Did the Earth Move? - Softcover

"Nils."

"Yes?"

"Nothing. I'm just trying it out. Nils...Nils," she repeated slowly, resting her head back against his arm and feeling dangerously close to falling asleep, right there in the middle of the afternoon. This was so good. How come she had forgotten how good this was?

Eve turned and smiled at the broad, freckled face beside hers on the pillow. "It might be quite fun to do this all again some time," she said, already with a little stomach flip replaying the best bits in her mind.

"Yes please," he answered, in the Dutch, butter-melting-on-toast accent which had landed her here in the first place.

He rolled onto his side and propped his head up with a hand to take a better look at her. So pretty in the way he thought of as totally English: skinny as a whippet, perfect nose, thin lips, hair too blond, too long and scruffy, nails...endearingly, the worst he'd ever seen. Had she been digging with her bare hands?

Without another word, just smiling, he ran a fingertip slowly, slowly from her chin to her belly button.

"You're very nice naked," he said.

"Likewise," was her answer and she moved in close so they were pressed up against each other. "And now I know you're a natural blond," she teased, moving her fingers down his chest to the damp curl of hair at the very base of his stomach.

He put both arms round her, squeezed her tightly and she felt herself sighing with relief. This was OK. It was good. It was fun. She was going to be all right. She was going to be able to move on.

She heard a vigorous scratching and turned out of the hug to see one of her grey cats sprawled over the bottom of the bed, pawing at its ear.

"So they should make a full recovery?" she asked Nils.

"A week of the drops and there shouldn't be any more problems. But I hope you'll call me anyway."

Because Nils was her vet, well, the cats' vet. She'd known him for almost a year now. They had laughed and flirted in his surgery, and she had been to his above-the-practice flat twice before for an elegant blue and white cup of scalding coffee. But this was the first time she and the cats had charmed their way into the plain, tidy bedroom which she was looking at properly now: white walls, white sheets, dark wooden furniture neatly stacked with books and clothes and shoes, a bed which had creaked, groaned and wobbled quite alarmingly all afternoon.

There was one big window, framed with masculine green-striped curtains, and filled up with the bare branches of a cherry tree. It was a clear, early February day, but the sunlight slanting in through the window was lukewarm.

"South facing," she said, prompted by her own thoughts, "You could grow all sorts of exotic stuff in windowboxes...chilli peppers, tomatoes, basil...I could plant some up for you, if you like."

"Windowboxes?" he replied. "This is what you mad Englishwomen do instead of sex, isn't it?"

"No! I have sex...sometimes. Occasionally." But you couldn't really call one afternoon of sex in three years "occasionally," could you? Three years!! How had this happened?

"I'm a busy girl," she said.

"I know."

"I have four children, two exes, a full-time job, two cats, one garden, a very messy flat and an old car..." She counted this all off on her fingers then gave a shrug...As if that little summary did her weird and intricate past any justice at all. But just how much would a new lover want to know about her children and their histories? Denny, aged twenty-two, Tom just turned twenty (not to mention their long-lost dad), then Anna, nine, Robbie, two, and their father Joseph. The complicated one. The man she'd most loved, most hated, most wanted, most pushed away. She twiddled at Joseph's ring, still encircling her fourth finger. No, a new lover would particularly not want to hear about him.

"You are busy," Nils agreed. "But I'm very glad you took an afternoon off."

"Do you think your receptionist suspects us?" She twined a leg round his and registered all the interested stirrings going on between them.

"How could she? I didn't even suspect us," he said.

"Oh, but I did." There was a throatiness to her delicious giggle which he hoped meant they were going to start all over again.

He put his warm coffee-tasting mouth over hers, rolled her on top of him and she felt another big surge of interest. Whoa. Light touchpaper and stand back.

"Like riding a bike" were the words popping up somewhere at the back of her mind. It may have been three years, but you didn't forget how to do this. His tongue was now exploring places he was making it very difficult to feel shy about because she felt turned on, touched, brushed against from fingertip to toe.

She could even hear herself groaning in a strange out-of-body kind of way: "Yeah. Yeah. Ohhhh...More..." More? That was the problem. More. She'd done it now. She'd reactivated the sex button and now she was going to want Nils morning, noon and night. And really, as she kept telling herself, she was TOO BUSY.

