Part 1
Brooke had two reasons for ringing Callum’s doorbell, and only one of them was true.
The true one was the cake. Her oven had died at half past one with a lemon sponge half-mixed on her counter, and the cake was for Priya’s engagement party tomorrow, and there was no time to buy a new oven. The other reason — the one she’d never say out loud — was the man at number 14, who washed his car on Sundays in a black ribbed tank and carried his shopping like it weighed nothing, and who had said “morning” to her over the hedge exactly four times, each one of which she’d replayed that evening in the bath.
She’d dressed for the truth. The fitted pink top, tucked into a low denim miniskirt with the wide white studded belt. Flip-flops, because it was that kind of overcast Tuesday, the sky flat and bright over the estate. She’d done her eyeliner twice. That detail she didn’t examine.
The bell was brass, set into a white paneled door between tan brick and a dark hedge. She pressed it, crossed her feet at the ankles, uncrossed them, and heard his footsteps on the other side of the door before she’d decided what her face should be doing.
He opened it in the black tank, olive cargos slung low on his hips, a leather cord with a small metal clasp at his throat. Lean. Pale in a way that made the tan brick behind him look warm. His eyes went somewhere between her face and the bowl of batter in her hands and stayed there.
“Hi. Sorry. Brooke — from next door.” She held up the bowl like a warrant. “My oven’s died mid-cake and this one’s for a party tomorrow, and I know this is a mad thing to ask, but could I use yours for forty minutes?”
“Forty minutes.” He was already stepping back, holding the door. “Callum. C’mon in.”
His kitchen smelled of coffee and something faintly woody. Cream shaker cabinets, dark wood worktops, a gas hob with black cast-iron grates under a big stainless chimney hood, and along the back of the counter four white ceramic canisters with looping black labels she couldn’t make sense of. A white ceramic teapot by the hob. A row of little glass votives along the windowsill, catching the flat light. It was tidier than her kitchen. She hated that it made her like him more.
He cleared a space at the dark worktop, moved the food processor’s jug aside, took the bowl from her, and weighed it in one hand. “Lemon?”
“Lemon.”
“Oven runs hot. Drop it ten degrees and give it the full forty.” He slid the tin onto the shelf, straightened, and tapped the timer on the stainless panel until the red display blinked up 40:00 and started falling. “There. You’re on the clock.”
“Thank you. Seriously. I owe you—” and she reached past him for her handbag on the counter and misjudged it, or didn’t misjudge it, and her hand landed flat on his waist instead, fingers just inside the waistband of the cargos, on warm skin.
Neither of them moved.
She looked up. He was looking down at her hand, then at her mouth, then at her eyes — in that order, unhurried, the way he did everything — and Brooke felt her own pulse change gear.
“That’s not where your bag is,” he said.
“No,” she agreed, and left her hand where it was.
“You’ve got—” he tilted his head, “—about thirty-nine minutes.”
“That’s not a lot of time.”
“It’s loads of time.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him, and he answered immediately — one hand coming flat against her waist above the studded belt, the other still on the counter’s edge, and his mouth was unhurried too, patient even here, like he’d already decided she wasn’t going anywhere and could afford to take his time proving it. She made a sound into it she hadn’t planned. His hand tightened on her waist in answer.
Somehow the oven door got closed. Somehow they were in the middle of the kitchen, and her fingers were pulling his tank up over his head, and he let her, dropping it somewhere behind him without looking. She got her palms on his chest — hot, flat muscle, a hitch in his breathing that told her everything — and she laughed, high and giddy at her own nerve, and he opened his eyes mid-grin like her laugh was better than the kiss.
“Your turn,” he said, and crossed his arms.
She pulled the pink top off over her head and shook her hair out. The cool air found her skin through the purple lace. He looked. He took his time looking, and she let him, chin up, breasts rising with her breathing, and the looking did something to her that touching wouldn’t have — heat crawling slowly up from her belly.
“C’mere,” he said, low, and she went.
He walked her back until the worktop met her spine, and his mouth went to her throat, and she felt the wet press of it below her ear and her knees remembered why they’d been shaky on the doorstep. His fingers found the button of her skirt. Slipped it open. The zipper was enormous in the quiet kitchen. Her white studded belt hung loose, its tongue clinking against the studs.
“Timer,” she managed, not meaning it as a stop, meaning it as a dare.
“Thirty-seven minutes,” he murmured into her neck, and hooked two fingers into the waistband of her skirt — just hooked there, holding, knuckles pressed warm against her, one knuckle’s width from where she was already soaked — and waited.
He would wait all day. She understood that about him in one flash. The stillness wasn’t hesitance. It was patience, and the patience was hers to spend.
“Take it off,” Brooke said. “And then don’t stop.”