CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two days to Christmas
Now that we’ve said our hellos, Jake and I go back to his car to grab our bags. Helena comes with us.
“Evie, we’ve prepared the cottage for you. Plenty of firewood.”
Her phrasing is peculiar—she makes it sound like Jake won’t be staying with me. I instinctively glance at Jake for clarification. Right now, though, he’s looking at his mom.
His head is subtly tilted, curious. Her eyebrows lightly lift in response. Jake answers with a slight pinch-lipped smile and a mirrored raise of his own brows, then Helena breathes a silent laugh through her nose. Her expression softens.
They’ve just had an entire conversation with no spoken words, and it happened faster than I can blink twice.
What would it be like, to be that known by someone? That seen? What would it feel like, to understand and be understood simply through microexpressions and shared history?
Jake finally meets my eyes, and his expression stays neutral, but one of his brows bumps up in tandem with a faint slant of his lips.
Shall I tell her …? the look says. I feel like I can actually hear his voice saying it in my head.
The expression I send back hopefully says, Don’t you dare leave me alone.
I think he gets it, because he answers with a smoldery warmth in his eyes before turning his attention back to his mom.
“I’ll be staying in the cottage too, Mum,” Jake says.
Oh. He got it. So that’s what it feels like.
“Marvelous.” Helena’s eyes sparkle, and she subtly bounces on her toes. “Extra pillows and blankets will be in the wardrobe.”
* * *
The cottage is down a fieldstone path behind the house.
We round a tall hedge, and the late-afternoon sun catches on the glass panes of a tiny greenhouse.
It looks like it started as an old shed, and gradually the walls and roof were replaced by a patchwork of antique windows secured together like puzzle pieces.
The door at the gable end is stained-glass.
A dense cottage garden surrounds it, and even though everything is brown and brittle now, it’s still beautiful in its austerity. I can imagine how breathtaking it must be in the summer, with bees and butterflies coasting between foxglove and geranium, echinacea and sage.
It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. “Can I see inside? I beg, Jake.”
Jake moves in beside me. “You like it? Miles and I built it for Mum ages ago.”
The hinges on the door squeal in harmony. I leave my overnight bag on the stepping stone outside. Jake comes in after me, closing the door behind him to keep in the meager amount of warmth from the sun trapped under the glass.
After almost a decade of living in the city, the scent in this space is almost like therapy. That cool mineral quality of clean, living dirt, and the slight funk of fertilizer. I swear I can still smell the heat of summer sun baked into the wood and the soil.
There’s a small crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling.
It’s vintage, the bulbs long gone and the crystals turned yellow with age, so it acts as an oversized suncatcher now.
Against the far wall, an old church pew is painted the chalky blue-green of a duck egg.
A raincoat drapes over the back, and a pair of boots sits propped against a leg.
Along a side table, there are grow boxes with winter greens—spinach, rocket, and lettuces of at least three varieties.
On the other side, terracotta pots and ceramic vases are all marked with handwritten chalkboard signs that hang from little metal stakes pushed into the soil.
Rosemary, Spanish mint. Olive, dahlias, cannas and callas. A dozen more.
What would it be like to putter around out here with Jake’s mom? I’d give anything to see this place in the warmer months. Central Park is gorgeous year-round, but I can’t imagine there’s anything that compares to having a space like this all to myself.
Jake trails his knuckles along the small of my back. It’s a gentle touch, and it’s not asking for my attention or a touch in return. He’s simply existing in the moment with me.
I turn to face him, sliding my arms into the open front of his coat and around his waist. “What was that about in there, with your mom?”
“You mean about the cottage?” Jake reaches up, gently twining loose locks of my hair around his fingers. “I mentioned the possibility of bringing a guest along for Christmas. I wasn’t specific about the, ah, nature of our association.”
“The nature of our association?” I laugh. “OK, Counsel.”
“Technically, I’m a solicitor.” He smiles, but it lacks his usual warmth. It’s like that every time anything remotely law-related comes up. “Barristers are the ones called Counsel.”
“Well,” I pull him closer, “to me, you’re just Jake.”
“That’s a good thing, I suppose. Anyway, I think Mum wanted you to have the option of staying alone if it would’ve been more comfortable for you.”
It’s touching, being cared for by someone I’d never met.
