Eli froze above me.
“We could make this quick.”
He shook his head. “For this, I’d rather take my time. We could ignore your brother.”
“If we do that, Mum will be banging on the door in about five minutes.”
“I need longer than five minutes for what I’ve got planned. Let’s wait.” He gave me another kiss, this one slower, deeper, full of promises.
Promises I couldn’t wait for.
12
A rugby ball – From Maxwell to Teddy
Marie
There wasnothing quite like having all of your family in the same house.
Nearly all of my family anyway. The prodigal son was on his way home from Morocco with Wren, but aside from that everyone was here, under one roof and eating.
Maybe a few drinks too, but that was mainly to survive the stream of bad jokes that my youngest son was coming out with.
“Do you think we have enough food?” Grant stood next to me, his arm around my waist, studying the buffet that was spread over three trellis tables.
We were cooking Christmas dinner tomorrow, so today, because I appreciated one, my sanity and two, the fact that none of my beloved children would even think about cooking given the fact that they turned back into children when they returned home, so we’d hired caterers.
“I think we have enough to not have to cook for the next three days. This could be Christmas dinner tomorrow.”
“You forgot to factor Seph into that.” His grip on my waist tightened. “He will eat everything there and if there is anything left, that will be his midnight feast. Remember that?”
I did. There had been many occasions when we’d had a big dinner, maybe had friends around for a meal, and the leftovers had been placed in the fridge for the following day.
The first few times we hadn’t had enough leftovers for more than a very light lunch, we just thought that we’d overestimated how much we’d had left. Then one night I’d woken up, needing a glass of water – and maybe a couple of painkillers – and found a fourteen-year-old Seph having a lovely feast at the table, napkins out and everything. I was half surprised he hadn’t lit a candle.
He’d been ignored, mainly because he had his headphones in and had been too busy being interested in whatever he was eating to notice me. After that, we hadn’t questioned where the food had gone.
“I remember. Poor Seph.”
Grant turned and looked at me. I felt the laser of his eyes dig into my neck.
“Poor Seph?”
“He’s lonely, Grant. He craves being with family. He doesn’t do well on his own and now he’s the only one who doesn’t have someone.” I never really worried about Seph; he bounced back; he was resilient. He loved hard but he knew he was loved.
Out of all of my children – and the four eldest were always part of that, even if I hadn’t laboured them – Seph was the most emotionally dependant but he was also the one child that I knew would fall in love with the most difficulty. He idealised the concept, saw only the perfection in his siblings’ relationships and never the challenges, and sought his true match.
“Seph will be fine, I promise you. Can’t say the same about whichever poor girl falls for him.”
I laughed, elbowed him. “Whoever she is, she’ll be able to manage him, otherwise he won’t fall. Anyway, our children are staring at us. We should find the mistletoe and embarrass them.”
Grant didn’t wait for that; he changed his hold on me and dipped me down, planting a kiss that made Maxwell yell to get a room.
I clutched his shoulders and felt the trickle of desire flicker through me. Thirty-plus years hadn’t completely erased the reasons I fell for this this man who had been grumpy, surly, argumentative and a complete mess.
“See, no mistletoe.” He brought me back up again.
“Yes, but is your back in one piece?”
