Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Paige
We’re on the train back to Bedford, shoulder to shoulder, with no one seated across from us. He’s convinced me to play the most ridiculous game. As soon as he said it reminded him of long trips with his mother, it became impossible to say no to a few rounds.
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Ash says when it’s my turn to think of something for him to guess again.
“Vegetable,” I say.
“Thank god. I didn’t even learn the bloody periodic table when I was still in school.”
“I’m expanding your horizons. You got it eventually.”
“You almost had to spell it out for me.”
“Just the S.” I try to smother my smile. “Luckily, I didn’t say animal. I would have wanted the family, genus, and species.”
“This game is meant to be fun.”
“I’m having fun,” I say with a laugh.
Despite his grumpy attitude, that’s a twinkle in his brown eyes that suggests he’s enjoying himself too. “Is it green?”
“No,” I say.
“’Course not. That’d have been too easy.”
“Easy is relative. There are a lot of green vegetables. Now you’ve narrowed the field.”
“The field,” he says with a humph, and I appreciate that he caught my joke. “Yellow?”
“Can be.”
“Tasty?”
“Um.” I laugh. “I like it.”
“Have I cooked it before?”
“No.”
He rubs his chin and seems deep in thought. “I reckon it’s a swede, though I would not call it tasty.”
“I don’t know what a swede is,” I say.
He digs out his phone and passes me a wall of images once he’s got it up.
“That’s a rutabaga,” I say. “But you’re right, that was it.”
“You Americans.” It’s a teasing comment that I’ve heard before when we’ve differed on what to call something. “Not sure why you lot feel the need to change something that already has a perfectly good name.”
“And I don’t know why the British are so resistant to the evolution of language when the new word is so superior.”
“Trust an America to claim superiority with no proof.”
He’s joking, of course. There’s no bite to his words.
It’s another thing that we’ve been doing since his birthday two weeks ago—poking fun at our differences, whatever they may be.
The air around us is buzzing, and I don’t ever remember feeling brightened like this by the presence of a man.
It feels purer and realer and far more complicated than anything I’ve ever experienced before.
When the train pulls into the station, Ash once again takes my hand and leads me to the car as though it’s the most natural thing.
We’ve been doing it all day, so maybe for him it is.
But I’m hyperaware of the contact, the fact we don’t need to be doing it, and how safe and protected he makes me feel.
We’re quiet in the car, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence.
Each time we glance at each other, one of us bursts into a smile.
Typically, I’d ask a guy what he was thinking or why he was smiling, but I don’t want to name whatever has sprouted between us—because that’s what it feels like.
As though whatever this feeling is has been germinating in the soil of our day-to-day life, and two weeks ago on his birthday, it rose closer to the surface, finally poking through today. Delicate and new.
At the house, we get out of the car and wander to the front door.
Ash has the house keys in his hand, and we keep looking at each other, and I wonder whether he’s feeling the same thing I am.
In some ways, it’s scarier to think he might be.
If it’s just me, I can ignore whatever has happened to me.
One of the best things about being around him has been how uncomplicated we are.
Honest and straightforward. Muddying the water with any version of a romantic connection complicates everything.
Not that I wouldn’t sleep with him. Heat pools between my thighs at the thought of his rough hands gliding along my body.
Before he opens the door, he squeezes my hip—whether it’s in comfort or warning or solidarity, I’m not sure. We step through, and Diya pops out of the living room almost immediately.
“How’d it go?” she asks. “The kids and I watched a bit of the match on the telly. Didn’t see you, though. You weren’t lying, Paige! Joey gets well into it, doesn’t he?”
Her amazement makes me laugh. He really does.
Ash’s passion for the sport has definitely found a kindred spirit in my son.
It makes me wonder whether Joey’s biological father also had an intense interest in sports.
Not something I looked for in the profiles, but it isn’t the first time I’ve had a question I’ll likely never know the answer to.
“Did they go to bed okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, no problems.” Diya grins at Ash. “How was your first fixture at the stadium?”
“Bloody class. Absolutely fantastic. Cracking goal at the end.”
Diya looks between the two of us for a beat, and I wonder whether she can sense a change.
