Chapter 53
He rolled off her, grimacing.
"My shoulder… hurts like hell…"
He was actually having difficulty getting the words out and Harry realised how much pain he must be in from leaning all his weight on that side.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, sitting up next to him and looking at the heavily bruised area with concern. "I should drive you to a hospital. It might be serious. You might need it strapping up or something. They can at least give you some heavy duty pain killers."
Dempsey ran his fingers through his wet hair, angrily. "Ain't much point now I've administered that heavy dose of passion killers."
"Of course there's a point…"
There was an awkward silence, the sudden come-down from their fervid intimacy leaving them both slightly adrift and embarrassed.
Dempsey flexed his shoulder carefully, muttering an oath as he did so.
"Think you just had what's known as a lucky escape," he said gruffly.
Twiddling with her halter strap, Harry laughed quietly. "Funnily enough, I'm not feeling very lucky at the moment."
He looked up from the spot at the edge of the towel he had been fixating on. "Was it really what you wanted? I mean, like this, out here on the beach?" He scrubbed at his hair, messing up what he had just moments before slicked into place. "Hell, anywhere! Things have gotten pretty screwed up lately… between us…"
"Screwed up?"
There was a certain edge there that Dempsey found worrying.
"Okay, not screwed up, jus' different. Like maybe my feelings for you are pushin' you into thinkin' it's what you want too when… well, maybe it isn't. All the personal stuff this case has thrown up… don't want you thinkin' I'd take advantage of that."
Shit, he couldn't even string a sentence together!
"What feelings?"
She was pushing him for his 'feelings'? Was she crazy?
He opened his mouth to speak and then clammed up again. The timing wasn't right. His busted shoulder was in the way. He'd struggle to tell her at the best of times but right now he couldn't concentrate fully on anything else.
"You know what feelings," he said awkwardly.
Harry leaned forwards, holding her arms around her raised knees. "No, I don't. I don't think I ever really know what you're feeling. I wish I did."
"C'mmon, Harry," he chided. "You know you ain't just my partner."
She shook her head vaguely. "No, I don't," she repeated.
A light breeze was blowing in from the sea now, enough to bring a chill to their bodies as they sat in their wet swimming attire.
"You're… more," he stumbled. What could he say that wouldn't sound like he was feeding her a line? "You're… everything."
Her eyes widened visibly.
Jeezas, if that didn't sound like a line then he didn't know what did!
He edged closer, his right knee bent so he was sitting face to face with her. "An' that's the way I like it, ya know?"
He cupped her chin, running his thumb along her lower lip. "I wouldn't ever wanna be without you, Harry, I need you in my life."
Spoutin' freakin' clichés like there was no tomorrow!
But the thing was, he meant every word.
"I need you too," she replied softly. "Too much sometimes."
Dempsey let his hand fall with a faint smile. "Oh yeah? I'm likin' the sound o' that. Care to elaborate?"
"I…" she looked down at her hands, "I want more from you than I should – than I should from a working relationship."
Dempsey nodded and lifted his hand again, this time running it along her right shoulder. He had to touch her, had to have that physical contact.
"Sounds like maybe we want the same thing," said Dempsey, hardly able to stop himself from whooping out loud. So why did she look so uncomfortable?
"Do you?" she asked, smiling nervously. "Are you sure about that?"
"Sure I'm sure. What's with the face?"
He ran a playful finger down her nose before returning to her shoulder.
"I'm not looking for just a quick bunk-up when the mood takes us, is what I'm trying to say. I want a real relationship," she looked him in the eyes then, "but if that isn't what you want or you don't think you can commit to something like that then I'd rather know now."
Was she blushing? Yeah, she was blushing and he loved it.
He gave her a roguish smile.
"Now we both know commitment has never been my strong point. Never really gone in for that whole tyin' yourself down to one woman thing, outside of the bedroom that is…"
Harry drew back a fraction, her heightened colour increased and a frown of disappointment crept across her face.
He laughed at her reaction but instantly regretted it when he felt a surge of pain travel through his shoulder and down his side. He sucked in air through gritted teeth and shifted his position as he reached out for her hand.
"But Harry, I wouldn't want a relationship with you to be any other way." He squeezed her hand, dipping his head to encourage her to meet his eyes. "You're the only woman I've ever felt that way about."
"Don't think that's strictly true though, is it? What about Simone? You lived together!"
Dempsey chuckled at that. "You met Simone. You think we sat down together and discussed it like rational, grown-up human beings? She caught me unawares, kind of sidled in through the back door with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a suitcase full o' psycho in the other."
