Alison Found

"It's true," Lesley said with a little giggle. "I offered to lie back and think of England, while you had your wicked way with me."

I blushed, and Ali snorted in amusement.

"I told you at the time I was moving abroad, and there was no way I'd let you have a child of mine and not be around to help raise it. Not that I wasn't tempted," I admitted.

Sam added, "He rejected me as well, but we got our own back. We made him the children's godfather."

"Who is the father?" Ali wanted to know.

"Don't know, and don't want to know," Lesley said. "It was arranged through a clinic. We gave them a set of criteria, and we both used the same anonymous donor."

Sam snorted, then said, "What she's not telling you is that the criteria was, find the closest match to him," and she pointed at me.

The meal was excellent, and it was fairly late before we said our goodbyes. I nipped into the cottage and kissed my sleeping godchildren goodnight, and then we made the 20-minute drive to my apartment. One of David's security team was sitting behind the reception desk with the building's doorman. David escorted us to the door of my apartment and then left us with a request that we contact him if we intended to go anywhere that wasn't secure.

I closed the door behind us and followed Ali across the lounge as she moved over to look out of the tall windows. The views of the esplanade and the shingle beach to the sea was one of the reasons I'd bought the apartment.

We were entering new territory for us. This woman had been the love of my life for all my formative years, yet we'd never been intimate. Oh, we'd petted, there had been mutual masturbation and there hadn't been an inch of her body I hadn't explored, but I'd been willing to honor her wish that we would wait for her 18th birthday before we made that final commitment to each other.

I gathered from the hesitant way that Ali watched me approach that she was also wondering about our future.

"How many bedrooms?" she asked pointedly.

"Two," I replied. "I can take the guest room."

She sighed in exasperation and stepped close, looking up at me. "That's not going to happen. I'm here so we can reconnect and get back to where were."

Reconnect, I noted, not hopefully reconnect. I got the impression that it was a done deal as far as she was concerned. My sense of anger rose, she was so damned used to getting her own way, she was happy to run roughshod over my feelings.

"No," I said, "you need to understand, I'm scared of committing to you. I'll accept that you had no choice when your mother dragged you off to the States. What I can't accept is the fact you never ever tried to get in touch. It's not like you didn't know how to find me, my parents still live in the same damn house."

"I told you why," her voice trailed off at my expression. She swallowed and turned to face the view.

"America was so different to anything I'd experienced before," she admitted, not turning to face me. "Yes, I missed you, but for those first few months there was so much going on, and Mum was so paranoid that Dad would find us that I kept putting off trying to contact you, and I honestly thought you'd get in touch with me."

She looked at me, trying to see if I'd joined her in admiring the view in listening to her. I had, so she continued, "I did think about you all the time that first year, but as I got involved at school and then college I was thinking about you less and less." She looked embarrassed at that statement.

"How often did you think about me over the last year?" I asked.

"Once," she said, "on your birthday. I have a birthday reminder app on my phone, and Lucy asked me who you were."

I snorted, "So I'm just a birthday memory."

"God, you're so much more. I cried when I realized how long it was since I'd last seen you. Remembering how much I missed you was the main reason I split up from Simon."

I wasn't sure where she was going with this. Was I really supposed to believe that I was the reason she'd broken up with her last boyfriend/lover? "But you knew nothing about what had happened to me, Christ I could have been married or even dead."

She laughed, "You're definitely not dead, and you told me you're not married."

Then she became serious, "I finished up on set last month, and I'd made a decision that I wasn't going to take on any more projects until I found you. I had just contacted a detective agency with the intention of trying to find you when you popped up like a bad penny."

I wasn't sure what to make of that. "Ali, I'm tired, it's been a long day," I said. "I'm happy that you wanted to get in touch. It's a pity it didn't happen two years ago, but that's just water under the bridge. I'm going to bed; you are welcome to join me, but I'll understand if you don't. We have a couple of days to see if there is still something there between us before you need to be in London. Let's see what happens, shall we?"

