Chapter 20
Violet
Struggling to regain some composure and not think about the hard muscle of Finn’s thigh pressed against hers, Violet mumbled, ‘Um, it’s supermarket own brand shower gel, I think.’
Finn chuckled, and she felt it as much as she heard it, as it vibrated through his chest and arm, and into hers.
Oh shut up, Finn, she grumbled in her head. She tried to cross her legs neatly and create a sliver of air between her and Finn.
Anna and Ben were telling a story about being chased across the kitchen garden at the estate house by a territorial goose, and Ben was rolling up his trouser leg to show off where he got bitten.
Violet tried to concentrate and laugh in all the right places, but she could have sworn Finn’s thigh was pressing even more closely against hers.
Her brain seemed unable to focus on anything but the part of her body that was in contact with Finn’s.
Glancing sideways at him, she saw he was watching her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked suspiciously, her eyes raking over him for clues.
He grinned and shook his head. ‘Always so suspicious, Vi.’
She rolled her eyes at the use of the shortened name. He held his hand up.
‘I was just wondering how you were?’
Violet peered at his face and sipped from her ever-full wine glass. ‘You know how I am. You see me every day. You saw me this day.’
‘But that’s work. That’s just you telling me I’m late, or giving me sides. We don’t get much time to talk, do we?’
Finn’s body was angled towards her now, his back towards Jennifer on his other side, who was in deep conversation with Ed, the director.
Violet was vaguely aware of cackles of laughter as Anna relayed how Ben had launched himself over a five-bar gate to escape the vicious goose. But her world had suddenly shrunk to the space between her and Finn.
‘What do you want to know?’
She tipped her chin up and took a gulp of wine, fighting the urge to down the glass.
‘What has been the best part of the shoot so far for you?’ Finn asked.
He rested an elbow on the back of the sofa bench. If he straightened his arm out along the back of the bench, his fingers would be in her hair. Violet swallowed and tightened her grip on her wine glass.
‘Uh,’ Violet racked her brains.
When you turned down my mother’s invitation to dinner. Or when you improvised a fetish for antique beds.
Aloud, she replied, ‘I think probably seeing the estates early in the mornings when it was all misty and eerie. And when my mother left,’ she added, with a wry twist of her lips. ‘What about you? What was your favourite bit?’
Finn paused, glancing around before angling his body slightly more towards Violet. It had the effect of creating a little cocoon for the two of them.
‘I think my favourite bit was,’ his eyes flicked down, and he picked at the label on his beer bottle. ‘Was when you helped me the day the scenes got swapped.’
Violet felt her pulse quicken. Finn looked up and met her gaze.
‘The voice you put on for reading Nathanial’s mother’s lines will haunt me forever,’ he said, a dead serious look on his face.
Violet burst out laughing and somehow found herself leaning in a little closer.
As her laughter eased, she looked at Finn, who was staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. It made her nervous, and she didn’t know why.
‘Do you…’ she cleared her throat. ‘Was the scene okay? I can… you should know that… if ever something like that happened again, you can ask me. I don’t mind. It was fun.’
Oh god, she cringed. Did she just suggest that helping Finn with his dyslexia was fun?
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you meant,’ Finn said quietly, his head low and tilted toward hers. The volume in the bar around them had increased in equal proportion to the amount of alcohol being consumed.
‘I appreciated your help and your discretion. But I don’t want you to treat me differently.
You should still think of me,’ he smiled, lines crinkling in the corners of his eyes, ‘as the lazy, disorganised, good for nothing…’ Violet could feel her cheeks heating up.
‘Who also happens to be devastatingly handsome and unnervingly charming,’ Finn finished.
Violet wished it were possible to disagree on these final two points but instead gave an awkward laugh and shook her head. An image from her dream flashed into her mind, and she stared into her wine glass.
‘I am sorry I wasn’t nicer, back in college,’ Finn said.
‘Even though I couldn’t necessarily help some of it, I didn’t have to be quite as difficult and mean as I was.
I genuinely didn’t realise the impact my actions had on you.
You know, with your university place and stuff.
’ Violet looked up. Finn’s expression was open, his gaze steady. ‘For that, I’m sorry.’
‘We were sixteen,’ Violet shrugged.
‘And now we’re not,’ Finn said. ‘I think, in the end, we both did okay.’
‘Yep,’ Violet said with a wry smile. ‘If they could see me now…’
‘They’d be jealous,’ Finn parried. ‘You’ve had an amazing career in theatre, and now you’ve been brave enough to start all over again.’
Violet shifted to see his face more clearly. ‘You think I’m brave?’
Finn nodded. ‘I do. Some people spend all their time wishing their lives were different, but are too scared to actually make any changes. They don’t want to take a risk, so they stay put. But you did it, took a big leap of faith. I’d say that’s brave.’
‘Oh,’ Violet shifted in her seat and felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘Thanks.’
The volume of chatter around them had grown once more, punctuated with shouts and squeals of laughter.
One of the lighting crew had connected a phone to a Bluetooth speaker and was turning up the volume on Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.
Leanne and Chloe were helping two of the grips drag furniture out of the way to make room for an improvised dance floor.
The middle-aged couple had disappeared, and the bar staff looked on with folded arms, bored. They had seen this all before.
The centre of gravity of the crowd of crew had shifted away from them.
Sitting beside Finn on the banquette, Violet’s right hand had folded over the edge of the seating.
Something brushed against the side of her palm, and she glanced down.
She watched as Finn gently rubbed his little finger along hers.
