Ellis stirred. The insistent tapping of some metal object on the windscreen of his car woke him. A traffic warden stood by the driver’s side window and it was clear that he would have to move on.
‘Your time’s almost up,’ he was told gruffly. ‘At least you bothered to ‘pay and display’.’
‘Quite so,’ Ellis grinned with a yawn. ‘Sorry about that. If I put more money in the machine can I stay a spell longer?’
The warden shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Go on then. It’s nearly the end of the day, anyway, but pay for the time left and you’re obliged to show an hour…just over.’
‘Got you.’ He saw a cheery wave from the man as he strolled off. It wasn’t an exchange you heard much of these days.
Ellis fed the meter and put the sticker in the window of his battered Peugeot runabout and he made sure that the car was locked up. He was soon on the beach with St Michael’s Mount to his left and Newlyn fish harbour before him and along a sweep of sand that was slowly being revealed as the tide went out.
His year off since leaving college was drawing to a close. In a month or so he would be heading off to university; a motley collection of odd jobs had seen him through and he had even put money aside to offset his first year’s student loan costs. He had lived it up, some, and now he would take in some sea and sand; do some surfing, and try and eke out an existence by seeing if any seasonal jobs still needed, or a helping hand needed.
He soon reached the water’s edge, the wavelets almost too lazy to reach the sand where he stood. Ellis shoved off his trainers and hopped on one foot, then another, as he took off his socks. The remains of seashells pricked the soles of his feet but he set off in a westerly direction and faced the setting sun.
He heard the quickening splash of water.
‘Jasper! No…come here, Jasper!’ A woman’s voice cried out, but he chose not to turn. He didn’t have to, for a large black retriever had bounded up to him through the water and soon he had little wet sandy spots on his jeans and white T.
‘So, you’re Jasper,’ he laughed and gave a tug on the stick that the animal clenched in its mouth. Ellis was surprised to find that the animal trusted him. It relaxed its grip on the stick and waited for it to be thrown. Ellis did so and turned to see a woman approach.
‘He’s such a handful!’ she laughed out, in some embarrassment, sweeping a hand at her hair on meeting Ellis’ appraising look upon her for an instant. ‘He just wants to get out and burn it off! I can’t keep up sometimes.’
He wondered about that as the leash she had been carrying was picked up off the sand before the next wavelet surged up the beach. She looked only to fit and how she behaved had drawn him into her, unexpectedly so. They now stood facing each other and waited for Jasper to return.
‘Again?’ Ellis asked, looking at the dog and then at the woman before him once more. He felt somewhat dismayed to feel a sexual attraction to her and how she behaved, the hems of her cropped slacks wet from the sea and her blouse shaping a willowy figure. ‘Is it allowed?’
‘I’ll risk it!’ she laughed. ‘Doing this gets me out of the house too.’
‘You holidaying here?’ Ellis asked as they set off in the direction he had chosen to take. ‘I’m just walking and getting to know the place.’
‘And I’m heading off home, it’s over there,’ she said and pointed. ‘It’s that sky blue painted property you see there, just above the town. That’s my place.’
‘Wow!’ he said in evident admiration. ‘It’s a beacon.’
‘No, it’s often a trial for me,’ she smiled again, despite what had been confessed to, and walked in easy strides beside him along the water’s edge. Jasper had calmed down but still had the stick in his mouth. ‘I run a Bed and Breakfast…get so little time to do this…to walk along the beach as so many trippers do and they can’t keep from telling me.’
Her voice was light and easy, conversational and friendly, her surprisingly blue-grey eyes staring out at him from a lined face; the set of her mouth more relaxed after some time of talking to him.
‘That’s what I am, a tripper…but I’m working my way about as I do it. I try to earn some readies as and when I can.’ Ellis stopped and looked back to where the car was parked. It already seemed a long way off. He checked his watch and sensed that the woman was looking at him.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked directly, pushing her large sunglasses up onto her head; over the tangle of her sandy-blonde sun-bleached hair that hung down onto her shoulders. ‘I’m Sophie Rackham, and ‘Westerlies’ is my place over there.’
‘Great name…’
‘Apt to when you’re being blasted by the winds we still get here…in winter, thankfully.’
‘Not as often as in other years,’ Ellis opined.
‘No, that’s true. You’re not a climate change zealot are you?’
‘No, certainly not…and you’re direct, aren’t you, Sophie?’ Jasper nuzzled her hand as if to make clear that standing still was not a part of the plan. ‘Well, I’d better get back to my car…or I’ll get a parking ticket. I’ve already met the parking man.’
He found it only too easy to talk to her and might have the chance to do that some more.
‘What’s your name, do tell me that?’
‘Ellis Pardew…I live up near Norwich.’
‘So, you’re very far from home.’
‘Wherever I lay my head..’ he crooned giving her a cheeky grin, ‘that’s my home.’
She laughed for only an instant, the graceful sweep of her hand as she brushed back her hair quite captivating to his ways of seeing it done. ‘Your luck may be in when it comes to some work…’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, oh! I’ve been dropped in it by someone leaving me, only yesterday, and my husband’s too wrapped in in his work, Plymouth way, to have the time to do odd jobs…like cleaning…doing basic maintenance chores, and even some room service for the older guests we get. So, I run the place…try to…almost on my own.’
‘I hear you.’ Ellis met a searching look upon him. ‘I’m not carrying a lot of smart clothes for this jaunt. It’s more a case of bumming around and making do.’
She liked his youthful ways of it.
