The Flat in Notting Hill

CHAPTER TWO

TORI, LYING ON THE super uncomfortable, lumpy and thin single mattress in the cramped boxroom, looked at the flashing display of her mobile and ignored Mark’s call.

What number call was that? Sixteen, seventeen? She placed her forearm over her eyes, feeling drained, exhausted and so, so empty. She’d acted her ass off earlier but she knew that her friends, especially Poppy, hadn’t bought it. Some of it but not all; they were too perceptive for her own good. Sometimes she thought that Poppy and Iz laughed because, knowing her so very well, they knew that was the reaction she was most comfortable with, because she always handled hurt with humour.

Tori hiccupped a sob and couldn’t believe that she was crying over a man…again. It was what she did, she thought, a pattern of behaviour that started in her childhood and she’d yet to break. She’d throw herself into a situation, looking for attention—love, affirmation—and when it ran out, sometimes in minutes, sometimes days, weeks, months, she’d be left feeling flattened and…less than.

She was so tired of feeling less than. But the reality was that she’d never been enough…not for her parents, not for her previous loser boyfriends, definitely not for Mark.

Tori rolled over onto her side and groaned as a particularly large lump dug into her ribcage. On the plus side, she didn’t love Mark, hadn’t been able to open herself up to him and reveal the chronically insecure woman below her flash surface. Maybe if she found a man she could do that with, someone she allowed to peek below the partygirl, flirty-girl surface, maybe that would be the man she could fall in love with, the man who would give her the love and attention and the stability that had always been beyond her reach.

Tori thumped her wafer-thin pillow and rolled over again. This bed was disgusting, the room small and cramped. When she and Poppy and Iz shared this flat—happy, happy days of laughter, girl chats and wild parties—Izzy had used this room to store her clothes and Poppy her medical tomes. This bed had been a place to throw stuff on, now it seemed to be a repository for the lost and strayed, first Izzy, then Lara, now her.

But everything was changing…The flat was like Love Central recently, with Izzy falling head over heels in love with Harry and Alex losing his heart to Lara.

But she’d rather be here, in this horrible bed in the tiniest room in the house with friends who cared about her, than back at Mark’s with or without his plus one. This flat, originally a fire station with its exposed red brickwork and crazy plumbing, was the place she felt most like…well, herself, and the people who lived within its thick walls were more family than her own flesh and blood. Especially Poppy, who knew her in and out and roundabout.

But really, this bed…she’d never get to sleep.

‘Isaac is away…’ Poppy had said.

Isaac is away…mmm, gorgeous Isaac. If he were in residence she’d consider making a play for him; he would be a super excellent way to forget Mark. Tori bit her lip…except that there was a weird vibe between Poppy and Isaac, something that would have her hesitating if Isaac were around…

But, right now, the bed in the turret room directly above her head was big and comfortable and, best of all, empty! She could, at the very least, get a good night’s sleep, something she knew would be next to impossible in this coffin.

Her mobile buzzed again and Tori sighed at the display. For a minute she considered answering it, considered allowing Mark to talk her around, to persuade her to jump into a taxi and come home. She’d make him grovel and, after endless hours of discussion, she’d have a warm body to curl up around tonight…

No! She was not that pathetic, that weak! He’d crossed a line as big as the San Andreas fault line and it was not okay! She was worth more than that…

Mind made up, Tori switched off her mobile, slid out of bed and walked up the stairs to the turret room, avoiding the stairs that creaked and the floorboards that groaned. In the morning, she thought as she opened the door to Izzy’s old room, she would feel better, calmer, and more able to make rational decisions.

Maybe. Or maybe she’d cave and go back to Mark…

‘You’re sounding stronger, Dad.’ Matt leaned back against the headboard, mobile to his ear.

‘I’m fine. Don’t worry.’

Matt twisted his lips at Patrick’s sharp retort. Like him, he hated being fussed over, but Matt wasn’t convinced that his dad was fully recovered from the bout of pneumonia that had hospitalised him at the beginning of August. He still sounded weak, although he tried to hide it.

And also like him, his father was a night owl and they often spent time on the phone between the hours of eleven and one in the morning. They’d chat about sport or the news and every so often Matt would explain a complicated deal he was involved in. Despite his years spent working in non-profit organisations promoting sport amongst disadvantaged children, Patrick had never lost his cool, unemotional, law-trained mind and his insights were frequently sharp, concise and devastatingly accurate. He had a way of cutting through the waffle and discarding the emotion to reveal the heart of the problem, the soul of the dilemma.

