Chapter 11
Rayna
The next day, after Rayna spent the morning yelling at Dominic to stop trying to stick his fingers into every socket he came across, having taught him about electricity, there came a knock at the front door of the farmhouse.
Dominic lifted his head from the manual in his hands. “Was that the door?” he asked, sprawled on the fabric sofa along the wall facing the bi-fold garden doors.
“Yeah,” she said, closing the fridge.
“Were we expecting someone?”
“It’s River,” she threw over her shoulder as she walked out the arched entryway and down the cream corridor.
“What?” she heard Dominic rumble.
She passed the closed door to the makeshift basement gym and an alcove corridor that led to a utility room and water closet, before reaching the sitting room entrance opposite the wooden staircase, carpeted in the same latte colour as the upstairs rooms. A rectangular mirror hung on the wall between the stairs and the office-library at the front right of the house.
“Hi,” Rayna said to River after opening the front door.
River ran a palm over his short, dirty-blond hair and smiled. He held a brown paper shopping bag in his other hand.
“Hi,” he said, his grey gaze slipping past her with a nervous flicker before he slunk his tall, slim frame inside.
She closed the door. “He’s in the kitchen, so head on through.”
River stopped before the stairs and cleared his throat. “I think it would be better if you led the way.”
“Why?” came a rough growl before Dominic appeared in the threshold of the kitchen. “Face me like a man instead of cowering behind a woman half your size.”
“Move back, Dominic,” she warned, heading past River.
“I should rip your head from your body,” Dominic snarled over her.
Reaching him, Rayna jabbed a finger into his broad chest. “You made a promise, Dominic. Don’t you dare forget that. Move. Now.”
He rolled his thick shoulders and rubbed his teeth together before finally dropping his piercing gaze to her. He turned away, and Rayna followed. River’s slow steps tailed her.
Dominic stopped at the edge of the fluffy, pale blue rug that lay between the small dining table and sofa. Rayna stood next to him, and River formed the third point of their triangle.
A tense silence fell between the two men that Rayna refused to break for them.
Eventually, her fellow historian cleared his throat.
“I would like to apologise,” River said.
“For bringing you here under false pretences, and for the fact that you were in quarantine for so long.” He shifted on his feet.
“It’s not ideal for anyone, especially not for you, because you didn’t understand what was going on.
And I’m sorry for that. I really regret what you were put through, and I would change how it happened if I could.
I hope you can forgive me one day and that we can come to an understanding as we had done before this. ”
Silence.
Dominic’s fingers moved restlessly by his sides as his brows pinched and un-pinched like his anger was reluctantly slipping away. Then he let out a heavy sigh.
“I do not appreciate being made to look like a fool,” Dominic grumbled.
His glare eased up. “But I suppose I am not displeased about being here, and that would not have happened without you.” He stuck his hand towards River after a long pause.
“I am still disgruntled over what I was put through, but I accept that it had to be done.”
The tension in River’s shoulders melted as he smiled and set his palm against Dominic’s. “Thank you.”
The way Dominic shook River’s hand looked like it rattled the latter man’s bones, and with the way Dominic smirked, it was clear that had been his intention. But it was better than bloodshed, and Rayna couldn’t blame Dominic for wanting a little bit of revenge.
Still, she rolled her eyes as he grinned proudly while poor River flapped his reddened hand around with a grimace of both pain and amusement.
“Now that we’ve got that out the way, how are you?” Rayna said to her colleague as she rounded the breakfast bar into the kitchen. “Also, tea or coffee?”
“Tea, please. And yeah, I’m good. You guys?” River headed towards the dining table and set the brown bag atop it.
Rayna grabbed the kettle on the way to the sink. “We’ve been good. Busy trying to satiate Dominic’s curiosity.”
“She refuses to let me step outside,” Dominic added as he tracked River to the table and peeked into the bag.
“I’ve told you five times already, I’ll show you around outside tomorrow. Then you can bloody live out there for all I care,” she rumbled as River grinned between them.