Since we entered the house, I’ve become positive the low-level buzz in me is reciprocated, and I’m not sure what to do with that.
There’s a part of me that wonders whether I should beg Diya to stay so we don’t ruin anything.
The other part of me wants to open the door behind us and usher her out even faster.
“I tidied up after the kids since I know Gwen arrives tomorrow,” Diya says as she slides past me. “Glad the two of you had a good day.” Call me, she mouths to me on the way past.
We must be giving off some serious pheromones for Diya to sense we’re on the cusp of something.
This is stupid. We can’t do this.
The front door clicks shut behind her, and Ash wanders toward the kitchen. “Drink?” he calls to me.
Butterflies beat their wings furiously in my stomach. I should say no and go to bed. If I go into that kitchen and have another drink with him, something is going to happen. It’s in the air, in each breath I inhale.
I go to the kitchen doorway, and he’s already got a beer cracked. He’s leaning against the counter, and he scans me from head to toe.
“Don’t get skittish on me now,” he says. “We’ve had a good day, haven’t we?”
The best day, but my skittishness is warranted.
Doesn’t he feel it coming too? He must. Or maybe this is the point where the fact I’m a bit older actually matters.
The train is headed for us, and I don’t have to hear the rumble or feel the breeze against my face to recognize the change in our atmosphere.
Maybe that means I shouldn’t stay. Let my hard-earned wisdom mean something.
He takes the bottle of wine out of the fridge and pours me a glass, and when he holds it out, what little resolve I have dissolves.
I cross the room to take it from his outstretched hand, and I lean against the counter beside him. We drink in silence, and the room is alive with things we aren’t saying.
“Best part of your day?” I ask. Sometimes we ask each other this at the end of a long day.
He half turns so he’s facing me, and those soulful brown eyes will be my undoing. The balance of roughness and tenderness in him is everything—absolutely everything.
“Being with you,” he says, and his voice is husky.
He’s taking a risk. It’s clear from his expression and from the way he said the words that it’s not just an offhand comment.
He means it, and there’s a flood of warmth low in my belly that tells me I’ve got one last chance to get out of this kitchen without ruining the peace we’ve found together in this house.
There’s no way this ends well, and it’ll end—whether it’s me going back to Grand Rapids, Imogen returning, or us discovering we’re not that compatible after all.
My relationships never go the distance, and I really need this one to remain intact. He already means too much to me.
I tip back the rest of my wine, and I slide my glass on the counter. “I should get to bed.”
“Paige,” he says, and his rough hand runs down my arm, stopping me from leaving.
For a beat, I stand with my back to him. A thousand futures flash before me, and none of them have me ending up with Ash. Not one. Doesn’t matter. If there’s a world where someone like Ash Galvin finds me attractive, I’m seizing that future with both hands, even if it’s not mine to take.
I rotate toward him, and he adjusts his hold to spin me into his arms. Our lips meet, hot, hungry, and desperate for more.
His hand is in my hair, and mine is up the back of his shirt.
The feel of his taut skin on my fingertips is something I’ve imagined a thousand times.
My heart is beating so hard, I’m wondering what rate signals a heart attack, but I’ll die a happy woman.
He lifts me up as though I weigh nothing and sets me on the counter, his big hands gripping my waist while our kiss goes on and on.
He’s a good kisser, and my imagination didn’t do him justice.
When he dips his tongue into my mouth, I thread my fingers through the short hair at the back of his head.
I cannot get close enough. He tugs me forward, so our bodies are pressed tightly together.
A terrible decision to kiss him, and so, so good.
The sound of the doorbell causes us both to break apart with a start, and we stare at each other for a beat, panting, before Ash glances at the clock.
“You stay here,” he says, and he steps back to adjust himself. “Not sure who’d be banging down the door at half eleven, but can’t be anything good.”
I sit on the counter, and I run my fingers along the side of my face, trying to get my breathing under control. Did we really just do that? The lust haze has cleared a bit, and I’m wondering how much we’ve screwed things up between us.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I dig it out just as I hear Ash unlatch the door.
Shit. Gwen.
“Oh my gosh!” Gwen’s high-pitched excitement bounces around the old house from the front entrance. “Have I got the right house? Are you Ash?”