He flicked the indicator without another word. He waited in the car while she sped into the supermarket, hugging her coat across her chest and ducking her head against the rain. When she finally emerged, staggering under the weight of her bags, he looked bored and irritable. She dove thankfully back into the passenger seat and ran her fingers through her damp hair, trying to smooth down the frizz. Her clothing smelled strongly of wet wool.
Richard turned around and stretched to look into the backseat. “So, by ‘women’s stuff,’ you actually meant your entire weekly shop.”
She flipped down the overhead mirror to check that her mascara was still attached to her eyelashes. “Well, I figured since we were here...”
The comment he muttered under his breath was uncomplimentary and mildly offensive to her sex in general, but she’d taken ages to make up her mind in the bakery section and he’d been waiting in the car for over half an hour, so she kindly let it go.
Neither of them could cook much more than tea and toast, so they also stopped to pick up takeaway for dinner. She wanted pizza. He wanted Thai. They compromised with Moroccan.
They were going back to her flat for the night, since her landlady was away for the weekend and Lainie was on cat-feeding duty again. Richard carried the bulk of the shopping bags up the stairs for her and then seemed confused about what to do with them. Obviously, his housekeeper usually did the supermarket run. When he frowned down at a packet of dishwasher cubes and tried to put them on the biscuit shelf in the pantry, she firmly removed it from his hand.
“You could do me a favour and go down and feed Cat Richard,” she suggested tactfully. She wanted him out of the way for a few minutes anyway. “The food is in Mrs. Talbot’s fridge. You can give him the rest of the can. And make sure his water bowl is topped up.” She assumed a helpful expression. “The water is in the tap. You just hold the bowl underneath and turn it to...”
He nipped her earlobe with his teeth in retribution.
When she heard his footsteps going down the stairs, she quickly put away the frozen food and then went hunting through the rest of the bags for what she needed. She left the boring things to put away later. Clearing room on her limited bench space, she set out the peach-and-apricot pie she’d bought. A dessert from a boutique bakery would probably be nicer, but she’d never have got away with that side trip. Besides, she highly doubted that Richard had ever eaten a supermarket dessert, and everyone should have a new experience on their birthday.
She was pushing candles into the top crust when he reappeared.
“I swear to God, that cat was smirking at me. What are you doing?” He halted in the doorway, staring at her handiwork.
“Putting in your candles. I’m going with three on one side and five on the other, because I think the crust will collapse if I try to stuff in all thirty-five. You shouldn’t be so old.”
There was a long silence. She looked sideways at him. His face was completely blank.
“It’s a pie,” he said at last.
She stood back to admire it. “You don’t like cake.” He’d turned down the Victoria sponge someone had brought into the theatre for Theresa’s birthday last week.
“No. I don’t.” Slowly, Richard walked over to stand at her shoulder. He looked down at the birthday pie. “What’s with the M&M’s?”
“I needed something to spell out ‘Happy Birthday’.”
“Does chocolate go with fruit pie?”
“Chocolate goes with everything.” She bit her lip as she looked up at him. She was a little more apprehensive than she was prepared to let on. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re slightly insane.” He suddenly pulled her close to him and pressed a rough kiss to her temple. “Thanks.”
She wrapped both arms around his lean waist and rested her forehead against his chest. “Happy birthday.”
The pie was actually fairly tasty. They ate it with forks straight from the serving plate, sitting on the floor of her small lounge. It didn’t really go with the chicken tagine, but she’d eaten far stranger combinations during her student days. Her stomach lining had been trained the hard way with months of pot noodles and post-clubbing kebabs.
Not for the first time, she wished she had an open fire. The heat pump kept the room warm, but it wasn’t as conducive to doing sexy things on the rug. Richard was sprawled on his back, one arm tucked beneath his head, his shirt riding up. The pastry calories probably wouldn’t venture anywhere near his flat belly. Genetics played a mean game of favourites. She was lying on her stomach. She was well aware that he could see directly down her top, and her cleavage tended to look better from this angle than when she lay on her back and her boobs slid toward her armpits. Problems of the naturally top-heavy, as her sister-in-law had rudely put it.