Bella felt like she’d been dropped from a great height. She was plummeting, she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. He looked at her then, his expression vulnerable, open, hopeful. Her heart was pounding so hard she wondered if he could hear it. But even if he’d not heard the hammering of her heart, there was no way he could have missed the shaky lungful of air she breathed in, or the tremor in her voice when she said quietly, “Yes. I’d like to find out. If there’s a chance for us. Very much.”
His mouth twitched into a tentative smile. “I’ve been so nervous. I didn’t know if you’d…still…after all this time.”
She wanted to tell him that she’d never stopped loving him. That every man she’d loved since him had been merely a placeholder. But she didn’t. Maybe there’d be a time for that, down the road. Right now, they needed to start at the beginning and see where it took them. So, instead of blasting him with three decades of longing, she mirrored his smile and said simply, “Yes. Still. After all this time.”
He reached his hand across the gap between them. She took it in her own.
The wonder of his being here, all these years later—graying at the temples, broader than he’d once been, but still everything she’d ever hoped for in a man—felt unreal, dreamlike. But he was here, and he had feelings for her, and she knew she would be replaying this moment on a loop in her mind for the foreseeable future. She gazed at him, feeling a deep sense of contentment percolate through her.
“Come away with me, Bells,” he said. “After Christmas, let’s go away for a few days, just us two. Start getting to know each other again, away from work and family commitments. What do you say?”
His words were like a strong wind stealing the breath from her lungs, and she laughed at the suddenness of it, trying to underplay the effect he was having on her. “I’m not sure that there’s much left of me, outside of work and family commitments.” She said it jokingly, but there was truth in it.
In the absence of any love life and no social life to speak of, these last few years, she had focused all her energies on the business, the aunts and her daughter. She thought of Fred. They’d only just begun to find their way back to each other; was now the time to embark on a new relationship? Fred felt she’d had to fight Bella’s boyfriends for her attention when she was a child. Would the prospect of Bella stealing away with yet another man, just when they were getting closer, set them back irreparably?
“Bells?” Liam drew her attention back to him, his voice uncertain. “Is it too much too soon? Am I going too fast?” His face was etched with concern. “It’s been a long timesince I’ve done any of this, I’m out of practice. If you need more time…”
“No!” she almost shouted, and then adjusted her volume. “No, it’s not too soon, I was just doing some mental logistics. I’d love for us to go away for a few days. Anywhere you like. Anywhere with you.”
It was only a few days. She deserved a break. She hadn’t taken a holiday in two years. The aunts would be fine, and Fred might enjoy having the house to herself. She needed to do this for herself. The universe was giving her a second chance, and she was not about to pass it up.
Liam stood, still holding her hand, and she stood too. She wobbled and he held her steady.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Very.” She laughed. “A little thunderstruck.”
“You and me both.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, really looked, for the first time in forever. Bella had given up dreaming of this moment years ago, but occasionally she’d allowed herself to remember how they’d been, back then. Precious hours squeezed in around their responsibilities, spent loving each other and dreaming of togetherness in endless tomorrows. Before she’d turned him down and changed the course of both their futures. And here they were again, battle-scarred and beautiful for it. He hesitated, just once, and then he kissed her. Whisky on their tongues, warm feelings in their bellies, and honey in their veins; decades and daydreams melting down and resolidifying into this one moment. It was a good first kiss.
—
“Will you tellFred and the aunts that we’re seeing each other?” Liam asked as he walked her back to Hallow House.
He kept his arm tight around her, as though she might float away if he let go. She felt so high, she just might. She didn’t want to spoil this night with reality. She wanted to stay in this dreamland for a little longer, just her and Liam and the fairy lights, and the snow spreading out its feather carpet before them as they walked.
“I suppose so,” she said. “I’ll need to tread carefully with Fred. She doesn’t know that there’sthatkind of history between us. So, us dating might come as a shock for her.”
“You don’t think she’ll be angry?”
Bella laughed. “Not with you, no, she adores you.”
“I don’t know how long I can go before it bursts out of me.”
She heard the smile in his voice and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’ll tell her soon. I promise.”
Hallow House was lit up like a carnival, but all the windows were dark, and she guessed everyone must be in bed. She didn’t offer for Liam to come up, and he didn’t ask. She wasn’t sure she could trust herself to stop at offering him coffee, and she didn’t want the first time they made love in more than three decades to be a sneaking, hushed affair. She’d waited this long; she could hold on a little longer. Instead, they kissed outside the large wrought-iron gates, beneath the smile of a benevolent moon, like two agingteenagers, until their lips were sore, and they were both breathless, smiling like they were drunk on each other.
Liam watched her all the way to the house, waving right up until she pushed the front door closed as quietly as she could. She poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen. She didn’t need to turn the lights on, she knew this house by heart. In almost total darkness she made her way up the stairs to the same bedroom she’d had since she was a girl. And when she sank into the soft mattress, smiling into the darkness, giddy with happiness, she felt almost that young again.
16
Fred
Deep cleaning the house hadworked its magic on Fred. Somewhere between descaling the bathroom taps and scrubbing the toilet, her mind had begun to open and as it did so, the seeds of images and ideas blew in and began to germinate. An hour later, she divested herself of her rubber gloves. After allowing Aunt Cam to furnish her with a candy cane martini, she settled down at the kitchen table with her notebook and began to plan. She’d been glad to have something else to think about other than her argument with Ryan, and between the cleaning, the cocktails and her intensive strategizing, she was in bed and dead to the world by eleven thirty, so she didn’t hear her mum quietly letting herself back into the house just after 1 a.m.
On Saturday morning the muse was still with her, and she was in the workshop before eight, to make the best of the winter sunlight that flooded through the windows. First, she snapped pictures of the workshop interior and took a video, panning around the space and settling on theview of the ocean through the window. Then she got shots of the plan cabinets, some with drawers open to give glimpses of the design archives. She hovered over the handmade gifts, before moving outside and videoing the vegetable garden and the rugged cliffs.
