Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
I KNOW YOUNG LOVE WHEN I SEE IT
Beth
“Balls! Big hairy fat balls,” I bit out into the pale dawn infiltrating my bedroom.
Alison, as diligent as ever, had just sent a message. A hospital appointment for her mother meant she couldn’t work at Belle’s this morning. As she was off the books, there was no way she could organise a replacement. Yet all the children still had places to be.
Belle was on her own.
My cinema shift didn’t start for a few hours, so there was no issue with me picking up the slack, but for the first time ever, I didn’t want to. No, scratch that. The urge to hide in my bed was so strong it nearly floored me.
I missed James. I’d spent three days with him and I missed him so hard it hurt.
An emotion that shouldn’t have happened had sprung up, and I didn’t know how to turn it off.
It ate at me. All I could think about was him.
His touch. Our last kiss. The strange situation he was in and why on Earth I had to like the one guy I couldn’t have.
Like. What an understatement of a word.
I dragged my miserable self into the shower then dressed in kid-breakfast-appropriate leggings and a long t-shirt. I fixed my hair into a messy bun and stepped out of the door into the cool spring morning.
“Morning, Beth!” Angela, our neighbour, waved from her doorstep.
I raised a world-weary hand in response. She chuckled at my no doubt miserable expression and went in, her little dog at her heels.
Beyond her house, and down the street, a large black car stood out. A Range Rover Velar—one of the cars James had booked for a test drive. A surprised laugh escaped my lips as, really, universe? Did I need another reminder? Way to kick a woman when she was down.
Turning, I began a slow trudge up the hill to the garage where Mattie kept her Audi.
In a couple of hours, Belle’s foster kids would be under control, I’d be on my way to the cinema, and my obsessing mind and lack of sleep would be lost to work. Tomorrow, the restaurant would allow me to come back, now I was clear of sickness, and every day would be full again.
I’d forget about James. In a few weeks, he’d be a memory.
My boring, repetitive life spread out before me, and my chest hurt. I wanted to cry.
“Beth?”
I twisted around and shielded my eyes, searching for the person who my tormented brain had made sound exactly like James.
“Beth, wait.”
I had to be imagining him. No way could James Fitzroy be slamming closed the door of the big car. Impossible that his hand waved or his boots set a course toward mine.
“No. No way,” I murmured, then, louder, “You are not here, and this isn’t real.”
“Oh.” James stopped two feet away.
I dragged in a breath, my heart in pieces. It was his legs encased in denim, his arms in a grey sweater that stretched over his biceps, the sleeves pulled up so his forearms showed. I adored those forearms, had drawn lines in the dusting of hair.
“Which of us is dreaming?” he added.
“You’re here and you’re making jokes?”
His lips tweaked, and behind him, the sun burst from behind a cloud. I sidestepped so I could look at him properly, examine the features I’d wanted to forget. His blue-eyed gaze did the same, skimming over my form, taking me in.
The light fell on him like it adored him, how vital he was. His tousled hair. That weaponised beauty of his.
Electricity crackled across the space between us.
It’d been two days. Not even that. My body ached to crush against him, to fuse my mouth to his. The hunger that had kept me awake and thinking about him now had my limbs tingling.
Deadly. There was no way I could touch him, even if every fibre of my being screamed to do so.
Cars sped past to the crossroads, and pedestrians walked around us, keeping out of our bubble.
I found my way through the haze. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”
James’s lips parted. “Let’s start with me taking you for breakfast.”
“And what would we be finishing with?”
“You coming home with me.”
For a beautiful second, I almost believed he’d come here just for me. To ask me on a date and be in my company. Except he couldn’t have.
“What happened to you getting married?” I asked in a rush.
“I still need to. But I don’t want to marry one of my uncle’s choices.”
I dragged my hands over my hair, more strands escaping the clip.
I made a fuss over rebinding it, twisting the lengths into a tight swirl and jamming the clip over the top.
Giving myself a second to think. James followed my actions, and his chest rose and fell.
Like he wanted to help, to touch the softest part of me.
If nothing had changed, and he’d somehow been close enough to pay an early morning visit to me, there could only be one reason why. A booty call. Claim the sex we’d missed out on by getting ill. That was what he meant by going home with him. A hotel, maybe.
Like an idiot, I summoned the image of him bearing down on me, his weight on my body and that low voice whispering in my ear while we fucked on a hotel room floor.
