Temptation Close Read online

  He had been clean-shaven that day too, unlike most of the men in the street, who gave their faces a rest at weekends. He had still seemed somewhat rugged in appearance, the type of look a Man of Action would have, rather than someone who put up your flowery wallpaper. He could certainly fit into the Tall, Dark and Handsome category. He was about the same size as her husband, which made him a little over six feet tall. He had wide shoulders and the cream shirt had hugged him, showing off a flat stomach and a potential for muscles rather than just skinniness, which wasn’t bad for a man in his mid-forties. Certainly better than her husband, who at ten years younger was sporting a bit of a belly.

  As for the handsome bit, she wasn’t the only one to think this if the dreamy way the estate agent girl had talked about him on the phone was anything to go by. He looked refined as well as rugged, if that were possible. It was the careful grooming that did it. She hadn’t had a great view that day but he just looked immaculate. The hair was quite full and wavy but it was in that controlled way that only posh guys seem to manage: still soft and natural without going all over the place. It was the type of hair a well established film actor would have, or maybe a debonair Frenchman. There may have been a bit of grey amongst the darkness but the neat eyebrows were all black. The lines on the face were black too - a few to the side of the eyes as if he spent a large part of his life squinting into the sun, and two deeper lines running from the nostrils down the side of the mouth. These were the kind of dark looks that could make you go all gooey inside if you weren’t very careful.

  Nesta felt a sudden rush within, a desire to know more about him that very instant. It wouldn’t be too long before at least parts of the truth emerged. This was a very sociable street, one where everyone mingled without it becoming an invasion of privacy. They baby-sat for each other, went round each other’s for drinks or dinner, went out for family walks together at weekends. Each Friday after work there were gatherings - the guys up the village pub one week, the girls out on the bus to the wine bar in town the next week, the spouses left home to mind children. These evenings were steadfastly followed and popular. People had been known to be dragged from their sickbeds to attend, whilst arranging any other social event on this day was frowned upon. That meant that quite regularly Nesta found herself staggering off the last bus at half-eleven having downed six or seven drinks, a round from each of the girls.

  The only girl who never now went with them was Eva, the be-tattooed biker of buxomian proportions from next door at Number Three. This was no loss in Nesta’s book, although her neighbour could be disarmingly funny. There was, however, some history between them that now meant an ever present friction. Eva was irrefutably attractive and seemingly very self-assured despite the fact she still lived alone at age 27. There were no references to previous boyfriends and things were a little hazy on this front. All the husbands lusted after her and she knew it. She might have been considered very threatening to marital harmony, especially as she liked mixing with the guys far more than with the mums of the street. After a couple of Girl’s Night trips to the wine bar she switched allegiances, joining the boys on their trips to the pub instead.

  ‘I would rather drink beer than wine,’ she had said. ‘And no offence but I don’t have much to add to conversations about nappies and toys and school uniforms. I’d rather be talking about bands and motors and sport, and about girls, of course.’

  That was the key thing with temptress Eva, the only thing that kept the other mums’ minds at rest. She certainly didn’t fit the image and, as far as Nesta’s memory served, had never actually outright admitted to being a lesbian, but she was always very happy to tell them about her same-sex trysts of the past, and that she was currently romantically involved with a girl. They had in fact all seen this girlfriend - a petite thing with bobbed pink hair who was driven into the close from time to time on the back of the Harley.

  Nesta’s husband, and quite probably all the husbands, used to watch from the window, virtually with erection in hand, dreaming of what went on in Number Three after the two ladies disappeared inside. Miss Eva most certainly fuelled many a fantasy around these parts. If not for this apparent predilection for females she might have been seen as some kind of modern-day Siren, sent mischievously amongst them to seduce shamelessly and wreck homes. She certainly liked the company of the husbands, and was always getting them to do odd jobs for her for free. They were only too willing - certainly more willing than they were to do such things in their own homes. She had them all wrapped around her little finger.

