Chapter Twenty-Five
Now
‘W hat’s it like working with the great S.
E. Artemis?’ Ethan stroked his hand up and down my arm, and I tried not to think about how good it felt to lie here, my head on his chest, like we used to.
We’d pulled back the covers, got in under the silky eiderdown and plump duvet, the moonlight lying across us fragmented by the raindrops on the window.
‘It’s exhausting,’ I told him, ‘but not always in a bad way. She’s feisty and confident, not at all introverted. Did you know that she ended the Cornish Sands series the way she did because her husband left her?’
‘She decided she couldn’t write a romance because she didn’t believe in it any more?’
‘She didn’t put it like that. She said she’d had enough, that the Rosevar family had run out of steam, but I think you’re right – she was heartbroken. Now she’s found some new inspiration, and she’s ready to give her readers the happy-ever-after they always deserved.’
His laugh was a low rumble. ‘You like working with her, then?’
‘I’m really working for her. Part of the reason I came here – aside from the letters – is that she said if we were bringing Amelie and Connor back, we needed to have a good idea of what the house was like inside.’
‘Couldn’t you just have created that, though? I know it was an important part of the series, but it’s still fiction. And Sterenlenn’s been in magazines,’ he added, a little sheepishly. ‘You told me you saw the pictures.’
‘Nothing beats being here, experiencing the view and how the light floods in; all the little touches like the disco shower. I do get what you mean, though.’ It had seemed strange at first, her insistence that I come to the open house.
‘I think she was desperate to see what it was like herself, because it used to be hers, and she can’t because of her limited mobility, so she’s using me instead. ’
‘And you’ll give her a few more photos and a report of your visit?’
‘I’m a great storyteller, Ethan.’ I poked him in the ribs. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that?’
‘Which is why you should be writing your own book, not going on missions for someone else, helping them write theirs . You’re good enough, Georgie. More than.’
‘It’s so hard,’ I mumbled into his warm skin.
It was hard when I was trying to get a journalism degree, trying to put my heartbreak over Ethan into a box, fielding calls from Mum.
Then I abandoned university and came back here, looking after her and getting reporting gigs at the same time.
I’d put any thoughts of writing fiction on the backburner.
‘The worthwhile things often are,’ Ethan said, ‘but you have to do them anyway.’
‘What’s been the hardest thing about Sterenlenn?’ I danced my fingertips over his chest. ‘Was it like an episode of Grand Designs ?’
He laughed. ‘Nothing this big or complex goes smoothly, and everyone said I was making things extra difficult for myself, starting with a renovation rather than a new-build. I thought having the original house here would be easier, but it wasn’t.
Every plan, blueprint, formula – when it came to it, we needed so many workarounds.
Sparks was the thing I was most confident about, because we’d been developing it for years – it’s such a dedicated team.
It felt like the final flourish once all the hard stuff was done. ’
‘You have a team of computer whizzes? Are you thinking about sacking them after this?’
‘No, I … You know, that is very distracting, what you’re doing.’ I could hear the restraint in his voice, which only encouraged me. I trailed my hand lower.
‘You have faith in your team, despite what’s happened?’
‘It’s a teething problem. And OK, it’s pretty fucking serious, but we’ve worked so hard – there must be a way to fix it.’
‘Good. You should be confident. You’ve got this, Ethan Sp …’ I stopped in case the house tried to do something else unexpected.
‘I’ll have to go back to the office as soon as we’re out,’ he said. ‘Take the house off the market while we fix it.’
My heart sank at the thought of him leaving immediately, and I wondered how much of this would have happened if we’d been free to leave.
Would I have walked out when I planned to, right after the event ended, and never seen him again?
‘You could say it comes with an escape room feature?’ I suggested.
‘One of the hardest in the country. Home and entertainment centre, rolled into one.’
Ethan turned onto his side, facing me. ‘Great idea. Maybe you should have written the marketing material for me.’
‘You didn’t offer me the job,’ I said, looking into his brown eyes.
They seemed warmer, now; he’d lost the impassive, detached look he’d had on the front path a few hours ago.
He’d kindled back to life, and I liked to think I’d had a lot to do with that.
‘Did you have to give a presentation about this place in front of a whole load of investors?’
‘Yes.’ He grimaced. ‘It ranks up there with the least fun days of my life.’
‘You didn’t imagine them all naked?’
His gaze trailed from my face to my neck, then lower. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I pictured you naked instead.’
‘You did not.’
‘I did.’ He nodded, decisive. ‘Thinking about the house came hand in hand with thinking about you, and that whole stage – pitching to investors, getting my proposal approved, developing then rehashing the blueprints, getting them locked down so they passed the endless surveys and checks – it was so stressful, because if it failed at any point, I would have lost the house and all those years of work. So I thought about what you would say to me. You always believed in me, encouraged me, even at the end. It was your faith in me that made you so angry.’
I chose to ignore that last point. ‘So you imagined me giving you a pep talk, naked?’
