Page 37 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop
His head jerked up suddenly. ‘Where are you from, Jemima?’
As a diversionary tactic it worked. ‘It — I — lots of places, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’ His eyes were on my face. ‘I returned your favour yesterday. Googled you. I thought you’d have a website.’
‘I have!’
‘Yeah. I found it. Jemima Hutton Jewellery. What puzzled me about it was the date it was set up.’
My heart was beating fast and my palms were too slippery to hold the whisk. ‘What?’
‘You’ve only had the website for eighteen months. Before that, nothing.’
Adrenaline flooded through me like a dam had burst. ‘Well, that’s all there is. The website, for marketing and selling.’
Ben turned from the pan. In the little galley kitchen he was only a breath away from me. I found I’d got my fingers around the milk-pan in a defensive hold. ‘But you’ve been making the jewellery for years, you told me so, when you gave me your spiel the first time we met. How come you only just set up a website?’
I’d had time to recover. ‘Eighteen months ago was the first time I could afford to set one up.’ I made my tone light, amused. ‘We don’t all have bank loads of cash sitting around, you know.’
I felt as though his eyes were scanning me, reading me. Like there was a barcode printed somewhere on my head. ‘Then how did you do your marketing? Where were you based? Most people who have websites run at least a Facebook page. A blog maybe. Or they’re registered on Friends Reunited, or have a piece in the local paper — they show up somewhere. You there’s no trace of.’ He went back to unpacking food from a freezer box, but kept looking at me. ‘So I’d guess you’ve got secrets, things you’d rather people didn’t know about you. Like the fact you aren’t really Jemima Hutton at all.’
I dropped the whisk. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sorry?’ His eyes flicked over my face, quickly. Almost as if I’d frightened him.
‘Really, I don’t know what you mean.’
Ben inclined his head. ‘Okay, maybe you don’t. I’m just guessing here. All I’m saying is, you know what it’s like not to want people pushing and prying into your life.’
I took a deep breath. ‘So keep out of yours? Is that what all that was really about? You trying to warn me off? Blackmail?’
The look Ben gave me was level and steady. Damn! ‘It can’t be blackmail if there’s nothing to hide, can it?’ Then he’d flipped away and was tying his hair back. ‘Right. Thought I’d start with melon . . .’ He pulled an alarmingly green melon from the cold box. ‘. . . with Parma ham. Then Lemon Sole in a Béarnaise sauce followed by Baked Alaska.’
The kitchen was too small. I felt suddenly huge, as though I was trying to hide myself behind matchboxes, naked and exposed. ‘I — it all sounds very — um.’
He turned to me and his expression was a mixture of sympathy and warning. ‘This is how it feels to be me, Jemima. Like — like I’m made of holes. People just want to keep poking, see how deep they can get before I flinch. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable, but maybe now you can understand how it is for me every fucking day.’
‘Then why don’t you open up?’ Was that a little sob there, just at the end, as though my voice caught on my teeth?
‘For the same reason you don’t.’ Ben weighed the melon in his hand, fingers playing over its rough surface, as though there was still a guitar lodged in his subconscious. ‘We’re both scared shitless of what the world can do to us, so we never talk.’ He took a step towards me. ‘I wish I could. I wish I could get involved, fall in love, really . . . really touch someone because it’s pretty lonely where I am.’ The hand not cradling the melon reached out, twisted a strand of my hair. ‘But it’s like this wall, you know? Between me and everyone else.’
‘And you daren’t let it down,’ I whispered. I was giving him ammunition. I knew it but I didn’t care. Now, here, with the kitchen getting hotter by the second, and not just because of the melting butter, my guard was splitting infinitesimally.
‘For fear of what might come through,’ Ben finished, and kissed me.
And, oh God, I let him. Dropped the shields and pressed myself into him, catching at his arms to balance myself, then winding my hands around his neck to pull myself closer against his warmth. I closed my eyes and felt the pressure of his tongue on my lips, opened my mouth and relaxed as his guitar-player’s muscles took my weight and rolled me so that I was squeezed between the corner cupboard and him. It was a long, long way from that kiss he’d given me outside his shop to avoid talking to his visitor. Now his kisses were so hard that I couldn’t breathe, he kissed like a drowning man given a Scuba mask. Like he literally couldn’t get enough. When I felt his hands travel over my thighs, rucking my skirt until his fingers touched skin, I touched his face. Ran my fingers over his cheekbones, down his stubbled cheeks then on to his shoulders. His belt buckle, ironically one of mine, dug into my stomach but even with that distraction I could feel the rigidity of him.
And it felt so good. To forget all the promises I’d made to myself, to forget all the awfulness, all the terror that had gone before. To free myself momentarily from the fear that being close to a man would wipe my personality away and replace it with that of a kicked dog.
And then he shuddered. Moaned in his throat, a cry of — what? grief? frustration? and let me go. Closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass-fronted cabinet above the fridge, arms wrapped around his torso and his fists clenched.
I was left gasping. For air and for sense. My brain was scrambled by the onslaught of emotion, both his and mine. And then the heat of desire suddenly drained away, leaving me chilled with the horror of what I’d so nearly done. And with a sadness, an awful, overwhelming ache.
‘It’s okay,’ I found I was saying. ‘It’s okay, Ben.’ Like the aftermath of a crash while the metal is still ticking itself cool, I was forcing myself to be calm. ‘Really.’
He was still huddled over himself, eyes shut. Rocking.
My heart was trying to escape. The room seemed to wheel and split and I grabbed at the washing machine to steady myself. ‘Ben.’ I put a hand on his shoulder.