‘I like you barefoot,’ I remark as he dances from what the chefs would call the mise en scène over to the fridge and back again. ‘And I like those dark jeans. You were wearing ones like those the night we met.’
‘I’m flattered you remember.’ He stops buttering and whisking and looks down at himself. Holds the white apron out comically like Little Bo Peep. ‘You like it rough, Serena?’
I bite my lip. He does too, biting down the shocked smile we share at the naughtiness of his remark. Yes, I like it rough, I think to myself. Or I will when I try it.
‘The suit distances you, that’s all. Makes you unreachable. Maybe first impressions are the ones that stay with us?’
He frowns as he ponders the question. Ponders me. ‘I think I like you every which way, Serena. Though I’m glad the tomboy is beating a retreat.’
‘I can be all things to all men. But yes. It’s kind of fun, and kind of pervy, dressing as my cousin.’
He laughs lightly and turns to a tray on the counter. I nearly tell him I also prefer him with his arms showing, because I love his strong hands and what I know they can do, and his strong forearms with the ropes of muscle. But I say nothing.
‘Have a drink,’ he says. ‘Shaken, or stirred?’
I pick up a glass of vodka martini from a tray on the counter and once again relish the slow burn of it down my throat. I hold the glass up and watch how his movements sparkle and undulate through the clear liquid.
‘Dip these nachos into the tzatziki. I’m willing to bet you haven’t eaten anything today.’
I hitch myself onto a stool and drain the entire glass. Take another one. ‘You’d be right. The cupboard is bare at Polly’s flat. I had a sandwich at the gallery today. So what’s this going to be? Pavlova? Mousse? Meringue?’
He moves the bowl along the counter to sieve the flour into the eggs. ‘Double baked cheese soufflé, if you must know.’
I watch the way the muscles in his arms flex as he whisks.
He catches me looking. Stops whisking and holds the bowl over his head to check the whites are done. ‘And if you’re lucky, maybe a taste of my famous Coquilles Saint Jacques.’
‘And for afters?’
‘What my grandmother used to call wait and see pudding.’ He dances back to the huge American fridge and brings out a bright berry coulis and some clotted cream. ‘Where’s my piping bag?’
I snigger like a schoolgirl. He looks at the limp, wrinkled bag in his hands, looking exactly like an oversized condom, and chuckles with me. His face is flushed from the heat of the kitchen. He’s unshaven again. Yes. I like him rough. It makes his face shadowy and manly, makes his eyes bright.
He grabs a hunk of mature cheddar and starts grating.
‘What’s that cheese ever done to you?’ I laugh.
‘Just getting it prepped for the second bake. Timing is crucial. Hey, look at you,’ he says suddenly, reducing the hunk of cheese to a few crumbs. ‘You’re soaked. What was I thinking? I should have got Dickson to collect you from the flat, but now you need to get dry. If you go up the stairs, as far up as you can go, you’ll find a shower room and something to put on. It’s the old attic. The previous owners claim it’s haunted.’
I let out a nervous tinkle of laughter. ‘I’m too tired for jokes, Gustav. You asked me to be at your beck and call, but you don’t have to scare me half to death as well.’
‘I didn’t mean to. Some people find that an added attraction. But I’m hoping you will consider this your home.’ He waves his grater in the direction of the stairs. ‘And when you come down I have a little gift for you.’
I wander obediently through the big house. There’s no-one else here. The skeleton staff consists of this mysterious man cutting and chopping and baking in his kitchen. And me.
The night gets wilder, pressing black and insistent against the windows as I climb the stairs, past closed doors, past low lights and pillar candles, soft music piped presumably from a central system Gustav is controlling from the kitchen. For the first time it occurs to me that all this melancholy magnificence, bought with the spoils of success, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if he has no-one to share it with.
The room at the top really is under the eaves, but the beams have been painted white as has all the old, distressed French-style furniture. White muslin curtains stir slightly against the glass doors leading out onto a little balcony. On a large four-poster, like something Scarlett O’Hara might sleep in, someone has laid out a white silk negligee. Why does everyone think I should dress as a vestal virgin? Don’t two years of active, adolescent sex with Jake count?
But I shiver suddenly as the rain slaps against the long thin window.
As I step into the warm spray of water in the little shower room attached, Polly’s voice in my ear has changed to: suck it and see. What’s not to like?
I am so ravenous and the jazz music playing in the background is so mellow that it feels perfectly casual and natural half an hour later to be perching barefoot against the quartz island in the kitchen devouring soufflé, warm bread, and cherry mousse. None of this strikes me as at all odd. That I’m eating supper in a strange house, wearing nothing but a white negligee given to me by a man I only met a few days ago. What else would I be doing?
Now softer music is playing throughout the house and Gustav has gone upstairs ahead of me and lit soft lamps everywhere. He has also taken off his whites and is wearing a soft blue and white striped shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
He waits for me solemnly as I come up from the kitchen to the ground floor and puts his hand in the small of my back to usher me into a little art deco cocktail bar off the hallway. The walls in here are of dark purple velvet. The chairs and stools are the same. It’s like walking into the cushion of a giant jewellery box. Even the bottles crammed onto every available glass shelf behind the mirrored bar are filled with liquors gleaming in jewel-bright colours.
‘Nightcap?’ He holds out a champagne bottle. His face looks almost bearded in the flickering candlelight, and the wolfish air has returned. His black eyes are asking questions again. But despite our signed agreement, despite eating together tonight, even though he touched me, pushed his fingers into me so intimately to pin me down, to make his point, to stake his claim, I still don’t know the answer.
‘Just one, thanks. And the food was great. Who knew?’ I walk a little shakily across the polished wooden floor, over the creamy rug, aware of the silk negligee clinging to my legs. Still sore from his fondling. Aware of his dark eyes trying to read me again. ‘But then I ought to get going. It’s quite a long way back to Gabriel’s Wharf.’
‘You’re going nowhere dressed like that, signorina!’ He twists the cork out with a pop. I was right. He is staring straight up my legs, directly at the place where he touched me. I perch quickly on the arm of the sofa and cross one thigh over the other. He chuckles. ‘But I would love to see it. You, running through the driving rain in nothing but a petticoat. Hailing a cab on Piccadilly in the middle of a thunderstorm. Eyes huge. Hair streaming down like a waterfall. You’d look like a Hitchcock damsel in distress.’
I look down at my body. My arms and legs are bare, my feet are bare, like his, and the lovely garment shimmers, the spaghetti straps slipping down my arms, delicate silk catching the light from the sconces and candles and picking out the tremor of the fabric as I move and breathe, lingering on my curves. And oh God, the low light lingers now on the stiffening of my nipples. I am wearing nothing underneath after the shower, because I had nothing dry to wear.
I’m learning the different ways he looks at me. The businesslike stare, deadpan but flashing with interest and enthusiasm. The concentrated one of this evening as he shuts out the rest of the world and whips egg whites and cheese into an ambrosial fluff.