Chapter 48
Tim
After an early run, I showered and threw on some old jeans and a hoodie, collapsed on my boyhood boat bed and texted Tabitha. Can’t wait to see you in two hours. Leaving now.
It was Saturday, the end of Tabitha’s week with the Wainwright brothers, and I was about to head to London to bring her back for the preview party at her parents’ house. After a whole week without her, I couldn’t wait to see her, touch her, hear all her stories from the last seven days.
She called back immediately. “Hey, you.”
“You missed me so much, you had to call even though I’m seeing you soon?”
She laughed. “Yes, but also you have a reprieve. Turns out I have a ride, but early evening. The brothers are coming to our preview viewing, would you believe? Normally, I don’t do personal stuff with people I’m interviewing, but they’re interested in the house on a business level.
Anyway, it’ll save you four hours of driving here and back. ”
Fuck. I didn’t want a reprieve. I was looking forward to having her to myself in the truck for those two hours on the return journey. And more of those fucking turbo-charged guys? Ugh.
“Well done, you,” I said, forcing the annoyance from my voice. “You are awesome. You are on fire. Look, why don’t I get in all the drinks and food for tonight?”
“Would you? Oh Tim, that would be so helpful. There are only twelve of us, but I can’t trust Mum and Dad to do it. Shoot. Sorry, got to go. I want to reread the pages for the spread before I leave. I love you.”
“Miss you, love you.”
That evening, I arrived at the inn and spent ages setting out the drinks and food. I was just finishing when an electric Bentley pulled up. Tabs waved from the front passenger seat.
My breath caught at the sight of her. Fuck, she was gorgeous.
I rushed to open her car door and pulled her into a hug and devouring kiss. She started giggling and wiggling out of the crush of my arms, blushing and nodding at the guys in the car.
One of them stepped out of the back. “Hi, I’m William Wainwright. You must be Tim. Nice to meet you,” he said, hand outstretched.
“Hi, William. Yes, I’m Tim Langston. Great to meet you too.”
“We’ve had such a good week with Tabitha. I don’t know how she put up with us. And she never stopped talking about you.”
William was just as handsome as I’d suspected, and I didn’t love that. But he genuinely seemed happy for us, so that was a plus.
I hurried around to the boot to get her luggage.
Somehow the other brother was already there.
Bloody Darcy. I wasn’t a fan of the slicked-back hair, nor his man-about-town camel trench coat that no one wore in real life.
He was the same height as me but with a narrower build.
What his pictures and reports didn’t convey was the fucking intensity of his disdain.
He was staring right down his nose at me.
And fuck you too. I held out my hand to him. “Hi, Darcy. I’m Tim. Nice to meet you.”
His forehead twitched. He shook my hand without a word and then turned back to grab Tabitha’s bag.
“I got it.” I ducked forward, reaching in. “I know where her bedroom is.”
He stepped back with a grunt and an annoyed look. I’d been around a lot of alpha guys in rugby, but this guy had an arrogance I’d never seen.
I led them into the house, my arm around Tabitha, so incredibly happy to see her and loving having her so close. The entry was night and day from when we’d started, the front filled with roses, a curved path with a new door painted in the same aquamarine as Tabs’s eyes.
We filed in, and Darcy stood in the entry hall, turned around, and gave the house a good long look.
He sniffed. “The house is a reproduction. Mix of styles. Georgian and Medieval.” He peered up at some carvings on the beams, all snooty, and pointed out a sphynx I hadn’t noticed. “Because of the Egyptian carvings, I’d say built around 1920s?”
“Yes.” Tabs clapped her hands with delight. “Gosh, you’re good.”
He’s a pompous fuckwit is what he is.
I quickly dropped Tabs’s bag upstairs in her bedroom, and joined them in the kitchen.
Now it was an open room that combined the original stone floors and wooden beams of the old kitchen, and the delicate, pastel-colored moldings of the drawing and dining rooms. The space was beautiful and light, with views to the hills, filled with colorful, whimsical fabrics, softened with rugs and rattan furniture around the fireplace, and modern light fixtures amid the 1920s Italian chandelier reflecting on the nude paintings.
And, of course, the aqua AGA stove, which I’d originally slagged off.
“Well done.” Darcy actually smiled…slightly. Finally, some emotion. “I see what you’re doing here.”
Bullshit. Tell us what she’s doing, then. Go on.
I glanced at Tabs, expecting a shared eye roll. Instead, she glowed.
“We have a country house that’s very run-down and tired,” he said. “I’d love you to do the interior. Pemberley.”
She sucked in a breath.
Oh fuck.
“Tabitha runs a whole section at a national newspaper, as you know, and she’s very busy with that. Your house—” I was calling him out on his fake-arse coyness, because his house was a stately home “—is way up in Derbyshire.”
Tabs’s face flashed with annoyance, and she glared at me.
Crap. Shut up, Langston.
“Let’s talk later. Maybe I could do it in the evenings from home,” she said.
But she was going to be with me in the evenings. Actually, how was that going to work? She lived two hours away from me. But I shoved any doubts aside. Whatever it took, I was going to make our relationship work.
“I suppose you could write about it too.” Darcy shrugged as if he didn’t really care either way. Cocky son of a bitch.
Tabs’s parents came in from the fields, and friends from London arrived, Isla and Declan, Ishani and Kingston, and Sunny and Shikha, and I plied everyone with the mountain of cocktails and food I’d bought.
I’d way overdone it. Amy and Fitzy hadn’t turned up yet, which was odd as they were never late.
I was about to text her, when the preview video arrived in my inbox on the dot of 7:00 p.m. Since all our friends had to drive back to London tonight, I didn’t feel as though I could delay the showing. I told Tabs to go ahead and texted Amy that we had to start.
With a whoop, Tabs slipped out from under my arm, grabbed the remote, and bounced onto the sofa. I sat beside her, determined to ignore Darcy and quit worrying about his presence. Tabitha was here, and all I wanted to do was stare at her lovely face.
Monty plonked down on the other side of me and started chewing my ear off about the flight pattern of the ducks. I had no choice but to listen politely, while Darcy sat in the chair on Tabitha’s other side and murmured something to her.
Agitation burned through me.
When the show came on, I exhaled and shifted a bit closer to Tabs.
The preview video was only a half hour, and the start was a head-swinging bang, bang, bang of the conflict highlights. The first day with Aberdeeen, our annoyed faces, our eye-rolling. Then it flashed to me in the library—my “confessional” with that exec from London.
I tensed, remembering how they’d cornered me into saying things I didn’t believe about her. Thank God I’d had the sense to shut them down. Except the moment on the screen looked a hell of a lot like when I’d criticized her, and my body froze with a terrible foreboding.
“So,” the exec said on the telly, “there are a lot of comments about Tabitha online.”