‘Oh.’

‘Is there a problem with that?’ Bryant’s eyes narrowed. ‘Something I should know about?’

‘No, no.’

Watching the closing sequences of the briefing disc, Chris turned it over in his head and tried to work out why he did feel there was a problem with Nick Makin. Makin hadn’t exactly come across as friendly, but neither had Hewitt, or Hamilton for that matter, and a lot of Shorn execs had probably heard the story of Elysia Bennett and Chris Faulkner’s sentiment attack.

The disc ended with the Shorn Associates logo engraved into a metallic finish on the screen, then clicked off. Chris shelved his thoughts, picked up his drink and went to look for his wife.

He thought for a moment she’d gone to bed with a book, but as he passed the kitchen he saw that the connecting door to the garage was open and the lights were on. Led by the clinking sounds of tools, he walked through, and around the bulk of the Saab, which was jacked up on one side. Carla’s coverall-clad legs and hips protruded from under the car beside an unrolled oilskin cloth full of spanners. As he watched she must have stretched out to one side for something, because the angle of her hips shifted and the plain of her stomach changed shape beneath the coveralls. He felt the customary twinge of arousal that her more sinuous movements still fired through him.

‘Hey,’ he kicked one of her feet. ‘What’re you doing?’

She stayed beneath the car. ‘What does it look like I’m doing. I’m checking your undercarriage.’

‘I thought you’d gone to bed.’

There was no response other than the creak of something metallic being tightened.

‘I said I thought you’d gone to bed.’

‘Yeah, I heard you.’

‘Oh. You just didn’t think it was worth answering me.’

From the stillness he knew she had stopped work. He didn’t hear the sigh, but he could have cued it, accurate to milliseconds.

‘Chris, you’re looking at my legs. Obviously I haven’t gone to bed.’

‘Just making conversation.’

‘Well, it’s not the most engaging conversational gambit I’ve ever heard, Chris. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up on it.’

‘Jesus! Carla, sometimes you can be so—‘ Anger and dismay at the idea of having a row with his wife’s feet gave ground in a single jolt to mirth. It was such a ludicrous image that he suddenly found himself smirking and trying to stifle a snort of laughter.

She heard it and slid out from under the car as if spring-loaded there. One hand knuckled across her nose and left streaks of grease.

‘What’s so funny?’

For some reason, the irritation in her voice combined with her rapid ejection from under the car and the grease on her nose drove the final nail into the coffin of Chris’s seriousness. He began to cackle uncontrollably. Carla sat up and watched curiously as he leaned back on the wall and laughed.

‘I said what’s so ...’

Chris slid down the wall, spluttering. Carla gave up as a reflexive smile fought its way onto her face.

‘What?’ she asked, more softly.

‘It was just,’ Chris was forcing the words out between giggles and snorts. ‘Just your legs, you know.’

‘Something funny about my legs?’

‘Well, your feet really.’ Chris put his glass down and wiped at his eyes. ‘I, just.’ He shook his head and waved a hand with minimal descriptive effect. ‘Just thought it was funny, talking to them, you know. Your feet.’ He snorted again. ‘It’s. Doesn’t matter.’

She got up from the floor with an accustomed flexing motion and went to crouch beside him. Turning her hand to present the ungrimed back, she brushed it against his cheek.

‘Chris ...’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said suddenly.

She held up her hands. ‘I’ve got to wash up. In fact, I need a shower.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

In the shower, he stood behind her and ran soaped hands over her breasts, down across her belly and into the V of her thighs. She chuckled deep in her throat and reached back for his erection, hands still gritty with the last of the engine grime. For a while it was enough to lean in the corner of the shower stall together, locked in an unhurried kiss, rubbing at each other languidly in the steam and pummelling jets of hot water. When the last of the dirt and soap had cascaded off them and swirled away, Carla swung herself up and braced her upper body in the corner while her thighs gripped Chris around the waist and her hips ground against this.

It was an inconclusive coupling, so Chris shut off the water and staggered with Carla’s arms and thighs still locked around him into the bedroom, where they collapsed giggling onto the bed and set about running through every posture in the manual.

Later, they lay on soaked sheets with their limbs hooked around each other and faces angled together. Moonlight fell in through the window and whitened the bed.

‘Don’t go,’ she said suddenly.

‘Go?’ Chris looked down in puzzlement. He had slid out of her some time ago. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here in this bed with you. Forever.’

‘Forever?’

‘Well, till about six-thirty anyway.’

‘I’m serious, Chris.’ She lifted herself to look into his face. ‘Don’t go on this Cambodia thing. Not up against Nakamura.’

‘Carla.’ It was almost a reprimand the way he said it. ‘We’ve been over this before. It’s my job. We don’t have any choice. There’s the house, the cards, how are we going to cover those things if I’m not driving?’

‘I know you’ve got to drive, Chris, but at Hammett McColl—‘

‘It’s not the same, Carla. At HM I already had my rep. I’ve got to carve it out all over again at Shorn, or some snot-nosed junior analyst is going to call me out, and once that starts you’re watching your tail forever. If they think you’re easing up, going soft, they’re on you like fucking vultures. The only way to beat that is to stay hard and keep them scared. That way you make partner, and from then on it’s a Sunday afternoon spin. They can’t touch you. No one below partner status is allowed to call you out.’ A vague disquiet passed over him as he remembered what Bryant had told him about Louise Hewitt and the partner called Page. ‘And partner challenges are few and far between. You see them coming. You can negotiate. It’s more civilised at that level.’

‘Civilised.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Carla was silent for a while. Then she rolled away from him and huddled herself into the pillow.

‘The disc says Nakamura are going to send Mitsue Jones.’

Chris shifted a little and tucked in behind her. ‘Yes, probably. But if you’d stayed to watch the rest of it, you would have seen that Jones hasn’t duelled in the last six months. And it won’t be her home turf. There’s a good chance they won’t even use her because of that. Not knowing the road can get you killed a lot faster than going up against a better driver. And anyway, driving on the same team as Mike Bryant and this other guy Makin, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Really.’

Carla shivered. ‘I saw a profile of Jones a couple of years ago. They say she’s never lost a tender.’

‘Nor have I. Nor has Bryant as far as I know.’

‘Yes, but she’s driven over two dozen challenges, and she’s only twenty-eight. I saw her interviewed, and she looks scary, Chris. Really scary.’

Chris laughed gently against the skin at the nape of Carla’s neck. ‘That’s just camerawork. In the States, she’s done centrefolds for Penthouse Online. Pouting lips, the works. She’s a fucking pin-up, Carla. It’s all hype.’

For a moment, he almost believed it himself.

‘When is it?’ she asked quietly.

‘Wednesday next week. Dawn start. I’ve got to sleep over at the office Tuesday night. You want to come in and stay in the hospitality suites with me?’

‘No. I’ll go across to Dad’s.’

‘You could always ask him to come and stay here for a change.’ Chris frowned and nuzzled at her back. ‘You know I don’t like the thought of you sleeping in that shithole. I worry about you.’