Managed another chapter. Can't believe how fast some of the others write - always takes me an age!
Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing, fav'ing and following 'cause you know I really appreciate it XXX
Chapter 9
Okay so Jonathan Makepeace was a nice guy, Dempsey had to grudgingly admit.
He'd recognised the irritation the music cassette conversation had provoked and deliberately pulled things around to a different topic. Lucky for him, Harry hadn't been aware of his shortcomings, least he didn't think so 'cause she'd only had eyes for Jonathan these past fifteen minutes.
Now that was just plain juvenile! Of course she was paying him attention, he was an old friend who'd gotten into difficulties.
Dempsey knew he had to snap out of this. Not only was it unnecessary, he wasn't doing himself any favours; Harry wasn't the kind of woman to appreciate jealousy.
"Ah. Yes. Christmas in September," said Harry, drawing the words out slowly as she stalled for time. She glanced at Dempsey, giving him a look which said, 'Don't you dare leave this one all to me'.
Jonathan laughed. "Is it horribly embarrassing? Sorry, I won't pry, it's just that it was impossible not to ask. It is rather in ones' face."
But not to give an explanation now would make it even more embarrassing.
"See, Harry and me, we been colleagues for a good while now – like four years..." Dempsey began.
"Oh, I see. Of course, you're something to do with the Metropolitan Police now aren't you, Harry? Quite a departure from the Natural History Museum." He returned his attention to Dempsey. "And you work together?"
"Yeah, we got partnered up when I first came to the U.K and..."
"Partnered up?" Jonathan jumped in. "What do you do exactly?"
"We're police detectives, Jonnie." Harry laughed at the look of surprise on his face. "We work for SI-10. It's one of the, shall we say, 'lesser known' departments under the mantle of Scotland Yard."
His mouth opened and closed again, words failing him for the moment. "Goodness me! I had no idea, hence the reason Harriet refers to you by your surname! I'd assumed, obviously very wrongly, that you'd joined the police in some sort of administrative capacity. I should've known better I suppose."
"Hey, it's a fact, she's great at desk work," Dempsey threw in.
Harry turned to him slightly, her hand ever so lightly touching his forearm. "Well one of us has to be, darling."
Okay, she'd used that jokey, snooty tone but she'd called him 'darling' for the very first time. And with somebody else around to hear it! Maybe one day she'd say it and mean it but 'condescending' was a good start as far as he was concerned.
Jonathan asked a few more questions about their work, intrigued by the fact that Harry was a 'real life detective' as he put it and although she answered, she made it clear that her job description really wasn't to be put out there in the public arena.
"And so a workplace romance blossomed," said Jonathan. "How long ago did that happen?"
Dempsey and Harry looked at each other and shared a grin.
"Very recently, actually," said Harry. "We didn't get on at all for quite some time."
"She hated my guts," Dempsey clarified.
"And he thought I was some stuck up little princess who was only around to make the tea and play at Charlie's Angels."
"It's the way you hold a gun, princess. You hold it like Farrah - who incidentally and contrary to popular opinion was my least favourite Angel – when you should be holdin' it like Shelley Hack."
Harry was about to protest but Jonathan stepped in. "Shelley Hack was your favourite?" he asked with surprise.
"Nah, I just liked the way she held a gun. I swayed between Jaclyn Smith an' Cheryl Ladd."
"You mean you'd like to have swayed between Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd," Harry said with a petulance Dempsey found gratifying.
Jonathan laughed. "Every red blooded male has a favourite Angel, Harry. It's one of those inescapable facts like death and taxes."
He looked at Dempsey side on and out of the corner of his mouth, buffooned, "Definitely Jaclyn Smith."
Dempsey winked as he slid an arm around Harry's waist where she stood beside him holding the dirty crockery. "That TV show's for the birds. I got my own angel right here – my Christmas Angel."
She made a show of extracting herself from his embrace. "Please, Dempsey, not on a full stomach," she groaned.
"Ahh, don't knock it, Harry, I've a feeling your chap here actually means it."
"Sure I do!" Dempsey said in a small, hurt voice.
"And I'm sure he doesn't need any encouragement from you, thank you very much," she grinned, pointing an accusing finger Jonathan's way.
"Is it my imagination," her guest asked, draining his glass, "or have we completely gone off at a tangent? I'm still very much in the dark with this Christmas theme."
Dempsey got up and fetched the wine jug, sharing the meagre remainder out between the three of them. "Well, in a nutshell, when Harry an' me decided we had this thing goin' on, I was my usual, charming self..." he bowed theatrically, a hand gesture giving him a dandified air, "an' told her all my Christmases had come at once."
"Oh, bravo,"laughed Jonathan, clapping his hands together.
"So this was kinda the climax to a lot of dumb Christmas related stuff."
Harry cringed a little at the admission and at the private innuendo although his diplomacy had been a welcome relief.
"And then I poll up and ruin your night!" Jonathan shook his head balefully.
"Not at all!" came Harry's dutiful objection. But it certainly wasn't turning out to be as bad as she'd expected when he'd first arrived.
