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Can’t Take My Eyes Off You

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 7—As much as I hate to admit it, there is a time for fantasy and there is a time for looking facts (especially the numbers on the bathroom scales) in the face.

THE water that had seemed so perfect and tranquil? Well, it was cold and smelly and far from perfect. As the murky green water closed over my head I panicked. I’m not proud about that, but it was surprisingly cold, given the glorious summer we’d been having, and then something slimy touched my leg.

I hadn’t had time to think about closing my mouth before I’d fallen in, and lake water filled my mouth and nose. It was the same three-shades-dirtier-than-olive colour as the suit I was wearing and, believe me, the water tasted as good as the suit looked.

I flailed around, desperately trying to find the surface, but my hands hit something hard and ridged. It took me a couple of seconds to realise I was under one of the boats. I opened my eyes to see two fuzzy, hulking shapes above me and no obvious gap between them.

That was when I really started to freak out.

I kicked with my legs, propelling myself forwards and upwards, desperate to get to the surface. My head hit the hull of one of the boats and I let out a silent underwater yelp.

Then something grabbed my torso, pulling me sideways. I kicked and fought, the breath burning in my lungs. At least I did until my palm hit something soft, something that definitely wasn’t boat or muddy lake-bed.

I realised I wasn’t alone.

In some weird, slow-motion part of my brain I thought, How romantic! He’s jumped in to save me. But the slicing pain in my chest wiped those musings away, replacing them with more primal urges.

I clung to him, dragging myself against him as he pushed upwards, wrapping my arms and legs around him just before our heads broke the surface. After the billowing underwater silence the shouts and squeals of the rest of the boating party seemed sharp and deafening. I buried my face in the crook of his neck to muffle them.

Slowly, rational thought returned. I coughed and hiccupped, thinking that if I’d known this was all I had to do to get up close and personal with this finely-toned physique, I’d have hurled myself in the lake the moment I got here on Friday afternoon.

I could feel the graze of rough wet cotton against my cheek, could feel shoulder and back muscles hardening underneath my arms as I held on tight. I felt totally vulnerable, yet totally safe. I knew he had me, and that whatever happened he would never let me go.

Was it wrong that it was now I got my tingle?

Despite the freezing water, a strange, buzzing sensation raced up my legs, surged through my body and lifted the roots of my hair. All I cared about was clinging on to him, the feel of him, the breadth of him, the dream of him…

‘Is she okay?’

The voice drifted above me, merging with other phrases of concern in different tones and pitches.

I was okay. Shaken. Wet. A little humiliated, maybe. But okay. However, I didn’t seem able to open my mouth and tell him that.

And then it hit me.

The voice. The one flowing in the air above our heads. That safe-and-dry-in-one-of-the-boats kind of voice. It was Nicholas’s.

Recognition hit me like a punch in the head. I knew this warm, hard shoulder I was resting my head on. I’d relied on it for most of my life, in fact. But the knowledge that it wasn’t Nicholas I was hanging on to didn’t change anything. I just clung to him all the harder.

‘Coreen?’ Adam whispered in my ear. ‘Are you okay?’

It was only then I noticed the pounding of his ribcage as it was pressed against mine, the hitches of breath between his words. I could almost believe he’d been as terrified as I had been. I raised my head to look at him, hair plastered over my eyes so I could only half see him through the sodden strands.

There was something fierce, something basic and protective, in those usually cheery brown eyes. I shivered a little. The water temperature, which I’d hardly noticed since he’d grabbed me underwater, suddenly seemed to drop. I still couldn’t prise my jaw open. Our gazes hooked together and I nodded.

A flood of warmth replaced the fierceness in Adam’s eyes. I loosened my grip on him a little, let my legs float downwards, but drew them up again quickly when they hit something soft and sludgy. It was then I realised I’d lost at least one of my shoes.

I also realised Adam wasn’t kicking and splashing to keep us afloat, which meant that the sludgy stuff I’d felt with the tip of my toe… Yep. It was the lake-bed. My vocal cords ended their strike and I groaned aloud.

