Unfortunately, Boy Racer didn’t get around to doing anything under the hood.
I understood his priorities, it is first about the way it looks and then you get to the meat of the matter but engine-wise, the Purple People Eater (as I called it) wasn’t much to write home about.
* * * * *
Anyway.
* * * * *
Once buckled into the car, I showed Ash a pot. “See this?”
He looked at the pot then looked at me.
“Yes,” he said, with what I suspected was what he considered extreme patience. “It’s a pink pot.”
“No, it’s fuchsia.”
Silence.
I pulled out another pot. “See this?”
“Pink,” he said.
I shook my head. “No, this is petal.”
“Petal?”
“Yes, and this one,” I pulled out the third, “anyone can see this isn’t pink it’s –”
“Brown.”
“Truffle!” I snapped.
“You’re mad,” he announced starting the car (in which, incidentally, he somehow managed still to look cool).
“Yes, I am but at least I’m adorably mad.”
Silence for a beat and then, “You don’t have any plants to put in the pots,” he pointed out.
Oo, I knew I forgot something.
* * * * *
This would mark the beginning of the end of my perfect day.
* * * * *
From Cadbury Garden Centre, we were off to Junior Poon’s on Hill Road.
I’d been looking forward to Junior’s for ages. The girls were meeting for drinks and crispy aromatic Peking duck in the wine bar underneath the restaurant. The wine bar looked like spruced up catacombs complete with low hanging ceilings that, believe you me, could catch you off guard – especially if you’d had one too many.
I loved Junior’s.
Junior’s rocked!
And crispy aromatic Peking duck was second only to pizza with loads of sun-dried tomatoes in the Ambrosia of the Gods Contest.
I’d been given the mission to get there by six, grab one of the private back alcoves with the comfy couches and order the duck.
Lucy and Josie got off at six thirty and Su was returning the Jag to Ash (under threat of certain death, but that’s another story) and we were all going to walk home after lots of Peking duck and wine.
I’d been waiting all day to get my lips around a pancake oozing with hoisin sauce.
I couldn’t wait for the duck.
I couldn’t wait for the nice Pinot Noir that I discovered the last time I was at Junior’s.
And I couldn’t wait for a reprieve from Ash, if only for a few girlie hours.
But, it wasn’t to be.
Instead this is what happened:
Ash was driving.
I was holding my pots and thinking about when I could next get to the garden centre to buy some plants to go in the pots.
I was also thinking about Peking duck and how many orders we’d need.
We were close to Junior’s, slowing for the Six Ways roundabout…
When…
Smash!
We were rear-ended.
“What the…?” (Me.)
Ash didn’t slow, he shot through Six Ways, pedal to the metal, the Purple People Eater’s engine revving and calling out to Mama, “No more, Mummy, no more.”
“Ash, slow down, we were just…”
Smash!
Rammed again.
The car jolted, fish-tailed and Ash downshifted. Ole Purple screeched in protest.
Smash!
Smash!
Smash!
At high speed, Ash took the left angle onto Hill Road.
* * * * *
For your information, Hill Road is one of those crazy “chicken roads” that came into being when rich people rode horses, poor people walked, kings chopped people’s heads off and the guy who had a premonition of the future existence of automobiles and tried to warn ancestral city-planners was burned at the stake.
In other words, Hill Road was narrow.
Way narrow.
Super narrow.
To a girl from Colorado where you could drive for an hour on the highway between Pueblo and Taos with two whole, big, wide lanes to yourself going eighty-five miles per hour and feeling like you were going sixty and maybe, just maybe, see one dusty pickup… well, to that girl, Hill Road was an eye opener.
These days, Hill Road, like many roads in England, was forced, against its will, to accommodate two lanes of traffic and parking and scary, aggressive English drivers who were scary, aggressive English drivers precisely because of the existence of roads like Hill.
With nothing for it, Hill Road, like many streets in England, protested against all of this and forced all travelers to play chicken in order to get through.
It was a hair-raising experience.
And it was about to get worse.
* * * * *
Down Hill Road we went (passed Junior’s, by the way), the maniac bumping into us again and again, swerving crazily behind us and clipping our fender one side and then the other while we were swerving crazily trying to avoid slamming into an oncoming or parked car.
Everyone was honking and tires were screeching and I counted three drivers who gave us the two-fingered, backhanded “V” (English for “Fuck Off”) and one of them was a blue-haired old lady who could barely see over the wheel of her Micra.
“Do you know how to use a gun?” Ash asked calmly as if we were on a Sunday drive.
Ack!
Guns?
Ack!
I was watching behind us and, at Ash’s question, my head whipped around so fast my neck cracked (and thus disappeared all benefits of the yoga I did that morning).
“No!” I answered (loudly).
We were making the right turn onto Marine Hill, a forty degree turn you should take at fifteen, twenty miles per hour (tops) and we had to be doing sixty (okay, maybe forty, but still!).
