“No, no, Ari,” Tom reassures her. “No, I was just thinking about you and me.”
“About you and me?”
“Yeah. About how lucky I am.”
She blushes again, and this time the pink to her cheek is deeper, though just as adorable. “You think it was luck that brought us together?”
“No,” Tom explains. “Not luck . . . Fate.”
“Fate?” Ari frowns. “You think it was fate?”
Tom nods, putting his coffee cup down and reaching for Ari’s hands. “Do you know how long it takes for a volcano to form, or how long it takes for them to erupt?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Hundreds of thousands of years,” Tom muses. “Hundreds of thousands of years for the earth to create the funnel, and hundreds of thousands of years for it to fill with magma. And that’s just to create the volcano... It then takes another ten thousand years for the pressure inside to cause it to erupt. Can you imagine that? You and me, Ari, we were half a million years in the making. Half a million years waiting to be in the same place at the same time, forced together through an act of nature.”
Ari looks at him with soft eyes. “So, if we were brought together by fate, why are you lucky?”
“Because someone or something up there, or out there or wherever, thought I was worthy enough of you to send millions of tonnes of ash into the sky at the exact right moment to bring us together.”
Ari squeezes his hand with her own. “I didn’t know you were so sentimental.”
“Neither did I,” Tom replies wryly. “I guess you bring it out in me.”
A slow smile creeps across her face. “With lines like that, you’re lucky we’re in a public place. If we were alone, I’d be all over you.”
“Feel free to be all over me later,” Tom grins, and Ari laughs back. The sound is like music to his ears. “Fuck it,” Tom decides. “Let’s go to Riga.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I want to see these eggs of yours. Take another adventure with you.”
“An egg is always an adventure,” Ari replies immediately, her tone suddenly parrot-like. “It may be different each time.”
“Right.” Tom grins, and Ari swats at his hands.
“It was a quote, Tom. Oscar Wilde.”
“I’m never going to remember that.”
Ari gives him a shrug so cheeky and playful he suddenly wishes they were alone. “Maybe one day you will.”
He can’t help himself. He bends forward to kiss her, pressing his lips to hers for a long moment, relishing once again in the shape of them against his own. “An egg is always an adventure,” he whispers.
“An egg is always an adventure,” Ari whispers back. “Let’s go and have some more of our own.”
* * *
Sasha was distraught when she turned up at Tom’s bedside, her face tear-stained and red.
“Your mother is such abitch,” she said viciously, plonking herself into the bucket-chair by his bed and crossing her arms. “I’m your fucking fiancée, but she got first visitation rights?”
“Well, once we’re married—”
“I mean, I’m going to be yourwife,” Sasha spat. “Does that mean nothing to her? For fuck’s sake, I’m yourbride.”
“Yes, I know, but she’s my mom.”
