Chapter Seven #2
“The hotel,” he announced, “is having a Grand Jamboree on Easter Saturday, and I’ve booked us in.” He looked down at Dan. “There’ll be an Easter egg hunt, organised games, pony rides, a carousel, a puppet theatre, a magician, sideshows, barbecue, the lot!”
“Wow!” said Dan, eyes widening.
“Wow, indeed,” agreed Xander. He glanced at Laurel, hoping she would think so too.
She did. “It sounds great fun,” she said. “Thank you.” Her eyes went briefly to Xander. Very briefly. Self-consciously.
But now he knew why.
And as he guided them out to his car to drive them home, he knew something else. Something that was making itself felt that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—shoot down.
He wasn’t going to fight it any longer. This constant awareness of her, the repeated kicks he got when his eyes went to her, however little she deliberately—as he now realised—made of herself.
Because there was no point fighting it.
It’s there, it exists—as powerfully as it did from the very first.
And it wouldn’t be repressed or ignored or denied. Or defeated.
So he was going to stop trying. Do, instead, the very opposite.
Let it run. A sense of new certainty was filling him, born, he knew, out of his new understanding about just why she was being so obstinate about sticking to her dowdy, dreary appearance.
After all the hostility, all the eggshelling, all the determinedly careful politeness to each other, something else was happening between them. Growing inexorably.
And he welcomed it completely.
Having showered after his pool session, and eaten his fill at the lavish late-afternoon tea, Dan needed no bath that evening, or supper other than a milky drink and fruit while he watched some TV before Laurel got him up to bed.
Xander hadn’t stayed, and she was relieved.
This endless disturbing awareness of him was getting worse.
Thank goodness there was only Easter to get through, then she’d have a reprieve from it.
The jamboree sounded good, she had to admit, and Dan was definitely keen, murmuring his anticipation as he fell asleep.
Laurel kissed his cheek and headed downstairs.
She made herself a cup of tea and went into the sitting room, settled herself down on a sofa.
Since her father’s death she had become very used to spending the evenings alone, Dan asleep upstairs.
She’d used the time to do her online tutoring when it was term time.
But with the school holidays and Xander’s tumultuous eruption into her life, she had let it drop for the time being.
So there wasn’t anything really for her to do right now, other than read or watch TV. She sat sipping her tea. The house was very quiet.
Out of nowhere, a thought struck her. Such a strange one. Contrary to everything she habitually thought. She’d told herself she was relieved Xander was going to be going back to Athens after Easter. But was she?
Yes, it would mean she could lower her constant guard against him, her continual awareness of his oh-so-disturbing effect on her, which had no place, none, in her life. But for all that, there was something else too. Something she ought to deny just as strongly.
Her eyes went to the sofa where he’d sat that dreadful evening when their vicious, toxic vitriol at each other had so devastated Dan, where they’d patched up some kind of peace, some kind of truce between them.
Since then she’d got used to Xander sitting there, an arm around Dan’s shoulders, watching TV together before Dan’s bath-time.
He wasn’t there now, and after Easter he wasn’t going to be there until he was back again from Athens after his own Easter.
The strange thought came again. Illogical, incomprehensible, given all the discord between them, but there all the same.
I’m going to miss him.
Xander threw himself down on his bed at his hotel after pouring a beer from the fridge, his mind still filled with the certainty that had struck him earlier. Silencing everything else. He was flying blind, he knew, ignoring everything the instruments should be telling him.
Just like I did first time around.
I knew Olympia was waiting for me to propose, that everyone was expecting it, but I swept off with Laurel all the same. Blanking everything else—
Now it was happening again, that same overpowering impulse, and for the same reason. Yes, it was complicated, it was conflicted, but his sense of certainty overrode it.
I know what I want. Whether I should want it or not, I don’t care. I didn’t care seven years ago, nor do I care now. It took only a single glance at Laurel back then to make me want her. Desire her. It’s taken longer now, but it’s still there.
Desire—naked and potent. Making him want to reach for her, take her slender, beautiful body into his arms, fold it against his own aroused body, draw her down with him, sink into her, feel the hot flames lick them both, mounting, kiss by kiss, caress by caress, thrust by thrust, into an inferno.
Memory, arousing and enticing, washed through him. Making him want to make it far more than mere memory.
What we had then, we can have again—for the both of us.
Somehow, he had to convince her to accept what was happening again between them, to deny it no longer, dismiss it no longer.
