Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ELLIE
I close the front door behind me and stand in the hall for a moment, bag still on my shoulder, keys in my hand.
The house is quiet. From the open kitchen door, there’s just the tick of the clock and the faint hum of the fridge.
I should probably go straight to Mum’s. I’ve been away since Friday, and she’ll be expecting me. But instead I set my bag down by the stairs, hang up my jacket, and put the kettle on.
Ten minutes. I’m giving myself ten minutes before I let the rest of my life back in.
I make a tea and sit down at the kitchen table, wrapping my hands around the mug.
Bannock. I allow myself to relive it all over again.
Douglas sleeping past nine o’clock and looking genuinely stunned when I told him the time. The woodland walk, the bakery, the tree swing—him on it, enormous and ridiculous, his legs too long. The way he looked at me across the restaurant table yesterday evening.
The way he looked at me when he was inside me.
I press my thighs together. I’m still sore—a low sweet ache between my legs—and the memory of how he felt sends a wave of heat through me that has no business arriving on a Sunday afternoon in my kitchen.
But it’s not just the sex, as incredible as the sex was. It’s what he said in the car just now. I want to make this work, Ellie. You and me.
I set my mug down, push back from the table, and do something wildly out of character for me. I dance around my kitchen.
It’s not good dancing. It’s a spin, a shimmy, a wiggle of my hips. I do a little twirl past the fridge. I look like a complete idiot and I don’t care, because there is nobody here to see it and Douglas Fraser wants to make this work with me.
Me.
After years of watching him from behind the library desk and carefully filing my feelings for him out of sight, he kissed me on a boat under the stars then spent a weekend making love to me.
I press my back against the worktop and let out a breath that’s half laugh, half disbelief.
When the ten minutes are up, I rinse my mug then check my reflection in the hall mirror—flushed cheeks, bright eyes, hair falling around my face in messy waves, thanks to Douglas running his hands through it all weekend.
I take a breath, compose my face, and head out.
Five minutes later, I’m knocking on Mum’s front door then pushing it open, the way I always do. “Hello, Mum! I’m back. How did you get on?”
“Ellie! There you are. Finally.”
Her voice reaches me from the living room, and at the tone of it, my smile freezes. Bracing myself, I head through.
Mum is in her chair, and the television is off. A cup of tea sits on the side table, half drunk. She’s in her navy cardigan and a blouse, neat as ever, but she looks tired, more so than usual. There’s a heaviness around her eyes, a drawn quality to her face.
“Hi, Mum.” I settle into the chair opposite. “How did you get on with Margaret?”
Her mouth tightens, and she shakes her head, a small, definitive motion.
“Never again. I don’t want you leaving me like that ever again.
It’s one thing you helping me. You’re family.
But Margaret? It was humiliating, Ellie.
Having that woman fussing about my kitchen, asking me if I needed help getting out of my chair. It made me feel like an invalid.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t great,” I say carefully. “But Mum, you do need the help. And I can’t always—”
“You and I get on just fine, don’t we?” Mum says, as if I haven’t spoken. “I don’t know why we have to start mixing things up when things work perfectly well as they are.”
Something from the weekend is still in me. Not the giddiness—that faded the moment I heard her tone from the hall—but a quiet resolve.
“Mum, I’ve been thinking. I know this isn’t easy to hear, but .
. .” I press my palms together between my knees.
“I think we might have reached the point where you could benefit from some professional support. Not instead of me, but alongside me. Someone trained, someone who could help with the things that are getting harder, even for just a few hours a week. It’d be some extra company for you too. ”
Mum raises a hand, palm out, and shakes her head. “I don’t need strangers in my house, Ellie. I need my daughter.”
Silence settles between us.
The hotel. The laughter. The warmth of Douglas’s body against mine.
Suddenly it all feels very far away.