I’d thought I was drowning in just over five feet of water?

How humiliating! I couldn’t even begin to look at the others, who were still peering over the edge of their rowing boats at us.

I sent Adam a begging look, no eyelash sweeps or tempting lip-bites included this time. I just telegraphed my desperation to him. Eye to eye. Friend to friend. Woman to man.

He didn’t even blink. ‘Let’s get out of this over-sized paddling pool, shall we?’ And then he hooked one arm under my knees and started wading towards dry ground.

Thankfully we were close to a section of bank that wasn’t engulfed in reeds, even though it had flattened into a rather small and very muddy beach. Adam just walked right out of the water—although how he managed to do it with me, my curves, and my water-logged tweed suit I’ll never know.

Once we were back on dry land I tried to slip out of his grasp and put my feet on the beach, but Adam stopped me with a firm squeeze and a stern look. ‘You’ve got no shoes,’ he said grimly. I hoped desperately that the strain I could both hear in his voice and see on his face didn’t have anything to do with the effort of keeping me aloft.

‘You can’t carry me back to the house,’ I squeaked. ‘It’ll kill you!’

Adam planted his feet firmly on the grass and twisted round to shout to the others, swinging me with him and yelling that he was taking me back to Inglewood Manor.

What a pair we must have looked, dripping wet, smeared with mud, and covered with tiny flecks of bright green duck-weed. I hid my face in his damp, white and, now that I noticed it, slightly see-through shirt—which prompted a Mr Darcy flashback so intense that my legs began to shake. It was just as well Adam had decided against plonking me on the ground after all.

And then I was bumping gently against his chest as he strode across the grass towards the formal gardens that encircled the house.

‘I can walk…really,’ I said weakly.

‘Shut up, Coreen.’ He puffed the words out above my head.

I’d thought offering was the right thing to do, but was secretly glad Adam had refused. If I hadn’t been feeling horrendously sorry for him, having to heft me all that way, I might have let the drama of the moment get to me. I don’t get to play the damsel in distress very often—not for real, anyway—and I was tempted to enjoy it as long as it lasted.

I snuck a look over Adam’s shoulder, wondering if the soggy, slightly smelly and muddy reality of what had just happened might look a little bit romantic to our audience, who were now some distance away. I also wondered if Nicholas might be even the tiniest bit jealous.

Wow.

That was odd.

For the first time in two months the thought of Nicholas Chatterton-Jones hadn’t sucked a sigh from my lungs. It hadn’t filled me with warmth because that glow had been snuffed out by a rather important question: why hadn’t he been the one to jump in and save me? He’d been a heck of a lot closer than Adam.

The thrill wore off a little at that moment. Enough to make me feel sorry for myself, anyway.

‘I’m so humiliated,’ I mumbled against Adam’s shoulder.

‘If anyone should be humiliated it should be Louisa and Marcus.’ Adam took a few more steps before he explained. ‘She was sneaky and selfish, asking you to lug that big lump around the lake instead of letting Nicholas do it. And Marcus—well, he’s just…’

‘A plonker?’ I suggested.

Laughter rumbled against Adam’s ribcage, and that delicious vibration made my chilly self warm a little. I hooked my hands more securely around his neck.

‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’ He smiled down at me. ‘Anyway…look on the bright side.’

There was a bright side to being wet, smelly and utterly embarrassed?

‘Well, first of all, the glasses have gone for good.’

My fingers flew up to my face and I realised he was right. My face was bare; I just hadn’t noticed in all the kerfuffle.

‘I’m a bit disappointed about that myself, actually,’ he added. ‘And, secondly, there’s no way you can rescue this suit for the rest of the weekend. You’re just going to have to find something else to wear.’

I lifted my head to look at him better. ‘You’re a genius! I knew there was a good reason I kept you around!’