‘You look fine as you are. Keep it clean and you’ll fit right in. Any good at DIY chores and the like?’
He laughed. ‘Sure! My father had me helping about the place from the moment I could walk, or so my mother tells me, and it feels that way sometimes, even now.’
‘Call by tomorrow, then…say at ten? We’ll go from there, Ellis.’ She called to Jasper and he came splashing back through the surf.
‘Thank you, Sophie. I’ll be there. Now, I’ve got to scoot and check in at the campsite I’ve decided on.’
‘We may even arrange that, Ellis.’
She gave him a parting look and called to Jasper again. The dog wondered if he would follow, but Sophie’s calls soon brought him to her side.
Ellis watched them go for a moment longer and knew that he had taken to her in his unpractised ways of it. He thought that he had struck gold and he hadn’t even been trying. For a woman rushed off her feet Sophie was a looker in her sleeveless cotton blouse and washed-out slacks. Like him, she had been seen carrying her shoes in one hand and strolling easily along the shore.
He had reached the end of his cross-country journey and had time to see how this played out before deciding on the length of his stay. Upon his return, he was glad that his car remained untouched and his gear remained secure inside it.
♥
His eagerness to see Sophie, the ‘shapely fair-haired lovely’, as he had come to think of her already, was soon dulled on meeting Sophie’s husband, Tony, a no-nonsense businessman who trekked to Truro every day. He made no secret of not having him working at ‘Westerlies’.
‘What we’ve got is not the kind of work for a guy like you,’ he soon told him after Ellis had been introduced.
Jasper remembered him and brushed against his leg for an instant as if to remind him of it. ‘Hello, mate…’
He met Sophie’s soft smile, for only a moment before Tony engaged his attention once more. It seemed that there was some heat between the two of them; that they’d had a spat before he had showed up, right on time. It soon became clear that Tony was meddling in her business of running a tidy place that enjoyed stunning views of the bay and St. Michael’s Mount. He made a note to visit it while he was here.
‘I can do some of the heavy lifting and take Jasper for a walk, even…’
‘Leave it out, no! There are plenty of other places to try your luck. Work in a bar like so many of your type do.’ The guy’s tone was only too uncompromising. He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to get going…and you’ve got my answer on it.’
He glared at Sophie as if to remind her of who was ultimately in control of the place. Only, based on his first impressions of Sophie she was not a woman to be so easily intimidated.
‘And I need some help, anything, seeing as we’re full and…’ Sophie glared at her husband. ‘It’s non-stop for one person, so help will suit me just fine!’
‘Advertise for it then, darling. Ellis, here, will do a few days and be gone again. It’s not a man’s work, and it’s not as though there’s no women in town who’d like some pocket money from working here for few hours.’
‘Two of them have been and gone, and have done that in next to no time at all! Ellis is here and I won’t need to advertise or spend the money on that!’
Their differences eddied round about him and Ellis wasn’t about to rock things still further.
‘I see it’s a problem for you both…so I’d best not bother you further. I’ve only just got here, last evening in fact, so I was lucky to get the chance to call in today…and to ask.’
He held Tony’s stare upon him, either to intimidate him further or to judge him on appearances alone.
‘Young guys like you don’t go in for this kind of work…’
‘I’m not looking for a career, just a few days in a gig while I take in the place in my free time. You set the hours and I’ll work them. It will be fine with me…’
‘Listen, Tony…Ellis can fill in while I find someone more permanent. You’re gone all day and when I need help it’s then that you’re not around. Try and see it from my perspective?’
Her voice had fallen and she sought to persuade her uncooperative husband to see things her way.
Ellis saw the looks that they again exchanged; she pleading, almost, and Tony adamant in refusing her. He didn’t need the hassle, good as Sophie was to look at and the first female to offer him some work on his exploratory tour of the west country.
‘How about I leave you my mobile number? If you change your mind, then call me, please?’ he said as an afterthought. Sophie was seen to take her iPhone out of a pocket in her slacks.
‘Call it out, Ellis?’ Sophie was heard to ask, in a soft voice, and he did so. She then followed him to the edge of the steps before turning away and not seeing him leave.
Anything can yet happen, Ellis thought as he strode down the hill and to the promenade once more. Sophie had wanted him to be there and he wasn’t about to refuse the chance to know the woman a whole lot better. The ways he had seen things play out between the two of them, Sophie might want some distraction from the brusque and uncaring ways that Tony had displayed in front of him, a total stranger.
He didn’t feel a stranger in Sophie’s presence.
♥
Sophie called him at lunchtime. She had worked furiously to get rooms cleaned by the maid service that she relied upon, and for the few hours that she had them attend. Her helpers were always looked on as a second pair of hands.
‘Hi,’ she said brightly when she heard Ellis answer the phone. ‘It’s Sophie Rackham…I’m sorry about earlier.’
‘It’s okay, it must have come as a surprise to Tony.’
‘That doesn’t excuse how he behaved,’ she answered tersely. ‘Where are you?’
‘Up at the campsite sorting out my things. I got in here a little late and fumbled about in the dark. It’s becoming a habit on this trip,’ he laughed. ‘I may go down on the beach as the tide’s in so I’ll test the waters.’