"Hey, I don' know 'bout you but I'm enjoyin' myself here."
And Harry was reminded that, despite his flaws, this was one of the many reasons she loved him - his ability to make the best of a bad situation.
"Jim," Jonathan beamed, "you have no idea! Good company, marvellous food and," he raised his glass, eyeing the contents in puzzlement, "unexpectedly wonderful drink... I feel like a new man." he raised his glass to them. "Cheers."
They clinked glasses and downed the last of the mulled wine.
"Not usually my thing either but I gotta say, this does kinda hit the spot," Dempsey acknowledged.
"That'll be because I overdid the Brandy by a country mile," Harry admitted, presenting them with a virtuous expression. "Shall I make another batch while I'm doing the custard?"
Whilst Harry prepared the next round of food and drink, Jonathan and Dempsey cleared the table of leftovers and between them, even managed the washing up, all this to bouncy Christmas pop music playing in the background.
And so it was at 3:00am, with them having laughed themselves silly over the pathetic jokes from the Christmas crackers and their inebriated, fruitless attempts to master the cheap plastic puzzle contained within one of them; Dempsey's story of a peculiar episode involving a mortuary attendant, a frozen turkey, three men of the cloth and seven New York cops back on Christmas Eve 1976, (which Harry had heard on numerous occasions but the way he told it, still found entertaining) and an enthusiastic sing along with most of the Christmas tracks played, that they finally paused for reflection.
"I truly can't remember the last time I laughed this much," Jonathan sighed contentedly, his speech a little slurred. "It's been a bloody good night."
"Hear, hear." Harry lifted her glass. "To a bloody good night."
"A bloody good night, spattered floor to ceiling," Dempsey agreed.
Glasses crashed together, exuberantly.
A giggling "Oops" from Harry and then a chorused "cheers" all round.
"Happy New Years," Dempsey called out.
"Oh, we seem to have moved on a bit," laughed Jonathan.
They were in the lounge now, Dempsey sitting sprawled at one end of the sofa nearest the window, Jonathan at the other end and Harry sitting between them on the floor.
"I feel very, very under-dressed for New Year," Harry complained. "I'm considering getting changed into something more suitable."
Her cut-glass accent could now cut diamonds, a side-effect of alcohol which always tickled Dempsey.
"Don' worry 'bout that, princess, it's bedtime."
"Party pooper!" She shot him an accusing look over her shoulder.
"Hey, I've been called a lot o' things in my time," he raised an emphatic finger, "but lemme tell ya, I ain't never been called no party pooper."
"Now that, Sir, I can believe," Jonathan said, his head tilted back so that it rested on the back of the sofa. "You certainly ain't." He grinned broadly as he let his eyes drift shut. "Whereas I, on the other hand..."
"Hey, Jonnie!" Dempsey reached across, almost tumbling off the sofa as he did so. "Hey, pal? You fallin' asleep on us?" He clamped his hand to Jonathan's jaw and waggled his head from side to side.
"I'm jus' resting my eyelids," Jonathan mumbled, a beautific smile indicating he was half way to dreamland already. A gentle snoring ensued only moments later.
"Sure you are, Sleepin' Beauty."
He flopped down onto his chest and turned his head so that he was almost cheek to cheek with Harry as she looked on, pouting. "Jus' you an' me now, babe."
"Well it's a damned god job it isn't New Year's Eve otherwise he'd have spoilt our snowball fight, wouldn't he?"
Dempsey let the words sink in, needing to mull them over before asking, "What snowball fight?"
"The snowball fight we'd be having if it really was New Year's Eve," she said as though it was all so obvious.
He stroked his fingers through her silky blonde locks. "I'm impressed."
"By what?"
"The fact you can predict heavy snowfall on a future New Year's Eve, on a pretend Christmas night, in our fake calendar."
"Just one of my many hidden talents."
Their lips were only millimetres apart now.
"Bet I can uncover a few more."
It was a warm, torpid kiss, made passive by wine and their approaching drowsiness.
"Oh, I'll bet you can," Harry smirked but then in an overly exaggerated whisper, her eyes darting to the side, "but we have a guest."
Suddenly, she leapt up. "Of course the odds are ridiculously low but there's always the chance of snow on Christmas Day."
Harry was at the window now and threw back the curtains expectantly. Dempsey sidled up behind her, laughing as he wrapped her in his arms.
"Oh, it's still bloody raining!" she cried."
"'An' besides, we've already flipped over into Boxing Day, am I right?"
"Good God, James, now it's my turn to be impressed. Boxing Day! I think that's the first time I've heard you refer to December the twenty sixth as anything other than the day after Christmas Day."
Dempsey stood with his cheek pressed against her neck, breathing in the now faint smell of her perfume, looking up to meet her eyes in the reflection of the glass. Their image became superimposed on the view of the outside world and the darkness was made starkly black by the reflected light. It swallowed up the expanse of driveway; the cars, the old sycamore trees that partially fronted the property and the stretch of main road, relatively quiet at this time of the morning, save for the occasional taxi.