I had a case full of ‘spares’ in my room. Vintage clothes could be very fragile, and I’d come prepared in case anyone spilled something down themselves or split a seam. Actually, there was a rather nice red dress I’d mentally ear-marked in case Louisa had such an emergency, but now I had an excuse to get out of the stuffed-olive suit I was claiming that dress as my own.

I rested my head against Adam again and sighed. We were at the edge of the rough grass now, just about to enter the rose garden near the back of the house. How had he got this far without dropping me? The tall, gangly teenager I’d known seemed to have hardened into a solid wall of muscle without me noticing. And that solid wall of muscle had gone awfully quiet.

‘Adam?’ I whispered.

There were a few seconds of silence before he answered, his words still slightly gruff, still laced with a smile. ‘What now?’

I closed my eyes and inhaled the spicy aftershave that somehow hadn’t been washed away by the dank lake water. ‘I don’t suppose I’m as light as a feather, am I?’

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

He just laughed in the back of his throat, hitched me up a little higher and squeezed me closer to him. Me? I squeezed back, smiled to myself and enjoyed the ride.

I had the biggest, brightest smile on my face as I tripped down the large oak staircase an hour later. I was clean, smelling of some gorgeous shampoo and body lotion Izzi’s parents kept in their guest rooms, and I was wearing the most divine red velvet dress. It wasn’t halter-neck or backless, like Louisa’s, but it was cute, with short flared sleeves, a long sash that tied under the bust, and its neckline was a wee bit daring.

Okay, Constance would probably have balked at the outfit—the V-neck plunged right into my considerable cleavage—but after the humiliation at the boating lake I deserved a confidence boost, and it was hardly as if I was dressed as an all-out vamp.

I looked up as I neared the bottom step and spotted Izzi there, scowling at me with hands on hips. I stopped bouncing from step to step and finished my journey a little more sedately.

‘What in heaven are you wearing?’ Izzi said.

I decided my best method of defence would be to bluff my way through this. I fiddled with the velvet sash. ‘It’s divine, isn’t it?’ Izzi opened her mouth, but I got in before her. ‘Don’t worry…it’s authentic.’

Now I’d reached the floor of the entrance hall, Izzi grabbed me by the arm and propelled me through a dark panelled door into a small room—a study of some sort.

‘I don’t care about it being bloody authentic,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘It’s not right for your character.’

I started to give a well-reasoned excuse for my attire, but stopped mid-flow when Izzi collapsed into an over-stuffed leather chair behind the antique desk.

‘What does it matter, anyway?’ she mumbled, sagging slightly. ‘Nobody else is bothering to keep in character most of the time as it is. The whole blasted weekend is going to be a disaster, red dress or no red dress.’

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, that we were all throwing ourselves into the murder-mystery weekend as hard as we could, but Izzi was right. I had only given thought to Constance, Harry and the grisly murder of Lord Southerby if it had helped me in my plans to snare her brother. I hadn’t been thinking about Izzi and what she wanted from the weekend at all.

She waved a hand in the air. ‘There are all these stupid clues laid out around the house. Look, there’s one—’ She picked up an envelope addressed to Lord Southerby, which had been sitting rather obviously on a blotter in the centre of an otherwise empty desk. ‘And do you think even one wretched clue has been found? No. Because everyone is too busy messing about.’

Her eyes started to glisten, and it made my stomach go cold. I’d never seen Izzi even close to tears before. I sat down on the edge of the desk and waited for her to look at me. ‘But surely as well as solving the murder, the reason everyone is here is to enjoy themselves? Have some fun?’

The rest of Izzi’s anger bled out of her face, leaving her looking closer to Lady Southerby’s age than I’d have thought possible. ‘Yes, I know. But how lame is it going to look when they all disappear back to London and tell their friends they went on murder-mystery weekend and nobody bothered to solve the murder?’

I swallowed. She had a point there.

‘Take a good look at me, Coreen,’ she said in a weary voice. ‘I’m not like you.’

