Love Your Neighbour: A laugh-out-loud love from the author of One Day in December

She breathed a sigh of relief when Dan slid back into the driving seat and passed her a bag clinking with bottles. ‘Red, white and sparkling. My treat.’

Emily laughed. ‘Now you’re talking my language.’

Dan winked and gunned the engine. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

His directness caught her off guard and the smile slipped from her face. He might have kept his tone deliberately light, but the subtext behind his question was clear. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘No.’

He nodded and turned out of the car park in the opposite direction to the village.

They drove out into the countryside for a little while before Dan finally eased the hearse up a battered dirt track and came to rest in a sheltered copse. Beyond the trees Emily had a clear view of the full moon as it glittered over the placid waters of the River Severn.

‘This place is beautiful,’ she said softly, and wound down her window to drink in the night sounds and smells.

Dan nodded, his eyes on her profile instead of the view. ‘Beautiful.’

Emily fidgeted in her seat and the carrier bag tumbled over with a clink that reminded her of her need for wine.

‘I don’t suppose you happen to carry wine glasses in this thing, do you?’ she asked, glancing hopefully around the surprisingly plush interior of the hearse.

‘Sorry, Princess.’ Dan shook his head. ‘Although, hang on …’ He stretched an arm back between the two seats, and fished around for a few seconds before coming up with a battered red KitKat mug.

‘I was working in the back this morning. Left this in there.’ Dan wiped the mug clean on the edge of his dark T-shirt.

Emily unscrewed the cap from the red wine and sloshed the mug half-full, then saluted him with it before taking a good long swig. It was a little cold, but she welcomed it all the same.

‘Better?’

‘A bit.’ She had another glug. ‘A lot.’ She grinned.

Dan laughed and refilled her mug.

Emily sighed heavily. ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow.’

‘No way! Let me guess …’ He turned her chin slightly towards him to study her face. ‘Twenty-four?’

‘I wish.’ Emily looked at her watch and groaned. ‘I’ve got exactly two hours left of my twenties.’

Dan whistled under his breath. ‘Well, here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.’

‘Don’t. You make me feel even older.’ She sipped her wine and idly wondered exactly how much younger than her he was. Couldn’t be much. A year. Two, maybe?

‘So … Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do before you hit the big 3-0?’

Emily shook her head, unwilling to allow herself to even think about the obvious baby-related answer to his question.

‘Skydive, maybe?’ he suggested. ‘Bungee jump?’

Emily wrinkled her nose with distaste at his daredevil suggestions. She preferred to get her kicks on terra firma; even domestic flights had her swigging Rescue Remedy in the airport loos.

‘How about wild sex in the back of a hearse?’ he added.

A charged silence crackled between them as his question hung in the air.

Emily had known where this was headed from the moment she’d got into the hearse back in the village. She hadn’t planned it, but then again, she hadn’t resisted it either.

And she didn’t resist now as Dan reached out to cradle her jaw, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb. She didn’t resist him, because she couldn’t. She turned her face into his hand and pressed her lips against his warm palm. A shiver of pleasure rocked through her at the intimacy of his unknown taste against her mouth, and she knew from the way his breath quickened that he’d felt the heat kick up a notch too. He took the mug from Emily’s fingers, slung it out of the open window, then promptly pulled her across onto his lap, leaving her in no doubt of exactly how much he wanted her.

He was different, he was exciting, and he made her feel like someone else. His kiss left her breathless, and Emily opened her mouth to let his tongue slide in.

Michael Hutchence had nothing on Dan when it came to sexy moans. Any last vestige of common sense followed the KitKat mug out of the window when his hands moved underneath her T-shirt to stroke her breasts through the lace of her bra.

She was lost in him. In how new and adored his hands made her feel. In how his ragged breathing gave away the extent of his arousal. In the erotic power of being wanted again.

Emily needed more. Right there and then she needed all of him, and she reached down to where he strained against the confines of the buttons of his jeans. He swore into her mouth, and in one swift move, he dropped the seat and hauled her over into the back of the hearse.

‘Dan! We can’t … not in here!’ she squeaked, and somewhere in her head, Emily actually meant it. It was scandalous on just about every level to steam up the windows of a hearse, but on the other hand, it was kind of perfectly proportioned for stretching out.

