Chapter 10
The bombshell was impossible to drop.
Lady Dorothy was so excited about attending the wedding that she demanded a more vigorous exercise routine and put her heart and soul into gaining strength and balance so that she could cope with walking on sand.
‘I won’t take my stick,’ she declared. ‘Oliver will be there if I need any support but I want to get dressed up and not look like an invalid.’ Her eyes had held an appeal Bella had no chance of resisting. ‘I want to look like me again.’
How could she have taken that away from the old lady she was so fond of?
The outing would be a reward for all the hard work she’d put in over so many weeks since she’d become ill.
She wanted to show her son that she could be independent again and rejoin society.
Maybe she wanted to show that she wasn’t going to be a burden for him in the years to come.
It didn’t matter what she was trying to prove, however.
What mattered was that it was so important to her and that she started every day glowing with determination and pride in what she was achieving.
The achievements spiralled upwards as the days went by.
Life inevitably became busier for Bella and she was slipping away from the Dawson household at increasingly frequent intervals to help Kate and Connor with all the wedding arrangements.
That prompted Lady Dorothy to increase her independence even further.
She learned to manage testing her blood sugar by herself again and could – almost – manage her insulin injections.
She had also agreed to wear a personal alarm around her neck on the occasions that both Bella and Oliver were absent and that way she could call for help if she felt a hypoglycaemic episode coming on or if she lost her balance and fell over.
The changes were a double-edged sword. Not ruining Lady Dorothy’s excited anticipation had the added benefit of letting the Dawsons know that they would be able to cope without Bella in their lives.
It would, at least, remove any guilt in having to abandon her private patient if she got fired from her position.
Knowing that she was becoming dispensable didn’t make the prospect of dropping the bombshell any easier, though. If Bella was really honest with herself, the biggest reason she couldn’t do it was the change she was watching in Oliver.
Ever since the day the wedding invitation had arrived and she’d seen that look of concern in his intense gaze. Ever since he’d smiled at her again in that way that made her feel so special, she could sense something happening between them.
He was spending more time in her company. Drawing her into conversations she couldn’t resist, like when he’d talked her through the surgery that Wally had had and brought her up to date with the wonderful progress her old patient was making.
‘He’s missing his line-dancing classes,’ Oliver told her, and there was a gleam of genuine amusement in his eyes. ‘Might be time for me to have another one myself.’
Bella had been gobsmacked. She made some joke about how embarrassing it would be for Oliver if it got around St Pat’s that he was taking line-dancing lessons and nothing more had been said, but it was becoming more and more obvious that Oliver was reaching out.
Trying to close the gap between them. Actually trying to make her laugh?
Like the day he’d told her she didn’t need to prepare dinner on the housekeeper’s day off. He would cook, he’d said, and then he’d arrived home laden with paper sacks from the fast-food restaurant.
‘It’s an old family tradition,’ Lady Dorothy explained. ‘Disgusting but delicious. Our little secret.’
If only he knew how much harder he was making everything.
Because it was irresistible. She was being drawn into this family. Made to feel as if she could be an accepted part of it and Oliver was showing her, all over again, the reasons she had fallen in love with him.
The very real love he had for his mother.
The streak of humour that lay mostly hidden beneath such a controlled exterior.
That hint that he would actually revel in the chance to rebel if he thought he could get away with it.
He got that from his mother. He had her strength of character and single-minded determination as well.
He just hadn’t learned to balance things.
Had he learned as a child that friendship and fun had to be sacrificed in order to retain control of what was happening in his life?
Bella knew she could teach him otherwise if she had enough time.
She didn’t have the luxury of time so was it so dreadful to put off the confession that would spell an end to what was beginning to happen?
She would never have it again. Maybe it was knowing that this was the very last time in her life that she could embrace fantasy before stepping into the responsibilities of being completely grown up.
Being a mother and not a carefree young woman with the possibilities of anything she could dream of ahead of her in life.
Was it so terrible to want one more night with Oliver? Because that seemed to be where this new attitude was heading.
* * *
Things were improving.
Glimpses of the old Bella were returning. It had taken some effort but it had been well worth it. He’d seen a gleam of… admiration, perhaps, when he’d gone as far as suggesting that she give him another line-dancing lesson.
He would have done it, too, but she’d been evasive.
