with no time for thinking or words or awkwardness, she’d kiss him right back.
But she was stuck fast. Nothing could induce her to lean closer or meet his eyes in the lustful way she had by the glowing hearth of the castle library.
She could feel his eyes on the side of her face.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘It’d be weirdly… planned? Right?’
‘Exactly. It would be artificial.’ She glimpsed at him long enough to catch his face fall like he knew it’d be absolutely real and not one bit artificial.
‘Artificial’s not what I meant,’ she corrected herself. ‘I mean it would be too forced. Too premeditated and too much like an experiment. It should be easier than this, without all the toing and froing andshould we, shouldn’t we? And it’d have happened already, years ago, if it was meant to happen.’
‘I hear you.’ Harri was making to move now, brushing away cookie crumbs. ‘We’re probably way too sober anyway.’
‘Yep,’ she said, half-heartedly.
‘Yep,’ he echoed.
He picked up the basket with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Pity, though.’
‘I’ll live with it,’ Annie said dryly, smiling, trying to convince herself she’d said all the right things to protect their friendship, to protect herself. It made her sad though, but what exactly had he just offered her? A night of ‘getting it out of our systems’? That wasn’t what she wanted.
‘So… now what?’ he said, the very last whisper of any possibility of them spending the evening with their skin touching skin, mouth upon mouth, hidden away under white bedsheets upstairs in the bookshop, sharing something experimental, just to see if there was magic there, dissolved away in the air like the smoke from an extinguished candle.
Annie shrugged. ‘There’s a drinks kiosk at the convenience store. Cup of tea?’
‘All right.’ He got to his feet, looking down at her with quirking lips. ‘So… just to clarify…’ he pulled her to her feet, quickly dropping her hands once they were eye to eye, ‘…it’s two cups of hot tea andnotpassionate sex? I forget what we decided?’
She dug at him with her elbow, laughing once more. ‘Milk, no sugar.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said, as they made for the glasshouse door, carrying their two tiny seeds in their pots. ‘Just making sure.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
