Chapter 15 #2
He’s holding onto my hand and trying to persuade himself to walk towards his bedroom door, and at the last moment, before my hand falls out of his grip, he jiggles it instead. ‘Want to sleep in here tonight?’
I raise an eyebrow, and he adds, ‘Nothing funny. I just know I’m going to lie awake thinking about you all night otherwise.’
‘Same. God, so much same.’ I love that he says that so openly, when the truth is I’ve been lying awake for many nights now thinking about Ollie, and it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to tell him so.
It’s just practising, I tell the ‘this is a bad idea’ voice in my head as I follow him into his bedroom. I need to be coming and going via this door when the guests are here, this is just making life easier by getting into the habit.
After we’ve got ready for bed, we cuddle up together under his duvet, my head on his shoulder and his arms wrapped around me.
I don’t want to go to sleep because that would mean being unaware of being cuddled by this gorgeous man.
He drifts off instantly and I lie there, holding his arm where it’s around my chest, and trying to remember the last time I felt so content, and all I can come up with is…
never. I have never felt as happy as I do here.
I shift my head until I can press a kiss to his neck and he burrows closer in his sleep. With him. I’ve never felt as happy as I do with him.
* * *
I wake up to the sound of distant whistling and the most gorgeous smell floating up from below.
As much as I want to stretch out and stay in Ollie’s bed for the rest of the day, it’s really not the same without him in it, so I force myself to pull his cream cardigan around myself and venture downstairs.
From the corridor to the kitchen, I can hear him clattering around inside, whistling the tune of ‘Coventry Carol’, and it makes me smile to myself, but not as much as I smile when he looks up as I go in and the beam that blazes across his face is so bright that it makes me feel like I need sunglasses. ‘Good morning.’
‘I wanted to make us breakfast before I get ready for work.’ He beckons me over, and as soon as I reach him, he slides an arm around my waist and plants a kiss on my head so affectionately that it makes me feel like I’m falling through the air even though I’m on solid ground.
I huddle against him and try to figure out what’s going on in the skillet he’s tending to.
‘Cinnamon toast,’ he explains as he spreads a mix of cinnamon, sugar, and butter onto thick slices of white bread and when he’s put them in the pan with a sizzle, he bends to lift me up into his arms and I wrap my legs around his body as our mouths meet again.
He looks morning-rumpled and dishevelled in the sexiest way possible and I run my fingers through his messy hair. This is the way to start a morning. There will never be a better way to wake up than by kissing Ollie.
He carries me to the nearest kitchen unit and sets me down so I’m sitting on it without our mouths ever parting. I’m moments away from ripping his clothes off and physically dragging him back up to bed, and he grunts like he’s feeling the exact same way.
‘We have a problem,’ he whispers against my lips. ‘I don’t know how to stop kissing you.’
I’m too young for hot flushes, but heat bursts through my entire body. It had better be him and not early menopause.
He kisses me again. ‘What do we do about that, hmm?’
It’s a loaded question. He’s offering me a chance to tell him what I want to do here.
If last night was a mistake… If we should stop this now, before it goes any further.
The problem is that I don’t know how to stop kissing him either, and nothing else seems to matter as much as that.
‘We’re married for the time being. Maybe we don’t need to do anything about it right now… ’
‘I like that plan.’ His low voice makes yet another flush of heat race through me, and he kisses me again, and I lose the power of logical thought with his mouth on mine for long minutes until he forces himself to pull away. ‘I do have to do something about this toast though.’
He turns the toast over in the skillet and comes back to wrap his arms around me again.
I take his face in my hands and drag his lips to mine.
My hands are in his hair, stroking his back, rubbing his chest, the noises we’re making are getting more and more lustful, and we’re moments away from things becoming truly indecent, when Nancy clears her throat behind us.
I scream and Ollie jumps so much that he whacks his head on the kitchen cupboard, making every single china plate inside clatter together and turning this into a kiss so loud that it was surely heard by people across the sea in Ireland.
‘Ow!’ He sinks down to lean on his elbows on the kitchen unit beside me as the shock turns into marginally unhinged laughter, and I rub my fingers gently over the back of his head to ease the pain.
‘I’d say good morning, but I can see that you two are already having one.’
‘We were just practising,’ I say as inspiration for an excuse strikes. ‘Gotta be on the ball for when the bosses arrive. Can’t have it looking like we’ve never kissed before.’
‘Practising, aye, that’s right.’ Ollie lifts his head and looks over at Nancy and then up at me. He pushes himself upright, takes a step back and holds out a hand, and when I slip mine into it, he gives me a formal handshake. ‘Good work, Lula. Job well done. Thank you for your time.’
I nod sagely, even though I’m trying to bite back a fit of the giggles.
Nancy casts disbelieving eyes towards the skillet on the stove. ‘Your toast’s burning. I can’t imagine why.’
Ollie swears and rushes over to rescue our breakfast. He puts a slice each on a plate and brings one over to me, but quickly realises he’ll be late for work if he doesn’t get a move on and scarfs his down in a few burningly hot bites.
‘Ollie?’ I call after him as he goes to leave the kitchen. ‘I don’t think we’re quite there yet. We need to put in more practise later.’
Nancy’s back is to him and she doesn’t see the beam that explodes across his face, but it’s even wider than the one he gave me earlier, and it sets off a maelstrom of butterflies in every part of my body, especially when he practically bounces out of the door and leaves me giggling yet again.
‘It’s been years since I saw him this light,’ Nancy comments as I finish the cinnamon toast, which is really good. The only thing that would’ve made it better would have been Ollie having time to eat it too.
‘Light?’
‘Like he hasn’t got the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like he wants to be here. You’ve given him a reason to come home instead of spending hours doing overtime at the office.’
I’m looking forward to Ollie finishing work today for the holidays, and the thought that he might be feeling the same fills me with a little fizzle, and I practically melt off the unit as I eat the last bite of cinnamon toast.
‘So when was it that you fell in love with him?’
Nancy has a really, really bad habit of making me choke on breakfast foods. ‘I’m not,’ I stutter out. ‘We were just practising, getting into character. It’s all pretend.’
‘Lula, I was friends with his mother since before he was even a twinkle in her eye. I’ve known that laddie from the day he was born.
He’s never been one for pretending. And if there’s one thing I know about Ollie, it’s that he’s deeply respectful.
Trust me, his bosses are not going to be seeing a public display like that, no matter how much “practice” you put in, as I’m sure you both know very well. ’
Her words make me feel like I’m swaying around on a ship in a stormy sea.
My breakfast plate is still hanging limply from my fingers and she takes it from me kindly.
‘Just be careful. This might be all fun and games now, but when Christmas is over, you might end up hurt in a very real way, and so might he.’
‘Ollie’s the most gentle person I’ve ever met. He’s never going to intentionally hurt anyone.’
‘For the past fifteen years, Ollie has prioritised his job over everything, including his own happiness, his sanity, his love of this castle, and his enjoyment of life in general. If you can make him change that, you will be a miracle worker.’
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence for me to see what she’s getting at. There’s an unspoken ‘and if you don’t…’ tacked onto the end. Ollie’s job is the most important thing to him. He won’t do anything to risk derailing that, especially not falling in love with me.