Let's Make This Thing Happen Read online

  This was a leafy part of the city, only a couple of streets away from the Roxette, but where that had been all pawnbrokers and discount shops, these terraces were gentrified inner-city chic at its peak.

  Emily paused at the entrance, using the menu as a prop to her hesitation. So many different kinds of coffee bean on the menu!

  Across the road, dark trees cast shade over a small park. Children were out playing, people walking and sitting. It was a beautiful evening, and the atmosphere of the place an abrupt change from the manic bustle of the city.

  A beautiful evening and she had just about run out of things to delay her, so she took a deep breath and went inside.

  He was sitting at a table just back from the window. Black t-shirt and jeans, a leather jacket slung over the back of another chair and a pair of shades on the table. From where he sat he could see out, but she hadn’t seen him until now, as she paused just inside the door.

  He spotted her instantly and stood, almost knocking his chair over in his haste, then reaching over to remove his jacket from the other chair.

  When she approached he seemed unable to decide whether to embrace her, shake hands or just nod awkwardly, so he settled for a brief kiss on the cheek and then stepping back, saying, “Emily. I really am glad you came. I told Mo to be discreet and sensitive.”

  “He said you’re a screw-up.”

  Ray paused in the middle of seating himself. “He...?”

  She smiled, breaking the tension. “He was being nice.”

  “He was?”

  She’d mellowed towards Ray, she realized now. His reaction to her last night still hurt, but time had drawn some of the sting. Outside, the sunlight had taken on that golden hue of a perfect late spring evening and she was sitting here in a rather good coffee shop with the Angry Cans’ front man. She could cope with that, she decided.

  “I just wanted to say sorry, really,” he said, and at least he had the decency to look genuine.

  Sorry for feeling repelled by her? She didn’t say that out loud.

  “Sorry for being such a... a screw-up last night,” he went on. “I haven’t been able to shake that look on your face. The shock at how I was behaving.”

  This wasn’t going where she’d thought.

  “I’d told everyone I wasn’t going to do that stuff all over again. Shit, I’d just said all that to you, but then I just went onto autopilot. So I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

  “I thought... I thought you didn’t fancy me. I thought you suddenly realized how the quality of groupies has plummeted in the last ten years. I–”

  “Are you serious?”

  She nodded, looked down. Realized they hadn’t ordered anything, but the waiting staff weren’t pestering them, were giving Ray the space and time he needed.

  He reached across the table, and put his hand on hers, and his touch sent shivers through her. Good shivers. Bad shivers – the kind she really shouldn’t enjoy.

  “Forgive my language, but that’s just fucking ridiculous,” he told her. “Ever since I first caught sight of you in the audience last night I’ve been gobsmacked. Enchanted. All through last night’s show, you were in my head. And ever since. That drink with you afterwards... I just couldn’t get enough.”

  She dared to look up into those dark pools that were his eyes.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said, in a very small voice.

  He gave a brief shake of the head. “Never,” he said.

  This was sweet. It was breathtaking. Not merely – merely! – that it was him, but that any man could say such things about her, could claim to feel that way about her. It was beautiful.

  But it could go no further than this... There wasn’t room in her life for this kind of complication!

  “I’m married,” she said.

  “I am too, technically.”

  “‘Technically’?”

  “We’ve been separated for years, just haven’t done anything about it.”

  That wasn’t really a surprise to Emily. She’d read enough about his turbulent lifestyle, after all.

  “Mine’s more than just technically,” she said.

  Now, his expression sagged a little. “Cool,” he said, in a voice that said most clearly that it was not. “I’m no homebreaker.” Then, that smile again, briefly: cheeky and mischievous. “Not any more, at least.”

  She smiled back at him, and told herself off for that brief pang of disappointment.

  “Coffee?” he asked. “I practically live at this place. I’m going to dedicate the new album to Caffè’s Banko Natural. I took that almost intravenously when I was writing, and then when we were recording I had a cab bring supplies out to the studio.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  Ray just had to raise an eyebrow in the general direction of the back of the place to get attention. “Two Banko Naturals, please. Straight up.” Then he turned back to Emily, and said, “So, are we good?”

  She nodded. “We’re good,” she said. “Even if this still feels really weird.”

  “Welcome to my world,” he said. “Once the Angries hit a certain level there was never any going back. Even now, I can’t just meet a beautiful woman – sorry! I’ll stop... I can’t just meet a friend in the city. I have to hide out in one of the most exclusive coffee shops in the country so I don’t get swamped with paparazzi and fans and idle gawkers staring at me because they think they’ve seen my face somewhere before and am I the guy from... fill in the blank.”

  “First World problems, eh?”

  They laughed, and the coffee came, two tall cups of rich, black brew accompanied by glasses of sparkling mineral water and a selection of what looked like handmade biscuits.

  “It has its compensations,” he conceded. “One of the worst scenarios? I know plenty of people who get the same attention, but they no longer have the money to pay for the lifestyle and so they have no escape. At least I can hide away in places like this still.”

