That was no vixen. It was a person, surely. Someone was out there in the storm. His blood froze. His first thought was to stay where he was. It could be anyone, and he was here alone, just him and a cat. But immediately he knew he had to act. If it was someone in trouble, he had to help them. Gently easing Dragon away and covering her with a fold of the blanket, he stood up, and looked around for the powerful torch they kept near the door. When you stayed at themasia, there were always reasons to be venturing out into the dark. And the nights here tended to be pitch black unless there was a moon. Before opening the door, he slipped on his grandfather’s heavy oilskin. Though Grandpa had been dead for nearly ten years now, the oilskin still smelled faintly of him, his Old Spice aftershave, and the perfume of his navy-cut tobacco.
The cry came again, fainter this time. Dídac lifted up the heavy iron bar that kept the old oak door locked from the inside, and leaned it beside the door. Then he lifted the stiff iron latch, and pulled the dooropen. Stepping outside, he turned on the torch and began to sweep its powerful beam through the dense darkness. Rain fell in sheets, lit up in the torchlight. He wished he’d brought a hat, but pulled up the weathered hood of Grandpa’s oilskin.
“Anyone there?” he called, his voice quavering in the dark.
For a long moment there was silence, and then someone called out:
“Dídac?”
Dídac turned the beam in the direction of the voice. Down the valley, struggling up the cart track that used to serve as a driveway to themasia, a drenched figure was toiling uphill.
How did this person know him, that he was here? Was it someone from the village? No one except Laia knew he was here, and she was sworn to secrecy. The figure below was definitely male.
“Up here!” he called, and saw a pale oval of a face look up. It couldn’t be. He stepped back. He had him on the brain, that’s all. This must be someone from the village. Had someone died? What was the emergency? The figure stumbled in the torch beam, and Dídac realized he was wet and cold, clearly at the end of his strength. Then Dídac was running down the track, risking a fall on the uneven loose stones. But then he had reached him. And it was Kim. Unbelievably, impossibly, it was Kim. How could this be? Kim, almost dead from exhaustion, his light summer clothes soaked right through. Dídac grabbed Kim’s wrist, hauling his arm across his shoulders, while slipping his other arm, the one holding the torch, around Kim’s waist. With the torch beam angled askew, but more or less lighting their way, together they stumbled back up to themasia.
31
In themasia, Dídac helped Kim over to the fire. Dragon was standing, hackles raised on the sofa, but as they approached, she fled into a cubbyhole near the fireplace that his grandfather had used as a coal bin. When she finally came out of there, he’d have to try and give her a wipe down, or she’d be painting everything with black. Kim could barely walk, the cold and wet had seeped so deeply into his bones. But before letting him collapse on the sofa, Dídac made him shed his wet things. Questions were flying around his head. How on earth had Kim ended up here in the dead of night in a storm? Why wasn’t he back in Barcelona directing his beloved production? But Kim’s teeth were chattering.
“Dídac… Dídac…” he whispered, and kept repeating it.
He stood there like a child or frail pensioner as Dídac helped him out of his cotton jacket, then his shirt. Quickly, Dídac grabbed the blanket from the sofa and wrapped him in it.
“Take off your shoes and pants—they’re soaked. I’ll grab a towel.”
But when he came back from the bathroom with one of the thick, pink, fluffy towels his mother insisted on stocking themasiawith, Kim was still standing where he’d left him, the blanket draped around his shoulders, gazing into the log fire with a lost look on his face. Not wanting to admit the worry in his heart, Dídac threw the towel over Kim’s head and began to scrub his hair dry. Somehow, somewhere, Kim had fallen in the mud, and his face and hair were caked with it. Dídac used the towel to clean him as best he could, and dried his torso. He tried not to think about the last time he had touched that chest. Although Kim was shivering, the fine golden hairs were now gleaming seductively in the firelight. He wanted to cry, he wanted to caress those beautiful hairs, but he kept his mind on his task. Leaving the towel around Kim’s shoulders, he dropped his hands to Kim’s belt.
“Come on, Kim, help me. We need to get you out of those wet clothes.”
He undid Kim’s belt, while Kim began to shudder in big spasms. Kneeling, Dídac undid his laces.
“Lift your foot, come on.”
Kim responded slowly, and Dídac pulled off first one shoe and then the other. Dídac pulled Kim’s trousers and underwear down his thighs. He got up, placing one arm around Kim’s back under his arms.
“OK, now sit down on the sofa. There you go.”
Deftly, he pulled off Kim’s wet trousers and underwear. Seeing his cock, shrunken and pale like that, it looked to him like the equipment of some stranger, not the man he’d made love to with such passion in Kim’s hotel. Grabbing the towel, and forcing his mind away from that chain of thought, he dried off Kim’s legs, and then wrapped him in the blanket.
“OK, lie back. I’m going to get you some more blankets. And you need to eat something hot. I have a stew. I’ll heat that up and be back.”
“No!” Kim reached out to him in panic. “Don’t go, Dídac! Stay with me, please stay… my beautiful Dídac… I’m so sorry… please…”
“I’m not going anywhere, Kim, but you need to eat something hot. Do you understand? I’ll be five minutes.”
Kim nodded stupidly. All the forcefulness of his personality had evaporated, and he was showing the awareness of a small child. Dídac took another couple of logs and angled them against the log he had put on earlier, which was now burning merrily. But Kim clearly needed heat, a lot of it. After checking that he was tightly wrapped in the blanket, Dídac hurried out into the kitchen and lit the gas under the big pot of stew he had made earlier in the week, the same day he’d arrived. Then he went upstairs and grabbed the thick white duvet off the bed, and a couple of pillows.
Downstairs, he propped the pillows behind Kim and spread the duvet over the blanket he was wrapped in. Kim’s eyes were closed, and his teeth chattering.
“OK, I’m going to get you some stew because you need to eat something hot. I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
As he headed back toward the kitchen, Dídac couldn’t keep the fear from his heart. If Kim needed a doctor, he wasn’t sure where the nearest one was. He hadn’t paid much mind when the medical clinic in the village had closed last year. The Amats were a healthy family, and tended to rely more on a good diet, exercise, and home remedies, rather than doctors and drugs. But Kim was worrying him. He might have to drive him into the hospital in Girona, a good hour away. He stood there stirring the stew, willing it to heat up. Had he had a microwave, he would have used it, but that was another piece of technology theAmats didn’t set much store by, preferring slow cooking over a stove than quickly heated slop. Finally, when it was ready, he ladled some into a large mug, grabbed a spoon and carried it through to Kim.
In the living room, he found Dragon sitting on Kim’s chest, purring loudly. Black swathes of coal dust marked the duvet like Chinese calligraphy, showing the moves Dragon had made in her decision to settle where she had.
“Ai, Dragon! What will we do with you!”
Ca n’Amat wasn’t a homestead in which cleanliness reigned supreme. Rather it was a rural farmhouse, where mud got regularly tracked in on people’s boots, despite his mother’s best entreaties to make sure everyone removed their footwear at the door. He would have to wash the duvet cover tomorrow though, or the next time his mum was up here, she would have a living piece of his hide at letting his cat dirty her clean bedding.