She nodded, took my hand and led me to the bedroom. "What's going to happen is we are going to share your bed, and we are going to do what we should have done years ago." She let go of my hand and made a shooing gesture at me, in the direction of the kitchen. She started shedding clothes as she carried on walking to the bedroom.

"Bring some water and snacks," she said over her shoulder as she dropped her bra on the floor. "You are going to fuck me stupid until I'm unconscious and hopefully, not able to walk straight for days, and I'm not going to let you go until you've fulfilled that."

Given my options, I did what any red-blooded English man would do. I grabbed a pack of water bottles from the fridge and a packet of chocolate digestives, grateful that David's people had stocked the kitchen. I was down to my boxers by the time I entered the bedroom.

She took no prisoners; her naked body was wrapped around mine within seconds of me entering the room. She hooked a leg behind mine and with a shift of her hips, pushed me back onto the bed. She landed on top of me, winding me. The water and biscuits knocked out of my grasp, spinning across the covers.

"Christ, Ali," I gasped, trying to recover my breath.

She giggled and gave me her version of mouth to mouth resuscitation while using her free hand to remove the last of my constricting clothing. She shivered as we both lay naked on my bed, her aggressiveness abated for a moment.

She rolled to be able to look at my face, her fingers mirroring the motion of mine as I gently caressed her.

"You should have been my first," she whispered, her eyes wide open in sorrow. "I broke my promise to you." She took my hand and pressed it against the breast, her nipple a hard bullet under my palm.

"I want you to claim every inch of me as yours," she continued, "and I mean every inch. Nothing is off limits; I want you to take my ass. I've never let anyone near it, so it's the only virgin hole I can give you."

Not what I had expected her to say; oh, I can't admit I wasn't interested, my jutting cock attested to that. Then she surprised me by jumping out of bed and removing a small object from her luggage.

"I almost forgot," she said.

She held her hand out to me, and the small old green velvet jewelry box sat in her palm. I hissed my breath in; she still had it. I'd saved my money and on her 16th birthday had given her the gold heart and chain in that box.

She opened the box, and the little gold heart sat in the silken interior. The chain looked different as I picked up the pendant.

"I wore it until the chain broke and it couldn't be repaired again," Ali said. "I found a close replacement, but it didn't seem right to carry on wearing it. The original is under the lining."

The sad thin 9 karat gold chain, the best I could afford at the time, was where she said it was. The chain had broken in two places, and the clasp was missing. The replacement was definitely better quality. On the back of the heart were our initials, the engravings worn to be almost illegible.

She bent her head down. "I've waited a long time for you to put it on me again."

"I can't believe you still have it," I said as I fastened it around her neck.

"It's always in my jewelry bag I travel with, the heart's never been out of my possession since you gave it to me."

The sex was indescribable, literally indescribable. I honestly can't find the words to describe the feeling, the emotions, the complete joining of our two souls. It was everything that both of us had been anticipating since we'd made the commitment to each other as teenagers. Sweat covered bodies joined and parted only to join again with cries of pleasure and urgency.

Ali was true to her words; we never left the bedroom for the next day. The bathroom was behind a partition so technically it was still part of the bedroom, and if you kept the French-doors open, so was the balcony.

We made love on the bed, under the shower, in the bath, and on the balcony, and a few places I can't recall, before hunger drove us out of our sanctuary 24 hours later. With Ali walking gingerly, we bought fish and chips from the late night Chippy. Eaten out of the paper as we sat on the beach, they tasted better than any three-star meal either of us ever had.

Lights from the West pier reflected off the sea, and the waves crashed down on the shingle. We licked the salt and vinegar off our fingers, and we both reflected on where we were in our relationship

I broke the silence between us. "How do you see this working out; we have two completely different lifestyles. Do we both compromise, or are you expecting me to make the changes?"

"I don't want you to change; I want to be the one who compromises. I'm rich Jos; I don't have to work again."

"Have or want?"

"If I was offered the perfect project, I'd give you all the facts and let you decide."

"So if I were to offer you a project, would you consider it?"

"That depends," she said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the waves on the shingle. "On what it is?"