  Nesta wondered how long it would be before Eva tried to get her claws into Mr M. Hunter. He didn’t look the type to be taken in by her. He looked a match for her sultry wiles. God willing he wouldn’t fall for her. Maybe he would be gay enough to be immune to her beguilement. If not maybe he would be a big enough bastard to make her wish she had kept well clear. Perhaps it was best not to know too much about him after all, just stick to the good images in her head. With this her one day off in the week and the house otherwise empty, Nesta pondered taking those nice, untarnished images with her upstairs to the bedroom, expanding upon them for a little while. Then suddenly he was out front in his garden again and she knew it was a chance not to miss.

  There was no ulterior motive. She wasn’t planning to instantly wheedle out of him just how gay he was on a scale of one to sixty-nine. She was just trying to be a good neighbour. There wasn’t a person alive who wouldn’t want to check out a newcomer at close range. So she speedily made two mugs of tea and took them down to him as he watched the removal guys negotiate the squeezing of a large leather sofa through the front door. As she neared him she saw that although he was in slim-cut jeans he still had very smart shoes on, a dark brown brogue this time. A thin wool crew-neck jumper completed the ensemble, since it was a little chillier now summer was fading for another year. He turned to view her as she made her final approach and bizarrely she felt the breath catch in her chest. Why she should be so nervous was anyone’s guess.

  ‘There’s no sugar in, I hope that’s OK. I’m Nesta from Number Four. You must be the Mr M. Hunter of Just Moved In fame?’

  He smiled and thanked her for the tea, taking it in his left hand and offering a handshake with his right. His grip was firm but the skin was smooth and warm against her nerves-induced chilliness.

  ‘Never “Mr” and never “M”,’ he said. ‘It’s always just “Hunter”.’

  ‘As in Just William,’ she said, before she had a chance to stop herself. He made a raised-eyebrow face that could have meant yes indeed, good joke, but could equally have meant either whatever or go away. She hoped it wasn’t the latter. He didn’t seem perturbed by her approach. He had turned to face her, which was a good sign that he was amenable to a chat. He spoke politely, with no discernible accent, quite probably well educated but not posh as such - a fact she was glad about. The voice itself was deep and there was warmth to it too. The eyes though, she couldn’t tell from the eyes. It certainly wasn’t hostility there but it was a definite edge, to go with those black Man of Action lines on the face. Why only ever “Hunter”? It was so impersonal. What could the M stand for that was so unutterable? Marmaduke? Marsupial? Mysterious, for sure.

  He was offering nothing back and she didn’t want it all to dry up before they had even started. She took another quick gulp of tea as she racked her mind for something else to say, and came perilously close to choking on it. She knew he must be able to see her nerves.

  ‘Shelley at Number One was thinking of having a little get-together on Sunday so you can meet all the neighbours. Will you be free?’

  ‘That is very kind of her. I will come if you can promise everyone will be wearing name badges. I am clinically incapable of remembering names for more than a second after I’ve been told them and I hate having to spend time at gatherings trying to cover up for my ignorance.’

  He was smiling as he said it. Maybe t
here was some warmth in those captivating eyes.

  ‘Consider it done. I’m afraid most people here go by their first names. I hope you don’t mind. Country ways! I’m also afraid you won’t get many leads for your business here - new houses and all that.’

  He looked a little stumped but came back quickly. ‘That’s a shame. Nudes are my speciality.’

  Now it was her turn to be baffled. Was it some weird attempt at a come-on, or maybe some gay reference that she couldn’t fathom? ‘The girl at the estate agents said you were a decorator.’

  He frowned but chuckled as he did so. ‘I said I was a painter. She must have misconstrued.’

  Nesta felt a little burst of relief inside. Now they were back on after a slight conversational hiccup and his body language was relaxed. There was definitely some warmth in those eyes. Plus he was a painter, a man of creativity, which was always a good sign. He might even prove to be flamboyant once he grew to trust her. ‘Perhaps you should use the word “artist” to avoid confusion,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but there are so many different kinds of artist: mime; trapeze; piss. Plus it infers some kind of expertise and I’m not sure I possess that.’