“Stubborn witch,” Dominic muttered, not exactly under his breath. Rayna glared at him as she set a kettle full of water back on its base in the corner of the breakfast bar and slapped it on.
“Kelly said hi,” River said. “She wanted to come, but one of the boys at the café called in sick, so she had to cover his shift. But I brought everything you asked for.”
“Yeah, she messaged me. And thank you for grabbing the stuff.”
“What is all this?” the curious, oversized cat questioned, his nose still stuck in the bag.
“It’s all for you,” River answered. “You can take it all out if you want to.”
Dominic’s honey-coloured irises lit up, and he stuck his hand straight in.
“Dominic, tea or coffee?” Rayna asked, holding a teabag over the second of the three mugs she’d set on the countertop.
“Tea, please. Instant coffee tastes awful,” he said as he pulled out a stubby white bottle. He studied it carefully before frowning. “Face wash?”
River nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
Dominic grunted and shook his head as he put the bottle down. “Hand wash, body wash, face wash, shampoo—how many different soaps does one person require to keep themselves clean? Surely, one soap is good enough for everything.”
River chuckled. “Yeah, probably. It’s just a way for companies to make more money, I guess.”
“Did you find a pair of chinos?” Rayna asked, putting a spoon of coffee in for herself.
“Yeah, we had a pair of navy-blue ones in the lab wardrobes.” Just as River said it, Dominic pulled the trousers out and let gravity unfold them. “Rayna said you weren’t too fond of jeans.”
“I cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to wear such a coarse and uncomfortable fabric,” was Dominic’s response. “These, however, feel much softer.”
“Well, I brought your wallet too, so you now have some cash and a company credit card for when you go shopping, so you’ll be able to buy whichever trousers you prefer.”
“Credit? As in money credit?” Dominic dug through the bag and pulled out a brown wallet.
“Yeah,” River confirmed. “But it’s all calculated on one card so that you’re not carrying loads of credit notes.” River gestured to the bag. “There’s also a phone in there. And once we take a picture of you on it, we can sort out your identity card, and you’ll pretty much be sorted then.”
“A phone?” Dominic echoed, losing all interest in the wallet, and picked out the last item in the bag. “That is the machine that writes imaginary correspondence, correct?”
“Close enough,” Rayna muttered to herself with a laughing huff. He had a good memory, she’d give him that, even if his descriptions were a bit funny.
“It does more than that, but yeah, that machine,” River said with a grin.
“Note F...two-point-zero smart—phone,” Dominic read off the white box in his hands. “This is for me to use?”
“For the time you’re here, yeah.”
“How does it work?”
“You might want to sit down with River for this, because explaining how to use a phone is going to take a while,” Rayna said just as the kettle went off with a bubbling boil.
That night, while Rayna lay in bed trying to go to sleep, her phone pinged on the bedside cabinet with an incoming message.
She picked up the device and unlocked it. A very slow string of messages popped up in the notification bar.
Dominic:
Goof evrning.
Goid evenkng.
Good evening.
Rayna:
Hi
A minute passed before the next message came through.
Dominic:
Did it work?
Rayna:
Yh it did
Rayna’s fingers hovered over the touchscreen as another minute passed.
Dominic:
It is hard to write on this.
The letters are very small.
But you write very fast.
What is yh?
Rayna let out a slow breath as a reluctant smile spread across her mouth. “Dominic?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
She struggled to roll over under the tightly cinched blanket to face the giant oaf stretched out on it. The light from the lamp next to him and his newly acquired phone illuminated his ruggedly handsome face.
“I’m lying right next to you,” she said slowly. “Why are you messaging me?”
His irises glinted like platters of ancient gold as he smiled proudly. “I am practicing. So you ought to help me by replying to my instant message.”
“Don’t call it ‘instant message,’” she muttered, bringing the device back up to her face. “Just say message, or people are gonna think there’s something wrong with you.”
