After a torturous moment, she nodded. “I think so. We came to an understanding.” That sounded ominous. “She invited me to lunch the day after tomorrow.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“That means it went more than okay. It went well.”
A small smile blossomed across her face. What was that science theory? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Seeing her smile lightened me. She anchored my thoughts, recentered my focus, balanced my life. And I needed that . . . desperately. Being back here . . . it was strange. I was struggling to walk that line between being polite and friendly, and falling back into my old ways.
“Now about these exes . . .”
Speaking of old ways.
“Exes?”
“Oh yes. Rowland estimated there were about ten in attendance.”
Goddamn it, Rowland.
I closed my eyes to resist the urge to go downstairs and mangle him.
“I’m sure he was exaggerating.”
The arms crossed over her stomach raised to cross over her chest, and she looked so deliciously bossy. Couldn’t we just skip this part and get on to what we’d planned earlier?
“Do you have that many exes here in London?”
I wracked my brain for a way that this conversation wouldn’t be disastrous.
“I don’t know that exes is the right word.”
“So they weren’t all relationships? What . . . just sex?”
I grimaced. Guess we were cutting to the chase then. I didn’t so much like this bold side of her when it was directed at me.
“Bliss . . . I was a right prick when I lived here. You would have hated me. My parents were not so good at the parenting aspect of life. They gave me money and a long leash, and like a stupid teenage boy, I took advantage of it. Often. Things are so beyond different now that that feels like a different life. A different person. And it was, really. When I left London, it was a rude awakening to live life outside this bubble of money and influence and tradition. But it was good for me. I grew up. I found something I really love, which led to finding someone I really love. If there were girls from my past here tonight, I didn’t notice them. They don’t matter. Nothing about this place matters at all in comparison to you.”
She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, surveying me. There was just a hint of a tear shining in the corner of her eyes, then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s impossible to be mad at you. This is setting a dangerous precedent for our relationship.”
That was a good sign.
I stepped forward and settled my hands on her hips. “I like that precedent.”
Her hands came up to my chest. “I know where you get it from. Your charm. Your father joins you and James Bond as a smooth-talking Englishman. He was really nice about the vase thing.”
I groaned. “He is a smooth talker, yes. But don’t let him fool you. He’s not nearly as nice as he pretends to be.”
She traced her fingers along my jaw and pulled my face down toward her. “What does that mean?”
I shook my head. “Nothing you need to worry about. We just have different priorities is all. Business and money and class always come first to him.” I laced my fingers at the back of her neck and grazed her jaw with my thumbs. “I may have inherited some things from him, but not that. You will always come first. Our family will always be my primary concern.”
Her eyes were wide and glassy, and I didn’t know if that look was because of something I said, or just the long day getting to her again.
She said, “It’s funny how children end up being so different from their parents.”
“It’s funny how we managed to grow into reasonable people despite our crazy parents.”
She swallowed and laughed once. “Right. How does that happen?”
I pulled her into my arms, laying my cheek against her head. Her hair smelled sweet and calming, like lavender.
“Let’s go out tomorrow. I’ll show you around the city. I just need a break from this house.”
“Sure. That sounds great. I need to run to the store anyway. I forgot a few things.”
I kissed her forehead. “Like what? We might have whatever it is.”
She pulled back. “Oh, it’s nothing important. Just some little things.”
She went to her suitcase on the floor and bent to gather her pajamas.
I stepped up behind her. “You sure you’re not feeling sick anymore?”
“No, I’m fine,” she called over her shoulder. “I just had a moment, that’s all.”
“Good.” I swept an arm under her legs and pulled her up into my arms. “Because I’m pretty awake. But I’ve got an idea of how to tire myself out.”
She dropped the clothes she’d picked up to clutch my shoulders, and her pretty little mouth formed a circle. That was all it took. No matter that there were hundreds of people downstairs, and we were in my parents’ house. I wanted her as badly as I ever had.
I walked her toward the bed and she said, “Garrick! The people downstairs.”
“Won’t hear a thing unless you plan on screaming my name. In which case, it might be worth it.”
She swatted my shoulder, and I deposited her on the bed.
“What if your mother comes upstairs?”
I knelt at the foot of the bed and slipped off her shoes.
“Then we’ll have another awkward occurrence to add to our repertoire.”
“That’s not even remotely funny, Garrick.”
I kissed the inside of her knee and said, “Do you see me laughing?”
