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

mirror. Hope leaned forward a little to meet them. Jack could smell her perfume every time she moved.
    ‘It’s the top end. Up by the park. If you head up through Roath and then on to Llanishen I’ll tell you the way after that. You really didn’t have to do this,’ she added, training her dark eyes on Jack once again. ‘Going all this way out of your way. I could easily have got a separate cab.’ Then she smiled at him coyly, as if she was pleased nevertheless.
    ‘It’s not that far,’ he said. ‘Only a couple of miles.’ How much could he read into that smile? Was he reading her right, period? She’d certainly revved up in the last hour or so. Did she fancy him, too? Her lips were glossy in the gloom. She must have put something on them when she went to the Ladies. Would a kiss be appropriate currency with which to end the evening? A peck of some kind? A brush of his lips against her cheek? Something nearer her mouth? Onher mouth? The buzzing of every part of him south of his waistband was matched only in its intensity by the furious campaign instructions his neurones were firing at him. Would there ever be a time again when situations like this just happened? It seemed to Jack that sex (if and when he ever got some) was just one big round of manoeuvrings these days. It didn’t used to be like that, did it? You just got the hots for a girl and went for it, didn’t you? But his fond recollections of his teenage libido had been unpicked, every last one of them, since his divorce. His easy flirtatiousness with the opposite sex while he’d been married had evaporated as surely as a puddle in the sun. It was all decisions now. Imports. Consequences. Angles. He would so like to kiss her. Would so like to kiss her while taking a well-aimed palm and smoothing it over the woolly mound in her jumper that he knew outlined her right breast. And then move on to the left… Was there any way he could wangle it so that he could send the taxi away?
    But her mother would be there, he remembered belatedly. Her mother was babysitting, that’s what she’d said. Though didn’t she say her mother had driven her down? In which case, wouldn’t she be driving home at some point? Why hadn’t he brought his car? He’d drunk comparatively little. If he’d brought his car there would have been so many possibilities. Carpe Diem . But now he was stuck with the bloody cab. He tried to imagine himself standing outside Hope’s house and kissing her while the taxi driver sat and waited for him. He couldn’t. But he clearly couldn’t kiss her inthe taxi. It would seem tacky. It would betacky. God, but he wanted to take her to bed.
    Llanishen came and went. More directions were exchanged.
    ‘Oh, I am soexcited,’ said Hope suddenly, lifting her arm up again and relocating it halfway along his forearm. A different part of his anatomy rose momentarily in agreement. But then he felt the mild pressure of her squeezing his arm through his jacket. Squeezing forearms was not, to Jack’s mind, a ticket to ride. ‘I just can’t tell you. This means so much to me… what with, well, you know, everything… and I just know we’re going to raise loads of cash. And it’s so kindof everyone–’ She stopped speaking for a moment to squeeze his arm again, before patting it. As if he were an amiable terrier. ‘It’s so kind of you, Jack. God, to think I almost didn’t ring in about my trainer! Serendipity, don’t you think?’
    True serendipity, thought Jack, would be the happy coincidence of her deciding she’d like to take him to bed too. Among her secret fur cushions – now, there was a picture. Her boudoir. And preferably tonight. With her mother and children spirited away somewhere. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said, holding her gaze long enough so that she wouldn’t fail to register quite how much of a pleasure. An anticipatory one, admittedly. But then he always travelled hopefully.
    She kept looking at him, her hand still on his