Free Barefoot in the Dark by Lynne Barrett-Lee Page A

and it broke with a snap. ‘God, does that make me sound sad, or what?’
    ‘Not at all.’ A smile played at the corner of his mouth. She lowered her eyes because his were becoming too distracting.
    ‘I’m prattling now. Ask me about Heartbeat. Much more interesting.’
    But he didn’t.
    He just sat there and smiled and watched her while she ate a mouthful of pudding. And another. And another. Still he looked at her, twiddling his glass stem and smiling. She lowered the teaspoon again. ‘What?’
    His eyes were trained on hers. ‘Can I try some?’
    ‘Some of this?’
    He nodded. ‘You seem to be enjoying it. Is it good?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, it is. Here… ’ She proffered the dish and the spoon.
    He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You do it for me.’
    So she loaded the spoon with a glistening mouthful and slid it gently between his waiting lips. She licked the spoon herself then, though she hadn’t meant to.
    ‘Thank you,’ he mouthed. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off her.
    Holding his gaze, Hope knew something else had happened. That the man she was looking at had broached her defences. Somewhere along the line, by some glorious oversight, she had taken her eye off the ball.

Chapter 7
    The taxi was somewhere between the castle and the University entrance when Jack made his mind up. Decided that what he would most like to do in all the world was to lunge at Hope Shepherd across the back seat and snog her until her teeth rattled. The thought, together with its profound inappropriateness at that moment, began to fuddle his cognitive processes. Hope was still talking thirteen to the dozen. This time about whether he thought it a good or a bad thing that the Welsh Assembly had decided to make museums free, which had followed on from what she’d been talking about while they’d been waiting for the taxi, which was how difficult it was to get any sort of government funding for little charities like hers, which followed on from what she’d been talking about while they waited for the waiter to bring his credit card back, which was, he only dimly remembered, something about how they hadn’t managed to get a lottery grant. Or something. He’d lost track. For someone so shy – and her diffidence at the start of the evening had surprised him – she had an opinion about everything . An informed opinion, to boot. That hypothetical feature article (such a devilishly clever idea) would have to become actual now. She’d half written the bloody thing for him already. He smiled to himself. He was sitting slightly angled towards her, and could see the full length of her left leg, right down to the couple of inches of black leather boot at the bottom. It made him feel horny as hell. He imagined her left leg without its trouser. He imagined her left arm (which was lying inert in her lap, while her right one batted the air in time with the points she was making), peeled free of its jumper and lying encouragingly across his own thigh. He imagined (well, what the hell) what she would look like if she were sitting in the taxi with nothing on whatsoever, how the contours of her tummy – a smallish swell beneath her breasts – would rise and fall every time she drew breath. How her dark – no, black hair…
    ‘Don’t you?’
    Jack rounded himself up and fixed his eyes on her face. She lifted her left arm and coiled a liquorice lace of loose hair behind her ear.
    Didn’t he what? Shit. He’d have to wing it. ‘I’m not sure.’
    She turned a little herself now, the better, he assumed, to engage him in the crux of her argument. The hand came down again and sat on the seating between them, the polished nails mere centimetres from his thigh. He pondered on the possibility of moving his leg. ‘That’s exactly it, isn’t it?’ she was saying. ‘I mean, on the one hand –’
    ‘Which part of Cefn Melin was it you wanted, lovely?’ The cab driver jutted his head to fix his eyes into the rectangle of rear-view