foisting myself on Giles and he is too polite to say so, and when I knock on his door, a rucksack on my back and a sack of groceries in my hand, I fully expect a lukewarm welcome. His eyes are very bright and very alert, and he is very polite indeed, taking the groceries off me and assuring me that I shouldn’t have.
“Are you all right?” he asks when I’ve peeled myself out of my coat and boots.
“Yes, I am, but you won’t bel—”
The rest is stifled by a big, thorough kiss, after which he literally flings me over his shoulder and carries me off into the bedroom. I didn’t think I would be in the mood for sex, after that little intermezzo at my cottage, but the moment I see his face and feel his body against mine, I decide I am not going to allow a anyone to spoil him for me.
“I missed you,” he whispers into my hair.
“Oh, my sweet.” I hug him more tightly and raise my hips against his. “Then you’d better take better aim, hadn’t you?”
This makes him laugh so hard that he can’t take aim at all for a few minutes. It is almost ten o’clock by the time the quiche is in the oven and Giles has drawn the cork of a bottle of Chardonnay.
“You seem very sporting about it,” he remarks, eyebrows raised, when I have described my domestic situation. “Are you taking this too lightly?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But they’re young, and after all…it’s just sex.”
“I have to say I have little sympathy left for Logan Williams,” he says.
I sip my wine. “Hmm.”
“You’re going to let him off, aren’t you?”
I gaze at him across his little kitchen table. “It’s so lovely to touch someone you like. I guess I’ll have to talk to Karen. She was odd when I tried to broach the subject before. Evasive. I imagine she’s tired of hearing complaints about her daughter.”
“If you shield the girl, she’ll only get into more trouble.”
“What would you do? Lock her up?”
“She’ll be knocked up by next Christmas.”
“Yeah, maybe. Talking of which, what are we going to do about Selena?”
He pulls a face at me over the rim of his wineglass.
“You mean, what are you going to do about Selena?”
“Oh, Giles! She needs help!”
“‘If she’s caught the Nicholas, it’ll cost her a thousand pound ere she be cured,’” he quips.
“You don’t like her because she has fallen for Hornberger! I don’t much like her either, but I’m not just frightened for her but also of her. I think she’s a liability, Giles. And she won’t confide in anyone unless she is confronted.”
“Are you worried she’ll start leaving gunge on your office door, too?”
“Oh! I haven’t told you!” I reach across the table to touch his hand, which makes him smile, catch it, and link his fingers with mine. “It wasn’t Corvin! It can’t have been, because he’s back and almost had a heart attack when he tried to get into his office and couldn’t because the lock had been changed. He says he spent the last two months with his daughter in Vermont.”
Giles seems suitably impressed with this news and more interested than in Selena O’Neal’s plight. “So Dancey was right? It was that spoiled little rich girl?”
“Madeline Harrison? I don’t know. Yes, it must have been. That college of yours is full of psychologically unstable, violent young women—why is that, Giles?”
He grins. “Your guess is as good as mine. Well, that’s a lot of words you’re going to have with quite a lot of people, isn’t it?”
I drop my head between my hands and groan. “I want the holidays to go on forever.”
On his shelf I find a large picture book about British landscape and literature, and we spend a happy two hours leafing through it, comparing favorites and telling each other anecdotes about the places we visited.
“…and there’s a pub in the village that sells the most fantastic homemade pasties, just heaven after a long hike. Remember that for when you’re next there.”
I look at his profile, so close to mine on the sofa.
“Giles.”
“Hmm?”
“Tell me again why we wouldn’t work.”
“Because I’m twelve years older than you.” He sighs, leans back and continues to enumerate his mental list. “Because I can’t father any children. Because your situation in the department is vulnerable and will remain so for years to come. Because I’m sure that your parents would have fifty fits if you spent your fertile thirties with a