Tiger Ragtime by Catrin Collier

Author:Catrin Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909840720
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Gertie opened her eyes to see David watching her in the gloom of the curtained bedroom.

‘Enjoy that?’ she smiled lazily.

‘What do you think?’ He wrapped his arm around her naked body and cupped her breast.

‘I like to leave a man satisfied.’

David deliberately pushed all thoughts of Edyth from his mind. He loved her – had loved her before he had seen her kissing Micah – but the last person he wanted to talk about Edyth to was Gertie. His feelings for Edyth had been and still were sacred to him. The way he felt about Gertie was anything but. And now he knew how it felt to make love to a woman, he didn’t want to think about Edyth making love to Micah or Peter –that’s if she ever had.

He’d overheard Harry explaining to Mary why Edyth had applied to have her marriage annulled instead of simply divorcing Peter. Harry had said that Peter had never wanted to sleep with Edyth, something he found unbelievable after making love with Gertie.

‘What you thinking about?’

Sensing that Gertie was waiting for a compliment he said, ‘I never in a million years thought that it could be this good between a man and a woman.’

‘That’s because you probably never saw any women besides your sisters on your farm,’ she teased.

‘I saw plenty on Sundays when we went down the valley to chapel.’

‘Sour old matrons in black that smelled of mothballs and lavender water, wearing their Sunday, pickled-onion­sucking, disapproving face.’

He laughed. ‘You have a funny way of putting things.’

‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’ she challenged.

‘Some of the older women were like that,’ he conceded.

‘And the younger ones?’

‘There was never much time to talk to them after chapel, although there was a little cracker working in the grocer’s shop in Pontardawe, with come-to-bed eyes. I used to look forward to delivering eggs and butter there every Wednesday.’ He lay back on the pillows, smiling at the memory.

‘And?’ She dug him in the ribs.

‘And nothing. I just used to look at her.’

‘Her come-to-bed eyes, you mean.’

‘One of the delivery boys christened them that. I never had the courage to find out if his description was accurate.’

‘So, all you did was worship her from a distance,’ she snorted in amusement.

‘There wasn’t much else I could do given that the farm was miles from the village. It used to take me an hour and a half to drive down there in the horse and cart in daylight to make the deliveries. It would have been an all­night effort if I’d invited her out for the evening. Not that there was anywhere I could have taken her other than the chapel social.’

‘We lived in the Rhondda and there were lots of places to go, besides the chapel socials: picture palaces, dance halls, roller-skating rinks, concert halls, Italian cafes, and walking on the mountains, which we did more often than anything else because it didn’t cost anything.’

‘Did you go out with a lot of boys in the Rhondda before you came here?’ he asked curiously.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.