‘Too cold for me…’
‘I’ve got a wet suit…’
‘I should have known…’
‘I’m not a beach bum…’
‘No, I saw that in you yesterday!’ Sophie laughed. As they talked, she sipped at an almost cold coffee that work had stopped her from drinking. She turned her face up to the sun. ‘I never said you were a beach bum.’ Sophie sensed that someone was at her shoulder. ‘Excuse me a moment? Hello, Jenny…’
One of her regulars, an elderly guest, smiled somewhat distractedly. ‘We’ve had an accident with our Teas-Made. It’s blown a fuse and scorched the wall. We threw some water onto it…’
‘You shouldn’t do that with an electrical fire, Jenny! That’s why we supply fire blankets…’
‘Yes, I know. We acted in fear, sorry,’ came a chastened reply.
‘I’ll come up in a moment, and…don’t worry.’ Sophie waited until Jenny was out of hearing. ‘Ellis, did you hear all of that?’
‘I heard most of it, yes.’
‘Good. I have a small DIY job and I’ll settle it in cash when you’re finished. Are you any good with electrics?’
‘I’m studying it at uni, come September.’
‘Then you’re the guy I need. Come over as soon as you can!’
‘And what about Tony?’
‘He’s gone to work and I’ll deal with him, Ellis. Just give it and me some time.’ She paused. ‘I need some help with the place and you’ve arrived here in the nick of time.’
Presumptuous the young man that she had met on the beach might be, but she needed his help and she might get to arranging things so that Tony would accept that what she had done was in the interests of her business. Anything else that Ellis might bring to her she would keep to herself.
♥
Ellis seemed unfazed by what had happened earlier.
Sophie met his smile and she saw evident pleasure in his look upon her as she greeted him at the door. She was, again, captivated by his even features, his straight lips, his attentive eyes, and his dark eyebrows. It felt as if he had been modelled on some ideal image of youth. His dark brown hair was thick and brushed up from his low forehead, but she didn’t mind any of that. The young man that she had met on the beach, and who had dealt with Tony so confidently, was here and with her.
‘I…I don’t know what you’ll make of it, and whether you can help me.’
‘The only way to know is for me to have a look, right?’ he suggested with a captivating grin. ‘I’ve dressed just in case it gets mucky.’
She didn’t know whether he was joshing her or not. She laughed anyway.
‘Come on, then, it’s on the first-floor front bedroom, number two. We have four on each floor; two in the rear wing…deluxe suites…and then Tony and I have our quarters above that.’
Sophie met his look as she turned on the landing; and saw him smile in embarrassment to have been caught ogling her.
‘I hope I can be of some help to you in this.’
‘We’ll wait and see, Ellis. Go on through there, the door is open and so are the windows.’
‘I see what you mean,’ he said in dismay and soon stepped over the lightly patterned soft green carpet and up to the small table set to one side of the window. The wallpaper was scorched, and the Teas-Made a molten mass of plastic and charred metal. ‘I’m surprised that the smoke alarm didn’t go off when it happened.’
‘Oh God!’ Sophie put a hand to her mouth. ‘It should have done! Have they gone wrong too?’
‘I could test it all, the system I mean, and after sorting this lot out,’ Ellis said in reassurance as he unplugged the machine and wrapped the cord around the molten mass of debris and the discoloured kettle. ‘This kit’s somewhat ancient…from the looks of it.’
‘I know,’ Sophie sighed. ‘I inherited this place from my grandparents. It was a place they retired to, but they wanted to remain active. I haven’t been able to do all the things that I want…Tony keeps reining me back.’
‘You can’t do that with safety,’ he answered tersely and on seeing her look at him.
‘No, you can’t.’
Sophie couldn’t help but give him a wondering look. His youthful ways, his polo shirt and chino shorts, were only a cover for what she was learning him to be; a clever young guy. Perhaps Tony had seen him as some kind of threat to his place in her life or in the business that she ran.
She just liked him for who he was, and how Ellis could look at her. That was only too disconcerting for its directness and what she dared to imagine lay behind such a look. It had been some time since Tony had looked in desiring ways at her. The impetuosity of youth was making Ellis behave in the ways that she had seen; discreet but unmistakable.
‘Where do you keep the toolbox…paints and so on? I presume you have something in stock for routine repairs?’
‘It’s in a shed we built onto the wing at the back of the house.’ She saw him tear a piece of paper from a notebook that the room’s residents had left on the table set into the bay window. She drew closer and watched as he scribbled a few notes. ‘What are you doing?’
Ellis looked her way and she felt his arm brush against hers and she took a half step away. ‘I’ve got to find a double socket and hope that there’s a place in town that stocks them.’ He saw her nod. ‘Good. I also need to get some batteries for your smoke alarms. Is me buying them okay?’
She nodded dumbly. He seemed to have taken control. ‘Do what you think is best…and I’ll pay you for your trouble.’
She moved away again as she felt her heart race. He put her at ease on something so crucial and that she had quite overlooked; a fire officer’s inspection had listed some points to make good, and the alarms had been one of them. She quelled the urge to curse him for not being of more help…Tony, that is.
‘Show me the shed and I’ll take things from there, Sophie. I guess you’ve got more than enough to be getting on with today.’
‘Yeah,’ she sighed. If only he knew what could play out in her life with Tony. ‘Meeting you on the beach wasn’t a chance thing was it?’
‘No, I guess it wasn’t.’ He sought his car keys. ‘I’ll check out what I need and go back into town. Doing these odd jobs is second nature to me, but then…’
She met his wondering look and saw him smile.
‘Don’t go there, Ellis, just don’t!’ she snapped in a sudden rush of irritation. He was being far too forward, flirtatious even, and she was not ready for it; for her reaction on seeing how he behaved towards her.