Fight it no longer. To accept that between them was more than the past, more than the son they shared, more even—and he gave it an impatient dismissal—than that damn bracelet.
After all, they’d set it aside for Dan’s sake, hadn’t they?
Now we can set it aside for ours. So it’s no longer a barrier between us. Between what we both want.
All he had to do—restlessness filled him now, seeing his goal in sight—was get her to see it his way, to yield to what he knew she was denying.
I just have to convince her to stop fighting it, stop resisting me.
Memory sifted in him. How he’d told Dan how mad Laurel had been for chucking her into the sea, and he’d had to swim after her, kiss her nice again. He’d had to go on being nice to her all evening, wooing her back to him.
So, what can I do this this time around? To woo her back to me.
Suddenly, his eyes gleamed. The jamboree he’d booked Dan in for was not the only Easter event the hotel had on offer.
There was another one in the evening. A grand black-tie dinner and cabaret with dancing.
His gleam intensified. Yes, that was it.
It would work, perfectly. The ideal opportunity.
She’d already be here at the hotel, doubtless looking like her usual dog’s breakfast, making no effort at all as usual.
The gleam in his eye intensified, seeing the perfect solution to that problem.
But there’s someone she will make an effort for—the only person.
Someone who would, he knew, be a gleeful co-conspirator with him. Yes, that was perfect too. Setting aside his beer he picked up the house phone, rang down to Reception. Bought two tickets.
Then he sat back, reaching for his beer again, relaxing back against the propped up pillows. This bed really was very comfortable. With easily room for two…
The satisfied gleam came again. And now he knew exactly how to get Laurel here to share the bed with him.
The Easter Jamboree had lived up to its name.
Dan had enjoyed it hugely. From the Easter egg hunt, the egg painting, the races, the magician, the puppet theatre, the pony rides, the miniature carousel, the lucky dip, the tombola and the coconut shy, he’d enjoyed the lot.
Now, Laurel knew he was completely enjoyed out.
The jamboree had ended with a barbecue, and Dan, replete with a hamburger and two grilled hot dogs, was finishing off a length of corn on the cob.
The light was fading, and though the day had stayed blessedly dry, it was starting to get chilly now that the sun had set.
“Time to make a move,” Laurel suggested. “You can have an ice cream for pud, and then we’d better head off home.”
She expected to hear a groan from Dan, but instead he giggled, and cast a conspiratorial look at Xander.
“We’re not going home,” Dan told her. “We’re staying here. At the hotel. All night!”
Laurel looked at him and then at Xander. “You and Dan?” she asked, puzzled, and not happy at having this sprung on her without running it past her. And how was she going to get home? A taxi she supposed.
“All of us, Mum!” Dan said gleefully.
She frowned, confused.
“It’s your Easter treat, Mum!” Dan told her. “Dad’s fixed it!”
“Yes,” Xander corroborated. “This afternoon was Dan’s Easter treat, tonight is yours.”
Laurel stared. What on earth?
Dan was obviously bursting to tell her. “It’s like a party for you, Mum! A posh dinner for you here, you and Dad, and then there’s a show!”
“What?”
“Well, it’s a cabaret,” Xander said smoothly. Too smoothly.
Laurel eyed him. “Is it?” she said. Her voice was dry. Very dry.
“Yes,” Xander said. Still too smoothly. “Over dinner. It’s all booked.”
Dan’s face was alight with glee. “It’s been our secret, Dad’s and mine! He told me and told me not to tell you! It’s your treat! We’re all staying here, all night, and tomorrow morning after breakfast I can go swimming again with Dad and then have my Easter egg!”
“Well, you seem to have got it all sorted, haven’t you?” Laurel’s voice was tight.
“I think so,” Xander said blandly. “I’ve taken an extra room,” he went on, his voice blander still, “and booked one of the hotel’s baby sitters for Dan while we’re at dinner.
” His voice changed. “Now, your mum said you could have an ice cream before we go in,” he said to Dan. “What flavour would you like?”
“Chocolate, please!” enthused Dan.
Laurel watched the two of them head off to the ice cream van parked near the barbecue station. Inside she was fuming. What the hell was Xander playing at? Springing this on her?
Plotting with Dan! Making him a party to it! Just so he can—
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Can what?
She didn’t know. Knew only that she’d been stitched up. But for what purpose?
It was only when she and Dan, ice cream consumed, went into the room that Xander had, without even the courtesy to consult her, reserved for them, that she realised the full extent of Xander’s unholy scheming…