Oh Lord, I wanted that. Him. Any way the quiet, intense man wanted to use me, I’d let him. It would work both ways as I burned to have his body under my hands. To watch him fall apart and have him at my command.
I shuddered on my inhale, hopelessly lost in the image.
Then cold reality slapped me in the face. “I can’t.”
His dark eyebrows formed two slashes, and I continued, slow and regretful, disappointment filling me from my toes to my head. “I need to help at my foster mother’s this morning. Then right after I have a shift at work.”
“I can wait.”
“Until after ten tonight?” Something in James’s shrug, his determined looks, had me pausing.
Then I blurted out words so stupid I couldn’t believe my own mouth.
“You can come with me. If you want? It’ll be Bedlam at Belle’s house.
A screaming toddler, whiny teens. It’s not all that fun of an experience.
You know, if you’re not used to having cereal flung at you.
But you can join me. Then if you want to hang around at the cinema, I get a free ticket per day. You can watch movies…”
A ridiculous idea. He’d have plans.
“Sure.”
“Sure,” I confirmed, holding his gaze while my stomach flipped and flipped again. Thank God my illness had been short-lived and my energy had flooded back.
I nodded to the car. “Can I drive?”
His lips tweaked. “Another time,” he said.
My butterflies took off and flew. This time, I couldn’t care less about driving. Being near him would be enough.
We left the city behind, the journey easy heading in the opposite direction to rush-hour traffic. Green fields flew by on either side of the road. I guided him with occasional directions but let him concentrate. The tension between us built the longer the wheels thrummed over the road.
By the time we reached Belle’s village, my thoughts were in turmoil. Under a row of huge trees lining the main road, alternating shadows and light concealed and revealed James, and I watched and watched and breathed him in.
For some self-sabotaging reason, maybe because emotions were high, my brain chose to summon another time where I’d been driven along this road.
The awful journey when a social worker took me from the hospital where my grandfather had just been pronounced dead, to Belle’s house.
My new but very much unwanted home. I’d been a spiky little ball of energy then, wanting nothing to do with the kind woman who’d answered the door but who, in turn, became one of my greatest allies.
I sank into my seat, letting James replace the memory.
Welcome relief came as we turned into the muddy country lane where Belle lived, and my mind clicked into action mode.
James eyed the little redbrick house through the windshield. “Do you want me to wait out here?”
“Not unless you’d prefer to. But if you come inside, be prepared to pitch in. Belle will find you something to do.”
His faint smile had my heart doing things it really shouldn’t.
“Lead the way,” he answered, and just like that, James Fitzroy, earl, and relative to kings and queens, followed me into the place I did the best part of my growing up.
Belle strode from one side of the kitchen to the other, a wailing Conrad under one arm. She glanced up as I hovered at the door, her pale-blonde hair wispy around her face where it escaped a wide bandana. The bandana had little skulls on it. I loved her so much.
The familiar smell of laundry, home-cooked meals, and Belle’s house washed over me. The radio blared music from the eighties, and toys and paperwork claimed every corner.
Ladies and gentlemen, the source of my tidy streak.
“Finn hasn’t come down yet, but she has an appointment in town at nine and needs to get moving if she’s going to get her bus.
Jessie is pulling apart the laundry piles looking for her running shorts.
She’s going away to camp for three nights.
Ah! I know where they are. Here…” She pivoted, changed direction, and swung the toddler to me.
“Get him into his highchair. Watch out, he’s in a biting mood this morning. ”
“Sure. Um, I brought someone. Is that okay?” The squirming boy settled in my arms and peered over my shoulder.
“Ooh!” he said to James. “Man.”
“I’m James Fitzroy. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” James took his place at my side. He tickled the foot Conrad tried to kick him with then extended a hand to Belle.
She shook it, and heat painted my face.
Belle looked James over. I’d never brought anyone home before. Not even school friends. It hadn’t felt right to burden Belle with another mouth to feed or yet more noise, though that was her life, and now I thought about it, she thrived on the activity.
For a moment that lasted a lifetime, her gaze passed judgment. Then her eyes gentled, and humour abounded. Reaching around the doorframe, she grabbed an apron from the hooks. “Good morning to you. As you can see, we are all action today. How are you at making toast, James?”
“I’m sure I can manage.”