Rayna:
Yh means yeah
Now go to your own room
She peered over the top of her phone and smirked as he slid her a displeased sidelong glance. Instead of commenting on it aloud, he began slowly, with immense concentration, tapping on the screen with one index finger.
Oh my—even Grandpa types faster than that.
At the thought, a fluttering chuckle fell out of her mouth. “Why are you typing like that?”
He paused. “How else am I to write?”
She rolled onto her back and shuffled closer to him. “Hold your phone like this above your face. Put your index fingers on either side, so your thumbs hover over the screen. And cup the back of your phone with the rest of your fingers.”
He watched closely and mimicked the positioning of her hands. Then a frown dragged his brows low. “Now I cannot see any of the letters.”
“That’s a you problem for having such fat thumbs.”
“I do not have fat thumbs, you little witch. They are very normal-sized.”
“Yeah, for a bear.”
“Bears do not have thumbs.”
Just as the last syllable left his mouth, the phone slipped from his blunt fingers and landed smack against his shadowed cheek.
“Sweet mother—” he bit out through a pained grimace.
Rayna threw her head back against her pillow as a loud cackle shook her entire chest. She watched Dominic fumble blindly for the device that had assaulted him until her laugh turned silent and breathless as she struggled for air. Her own phone slipped from her slack fingers.
Dominic slapped the mobile down on the bedding beside him and growled in embarrassment. “You damned witch. How dare you laugh at my pain? Were you aware that would happen? Is that why you made me hold it so?”
She shook her head as she tried to crumple in on herself, her belly aching under the strain of her laughter. But Dominic’s weight on the duvet left her with little wiggle room.
“You set me up,” he grumbled.
She hiccupped when she finally caught her breath, tears of delight slipping through her bottom lashes. “Oh, Dominic,” she cooed, swiping at the liquid slipping across her cheek.
He turned onto his side and rested his jaw against the flat of a propped fist so that he hovered over her with a playful scowl. “I shall never trust you again, you wicked woman.”
“Like it was my fault,” she sassed back through a snicker. “But don’t be embarrassed. It happens to everyone.”
He huffed a sceptical sound but wore a faint smile. He brushed his thumb gently through the dampness under one set of her lashes. Her amusement stuttered in place like a system of rusted cogs as the sunny warmth in his eyes poured over her chest as thick as syrup.
The beat of her heart sounded in her ears as she held still and unbreathing.
Don’t look at me like that. Stop looking at me like that.
“You humiliate me,” he rasped, “and yet I cannot find it within me to be angry when the sound of your laughter is the most precious melody.”
That was the moment she should have laughed at his stupid, cheesy flirtation and rolled her eyes. But the gooey trap of his gaze refused to let her play it off as a joke.
It felt near impossible to break out of the warm, sticky pools he was dragging her into, deeper and deeper and under.
At least until he traced the same thumb along the line of her jaw, skimming dangerously close to her lips. Then her heart kicked for another reason entirely, warning her that this was moving dangerously close to forbidden territory.
She swallowed and clenched her teeth, pulling his hand away from her face by his wrist. “Don’t cross the line, Dominic.”
The glaze coating his stare cleared away, and he curled his hand away from her. “What line have I unknowingly attempted to cross, sweet Rayna?”
“You can’t touch me like that.”
“Then how may I touch you?”
“You’re not supposed to touch me.”
“At all?”
“Intimately,” she said with a bite of irritation. “You can’t touch me intimately.”
Something wispy darted through his eyes, dulling the bright hue of his irises, but Rayna couldn’t figure out what it was. It was probably better that way too.
“I think you should go back to your room,” she said.
He held still for a second, then twisted over and flopped on the bed again. He rubbed his head into the pillow as he crossed his arms over his chest. “In a minute.”
“Dominic.”
“Five more minutes. Please, sweetheart. I shall not touch you.”
Say no. Say no, Rayna. Now.
But fuck him, because something about the softness of his tone smashed whatever stubborn front she’d been hoping to maintain to smithereens.
“Five minutes,” she echoed, then rolled over, giving him her back.