‘What is it?’
‘Something I made earlier,’ he said cryptically as he rummaged through a cupboard. He pulled out something that looked like an old-fashioned Thermos flask with a nozzle, which didn’t give Neve any clues. Max had a frightening amount of gadgetry in his kitchen.
‘What is that and what are you going to do with it?’ she asked, as Max plonked it down on the table.
‘Wait and see,’ he admonished, patting her shoulder as he walked past to fetch the dessert he’d just got out of the fridge. ‘Crème brûlée,’ he announced grandly, putting a little ramekin down in front of her and sprinkling the top with brown sugar.
Neve looked down at it with undisguised interest. Although she preferred the chocolate-based desserts, the rules of Treat Sunday would allow her three good spoonfuls because she had cycled miles around north London earlier that day and she still had to cycle home …
‘What are you doing?’ she yelped when Max picked up the fiddly Thermos gizmo and made fire come out of the nozzle.
‘Just watch – it’s the coolest thing.’ Max picked up her ramekin and scorched the top of the crème brûlée until the sugar caramelised. ‘Give it a moment to set and then we can crack the top at the same time.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Neve breathed as Max performed the same pyrotechnic trick with his own ramekin. ‘Be careful with that thing!’
Max blew out the flame that licked across the top of the brûlée and sat down. ‘I know you can’t eat any, but that’s my party trick.’ He beamed at her. ‘I set our pudding on fire with my blowtorch! You have to admit, that was pretty cool.’
‘It was very cool, though I feared for my eyelashes.’ Neve prodded the top with her spoon to test its hardness and all the time she was thinking that as she’d been moaning to Chloe about Max and the nefarious games he was supposedly playing, Max had been making her crème brûlée.
Because it wasn’t just Max carefully measuring out sugar and separating egg yolks, it was Max thinking about her. It was Max trying to impress her. And the whole thing with Max making fire? That was the metrosexual equivalent of hunting down a wild animal, then dragging it back to his cave for the approval of his cavewoman.
It wasn’t crème brûlée. Not at all. It was Max trying to seduce her. So why wasn’t he getting on with the seduction?
Neve was out of her chair, and before Max even had time to look up, she was half on his lap, half crouching down to smother his face with kisses.
Max tried to speak but there was nothing he could say that Neve wanted to hear, not when she wanted his kisses and he was still withholding. His mouth barely moved against hers, his hands on her shoulders to keep her at a distance and stop Neve from pressing herself against him, while she wanted something harder and fiercer and more passionate.
‘God, why won’t you kiss me properly?’ she demanded, pulling herself away and standing up so she could loom over Max with her hands on her hips. Also, crouching down had been hell on her knees.
‘Because I don’t want you having a panic attack halfway through.’ Max looked up at her, no trace of teasing on his face. ‘You’d better be sure that this is what you want.’
‘Either we’re doing this for real or there’s no point in doing this at all,’ Neve snapped. ‘God, this is a disaster. We don’t fit together. I never know if you’re joking or not, and you certainly don’t know that I want to be kissed – really kissed – and if you don’t want to do th—’
Her garbled speech was stopped abruptly when Max stood up and kissed the words right out of her mouth. Proper kisses that made her aching knees buckle just a little bit.
Neve had a sense memory of that first night on her sofa because these kisses were just as heated, but it wasn’t the same because this time when Max cupped her breast and bottom, she pressed herself into his hands. These weren’t kisses that were going to lead to sex, she had made her feelings about that perfectly clear; they were kisses for the sake of kissing. Which was fine with her.
They only broke apart when Keith barked and scrabbled at the closed kitchen door. He came bounding into the room, then stopped and looked at them suspiciously, his ears cocked.
After Keith was fed and they’d done the washing up, they reconvened to the sofa where Max fed her exactly three spoonfuls of crème brûlée and then they kissed again.