"It's the same one I offered you many years ago, a lifetime of love and the chance to make a family."

She rested her head on my shoulder. "I think you could sell that proposal to me very easily. There's a price though," and she waggled her hand in my direction, pointedly tapping her ring finger.

I thought of the engagement ring I'd been ready to give her on my return from Australia. My grandmother's ring, the one my parents had given to me. It was an impressive three-carat emerald cut flawless diamond, flanked by two large sapphires and was a family heirloom, first given to my great, great grandmother over a hundred years ago. For a long time, I'd worn it on a chain around my neck. I wanted it with me in the expectation of Ali's return so I could give it to her. Now it was in a safety deposit box at my local bank.

"I had a ring for you; I had it with me when we got back from Australia," I whispered.

She lost the smile from her face and gave a little sob. "You'd bought me a ring?"

I shook my head, and said in a light voice, trying to ease her mood. "I was a teenager; I couldn't afford the ring you deserved. I was given it; it was Gran's ring, it's been in the family for donkey years."

"That sounds perfect," she said hopefully. "Have you still got it?"

I nodded, "I keep it in the bank for safekeeping."

Then I pulled her around to face me. "Ali, if you are serious about all of this then I will get it tomorrow and place it on your finger. But if you are not sure, or this is just a passing fancy, then tell me to leave it where it is."

She took my face between her hands and pulled me close. She delicately kissed me, an act so laced with emotion that my heart stuttered. She drew back and said with passion, "I've waited for such a long time for this. There's no way I'd let you get away."

"I take it that's a yes then!"

"Idiot, of course, it is."

The music the DJ was playing in the far room was overpowering, and the heavy thud of the baseline pervaded the whole club, even the area set aside for the distributor's party. Not for the first time that evening I wondered just what the fuck I was doing there. I was missing the peace and quiet of my boat.

I'd hoped and naïvely anticipated that the act of belatedly placing the ring on her finger would go a long way to calm the worries I still had. She was mine the ring shouted, but for how long, the pit of my stomach replied. I was still suffering these swings in confidence as we returned to London to attend the premiere of her latest film, a romantic comedy.

The premiere passed as smoothly as any of those events ever did. The audience had been full of the high and not so mighty of the London elite, with a scattering of minor royals. I was deftly shuffled to one side for the meet and greet in the foyer. I was mildly surprised that I was even allowed to sit next to Ali during the screening, it had taken a lot of last-minute scrabbling from Lucy to obtain an invite for me.

It wasn't until the press interviews following the showing that the journalists noticed the ring on Ali's finger. She hadn't been wearing it when we'd arrived, and she'd only slipped it onto her finger as the film finished.

"I don't want to get into a press frenzy over us before the event, it will distract them from the film," she had told me in the car when I noticed her slip it off. "I don't want us to be a distraction. I'll be wearing it afterward, I promise."

"I've reconnected with my oldest friend, my first boyfriend," was what she repeated to the numerous questions as she clutched my hand.

I couldn't understand half the questions that were shouted in our direction. Yet there was one running theme to them that disturbed me. She was continually asked 'when had she broken up with Simon, and had she returned his ring?'

"You were engaged? I thought you had broken up long before that meal at the restaurant," I said in her ear.

She kept on smiling and whispered, "We were never formally engaged, I thought he'd understood we were over, months ago."

"And his ring?"

"I never accepted it."

Then we were in the car, and she and Lucy were on their phones for the ten minutes it took us to drive to the nightclub where the after-screening party was being held, so I was unable to ask the myriad of questions that were rattling around in my head.

We entered, and I pulled her to one side, finding a quiet alcove where we could talk. I had to prevent Lucy from joining us forcibly. David lurked at the entrance to deter unwanted visitors.

"Tell me about Simon," I demanded. "Were you engaged and when did you split up? I thought it was all over between you, but I'm beginning to wonder." Then I had a bad thought, "Are you still in a relationship with him?"