He’d made her laugh, though, offering to cook and then turning up with hamburgers and French fries.
She seemed happy to talk to him too and it was so easy to talk about things that always bored the kind of women he’d usually dated.
Medical stuff, which was all he really had to talk about, wasn’t it?
Had he really dismissed Bella as a somewhat ditzy young nurse?
She was smart and things she probably hadn’t learned in her training had been absorbed on the job.
She actually seemed fascinated by the intricacies of neurosurgery and the questions she asked were intelligent.
What stayed with Oliver during his days at work was the way she could centre on the people involved, not just the medical details.
Bella cared about patients she hadn’t even met and he would find himself following them up in more detail, even asking about things in his patients’ lives that had nothing to do with the case, just so he could make them more real for Bella and hold her interest even more keenly.
The odd thing was, he was getting more interested himself.
Connecting with his patients in a way he never had before.
Bella Graham really was the most intriguing woman he’d ever met. And she was… gorgeous.
The idea that having a relationship with her would undermine his controlled life to a dangerous degree was fraying around the edges now. With every passing day, Oliver was craving more than just trying to make the old Bella reappear from that unusually restrained version.
He was craving her.
He wanted Bella. No, he needed her.
His control finally broke one evening the following week, when there was a particularly spectacular sunset happening.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’
He led her down through the garden.
‘I’ve never been this far,’ Bella said. ‘I keep meaning to find the steps and go and have a swim at the beach. Is it safe?’
‘The beach? Yes, it’s perfectly safe.’ Going this far with him, the way he was feeling right now? Probably not.
‘It’s good swimming.’ Oliver had to clear his throat. ‘You need to stay on the steps going down, though. The cliff can be a bit crumbly in places. Here, this is what I wanted to show you.’
The old summer house was at its best on an evening like this, warmed by the glow of the sunset and with a clear view of the ocean and the changing light.
‘It’s my personal haven,’ Oliver told Bella. ‘The place I always feel most at peace with the world.’
Would she understand how significant it was to bring her here?
She seemed to. She was standing so close to him and when she looked up, Oliver was sure he was going to drown in what he could see in her eyes.
An almost childlike mix of appreciation and wonder and excitement. But there was nothing childlike about the way her pupils dilated and her lips parted. It was pure woman and utterly irresistible.
The first time they’d kissed, Oliver wasn’t quite sure how it had happened.
One moment they’d been standing there and the next they’d been all over each other.
But this time he savoured every microsecond, dipping his head with infinite slowness to bring their lips into contact.
Maybe he was giving Bella the chance to pull away if she didn’t want this.
More likely, he was finding the exquisite torture of delayed gratification too alluring.
Bella didn’t pull away. She didn’t close her eyes either. She was watching him and it was like looking into an emotional mirror. He could swear she wanted this just as much as he did.
The built-in seating was more than wide enough to serve as a bed and, if the cushions were past their use-by date, neither of them noticed or cared.
Like the kiss, Oliver slowed things down as far as he was physically capable of doing.
He undressed Bella, touching her skin as though it was the first time.
In a way, it was. They had been so inflamed by passion last time, he’d barely noticed detail.
He was noticing now. How smooth her skin was.
How delicious it tasted. How just one touch of his tongue could make her nipples tighten into the most amazingly hard buttons that begged to be softened by enough extra attention.
And the way Bella responded to his touch was like nothing Oliver had ever experienced.
If his first encounter with her had been the most mind-blowingly exciting sex he’d ever had, this was the most tender.
Did Bella feel it touching something so deep in her soul that he couldn’t even recognise what it was?
Maybe she did.
Maybe that was why he saw those tears in her eyes when he held her gently as they finally returned to reality.
Not that he got a chance to talk to her about it.
‘It’s almost dark,’ Bella murmured. ‘It must be getting late.’
She pulled away from him. ‘I’m running late. I’m supposed to be at Kate’s by now. There’s so much to do with only a few days till the wedding.’
She was still moving as she spoke, getting off the wide seat and leaving a space that felt unbearably empty beside him. She was getting dressed at the speed of light despite having to search for items in the dimness of a dying day.
And then she was gone and Oliver groaned softly. He probably wouldn’t see her for days now with the chaos of the last-minute wedding preparations.
He wanted to see her again.
Soon.