The first kisses had been a little desperate but now they were slow and deep, and sometimes they didn’t even kiss but just lay on the sofa holding each other. Then Max would shift, so he could undo the third button on Neve’s dress to reveal a little more of her thermal vest, or she’d lazily run her finger along the soft underside of his arm and they’d kiss again. Even though Max’s living room was painted white and blue, Neve felt as if she was cocooned in a warm, red glow.
‘I’m not too heavy for you?’ she murmured in one of the not-kissing moments.
‘For the fifth time, no,’ Max said, smoothing the hair back from her face so he could kiss the tip of her nose. He glanced over her head. ‘It’s getting late. Will you stay over if I promise not to breach your thermals?’
Neve craned her neck to see the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearly ten. William had said he’d call at nine.
‘I should go,’ she said half-heartedly. The thought of leaving Max’s toasty warm flat wasn’t that appealing. Neither was the cold bike ride home, and for a moment she thought about staying and kissing Max a little while longer, but then she thought of William at the other end of the phone. The pleasure in his voice when he said hello and the throaty way he’d laugh if Neve said anything even remotely funny and how they could just talk and talk for hours and … and talking to William on the phone was even better than staying where she was and kissing Max some more. Which was no slight on Max’s kissing skills – in Neve’s limited experience Max seemed to be an expert kisser – but in a contest between kissing Max and talking to William, William was always going to emerge the victor.
‘Just to sleep,’ Max clarified, sitting up with a little groan and swinging his long legs to the floor. ‘You said you needed to get some practice in sleeping with someone else, didn’t you?’
‘I did,’ Neve said slowly. Now she wasn’t sure about that because there had been moments when they were kissing that she’d had the urge to rip off her many layers of clothing, tug away Max’s T-shirt and do more than kiss. What if she felt that urge again when they were in bed together? And she wasn’t sure how she felt about sharing a bed with Max when he’d made it perfectly clear that he was going to sleep with other women while they were dating. One whiff of someone else’s perfume on his pillow would ruin everything. ‘Have you ever shared a bed with a woman and not, hmmm, you know, had relations with them?’
Max gave the matter some thought. ‘Well, no, but I’m ready to give it a try if you are.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you, but we’ve only just got the kissing thing ironed out and I have to go home now because there’s stuff I need to do.’ There was no point in lying about it, Max knew William was the whole reason why they were doing this, but Neve made sure she was sitting right at the other end of Max’s sofa before she said, ‘Actually, I’m expecting a call from William.’
‘Fine, go home and coo sweet nothings down the phone to William,’ Max drawled diffidently. ‘Don’t sleep with me, it’s your loss.’
‘Well, it’s not as if sleeping with me is going to be that exciting when I’m sure you do all sorts of far more thrilling things when you’re in bed with your other women.’ Neve could only begin to imagine the lurid sex games Max played with his legions of other girls, which had to be much more fun and a lot more exotic than kissing a girl wearing a thermal vest, but his spine was set in a tense straight line like he wasn’t too happy about Neve cycling off into the night. He probably wasn’t used to being rejected. ‘And it’s not like I’m going home to sleep with William, though it would be hard to do that when he’s in California and I’m not.’ Neve wille
d herself to stop talking because she was rambling and also she didn’t like to think of William in that way – their bond was so much more spiritual than that.
‘I don’t fuck a different woman every night,’ Max snapped. ‘Or every other night, for that matter. I do have some control over my dick.’
Neve winced at Max’s harsh language. ‘I know, I know,’ she said hurriedly, although she hadn’t known any such thing. They’d been having such a lovely time, not to mention stellar kissing, and now it was all going horribly wrong and she didn’t know why or how to make it right again.
‘Well, you’d better go then,’ Max said, standing up and stretching. And just as Neve thought that the whole situation and their pretend relationship was irrevocably broken, he held out a hand so he could pull her up from the sofa. ‘We’ll take a raincheck on sleeping together.’
‘Maybe next Sunday, you and Keith could come round to mine and I’ll cook you dinner?’ Neve suggested tentatively, as she hunted for her shoes. ‘I’m not that great a cook and there won’t be any blowtorches involved … Perhaps we could try the sleepover thing then, once I’ve had time to get used to it, if you still want to.’