"No," she said forcefully, holding my gaze. "I'm only in one relationship, and that's with you." She stared at me trying to see if I believed her and when my expression didn't change she said. "I was attracted to Simon when we worked together last year. He was fun to be with, but that was all. I might have let him think I was more interested than I was."

"What does that mean?"

"He wanted to get married, and I kept putting him off, but apparently not forcefully enough, as I never actually said no. He was nice, but he wasn't you. Somewhere along the way, the press got the impression we were engaged." She shook her head, "We weren't! Or at least I didn't think so."

"So why were you at that restaurant with him?"

"That wasn't a date; we hadn't seen each other for a couple of months, and we were just supposed to get caught up. He'd mentioned a new project I might be interested in as a teaser, but that wasn't his goal, all he was interested was us getting back together. He was going on about us getting married and wanted us to announce our engagement to the press. When your friend came over asking for an autograph, I was so pleased to have the distraction. Usually, I don't like people coming up to me in restaurants. He was pissed off at the interruption."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. Well, that's as far as he'd got when I saw you. Recognizing you sitting at your table was the final nail in his coffin. Oh, I like him, he's been a good friend over the years, but there just was no spark between us anymore. I just said 'no more,' and chased after you, and you know the rest."

"Ash," called Lucy from the entrance, "Ash, you need to get in there. Everyone is waiting for you. I'm running out of excuses for you."

"Damn," Ali muttered. "Jos, I need to go and mingle. It's what the film company expects of their stars. I want you by my side."

I took her hand, and we entered the madhouse. It wasn't a party; it was a glorified press conference and bitch session. I was just a prop for the chief attraction. A prop who was at best ignored, and at worse misunderstood.

I must have been asked the same question, or a variation of it, countless times.

"Don't you feel guilty breaking up Simon and Ashley, they were such a wonderful couple."

At least the press were willing to listen to our explanations. How we were old friends and of our teenage relationship.

Ali tried responding to the questions about Simon by explaining that he had believed that there'd been far more to their relationship than she had.

"But you were supposedly engaged," they would respond.

"No, we weren't, just close friends," was Ali's answer. Then she would indicate the ring on her finger. "I'm engaged to Josh, and we will be getting married as soon as we can arrange it."

After a while, the press left us for more willing victims. That left me vulnerable to the attention, or lack of, from Ali's friends, colleagues and Simon.

Ali's friends quickly drew her into their circles leaving me standing at the perimeter. I had expected her to keep me at her side, but other than a few initial backward glances, she seemed to ignore me.

Lucy came and stood by my side. "They don't know you," she said. "And they are nervous about what your relationship with Ash is going to mean to them. A lot of them get work on film projects, based on her recommendations. She's already told her agent that she's not going to take any new roles for the foreseeable future and they are worried."

"That's fine," I responded, "but I hope they are aware that it's not my decision she wants to cut back on her work? All I've told Ali is that I have my own life and that if she wants to join me, she's welcome. Is her decision going to affect you?"

"Slightly, but I'm employed by her directly, and she's already told me she'll be keeping me on. I guess my role will change a bit, but I'm fine with that. To be honest, if it means a less hectic lifestyle, I'm all for it. But don't the stories about what's she's been up to over the last few years worry you, her other boyfriends, the party lifestyle?"

"No more than it should worry her about what I've been doing. Alison didn't have a choice when her mother took her away. She's been living her own life for the last 12 years. Am I bitter that she didn't make an attempt to contact me when she was able? I guess so, but I don't know what the circumstances were, so how am I supposed to judge her?" I gave Lucy a speculative look, trying to gauge her agenda.

"It's weird listening to you call her Ali; I've only ever known her as Ashley. So the fact that's she's over there talking to an ex-lover who'd be very happy to lose the ex from the status, doesn't worry you?"

To be honest, it did. Ali was in the middle of a small group of people, the man standing beside her had his hand placed possessively on her shoulder. I knew he was an American tennis player, and that only because he'd done a 'McEnroe' when he'd crashed out of the first round at Wimbledon the previous year and had been all over the papers. I think his name was Brad or Ben, something that started with a B.