His lips tipped up. ‘Maybe. Sometimes.’
‘What memories did you go back to?’ I had meant it to sound challenging, but it came out far too sincere, like I was hanging on every word.
‘The first time we were together,’ he said. ‘I don’t know – a whole slideshow of memories. That time on the beach.’ He grinned, and I groaned.
‘Anyone who says they like having sex on a beach is lying. A Cornish beach, anyway. I bet they don’t have seaweed in the Seychelles.’
‘They get deadly box jellyfish in the Seychelles.’
‘Well then, all beaches are out.’
‘It was fun though. I laughed a lot.’
I returned his grin. ‘Yeah, me too.’
‘You always made me laugh. I’ve sort of … forgotten how. Everything’s seemed so serious, lately.’
‘That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Ethan S., young architect on the cusp of a brilliant career, has forgotten how to laugh.’
‘That’s a very long-winded headline,’ he murmured, as he traced the line of my collarbone.
I closed my eyes, distracted by his touch, and by his warm body so close to mine. ‘“The Spark has gone”,’ I said in a deep voice. ‘“When success comes at the cost of happiness”.’
‘Ouch,’ Ethan said quietly. ‘Maybe I don’t want you making up headlines about me, after all.’
‘Sterenlenn is in Panic Room Mode,’ the house said at the same time.
‘Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.’ I rolled my eyes, then ran my fingers over Ethan’s freckle constellation, realizing I knew the shape of it by heart. ‘Has it been worth it?’
‘The house?’
I nodded, held my breath.
He glanced towards the window, where the moonlight was drifting in, reaching across the room to dust our skin, then brought his gaze back to mine. ‘It has,’ he said eventually. ‘But I’m not sure it would have been if the Smart system hadn’t broken down.’
‘Right.’ It took me a second to work out what that meant: that he was happier we’d ended up trapped together than he would have been if his showcase had gone perfectly.
He was prepared to face all the hassle just to get time with me.
And we only had right now – until the bug fixed itself and the house released us, or Sarah realized what had happened.
‘I think we should try out the shower.’
Ethan frowned. ‘Why?’
‘The disco shower,’ I explained. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been obsessed with it since I saw it.
We’ve tried out the bed, the sofas. We should try out the shower next.
Maybe I’ll write a piece about what it’s like to live in a Smart house for a night: I could do it without mentioning that I didn’t have a choice. ’
‘That’s how you’re going to frame your article?’ But he sounded distracted, and his gaze was hazy. Perhaps he was remembering, like I was, that we were quite good at showering together.
‘It’ll be like Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ I said. ‘The sofa was too big, the beer fridge was way too small. The bed, however, was just right. The villain in my fairy tale will be the house itself, because that voice has said some strange things, and it’s just plain creepy.’
‘It’s not …’ he started, then stopped. The look he gave me was intense, calculating, and before I realized what was happening, he’d scooped me up, holding me against him as he clambered off the bed and walked us both towards the en-suite.
‘Have you been in here?’ I asked, holding onto him tightly.
‘No.’ He opened the door and put me down gently. ‘There’s no body wash.’
‘I’m not interested in body wash.’
‘No, all you care about are the lights.’ He pressed buttons on the panel and it beeped a few times, the lights around the bottom of the shower flickering on, pulsing between red, blue and white.
‘The lights are OK,’ I said.
‘Just OK?’ He pressed another button and the pulsing sped up, the colours changing to an out-of-sync rainbow: green and crimson, violet and lemon, orange and sky blue. ‘You know you can have them flash in time to music?’
‘Let’s do that, then. Do I have to ask the creepy voice?’
Ethan rolled his eyes. ‘What shall we …’ He hesitated, his finger inches from the screen.
I looked at him, standing there naked, unselfconscious because I’d given him a task and he was entirely focused on it.
His body was gorgeous, strong and firm and freckled.
‘This,’ he said, triumphantly. He pressed a series of buttons then stepped into the shower with me, walking me backwards until he could reach behind me and turn it on.
The water came out of the rainfall shower head perfectly warm, heating to hot in a couple of seconds.
‘What song did you pick?’ I asked, as Ethan bent his head towards mine.
‘Patience, Georgie,’ he whispered against my lips, and a moment later the song started, lights flickering in time with the opening chords, and I smiled up at him, hoping my emotions weren’t showing on my face, and that he couldn’t see inside to my racing heart.
My love for him had crashed right over me, a new, confounding wave, even more intense than it had been when I was eighteen.
‘Whatever it Takes’ by Lifehouse filled the shower cubicle.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘The cheese.’
‘Everyone loves cheese. Nobody can live without it, whatever they say.’
A laugh spilled out of me. ‘A staple part of every diet. What would you say this is? Camembert?’
I stretched up to kiss him as the hot water rained down on us, washing away everything except the reality of this moment: disco lights dancing and a song I hadn’t heard in years, but was now branded onto my heart for ever, along with the taste of Ethan’s kiss and what it felt like to have him back in my arms, even if it was only for a night.