Chapter 16 #2
‘Thank you for dinner, it was amazing.’ Rowan turned towards him as they pulled up outside her cottage.
They’d driven to Port Tremellien and had drinks at a new bar overlooking the beach, watching the sunset turn into nightfall, before eventually heading to dinner at a Thai restaurant which had a fabulous reputation, but that Rowan had never tried.
There was always a chance of someone seeing them together, but all three of their dates had happened outside of Port Agnes, apart from when they went to Penrose Plaice for a portion of chips, and no one watching them together could have claimed to know for certain that they were a couple.
They’d kissed again at the end of the first two dates, but despite the opportunity there had been to go further, and despite how much Rowan had wanted to, she’d put the brakes on both times.
James was the only man she’d ever slept with.
Part of her was still scared that their lack of intimacy and the fact that he’d fallen in love with another man was due to some kind of failing in her.
Added to that, she was also nearly forty and had been through two pregnancies, which made the prospect of someone seeing her naked terrifying.
But it wasn’t just someone, it was Nathan.
In a way that made it better, but in another way the stakes were far higher than they would have been if this had just been a rebound fling.
As much as she might try to tell herself that dating Nathan was just a way of moving on from a bad marriage, she knew it wasn’t true.
He meant far more to her than that, he always had done, but up until now it had all been on her terms. Just as she’d suspected, Nathan hadn’t given even the slightest hint of wanting to push her into something she wasn’t ready for, but the truth was she was more than ready.
She was just terrified of getting it wrong.
She couldn’t even use going home to the children as an excuse for not being as brave as her body was begging her to be.
Bella was staying at Tiffany’s, and Theo and Leo were at a cub camp in the village hall.
The newest cubs were doing their first ‘camp out’ in the warm and dry, rather than under canvas, partly because of the time of year and partly because, as the cub leader had told the parents, there was a high rate of wanting to go home at their age.
Irene was one of the volunteers and she’d assured Rowan that she’d take the boys home with her if the need arose.
There was unlikely to be a lot of sleeping going on for the boys and, as Rowan looked at Nathan she realised that getting a good night’s sleep was the last thing on her mind, too.
‘I’m really glad you liked it.’ His voice was warm, but somehow it still elicited a shiver of anticipation. ‘And I love going out with you.’
‘Me too.’ Rowan twisted her hands in her lap.
There’d been so many times during the evening when she’d wanted to reach out and touch him, but instead she’d knotted her fingers together and she was doing the same thing now.
They had to take this slow, not just because of her insecurities, but because of the risks to their friendship if they got it wrong.
The trouble was, the more time she spent with Nathan, the more her feelings deepened into something more than friendship.
Her attraction to him was even stronger than it had been all those years before, and even though she knew she should thank him again, lean over and give him a kiss, before disappearing inside, something else entirely came out of her mouth.
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘Do you want me to? I don’t want you to feel like there’s any pressure to invite me in.’
‘You know I want you to, and I’ve wanted you to at the end of every single date, it’s just that I’m scared I might have forgotten how to do this.
’ Her voice was low and she couldn’t meet his gaze.
She had to get this out now, or she might never be able to tell him, and she needed him to know before they went any further.
‘My marriage to James was so lonely for years. There were always a thousand things he needed or wanted to do rather than spend time with me. In the end we were more like friends, maybe not even that.’
‘Then he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought.
’ Nathan took her hand. ‘If I come in, I want you to know there’s still no pressure.
I would give anything to spend time with you, except if I thought it wasn’t what you wanted.
’ She looked at him then and she could see in his eyes that he was every bit as attracted to her as she was to him, and that there was no putting the brakes on this time, because she didn’t want to.
‘Let’s go inside.’ Getting out of the car, she moved with an urgency she suspected wasn’t entirely decent. Within seconds they were inside the house and as she pushed the door shut behind them and turned to face him again, he closed the gap between them, pausing for a moment.
Rowan reached up and put her hands on the back of his head, pulling his mouth towards hers and kissing him, making all the lies she’d told herself in over two decades with James painfully obvious.
Maybe everyone’s love life died off when they’d been together a while.
Passion didn’t matter in a relationship.
She didn’t need to feel desired to be happy.
When Nathan kissed her, she knew what she’d been missing and suddenly her fingers were fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, her body arching towards his.
‘Are you sure?’ He whispered the words into her hair, but she didn’t have to ask him if he felt the same. His feelings for her were obvious as their bodies pressed together.
‘Oh, I’m sure.’ Rowan helped him pull his shirt over his head, before slithering out of her dress.
She was too much in the moment to feel self-conscious any more, or even remember that no one but James had ever seen her like this, or touched her the way Nathan was touching her.
Except the truth was it wasn’t remotely the same.
When Nathan touched her it was as if electricity was pulsing through her body and when she kissed him again, she wouldn’t have been surprised if fireworks really had been going off somewhere above her head.
But she wouldn’t have noticed even if they had been, because all she could see was Nathan and all she wanted was him, in a way she couldn’t imagine ever wanting anyone else.