The Honey Queen

‘Maybe I could come and meet your parents sometime?’ David said. ‘They need to know that their daughter isn’t dating a madman. I promise I won’t shame you dreadfully,’ he added, grinning.

‘Maybe,’ Peggy said, after an uncomfortable pause.

Ignoring this, David took her hand. ‘Come on, I’ll bring you into the kitchen.’

He led her into a kitchen painted blue and white, with jolly blue and white sprigged curtains over the sink and old stained-pine cupboards.

‘Mum and Freya did the decor,’ David said. ‘We keep thinking we’re going to change it. Steve wants to get one of those modern kitchens, shiny red cabinets and stainless steel splashbacks, but with Brian leaving to get married it’s difficult making decisions.’

‘It’s a bit old fashioned, but it’s nice,’ said Peggy.

The kitchen in her flat was nowhere near as pretty as this. It was full of odd freestanding bits of furniture. She was scared to look underneath in case there might be dead bodies or live mice. This sweet traditional kitchen was rather adorable and certainly sparkling clean.

‘We’ve got wine, tea, coffee, juice?’ said David. ‘What would you like before I start on dinner?’

‘Tea would be lovely,’ she said.

He boiled the kettle and Peggy leaned against a cabinet, watching him as he moved around the kitchen. He was so much taller than her, she thought absently, that she’d have to look up if he kissed her.

‘Excuse me,’ he said coming close, opening a cupboard right beside her. ‘Mind your head.’ He touched her gently as if to make sure the cupboard door wouldn’t hurt her. And then the cupboard was quite forgotten. Their eyes met, and in an instant his mouth was on hers and it was so tender and sweet that, for a crazy moment, she felt she was a flower opening in the sun.

Then Peggy wasn’t thinking any more. Their kisses grew hotter, suffused with passion and want. She buried her hands in his hair, pulling him to her. His hands slid down to her waist, fitting her comfortably against him.

After a few minutes, David’s long fingers began to undo the buttons of her cotton blouse. Peggy leaned back, letting him touch her, wanting him to.

But then he paused, took a step away from her, leaving her staring up at him, lost.

‘I’m sorry. Is this too fast?’ he asked. ‘It has to be right, Peggy. I don’t want to rush you. You’re too special, do you understand?’

Peggy had looked up at those azure eyes, darker now with desire.

He wanted it to be right for her. He wanted her to be happy, not rushed. How beautiful that was.

She reached for his hands and pulled them back to her blouse.

‘It’s right,’ she said softly. She laid her palms on either side of his face and drew his mouth to hers.

Peggy woke in David’s bed, wrapped in his arms, the duvet tangled around them. Outside it was still dark. She didn’t know what time it was, but she felt no panic at being somewhere different – only a sense of rightness at being beside him, a feeling she could honestly say she’d never felt before.

He was sleeping deeply and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out his profile against the pale colour of his sheets. She had been to bed with other men, but she realized now that with them it had just been sex. Sometimes wonderful sex, she knew, but it had been purely mechanical. Bodies merging in mutual need, and when the lust was slaked, both parties had been happy to go their own way.

But this …

Peggy closed her eyes again and snuggled against David’s warm body. In sleep, he shifted so that he was wrapped more closely around her and she relaxed into the sensation. They hadn’t had sex, they’d made love. There had been lust and tenderness, true closeness, and now that she’d experienced it, Peggy knew the difference. If she stayed with David, she could have this. She could come home and lie in his arms at night: loved and sated. She could tell him about her day and he’d touch her face gently, and be glad or sad for her, depending on the circumstances. He would be her support in all things and Peggy, who’d had no experience of such a thing in her entire life, began to cry silently at the thought of what had to be done.

She hadn’t told him about her background, for all that he’d asked her. She hadn’t told anyone.

He’d asked her to lunch with his parents, but there was no way Peggy could go, she knew that. She should never have slept with David. She should never have gone out with him. Right at the beginning, she’d known that he was different from all the other men she’d been with. He was a good man. And she was …

Well, she wasn’t able for that sort of relationship. He would want two-point-five kids and the white picket fence, and Peggy couldn’t do that. She didn’t know how. She would mess it all up because you did what you’d grown up with, right?

Silently, she slid out of the bed and picked up her discarded clothes. She dressed in the bathroom, then tiptoed quietly downstairs. David’s wallet and keys were on the coffee table. She’d leave a note there, better to do that than go back upstairs with it and risk him being awake. She found a scrap of paper and a pen, and wrote:

David, I’m sorry but I can’t go out with you any more. You are a lovely guy and you deserve to be happy. Just not with me. It would be easier for us both if you don’t contact me. Please don’t come to the shop.

