Really, really liked it.
Remembering the hard urgency of his mouth and the light, teasing touch of his hands on her skin, she felt her breath shorten. He liked what he saw on the outside too.
Releasing the pedal, she leaned into the keyboard and, opening her mouth, sang from her heart—sang the song as she had written it to be sung.
As the last note faded to silence she heard a slow, steady hand-clap and, turning on the piano stool, she felt her stomach flip over.
Charlie was leaning against the door frame, his dark eyes resting on her face. He was wearing loose cotton pyjama bottoms and his hair was flopping across his forehead in the same way it did when he rolled her body beneath his in their bed upstairs.
Her heart began beating faster. He was so mesmerisingly beautiful that every time she saw him she had the same feeling of not being able to look away. But it wasn’t just his looks that drew her to him. Charlie made her feel as though every day was the first day of spring. Just being with him made her think of warmer days and soft green leaves—and new life.
‘You should have woken me.’
‘You were sleeping.’
He held her gaze. ‘Was that the song you’ve been working on?’
She nodded. ‘It came together this morning.’
His mouth curved into a slow smile that made heat rise up inside her. ‘Yes, it did,’ he said softly.
Watching the flush of colour rise over her cheeks, Charlie walked across the room towards her, but she was already moving towards him.
They met halfway, her lips finding his as his arms curled around her body.
He wasn’t sure this feeling would ever go away—this feeling of wanting to hold her close—or the way her nearness and the soft beat of her heart warmed him.
Seeing her at the piano, hearing her sing, made something tear inside him. He knew how much it meant to her, so it meant everything to him.
Burying his face in her hair, he breathed in her scent, feeling blessed. Grateful. Whole.
So much had changed since that day when she had come after him. He was going to a counsellor and now, thanks to Dora, he could talk about himself, reveal the hurt and the loneliness of those years he’d spent trying to meet his father’s demands.
Miraculously—and again thanks to Dora—he had grown closer to his mother and his sisters too. It wasn’t easy—there were still days when he found it hard to forget the need to pretend, to protect himself, to keep his distance—but Dora and Archie, and his mother and his sisters, needed him to be whole. And his father’s way would stop him from being the man, the husband, the brother, the son they needed.
Being honest with himself, with his family, was hard, but he knew now that it was necessary for the life he wanted and needed to live.
‘You’re not missing him too much, are you?’ he asked softly.
They had left Archie with Nuria. His chest tightened as he remembered how thrilled his mother had been when they’d asked her to take care of him. She was so excited—touchingly so—to be an Avó, and she adored Archie.
His sisters doted on him too, and now that Lei had found out she was pregnant she was at the house most days, practising her ‘mummy’ skills.
‘I do miss him, but I know he’s fine. And, anyway, I wanted it to be just the two of us.’
He nodded, his heart contracting with the love he was learning to express more with every passing day.
‘I want that too.’ Pressing her against him, he kissed her slowly, hungrily, the soft hitch of her breath making his body harden with unqualified speed.
‘We need to make the most of it. I mean, it might be the last chance we get for a bit,’ she said softly. ‘When the baby arrives we won’t have much time to ourselves.’
His gaze drifted over her vest and cropped denim shorts, lingering on the bare skin of her throat and thighs. ‘I think we have time. Lei isn’t due until the New Year.’
She gazed up at him, her grey eyes hazy with a love that mirrored his own, and then, taking his hand, she rested it gently against her belly. ‘I wasn’t talking about Lei’s baby.’
His face stilled. ‘You’re having a baby?’
He was stunned.