Assassin

13

The first morning at the ranch, Carver woke up with something tangled round his right foot. He reached down and felt a length of satin ribbon attached to a sliver of silk and lace. He remembered pulling that ribbon and its twin, and a sleepy grin crossed his face.

He was alone in the bed. Carver reached for his watch and was startled to see it was gone ten in the morning. He brushed his teeth, put on his jeans and wandered downstairs, expecting to find Maddy, but the kitchen and living-room were empty. The previous day she'd given him the guided tour of the house and its outbuildings. It struck him she might be out at the stable, tending to her horses, so he fixed himself a coffee, grabbed a pair of dark glasses and went outside.

The air was already warm, well on the way from the relative cool of early morning to the pure, dry heat of midday, and the sun was bright enough to make him glad of the shades. He stopped for a second to look at the forest-covered mountains ringing the horizon, their jagged peaks stabbing into the cloudless blue sky. Carver lived in Geneva, he was used to a spectacular backdrop, but that didn't make this one any less impressive.

The stables were empty, but as Carver came back outside he heard country music coming from the open-fronted, three-bay garage nearby, so he ambled across the compound till he came to a radio, left on a concrete floor next to a plastic bottle of mineral water and an open toolkit. Maddy's German Shepherd, Buster, was lying asleep beside them. Her open-top, metallic champagne Ford Bronco truck was lifted up on jacks just beyond him.

A pair of feet in battered old workboots poked out from underneath the truck, attached to legs encased in oily blue dungarees. Carver took a sip of coffee, put down his cup and peered under the Bronco with an inquisitive frown on his face.

'Hello?'

There was a muffled, high-pitched 'Shit!' then the boot-heels pushed down on the concrete and pulled their owner out from under the truck on a low mechanic's trolley.

Maddy got to her feet. One hand held a wrench, the other was making a futile effort to neaten the hair pinned up on the back of her head. Rebellious dark brown strands had escaped and fallen either side of her face, which was bare of make-up, other than a few smears of motor-oil. The top of her dungarees was tied around her waist. All she was wearing above that was a cap-sleeved white T-shirt with the words '[semi]sweet' written across the chest. The shirt was lightly speckled in dust and grime, as was the strip of flat, caramel-tanned tummy peeking out beneath it.

'Shit!' she repeated. 'I was hoping to get this done before you got up. Figured you'd be out for hours, the way you were lying there, snoring like a big ol' hog.'

She stopped for a moment and looked at Carver. He suddenly realized he was grinning like a village idiot.

'Yeah, go ahead, laugh,' she said. 'I know I look like crap.'

'No, you don't, you don't at all,' he said, slowly shaking his head, but still unable to take the smile off his face. 'You look great.'

'I do?'

Now she was smiling too and the way she was looking at him had changed. Carver was suddenly uncomfortably aware that not only had he not bothered to shave before he came looking for her, he had not brushed his hair or even put on a shirt.

Maddy pulled off her gloves and ran a single finger down Carver's chest. 'Well, you don't look so bad yourself, Mr Six-Pack. Couldn't resist showing it off, huh?'

Her finger was still moving down.

He reached out for her backside and pulled her towards him.

'We can't!' she said, giggling. 'Not in front of Buster!'

'He's asleep,' he said, and kissed her bare neck. 'How about the back of the truck – reckon the jacks'll hold us?'

Carver started nibbling Maddy's ear. She squirmed with pleasure and whispered, 'You'd have to take it real slow and gentle. Think you can manage that?'

'I can try,' he said.

He let go of her for a moment, clambered up into the back of the Bronco, then turned to give her a hand as she climbed up to join him.

The last words she said before his mouth covered hers were, 'Remember, slow and gentle…' A while later they walked back up to the house, arm in arm, with Buster bounding along beside them, wagging his tail so hard it was making circles in the air. He didn't seem too traumatized. They took a shower that seemed to take a little longer than the business of getting clean necessarily required. Then Carver sat on the edge of the bed and watched Maddy dry and brush the tumbling mane that fell halfway down her back.

She looked at him over her shoulder and said, 'So, you freaked out by a girl who does her own auto-mechanics?'

'Not at all. I respect all forms of competence. I like people who are good at things.'

There was just the hint of a dirty undertone in his voice as he said that.

'I agree, skill is very important,' she said with impeccably ladylike cool.

Carver wasn't sure he had the strength to take that thought any further, so he took the conversation on to safer ground: 'Seriously, how did you learn all that stuff?'

'I was an only child. I guess Dad didn't have anyone else to pass on his knowledge to, so he took me hunting every season for deer, pheasants and grouse. I learned how to shoot, how to keep a weapon properly maintained, how to service his truck. Maybe he thought I could be the boy he never had…'

'Not too much like a boy, thank God.'

Maddy was silent for a few moments, brushing her hair, her mind elsewhere.

'Suits you, being single,' he said. 'You look more relaxed, like you're a real woman, not someone's prize possession.'

Maddy gave her hair one last brushstroke, ran her hands through it to get precisely the right degree of artless tumble, then got up from her dressing table.

'Feel like some brunch?' she said.

'Thank God,' said Carver, 'I thought you'd never ask.'