He followed her to the store shed and Sophie left him to it.
♥
Ellis thought that he’d made a start with her; had won Sophie’s confidence in getting the job done and saved her, and the business, trouble and money. She was restrained in her thanks; bunged him some money and was somewhat surprised that he had not asked her for more. But, the woman was awake to what was playing out in his mind and she seemed not to be uncomfortable with that, despite how she behaved when they were together.
Sophie now knew that he could take on anything that came his way, at ‘Westerlies’. He put her and that Tony man at about forty years old, Tony a tad older perhaps, and into all that corporate stuff that passed for being important and that failed to grab him.
Like he had shown Sophie, his interests were in the tecky and practical aspects of life, and sorting out the smoke alarms and the control board had challenged his knowledge, stretched it even; but the system worked when he finally came to testing it.
‘That’s a load of my mind,’ she told him. ‘I can relax a bit, now, thanks to you.’
She stood close to him as they talked and surveyed the work he had done for her.
‘And the room’s decorated, so your residents will notice no change when they get back.’
‘Except for the smell along with a new electric kettle and the rest of it. I’ll have to speak to Tony about making those sorts of changes, make some safety improvements, and add a few touches. It’ll improve our customer satisfaction rankings too. You helped me with that…opened my eyes to what needs doing.’
‘It’s all stuff that I learned helping my father…’
‘He taught you well,’ she chose to admit and speaking to him as an equal.
They sat on the terrace for a moment to talk through how their time together, and Ellis on his own, had been spent. Sophie had become engaged with him and was dismayed by what he had listed as items to attend to, even if it was over time.
‘You can make the rest of your day your own,’ he had gone on to say. ‘We could go on the beach with Jasper…perhaps, or I could do that if you needed to do your paperwork?’ he had asked, pushing his luck.
‘No, you’ve done enough for me for one day. So, go and enjoy the rest of it. My grandparents who once owned this place, would turn in their graves on seeing the list you’ve written out. Now, just go, and thanks. Take that walk or swim…’
‘On my own…’
Sophie looked at him in startled amazement, at his forwardness, but said nothing in reply.
She would have liked nothing more than to be taken out of it all for a while, risky as it was to be seen with him. But, she had sought to maintain some standards for cleanliness and homeliness in the place and ensured that it was so. She could so easily take an hour or so off and do as he had asked of her. The place was always locked up, but residents had the necessary coded outer door key on the same fob as that of their room.
She felt herself tied to the place out of a sense of duty and looked on ‘Westerlies’ as an investment and a pension top-up for when that day came. Tony looked at the place as a means for short-term gain. In that, too, lay a source of difficulties between them, and having Ellis drawing off some money, if he was taken on, was another contributing factor.
‘Well,’ Ellis said on looking at his watch and with the conversation stilled. ‘I’ll push off then. Call me if you have a change of mind and we can meet on the beach, as before?’
She pouted a smile on hearing it said, shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand as she gazed up at him. ‘Forward, aren’t you?’
‘Not usually, Sophie…but, yes I am now.’
She watched him go. The young man had certainly been of help in dealing with property matters. In everything else, crazily, he had aroused a riot of conflicting emotions in the woman she thought herself to be. She was trying to get her bearings and her life’s compass had been disconcertingly thrown off balance by Ellis’ ways and certainty in helping her.
He wasn’t put out by their obvious age difference; he didn’t look old enough to have even started learning of the complexities of relationships between people; he made his interest in her only too obvious. Ellis had taken in how Tony was with her and, yet, he had been only too mature in his reactions when Tony had told him to push off with his hopes for helping out, for however long he was to stay in Newlyn.
She had looked on him being around as a break, as a relief from the strains of doing it all on her own, almost. Today, and his uncomplaining help, had changed all that. Tony was not to know of it, or her life would again be taken to the edge.
♥
Ellis felt the warmth on his skin.
He rested against the sea wall and watched the tourists stroll by, many clad in the most garish, even outlandish, beach wear. Stays by the seaside wouldn’t be the same without that parade of taste and styles, the sights of the fleshy and the lean, or not hearing the noise and observing the quietly restrained.
He was still in his chino shorts and lay against his polo shirt as a thin buffer against the prick of the stones that made up the promenade’s wall. Voices of those passing by above him drifted down. Some even stood at the rail above his place, but he took no real notice of them. A bottle of fruit cordial was sipped at, absentmindedly.
He thought of her, of Sophie. You could tell she was lonely, or obsessed by her work, appearing to hang about the place even as all the most pressing tasks had been completed. He guessed all business owners get wrapped up in their endeavours so that it left few opportunities for ‘down time’.
His iPhone trembled and he fumbled to take it from the patch pocket of his shorts. ‘Hi…what’s up?’
‘You know it’s me, then?’
‘I’ve auto-saved your number, Sophie…so yes, I know that it’s you. I don’t know the reason for the call.’
‘Yes, of course. There’s no hiding unless you make it so.’
‘What’s up?’ he repeated.
‘Nothing’s up! I just called to say thanks for this morning. It looks only too good, the bedroom and no one would know what happened earlier.’
‘So, at least I was of use to you,’ he chose to point out. ‘And the place is a lot safer too.’
Ellis wondered if she would take a different meaning from what had been said. He had few accomplishments to boast of when it came to girls let alone a woman of her age, but she had aroused undeniable feelings of longing in him. He had also taken in the woman’s distracted looks that were often cast his way when they had talked of something that touched her life.
