Faith - Lesley Pearse [49]
He made for the pub and ordered a pint. It was quiet in there, only a couple of old men with their dogs in the bar, and they merely nodded at him and went back to their conversation.
As he sat back in a chair by the window, he found himself slipping back to that first night with Laura and reliving it.
She kept tickling him as he tried to blow up the lilos, and only told him she had a pump when he was purple in the face with the exertion. If it hadn’t been for the little boy sleeping in the room, he would have thrown her down on it there and then. But once he’d got one blown up, he laid the sleeping bag on it, then lifted the child on top and zipped the bag up round him.
‘Do I need to blow up the other one too?’ he asked, and she shook her head, smiling seductively at him.
His head told him it was wrong to make love to a woman with her small child so close, and he felt too that he ought to know more about her first, but when she began opening the buttons on his shirt and kissing his chest, all he wanted was to possess her.
He’d had about five different girlfriends before, but they paled into insignificance beside Laura. She was like a tigress the first time, clawing at him, devouring him in a way that was both thrilling and frightening. He came far too fast, and collapsed against her breasts feeling a failure, but she lifted his face up and kissed him.
‘We’ve got all night yet,’ she said.
Even now, twenty-three years and scores of other women later, that night was the one Stuart could hold up as the very best in his life. Since then he had made love all over the world, in luxurious hotels, romantic hideaways, in swimming pools, cars, fields and even trains, but nothing could ever top that night on an old stained mattress in a farm outhouse.
It had everything – wild passion, exquisite tenderness and raunchy fun – and Laura taught him more about women and sex that night than most men learn in a lifetime. When dawn came creeping through the window, they were sated, lying entwined and dripping with perspiration. For him it was love, the kind that could only come once in a lifetime. He was ready to lay down his life for her, and he believed then that it was the same for her.
‘On holiday?’
Stuart was startled by the question, and surprised to find it was asked by an attractive blonde with a couple of empty glasses in her hands.
‘You were miles away,’ she laughed, showing large, very white teeth. ‘Perhaps I should have left you there?’
She was curvy and looked as if she’d poured herself into her jeans and slinky, low-necked top. He thought she was probably around the same age as him.
‘Not at all,’ he grinned. ‘I was remembering coming here as a child for holidays. Maybe we played together on the beach?’
‘If I’d played with you I would have remembered,’ she laughed. ‘I’d have stuck you in a lobster pot and waited for you to grow up.’
‘I’m Stuart Macgregor,’ he said holding out his hand, delighted that he’d found someone who’d not only clearly lived here all her life, but had a lively sense of humour.
‘And I’m Gloria White,’ she said as she shook his hand. ‘I know a dozen Stuarts, but I don’t think I’ve met you before. Where do you stay?’
‘I’m from Edinburgh, but I’ve been working away for a long while,’ he replied.