‘How’s Angela?’ Matt asked, referring to the woman his dad had met a couple of months ago.

‘Fine but she’s not your mother.’

‘No one is, no one could be,’ Matt said gently, as he had a hundred times before. And as always he was instantly transported back to those awful months after her death, his dad sobbing at night, grief racking his body when he thought Matt was asleep. How many nights had he been woken by that low keening? How many times had he slipped out of his bed to lie in the passageway next to his dad’s closed door, listening until his father finally stopped crying and drifted off to sleep?

‘Twenty-two years, Matt, and I’m still as in love with her as I was. They say that people forget their loved ones, that they don’t remember their faces, their voices. I still remember everything. Her wide green eyes, her raucous laugh, the way she always stuck her tongue between her lips when she was concentrating.’

And because his dad remembered so much, and spoke of her often, he did too. He’d adored his mother, grieved her death, but her passing had also taught him that marriage and love equated to heart-wrenching grief and he’d decided, at the ripe old age of eleven, to have nothing to do with it.

They were getting morbid, Matt thought, and changed the subject. ‘So, I think I have a new flatmate…’

Matt explained the circumstances around Tori’s arrival and soon Patrick was chortling in amusement. His dad wasn’t a prude, thank God. He could talk to him about anything and he did.

‘Oh, and I went to see your uncle Alfred yesterday.’

Matt tuned out as Patrick updated him on the health of his great-uncle and just listened to the comforting hum of his dad’s voice. After his mum died, they’d stumbled through their lives. Patrick had learned to cook and to listen; mopped up spilt milk, broken windows from cricket balls and Matt’s own childhood tears. Cricket had turned to rugby, and excruciating lectures about sex and girls had been suffered through—by both of them—and they’d both had to wrap their heads around his dad dating again. But Patrick had kept his sex life away from him—thank the Lord—and nothing and no one had disturbed their masculine, sports-crazy home.

It had been a blow to realise that, while he was good at cricket and great at rugby, he wasn’t good or great enough. He was an excellent sportsman but just wasn’t brilliant…he didn’t have enough raw talent to take his sport to the next level. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t work in the field, Patrick had constantly reminded him. He could always be associated with sport…

And now Matt represented twenty of the biggest names in sport that he personally looked after and his two associates had another sixty they represented between them. One of his tasks while he was in London was to consider hiring a UK-based agent to expand his business.

Matt heard a noise on the landing outside and glanced at the luminous hands on his sports watch. It was long past midnight and he wondered who else was up.

‘Dad, sorry, I’ve got to go. Speak soon and look after that chest!’

He tossed his mobile onto the side table, sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. His eyebrows lifted when his door handle dipped and the door slowly opened. He’d always had excellent night vision and didn’t need light to discern the slight female form, perfectly curved. As she turned to close the door her slithery robe rustled and he was treated to the most luscious bottom he’d seen in a very long time. Her hair was streaked and her profile, caught in the landing light just before she shut the door, showed a small, straight nose, full lips, deep-set eyes and a round, stubborn chin.

She stopped by the far side of the bed and he watched as small hands went to the belt on her robe and the fabric slipped off her shoulders revealing perky breasts, a flat stomach, slim hips and those fabulously long and silky legs.

Birds sang, and an orchestra started playing and he was quite sure that a mountain, somewhere in the world, moved. She was that sexy, he thought, as lust shot straight to his groin and belted up his spine.

Ah, the actress from earlier.

Which raised the question: what the hell was she doing in his room?

Naked?

Ooh, Tori thought, wiggling under the covers, a nice firm, lump-free bed. High thread count, clean cotton sheets, a decent feather pillow. Thank you, Isaac, for being in Amsterdam or Paris or somewhere else exotic doing cocktailbar stuff and leaving your room empty for me to borrow. She sighed happily. This was a million times better; she could get a decent night’s sleep in this comfy bed and she’d feel so much better in the morning: stronger, bolder, better able to cope. She rolled over on her side and dropped her hand to the mattress…

Except that wasn’t a mattress. Tori froze. It was warm and hairy and the muscles underneath her hand contracted and released.

She’d known enough male bodies to immediately realise that she was holding a very muscular male thigh and because she could feel something that felt like a testicle brushing her pinkie finger, she suspected that her hand had landed quite far up his thigh—far as in ‘far too close’.

