So there wasn’t anything really for her to do right now, other than read or watch TV. She sat sipping her tea. The house was very quiet.
Out of nowhere, a thought struck her. Such a strange one. Contrary to everything she habitually thought. She’d told herself she was relieved Xander was going to be going back to Athens after Easter. But was she?
Yes, it would mean she could lower her constant guard against him, her continual awareness of his oh-so-disturbing effect on her, which had no place, none, in her life. But for all that, there was something else too. Something she ought to deny just as strongly.
Her eyes went to the sofa where he’d sat that dreadful evening when their vicious, toxic vitriol at each other had so devastated Dan, where they’d patched up some kind of peace, some kind of truce between them. Since then she’d got used to Xander sitting there, an arm around Dan’s shoulders, watching TV together before Dan’s bath-time.
He wasn’t there now, and after Easter he wasn’t going to be there until he was back again from Athens after his own Easter.
The strange thought came again. Illogical, incomprehensible, given all the discord between them, but there all the same.
I’m going to miss him.
Xander threw himself down on his bed at his hotel after pouring a beer from the fridge, his mind still filled with the certainty that had struck him earlier. Silencing everything else. He was flying blind, he knew, ignoring everything the instruments should be telling him.
Just like I did first time around.
I knew Olympia was waiting for me to propose, that everyone was expecting it, but I swept off with Laurel all the same. Blanking everything else—
Now it was happening again, that same overpowering impulse, and for the same reason. Yes, it was complicated, it was conflicted, but his sense of certainty overrode it.
I know what I want. Whether I should want it or not, I don’t care. I didn’t care seven years ago, nor do I care now. It took only a single glance at Laurel back then to make me want her. Desire her. It’s taken longer now, but it’s still there.
Desire—naked and potent. Making him want to reach for her, take her slender, beautiful body into his arms, fold it against his own aroused body, draw her down with him, sink into her, feel the hot flames lick them both, mounting, kiss by kiss, caress by caress, thrust by thrust, into an inferno.
Memory, arousing and enticing, washed through him. Making him want to make it far more than mere memory.
What we had then, we can have again—for the both of us.
Somehow, he had to convince her to accept what was happening again between them, to deny it no longer, dismiss it no longer. Fight it no longer. To accept that between them was more than the past, more than the son they shared, more even—and he gave it an impatient dismissal—than that damn bracelet.
After all, they’d set it aside for Dan’s sake, hadn’t they?
Now we can set it aside for ours. So it’s no longer a barrier between us. Between what we both want.
All he had to do—restlessness filled him now, seeing his goal in sight—was get her to see it his way, to yield to what he knew she was denying.
I just have to convince her to stop fighting it, stop resisting me.
Memory sifted in him. How he’d told Dan how mad Laurel had been for chucking her into the sea, and he’d had to swim after her, kiss her nice again. He’d had to go on being nice to her all evening, wooing her back to him.
So, what can I do this this time around? To woo her back to me.
Suddenly, his eyes gleamed. The jamboree he’d booked Dan in for was not the only Easter event the hotel had on offer. There was another one in the evening. A grand black-tie dinner and cabaret with dancing. His gleam intensified. Yes, that was it. It would work, perfectly. The ideal opportunity. She’d already be here at the hotel, doubtless looking like her usual dog’s breakfast, making no effort at all as usual.
The gleam in his eye intensified, seeing the perfect solution to that problem.
But there’s someone she will make an effort for—the only person.
Someone who would, he knew, be a gleeful co-conspirator with him. Yes, that was perfect too. Setting aside his beer he picked up the house phone, rang down to Reception. Bought two tickets.
Then he sat back, reaching for his beer again, relaxing back against the propped up pillows. This bed really was very comfortable. With easily room for two…
The satisfied gleam came again. And now he knew exactly how to get Laurel here to share the bed with him.
The Easter Jamboree had lived up to its name. Dan had enjoyed it hugely. From the Easter egg hunt, the egg painting, the races, the magician, the puppet theatre, the pony rides, the miniature carousel, the lucky dip, the tombola and the coconut shy, he’d enjoyed the lot. Now, Laurel knew he was completely enjoyed out. The jamboree had ended with a barbecue, and Dan, replete with a hamburger and two grilled hot dogs, was finishing off a length of corn on the cob. The light was fading, and though the day had stayed blessedly dry, it was starting to get chilly now that the sun had set.
“Time to make a move,” Laurel suggested. “You can have an ice cream for pud, and then we’d better head off home.”