‘I still want to,’ Max said slowly. ‘I’m all about expanding your relationship knowledge, as long as you promise never to call it a sleepover again.’
‘I suppose it does sound a little teenage …’ Neve stopped and gave Max a shaky smile. ‘So, we’re OK? You’re still all right with doing this whole relationship thing?’
Max smiled back. ‘A pancake relationship. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t want any other kind.’
Chapter Fifteen
Being properly kissed and being in an improper relationship put Neve in such a cheery mood over the next few days that it didn’t matter when Charlotte started banging on the ceiling like she had a sixth sense about these things and knew the exact moment that Neve had fired up Microsoft Word to work on the next chapter of her Lucy Keener biography. Or that William hated Tristram Shandy too but still insisted that they finish reading it.
‘But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.’
It also didn’t matter that Gustav was exceedingly crabby because he’d pulled a thigh muscle and had to have a week off from training for his half-marathon and had decided to use the time to lecture Neve on the perils of pancake relationships.
‘I thought you were saving yourself for William, your one true love,’ he said sourly, as Neve huffed and puffed on a gym mat as she worked her core muscles. ‘It shows no commitment to your romantic goals. I hope you’re not going to take the same fickle attitude to your fitness goals.’
‘It shows a total commitment to my romantic goals,’ Neve panted, stopping her stomach crunches, only to start them again when Gustav pointed a finger in the direction of her domed belly. ‘Going out with Max is like your marathon training. William is my finishing line.’
That made Gustav even stroppier. He had to go and get an ice-pack for his injured thigh and when he returned, he made Neve spend ten minutes lying on the floor doing scissor kicks. But scissor kicks did not destroy her; they just built muscle, which burned fat so it was all good.
Neve’s good mood wasn’t even punctured by the strange atmosphere at work. Every time she went into the kitchen, Chloe and Rose were already in there having a fierce, whispered conversation that stopped immediately when Neve asked if the kettle was on. The annual Board of Trustees’ meeting was imminent, which always made everyone jumpy, as their thoughts turned first to lack of funding, then to pay cuts and four-day weeks and even redundancy. Neve was sure it wouldn’t come to that, since funding always turned up at the eleventh hour and, for once in her life, she wasn’t going to worry about the stuff she couldn’t control.
What mattered was that things with Max were going smoothly and if she could be successful in a fake relationship, then a real relationship with William would be a breeze, a walk in the park, like falling off a log.
Neve would never admit it to Max, because he’d never stop crowing about it, but she was definitely having fun.
Though at two o’clock the next Sunday afternoon Neve was feeling less fun-filled and more frazzled. She had a beef casserole on a low simmer, a pore-minimising mask on her face, which was making her skin itch, and even though she’d changed her sheets midweek, she remade her bed swapping floral sprigs for a candy stripe, which was the manliest bedlinen she could find in her airing cupboard. Then she tore through her pyjama drawer for something suitable to sleep in. She’d never realised just how many dowdy, plaid pyjama bottoms she’d accumulated. Neve even contemplated phoning Celia to ask if polka dots were sexier than tartan but Celia was probably still in bed, and even if she did manage to answer the phone, she’d want to know exactly why Neve was having a sleepwear style crisis and that was a conversation that Neve didn’t want to have.
There was a ring on the bell at precisely three o’clock as Neve was furiously dabbing powder on her face. The mask may have minimised her pores but had left the rest of her red and blotchy, and as she tiptoed down the stairs at great speed to answer the door, she realised she was still wearing her strictly ‘round the house’ jeans with the saggy knees and stretched-out waistband instead of her ‘can just about walk in them’ jeans. It was too late to go back and change now.
Neve took a deep, centring breath, then opened the door with a fixed smile, which turned into a grin of sheer delight when Keith leaped up to lick her hands and wag his stumpy tail.
‘Hello, my precious little boy,’ Neve clucked, taking his front paws in her hands so they could do a little two-step.