"What?" His head ducked up from under the duvet and her eyes snapped open.

"What?" she asked but suspected she'd said that last bit out loud.

"You're feeling dizzy?"

"No, no. Fine." What was the etiquette here? Did you just say "carry on, please"?

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

He was holding himself up on his arms over her and she had to have a little squeeze of his hard, blond biceps. "You're lovely," she said and meant it. He was. In a totally different way to...oh no, don't go that route...never mind...concentrate please on the muscular vet who is licking and breathing against the side of your neck, whose fingertips are tracing, circling there, there...oh yeah...

She wrapped her legs round him and he was inside again. No sex for three years then three shots in one afternoon. Was this a record? It was certainly an overdose. And how was she going to explain away the growing stubble rash on the side of her face?

But she was very pleased that she had decided to give in to her growing conviction that Nils van der Hoeven should probably be the one who was going to help her make the transition from separated to single to back out there again. She had made the appointment for the cats -- which did actually have sore ears, she hadn't deliberately infected them or anything -- but she had booked in for the end of the vet's day, hoping that he didn't have much else planned and wondering if she could still remember the slightest thing about seducing men or at least letting them know it was OK to go about seducing you.

So that was how she'd ended up in Nils's little consulting room scooping her cats onto the table in a way that just happened to make a silver G-string pop up over the top of her tight combat trousers, and when she turned round she could see his gaze was straying, as intended, to the cleavage Wonderbra-ed up underneath her slinky pink cardigan.

"Ear infection, I think." She had run an armful of jangling bangles through her hair and smiled glossy lipstick at him, thinking she was maybe overdoing this a little. He had examined them carefully and the two fat ladies -- as she thought of the cats now -- had purred and sat still for him.

"I've been away, so I don't know how long they've been like this," she'd said.

"OK...so, where have you been?" he'd asked in the accent which had a strangely hypnotic, unzipping effect on her.

"Oh nowhere interesting, visiting family out of town."

"Nowhere interesting...hmmm...my most interesting client says 'nowhere interesting,'" he'd teased.

"And what makes you think I'm so interesting?" she'd smiled at him. Ah, standing there in the beam of his warm, amber eyes was like basking in the sun. She'd felt so happy and relaxed, she'd had to fight the overwhelming desire to start taking her clothes off right there and then.

For a moment, all she'd been able to think about was sex on the disinfected linoleum floor with the cats watching and a waiting room full of pensioners with constipated dogs and moulting budgies tut-tutting about the delay and wondering what the rhythmic banging noise was.

God, Eve get a grip. She'd tried to click that daydream off.

But he was so nice and solid. The rolled-up sleeves of his white coat revealed chunky forearms dusted with freckles and golden hair and she couldn't help picturing the strong, golden-downed body underneath the coat. She'd looked up at his face, big jaw, blond and brown tousled hair in a messy pudding bowl kind of thing. He was gorgeous. And at least 35-ish...not too young. Still inexplicably single?

"Well," he was answering the question she'd now completely forgotten about, "I still don't know why someone like you is wearing an engagement ring, dressing like a teenager and living alone with children and cats in this part of town. I think it is probably a very interesting story...huh?"

"Well...maybe. I like it here," she'd smiled back, answering the easy part of the question.

"I do too."

"And anyway, why is anyone single?" Big smile, little flick through hair. "Are you still single?"

"Yes." This said decisively as he crossed his arms over his broad chest and squared up to her: "I'm nearly finished for the day. Would you like to come up for some coffee?"

"Of course. I'd have invited myself, if you hadn't asked," she'd confessed.

"Really?"

She'd gone back to the waiting room with the cats, feeling almost breathless with the suspense. Surreptitiously fluffing her hair, hoicking up the cleavage and tugging down the combat trousers, she'd wondered if she still had any idea how to do this: let someone know you wanted just a little bit more than their friendship. Not too much more -- just a little bit.

"I have wine too," he'd said as she followed him up the stairs to his flat. "Maybe you'd prefer a glass of wine."

"Yeah, if you like, or ketamine? You know, the horse tranquillizer: apparently that works much faster." Oh my God, I've clearly gone insane.

They were in the hallway now and he'd turned to look at her with amusement.

"Sorry, why am I...