Okay, she really hadn’t planned on feeling Isaac up this evening. And why did she immediately feel guilty? Because of Poppy, she realised. Poppy and Isaac had something cooking; what it was she wasn’t sure but it was something…

And while she had many, many, many faults, stealing her best friend’s man—potential man—wasn’t one of them.

If she was desperately lucky, then Isaac would be asleep and she could sneak back out and keep her mouth shut for ever and ever and ever…

Tori, trying to be very stealthy, lifted her thumb off his thigh, then her index finger, middle and ring finger and finally her pinkie. Pulling her hand away, she sighed with relief when there was no reaction from the body and slowly started to inch her way out of the bed.

A deep, sexy-as-sin voice growled at her through the darkness and pinned her to the bed. ‘Where are you going? It was just starting to get interesting.’

‘Isaac?’ she whispered and held her breath, desperately hoping that Isaac had acquired a slight accent she didn’t remember him ever having.

‘Nope. Sorry.’

Sometimes, Tori thought, you are the statue and sometimes you are the pigeon. Obviously her day to be the statue wasn’t quite over just yet.

The bedside light snapped on at the same moment that Tori bailed out of bed, the hounds of embarrassment snapping on her heels. She was halfway around the bed and still eight feet from where she dropped her robe—serve her right for being a slob and just dropping clothes on the floor—when she realised that he could see her in all her naked, jiggling glory!

‘Eeep!’ She instinctively slammed her forearm against her boobs, cupped her pubic strip with her hand and stood there with her mouth hanging open, a deep red flush covering every inch of her body.

Help, help, help, help, help…

What to do…? What to do…? What to do…?

Seeing the corner of the loose duvet draped over the corner of the bed, she yanked it up and bailed underneath it, only taking another breath when she knew that every inch of her body was covered. Of course, she could still feel the long, long length of him—they were only separated by the sheet—but at least he couldn’t see her!

Dear Lord, who was he? She was going to kill Poppy, slowly and with an evil smile on her face.

Tori felt fresh air slide in under the duvet and knew that he’d lifted it up to look at her. She turned her face into the mattress and gnawed the bottom of her lip.

‘Hey there…’

Ooh, he had the nicest voice. Deep, mellow, like an aged whisky on a freezing winter’s night.

‘Want to come out from under there so that I’m not talking to your—admittedly gorgeous—tortoiseshell head?’

Tortoiseshell? Say what? Tori frowned while her brain turned over his words. Huh, he must mean her hair and the various shades of colour. Browns, reds, blondes…tortoiseshell. Dave, her hairdresser, would love that description.

Okay, so not the point.

Tori pulled her face out of the mattress, breathed deep and lifted her eyes and found herself looking up at a bigger, broader and—obviously—hairier chest than hers. He had just the right amount, she thought, a perfect black T that dusted his pecs and drifted into a luscious line that flowed over a stone-hard A-pack. The sheet covered his hips and she managed to contain her sigh of disappointment. Her eyes ambled upward again, noticing a crescent-shaped scar on his lower rib, the flat masculine nipples, muscled shoulders, thick arms, an angular jaw covered in black stubble, a wide mouth tipped up in amusement and eyes the colour of…

‘British racing green,’ she murmured, the words sliding out of her mouth.

‘Excuse me?’

She wanted to wave her hand but instead she held the duvet to her chest. ‘Your eyes, they are the exact shade known as British racing green,’ she said, blushing and ducking her head into the mattress again. She sounded like such a twit; she’d snuck into his bed—naked—and she was wittering on about his eyes.

They were beautiful but…really?

Oh, fudge. Her face flared and she hoped he didn’t notice. There was only one way to get out of this situation and that was to brazen her way through it. She wasn’t in PR for nothing, she decided, and had plenty of practice.

Taking all her courage in both hands, Tori kept the duvet firmly in place and wiggled her way up so that she was sitting upright, the duvet tucked under her arms.

‘Hello,’ he said, his mobile mouth quirking up in a half-smile.

‘Um…hi.’ Tori pushed her hair out of her face and straightened her shoulders. ‘Sorry about this.’

‘I got to see a gorgeous naked girl. No need to apologise.’

