‘Why?’
‘Because looking down on it from up here, it’s the right way up, which does rather defeat the object of the exercise. I didn’t think of that when I was all fired up and pissed off.’
Unexpectedly, Theo felt a faint smile curve his mouth. ‘No, well, who would?’
‘Ideally the tattoo artist would have had an inkling,’ she said dryly. ‘He supposedly had twenty years’ experience. But it’s fine. I’m used to it. And now it seems rather irrelevant anyway.’
His smile faded and a ribbon of concern wound through him because he hoped she wasn’t referring to them. They weren’t dating and they never would. This was a one, maybe two, night thing at most. Which was all it ever could be. And that was fine. The thing stabbing away at him wasn’t regret. It was guilt. Because now he came to think about it he’d been remiss earlier and it had been playing on his mind.
‘You looked spectacular this evening,’ he said, remembering how speechless he’d been when he’d turned and seen her standing there on the balcony.
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. I wasn’t sure.’
‘The mirror doesn’t lie.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t much like looking at myself in a mirror,’ she said, frowning and biting on her lower lip, which gave him all kinds of ideas he intended to put into action later. ‘Not a full-length on
e anyway. There’s just so much of me. I went to a hall of mirrors once at a funfair when I was six and was traumatised for weeks.’
‘Yet you’re now wearing heels.’
‘I know,’ she said, flashing him a quick grin that did something strange to his chest. ‘For the first time in years. Isn’t that great?’
Was it? He wasn’t so sure. While he was gratified by the improvement in her self-esteem and confidence, he didn’t like to think what she might see if she looked him straight in the eye. He liked even less the memory of how as they’d walked to the party, their strides in synch, it had briefly, unacceptably, occurred to him that they somehow matched.
‘So come on,’ she said, rolling onto her side so that she faced him and fixing him with exactly the sort of disconcertingly probing look he feared. ‘Your turn.’
‘About what?’
‘Tell me something about you that no one else knows.’
He tensed and frowned. ‘I’ve already told you something no one else knows.’ Many things, actually.
‘Something else.’
‘My childhood wasn’t enough?’
‘It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be tiny. Humour me.’ She shot him a wicked smile and for a second he marvelled at how quickly she’d gone from virgin to temptress. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘All right,’ he said, his body hardening all over again at the mere thought of just how she might go about doing that. ‘I get headaches when I’m stressed. I didn’t learn to read until I was sixteen. And I have a mild allergy to celery, which makes my tongue go numb.’
‘There,’ she said, her eyes shimmering with emotions he didn’t want to even try and identify. ‘You see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
‘Depends on what I want to do with my tongue.’
‘And what do you want to do with your tongue?’
‘Why don’t you lie back and let me show you?’
* * *