I was just about to tell her that was a good thing, but she cut me off with a roll of her eyes. ‘I’m twenty-six and I have no qualifications to speak of. I can’t run my own business, like you do. I couldn’t even hold down a job! All I have is my reputation for being the most creative hostess in the South East of England. If this weekend is a disaster, I can kiss goodbye to all that.’ She stopped fiddling with the clue envelope and placed it squarely back in the centre of the blotter on top of the desk. ‘You’re lucky you don’t live in my world,’ she said, sighing. ‘The women are so vicious—always looking for an opportunity to trample you so they can be top dog—and in this world position is everything.’

She sat back in the desk chair and let out a dry laugh. ‘I might be close to being useless, but at least I’m the best at it—you know what I mean?’

I smiled and nodded, and then I stood up.

Izzi looked worried. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going back upstairs to change,’ I said. ‘And after that you and I are going to whip those layabouts into shape and make sure they not only catch the killer, but have the time of their lives doing it!’

Once again they were all staring at me, speechless. It could have been the ugly beige floral dress I’d flung on, so I could run downstairs and catch them all before they went upstairs to get changed for dinner, but I suspected the silence was more a reaction to the lecture I’d just delivered on Getting the Most Out Of Your Murder-Mystery Weekend.

‘Come on,’ I said, in a slightly schoolmarmish voice. There were aspects of Constance’s character that lent themselves rather well to severity, and I was quite enjoying myself. For once, a whole room full of people was taking me seriously. ‘It’ll be fun to dust a few of those mental cobwebs off and use our little grey cells for once. And don’t these clothes just get you in the mood?’

There was a sheepish mumble from most of the group—all except Nicholas and Adam. The former was smiling and the latter was staring at me with an expression on his face that looked very much like pride.

Nicholas stood up. ‘Well, if there are clues to be found round this draughty old house we’d better go and find them.’

Of course once Nicholas was on his feet everyone else followed. They put down their cocktails and headed for the hallway. As he passed by me Nicholas paused, placed his fingertips on my bare arm and bent forward to speak words intended for my ears only.

‘Good on you,’ he said. ‘I thought this thing of Izzi’s was going to be a total waste of time, but now I think I’m actually going to enjoy myself.’

I stood and watched him leave the room, my mouth hanging open slightly more than could be considered attractive.

Nicholas Chatterton-Jones had just touched me of his own free will. Miracles really did happen.

Izzi had decreed that this evening we would all wear formal dress to dinner—evening gowns for the girls and dinner suits for the boys. After an hour of clue-solving we’d all broken off to get ready, promising to get right back to sleuthing as soon as we could. As I came out of my room I spotted Adam, his hand on a doorknob on the first-floor landing.

‘I don’t think you’re supposed to go in there,’ I said, coming up behind him. ‘I think that’s Nicholas’s room.’

He turned, his fingers stilled curled round the brass knob, and I had a reprise of the sensation I’d had when I’d first seen him in his costume yesterday evening, only this time it was ten times stronger. Adam and vintage dinner suits? They went together incredibly well. So well that my mouth dried.

‘This isn’t Lord Southerby’s bedchamber?’ he asked, frowning.

‘No.’ I shook my head gently. ‘Next one along.’

There were only a certain number of rooms in Inglewood Manor earmarked for our weekend of sleuthing, and the weekend organisers had prepared and ‘dressed’ them carefully. The rest of the house was supposed to stay undisturbed. Just as well, really. Otherwise it would have taken us a month to search Inglewood Manor for clues.

A wicked grin lit up the face of the man who was supposed to be a vicar. ‘Shall we take a peek anyway?’

I slapped his fingers away from the doorknob. And then I grabbed the hand that had touched him, clasped my other hand round it and hugged it to my chest. I’m not quite sure why I did that. I’d been slapping, elbowing, nudging and thumping Adam for most of my life and had never given it a second thought, but touching him just then had felt like crossing a line I hadn’t realised had been there before.

