When they pulled up at the top, Tash was speechless with delight.
A rare smile breaking across his face, Lough reached across and patted her on the back. They both remembered the day, not many weeks earlier, when he’d taken off ahead of her and she’d almost expired with fright as her horse bolted behind.
‘I got it back!’ she laughed.
‘It never went. It was always in here.’ He boffed her chest lightly with his knuckles. As he did so, his horse shifted sharply beneath him and he was unbalanced for a moment, forced to reach out to steady himself, and almost joining her in the saddle. Their bodies crashed clumsily together, his hand on her thigh and chin in her ear. Then he tipped back again, in balance once more, horse circling away beneath him.
Tash, who now found she could barely breathe, looked away to try to compose her face.
They both remained silent as they began to hack the short circuit home again, but when she finally glanced across at Lough, she knew he was just as tense as she was. This blood-rush was a lot more alarming than falling off.
Unlike his mute reaction, instinct made her start to chatter nervously. ‘I’ll think I’ll host a big supper instead of a party. I’m going to invite the Moncrieffs and the Stantons, plus some other good chums
and the team at home, of course. I hope you’ll be able to come?’ As soon as she said it she could have hit herself. It sounded appalling after the chemical reaction that had just occurred between them, like Sharon Stone taking a break from smouldering in
Basic Instinct
to suggest she and Michael Douglas have a cream tea.
He didn’t dignify it with an answer.
‘I have no idea what to give Hugo for his birthday,’ she rattled on. ‘I was really hoping the foal might be born by now, the one Dove’s carrying – it’s the last of Snob’s line, and this one’s embryo transfer.’ She patted River’s neck. ‘That’s really his present from me, but I’d better find something else too.’
Still saying nothing, Lough held open another gate. Their knees brushed as she passed through. It lit up her nerve endings and she half-expected her stirrups to send out sparks.
‘I wish I could give Hugo some good luck,’ she squeaked, her overheated brain determined to cool itself with a tide of words. ‘He’s had such a rotten month, what with the bad press, sick horses and some awful hate campaign going on. I’d love him to do well in Kentucky to give him a boost. My sister and Ben are flying out to support him …’
Lough had ridden closer so he could reach out to touch her arm. ‘Tash, shut up.’
With another electric bolt passing through her, Tash did as she was told.
‘I’m sure you’ll give Hugo a great birthday,’ he said quietly.
She nodded.
‘And we’re all looking forward to following his progress at Kentucky.’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed uncomfortably, not daring to look at him. The both knew that as soon as Hugo and Rory left for America they’d have Haydown to themselves once more.
This time, she was determined to give her husband a fantastic send-off. She only wished she could stow away with him.
If Hugo was somewhat disheartened by the hastily cobbled-together dinner party Tash organised to celebrated his two score years, his present from his wife was one he would never forget. She made him wait until after the last guest had departed before he could see it.
Utterly determined to get a four-star seduction on the score-board,
Tash would let nothing stand in her way. Leaving the washing-up piled in the sinks and the Bitches of Eastwick helping themselves to leftovers, she hoofed upstairs three at a time, telling Hugo to bring up a nightcap. In a spirit of wicked, one-night-only abandonment, she switched off the baby monitor and locked herself in the bathroom.
When she emerged, Hugo was lounging on the slipper chair in the corner of the bedroom, swirling cognac in a huge balloon glass and gazing into its contents. Looking up, a smile broke across his face like rays of sunshine through thunder clouds.
She had used the remaining tubes of ready-made coloured icing that Cora had squirted on her father’s birthday cake earlier that day. It wasn’t nearly as sophisticated a picture as the exquisite body-paint that she’d applied upon his return from the States, but given her artistic flair and her new-found, toned physique, it was more than enough for Hugo to feast his eyes.
Inscribed deliciously all over her body in bright icing were the letters and numbers that made up HAPPY 40
TH
HUGO and I LOVE YOU!
Self-conscious yet hopelessly excited, Tash hastily dimmed the bedroom light and edged towards him, hoping that he wouldn’t notice her crab-like walk, necessary to try to preserve the H on the inside of one of her thighs. Behind her back was the unused tube of cherry-flavoured red that she planned to use to write MANY HAPPY RETURNS on his body.