  She’d seen the prices on the menu as she loitered at the door. She sincerely hoped he was paying.

  “I enjoyed talking last night,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve just sat down and talked with someone who didn’t have an agenda. Real conversation.”

  As she recalled, they’d mostly talked about his show, but maybe in his world that passed for normal conversation.

  “So tell me about you,” he went on, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I know you have connections with the Roxette and that you had Angries posters on your bedroom wall when you were a teenager. And yes, that still makes me feel old, but hey. Who are you, Emily? What do you do? What do you get passionate about?”

  She raised her cup and breathed in pungent, tropical scents: the tang of coffee cut through with something sweet, the nectar of night-blooming flowers. The taste was a repeat of that, plus a punch to the head, the flavors incredibly rich and complex, with deep chocolate and strawberry and a hammer blow of caffeine. She’d always enjoyed good coffee, but this was something else entirely.

  “You like?” He was watching her closely.

  She took a sip of mineral water to cut through the dry after-taste, then said, “I do. It’s incredible.”

  “The best. So: you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Anything.”

  He was doing that thing again. Coming on to her. Just with his eyes, drinking her in.

  “Stop it.”

  He looked down, then away, out of the window to the park. “Sorry. It’s hard not to. I’ll try to be good.”

  “I work in the city,” she said. “Management consultancy. All sorts, but I specialize in going in and rescuing firms that are struggling for one reason or another. I’m good at asking the right questions and getting businesses to refocus.”

  “Maybe I should hire you.”

  She had real trouble telling when he was being serious or playful.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Formerly successful business in
the entertainment industry, about to relaunch. CEO who’s easily distracted. I bet you could make a world of difference to Ray Sandler Inc.”

  “I’m expensive.”

  At that, he just spread his hands to indicate their surroundings. “I invest in fine things,” he said.

  This was another Ray sitting across the table from her. Away from the post-performance buzz and anxiety, away from constantly considering the expectations of those around him. He was so much more relaxed, and there was a playfulness that was both fun and dangerous.

  She shouldn’t be enjoying this so much.

  She’d kissed this man. She’d felt him growing hard against her. Hell, she’d nearly had an orgasm just from clinging onto him!

  After something like that, anything they did was always going to be pitched somewhere beyond mere playfulness.

  She’d felt safe, coming here to meet a man she had believed saw her as overweight and unattractive, but now? Those dark eyes rarely left her face, and he seemed to smile at the slightest thing. Even though he had sworn to behave, he made no secret of his enjoyment of her company.

  They talked. Talked like Emily couldn’t remember talking in years. They talked about some of the places he’d seen and her own more limited travels; about films and books, and about those posters on her teen self’s wall; about the music business, where he descended into a comic sequence of namedropping the stars he’d insulted over the years; about the city and their favorite places to eat and chill; about everything. They went from the Banko Natural to something grown on an Ethiopian mountain whose name Emily couldn’t pronounce, to green tea when she pleaded caffeine overdose.

  And all the time, those eyes, that smile, the undercurrent of intense attraction and a sense of things going too far already.

  “I’m married,” she said again, as if it was a mantra that might somehow ward him off. “I’m married and I need to be going home.” She hadn’t told Thom she’d be late. Hadn’t texted.

  “Me too,” he said. “Technically.”

  8

  Nothing was going to happen. He was walking her to the Underground, that was all. Technically, going via the park was a bit of a detour but it was such a beautiful evening she could justify that. Technically.

  “See?” he said, as they passed along an avenue of slender trees, their leaves dappling the evening sunlight into a dancing, ever-changing mosaic on the ground.

  She just looked at him, waited for him to go on.

  “I’ve been good. I said I would. We talked. I’ve had a lovely time. It’s been cool. I’ve been good.”

  “You’ve been good.”

  “I didn’t even say how beautiful you look this evening.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “See? I can do this thing. I can behave.”

  And all the time, that playful smile tugging at his features.

  When had Emily last felt so chilled? So flattered by an attractive man’s attention? When had she last laughed as much as she had in the last hour?

  “I finished that song.”

  He didn’t need to say any more. The song he’d written for Emily when he left the stage last night. ‘Let’s Make This Thing Happen.’

  “When?”

  “Just now,” he said. “In between leaving Caffè and now. In my head.”

  She looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

  He nodded, then tapped the side of his head. “It’s all in here.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You want to hear?”

  She nodded, expecting him to launch straight in, a cappella. Instead, he raised a hand to indicate a row of houses backing onto the park. “My place,” he said, and then she wondered just how much of this had been a carefully-spun web of seduction.

  “Hold on a minute,” she said. “I–”

  “You’re married, I know,” he said, laughing. “It’s fine. I just want to play you a song and that’s the nearest guitar. We’re cool. I’ll be good. You want to hear it?”

  §

  There was a door set into the high wall that separated his small back yard from the park. How many private houses have direct access to parks in the city?

  He let her through, and then leaned back on the door to close it.

  The Yale lock on the door clicked shut, and suddenly Emily knew.