‘I was only kidding!’ He rubbed his hand. ‘And haven’t you got all turbo-powered about mystery solving all of a sudden?’

‘Turbo-powered is my middle name,’ I said haughtily, and stalked along the landing to the right door. When I turned to look back at Adam, he hadn’t moved.

‘Don’t I know it,’ he said, a hint of hoarseness in his tone.

Now, I’m used to telling exactly where men’s eyes have been resting while I’ve had my back to them. What’s the point of perfecting a sway that reduces them to dribbling wrecks if you can’t tell if it’s had the desired effect?

Was it my imagination, or had Adam’s eyes just flickered back from being much farther south than I’d expected them to be?

That awkward, not-sure-what-to-do-now feeling crashed back over me in a second wave, turning the thermostat in my cheeks to high. I waited for Adam to join me, and my hand felt slippery against the antique knob as I opened the heavy bedroom door and let it swing open.

I assumed he’d go past me, but he stopped opposite me, filling the rest of the doorframe. I don’t think we were even remotely close to touching, but somehow it felt as if we were just about to. He stood there looking at me for a few seconds.

‘I thought you were going to change.’

I looked down at the simple cream evening dress—not a patch on the red one hanging up in my room. It had short puff sleeves, a demure little collar, and beautiful little covered buttons than ran from waist to collarbone. I’d even been angelic enough to do all but the top four up, and my cleavage was completely going to waste.

It was obvious I had changed. But I hadn’t ended up in the sort of dress I normally would have chosen, given half a chance. Was that what Adam meant?

‘I did change,’ I said, the tips of my arched eyebrows drawing together.

Adam didn’t reply. He just looked at me. As if he was trying to see past the powder and foundation, past the restrained blusher and barely-there lipstick. As if he wanted to turn me inside out with the sheer weight of his stare. I slithered away from him, out of the doorway and into the room, and started hunting for clues, all the while feeling his eyes on me.

Eventually I turned and glared at him. ‘Well, don’t just stand there! Help me out!’

It didn’t take us long to find an ancient-looking piece of paper, folded carefully and hidden in an otherwise empty bedside cabinet. I unfolded it and let my eyes rove over what looked like an old-fashioned birth certificate. Before I’d even read to the bottom, I gasped.

‘It’s mine! I mean Constance’s! And look! There’s a space where the father’s name should be!’ I turned to look at him. ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’

Adam took the certificate from me and our fingers brushed.

It wasn’t an accident. I’d done it on purpose.

And, from the way our gazes locked and held, so had he.

I held my breath while the air stilled around us and my heart bumped loudly in my ears. If this had been anyone else staring down at me, his eyes darkening, I would have sworn he was thinking about kissing me. Odder still, I wasn’t the one to back away. It was Adam who wrenched his focus back onto the yellowing document.

‘Of course we have to ask ourselves not just why there is a blank space where the father’s name should be, but why a copy of your birth certificate is in Lord Southerby’s bedroom in the first place,’ he said, not looking at me.

I heard the words, but they slipped through my brain without taking root. Something weird was going on. It was as if I’d emerged from that lake into a parallel universe—a world that was deceptively similar, yet where ‘normal’ was a topsy-turvy version of itself. It made it very hard to think straight.

While I was trying to process the information Adam had given me, the dinner gong sounded somewhere in the distance. There were footsteps on the landing outside, and the sound of other people rushing back downstairs.

I waved the crinkly bit of paper in my hand. ‘I finally have a clue,’ I said, and folded it back into quarters once more. ‘It’s time we did something about it.’

Adam was giving me another one of his inside-out looks. And then he held out his hand. When I offered him the birth certificate he laughed, softly plucked it out of my fingers, and then slid it into his pocket. He repeated the gesture with his hand, and this time his large, warm fingers closed around mine.

‘It’s time,’ he said, and kissed my knuckle ever so softly. Then he led me from the room. ‘Time for us to see what new developments these revelations will bring.’