Free Snarl by Celina Grace Page B

mates. Perhaps here at this party, he could start to ascertain his next move, who he should be taking a deeper interest in.
    He went back inside to fetch more beers, an exercise designed to continue the good impression he was making on James and Rosie and to give him the opportunity to stake out a few of the fellow partygoers.
    He walked slowly; it was impossible to do otherwise, given the crowded space, but he wanted to keep his ears open to the possibility of overhearing something interesting. He reached the kitchen. For a moment, the press of bodies in front of him opened up a little and that was when he saw her.
    She was standing under the harsh strip light, bathed in a strident white light that would have been utterly unforgiving to nine out of ten women. She was the tenth. The brilliant white light turned her face to a beautiful blank mask, bleaching out all the little imperfections that you saw in normal skin. Her hair was jet black and very short, almost a sculpted cap that hugged the contours of her perfectly shaped head. All Stuart could see for a moment was a sulky red mouth and two huge dark eyes, as her gaze met his.  A challenging stare. For a second, he was aware of a surge of anger, almost as strong as the opposing one of desire.
    The challenging, almost aggressive look was gone in the blink of an eye. Stuart wondered whether he’d imagined it. Now she was looking over at him with the tiniest trace of a smile, her face softened and open. He made up his mind.
    “Hi.”
    She looked up at him from under her long lashes. “Hello.”
    “I’m Mike.”
    “Hi Mike. I’m Angie.”
    His ears pricked up a little at that. “This is your gaff, isn’t it?”
    She nodded. Up close, he could see faint freckles on her pale skin, the merest dusting of them , like gold glitter spread over her little nose. She wore a slash of black eyeliner and that red lipstick, but no other make-up.
    “It doesn’t belong to us. We’re squatting here. It was empty and unloved so – we took it on.”
    Stuart looked around at the squalid room surrounding them. Angie followed his gaze and laughed. The laugh transformed her face, from beautiful but chilly sculpture to a more appealing, boyish gamine. Stuart could feel the faint warmth of her body from a few inches away, they were standing so close.
    “Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s pretty shitty. But beggars can’t be choosers.”
    She had an unexpectedly deep voice for such a delicate looking girl, rather husky, as if she were just getting over a bad cold. She confirmed the reason why after a moment of silence between them. “Coming for a smoke?”
    “Lead on,” said Stuart, who sighed inwardly at the thought of another fake toking session. Still, if that was what it took…
    They passed James and Rosie on their way through the garden and Angie stopped when she saw them. She and Rosie greeted one another with a kiss on the lips, which inwardly raised Stuart’s eyebrows. James didn’t seem to mind, looking on with a slightly lecherous smile. The four of them stood and smoked and talked. Stuart tried to quell his impatience. He wanted to talk to Angie on her own.
    “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked Angie, in a break in conversation.
    She looked at him with those large dark eyes, eyelids made heavy with dope. “What?”
    “You said ‘we’ took it on. The house.”
    “Oh, yes,” she said. She passed the joint to Rosie and hoisted herself onto the brick wall, kicking her heels against the bricks. “There’s a few of us here. Rizzo and Charlie, mostly. People come and go.”
    “Seen Kitten lately?” asked James.
    Stuart had his eyes fixed on Angie’s face and he saw the tiny ripple of some kind of emotion go over her face, gone in an instant. She pushed her hair back from her forehead.
    “Not lately,” she said, a trifle coolly.
    There was a moment’s silence. Then Rosie started talking about the protest, how she was sure it was having an effect, they must be getting