The earnest expression on her face made Rose laugh.
‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I can always stay if you want?’
Madeleine knew it wasn’t what they’d agreed, it wasn’t how this week was supposed to go, but equally she didn’t want to leave Rose alone– not when Lysander’s arrival had had such a profound effect on her. But Rose shook her head.
Madeleine sighed. ‘OK. But listen, feel free to text me in the night if you need anything. Or you could go old style and knock on my actual door. You know, like they did back in the nineties.’
‘I know. Thank you.’ Rose smiled. ‘I’m so lucky to have you, Maddy. You know that don’t you?’
Madeleine headed for her room. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
Rose nodded.
‘It’ll all work itself out, I promise,’ Madeleine said.
‘Yeah. ’Night, Maddy.’
Chapter 8
4 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS
Madeleine checked her watch. It was still dark outside and early enough to be pre-arrival of the daily delivery of fresh baguettes, lodged on the windowsill outside her room with such forceful scrunching of the large brown paper sack the previous morning that she’d thought someone was coming in through the window.
Was it too early to go and make tea? Trouble was, if she left it too long, Tom would begin his breakfast preparations and then the opportunity would be lost. She grinned in the dark. She was being so immature. But the thought of catching a glimpse of a world-famous male model asleep on one of the sofas upstairs had been chewing away at her since she’d woken.
It wasn’t that she was attracted to him. Not that it would matter if she were, he wouldn’t give a plain Jane like her a second glance.
But these kinds of situations didn’t happen to Madeleine. At this moment in time, she was about as far away from her real life as she could imagine being. She could see herself, when she got home, sitting at her mum’s kitchen table explaining how it was that the bloke from the magazine adverts had slept on one of the sofas. ‘You know,’ she imagined herself saying, ‘Anthony Harrington’s son.’
She felt sure her dad would adopt a dramatic tone and then utter the immortal words ‘travelling through the wormhole was just the beginning’; he might even make the signal with his fingers and they would try to remember how many films were in the First Galaxy franchise, and whether to include the spin-offs or not. Then her dad would ask, not for the first time, how much they reckoned Anthony Harrington got paid to star as Galactic Commander Robson in those blockbuster movies.
To be able to take home a tiny piece of this world, she needed just a little bit of insider knowledge that hardly anyone else had– like, did Lysander Harrington sleep with his mouth open? Did he snore? Well, that would be golden.
It would also go some way towards making up for missing Christmas with her parents– for the first time ever. It would be great to take back a treasure trove of stories about how the other half live. Something to make up for the lack of traditional family time she’d never wanted to miss until she’d heard her brother and his family would be descending for the first time since he stopped talking to her. Awkward didn’t quite cover how that situation would have played out, and she hadn’t wanted to make Christmas an ordeal for her parents– it had seemed far simpler to accept Rose’s invite instead.
Madeleine threw the covers back, shoved her feet into her slippers and wrapped her dressing gown firmly around herself. She heard the bag of bread being shoved against her window as she left her room and headed as quietly as she could up the dimly illuminated staircases.
At the top of the second flight, Madeleine paused and peered through the gloom, wondering which of the sofas Lysander had settled on for the night. All seemed quiet, so she padded towards the kitchen area.
‘No need to tiptoe around on my account.’
Damn. Rumbled. She flicked on the small light over the counter and peered over at him. ‘I’m sorry. Did I wake you?’
Lysander clicked on the standard lamp beside his sofa and Madeleine had to pretend not to stare at the nakedness of his perfectly smooth torso, even if it was almost impossible to look anywhere else.
‘Nah. This couch is bloody purgatory; I don’t think I got more than a couple of hours.’
She flicked the kettle on. ‘Can I make you some tea?’
‘I’ll take a coffee. Black.’ As he swung his legs out from under the fur throw, he stretched his arms up above his head.
Madeleine held her breath as he stood. For a split second she thought he might be completely naked, but there was underwear concealing everything relevant. Lysander rummaged beside the sofa and pulled on the pair of jeans he had been wearing the night before, then flopped back onto the seating, yawning as he reached for his mobile.
With two mugs of tea and a black coffee made, she lifted all three and headed for Lysander, placing the coffee in front of him.
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ he said, his gaze on the remaining two mugs she held. ‘Is one of those for Rose?’
‘Yes.’
