His spirits lifted a little more at the startled look in her eye and the fact she was holding his gaze timidly. Encouraged, he took a step closer, then another, until he was close enough to entwine one of her small hands in his.
‘I’m not in this for a one-night stand, Jen. I’ve been attracted to you from day one, and it’s never dulled. If anything, every time I’ve seen you, this need to get to know everything about you has kept growing. After tonight,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it’s only got stronger.’
‘But the age thing,’ she said.
‘Isn’t important,’ he finished for her firmly. ‘I don’t have a weird fetish for older women or something. What I feel for you is simply a man attracted to a woman—a beautiful, intelligent, kind woman. I’m attracted to you as a person—not your age or anything else. Just you. That’s it.’
He saw something shift in her then, and the glimmer of hope turned into something a little brighter. ‘I don’t know where this will go, but I do know that what we had just thenisn’t something that comes along every day. We’d be idiots to throw it away without giving it a chance.’
She held his gaze. He could see her processing and weighing something up in her mind before the conflict behind her eyes seemed to loosen and she relaxed a little.
‘Okay,’ she said simply.
‘Okay,’ he breathed, feeling as though he’d crossed the finish line of a marathon. He could work with an uncertain okay. He’d show her he was right and tonight wasn’t some fluke. All he needed was for her to trust him a little. He leaned in and kissed her lips softly, feeling her own tremble beneath his, but restrained himself from deepening it, despite every fibre of his being urging him to do so. He had to prove he was worthy of her trust and he wasn’t about to blow this chance. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
‘Mum! I can’t find my car keys!’ Savannah yelled from the hallway the next morning.
‘Are they hanging on the key hook?’ Jenny hollered back.
‘No. Why would they be there?’
Jenny gave a small tsk under her breath and closed her eyes briefly.Of course not, it’s far more entertaining to play a game of let’s all look for Savannah’s bloody car keys every damn morning.
‘I’m going to be so late!’
‘Well, maybe if you got up when your alarm first went off and didn’t stay in the shower for half an hour you wouldn’t be late,’ Jenny said.
‘How is that at all helpful to point out right now, Mum?’ Savannah snapped.
‘About as helpful as you leaving a trail of stress and anxiety behind you every day when you tear through the place like a cyclone looking for your bloody keys!’
‘I’m going to be fired if I’m late!’ Savannah cried, and instantly Jenny’s irritation subsided to go into comforting mode.
‘We’ll find them,’ she said, picking up cushions from the lounge and checking underneath. ‘Where did you go when you came inside last night?’
‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’ Sophie called out, interrupting and adding to the general bedlam.
‘Shh, Soph. Just wait,’ Brittany told her with a frown across at her younger sibling.
‘I came in through the front door, through here to say hi to Britt and Soph, then up to my room.’
‘Check your jacket pockets,’ Brittany suggested from where she was wrestling her toddler into clothes for day care.
‘I did.’
‘Check the freezer,’ Chloe called from upstairs. ‘That’s where I found my phone once.’
‘Why would your phone have been in the freezer?’ Jenny asked as her youngest daughter came down the stairs.
‘I was getting ice cream,’ she said with an offhand shrug as though it were completely logical.
Jenny bent down and picked up Sophie, who was now dressed but still fussing, and absently began rocking as she balanced the toddler on her hip.
‘Hello, people? Still can’t find my keys?’ Savannah reminded them impatiently.
‘Mum’s right, you need to start taking responsibility for your shit,’ Brittany said.
‘Oh, right—like you’re so perfect.’