"Don't give me that. You loved Simone, I know you did," Harry said, his confession making her feel quite magnanimous.
Automatically, he shrugged, bringing on another shooting pain in his shoulder.
His expression gave away his discomfort and with her hand now gripping his, Harry pulled him to his feet.
"Let's go back in. You need those Paracetamol sooner rather than later."
She bent and retrieved her sunglasses, pushing them up onto the top of her head and then picking up her towel and Dempsey's suntan lotion.
"Where's your body wash stuff?" she asked, looking around for it.
He glanced down at his waistband, realising already that it had gone. "Lost at sea, I guess."
Harry rolled her eyes.
They began the short walk back up the beach to the sandy pathway, Harry carrying her towel and the bottle in front of her.
"I did love her," Dempsey admitted after a few moments of quiet contemplation, "just not enough, not how I was s'pposed to…"
'Not how I love you', he wanted to tell her but he wasn't brave enough for that, not yet.
"Maybe if I had, she wouldn't've become such a lush. I shoulda taken care o' her… guess I just didn't care enough."
"Surely you aren't blaming yourself for her… problems."
"That's what I'm sayin'. It's like, which came first, the chicken or the egg, ya know?" He sighed and then grinned at her. "Anyways, why the hell are we talkin' 'bout me and Simone for when we should be talkin' 'bout me an' you?"
"I thought we were supposed to be talking about the case, actually," Harry said pertly.
"True but we got all night ahead of us don't we? Plenty of time to nail 'em both."
Dempsey lifted the latch on the garden gate and pulled it wide for Harry to walk through. It was odd, seeing this much of her body on display – great but odd, he thought, feeling the physical effect of her hit him hard again as his eyes wandered up the back of her.
"I'd suggest one thing at a time," she said over her shoulder, offering him a judicious smile.
"Do I get to choose which one?"
She continued to walk just ahead of him up the garden path. "I think that decision has rather been taken out of your hands rather, don't you?"
"Talkin', Lady Harriet, just talkin'. You got a dirty mind, you know that?"
"We weren't 'just talking' a few minutes ago thought were we?" she pointed out, "and I don't want you rupturing anything, Dempsey."
As Harry took the veranda steps, Dempsey fell into step beside her, placing a casual hand on her left hip.
"I think I might've ruptured my eyeballs already – they kinda popped outa their sockets jus' now."
She gave him the look.
"What?" he asked indignantly. "I ain't allowed to give my girl a compliment?"
His words had the desired effect and Harry laughed loud and throatily, Dempsey dragging her against his side as they approached the back door.
"'Your girl' isn't convinced that actually was a compliment, more of a teenage confession."
"I can't help it; it's a by-product of my misspent youth."
They were in the kitchen now and Harry dumped what she was carrying on the worktop along with her sunglasses. She turned and found Dempsey was directly behind her and as his arms went around her, she slipped into his embrace like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Hi," he said, smiling down at her.
"Hello, you," she replied.
The kiss was also natural – and breath-taking and heavenly and exciting and Harry found herself pressing closer to him, getting carried away in the moment.
Even when she heard the slight whimper from him, her mind interpreted it as guttural passion and she rejoiced in the sound, pulling her arms up tighter as she sought to prolong the experience. It felt so right at last.
The sudden, sharp memory of her night with Paul Masters pierced the bubble for a split second as she involuntarily compared the right with the wrong. The difference was unnerving. What had possessed her to… Oh, God, she'd never done anything like that before and didn't believe she ever would again. The one saving grace was that he actually seemed like a decent sort of chap and maybe under other circumstances, if there was no James Dempsey… But that 'maybe' was fundamentally flawed because if there was no James, she wouldn't have found herself attracted to Paul in the first place, would she?
And then she was drawn back to the here and now and the warmth of his flesh enveloping her taut, goosebumpy skin, their lips barely touching.
"Harry," he murmured somewhat breathlessly as he gently pushed her away.
It was only then that it dawned on her.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry!" Hastily, Harry withdrew her arms from around his neck, realising that she had been pulling down and exerting too much pressure on his poor shoulder. "I seem to keep inflicting pain, don't I?"
"It ain't so much pain as torture, baby. Nothin' I'd like to do more than make love to you upstairs in that big ol' bed with the sound of the waves hittin' the beach and the smell of the sea comin' in from the open window. But it ain't happenin'."
Harry delicately stroked the top of his shoulder. "You really are in a bad way, aren't you?" she smirked, hoping to hide her blushes.