  ‘You clearly don’t do badly out of it.’

  ‘This is more of a hobby, something to make me semi-retired rather than simply retired. It’s what I did before that I didn’t do badly out of.’

  ‘And what, pray, was that?’

  He didn’t answer. There was a thin smile but this slowly faded and he was left looking at her, rather intently, his eyes narrowing. He stayed like this for a good few seconds and Nesta could feel the pound of her heart increase and the adrenalin begin to unload in her belly.

  ‘I’m sorry to stare,’ he said suddenly, making her jump, ‘It’s just that I’m sure you remind me of someone.’

  ‘Oh God, it’s not Mick Hucknall is it?’ Her voice was shaky and she needed to pull herself together. She was sounding flustered, love-struck even, which was completely the opposite impression from the one she had intended to make. She had wanted to come over as calm and indifferent to his looks, so that when he revealed his homosexuality she could just shrug it off rather than look crestfallen. She pressed on, hoping to shake the nerves. ‘Actually, a couple of people have said I look like Brigitte Fonda - except with red hair, obviously.’

  ‘Brigitte Fondant?’ he said, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Fonda, not Fondant!’ she giggled. ‘As in the actress from, well, from all those films she’s been in.’

  ‘Well, better her than Henry Fonda.’ He was smiling now and so was she, suddenly elated that they were getting on so well.

  ‘I’m reliably informed she is rather pretty,’ she said, challengingly.

  ‘You certainly have beautiful skin.’

  He said it in a heartbeat and held her gaze. Was it a come-on or the kind of a compliment a gay man would never think twice about bestowing? Why were her legs feeling so ridiculously weak?

  ‘I bet you say that to all the baked potatoes,’ she finally managed to say, although it was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Ah, another visitor bearing gifts,’ he said, looking over her shoulder.

  Crap. Crappety-crap. It was Eva, heading towards them with some kind of Tupperware box in hand. It was too cool for just a T-shirt but that’s what she had on, ensuring her tattooed arm was fully visible. She also had her tightest jeans on, because she knew she had a lovely shapely backside and thighs. As she drew near it became apparent that the chill had caused the standard stiffening of the nipples and made little points out of them that showed through her tight top. Nesta’s stomach sank. She suddenly felt very frumpy in her woolly jumper, not like a Hollywood actress at all.

  There were introductions. Eva barely acknowledged Nesta and certainly didn’t care about barging in on the conversation. For a lesbian she was doing a bloody good job of looking like a dirty man-eating bitch. She opened her plastic carton to display a triangle portion of sugar-coated pastry.

  ‘I made a blackberry and apple pie yesterday and wondered if you’d like to try some as a welcoming gift,’ she beamed, and by “made” she clearly meant “bought”. ‘I like to think I put the “tempt” into Temptation Close.’

  ‘You certainly put the “tat” into it,’ Nesta said quickly, signalling with her eyes towards Eva’s inked arm. It was a clever double-meaning and should have been a minor victory but Nesta only felt her spirit draining. She was out of her league here. Now it looked like some kind of flirting, fawning competition to bag the favours of the Handsome Man. Now Eva had come along with all tits and ass blazing Nesta just felt inferior and stupid. She had simply wanted to create a good impression, but then who doesn’t? She was completely and utterly satisfied with her home life and her man and had absolutely no intention of trying to make this newcomer fancy her. The more Eva next to her batted her eyelashes the more it seemed to disprove that fact.

  ‘Tempted?’ said the supposed lesbian, thrusting the pie and her bosom in his direction.

