Hearts On Ice

Hearts On Ice Part 6

His blood hummed through his veins as he approached the bookshelf and it was a good minute before he could concentrate enough to read the blurbs properly and pick out a book.

She had an excellent selection of thrillers amongst the new-age rubbish; he chose an old bestseller he hadn't read and made himself comfortable on the sofa ready to start it.

'Do you want a drink?' she asked from the other side of the kitchen.

He looked over to where she was standing, holding onto the pantry door. 'Sure, what have you got?'

'I've got sweet sherry or advocaat,' she said. For a second he wasn't entirely sure whether she was joking or not. This girl was seriously good at pushing his buttons.

He gave her a challenging smile. 'I'll have a beer, thanks.'

She smiled back, and went to the fridge to get one out, popped the cap off and brought it over to him.

'I'm guessing you're the sort of guy who prefers to drink straight from the bottle,' she said, placing it carefully onto a small table next to the sofa.

'Damn straight,' he said, adding bass to his voice and doing a bad impression of an American hard-ass.

She snorted at the joke and took herself back off to the kitchen side of the room where she proceeded to peel and chop what looked like two hundred potatoes.

It was impossible to concentrate on the book with her moving gracefully around the kitchen singing quietly along to the eighties songs she had playing on a very dated CD player on the counter. In fact, as he looked more closely, he realised everything in the room appeared to be well loved. There didn't seem to be anything pointless. Everything had a purpose. He liked that.

Sally had filled their house with loads of useless crap, like rows of candles she never burned and piles of fluffy cushions he wasn't allowed to sit on, and it had driven him insane.

'How come you're preparing so much veg?' he asked, watching her pile the potatoes into a large pan on the stove.

Strangely, this bland question seemed to make her uncomfortable and she shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, not meeting his eye.

'I'm having a dinner party the day after New Year's Day and I wanted to get ahead of myself.'

'How many people are you inviting? You could feed the five thousand with that mountain of potatoes.'

She gave a nervous sort of smile. 'A few.'

He waited for her to expand on the statement but she didn't. His instincts told him she was keeping quiet about something, but he didn't have the enthusiasm or the energy to get into whatever it was. He had enough to deal with in his own life without getting mixed up in hers.

'You know what, Hettie? I'm really not interested in whatever weird undercover potato operation you've got going here, I was just making small talk. I'll keep it zipped if I'm making you nervous, okay?'

The cagey look on her face made him laugh. 'Relax. Just because I'm a cop it doesn't mean I'm on the lookout for things to bust you for. Perhaps I'm not the only one that likes to stereotype people?' He turned purposefully back to his book, closing down the dialogue.

After rereading the same page a couple of times, he sensed her walking towards him. The sofa cushion dipped slightly as she sat next to him, drawing her legs up under her.

'What are you reading?' she asked, taking a small sip from her own beer bottle.

He held the book up for her to see the cover.