I screamed.
Yes, to my utter mortification, I girlie-Kim-Basinger-in-Batman screamed, high-pitched and shrill.
(What can I say? It was terrifying.)
We’d gone the five hundred feet on Marine Hill to Wellington Terrace and managed somewhere during the scream to lose the car behind us for a second.
Ash slammed on the brakes and then cut the wheel to the left, switched gears then reversed down Marine Parade.
Yes, he went backwards down Marine Parade.
Holy Mother Earth and all her flowered friends.
* * * * *
Let me explain about Marine Parade.
On a good day…
On Marine Parade…
When you are going forward…
And have plenty of time…
And there is no traffic…
And the sun is shining…
And you are in good health with all your faculties about you…
The angle of Marine Parade to Marine Hill and Wellington Terrace is The Angle of Death.
That junction was where perfect insurance records went to die.
Not to mention, Marine Parade was another “chicken road” but it just happened to have the added heart-attack-inducing sheer wall of granite that held up Marine Hill on one side of the road and on the other side you had a thirty foot drop onto an access road to the seafront terraced houses.
I didn’t scream this time. I was too terrified to move a muscle… even a throat muscle.
The car came after us, screeching tires to make the death angle and Ash drove backwards down one of the most crazy bits of road in a town full of crazy bits of road.
The whole time he was winding open the window (if you can believe).
Then out came the gun.
Ack!
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
I don’t know if he hit anything because I closed my eyes. I felt like Brenda must have felt in Highlander when the Kurgan took her
out for a spin.
We were screaming down Marine Parade and Ash cut the wheel at the end and we went careening left into the parking lot of the derelict Royal Pier Hotel.
Screech!
We stopped with a jolt.
Zoom! The car passed us.
Ash pulled the emergency brake and got out of the Micra (gracefully, which is surprising considering he’s over six foot and the Micra is called a Micra for a reason). He ran toward the Parade in that manly, loping SWAT jog as-seen-on-TV with the gun held behind his back.
* * * * *
Yes, this happened.
* * * * *
To me.
* * * * *
When he got back to the car he said, “I’m taking you home.”
I could think of nothing but…
“What about the Peking duck?”
He looked at me under his brows as he put the car in gear.
I started babbling, “I’m supposed to order the Peking duck. I’m supposed to get the table. In the alcove. At the back. Peking duck is important. I’ve been looking forward to Peking duck all day… no, all week. The girls are counting on me.”
We screeched away from the hotel.
“They’ll get over it.”
* * * * *
He took me to The Gables and the minute I got out of the car, the bag with the pots clutched in one hand, my sausages, lavender and carrots clutched in the other, he skidded out of the driveway without a backward glance… off in the Purple People Eater to track the bad guys.
Needless to say, this turn of events meant Junior Poon’s wine bar was out of the question.
Everyone descended on The Gables instead.
After I’d told the story for the five hundredth time and had mellowed out on a Shiraz cabernet blend that was really just an ugly stepsister to the Pinot Noir, Ash came back.
“Did you find them?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did you total my car?”
“No.”
“Fuck!” I shouted.
“You can say that again. That car is shite,” Lucy said.
“Fuck!” I shouted again.
Ash handed me a bag.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s Peking duck.”
After chasing the bad guys in a suped-up Micra, Ash went out and got me some Peking duck.
From Junior’s.
How do you like that?
3 April
Okay.
I… have got… to get… my shit… together.
I mean, screaming like a girl? I’m a witch, the witch for goddesses’ sake.
I had my wand on me and I didn’t have it together enough to do a spell, even a simple spell, to help out Ash.
I just sat there, silent or screaming.
How embarrassing.
And after that performance, he brought me crispy duck from Junior’s.
What am I supposed to make of that?
He must be wondering what he’s gotten himself in for, laying his life on the line for the likes of me.
And what is going on with all this nonsense, Darling and Addison at the Italian Place, Mom and Gran and everyone here, without plans to return home anytime soon?
And what is the deal with no one telling me any Prophesies, Ash and Aidan looking and not touching (well, not exactly but almost).
And what exactly is Josie going to do that is so fucking important to the world’s future that I have to protect her? Who’s after her and why and where are they now?
Ash is gone, left this morning, Mom tells me, to go to London. I’m to stay at The Gables or be taken by Mom, Gran or Mavis to the café.
Ash’s Edicts: No Junior Poon’s, no Tandoori Nights, no Moon and Sixpence and absolutely no driving around in the Purple People Eater. Ole Purple needs to stay “out of sight”.
Okay.
Last but not least…
If I’m The Chosen One, why is my bodyguard giving me orders?
17 April
Get this.
If… you… can… believe… this is what just happened!
* * * * *
Obviously, slept like the dead (the dead I almost was!).
(Will tell why later…)
Woke up all snuggly, warm, happy all covered in heavy blankets and tucked in tight.