  Nesta needed to get away without looking like a defeated suitor. ‘Before you get too excited about the name of this street,’ she said, ‘I ought to point out it is merely named after a variety of tomato. It is a running joke by the builder, who likes to name all the roads he does in the village in such a manner, perhaps to ease his conscience at unceremoniously destroying large areas of allotment to give room for his developments. The roads sound exotic but are simply varieties of fruit and veg. Gala Street is named after the apple; Carnival Close takes its name from a squash. You could just as easily be living now in Baby Plum or Vine-Ripened Close.’

  ‘Or Beefsteak,’ said Eva looking him up and down with a wolfish grin. ‘So do you want to eat my pie then, or what?’

  Oh dear, it was getting worse - so why did Nesta feel so bitterly envious about her brazen neighbour? He appeared unfazed but surely soon he would be swapping innuendo and cosying up to the prettier, less mumsy of his two new acquaintances. There was no competition. If only Nesta could make him see that she hadn’t intended to compete in the first place. He took the pie and bit off the pointed tip. He chewed as they watched and he nodded his head a little as if to display that it was indeed very tasty. Then he swallowed, fixed his eyes on Nesta’s and said, very purposefully, ‘utterly delicious.’

  She felt her legs weaken, almost buckle. She knew her gasp might well have been audible to all. The tingling burst inside was warm in her belly but freezing in her fingers. Her cheeks felt hot and her mouth wet. She had to go, that instant. She managed to mumble some kind of goodbye but she was conscious all the way back to her house of how pitiful an exit it was. She went straight upstairs to her bedroom where she knew she couldn’t see out into the street. She flung herself onto the bed and pressed her hands to her burning face. She tried to drive out the thoughts, the hopes that he would fend off Eva’s shameless attempts to get close.

  She shouldn’t care because it was nothing to her. The two neighbours she had slunk away from so ingloriously were both single and very good-looking and thus a very good pairing, even if one of them was apparently lesbian and the other hopefully gay. She shouldn’t care but she did - that’s why she was currently such a mess. It wasn’t just the fact that he had deliberately looked at her and not at Eva when he had said those words, it was the other effect. When he had said ‘delicious’ she had actually felt the word in her most sensitive place. It was an actual, palpable feeling, a definite rather than an imagined contact, like his tongue had somehow stroked upward over her clit as he pronounced the L of the word. It was impossible but it felt like it had happened. It had sent a bursting, glorious fizzle through her sex and into her belly. It had made her knees give. She knew if she dared put her hand down her knickers now she would feel wetness there.

  No one, no one, had ever had such an effect on her before. It wasn’t just a flutter of
excitement but a jolt of bliss. It couldn’t possibly have happened. You can’t possibly feel something so acutely without being touched, but that’s exactly what her body was telling her had happened. Suddenly everything was rude and wrong. Chatting was fine, maybe even a bit of light, harmless flirting, but not this. Her head was a cacophony. Guilt was forcing her to mentally replay the scene loudly and in bright garish colour to ensure her betrayal was all the more evident.

  She hadn’t meant any of this to happen, she hadn’t asked for it, even if it was her who went to him all alone, and laughed at his jokes, and blushed at his flattery. Betraying the man she knew only love for was absolutely the furthest thing from her mind. Then from nowhere there was physical contact, taking her from good neighbour to love rat in a millisecond. Well, not physical contact because he hadn’t actually touched her. Magical contact was more accurate: impossible, must-have-been-imagined contact. She desperately hoped it was imagined, because if not she had unwittingly become one of those married people she looked down upon with such scorn: one who cheats.

  She had to drag herself back to reality, remind herself that nothing had changed, that she was still the same person she had been barely half an hour ago. There couldn’t have been any betrayal because it always takes two to tango and she would never be one of those people. It couldn’t have happened. Her nerves must have somehow tricked her into thinking it had. Except that the tingle that had been induced was still in evidence, more a dull throb now, calling for her. And while it was there all she could see was Hunter’s face. There was only one way to push him from her thoughts and her body knew it. Her hand was already creeping down beneath her towards the source of the throb and she was begging herself not to give in, not to go any further and compound her disloyalty. But still she did it.