‘Take off your shirt,’ she ordered.
But she was barely mid-way through writing the HAPPY when Hugo scooped her up and threw her onto the bed, his appetite for petites-fourplay ravenous.
He found the Ps and H’s with greedy kisses, devoured the Os and Us and licked away each Y with two tantalising flicks of the tongue. By the time he reached the As, the G and the L, the icing was melting in his mouth and on Tash’s skin.
She had barely tasted a delectable sweet fix of M from the inside of his wrist before he discovered his 40th at the base of her spine.
‘There’s an exclamation mark somewhere,’ Tash managed to gasp as he turned her over again and dived for the perfect V beneath her belly button.
He found the exclamation mark and more as his tongue traced
lower to taste the sweetest nectar, its icing swept away in a hot, slippery tide of excitement.
‘You’re something else,’ he breathed into her ear when he resurfaced, looming over her, his face and body in shadow, such an eclipse of vigour and animal sex appeal that she felt willing to succumb to his every whim.
Hugo’s every whim was thrillingly straightforward. Impatient and rapacious, they lifted hips and tilted pelvises to those familiar angles that slotted together so well, hot excited skin brushing faster and tighter, friction sparking, nerves jumping and trembling, their breath quickening as blood rushed south and oxygen whooshed after it. Hugo’s eyes never left Tash’s, her cries of delight as untamed as a wild bird lifting from cover, frightened and exhilarated by the sheer abandon of instinct taking over.
Afterwards, sticky with sweat and icing, curled in each other’s arms, they said nothing. Tash could hear Hugo’s heart in his chest, settling back into a steady rhythm after such a violent awakening that she was left in no doubt of his desire and love. At the far end of the bed, beyond a slumbering Beetroot, the Rat Pack minus one terrier was trying to scale the furry new counterpane without detection.
She smiled into Hugo’s chest.
His voice lifted through his ribcage into her ear. ‘What are you thinking?’
Tash held her breath in amazement. It was the first time in almost a decade together that he had asked that question. She remembered reading somewhere that real men never asked it unless they thought you were having an affair, or they feared that you had found out about the affair that
they
were having.
‘I don’t have time to think these days,’ she evaded, ‘just to love you.’
‘Me too, but—’ He laughed gruffly and closed his eyes, leaving Tash cemented to his side, getting cramp, until she realised that he was fast asleep.
‘But?’ She prodded him.
He was dead to the world.
Tash wearily unglued herself and went into the bathroom to sponge away the last exclamation marks. The dye from the blue icing had left a rather alarming stain across her throat, arms and belly, along with the purple on one cheek and her shoulder.
Making a mental note to exfoliate in the morning, Tash wrapped herself in Hugo’s deep green dressing gown, switched on the baby monitor and carried it downstairs, trailed by Beetroot, to tackle the washing-up.
When Beetroot started running backwards and forwards from the Bitches’ sofa to the terrier’s floor-rug, she straightened up from loading the dishwasher and glanced over her shoulder in time to see her aged little dog performing strange hops and snarls as she danced out into the back lobby.
Following, Tash found that Beetroot was now standing at the boot room door, trying to inhale the air from under it and growling suspiciously.
Swathed in the gloom of the unlit back passage, she jumped as the yard security beam flashed on, its silver light-spill slicing in though the grubby windows and revealing a long shadow of a figure moving around.
Not thinking, Tash stepped into her boots and raced outside, Beetroot limping along in her wake.
The first thing that struck her was the cold, like an acid splash in the face, even though it was early April. There were even snowflakes in the air. She was still naked beneath Hugo’s dressing gown and not really equipped to restrain armed robbers. But when she walked beneath the archway, she saw a light glowing from Dove’s stable and gave a bleat of excitement.
Dove had given birth to a big, white-faced colt, still wet and crease-eared from the womb, his long legs trembling and limpid eyes blinking as he stumbled about in search of milk and succour.
‘He’s a beauty, isn’t he?’ A familiar, flat voice drawled across the yard as Lough appeared from the office, a can of antiseptic spray in one hand.
