Chapter 20
Isla
“Mummy, can we have hot chocolate before I go to bed?” Teddy asked from her spot on the rug.
Alistair was helping her add some particularly fiddly bits to a Lego pirate ship while I cleaned the kitchen.
My task had taken twice as long as it usually would because my eyes kept straying to them.
Rib cage expanding with every laugh they shared until I almost felt high from the overload of oxygen.
It had taken less than an hour to get the pie made and in the oven, and now the entire room smelled like cinnamon and warm apples. No wonder she was craving sugar. “You had hot chocolate yesterday.”
“And my tummy misses it.”
I threw my head back, laughing. God, my kid was cute, especially when she was happy. Had me wrapped right around her little finger and she knew it. “How about a bedtime story instead, then we can have hot chocolate at Brown’s tomorrow?”
She bit her lip as she considered. “Can Ali read it to me?”
My heart stalled, eyes bouncing to his. “As long as Alistair doesn’t have to get home. He might have other plans.”
“He doesn’t.” His gaze locked on mine.
I’d worried things might be awkward between us after I’d been too pushy about his dad. But Alistair had regained his good mood, quietly listening to my every instruction then performing each one with the same serious countenance I imagined a surgeon had when performing open-heart surgery.
My stomach flipped. “Okay, then.”
“I’m picking the book!” he declared, and leapt to his feet. I watched in stunned silence as, completely at ease, he threw Teddy onto his back.
Teddy’s excited cry echoed off the walls. “Faster, horsey, faster!”
Who was this man and what had he done with my grumpy neighbour? Perhaps I should check next door, just in case the real Alistair Macabe was hogtied in the wardrobe.
“Who you calling a horse, Theodora?” He stretched out her full name and did a little jump, making her bounce and her glasses slip, as he turned down the hallway.
She let out a delighted giggle – the one I’d so rarely heard since moving here – beating her tiny fists against his back. I paused, closing my eyes, soaking up my favourite sound in the entire world, before I called after them, “Brush your teeth first, sunshine.”
Alistair reappeared by the kitchen half an hour later. “Thank you for doing that,” I said. Closing the oven with my hip, I pulled off the oven gloves and moved to the fridge, suddenly feeling nervous. “Can I get you anything? Water? Chocolate milk? Sorry, I don’t have any organic swamp juice.”
He hesitated, hands sliding into his pockets, and I waited for him to say he should get going. The pie was baked. No one around to see us. There was no logical reason for him to linger.
He came closer anyway, staring down at the golden pie.
It looked a little rudimentary, the filling seeping slightly on one side. But it was neatly shaped and pretty enough – especially for a first attempt – that I knew Alistair would succeed at anything he set his hand to.
“How about whisky?” he asked, surprising me. He looked up from our pie. “That goes with apples, right?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
His gaze was steady. Commanding, though I didn’t know what he was trying to convey.
Heat coursed into my cheeks; I tried to stop it. Just like I tried not to let my eyes wander to the patch of flour at the neck of his jumper, just beneath his Adam’s apple.
It bobbed.
I swallowed too.
Other than holding hands in public, there hadn’t been a single suggestive word passed between us since that day at the food market.
But my mind felt like an old tape recording, always running back to that dingy little toilet block, pausing on the moment his fingers stroked over the small of my back.
I could make you feel so good, honey. His quiet rasp repeated in my head, over and over and over again.
“Well?” he prodded, the exact same rumble in his tone.
This was foolish.
“Whisky sounds great.”