‘Oh yes we fucking can,’ he muttered, pulling her T-shirt over her head without breaking their kiss, like a magician pulling out the tablecloth without upsetting any teacups. He unfastened her bra with the ease of a practised man, and Emily’s protests dissolved as his warm hands and wet mouth roamed over her body. He licked and sucked until she gasped and begged. Somehow, he managed to wriggle off both her trousers and his own in one go and settle back over her, warm skin against warm skin. He was hard and heavy between her legs, but it was Dan’s kiss that tipped Emily’s world upside down.

Slow, sweet and exquisite over her mouth.

Feather gentle over her squeezed-shut eyelids when he pushed himself all the way inside her. Outside, the hearse creaked to the rhythm of INXS and Emily and Dan’s efforts.

Inside, she buried her tear-damp face in his neck and clung to his broad shoulders for safe harbour while he rocked her to the moon and back.

Sometime later, Emily opened her eyes as Dan’s mouth traced a lazy pattern on the sensitive hollow below her ear. She gazed out at the moonlit river, still and serene despite the fact that three lives had just changed forever on her banks.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_30ef7d3c-d424-5d9c-aa9f-97f7c4c209f0)

‘Gerroffme …’

Marla grumbled at Bluey as he tried to nudge her awake with his huge head. She turned over and snuggled deeper into the crisp, white, cotton duvet, desperately trying to hang on to the coat tails of her delicious dream. She stuck her head under the pillow as the ever-patient Bluey thumped his way around the bed to poke her again from the other side. She shot up with a guilty flush. She’d been dreaming about Gabe, who for some fathomless reason had been shirtless and fixing her wonky shower when it suddenly sprayed all over him. Jeez, he’d been very, very wet. She shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the disconcertingly sexy image.

Bluey stood by the door whining low in his throat with his head cocked to one side, and it finally dawned on Marla that there was someone knocking on the door. She scowled at the clock. It was just after eight on her first morning off for quite some time, so whoever the hell had decided to interrupt her much-cherished lie-in had better have something vitally important to say.

She shrugged her white waffle dressing gown on over the top of her cotton slip and belted it tight. A peep through the white voile blind didn’t help, because whoever was at the door was too close to the cottage for her to see. She straightened the blind and pushed her toes into her white terry-towelling flip-flops. A gift from Dora – she’d snipped the little pink ribbons off the front before she’d worn them. Jonny had been appalled, and insisted that her obsession with white was a direct reflection of her uptight personality. Marla eschewed his attempts at pop psychology; her mother had analysed her to death over the years. You didn’t get to be the child of a sex therapist and not have your every thought and word examined. Marla had learned pretty early on not to share her inner feelings with her mother unless she had at least an hour to spare and the inclination to spill her guts. She was self-aware enough to know that this was part of the reason behind her reserved nature as an adult. She’d watched her effusive, colourful parents run constantly at life head first and wanted something different for herself. Something less complicated. More relaxed. More white. White just made her feel clean, that was all. It helped her to breathe more deeply, to relax more easily. She shook her head at Bluey to warn him against climbing into her recently vacated, warm bed, and ran her hand along the handrail as she picked her way down the steep cottage stairs to the front door.

Her attempts to peer through the bevelled glass pane in the old oak door proved fruitless; she couldn’t recognise the warped silhouette on the other side. It looked male though. She slid back the bolt and inched the door open. She was right in her assessment. Male. Very definitely male. Very definitely attractive, too. And naggingly familiar somehow, but without its first hit of caffeine her brain had some way to go to catch up with her feet.

His smile sailed through the Marla Jacobs teeth test, and his sparkling blue eyes melted her last vestiges of annoyance at being woken up. To his further credit, he rather heroically didn’t let his eyes wander down over her state of undress.

Belatedly, she noticed the newspaper in his hand.

‘Are you the oldest paperboy in the world?’

He laughed and ran a hand through his floppy hair. It was so Hugh Grant that she wondered if he’d actually cut a photo out of a magazine and taken it to the hairdressers. If he said the words crikey and gosh in the same sentence in the next few minutes she’d know for sure.

‘Marla, hi. You probably don’t remember me from the other night …’