"My first Christmas on British soil, I thought families got together to sit around the TV watchin' some Commonwealth Championship Boxing League deal or somethin'."
Harry crossed her hands to hold onto Dempsey's forearms. "I'm afraid I can't blame you for that. I don't believe half the population knows the reason for Boxing Day."
"Maybe that's 'cause most of 'em don't have servants," he told her wolfishly.
She slapped his left arm. "This isn't medieval England, Dempsey," she reprimanded, "the upper classes keep a staff, they don't have servants."
"Is that so?" he asked in an overstated fashion. He knew that perfectly well. They'd had the conversation once before and he hadn't forgotten – it was just that it was a hoot to yank her chain, especially when she'd drunk too much.
"You know perfectly well it is," she began and then tried to shrug him off, giggling as he nuzzled into her neck.
"What say we cut this party an' go find ourselves somethin' else to do."
Boldly, his hands explored her body. Alcohol had taken away the careful tenderness of earlier and instead left him with a sanguine confidence that his own immediate desires would be mirrored in her.
Harry leaned back to look at the sleeping visitor.
"What about Jonathan?"
Thankfully, she didn't sound overly concerned.
"He's out for the count," he assured her.
She'd managed to wipe out more than twenty years credence at the start of the night. He'd felt as though he were practically back to those early days when the horror of ineptitude loomed large; when pace and pressure were frightening organic gauges and the climactic moan on a girls lips was the sound of God speaking to him. It was scary she could make him feel that way again, that 'getting it right' had been, for that short while, the most important thing in the world to him. But now he'd proved himself worthy, that shadowy anxiety had faded away.
As his touch became imprudent, Harry turned herself in his arms, her body compliant with sensuality, blue eyes swimmy with wine and mischief.
"Did you mention it was time for bed, Lieutenant?"
"We can have a New Years party all of our own, Sergeant." He watched in the blackened glass as she trailed her fingers over his collar bone, her lips parting in anticipation. "An' if you're still feelin' uncomfortable in the jeans, I think that birthday suit of yours looks pretty phenomenal."
"Oooh, that sounds like you're planning to take advantage of me. You do realise I've had far too much to drink, don't you?" she asked with a giggly sort of hiccough.
"Enough for you to take advantage of me, maybe?"
She gave him a half smile that powered through him like Cupid's arrow.
"What's that saying of yours, James? You never know when you might get lucky?"
She turned away from him, drawing the curtains shut again before grabbing his hand and dragging him away towards the sleeping Jonathan.
"Whadya doin'?" Dempsey whispered. "He's okay."
Harry was shaking him gently to no effect. She tried harder, calling his name and finally his eyes rolled open, a vacant smile giving him a look of innocence. "Bedtime, Jonnie," she said loudly.
The smile broadened. "Goodnight, sweet Harriet."
He made no attempt to move, even when she tried half-heartedly to drag him from the sofa.
"Your futon awaits. Come on, up you get."
"No, no. I don't want to put you to any..." His eyes closed again, "...trouble," he managed before he fell back into his alcohol induced slumber.
"You see?" Dempsey grinned. "He's okay where he is."
"We can't leave him here!"
"You serious?" he asked, feeling a sudden crabbiness bite. "It was always good enough for me."
Letting go of Harry's hand, he grabbed both of Jonathan's ankles and lifted his legs up and across, yanking him down the sofa so that his head rested on the arm.
"Enjoy, pal."
"Dempsey!" she tutted but only laughed, fortunately failing to see his attitude as anything other than horse play. "Anyway, I always felt it more prudent to keep you down here. Having a staircase between us kept temptation at bay."
There was a neatly folded woollen throw over the back of the other sofa on the opposite side which Harry took and covered him with.
"Night, night Jonnie," she sang, shrieking when Dempsey's arm around her waist yanked her backwards. She shushed herself, giggling.
"My turn to be tucked in, princess," he growled, the moment of animosity having passed as quickly as it had come upon him.
When the lights went out, the occupants of the dark blue Allegro parked across the street decided that that was it for the night.
"Don't get it," said Don, searching in the pocket of his sports jacket for his Silk Cut and lighter. "He might be a toff but he still stinks just like the rest o' them dirty bleedin' 'omeless sorts. How can he crawl in off the street an' into the arms of a bird like that?"
"Dunno," replied his older associate, Gerry, "but if it's eau de tramp that does it for 'er, gimme a flamin' gallon of the stuff!"
He chuckled, his eyes still on the darkened bay window.
Like Jonathan, they too had failed to realise that the owner of the grey Mercedes convertible parked several feet to the left of the white Cabriolet was actually visiting the attractive blonde and had nothing whatsoever to do with the neighbouring property.
Even though the rain had settled down to a fine drizzle now, at this distance away and partially obscured by Harry, they had assume that the man must be the same one they had followed and seen gaining admittance at two minutes to eleven.
"You get yer 'ead down for a couple of hours, Gerry, I'll take the first shift. No dirty dreams now mind," Don grinned, cranking down the window a couple of inches as smoke plumed from his cigarette.
"Come on, mate, dreams is all I got these days," Gerry laughed.