Ignoring the flare of heat that she knew was still staining her cheekbones, Tori pushed her hand through her hair and smiled her patented I’m-a-girl-of-the-world smile. He didn’t need to know that she was feeling anything but and her spirit was, well, not broken…cracked, dented, bruised? Bruised. That was the perfect word for how she was feeling…along with battered, drained and a healthy dose of smarting.

But since she had many years of practice of hiding her feelings she just kept that stupid smile on her face and carried on bluffing. ‘So, I guess the question is, who are you and what are you doing in Iz’s bed?’

‘Matt Cross and I’m renting the room for the month while Isaac is away. And that raises the question, what are you doing in Izzy’s, Isaac’s, temporarily my bed?’

‘I heard there was a good-looking guy in it and thought I’d check you out.’ Tori regretted the words before they even left her mouth.

‘If that was true then you wouldn’t have spent the first five minutes burrowing under the covers whimpering with embarrassment,’ Matt calmly stated.

So the guy wasn’t afraid to call BS. Good to know.

‘So, give me another explanation,’ Matt asked, after bunching up a pillow and placing it between his head and Iz’s iron headboard.

‘I’ve just had a really bad day and I wanted a decent night’s sleep. The bed in the boxroom is a torture device and I knew that Isaac was away so here I am.’

‘Here you are,’ Matt agreed. ‘So, I’m presuming you’re Tori of the bad boyfriend and the Frantic Fairy story of earlier?’

‘How on earth do you know about that?’ Tori demanded.

‘I was in the hall when you were concocting the story for Izzy and Poppy. That has got to hurt like hell.’

Concocting? That was an interesting, very truthful, turn of phrase. Tori cursed silently and bit her lip. She was sitting in bed, naked, with the hottest man she’d—literally—stumbled across in her life and he knew that her boyfriend had brought home another woman for a threesome. And he was sympathising with her…

Could this evening, possibly, get any worse? ‘Oh, I was about to kick him into touch anyway so I don’t really care,’ she said, lying her head off. She did not need his sympathy or, worse, his pity. God.

‘You have piggy eyes from crying. And your words and body are stiff with tension. Oh, yeah, you talk a good game but it hurts. How can it not?’

Tori sighed. She was not one of those women who cried well…She didn’t have gentle tears that rolled out in perfect droplets and didn’t wreck her make-up. She gushed and she was obviously violently allergic to her own tears because her eyes swelled up and turned blood red, her face blotched and Rudolf envied her nose. As a result, she generally avoided meeting flame-hot men until she looked normal again. No wonder Green Eyes was looking at her as if she were an alien species…not generally the reaction she normally got when she found herself naked in a man’s bed. She’d never been particularly vain but she knew that men generally found her attractive. It was mortifying to be the object of pity, of concern, of zero sexual interest.

Focus, Tori, and start thinking of a way that you can get out of here with your dignity and pride intact. Actually, she’d settle for just getting out; pride and dignity were on their own.

I could seduce him…

Whoa, whoa, what? The words popped into her head and her eyes widened. Bad, bad idea, terrible idea, are you nuts?

He’s a good-looking guy…

He’s every gorgeous male celebrity wrapped up in one delicious package but that doesn’t mean that you should make a play for him. You’re upset, feeling emotionally beaten up and you never make good decisions when you’re in this frame of mind…so keep your big mouth shut! Dear God, you are a basket case, Phillips.

Great sex—he looked the type who knew what he was doing in the sack—and a soft bed, a body to curl up around afterwards…

‘Down, Tiger.’ That dark-chocolate voice broke into her chaotic thoughts and she bristled at the undisguised amusement she saw in his eyes, in the tilt of that sexy mouth.

‘Excuse me?’

‘That mind of yours is working the angles; flipping through your options.’

Tori licked her lips and looked for and found her coolest expression. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about,’ he drawled. ‘But, okay, let’s spell it out…you’re running through scenarios; you’re not happy that I know that you had a horrid experience at the hands of a man who, frankly, needs someone to teach him how to treat a woman. I’d be happy to oblige. You’re also telling yourself that you don’t want to go back to that bed or, if you were honest, admitting that you don’t want to be alone.’

He’d be happy to beat Mark up for her? Now there was an idea…concentrate Tori! As nice as his statement made her feel, he was still looking past her breeziness to the truth below and she didn’t like it and she wanted him to stop. She scowled at him. ‘Nonsense.’

‘Honey, if you weren’t scared of being on your own you wouldn’t still be in this bed, you would’ve hightailed it out of here the minute you realised you made a mistake. Instead, you’re lying there looking like a wet dream thinking about making a play for me, thinking about whether you could seduce me or not.’

