Chapter 16 #3
‘Because of your dad, and the divorce and…?’ he tailed off.
‘They don’t speak. Dad hurt Mum really badly and she didn’t cope all that well when he left. Omma had to step in and look after us both. I try to keep Mum and Dad completely separate these days. I never mention him in front of her.’
‘But you’re working for him?’
‘Yeah, I am, for the first time. I’m…’ she was hesitating, quite rightly, not sure she could trust him after his stupid blunder with the phone call.
She couldn’t know how grateful he felt when she went on explaining.
‘I’m here on a trial basis, doing this one job to see if I have the mettle to be a Norheim ski business consultant.
I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.’ Something in her posture changed, her shoulders rounding with the effort of having had to keep her secret, but now it was out.
He saw the toll it had taken, and suddenly Florrie made a lot more sense. She was deeply miserable.
‘Hey.’ He stopped her, now that they had passed down the dark lane into the leafy riverside path that led towards McIntyre land, wanting to look her in the eyes when he told her. ‘I’m glad it was you he sent.’
‘Really?’ she rolled her eyes. ‘But I’ve upended your whole life.’
He watched as she searched his face for signs of anger or resentment, and his whole being responded with the need to reassure her.
‘It’s OK.’ And in that moment, he really meant it. She could do anything she liked with him. ‘I’ll survive.’
Her eyes glossed with moisture but she didn’t look away.
The breeze through the bare branches, the icy trickle of water over rocks on the riverbank, and the slow, creaking turn of the waterwheel that clung to the side of the Mill House, all faded into absolute silence, only one thought replacing all the noise of the last few days.
He wanted to kiss Florrie Norheim. His whole body was telling him to ask her if it was OK.
The upwards tilt of her chin and the step closer that she took, not quite closing the gulf between them, but almost, seemed to suggest she was thinking the same thing.
‘Florrie…’ Her name came soundless and airy from his lips. ‘Can I…?’
Without waiting, Florrie stepped right into his space, her mouth a breath away from his.
The reedy white vapour from their mouths combined in the frosty air, blurring his vision. This close, Hamish could sense the warmth radiating from her body.
He travelled his palms from her elbows up to her shoulders before curling his hands so he could trail his knuckles and the flats of his nails into the soft hair at the nape of her neck where he let his fingers spread out, ranging into her hair, feeling the tingles in his own scalp as if their bodies were electrically connected.
Her eyelids turned heavy, her lips in grazing distance of his.
They held still like this, waiting.
When he let his lips sweep slowly over hers, she exhaled in a drowsy shudder, and when he repeated the same soft arc over her mouth, she seemed to awaken, mirroring his movements until she was brushing his lips from the corner of his mouth to the bow of his upper lip and down to the other corner and back again in an unhurried, maddening drag, amplifying all his senses and making his lips tickle and prick with building urgency until the softness grew too much to bear and he had to press harder, kissing her fully.
Her soft moan, that he’d felt travelling upwards from her very core, sent shock waves to the pleasure centre of his brain before relaying the message in a breathtaking race around his nervous system.
And she wasn’t pulling away, but pressing her mouth harder to his in a way that told of the deep need she had of him right now.
An intrusive buzzing sounded twice before they pulled apart, blinking and dazed. ‘What is that?’ he tried to say, but he couldn’t command his voice.
‘My phone! Can you…?’ she gestured to her pocket, and he had to work the zipper and take it out for her.
‘It’s your mum.’ He’d read the screen before he could stop himself, and wanted to kick himself all over again because he’d overstepped her privacy for a second time.
‘It’s like I don’t learn…’ He was mid-apology when she tapped the button to answer and, by tipping her head, managed to get the phone jammed against her ear, something of a feat with her thumb splinted.
‘Mama? Hei! Nei, I’m fine.’
She wandered ahead as if she’d forgotten him, drifting into a language he didn’t understand, Norwegian, he’d have guessed.
Left holding the carrier bag of snacks and feeling like he’d just been jolted out of the best dream he’d ever had by a bucket of iced water, he didn’t know what else to do but follow at a respectful distance so he didn’t look like he was earwigging.
She passed through the gap in the stone wall that marked the Mill House boundary and he traipsed behind her into the gardens glittering with frost, feeling that, one way or another, this was a point of no return and that whatever happened to him in the next few minutes would set his life’s course forever.