Her email flashed up with a new message. She looked at the address and was delighted to see that Mr Woo had wasted no time.
'Greetings Annie Valentine,'
she read,
'I hope you have nice
day! I very interested in doing business with your esteemed
corporation. My shoes sold in Hong Kong but made in factory of
my family. Happy Feet factory. Very good workmanship shoes.
I glad you like.
We can make 120 pair Timi Woo shoes this month. But if
you need more next month, we can make more. Shoes only sell
in Hong Kong. Very popular with high class ladies desiring
much shoes. We love to sell in England with your esteemed
corporation. I send order form with this message. Many styles,
many colours. Each pair shoe for you $80. If you buy 100 pair
shoes, $75.
Greetings, Timi Woo.'
Although Annie's heart was thudding with excitement as she read this, she couldn't act just yet as she could now hear the sound of the front door opening.
'Hi! Annie! We're back!' came the shout from the hall, so she quickly closed down the email and hurried downstairs to meet Ed and her little boy.
'Hello Owen!' She hugged her son tightly first. He felt so skinny. He was growing like a weed and his appetite didn't seem to be able to keep up with the amount of food he needed.
Owen kept his face, almost hidden under his thatch of overgrown blond-brown hair, tipped down, but he accepted the shower of kisses without protest. He liked it, really. He just didn't like to admit that he liked it. That's how it is when you're ten.
'Nice time?' she asked, directing her gaze at Ed in turn.
He looked so happy that she couldn't stop her smile from broadening when it met his. He seemed relaxed and chilled out by his evening away. He slung his jacket on the rack by the front door, then, when she'd released Owen, he put one arm round her waist and the other round her shoulder so she was encircled, and pulled her right in.
'Hello there.' He didn't believe in half-measure kisses:
'If you're going to kiss, you might as well kiss properly.'
Putting her arms around Ed's broad back, Annie saw the playful look in his blue eyes and felt the touch of his lips against hers. Ed was so calming, when he took hold of her he made her stand still, be still, think about no one and nothing else but him, right here and now. It was very sexy.
'Please, just no tongues,' Owen insisted, which made the adults break up a little sooner than they might otherwise have wanted to.
'Busy day?' Ed asked, now that the kissing spell was pretty much broken. 'Dressing the universe?'
'Oh yeah,' Annie told him with a smile. 'Do you boys need some food? It's late but . . .'
'Well, you know . . .' Ed began, 'we never knowingly like to miss out if there's food on offer.'
'What have you got?' Owen wondered, as he deposited his anorak on the floor and sat down on a stair to spend the fifteen minutes it seemed to require for him to unlace his trainers. By now, Ed's two fat black cats, Hoover and Dyson, had stalked into the hall and were rubbing up against every available leg and foot, desperate for some attention.
'A little bit of fennel lasagne?' Annie offered, fairly certain that this wasn't going to be met with much excitement.
'Hmm . . .' was Owen's reply.
'Fried eggs and toast?' she offered next.
'Look, there's bacon, there's cream, there's definitely a chunk of Parmesan – why don't I rustle us up a carbonara?' Ed offered. 'That'll stick to your ribs.'
Owen shot Ed a grin and nodded.
This was one of the many surprising effects that surrogate family life had had on Ed. When Annie had first met him, he'd been a sad and lonely singleton living in a damp basement – the damp basement of the house they were currently living in, to be precise. His cooking had been severely limited to putting potatoes in the microwave and opening cans of beans or, even worse, sardines.
Now, one year into his man-of-the-house role and his cooking put Annie's to shame. Yes, she could fry an egg, boil a potato, shop at M&S and heat up a ready meal just as well as the next woman. But Ed . . . Ed now
basted
things in the oven. He
crumbled
rosemary. He liked to serve stewed fruit with home-made custard. He simmered casseroles on the hob. He actually read cookbooks, hunted down hard to find ingredients and got slightly over-excited at the prospect of having a whole weekend free to cook.
It was all quite mysterious to Annie, but, just like her children, she loved most of what he served up: the braised ox tongue had been a dish too far, but otherwise she was happy for him to get on with it.
Once Owen had crammed himself full of spaghetti, Annie supervised his teeth-brushing and put him to bed before coming down to snuggle up with Ed on the sofa.
'Andrei is walking Lana home tonight, isn't he?' Annie checked. 'You know there was a mugging the other night, two streets away.'
Ed nodded reassuringly then asked: 'So, busy on the computer tonight?
'Oh . . . you know,' she brushed the question away.
'Selling things on eBay or doing more "how to run your own business" research?' Ed didn't look quite so friendly now.
'Look,' she began, 'I'm not going to do anything stupid, OK? Can you stop worrying about this? When . . . I mean,
if
I come up with a good idea you will be the first to know, OK? I will not do anything without making sure you think it's a good idea.'