"It ain't funny! I finally get the chance to show you how much you mean to me and I just ain't up to the job." Dempsey suddenly stopped talking and looked at her hard. "Lady Harriet, I do believe you're blushin' again."
"No I'm not," she fired back automatically although it was quite clear she was.
"Was it somethin' I said?" he grinned, going over in his mind what had just come out of his mouth. "You're deain'l with low life scumbags on a regular basis, shootin' their mouths off, givin' you all kinds o' sicko talk and you take it on the chin. I make a little whoopee in your ear an' you make like a tomato."
"Tom-ar-toe," she corrected with a frown.
He ignored that and carried on. "So was it the 'big ol' bed' that got the tomato's juice flowin'?" he asked wickedly.
"Alright, stop it now," Harry warned, growing even redder.
But he was intrigued by her reaction.
"Stop what, Princess? The idea of us makin' love is embarrassin' to you?"
His forefinger ran down the smooth skin of her inner elbow as he spoke before rising up to her upper arm, over her collar bone and finally taking her shoulder into a massaging grip. He liked the effect that seemed to have on her. Her lips parted a little and goosebumps had formed where his fingers had trailed.
"Not embarrassing," she murmured, "it's just…"
She seemed to be finding it difficult to speak as his hand gently squeezed.
"Just?" His hand slid upwards along her neck, coming to rest against her cheek, wet from the water that trickled from her hair.
"I'm not used to you saying things like that and meaning them."
"Princess, I've wanted to make love to you since the day I first laid eyes on you."
Harry shook her head. "No you haven't," she said firmly.
"You wanna bet?"
He was looking into her face and what Harry read in his eyes confirmed what she was thinking.
"You wanted to have sex with me – there's a subtle difference, don't you think?"
Now it was Dempsey's turn to feel the heat a little. She was absolutely right only there was nothing subtle about it. Having sex with a woman and making love to her were two totally separate things. Was he that transparent that she could actually see the way he felt about her? Was now the right time? It didn't feel like it though, not quite. That kind of admission needed perfect timing to make it memorable for the both of them.
"Big difference," he grinned softly, his heart pounding with indecision.
"At one time, I would've been a notch on the bedpost… but it's not like that between us anymore, is it? Not deep down."
He played a lock of her hair through his fingers.
"Not for a long time," he said, smiling when for just a tiny moment, her eyes shut tight in an inadvertent gesture of relief.
Tell her! Do it! he yelled in his head but something inside held him back.
"We both know somethin's been goin' on between us for a while and whatever that somethin' is, it gets me outa bed in the mornin' and puts this stupid grin on my face, ya know what I'm sayin'?"
Yes, she knew exactly what he was saying, experienced it on a daily basis when he was there on her mind at the moment of waking.
"I like your stupid grin."
Despite the intolerable ache that coursed down his right side, he wasn't prepared to let this opportunity go.
"You got me all kinds of stupid, Makepeace. When you walk in the room, I don't know which way is up sometimes."
Unconsciously he had tempered the words with the use of his partner's name but Harry wasn't about to fall for his cover up. She'd known him long enough to recognise the blurry reflection in his eyes and the burr in his voice.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, come here," Harry smiled, lifting up on the balls of her feet and bringing her face up close to his.
She kissed him, drawing him close and the heat from his pain melded with the heat of their emotions for those few boundary-less seconds. Her lips were soft and yielding as she leant into him, ironically, that weakness giving him the strength to stay on his feet. And then she seemed to take over, her hands holding his bruised and damaged face so tenderly that she made him feel not just weak but strangely fragile too. Her mouth opened against his and Dempsey let himself fall into the pleasure she was offering, feasting on the succulence he found with reverence and wonder, drifting in the malaise but cushioned by her sensitivity.
He held her wrapped in his arms, loving her, needing her and when she at last drew away, it was a shock to the system.
"You need to sit down before you fall down," Harry said quietly.
He didn't respond, just continued to gaze into her eyes.
"You're leaning," she told him with a slight smile. "It's hurting a lot, isn't it"
"I'm okay."
"No you're not. You literally can't stand up straight."
It was true. The pain was taking over now, spreading like wildfire. He'd really overdone it out there and now he'd come to a standstill, it was kicking in with a vengeance.
Harry slipped a hand into his and lead him out of the kitchen.
"Time for the Paracetamol, macho man." She glanced behind her briefly, giving him an imperious look. "And seeing as you're in no fit state to be going out again, I suppose I'll have to make dinner."
