His fingers hooked under the striped fabric, right at her shoulders. He was incredibly careful, gently moving the fabric upwards. Her arms were still trapped. It was almost unbearable: the touch of his fingers, his closeness, her vulnerability.
She wanted him to just yank it off over her head. To get this over with.
No, she didn’t.
The fabric had cleared her shoulders now, and he moved closer still to help tug it over her arms, where the top was still wrapped tightly.
Now his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her arms. Only as much as necessary—and that didn’t feel like anywhere near enough.
He was so close behind her that if she shifted backwards even the slightest amount she would be pressed right up against him. Back to chest.
It seemed a delicious possibility.
It seemed, momentarily, as she was wrapped in the temporary dark, a viable option.
And then the blouse was pulled free.
April gasped as the room came back into focus. Directly in front of her were heavy navy curtains, closed, obscured by an obstacle course of cardboard boxes.
She spun around.
‘Thank you—’ she began.
Then stopped.
Hugh was still so close. Closer than he’d ever been before. Tall enough and near enough that he needed to look down at her and she needed to tilt her chin up.
She explored his face. The sharpness of his nose, the thick slash of his eyebrows, the strength of his jaw. This close she could see delicate lines bracketing his lips, a freckle on his cheek, a rogue grey hair amongst the stubble.
He was studying her, too. His gaze took in her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. Her lips.
There it was.
Not subtle now, or easily dismissed as imagination as it had been down in his basement apartment. Or every other time they’d been in the same room together.
But it had been there, she realised. Since the first time they’d met.
That focus. That...intent.
That heat.
Between them. Within her.
It made her pulse race and caused her to become lost in his gaze when he finally wrenched his away from her lips.
Since they’d met his eyes had revealed little. Enough for her to know, deep in her heart, that he wasn’t as hard and unfeeling as he so steadfastly attempted to be. It was why she’d known she couldn’t be responsible for the disposal of his mother’s memories.
And maybe that was what had obscured what she saw so clearly now. Or at least had allowed her to question it.
Electricity practically crackled between them. It seemed ludicrous that she hadn’t known before. That she’d ever doubted it.
Hugh Bennell wanted her.
And she wanted him. In a way that left her far more exposed than her displaced T-shirt.
But then he stepped back. His gaze was shuttered again.
‘You okay?’ he asked, his voice deep and gravelly.
No.
‘Yes,’ she said, belatedly realising he was referring to the stripy top and not to what had just happened between them.
Way too late she tugged down her T-shirt, and blushed when his gaze briefly followed the movement of her hands. Then it shifted away.
Not swiftly, as if he’d been caught out or was embarrassed. Just away.
He didn’t look at her again as he went over to the box April had been emptying.
Without hesitation he reached in, grabbing a large handful of clothing and directly deposited it into the ‘donate’ box. Then, with brisk efficiency, he went through the remainder of the box: ancient yellow newspapers to the recycling pile, a toaster with a severed electrical cord to the bin, encyclopaedias with blue covers and gold-edged pages on top of the clothing in the donation box.
April had been boxing books separately, but she didn’t say a word.
The donation box was now full, already packed with yesterday’s miscellanea, and Hugh lifted it effortlessly.
April followed him into the foyer and directed him to where she’d like the box left, ready for the next visit by the red-and-white charity collection truck.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I just want this stuff gone.’
She nodded. ‘I’d better get back to work, then.’
Finally her temporary inertia had lifted, and reality—the most obvious being that it was her job to empty these boxes, not Hugh’s—had reasserted itself.
Although amidst that reality the crackling tension between them still remained.
April didn’t know what to do with it.
Hugh seemed unaffected, but April knew for certain that he wasn’t unaware.
‘These clothes aren’t my mum’s,’ he said suddenly. ‘I have no idea who they belong to. I have no idea what most of this stuff is, or why the hell my mum needed to keep it all so badly.’
April nodded again. His tone had hardened as he spoke, frustration fracturing his controlled facade.
‘She was more than all this stuff. Much more.’ He shook his head. ‘Why couldn’t she see that?’
Hugh met her gaze again, but April knew he’d asked the most rhetorical of questions.
‘I’ll get this stuff out of your house,’ she said. She promised.
‘Her house,’ he clarified.
And then, without another word, he was gone.
HUGH HADN’T SLEPT WELL.
He’d woken late, so he’d been too late to join the group he normally rode with on a Wednesday, so instead he’d headed out alone. Today that was his preference anyway.
Because it was later, traffic was heavier.
It was also extremely cold, and the roads were slick with overnight rain.
London could be dangerous for a cyclist, and Hugh understood and respected this.
It was partly why he often chose to ride in groups, despite his general preference for solitude. Harried drivers were forced to give pairs or long lines of bikes room on the road, and were less likely to scrape past mere millimetres from Hugh’s handlebars.
But other times—like this morning—his need to be alone trumped the safety of numbers.
Today he didn’t want the buzz of conversation to surround him. Or for other cyclists to share some random anecdote or to espouse the awesomeness of their new carbon fibre wheels.
When he rode alone it was the beat of his own pulse that filled his ears, alongside the cadence of his breathing and the whir of the wheels.
Around him the cacophony of noise that was early-morning London simply receded.
It was just him and his bike and the road.
Hugh rode hard—hard enough to keep his mind blank and his focus only on the next stroke of the pedals.
Soon he was out of inner London, riding down the A24 against the flow of commuter traffic. He was warm with exertion,