  How far back had this become inevitable? When she’d agreed for him to walk her to the station? When she’d sat for longer than a mere apology? Even agreeing to meet him?

  Earlier than that? Had this been inevitable from the moment Marcia called to say There’s this guy...?

  Inevitable that, now, he would step away from the door and Emily would feel as if her feet had grown roots so that she couldn’t back away when he came to stand before her, head inclined a little to gaze down into her eyes.

  He raised a hand, and one knuckle came to rest under her chin, slight pressure tilting her head up to meet his kiss.

  It was no more than a brushing of lips across hers. The fleetingness making it so much more intense a thing.

  His hand moved up, a thumb trailing along her jaw until he cupped the side of her head, fingers deep in her hair.

  His lips pressed again, more firmly this time, more lingering. His tongue flicked across her lips.

  They shouldn’t be doing this. It was wrong.

  She reached for him, hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and pulled him closer so that his ribcage pressed against her breasts.

  So wrong.

  She’d only wanted to pull him closer, but her fingertips encountered bare flesh, coarse, tangled body hair.

  His hand worked round to the back of her head now, and he kissed her hard, so hard she thought her raging heart was going to burst. His tongue drove deep, found hers and pressed, and her hand was deeper now, forced down by the way their bodies mashed together. Fingertips met hardness, the base of his shaft, and if ever there had been a chance of stopping this thing there was none now.

  She tried to pull away but he followed, somehow keeping his mouth on hers.

  She extracted herself, turned, took a few steps across the paved yard and then found herself face up against a door, and his body against her, pressing her hard against the painted wood surface.

  His arms looped around her. Hands cupped her full breasts, gently kneading, fingertips scratching across her hardening nipples through the tight fabric of her top. A hand slid down then, leaving an electric trail across her belly and then lower, until he was cupping her sex, squeezing and rolling his hand from side to side.

  She eased her legs apart, and for a moment all she was aware of was that steady, rolling pressure down there. Then it became like a sudden barrage of sensations: the hardness grinding against her backside, the wet heat of his mouth on the back of her neck, that steady, relentless flicking of fingertip against hard nipple, the hand... cupping, squeezing, rolling.

  She twisted, forcing her way round to face him, and now he pulled at her top and she raised her arms so he could tug it free and pull it over her head.

  A single hand at her back was enough to release her bra – oh, he was good! – and then that too was tugged free, discarded, and his head dropped to bury itself in her cleavage. Hungrily, his mouth worked over the smooth skin of one breast until he found the nipple and sucked it deep, then pulled back to let it drag free through sharp teeth, sending sharp pulses of pleasure and pain darting through her body. While one hand cupped that breast so he could work the nipple with his mouth, the other found her free nipple and started to roll it between finger and thumb.

  This was so intense! She didn’t understand how he could trigger so many sensations just with mouth and fingers, but soon she stopped even wondering and gave herself up to it.

  She pulled at his t-shirt, then found the waistband of his jeans again and freed the first button, then the second, the third, until she could push them down over his slim hips. His shorts followed and she felt his manhood spring free from its constr
aints and slap against her.

  She took him in her hand, wrapping her fingers around his broad shaft and starting to pull and twist and pump.

  And slowly, she slid down the door until she was squatting, almost kneeling. She had to change her grip on him now, and then she could pump him slowly through her tight fist, the swollen head of his manhood only inches from her face. The purple skin was smooth and shiny with his juices, and as she looked another clear bead squeezed out.

  That wetness... so slippery!

  She peered up at him, a leather-jacketed silhouette hanging over her, one arm stretched out to lean on the door while she worked him.

  “Oh babe,” he said. “You don’t know how good you look like that.”

  She smiled, a hungry, naughty look. And then she shifted position again, worked her way up the door until the head of his dick came to lie in her cleavage. Now, when she pumped him, that swollen, wet head slid between her breasts and then up and clear.

  His eyes widened now, and he put both hands on the door and started to thrust. Deep down between her breasts and then up and clear, the base of his shaft grinding against her breastbone and the head sliding up her neck.

  She took her breasts in her hands, squeezing them together, her own fingers flicking at the nipples now. Smiling eagerly up at him as he drew back down, his shaft squashed between her breasts, lubricated by his juices.

  As he pushed up, she dipped her face downwards and caught the head in her mouth, swirling her tongue around that salty sweetness.

  He started to thrust hard, from breasts to mouth, again and again.

  Just as she thought her thighs were finally going to explode, she sensed a change, a new urgency. She tipped her head back and saw it in his eyes first: a widening, a desperate need.

  He dropped lower, his shaft gliding deep in her cleavage, the head barely emerging. She looked down. He was so wet! So turned on!

  Then there was a tension in his body, a deep thrust and a creamy wetness burst from the eye of that swollen head and shot a hot, sticky trail into her open mouth, down her neck and into her cleavage. He thrust again, and there was another burst of semen. Again, and all that emerged was a single pearly bead as his come pooled back down between her breasts.