‘Yes, it is safer now.’
‘So, what now? There’s still time to take Jasper on the beach if you want to.’
‘I thought that I might do that.’
‘Good. I’ll stow my things in the car and I’ll wait for you.’
‘Who said anything about me meeting you?’ she answered with a teasing laugh, ‘but now that you mention it…I could watch the two of you get wet and sandy.’
He would play it out just as she had done.
‘My car’s stowed in a place by Marine Terrace and I’m on the beach…at the wall where Bolitho Gardens starts. The pebbles have been something else to sit on, but I’ll stay here for a spell and play the beach bum for a while longer.’
‘Then, I’ll have no trouble finding you.’
She was gone before he had the chance to reply to that, but Sophie found him soon enough and teasingly dropped a few small pebbles onto his stomach as she leaned over the railing above the place where he lounged. She saw his eyes drift over her as she leaned forward, the neckline of her dress opening and the sight of her cleavage deliberately provocative.
‘Be here with me,’ he pouted even as Sophie straightened up.
‘Don’t overdo it…the sun I mean,’ she smiled, then moved away to take the steps down onto the shingle beach and walked to join him. Jasper strained on the leash and jumped up to greet him. Sophie saw that he had put on a sleeveless orange T that fell over his shorts. This young man, it seemed, would tan very quickly. She met his gaze when Ellis pushed his sunglasses up over his head once more and loosening the stretch binding as he did so.
Ellis’ attention was again focussed only on her.
Sophie had dressed for the beach, a sleeveless short-hemmed dress flattering her figure.; He thought that he could make out a bikini under the thin fabric and formed an enticing image of her. The businesswoman now wore bangles on each wrist and a loose colourful beaded necklace at her throat. He had seen it dangle between her breasts as she leaned forward, moments ago, and now he also noticed how her hair was mussed by the breeze.
He felt that she was letting go for as long as it was possible, and wanted to do so again and in his company; just as he had seen her do, but in evident restraint, when they had first met.
‘You shouldn’t look at me like that, you know?’ Sophie said, somewhat nervily, disconcerted that he should look at her in the way that Ellis did and that she had provoked, on a whim, when she had seen him lazing against the sea wall. He was young, attractive, and seemingly into her, and his behaviour so at odds with what she so often endured with Tony.
‘Easy to say, not so easy to do. You look gorgeous,’ he confessed and holding out a hand that she shied away from. ‘Let me hold Jasper for you…’
‘Oh, okay…yes, thanks.’ Sophie pointed in the direction they should take. ‘I’ve got about an hour, but will have to make it less just to be sure I get back in time.’
‘Okay, I understand.’ He saw again how she balanced to take off one sandal then another, clutched them as she had done the first evening. ‘Your dress…the color suits you.’
‘Walk, and let’s have less of your flattery.’
Sophie blushed all the same on hearing it from him. This meeting was no prank on her part. She wanted to be away again from ‘Westerlies’ and felt a reason to justify that, if only to herself. It occurred to her that she could say that Tony would soon arrive home and that supper would have to be prepared.
They watched Jasper capering about in the surf and Ellis found a stick that was thrown in the dog’s direction.
‘I’ll amuse him,’ he said on leaving her side and splashing into the surf so that it was up to his calves. Jasper cavorted and plunged about, barking out of excitement, and he soon splashed Ellis’s T-shirt and shorts. He seemed not to care about that and, instead, strode towards her once more.
‘You’re lucky to live here,’ he told her, smiling at Sophie and unashamedly taking in the look of her once more. ‘It will be difficult not to visit and attend to tasks for you…’
Before she could silence him and these admissions of his interest in her, she felt his touch on her arm, then the clasp of his hand to maintain his balance. Jasper had leaped up at him to grab the stick he continued to hold.
‘Don’t…don’t do that!’ she murmured, yet she felt the surge of longing for the young man beside her. She felt wanted, desired, and lusted after even and on such a short acquaintance.
Yes, her heart had seemed to stop for a moment before she had felt a rush of wanton longing that his touch had aroused. It felt so wonderfully distracting; so utterly destructive of an ordered life that she sought to pursue and that Ellis had intruded upon by simply being on this beach at the same time as she had been but a day or so ago. Coincidences had a magic all of their own.
‘No, of course, I should stop, Sophie. How could I mean anything by it and so soon?’
Ellis moved away and resumed his play with Jasper but looked in Sophie’s direction whenever the dog ran off to reclaim his toy. Ellis slicked his hands over the wet skin of his arms; the game with Jasper soon soaking his clothes. His T-shirt stuck to his body and he met Sophie’s appraising glances his way. He had to engage with the woman, somehow, even if it was clear that Sophie toiled with the knowledge that she had begun something that could so easily spin out of control.
‘Perhaps we should turn back and give you time to get home and make ready for Tony’s return?’
‘Tony is a good guy,’ she confided, touching his arm and doing so to slow their progress. ‘He just spends long hours driving to and from work and all that it brings. It’s left to me to sort out the property and the business…what you did today is work that he could well have done or organized, but he’s not here. He has to make his way in what he does and, so, I do the same…and it’s not always easy as today has shown me and you.’
He was mildly surprised that Sophie should confide in him, so soon. ‘You have the weekends together, though, don’t you?’
He saw her shake her head in disavowal of that. He heard the soft rustle of her beaded necklace and watched it sway over the curve of her breasts. Ellis looked away as thoughts of touching her maddened him. He wanted the woman before him and felt enslaved by the mix of her vulnerability and Sophie’s sense of purpose to do the best in her business.