‘Why didn’t you fetch us?’ she asked.
‘You had guests. The old girl didn’t want a load of spectators.’
She stepped aside as he pulled back the bolt and went in to sterilise the foal’s umbilical stump. Watching the leggy newborn and proud, whickering Dove brought an unexpected catch to Tash’s throat that made speech impossible. For a maddening moment she thought she was going to cry, but she stared determinedly up at the rafters and held hard to her emotions, knowing that maternal overload and birthday sentimentality were in danger of making a fool of her.
Lough came out through the door, his shadow falling across her.
‘They haven’t needed my help really. She’s a great mum,’ he murmured as Dove nudged the colt towards her milk.
Tash felt the tears brim again, a broody tidal wave that made no sense.
The baby monitor was still in the kitchen, she remembered, her own umbilical cord, not yet fully cut and cauterised. ‘We should leave them to bond. It’s late.’
‘Sure. You must be frozen through.’ Lough moved further out into the yard and stopped in his tracks as saw her in the light for the first time, cast in chiaroscuro but still visible enough to make him double-take.
‘I
am
cold,’ she laughed, pulling the dressing gown tighter and trying to stop her teeth chattering. ‘I should get back.’
But as she turned away he caught her arm and held her under the glare of the security light.
‘You’re covered in bruises.’ He reached up to take her chin in his fingers, tilting her face away from the shadows. ‘Christ, you’re black and blue.’
‘Food dye,’ she muttered embarrassedly.
Lough didn’t seem to be listening as he examined the deep blue and purple stains on her cheek, throat and forehead. Then he touched her collarbone, still smudged with green where Hugo had recently licked an O from its curved ridge.
Still tingling with sexual after-burn, Tash was horrified to find her pulses leaping obediently, her cool, naked flesh drawing hot blood. As Lough drew back the collar of the robe to reveal more stains, ominously and deceitfully dark against her pale skin, her faithless heart hammered in her chest, ears and groin.
‘What has he done to you?’ he breathed, his eyes filled with pity as they examined the damning evidence.
‘It’s dye,’ she repeated. His fingers were blisteringly hot against her skin, his kindness and care enveloping her. ‘Here – taste.’ Without stopping to think, she rubbed her forefinger against her neck, where there was still a smudge of icing, and touched it to his lips. The moment she did it, the moment his mouth was against her skin, she knew she’d crossed an invisible line. She snatched her hand away, but the boundary stayed crossed. In the dark side of her heart that told the bitter truth, she knew she’d been walking the line for weeks.
He was still pulling back her collar, but he was no longer looking for bruises. She could feel the cool air on the back of her neck and his warm hands on her shoulders.
Count to ten, she told herself firmly. On one, walk away. On two, run. By five, be back in the house with the door looked and in bed with Hugo by ten.
But even as she started counting, Lough had eased the robe over her shoulders, letting it drop to the ground. By two, Tash was naked, bar her boots.
Being a birthday cake for Hugo had made her fizz all over, forty little candles of hot lust licking at her skin.
Being naked in front of Lough, in the snow, made her feel as though her skin and heart were on fire.
His eyes, so huge and dark they were the blackest of wishing wells, didn’t leave her face as he stepped towards her and gathered her gown again, wrapping it over her shoulders, his breath hot against her cheek. For a moment she felt his lips there. Her mouth craved contact with his so badly that she had to consciously hold her head as if in a neck brace to stop it tilting into his.
‘I love you.’
He could have said it, or it could have been a trick of the wind, moaning softly through the archway.
‘I know,’ she breathed even more quietly, turning to flee.
Amery was bawling his heart out when she got back in the house, the monitor on the kitchen table lighting up like a mini disco. She ran guiltily up to him, gathering him in her arms to cuddle and love without question or restriction, her guilt-ridden heart hammering so badly that she felt as though it would burst.
Finally settling him, she went straight to bed. Too exhausted to care about the half-finished washing-up, she cleaned her teeth again and climbed into the heavenly cocoon.
Hugo woke groggily as her cold skin slid against his bed-hot warmth.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Dove had her foal.’