Violet watched for a second, her breath caught in her throat, then she lifted her eyes to meet Finn’s.
They were wide and dark and locked on her face.
Her body responded to this slightest of touches between them.
She was frozen to the spot and her nerve endings were on fire, tingling all over.
Her belly flip-flopped, and her lips parted of their own accord.
A smash of glass and a shout from near the bar broke the spell.
Violet snatched her hand away, her eyes flitting about the group to see who had seen their little moment.
No one seemed to be paying attention. The average level of drunkenness in the room had risen considerably, and the energy in the bar was heady.
Two more bottles of wine had appeared at their little table nearby, and Rachael and Chloe held their glasses aloft, toasting something.
She needed space.
On unsteady legs and without a backward glance at Finn or anyone else, Violet shot up from her seat and made her way from the bar, following signs for the loos.
Five minutes later, having splashed so much water on her face that the collar of her pink shirt was sodden, she gripped the sink and stared at herself in the mirror.
Her eyes were overly bright, and her cheeks were still flushed, but somehow, she still looked less deranged than when she had stumbled in there.
Unsteady legs wobbled beneath her as she leaned into the sink.
She couldn’t tell if it was the wine or Finn.
Maybe both. This thing, whatever it was, had to be nipped in the bud.
It was classic tour behaviour, she told herself.
People thrown together in emotionally charged, intensive environments, away from home, throw in some alcohol, put them all in the same hotel, and inhibitions disappear like martinis at happy hour.
This was Finn Ellington, she reminded herself.
No matter what had shifted in recent weeks, he was the star of the show, and she was the trainee.
Nothing good could come of it. It would be unprofessional.
There might even be rules against it. HR rules about not fraternising with colleagues.
Sackable offence, record-blemishing, career-ending kind of rules. She shivered at the thought.
And then she remembered his eyes when he was looking at her a few minutes ago, like none of the other sixty or more people were there. Like he wished they were alone. Her body tingled at the thought, and she shook herself.
Jesus.
Get a grip of yourself, Hathersay, she told the Violet in the mirror.
Mirror Violet didn’t look like she was capable of this.
Smoothing her wild hair away from her face, she sucked in a deep breath. She would stroll back in, find her phone, fake a call—again—slip away and slope off to bed. Maybe, if things had got even more raucous, she could sneak in, grab her phone and execute a true Irish goodbye.
The heat as Violet stepped back inside the bar was oppressive. A gaggle of crew were dancing badly in a jumble of sweaty, rhythmless bodies, clutching drinks and each other, as Uptown Funk blared out.
The crowd had thinned even further around where she and Finn had been sitting.
Finn was still there, now in intense conversation with Ed, who was swaying slightly even though he was sitting down.
As she moved forward, her eyes scanning for her phone, Finn looked up and saw her.
A smile spread across his face, his eyes crinkling.
Violet’s resolve was packing up and running for the hills. Finn patted the seat beside him.
Violet could see her phone balancing on the edge of the little table, almost pushed off by the clutter of empty and half-empty glasses.
All she needed was her phone, and she could go.
Ed was gesticulating passionately and grabbed Finn by the shoulder.
Finn was nodding and leaned forward to speak into Ed’s ear.
There was no sign of Anna, Ben or Rachael.
She glimpsed Leanne’s shiny ponytail swinging somewhere in the middle of the throng.
Reaching for her phone, Violet ignored Finn’s indication that she should sit back beside him and perched herself gingerly on the edge of a chair, poised for escape. Beyonce’s Texas Hold ‘Em came on, and one of the grips tripped over his own feet trying to line dance.
Violet flipped her phone case open, looked at the screen, and did her best, Hmm, what is this?
face. Finn was watching her as she stood.
She mouthed, sorry, one sec, and held up a finger.
Lifting the phone to her ear, she walked as calmly as she could back the way she had come.
She could feel Finn’s eyes burning into her with every step.
In the cooler air of the corridor, Violet sucked in a breath and slid her phone into her pocket.
Part of her wanted to spin on her heel, strut right back into the melee and sit down with Finn’s thigh pressed hard against hers again.
She was about one small Sauvignon Blanc away from making that kind of bad decision.
As she waited by the lifts, the realisation brought a strange mix of disappointment and relief.
The hotel lift dinged to announce its arrival, and the doors began to slide open, when Violet heard a shout from down the corridor.
‘That was the worst, I’m getting a phone call acting I have ever seen, Vi,’ Finn called, as he strolled towards her, one hand in his pocket.
His long legs ate up the distance, and before Violet could think of a suitable retort, he was standing in front of her. The ancient lift doors started to shudder closed, and Violet hammered the button again.
Her face flamed, but she shrugged.
‘Well, you’ll have to give me lessons,’ she said, stepping inside the lift.
She had hoped her retort would be timed to the lift doors’ closing. She would have the last word, and Finn would be left standing in the corridor as the lift spirited her away. Instead, the doors were so slow that it was like trying to make a getaway on a tricycle.
Finn stepped inside the lift with her. The little metal box shrank by half.
Violet was standing beside the panel with the buttons on it. She had been so focused on making it into the lift that she had forgotten to select her floor.
‘Which floor number?’ Finn murmured.
He was leaning across her, fingers hovering over the panel. She could smell the warmth of his skin and his aftershave—wood, citrus and spice. His breath fanned over her cheek.
The old country hotel only had four floors, but Violet’s mind went utterly blank.
‘Uh, um, it’s… Three. Floor three. I mean, third floor.’
Finn nodded and pressed a button. ‘Same as me.’