‘The weekends aren’t much better…we spend some time together, down here on the beach or with friends at dinner somewhere…but it’s never enough, for either of us.’ She walked closer to him now, closer, and seemed not to care how it looked or that she was sharing secrets with him; she the older woman engaged in conversation with a young guy. ‘You don’t have these problems yet, I suppose?’
He gave an audible sigh and felt Jasper nuzzle his hand and the scrape of the stick against his bare leg. He threw it once more and they watched the dog run off; his energy seemingly inexhaustible.
‘I…I don’t have a girlfriend, in case you’re wondering, and if I’m to be honest with you, now, being here with you like this is something of a fantasy come true.’
‘And a destructive one for both of us.’
‘Yeah,’ he sighed, ‘and unreal.’ He quickened their pace after they had fallen into a slower step as if in time with their thoughts. ‘The truth is,’ he began but she sought to still his confession, but Ellis pulled away from her touch to his lips. ‘The truth is…I’ve never really been with any woman let alone a married one. It’s not something you go talking about.’
Ellis increased the distance between them and chose to put on his deck shoes after wiping the sand from his feet as best as he could. Sophie closed the space between them once more as Jasper looked up at her expectantly but she ignored the animal.
‘Call in again at eleven tomorrow, please? Tony, I know, will be gone long before then, and one room is set for a refurb. Help me with that if you can, or if you want to?’
Sophie knew what his answer would be and that she wanted to hear. Ellis nodded as she stood close and he felt her breath on his face. He was suddenly consumed by the rush of raw desire for the woman, what the sight of her cleavage as she had leaned over the railing had aroused in him, and now her touch, Sophie’s softened gaze. All of them had aroused an uncommon rush of desire, the cramp in his belly, for her.
‘I’ll help you with that and so much more.’
He blurted it all out slipped out of her hold on his arm and left Sophie without a backward glance. These ways of it between two people had to be learned of sometimes and he ached for it to be soon, very soon.
♥
Ellis stifled a groan.
The woman, that he saw come to greet him, was like a drug that he had no wish to give up. Sophie wore cropped, white, denim jeans that revealed the soft tone of her calves, white moccasin shoes on her slender feet, along with a blue shirt with a white check, like a lumberjack’s summer shirt, She filled it nicely, the neckline revealing a silver pendant necklace that drew his eye to the mute freckles on her breastbone and her cleavage. She had pulled up her sleeves and Sophie had completed the look by tying back her hair into a single ponytail, fastened with a diamante clasp or some such thing.
They had so little in common and yet he wanted to be with her, and attending to the work that she set him was the way to achieve that and to see where it took them. That she now wanted his company, under controlled circumstances, he had no doubt.
‘I feel scruffy, compared to you!’ he laughed out and gazed at her approvingly. ‘You’ll have to excuse what passes for my work gear as I hadn’t planned for any of this. But I’m glad we’re here now…’
‘Come? I’ll show you what there is to do,’ she smiled and turned to lead the way.
He followed her dutifully. His admiring looks, as she led him upstairs and along a picture-lined corridor, must have registered, for she turned once, maybe twice, to glance his way.
‘I’ve had my residents to deal with so I couldn’t wear scruffy work clothes,’ she confessed as if to excuse how she looked. ‘I’ll call in from time to time to see how you’re getting on.’
She said it on opening the door to an echoing room, the dust sheets covering a large bed and the curtains stowed in long covers that were cinched tight, close to the gleaming metal rail.
‘You’ve got things organized, Sophie,’ he said admiringly. He saw her move to a small trestle table used for wallpapering.
‘I have to be that… organized, as I told you yesterday. These pots are the emulsion for the walls and you’ll do them all in this one colour. The rollers and extension rods are over there in the corner…’ She pointed at the ceiling and its cornice. ‘I’ve done that and finished it on my own whenever I had the chance. Getting it finished now will give us more earning power while the season lasts.’
‘I understand where you’re coming from,’ he assured her despite feeling disappointed by how business-like she had become.
‘Good so you’d better get on while you can and…and Tony’s not around. He doesn’t suspect anything and thinks I’m doing things on my own, as I have done until now.’
Her tone had softened as she said that but Sophie now stopped on hearing a knock on the door and went to speak to whoever it was. Ellis took no notice. He looked, instead, out of the window and only turned away to gaze at her when Sophie came to stand by his side.
‘I’m almost through with handovers and checkouts. My helper will soon be on her way and then I can be back here and with you…’
‘Okay…I’d like that.’
‘I know…but there’s work to be done.’
She didn’t need to say any more and Ellis felt his spirits falter. Sophie was only too business-like in her dealings with him now. He moved to pick up a screwdriver from the table before levering a lid off the paint pot to be used. ‘I’ll give this a good stir and get on.’
‘Do that.’ Sophie drew near once more on seeing his changed mood, and; how engrossed he had become in the task facing him. Impetuously, she took a handful of his T-shirt as she stood close. ‘I’ll be back to help, and I’ll bring you a coffee. I don’t suppose you live very well on that campsite you stay at?’
He met her soft smile upon him and let his eyes drift, for an instant, to take in her captivating appearance once more. Thoughts of this woman, and what he ached to do with her, had kept him awake during the night.
♥
‘Look at you!’ Sophie shrieked in laughter, the tray she carried shaking in her hands as she caught sight of him. Ellis had fashioned a cape from a dustbin liner as a way to keep the paint splashes off his clothes. ‘Inventive and you’re quick!’