No hard feelings,

Peggy

She slipped the note into his wallet, so he’d find it easily, then left. It was the right thing to do.

Her priority should be the shop, she told herself as she drove home in the yellow glow of the streetlights. She had no time for someone like David. There could be no place in her life for him. She knew that and it was easier to end things now, before it went horribly wrong, which it would. It was bound to. So why was she crying?

Chapter Three (#ulink_9a117c87-108b-5c16-ab64-bff5b2f3cba9)

Sitting at the scarred wooden desk in front of the small window of her eyrie on St Brigid’s Terrace, Freya Bryne was smiling. She was reading an email from a sweet foreign gentleman – from Nairobi this time – who had a few million dollars to invest in her country and wanted her to assist him.

He was a prince, and due to problems in his country, and the fact that his father, the king, was under threat, he couldn’t invest it himself. But she could help …

She really did have the worst spam filter on the planet, Freya decided. No matter what she did, genuine emails ended up in her junk box and funny ones from people pretending to be investors or proclaiming that she’d won a lottery and all that was needed were her bank details and passport number, were forever popping into her inbox. She started to type a reply:

OMG, I can’t believe I’m writing to a real prince!!!! Mom is going to be, like, aced out! You have no idea how good a time this would be for us to have friends in new places – and a prince! Wow, as we say in Headache Drive. Mom hasn’t had a proper holiday since that incident with the airline company. She needed two seats and we thought that had been made plain from the start but no, she only got one and that sweet guy beside her – well, the feeling did come back into his arms a day later but it was very stressful for all concerned. Now, obviously, we have to visit before we work on this million-dollar deal – again, what LUCK! Mom has maxed out her credit card trying to buy the scratch card with the £25 million ticket and she needs a holiday. If you can get a hold of the royal plane, that would be perfect. Just remember: NO SUGAR ON BOARD. She might get her hands on some and … well, the less said about that time in the chocolate shop the better. We settled out of court, which was good for all concerned. But she is very partial to that South African creamy drink. Four bottles ought to cover it. We can stay in a nice hotel if you have recommendations, but from a financial point of view, do you have spare rooms in the palace? And any brothers? Mom is worried about marrying again but I read her tarot cards for her online today and by an AMAZING COINCIDENCE, it said she’d meet someone new …

‘Freya, lovie, it’s nearly eight,’ yelled her aunt Opal from downstairs. ‘I have scrambled eggs on …’

Opal’s voice trailed off. She was always trying to stuff Freya with protein in the mornings, while Freya was more of a coffee and a sliver of toast kind of person.

Poor Opal didn’t understand. Apparently, at breakfast every morning the three boys had wolfed down food as if they hadn’t eaten for a week and now she felt that this was the correct way to feed Freya.

Desperate as she was not to hurt her aunt’s feelings, the thought of an egg in the morning turned Freya’s stomach.

She finished her email with a quick:

Reply soonest. We’ll start packing. Mom does tend to overpack but I am assuming this won’t be a problem on the royal plane, right? Hugs,

Cathleen Ni Houlihan

Freya grinned as she clicked send.

If only she could fly through the Internet like her email and perch on the computer of the man receiving it, to see his astonished face as he read it.

Just outside her window, she could see the blossom on the apple tree in the postage-stamp garden below. Behind the fence her uncle Ned had painted pale green the summer before, the council had started turning a scrap of deserted land into a proper park. The adjacent allotments would stay the way they were, despite the plans for the park, which was wonderful. Uncle Ned would have died if he couldn’t go to his allotment every day. She could see some of the plain but sturdy sheds from the window and the neatly planted allotments themselves. Ned grew tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes and all manner of salad greens on his. In the distance Freya could make out the spires and towers of the city, but it seemed a long way away, giving the sense that Redstone was out in the country instead of being part of town.

All in all, Freya felt that the view from the third-floor bedroom of the narrow house more than made up for the tininess of the room.

‘You’re sure it’s not too small?’ Aunt Opal had said anxiously four years ago when Freya had come to live with them. ‘Meredith wouldn’t have this room – she said it was a spiders’ paradise up here in the attic. Mind you, Steve was happy enough in here.’

‘I love it,’ Freya had replied. She wasn’t in the slightest bit scared of spiders for she had spent years taking them gently out of the bath for her mother and releasing them back into the wild. Now the bedroom had a DIY bookcase on one wall, and Freya’s own artwork on another. She’d painted the old wardrobe so it looked like part of Opal and Ned’s colourful garden down below, although Opal didn’t have any enquiring and abnormally large caterpillars on her flowers, or indeed, a Venus fly trap with a shy smile.