“Of course it is. I want to show you off around town. Give the lads something to be jealous of. Make them see that the hottest property in Goldsands is all mine.”
He laid a hand lightly on her backside. She wanted to push him back against the change counter and ravish him then and there.
“Oh, I want to do things to you,” he murmured into her ear. “Very bad things. But I’d better wait till tonight.”
It nearly killed Flipp to step away from his masculine heat and leathery scent, but she managed it somehow.
“Can’t do tonight,” she said with an apologetic grimace. “Cordwainer’s asked me to do overtime.”
“He’s what?”
“It’s just a stock take, Rocky. Jesus. Calm down.”
“I can’t…Listen, I can’t talk now. When’s your lunch break?”
“Two.”
“Meet me…oh, I don’t know…meet me on the pier steps—you know the ones? They go down the side of the pier. We should be safe from view down there.”
“Okay.” Flipp, worried, watched him swagger off to the stairs. She had never had much of a sense of danger, but suddenly all her alarms were going off at full blast.
“I brought us some chips.” Flipp stepped delicately down the seaweed-slippery iron stairs to the platform at their foot, where Rocky stood brooding at the sea over the railing.
“Thanks.”
She joined him for a moment, leaning against the Victorian iron, watching the sea froth and lap against the pier’s legs. Down here, it seemed that you entered a different realm from the high, happy, sunny fun of the pleasure pier. Metal struts and bars crossed and intersected in a nightmare of tangled ironmongery while the air was cold and the wooden slats of the pier above conferred darkness on the platform. The sea was loud and menacing, the thing that drowned sailors rather than the thing that you bathed and splashed in.
Flipp shivered. “Chip?” She offered the cardboard cone, breathing in its reassuring salt-and-vinegar tang, using it to insulate her against the fear. Rocky took one and munched on it contemplatively before taking her by the hand and wrapping her into his arms so that they both looked out from the same vantage point, his chin on the top of her head.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen if you stay at the arcade,” he said. “You’ll be the next in a long line.”
“Long line of what?”
“Cordwainer doesn’t ask for references. Have you ever wondered why?”
“Not really. Too busy thanking my lucky stars.”
“I think he’s thanking his lucky stars for the day you walked in. Pretty girl, no references, something to hide,
something he can use as leverage.”
“You think he wants to…blackmail me?”
“I think he thinks you’re desperate. And you’ll do anything to hang on to your anonymous little job. Is he right?”
Flipp craned her neck up at Rocky. “No,” she said. “But I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have this job.”
“Claim benefits?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Rocky, just tell me, will you? Tell me what this grave danger is. I suppose you think he’s going to try and get me into bed. Is that it? I’ll say no, that’s all.”
“He’ll sack you.”
“Not if I play it right. I bet Cordwainer’s a man who likes the chase. If I hold out on him, I’ll just pique his interest.”