Chapter 33
The next morning, I couldn’t quite believe what had happened. I almost pinched myself to check I wasn’t still dreaming. But no, it was true. We were in love. And it was bloody fantastic!
The night had been nothing short of amazing. I had always prided myself on my ability to have sex without attachment in the past.
To see it for what it was: a mutually beneficial arrangement between two consenting adults. As a lawyer, I understood only too well the concept of a contract. But all those romantic Mills and Boon novels that my granny had devoured when I was a kid, a big mug of tea in one hand and her novel clutched in the other, had turned out to be true. She would tell me, her glasses all steamed up, I never knew whether from the tea or the steamy pages she was reading, that I had to wait for “the one”.
Even as a child, I had laughed that off. In a world of nearly eight billion people, how could there be “the one”? And how likely was it that they would just happen to be living in the same town as you?
I had thought her books were unrealistic and cheesy and just incredibly uncool. But maybe they had been spot on all along, and there really was “the one”. Now I’d found that sex when you were in love, truly in love, was the biggest thrill of all. And I knew in my heart this was the real thing with Seb.
I once believed I loved my ex-husband, truly loved him, for the longest time. But like the yogurt residing in my refrigerator, it turned out that our love had a limited shelf life. And when it finally turned sour, well, it was nothing short of rancid.
We had made the best of things for a while. But unfortunately, the remnants of our love that remained were not enough to weather the storm of life. And the bitterness that had set in had been like a rot, just too corrosive to our relationship.
I had hated Duncan so much for cheating on me, but if I was totally honest with myself, it had given me a reason to boot him out on his arse. In some ways I should have thanked that girl. She did me such a favour.
But even in our best times, the love I had for my ex-husband was nothing compared to this. I couldn’t believe I had denied my feelings for so long: always believing myself a strong, independent woman who was best on her own. Confident I knew what I wanted, I damn well made sure I got it. But nothing could have been further from the truth, because if I’d really been true to myself, I would have realised that what I’d wanted all along was Seb. And now I had him, I wasn’t going to let him go.
My past half-life of lack-lustre liaisons and hedonistic endeavours was behind me. All I needed now was Seb: his sci-fi socks, his shepherd’s pie and his…ahem…light sabre. I smiled just thinking of what I had been missing for all those years. It sure made me glow.
We didn’t just get intimate in the boudoir, though we talked for hours too. I’d believed I knew everything about him, but in the afterglow of our passion, we opened ourselves up fully to each other, our souls completely bared. And it was beautiful.
What we hadn’t done, though, was eat. And after all that energy had been expended, we were completely ravenous. So in lieu of shepherd’s pie we microwaved the abandoned fish and chips and shared them between us.
Never had there been a meal that tasted quite so divine. You could keep your champagne and your finest oysters from now on. Reheated fish and chips eaten under the duvet with the man you loved just couldn’t be beaten. They were manna from heaven.
And looking at Seb now, dozing on the pillow next to me, the shafts of sun streaking through the linen curtains and illuminating his face like a golden kiss, he looked every inch the angel that he was.