Deep down, Annie did believe this. She believed that with the Timi Woo shoes, for instance, she was just doing the groundwork, the research. When she had the shoes, when she had the customers . . . when it came to really making the move, she
would
let Ed know. By then it would all be much more clear anyway.
But Ed didn't seem ready to let the subject drop just yet.
'I'm not saying you can't have your own business, Annie,' he told her, 'I just don't think this is the time. I feel as if we're all only just settling in together. It's hardly even been a year . . . and you're working really long hours,' he reminded her. 'Four nights a week, and most Saturdays you barely see the children. I think that's enough time away from them. If you set up your own company you'd be working flat out.'
She was listening and she had to admit that some of this was true. But the whole point of having her own business was that in the long run she would be in control of her working life and her working hours, wouldn't she? She was trying to branch out so that
in the long run
there would be more money and more flexibility for her.
'It's OK,' she assured Ed, moving in close to him, 'don't worry about it and don't worry about me. Stop worrying! We do not have to talk about this right now,' and then she quickly moved on to her tried and trusted distraction technique.
She slipped her fingers under his T-shirt and began to run them over the soft, fuzzy-haired, warm skin there. Pushing a fingertip gently into his bellybutton, she asked him, 'Do you think you could stop talking now?'
Ed didn't have to be asked twice. He shut up immediately, leaned back against the sofa cushions and pulled Annie onto his chest so he could kiss her.
And then she was under the pull of the steady blue gaze. There he was, her very hot,
younger
man, absolutely focused on her, ready to do whatever it was she wanted him to do.
She moved her hips so that she could feel him getting harder right there against her, then she pushed his T-shirt up so that she could bite firmly on his nipple.
When her fingers had undone his belt, loosened his buttons and slipped inside, he said against her ear: 'We have to go upstairs. Sensitive, impressionable teenagers could walk in at any moment.'
'She'll be late,' she reminded him.
'No, no, too risky,' he said with a little gasp because she was still moving her hand (oh!) so interestingly against him.
'C'mon.' He managed to extricate himself and get up from the sofa, holding his jeans in place with one hand, taking hold of Annie's wrist with the other. 'Race you up the stairs.'
And then they were in their bedroom, with the door tightly shut and the lights off because the curtains were still open and neither of them wanted the distraction of breaking off from the urgent kissing to go over to the windows.
Annie was trying to remember when they'd last made love. Three days ago? Or four? Suddenly it seemed like a long time.
Ed let his jeans fall to the floor, but he wasn't in a hurry. The fact that he was never in a hurry was the single most sexy thing about him. He was going to take his time. He was going to make love to her in his very own sexy, but funny, but passionately intense way.
Kneeling down, he moved his head under her skirt and listened to her giggle as he tried to take her knickers off with his teeth.
Fingers winding into his curly hair, she backed slowly towards the bed, pulling him towards her.
He was starting to hum with his lips pressed right up against her clit. She lay back on the bed, stripping off her top and her bra so that his hands could stroke over her breasts as the humming continued, sending waves of warmth rushing and tingling up from the pit of her stomach.
'You make me forget about everything else,' she told him.
'No!' he broke off to joke with her, 'that's not it. Name that tune!' he insisted and put his lips against her again.
He almost always made her come first because, as he put it, 'I need to concentrate on you while I can still think straight, if I leave it till later . . . baby, it's like trying to control a volcano.'
And he was good.
Yes . . . he was very good.
She could feel the very tip of his tongue now, licking up and down with tiny, quick darts as his warm hands rubbed against the skin of her thighs.
There was no fumbling with Ed. None of that confused 'what exactly am I looking for down here?' Annie, like most women, had endured quite enough Boy Scout lovers: all that rubbing and rubbing of the kindling and still no hope of a fire.
The little darts of the tongue were getting quicker and she could feel the melting rush building and building now.
'Come in,' she urged, pulling him up by his shoulders, 'come in . . . because I am so . . . so . . . so . . . cl . . . close.'
As he pushed inside, she felt herself shudder and clench again and again around him. Oh. Yes. Yes! Nothing was better. Nothing was better than coming like this, all the way through Ed's urgent thrusts.
Eyes screwed shut, fingernails digging into his soft back, legs wound tightly around his, she clung on, feeling him pulse on through her until they were both more than finished.
'Is that a cat?!' Annie lifted her head from Ed's sweaty, post-coital arm and looked more closely at the two small glowing lights at the end of the bed.
'Down!' Ed commanded, raising himself up.
The eyes moved and with a heavy thump, four paws landed firmly on the floor.
'I don't like cats in the bed,' Annie reminded Ed, as if there was any chance he'd forgotten.
'They miss me,' he told her. 'I think they're very, very jealous of you.'
'They'd probably scratch me to death and eat me with a side helping of Whiskas if they got the chance,' Annie agreed. 'I can't believe you used to sleep with them.'