He saw Sophie glance around the room. ‘Is it as you expected?’
‘You’ve done wonders and been so quick. I didn’t think you’d get so far with the work before I came to help you.’
‘It’s been a couple of hours since I saw you,’ he lamented, making a joke of it.
‘And I’ve done all that’s been needed. Here, drink this, you deserve it.’ She handed him a coffee mug. ‘I wish I’d met you earlier in the season. I’d have had the place ready and up the Tourist Board’s rankings a whole lot sooner.’
‘And I wish you were my age,’ he blurted out, shuddering at simply stating the obvious, as he saw it. The woman just captivated him, and thoughts of being in her company and sharing in uncommon intimacy, in his case, again impossible to close out.
She wound his clock and he was besotted with her. He wanted to kiss her mouth, to feel her lips on him. He wanted to hold and to touch. He ached to learn of it with the woman before him. The slightest touch of her hands to his skin, to his arm, inflamed his senses and aroused a riot of emotions; the thoughts of what was to be found clothed in that shirt and cropped jeans, beguiling him.
He felt his breath catch in his throat as Sophie brushed fingers over his arm. They seemed to linger, as he tugged away at the bin liner. It had served its purpose.
‘I wish, now, I had travelled down here a whole lot sooner.’
‘So, do I. We could well have had a lot of fun together, Ellis, if you’d done that…’ she said in a low voice. Sophie glanced at him as she licked the rim of her coffee mug, then brushed a fingertip over her parted lips.
‘Don’t,’ he groaned, audibly, averting his gaze from her for a moment. He had fantasized about the woman and what she would bring to him. The ache in his belly made him tense his muscles as if that would be of any help. He knew that there could be only one remedy for how he felt and that she seemed to seek of him, by what she had said and done moments ago.
‘It’s okay…those feelings…that I read in your eyes when you look at me. They’re okay and I’ve wanted them, Ellis.’
He eased out of her gentle hold on his arm and broke his gaze into her eyes. Instead, he looked at the light tan of her skin, at the gleam of the jewelled pendant that hung down from Sophie’s throat and into her cleavage, just to be seen where her shirt was unbuttoned. Ellis wondered how it would feel to touch her there and press his lips to her skin.
I…I want to be with you…know how it goes with you and to .learn that with you,’ he confessed and on meeting that look again.
‘I know and have known it for some time, Ellis.’ Her smile was captivating and Sophie’s look mesmerising in wishing to convey what she felt and sought of him. ‘The place is ours now as the guests have gone for the day.’
Sophie reached up to his face and brushed his hair away from his forehead. She traced fingertips over his cheeks, over his lips, and then his jaw. She then pressed them to his lips, slowly, enticingly, suggestive of what she sought and wanted to bring to him.
‘I…I want you,’ he blurted out, the ache in his belly, the swell in his pants impossible to ignore. He took her hand and brought her palm up to his moistened lips. Just to taste her excited him; sent a flush of hot longing to his groin. Ellis shuddered.
‘You darling…you make it so obvious what you want from me.’
‘I don’t know any other way. Sorry…’
‘Don’t be that, sorry.’
Not breaking eye contact Sophie, moved away and chose to lock the door. Ellis followed her and he sensed that this was the moment for him to fully experience a voluptuous woman, not to dream of her.
Sophie made no show of resisting his embrace and she turned to meet his soft wondering kisses on her face. She felt the warmth of his breath on her throat and ears, his kisses behind them placed as if it were a common practice for him. She felt Ellis hard against her belly and heard him gasp as she sought to touch him there, to clamp on the swell in his shorts.
‘So strong and full, already,’ she murmured on looking down at what he now sought to do for him.
Her body felt wonderful to his touch; the scent on her skin, between her breasts wonderful to breathe in. He became lost in touching her, in his emotions for her; he felt her hands move over his back and lift his T-shirt until they were on his skin. They slid lower before she grabbed his hips and yanked him to her. She responded to the slow press and grind of his hips against her belly. She met his first hungering kisses to her lips, opened her mouth, and responded eagerly as her hands gripped his body and caressed Elis’ back, tugging on his hips to heighten their shared sense of longing.
‘None of it…none of this was planned!’ she gasped. ‘You met me on the beach and I just knew what could happen the longer we talked and then when you came here to do some work for me.’
He had wondered if she hadn’t thought of this happening and whether the signs were there when Tony had reacted to his presence that first morning and sent him on his way.
Sophie knew what she was doing and began to unbutton her shirt, her movements soon revealing the tumble of her breasts, held so languidly in a thin bra.
She tilted her head, in an invitation that he could no longer refuse. He kissed her throat, slowly; from her chin down to the swell of her breasts. She moved to allow him to unfasten her bra before he placed his mouth on her nipples, the swirl of his tongue over them making her shiver, the tug of his lips arousing groans of pleasure.
‘Should I…should I?’ he asked hotly as she kept him to her.
‘Yes…yes! It’s just you and me! We think of no one else! I need this from you!’ She clasped him and felt the young guy’s heat and crazed longing for her. She whimpered and felt that her body would fuse with his. ‘Think of nothing else! Let’s use what time we have to be together!’
She wanted to be fucked by the young guy, to know of it differently and with Ellis. Enthusiasm, and his hunger for her, would make up for his inexperience. She felt thrilled that it would be her to take him in ways that he did not know of.