She swallowed, and her eyes followed my hands as I reached for her. Her cotton dress was stretchy, and I slipped the straps down over her shoulders easily. It fell around her waist, revealing more skin to me. She wore a lacy blue bra that looked sweet and innocent, and damn if that kind of thing didn’t always do me in.
“Do you have any idea how hot it is to think of having you here in my old room?” She shook her head, but her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and I think she knew exactly what I meant. “It reminds me of last year.” How much it had f**ked with my brain to think of her as a student, and how very little it did to deter my feelings for her. If anything, I wanted her more. “Every class I was so tempted to ask you to stay after everyone left. Even though your friends were outside and anyone could have walked in, all I wanted to do was touch you. Taste you.”
Her eyes were large and dark, and her breath hitched. I kissed the side of her knee again and ran my hands up her thighs to the hem of her dress.
She asked, “Why didn’t you?”
“Because that wouldn’t have been fair of me. So I had to settle for my imagination.”
Thank God I didn’t have to do that anymore.
“And what did you imagine?”
I leaned over her and laid her back against the bed. Her arms stretched out across the mattress, and she looked up at me with wide, apprehensive eyes. It reminded me so much of the night we met, and all my blood rushed south so quickly that black spots dotted my vision.
I slipped my hands under her dress and said, “I imagined a lot of things. I thought about having you against the wall back behind the curtains.” She closed her eyes and fisted the blankets in her hands. “I saw you in that skirt you wore the first day of school with your legs around my waist.”
I hooked my fingers around her underwear and slid them down her gorgeous legs. “I wanted you in every seat in the audience.” She made a low noise and tried to sit up, but I braced a hand on her stomach to hold her in place. “I wanted you in every seat so that you wouldn’t be able to sit anywhere in that theatre without thinking about me.”
“That was already true.”
I smiled. “Good to know.”
She laid both of her hands over mine on her stomach, and held my hand tighter against her for a second. She said, her voice small and quiet, “I love you so much.”
I stood and leaned over her so that I could see her face. She blinked a few times, and I couldn’t read her expression. It was sad and happy and confusing, and she had never had this kind of response in bed before.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I could feel the panic rising under my skin, at the back of my throat, in the lining of my lungs.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
She shook her head until her expression cleared, and then smiled. “Yeah . . . just thinking about the future.”
My heart jerked in my chest, and I tried to explain away the sadness and the fear I saw in her eyes. They didn’t have to mean she was having doubts. They could mean a thousand other things. But for the life of me, I couldn’t conjure one more possibility.
I dropped a kiss on her lips and said, “I did promise you forever. That’s a lot of future.”
She nodded, and then after a too long moment she smiled. “I’m sorry. But do you think we can . . . just go to sleep? I’m sorry. I know I said I was fine, but I’m feeling a little off after all.”
I took a deep breath and tried not to read too much into this. She’d been sick. It didn’t have to mean anything else. But damn it, now I couldn’t think about anything else.
As calmly as I could I brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. “Of course. Can I get you something? Water? Medicine?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “I think . . . I think I just need some sleep.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
I folded down the blankets, and she slid between the sheets, still only half covered by her dress. I took another deep breath that did absolutely nothing to relieve the pressure in my jeans or the pressure in my head.
I kissed her cheek one more time.
“I love you,” I said, slowly, deliberately. I needed her to hear that through whatever noise might be happening in her head. “Get some sleep. I’m just going to go take a quick shower.”
“I’m sorry,” she called again as I walked away.
“No need to be sorry, love.”
Unless she was saying sorry for something else, something she hadn’t said.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she said.
“Also not necessary, though I do like the sound of that.”
She pulled the blankets up to her neck, settling back on the pillow. I switched off the lights and said, “Good night, Bliss.”
Then I ended our roller coaster of a day with an ice-cold shower and too many worries to count.
“WAIT, WAIT! JUST one more!”
“Bliss, there are children waiting.”
And they probably hated us, but I was just so glad to see her smiling that I didn’t care.
“Yeah, well, they all just jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them weren’t alive when I read Harry Potter for the first time.”
I turned to the Canadian family behind me and said, “I’m so sorry. This is the last one, I promise.” Then I took one more picture of Bliss pretending to push the luggage cart through the wall at the Platform 9? monument at King’s Cross Station.
A little boy stuck his tongue out at Bliss as we left. I pulled her away before she could follow suit.