Sleeping with the Soldier. Charlotte Phillips

only sources of light. She stood up and looked curiously at Poppy’s brother, sprawled in the shadows on the sofa. Deciding she must have imagined it, she moved to sit back down.

      He twisted in his sleep.

      She frowned. Abandoning her chair, she took a step towards him. His hands were twisting in the throw she’d draped over him and he let out another cry. Almost a shout this time, enough to make her jump. She watched his face as it contorted. Sympathy twisted in her stomach as she caught sight again of his scarred chest in the dim light. Where was he right now in his mind? In the middle of some hideous battle?

      His body twisted sharply again and she couldn’t stand it any longer. She reached out to shake him awake, to take him away from whatever horror he was reliving.

      First there was the vague impression of something stroking his upper arm. Tentative, not rough. And then there was the scent, something clean and flowery, like roses. It reminded Alex vaguely of his mother’s dressing room back at their country home, with its antique dressing table and ornate perfume bottles and he flinched at the thought. It had been years since he’d visited the family home and he had absolutely no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. Why would he? For a place filled on and off with so many people, so many offshoots of the family, it had been bloody lonely for a kid.

      He opened his eyes, disorientation making his mind reel.

      He struggled to place himself in a panic. Not his army quarters. And not his room in his sister’s flat, with its calming military organisation. Instead he was in a room that could only really be described as a boudoir. And it was getting dark.

      He struggled to his feet, his mind whirling. Of course, he’d been locked out of Poppy’s flat and the downstairs neighbour had offered to make him tea. That was the last thing he remembered. He looked down at himself as the quilt covering him fell away and saw that the towel around his hips was hanging askew. He snatched it closed again. Horrified, he realised he’d been sleeping here in a stranger’s flat with his scars on show for her to view at her leisure.

      The blonde neighbour was standing a few feet away, an expression of concern on her pretty face. The sewing machine was lit up on the desk by a bright angled lamp. A neatly folded pile of pink silk lay further down the table. A tentative smile touched the corners of her rosebud mouth.

      ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘You were …’ a light frown touched her eyebrows ‘… calling out in your sleep.’

      The heat of humiliation began at his neck and climbed burningly upwards as he regained a grip on reality. He’d had a nightmare. In full view of her. Had he shouted? What had he said? How could he have been so stupid as to let himself fall asleep here?

      ‘What time is it?’ he managed, rubbing a hand through his hair as if it might somehow help to clear his foggy head.

      ‘Nearly six,’ she said. ‘I was just about to wake you. Poppy’s home, I think—I heard her go up the stairs to the flat. So you should be able to get back in now.’

       Six?

      He’d slept the entire day. He avoided her eyes. What must she think of him, just falling asleep like that? And then having a bad dream, like some kid. He couldn’t quite believe that he could relax enough to fall asleep in a strange place with a strange person. His tiredness must be a lot more ingrained than he’d thought it was.

      ‘I can’t believe I fell asleep,’ he blustered. ‘You should have woken me.’

      ‘I couldn’t really believe it either,’ she said. ‘Of course I think my business plan is the most interesting topic of discussion on the planet.’ She smiled. ‘But it made you nod off in the space of about ten minutes.’

      He shook his head. What the hell must she be thinking?

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘It’s a joke,’ she said, making a where’s-your-sense-of-humour? face. ‘I’m joking?’

      ‘Right,’ he said. Awkwardness filled the room, making it feel heavy and tense. He had to get out of here.

      ‘I was going to wake you,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t have the heart.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ He zeroed in on that comment. Was this some kind of sympathy vote because she’d seen his awful scars? Or worse, because he’d cried out in his sleep? He didn’t do sympathy. And he didn’t do bursts of emotion either. Nearly thirty years in the stiff-upper-lip environment of his military-obsessed family did that for a person. Stoicism was essential. His father had made that pretty damn clear when Alex was just a kid, an attitude later reinforced at boarding school and then in the army. Emotion was something you stamped on, definitely not something to be expressed among strangers.

      ‘You looked so peaceful,’ she went on. ‘And you’ve clearly been getting hardly any sleep if your noise pollution is anything to go by.’

      There was an edge to her voice that told him she was still narked about that. He didn’t let it penetrate, there was no need to, since he had absolutely no intention of running into her again after today.

      ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked him. ‘Your last one got cold. Are you sure you’re OK?’

      He shook his head, automatically folding the enormous throw and placing it neatly at the side of the sofa. He had no idea how she could live in such a cluttered room without going mad. It jarred his military sense of order.

      ‘I am perfectly fine,’ he snapped. ‘And I’ve taken up enough of your time. Now I know Poppy’s back I’ll get out of your way.’

      He headed for the door as she watched him, a bemused expression on the pretty face.

      ‘Bye, then,’ he heard her call after him as he pulled the door shut.

      A thank-you might have been nice.

      Then again, she didn’t have time for niceties. Neither did she give a stuff as long as Alex curbed the disruptive noise from upstairs.

      Forty-eight hours had now passed with a definite reduction in noise levels although she’d seen no corresponding drop in the stream of disposable girls visiting. That was the thing about working from home for all waking hours—the comings and goings of other residents in the building amounted to distractions, and she couldn’t fail to notice them. He must have moved his bed away from the radiator because the endless clanking had ceased. Not, of course, that she was dwelling on Alex Spencer’s bedroom activities.

      What mattered was that normal sleep quality had been resumed and thank goodness, because the launch of the shop was only a week away now. Just time to fit in a quick shower this morning and then she would head over there to add a few more finishing touches to the décor before she began to move stock in. She’d managed to track down a beautiful French-style dressing screen, the kind you might find in a lady’s bedroom, gorgeously romantic. No run-of-the-mill changing cubicles for her little shop. Still, she wanted to try it out in different positions until she found the perfect location for it.

      She rubbed shampoo into her hair, closing her eyes against the soap bubbles and running through a mental list of the hundred-plus things she needed to get done today. A full-length gilt-framed mirror had been delivered the previous day; it would provide the perfect vintage centrepiece for the small shop floor, and she needed to decide where best to put that too. Then there were garlands of silk flowers to hang and some tiny white pin lights to add to the girly atmosphere she wanted to achieve.

      The torrent of water rinsing through her hair seemed to be losing its force. She opened one eye and squinted through the bubbles up at the shower head. Yep. The usual nice flow was definitely diminishing. And without the sound of the running water she was suddenly able to hear a monstrous clanking noise coming from behind the wall and above her head.

      ‘What the hell …?’ she said aloud as the water reduced to little more than a trickle. The clanking built to a crescendo.

      Oh, just bloody perfect. Naked,