I slip my hands from under his coat to reach up and draw him down for a kiss.
Jake doesn’t hesitate to bend to meet me.
He’s got a hand in my hair, the other hooked onto a belt loop of my jeans with his thumb.
The flashpoint between us falls lower and lower every time we’ve kissed over the past few days—lust ignites the moment my tongue makes a slow glide against his.
I hear it in the sharp draw of breath through his nose, the urgent press of his hips into my belly.
He walks me backwards until I’m pinned between his body and one of the high tables.
A wind chime of tiny bells rattles against the glass. A few of the pots wobble.
“Whoops,” Jake mutters.
Goosebumps scatter up my spine when he nips my earlobe with the edges of his teeth. “Someone will see us.”
“Good,” he growls. “I’d argue—”
“Of course you would.”
“—that it’s a good thing for them to see this. That way, there’s no question who you are to me.”
Hell. If they’re able to figure it out, maybe they can clue me in. “Who am I to you, Jake?”
He looks surprised, like it should be entirely self-evident what the answer is.
“You’re Evie.” The way he says it is quick and clear.
He coasts the pad of his thumb between my brows to smooth away the frown, then he lets my messy braid slip between his first and second fingers. Softer, he says, “You’re mine.”
Well, then.
I guess I am.
* * *
The cottage is a miniature version of the main house.
The same straw-colored masonry, the same dormant jasmine vining along the front facade.
Inside, there’s a fireplace along the wall to the left, and a tiny galley kitchen to the right.
Everything is sparkling clean, but there’s an undertone of homey mustiness from the old timber and stone. I love it.
The bed is up a small set of steps, on a galleried landing rather than an enclosed bedroom. The ceiling is pitched along one side, low enough that I can’t stand fully upright. I lean over the railing. “I can’t sleep in these conditions, Jake.”
He looks up, concerned. “Something wrong?”
“It’s much too far from the kitchen.”
“Sounds like I’ve got some remodeling to do, then.”
Jake gets behind the small sofa and drags it away from the hearth, pushing it instead against the wall near the door. On the other side of the room, he scoots a small bookshelf and a side table closer to the kitchen.
I watch from halfway down the stairs. “Are we going to dance? Or tussle?”
He laughs, whisking a stand lamp to the opposite corner near the hearth.
“Is that what you want to call it?” He pulls plaid blankets from a wardrobe with squeaky hinges, whipping them outward to unfurl flat over the thick woolen rug in front of the cold hearth.
Then he climbs past me on the stairs, taking two at a time.
Laughing, I say, “What in the world are you doing?”
Jake grunts. I hear the billowy rustle of the duvet and the other bed linens from the loft.
Then I see the edge of the mattress scooting out over the railing.
It slowly edges farther over the rail until it falls, thudding neatly on the landing pad he made with the plaid blankets.
A sweet-scented cloud of cedar and thyme plumes into the air.
A ball of linens comes down next, followed by the duvet.
Jake grips the loft railing and leans over to grin at me. “Better, love?”
* * *
One day until Christmas – Christmas Eve
“How could you, Jake? Letting this poor girl spend a December in England without a proper pair of wellies.” Helena stands over me at a bench in the cloakroom as I pull on a spare pair of her boots. They’re a bit big, but she’s so sweet and earnest about it, I can’t refuse.
We spent the first part of the day prepping food for Christmas lunch, chatting all the while.
I learn that Indi is the mudlark (and yes, she would take me along, if I wanted to go), Genny and Ewan were best friends since primary school and married when they were twenty-one, Miles is a rural veterinarian, and Caitriona (arriving tomorrow with her wife Maeve) is a pediatric surgeon.
She’s the sister who’s into astrology. Now, tonight, Helena is keeping the little ones so we can go to a pub in the village called The Drowsy Cow.
“Are you sure you should go?” Helena twists her hands together, glancing between everyone as we shrug into coats and scarves. “Trevor Pritchard was just saying earlier today, we’re due a big Christmas Eve storm.”
On his way out the door, Miles says, “That old bastard is just trying to get sweet people like you into his hardware store to buy overpriced generators, Mum.”
Slow-motion snowflakes meander above us on our nighttime hike to the pub. There’s a velvety softness to the darkness here. Jake holds my hand, and we walk in step with each other.