“I’m more grateful than nice.” Tam’s gaze hazes again. “Mybrother went off the rails about ten years ago. They helped him get his life back on track when he wouldn’t let me anywhere near him.”
“The brother you hung up on last week?”
“Sab? Yeah. These days he’sonthe rails so damn hard he makes me look bad.”
I doubt anything could make Tam look bad, and I’m enchanted by the piece he’s done for the church. The religious words mean nothing to me, but the intricacy of each letter is mesmerising. “How long does something like this take?”
Tam narrows the gap between us and glances over my shoulder. “Couple of days, but you see these smaller cards? I can rattle loads of them out if I get in the zone and nothing distracts me.”
I wonder if I’m distracting him. If he’s supposed to be working right now instead of being the master of the savoury aroma coming from downstairs. What I’d do if I asked him and he said yes. Because leaving feels impossible and I’m as sucked into his vortex as I was the first night I laid eyes on him. “How did you get into this?”
Tam takes a breath slow enough to make me glance at him. His expression hasn’t changed, but the shift in him is hard to miss. “It was therapy, and I turned out to be good at it, so I carried on, and here I am.”
Here he is, so close to me again that it takes every ounce of restraint not to lean in and justfeelhim. Brace my weight against his, that rangy warmth, that strength. I want to sniff his neck too, so much it alarms me, but I can’t make myself move, except to skim my hand down his un-casted forearm. “Every cloud, eh?”
Tam hums, low and deep, not agreeing or disagreeing. Iwant to say more—Ineedto say more, but the oven timer beeps and the moment breaks.
We go downstairs. Tam sits me on a stool and finishes dinner, and that feeling of perfection returns.
“I haven’t had a vol-au-vent since the nineties and I’m pretty sure it was tiny and came from the back of my nan’s freezer.”
Tam laughs and dumps the tray with the giant pastry case on the counter. It’s oozing with creamy chicken and bacon and smells almost as edible as he does. “I can cook six things. This is one of them.”
“What are the other five?”
He speaks French again.
I nod like I have a clue what he’s saying, and he laughs some more.
“I’ll show you number two next time you come over.”
Next time. I try not to let my grin split my face, and I get lucky as Tam turns away to find plates and cutlery.Reallylucky as I get to watch him stretch and reach over his head, lifting his shirt enough that I get a glimpse at more tattooed skin and…
The tail end of a brutal scar.
My mouth dries up. I reach for the beer he put in front of me when we came downstairs. French beer, obviously, but it tastes like ash as I swig it and try not to join the dots in my racing mind.
Ex-biker.
Therapy.
Scars.
It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that at some point before I met Tam, something terrible happened to him.
“Earth to Bhodi?” Tam waves a hand in front of my face. “Still with me?”
I force a smile. “Where else would I be?”
“Anywhere you want.”
I want to be here. But Tam doesn’t seem to be the kind of bloke who needs that reassurance. He lets me get my bearings in my own time and flicks on the radio, letting cheesy Christmas music fill the silence. Slade, of course, growling out the tune I’ve already heard a thousand times in the hospital lifts and it’s still November.
“Eat up, son.”
Tam slides a plate in front of me. He’s added bread. And a salad of green leaves and walnuts I hadn’t noticed him pulling together.
“Wow.” I reach for the cutlery. “This is the best dinner I’ve seen in months—probably years.”