‘And hello to you too,’ Max said, stepping past them and shutting the door with his foot as he was laden down with two holdalls, a carrier bag, a bunch of flowers and a dog bed.
‘So you and Keith are definitely staying over, then?’ Neve let go of Keith’s paws, so she could assess the sheer amount of stuff Max deemed essential for sleeping over. Even though she’d spent most of the morning panicking about bedlinen and sleepwear, she’d half-hoped that Max would have some good reason why he couldn’t spend the night.
‘I thought Keith could act as a chaperone but his requirements for an overnight stay rival any Hollywood celebrity,’ Max complained, as he started up the stairs. ‘Dog bed, special blanket, a selection of his favourite toys and he’ll only drink and eat out of his own bowls. I even had to bring some smoked salmon paté to disguise the taste of his worming tablets and vitamins.’
‘You’re a very high-maintenance doggy,’ Neve told Keith, who was making progress very slow by climbing a stair then stopping and looking round to make sure that Neve and Max were still behind him. ‘I’ve got you some lovely doggy treats.’
‘Please don’t talk to him in that creepy voice. He’s a dog, not a five year old with learning difficulties.’
‘No pudding for you, mister,’ Neve snapped, bumping Max with her hip as they reached her landing. She waited until he’d retrieved the dog bed, which had fallen to the floor, then gestured at the open door. ‘Just go through, you know where everything is.’
She winced at the reminder of that awful, drunken night – but then again, if it hadn’t been for that awful, drunken night then Max wouldn’t be dropping his bags on the floor so he could take her in his arms.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, kissing the blotchiest patch of skin across her left cheekbone.
‘Hey yourself,’ Neve said, then they were kissing in her tiny hall with the door still wide open and Keith bashing his head against their shins.
It was absolutely perfect – or it was until Neve heard a loud thumping sound, followed by a door crashing back on its hinges and the thud, thud, thud of footsteps. Keith started barking and chasing around in circles as Neve tried to wriggle out of Max’s arms because …
‘For fuck’s sake! What the fuck is going on up there?’
>
Charlotte was still on the half-landing between their two floors, foot raised to complete the climb to Neve’s flat when she stopped and stared, her mouth hanging open.
Neve could feel her heart pounding and her face firing up so it would be impossible to tell where the blushing started and the blotching stopped. She took a step backwards and blundered into Max, while she willed herself to stay calm. She had back-up and she had a fierce-looking dog who flattened his ears and growled when Charlotte decided to climb another stair.
Charlotte hurriedly backed away to the safety of the landing. ‘Could you keep the noise down?’ she asked politely, as if the screaming harridan of thirty seconds ago had just been an hallucination. ‘I have a headache.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Max purred, taking his hands off Neve’s shoulders so he could come forward and give Charlotte a good telling-off because it was what boyfriends did when they met their girlfriends’ arch nemeses. ‘Keith, stop that!’
Keith let out a volley of defiant barks, then slunk behind Max’s legs.
‘I’m sorry,’ Max repeated. ‘All my fault. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Neve’s special friend and I can’t believe she forgot to tell me that there’s another gorgeous Slater sister walking the earth.’
Neve contemplated shoving Max head first down the stairs, but settled for a thousand silent curse words as she glared at his back. Charlotte tossed her hair back and made a horrible sound, half giggle and half simper. ‘I’m only a Slater by marriage,’ she said conspiratorially, as if confessing to some terrible crime. She gave Max a long look, eyes narrowed, as if he was a huge uncut diamond and she was trying to estimate how many carats he was worth. ‘I’m Charlotte, Neve’s sister-in-law.’
It was probably the first time that Charlotte had ever admitted they were tenuously related. Neve twitched with anger. Charlotte had obviously decided that Max was heterosexual, handsome and wasted on Neve because she flicked her long, shiny, stupid hair back from her face again, then stuck out her chest in her stupid Juicy Couture track-suit. Celia and Yuri had once tried to guess how many Juicy Couture tracksuits Charlotte owned, but they’d given up once they’d hit double figures.