‘If I’m not allowed to say it now, then I guess I’ll just have to show you.’
He quickly turned out all the lights then took her hand and walked out the shop, stopping briefly to lockthe door. She giggled as he marched across the street, almost dragging her in his wake.
‘OK, are we ready for movie night?’ Xander said, sitting down next to Immy, with a big bowl of popcorn. ‘I love theJurassic Parkfilms so I’m looking forward to this one. I can’t watch them with Etta as she finds the dinosaurs a bit scary. She loves dinosaurs and finding out facts about them and she has so many children’s books about dinosaurs having adventures but she doesn’t like it when they are mean. So I have to wait until she’s not here to watch these films.’
‘I’d have thought you’d watch them with Archer,’ Immy said, cuddling into his side.
‘Oh god no, he points out all the historic and scientific inaccuracies. Apparently most of the dinosaurs are cretaceous not Jurassic, the velociraptors are too big in the films, we now know that a lot of the dinosaurs had feathers not scaly skin – and that’s not in the films – and the possibility of creating all these dinosaurs from one mosquito when the DNA would have degraded over millions of years anyway is completely implausible.’
Immy laughed. ‘He certainly knows his stuff.’
‘He does and I’m so incredibly proud of him and his extensive knowledge of all dinosaurs and fossils and what he does now bringing this knowledge to schools, museums and exhibitions. But these kinds of movies aremade for the drama and excitement factor, not to be scientifically accurate.’
‘That’s true.’
Xander chewed his lip as he got the movie ready. He hadn’t said the words he needed to say to her. He’d brought her back over here and made love to her, and she’d stroked him and told him she loved him again and again and he couldn’t say the words back. He hated that. He felt like he needed to get this right. He’d screwed it up too many times with her and this was too important to get it wrong. He felt like he needed the right words, the right moment. Although if making love to her while she stroked him and told him she loved him wasn’t the right time, then what was? She’d said he didn’t need to say it back but it must have hurt her that he didn’t.
He would fix this, he would find the right time, the right words to tell her how much she meant to him, how she had changed his life irrevocably for the better.
Xander placed a kiss on her head and pressed play on the movie. Suddenly there was a ringing on the doorbell.
‘I swear, if that is one of my brothers again, there will be hell to pay,’ Xander said, getting up to answer it.
Immy giggled. ‘Maybe it’s Archer. He somehow knew we were about to watchJurassic Parkand felt compelled to come round and tell us the truth.’
Xander rolled his eyes; he wouldn’t put it past his brother.
‘Hello?’ Xander called through the intercom, as he peered at the camera. It looked like it had been rainingand there was a big blob of water over the lens of the camera so he couldn’t really see who it was.
‘It’s Margaret and Tom,’ came Margaret’s voice over the intercom.
He frowned. Surely they weren’t bringing Etta back already, she’d only been gone a few hours. They were the ones who’d offered to take her for the night, why offer if they didn’t want to do that?
‘Is everything OK?’ Xander asked.
‘Not really,’ Margaret said. ‘Can we come up and have a chat?’
He pressed the button to release the main door. When he heard them come upstairs, he opened the door to the flat and was surprised to see that it was just the two of them, no sign of Etta.
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s in the car. She’s fine, well she’s not, but she’s not hurt or anything,’ Tom said.
‘What do you mean, she’s not fine?’ Xander said, shoving his feet into his boots.
‘She’s a little upset,’ Tom said.
‘A little? She’s inconsolable,’ Margaret said.
Xander moved to go past them but Tom put his hand up to stop him. ‘We need to talk first.’
‘Is this because you’ve got bored of her again and brought her back early? You have to stop doing this, she was looking forward to spending the night with you. You can’t just change your mind, it hurts her and disappoints her.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ Tom sighed. ‘We mighthave made a mistake. She was telling us all about Immy and the baby and she said that Logan wanted you to take a paternity test for Immy’s baby.’ Immy came out into the hall and Tom looked at her, accusingly. ‘Is that because you don’t know who the father is?’
‘No, the baby is mine,’ Xander said, firmly. ‘Logan had doubts but I never did.’
Tom didn’t look convinced. ‘Well anyway, she said that she might get one done to find out if you’re really her dad. But that you didn’t want her to.’
