Elijah grins. “Then I’ll have to work extra hard at putting a smile on your face.”
“Oh, you do that, Mr Frazer.”
His mouth slams down on mine, our tongues tangling as I sink into his body.
“I love you, Elijah Frazer, and I would be honoured to be your wife.”
“Thank goodness.”
I pull back, my hands resting on his shoulders.
“What about Lottie?” I ask.
“WhataboutLottie? You think she’ll have a problem with us?” He takes my head in his hands. “She’ll be thrilled. She asked me the other day if I was going to propose, if we might havebabies. She loves her cousins. I had to all but drag her away from Leah and Gabriel’s after Callum was born.”
“It’s just...”
“What?”
“I love her like a daughter. I don’t ever want her to think that isn’t the case.”
My heart is still breaking for Lottie and all she’s been through.
“And that’s the other reason things will be fine. Lottie loves you, too. You have the strongest of bonds. One thing I’m learning, especially after everything that’s gone on recently, is communication is important. You and Lottie already have that.”
“About work,” I say.
“The choice is yours. You can work or not work. I have something I was going to discuss with you. It was finalised today, but in all the excitement?—”
Elijah pauses, and I incline my head.
“I’m selling Frazer Cyber Security,” he says.
I stare at him for a moment. “Wow, that’s not what I was expecting you to say.”
“I want to change my life. Not in a midlife crisis kind of way, but I’ve realised life is too short.”
He leads me to the sofa, and we sit down.
“Darra was right when she said she was married to a workaholic. I have been. It’s been my crutch for too many years, a distraction from my day-to-day life. Since you’ve come back into my life, I’ve realised I don’t want to be locked in an office from six AM until midnight, be on call twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I want to start enjoying life again, the way I did when I was swimming.”
“But you were always so animated about Frazer Cyber Security in the beginning,” I say, confused by what he’s saying.
“I was when I was about to be working with my best friend, but after she was forced to bail on me.” He shoots me a wink. “That same company became a means to an end. A way to support a wife and child. Yes, I’ve been successful, but I’m a driven man. I can’t do anything by halves. That’s just who I am.”
“What do you plan to do? I take it you do have a plan.”
I know Elijah too well. He’s not a man to sit around and twiddle his thumbs. He’d be bored in five minutes.
“I want to paint,” he tells me. “Come with me.”
It’s then I remember the room he showed me when Lottie went missing. We haven’t had a chance with everything else that’s gone on to revisit the little nugget I knew nothing about. Elijah, The artist.
Elijah gets up and drops a quick kiss on my lips before taking my hand and pulling me after him. We make our way upstairs and towards his art studio. He presses on the keypad until the door unlocks.
As with the first time we entered, I’m hit with the smell of oil paint and turps.
The next is the light. The room has floor-to-ceiling windows, letting in an enormous amount of natural light. Not something I’d really taken in the last time I was in here.
