“Hello?” Adam spoke from behind the door.
God she’d missed his voice.
“Come in, I’m just in the bathroom,” she called.
The door opened, then closed and she could hear footsteps. When she went back, he was standing in the middle of the room watching the fire.
“This is very cosy,” he said, turning towards her, and then stopped. His eyes widened as he took her in from her bare feet, bare legs, dark red shirt cinched with a belt round her waist, all the way to the three buttons she’d left undone at the top.
His face went a little slack.
“Good? Bad? Awful?” she asked, and her voice came out a little breathy. The way he was looking at her made it hard to speak normally.
“You look…” He cleared his throat but didn’t say anything else. Just went on looking at her.
Call her shallow and vein but she really, really liked the way he was looking at her.
“Say something,” she finally told him.
His eyes met hers and something shining happened between them. “I actually…” He cleared his throat again. “I have to talk to you about something. And I can’t do it if you’re dressed like this.”
She knew what he wanted to talk about. And she still had no answer for him. “Not tonight, please not tonight. I’ve had a horrendous week and…” She could not stop smiling because he was still looking at her in that way. “And you still haven’t told me what you think.” She did a little twirl.
“You are beautiful,” he whispered. “Do that again.” He twirled his finger around.
She gave him another turn, this time slowly but when she faced him once more, he had moved – in that stealthy, silent way of his – to stand inches away from her.
It made her heart flutter, and when he leaned closer and his warm breath brushed her cheek, her heart fluttered even worse. The man was very bad for her health.
But his touch, dear God, his touch was so very good.
Later, she put the burgundy shirt back on, as well as a coat and scarf and they went up on the roof.
It was a flat roof, stone-paved, with an ornate stone balustrade all round the edges. Adam spread the blanket on the stone surface and helped her lie down on it, then he uncorked the bottle of wine. “We forgot to bring glasses.”
“Considering we spent the last three hours mouth to mouth, I think we can drink from the same bottle.”
“Mouth to mouth?” he smirked at her. “You make it sound like a procedure.”
“Get your mind out of the medical gutter and look up at the stars. It’s why we are here in the cold.”
His arm around her, holding her very close to his side kept her warm as they lay back and watched in silence for a while.
“So, this is why they don’t allow cars or street-lamps at night,” Adam breathed, scanning the sky. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The dome of the sky was inky blue and busy with millions of pinpoints of white, yellow, pink, blue, purple and green. They clustered here and there in shapes and constellations like rivers of light.
“We had a cloudless night on Wednesday,” she said. “I took lots of pictures to send you, but none of them did it any justice. You really have to see it properly.”
“Thank you.” He pressed a kiss into the side of her head, on her hairline before looking back up at the exquisite display.
“Do you know what they’re called?” he asked a moment later.
“Not a clue.”
“Do you want to name them?”
She giggled, actually giggled. When did this happen to her?