Sun was shining on my face, very rare of a morning in England.
Felt like staying there forever and ever.
Snuggled deeper into bed and warm thing behind me.
Warm Thing moved!
Before I could, like, totally freak out, Warm Thing’s arm tensed (not heavy blankets on me – heavy Warm Thing arm on me) and hand which was on my breast tightened with thumb finding just the right spot.
Holy crap!
Oh me.
Oh my.
I maybe made a little noise in my throat.
Just a little one.
(Scared? Or other?)
Warm Thing moved and I heard, “Good Morning,” in my ear said in throaty, warm, sexy, sleepy Ash voice.
Yowza!
And.
Ack!
What the…?
Felt nuzzling at my neck.
Felt nuzzling other places too.
Body melted.
Mind freaked out.
(Chest hurt like hell but more on that later…)
Hands were moving (not mine).
Lips on neck.
Oh me.
Maybe made another little noise.
Oh my.
Ash gently turned me over to face him and before he kissed me…
* * * * *
Okay… maybe I’m one of those people who sabotages their happiness.
I mean, after all these months, I was somehow in bed with Ash all cuddly warm and yummy.
Yesterday, life nearly passed me by and now, here I was all scrum-delicious with the most fantastically handsome, delectably cool man (not to mention fab kisser) I’d ever met.
Yet.
I don’t know.
Maybe I should see a shrink.
Maybe I should relax and go with the flow.
Take a few risks.
Live a little.
* * * * *
Or maybe…
* * * * *
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Nudging close to my ear he said, “I think that’s fairly obvious.”
Mm.
He would be right.
One of his hands was doing very lovely things around my bottom and toying delicately with my panties.
Er… is it me or is this going fast? (Sabotage)
We haven’t even been on a date! (Sabotage)
“Um… ” (Sabotage) “Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked. (Sabotage!)
“What?” I got the impression that he wasn’t paying much attention to me.
Well, he was paying attention to me but he wasn’t paying attention to me, if you know what I mean.
“Well, this whole… er… ” His hand went somewhere rather nice. “Um… you’re my bodyguard.”
With some attention to my injury (more on that later…), he pulled up my knee and hooked it over his hip then his thigh slid between mine and he used his hand on my bottom to push me along it and… oh my.
I started panting.
“What whole bodyguard thing?” Ash murmured.
“Well, um… won’t this… kind of… ”
Panting and unable to finish my thought some time later, doggedly, I went on.
“I mean, yesterday… The Prophesies… The Chosen One gig… er… black dragon… ” More panting. “You know… or, the fact that we haven’t even been out to dinner, or, a… uh… movie… is this the right thing to do?”
Ash didn’t even pause with what he was doing, anything he was doing.
But he answered.
“Considering The Prophesies say you’re to bear me three children, I don’t think…”
Ack!
Ackity ack ack!
&nbs
p; Ack!
Hold on a minute!
I froze.
Then I shouted, “What?”
“Two sons and a daughter,” he murmured into my neck.
I reared back rather violently (must… ignore… pain… in… chest!) which caught Ash off guard. Instead of going back, my bucking and Ash compensating caused us to roll over…
Ash on his back…
Me on top.
Being the brainiac I am and in my complete panic after hearing future-father-of-my-unborn-children news, I lifted both knees to pull myself away and escape, escape, escape!
I ended up straddling him about ready to push off to leap from the bed when Ash’s hands landed on my hips to keep me where I was.
“Hang on,” Ash growled.
Ack!
Two sons…
And…
A daughter.
“What? Do The Prophesies say we’re supposed to get married or something?” I said, kinda flippantly, like that would ever happen.
“Yes,” Ash answered.
“What?” I shouted again. “What, what, what?”
I tried to push off and somewhat succeeded and got to my feet beside the bed but he came up after me, caught me and spun me around. I collided with his body (“Careful,” he said quietly, trying to hold me still but again, not the time to collide into a gorgeous man’s body – not when in full-on-panic-mode-escape-escape-escape-two-sons-one-daughter-second-degree-burns-on-chest-yikes!).
He shook me gently. “Mathilda, calm down.”
“I’m not marrying you,” I blurted it out. I couldn’t help myself.
“Yes, you are,” he answered, completely calm and looking at me somehow amused.
How was this amusing?
Ever?
In the History of Amusing Things, how does this fit?
“Witches get married and then never see their husbands again!” (Me)
“Mm.” (Ash, clearly unconcerned at this juncture)
“Their children grow up fatherless.” (Me)
“Not exactly.” (Ash)
“It’s not going to happen.” (Me)
“Yes, it is.” (Ash)
“No… no… what? Are you asking me to marry you… like, now?” (Me – ack!)
“No.” (Ash)
“Well then?” (Me)
Ash had one hand at my back, one hand not at my back.
“What are you doing?” (Me – hysterical.)