He kept chewing, mouth open, looking as if he was smiling.
“He’s eating what was left on my plate.”
Zolt brushed my hair back and kept me still as I went to collect our plates. “Just give me one minute. One minute to look at you.”
I sat back, frowning, feeling the blush burn my cheeks,but he brushed my brows, and they relaxed on impact. I followed his hand to drop my cheek into his warm palm, and he stroked me with his thumb.
Our frost had thawed.
We stayed like that until my neck hurt, and I broke away from his lap. “Right,” I sighed, grabbing the plates. “Move the coffee table. You’re going to show me just how good you are. We’re going to play English Scrabble.”
Together, we went through the tiles and replaced the Hungarian letters with the common English ones by tearing up a piece of paper into little squares.
For an hour, we played, and I let him win, just to see the proud smile on his face. We went for a second game, but as I decided to go to war with him this time, teasing him every round, Vincent had decided enough was enough and walked right across our board, dispersing the tiles as he went.
Zolt sprang up. “Right. It’s time for a walk.” And he threw a jumper and coat on and took all the dogs out the back door, pressing a kiss to my cheek before he left.
I washed up our plates and started to clear away our game when the doorbell rang.
My hands froze on the lettered tiles.
It would be her. Zolt hadn’t told me her name, but she clearly knew who I was by the way she blinked at me on his doorstep. And she still decided to touch his arm before she left.
I threw my huge dressing gown on the pantry floor, checked in the hallway mirror that my ass was at least covered by Zolt’s jumper, and brushed back my hair before taking a breath and opening the door with a smile.
Which fell flat the second I saw who had rang the doorbell.
It wasn’t the translator. It was Zolt’s mother.Helena.
Shite.
She was dressed as she always was — long, beautiful dress to her ankles, her hair pinned back, but she looked me up and down with bulging eyes that stalled on the hem of Zolt’s jumper.
I’d screwed the pooch well and truly.
And words were not making it any better because they weren’t working, no matter how hard I tried. Portuguese. She liked to speak in Portuguese, but that wasn’t coming to me.
“Can I come in?” she asked in English, her accent as strong as her clipped tone.
I lunged back, trying to pull the jumper down.
The moment the door closed, her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I—”
“You can’t hurt him more than you have. If that’s what you want—”
“No,” I cried. “No. I came here to see him. To… patch things up.”
Her narrowed eyes scanned the room for any signs that I might be lying. And then her shoulders fell, and she crushed me in a hug, her long coat cold against my knees. “You and he are back together?”
“Yes,” I wheezed.
She pulled back, taking my hands. “And did he ask you?”
He’d asked me to stay, to give us another go. To be hopeful.
“Yes.”
