‘It took around a year,’ he said, his voice oddly flat. ‘I received his diagnosis the night you and I met.’
She gave a slow nod of understanding. ‘That was why you looked so sad.’
‘Did I?’
‘Well, desolate really.’
‘I was drowning my sorrows.’
‘And then I rocked up and intruded. Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘You were the perfect distraction.’
Her breath caught and a hot shiver ran through her. ‘You were the perfect birthday present,’ she said huskily. ‘It was a good night.’
‘It was better than good.’
His dark, glittering gaze remained locked onto hers and scorchingly vivid memories suddenly poured into her head. The air surrounding her thickened. The hustle and bustle of the restaurant faded. Up until this point she hadn’t realised how much of a chaperone, a shield, Josh had been. Without him, she felt wild and carefree and she suddenly wanted to stand up and lean over and kiss the man sitting opposite her looking at her so intently. Her mouth was dry and her heart was pounding, and deep inside she ached. She wanted to grab his hand and take him home and have him seduce the hell out of her all over again.
But none of that would happen. It couldn’t, even if the heat and desire had been mutual, which it clearly wasn’t. What with the risk of pregnancy and the chance that it might induce another psychotic episode, she was never having sex again. It was vaguely ironic that her libido had returned when it was of least use but she had to ignore it. Starting now, she thought, shifting to alleviate the ache only to accidentally knock his knee with hers and jolt as though electrocuted.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, blushing fiercely while mentally throwing her hands up in despair.
‘No problem,’ Finn replied, unlike her, completely unmoved by the moment, if the inscrutability of his expression was anything to go by. ‘We should order.’
* * *
Despite appearances, Finn was anything but unmoved by his brand-new civil partner. Theoretically, the ceremony should have changed nothing. The whole event had been a legal and bureaucratic process designed to bind Josh to him permanently, and that was it. He hadn’t given Georgie a ring or planned a honeymoon and the lunch they’d had afterwards had hardly been a celebration.
However, for some baffling reason things had changed. A week in and there now seemed to be an inexplicable intimacy about living with her that somehow hadn’t existed before. At night he’d started imagining her in bed and what he might do to her should he find himself ever in it with her. In the mornings, when he heard the sound of the shower running, he now envisaged her in it, wet and naked.
He seemed attuned to her every movement. Her scent lingered even when she wasn’t around. When home, she’d taken to wandering around the apartment in tiny shorts and T-shirts that drew his gaze to her long legs and spectacularly returning curves. When going out she did at least put on proper clothes, none of which were either particularly tight or revealing, but that didn’t provide much relief. He knew what lay underneath regardless, and to his immense irritation he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And then there were the little things that he’d noticed and now couldn’t un-notice, such as her habit of nibbling the end of the pen that she used when writing in her diary. The extraordinarily expressive delight with which she savoured the food she ate. The way she gathered her hair up and then with a sort of flick of her fingers twisted it once before letting it go.
He couldn’t stop thinking about any of it and he existed in an agonising, limbo-like state of wanting to back her up against a wall and slake his desire yet not being able to do one damn thing about it, of yearning to escape her mind-scrambling orbit but needing to be as close to his son as possible. At least she had no idea of the battle raging inside him. She couldn’t. If she did she’d never prance around the place so scantily clad. She wasn’t that foolish.
Nevertheless, everything else about the situation was driving him demented, and despite his best efforts to contain it his mood of recent days had not gone unnoticed. From time to time he’d caught her looking at him, her eyes
on him searing his skin and burning through him, as if deliberating whether to question him about it.
She was doing it now, sitting out here on the terrace that overlooked London, staring at him from over the rim of the mug she drank coffee out of every morning, which had ‘world’s sexiest lawyer’ emblazoned across it, as if he needed a reminder.
‘If you have something to say, just say it,’ he snapped, unable to stand the scrutiny and the suspense any longer.
‘All right,’ she said, putting her mug down. ‘I’ve been thinking. What would you say to spending your evenings up here with me instead of disappearing off to wherever it is you go?’
What? No. No way. He barely trusted himself with her in the presence of their son and Mrs Gardiner in broad daylight. He and Georgie in the evening alone with soft lighting and an even softer sofa was not happening. ‘Work needs me,’ he said, which was a big, fat lie, since the team to which he’d delegated everything was doing just fine.
‘It would be good to spend some time together without Josh.’
‘Why?’
‘There are things we should discuss.’
‘Like what?’
‘How we move forward.’