Her hands slid over his body, clamped by his, as they unbuckled his belt and shorts. They held each other’s gaze as they undressed each other; shared in their thoughts as fiery kisses were exchanged, their lips parted and flickering tongues meeting; the shivers of pleasure that their first caresses offered to enervated skins.
‘I’ve nothing with me,’ he stammered. ‘No condom…
‘You’d break it,’ she gasped on a kiss to silence him, her hands lightly brushing his trembling cock. It had been some time since Tony had been so lustfully hard. She ran her cool fingers up and down his shaft, lightly skimmed the taut skin of the domed tip, each touch arousing renewed shivers in his body and the jerk of his penis in her hand. ‘Let me take care of you.’
Sophie tore away the dust covers and made him lie back on the bed, soon straddling him and clamping her hands to his straining flesh and caressing slowly but purposefully; occasionally sweeping the tips of her pendulous breasts over his enervated skin.
‘Jeez…oh Jeez!’ he groaned, his throat feeling dry. What he had only dreamt of doing with her now had now become so very real and sensuous. ‘I’ll lose it!’
‘Don’t…or not yet.’
She knelt in front of him, tracing her tongue down the centre of his chest as she did so, her other hand cradling and gently, rhythmically, squeezing his sac. Sophie worked on him until he could no longer resist, surrendering into her hands.
‘Sophie…I can’t…can’t hold it back!’
‘Show me, Ellis…then show me how it is for you!’ Sophie spread her arms, arching her back as he unloaded onto her breasts, his penis jerking as he aimed it at her body. ‘You wonder…you have so much for me. This is only the beginning…you’re taken.’
‘Soph…Sophie,’ he groaned in response to her ways of jerking him off, reaching out to touch her wonderfully slim, full-breasted body, his mind in a whirl of pleasure aroused by her wanton behaviour with him. ‘Y you’re the wonder!’
‘As you are to me.’
She sensed that he was nearing the end of his orgasm and moved to kiss his belly; to offer lingering kisses to his shaft as she held it gently and allowed his longing for her to slowly subside, for the heat and the blood to ebb away. ‘You are of help to me, Ellis…you’re of such help to me.’
They looked at each other as Sophie moved to sit on his lap, facing him. They caressed and held onto each other when she leaned forward to kiss him; to have her nipples brush his skin; Ellis felt her tremble and knew of her longing. Sophie clamped his cock and pressed it to her wet lips but sought no more. Ellis needed time to recover and she simply used it to caress and excite; to take her pleasure from the act of using it to caress her pussy, the lips parted and ready for him.
He pressed his mouth to them, her soft sighs of pleasure aroused in response to how he sucked and tugged on her nipples and as his hands slowly caressed and kneaded that soft flesh. Her words served only to encourage him to claim her breasts in his mouth, one then the other, as his hands caressed her body, moved over her slim waist, and before one hand cupped her mound, brushed over the narrow band of hair that marked her slit.
She bucked her hips to meet the sliding caress of his fingers over her pussy’s lips before two slowly entered her moist heat. His fingers rubbed caresses over her slit and she moaned, grabbed his head, and drew him in for deepening kisses as she told him, at the same time, to rub harder, telling him not to stop and then she began to writhe and tremble, to grip his body and to gasp in her pleasure.
‘Don’t top! Don’t stop! Make me cum with your fingers!’
Sophie lifted her hips off the bed and met the fingering of her pussy’s lips, the deepening penetration of her cunt as an orgasm overwhelmed her, each breath quicker than the one before until she was panting. She succumbed to his ways with her. started trembling and moaning loudly as she pushed up against his fingers which continued to plague her, and she was unable to reach for him and work his prick as she wanted to do.
‘What…what about you?’ he asked, wanting more. She knew it to be so.
‘Next time,’ she smiled and shifted off his fingers. ‘I need to accept what has happened between us and take a first step.’ Sophie slipped from his embrace and went into the small en-suite shower room to clean herself. ‘There will be other times. Now, please, Ellis, get dressed and go. I’ve taken a risk, but it was wonderful. My mind and body’s been taken, because of you.’
♥
Ellis stopped the car and got out; chose to look down at the town for one last time.
The ten days that he spent with Sophie had been a passionate process of learning. He had lived out a lie and loved every moment of it. Routine chores were attended to when the house was quiet and guests had left for the day. Then, with their respective duties dispensed with, they would shag until there was nothing left to give. They would meet on the beach and walk along the shoreline as Jasper frolicked in the surf, but such moments were but an interlude. Their hunger for each other, and the wildness of their actions, had made them pursue each other whenever the opportunity arose.
They laughed and frolicked like kids with a new toy, and in his case, it was only too true. He had not known of it, quite like this, with a girl or woman before. He knew all about it now; he also knew that apart from the sex, they had little in common and there was no future in it, in any of it. It was something that Sophie had made only too clear when they talked after tempestuous sex, the pack of condoms he always bought in readiness soon used up.
Sophie, wonderful and desirable Sophie, had found a distraction in him from all that prevailed in her real life with Tony. She had been taken to another place, just as he had passionately and wantonly taken his pleasure and learned of it with her.
On a sigh of regret that it was over and that he had to leave, he pulled open the driver’s door.
On one final look at the town and the bay, with thoughts of Sophie in their rightful place, and knowing that memories of her would endure, he got back into his car and moved off.
Passionately taken by surprise by what had happened between them. That is how we were for a time, sex mad and for each other, he thought, as the road home stretched out before him.
♥