Dammit, this guy was perceptive.

‘You probably could; I’m a man and you’re…’ his eyes flicked up and down her body ‘…you’re seriously hot.’

Dark blue eyes collided with green and that lightning rod of attraction arced between them. Tori could see herself writhing over that body, her hair trailing along his chest, across his stomach. As if he knew what she was thinking, his Mr Get It On tented the bedclothes. Oh…oh, wow.

‘You need to stop looking at me like that or else you’re going to be flat on your back in ten seconds and I’m not going to able to stop what comes next.’ Matt growled. Tori pulled her eyes back up to his and saw that his gaze could melt her panties…if she were wearing any. Dear Lord, if she scooted over just a bit she could have those big hands on her body, that mouth on hers…

‘You’re killing me, woman,’ Matt muttered, his thumb lifting to press her bottom lip. ‘But sleeping with me isn’t the antidote for whatever happened tonight.’

Tori swallowed and looked at her hands. ‘I told you, I was about to kick him into touch anyway.’

‘No, you weren’t. You know it and I know it,’ Matt said, his voice gentle. God, she could cope with attraction and lust and flirting but she couldn’t cope with this stunningly attractive man looking past her brave girl façade and seeing the mess she was inside.

Matt leaned sideways, dropped his arm and when he straightened again, he clutched a navy T-shirt in his fist. Shaking it out, he draped the hole over her head and the big shirt fell over her chest. She slipped her arms into the shirt and allowed the duvet to drop. She hauled in the masculine scent of his deodorant and aftershave and that essence of masculinity that made her girly stuff hum. ‘Thanks.’

Matt grunted, shoved the covers off and in one fluid movement stood up and stalked naked across the room. Tori’s eyes followed the most excellent back and butt and long, muscled legs to the chest of drawers and sighed with frustration when he yanked out a pair of sweatpants and covered all that lusciousness up. Damn, damn, damn…she wasn’t finished perving yet. Then Matt grabbed another T-shirt and pulled it on.

She thought she heard him mutter something about being a saint and stupid before he turned back and resumed his place next to her on the bed. He sat up so that his back was against the headboard and crossed his legs at the ankles.

Serious eyes met hers and Tori licked her lips at the compassion she saw within them. Then she yelped when he leaned forward, snuck an arm around her waist and hauled her up to him. His big hand forced her head onto his shoulder and his other hand rested on her lower back.

Tori lay in his embrace, her body radiating tension. What did this mean? Was he actually going to try and seduce her after all? And if he was, where was the kissing, the touching? Instead, Matt just switched off the light and they lay in the darkness and Tori felt his chest rise and fall beneath her cheek, heard the solid, reassuring thump-thump of his heart.

Inexplicably, tears started to build again and before she could stop them, they rolled down her face and dropped onto the material of his shirt. Matt’s hand tensed and relaxed on her back and then he patted the top of her butt. That little tap was like the secret code that opened the gates to waterworks hell and her tears started to fall, thick and fast.

Matt didn’t say anything, but just held her and allowed her to cry. Silent, long, scary tears that didn’t seem to want to stop…tears that sucked her energy out of her, making her feel bone-deep tired. She closed her eyes against the burning sensation and it felt so good that she just kept them closed.

Tori sniffed, thought about lifting her head off his chest, decided she was too comfortable and stayed where she was. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me that it will get better and that worse things in the world happen to good people every day?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t those the platitudes people dish out at times like these?’

‘It will get better and worse things do happen but that’s not what you need to hear right now.’

Tori looked up at him, his profile strong in the room full of shadows. ‘What do I need to hear?’

‘You need to hear that it hurts because it matters, that he treated you badly and that was wrong. You have a right to cry, to feel sad, to feel used.’ Matt stroked her hair. ‘You are allowed to feel miserable and you are allowed to show people that you feel miserable.’

Tori turned his words over in her mind, knowing that there was a fundamental truth within them but not able to grasp it, believe it. It was as if it were a finger of fog drifting past and her fingers kept sliding through it. Eventually she gave up trying to capture that nugget of truth and just listened to the thump-thump of Matt’s heart.

Tori had no idea when she fell asleep…just that she did and it felt good and right. For the first time in a long time, in a stranger’s arms, she felt safe.

Accepted. Enough.

Feeling as if she could just be…