White Knight

by Annie Dyer

  “Morning,” Marie said, breezing into the kitchen wearing her running clothes. “How was yesterday?”

  “Successful,” I said. “Vanessa picked a dress and a colour. All the men were measured. Seph didn’t vomit everywhere and Callum returned at the same time as we did despite disappearing for about three hours to god knows where.”

  Marie raised her brows. “Standard Callaghan drinking day out then. What’s on your mind?”

  I looked at her puzzled. “I’m not that easy to read.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “It’s seven thirty on a Sunday morning and you’re not hungover or reading in bed so something’s on your mind. Killian?”

  I exhaled and tipped my head back, clutching my coffee. “We kissed. No one saw us or if they did they haven’t said anything.”

  “Colour me unsurprised.”

  “You need to keep that crystal ball locked away,” I muttered. “We’ve agreed to talk.”

  “Are you going to tell him? You need to.” The grounding of coffee beans broke the peaceful quiet but the aroma was delicious.

  “We’ve said we’ll talk so yes I am. He won’t want to speak to me afterwards,” I said, looking at the bottom of my mug.

  “I beg to differ. He will understand why you made the decision. Although he will want to know why you didn’t tell him at the time. My guess he would’ve supported you whatever you’d chosen,” she said. “I’m pretty sure that’s what will come of the conversation once he’s had time to think about it.”

  I shrugged. I’d already gone through every possible reaction. Some were more extreme than others.

  “How was the kiss?”

  I looked at her. “Not something I’m willing to discuss.”

  “Your eyes give it away,” she said. Anything more she wanted to add was halted by the knocking of tiny hands at the door where near identical twins stood in matching shorts and t-shirts, just their hair tied differently. Nick waved at us and a baby’s giggle sounded. My heart melted as Kitty ran towards me, arms outstretched.

  “Store ee,” she announced, clamouring onto my knee, tiny fingers touching my face. I cuddled her into me and inhaled, the slight baby smell still there.

  “What story?”

  “Ed Iding Ood.”

  I began the tale, aware when Killian entered the kitchen looking rumpled and sleep washed. He sat on a bar stool, pulling Margot into his arms as she listened to my story too, Nick talking quietly to Marie. Vanessa bobbed in seeking coffee and gave me an odd smile. It was all I could do to keep the pace of the tale, my eyes and chest filling up with need and want seeing the big blonde man with a tiny girl in his arms and wondering what it would have been like and what it would be like now, because that kiss had told me that I was nowhere near over him. I didn’t move my eyes from him, even knowing that Marie was watching me subtly, glancing occasionally at the twins we both held.

  “Do you want pancakes, girls?” Marie asked as I ended the story and before the twins could demand more. Kitty climbed off my knee, saying thank you with a kick in the shin, while Margot hugged Killian fiercely and pulled his beard. He put her down with a laugh and a smile for me and my lids felt heavy with desire.

  It stayed the four of us adults with the twins, drinking coffee and eating pancakes with bacon and maple syrup until my father came down, loaded with Sunday papers and a twinkle in his eye as he spied Marie. We discussed the headlines, Dean Lacey, American politics where my father deliberately rattled Marie, and the celebrities who were lined up for a reality TV dance show. Killian was relaxed, sitting on the floor to supervise the playing his nieces were doing, occasionally intervening when one attempted to seemingly kill the other. Gradually my siblings and friends woke up, appearing in various states of dishevelment, from Seph who looked as if he’d just completed a week of detox in a spa to Amelie who looked as if she wanted to die quietly in a field or murder Max, who was enjoying tormenting her over her hangover.

  “Claire, give me a hand with the meat in the fridge in the cold room,” Marie said, still dressed from the run she hadn’t gone on. “I need to work out how much to do.”

  I followed her knowing that she didn’t need my opinion and was instead wanting to pass comment on something she had observed. There were times when this would irritate me, but in all the years she had been my mother, for all intents and purposes, she had never been wrong.

  “Pork or beef?” she said, opening the fridge in the small storage kitchen that was also used to hoard wine and my father’s home brews, some of which were disastrous.

  “Beef,” I said, looking at her, puzzled.

  “Sweet potatoes or roast?”

  “Both.”

  “What?” she said, her eyes shining.

  I sighed. “Whatever you want to say, say it. There’s no way you would drag me in here to actually get my opinion on what to cook for Sunday lunch,”

  She chuckled. “Promise me you’ll talk to him in the next couple of days. The way you were looking at each other when you were holding the twins – Claire, it breaks my heart.” I saw tears flicker in her eyes despite the smile on her face.

  “Did I do the right thing?”

  “By kissing him? Yes! Absolutely!”

  “No,” I shook my head. “You know, back then.”

  She bit her lip and regarded me sharply. I hadn’t asked her before, in all the years since, I had never asked her if she agreed with my decision. It was done and nothing would change that. “Yes. I thought you made the right decision,” she said slowly and quietly. “You were too young and both of you deserved the chance to grow up without having to rush. But if you had decided to go through with it and you were asking me that question now, I would be saying the same.”

  I took the carrots and broccoli she passed to me, looking at the vegetables rather than her.

  “Claire,” she said. “You deserve to forgive yourself. You deserve a family yourself and you shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting that.”

  “I’ll take these through. Who’s prepping vegetables?” I said, moving the subject on with no grace whatsoever.

  Marie rolled her eyes at me. “Seph and Callum. Because they’re both little shits.”

  I laughed, pushing the door open into the kitchen to be greeted with laughter, my father and Max debating something completely obtuse in between tearing Seph a new asshole for a random opinion that neither agreed with. Given how much everyone bullied my youngest brother it was amazing he’d turned out as well as he had.

  “I hope you’re not going to attempt to cook,” Killian said, spotting me with an armful of vegetables.

  “Be careful,” I said. “My aim is good.”

  “Better than her cooking,” Jackson said after removing the foot of a twin from his mouth. “Whichever bloke ends up with her either needs a stomach of steel or be happy cooking himself.”

  Vanessa popped her head up from the floor where she was playing with Margot. “Hang on. Am I about to marry a man who thinks it’s still nineteen fifty-five and a woman’s place is in the kitchen? Because if that’s the case, I might need to rethink…”

  For a moment Jackson looked genuinely panicked which caused Max to double over in silent laughter and Callum to take a photo with his phone. “No, just that any man who ends up with Claire - and given that she should come with a health warning, it’s doubtful that will happen – will have to be able to cook as she can’t… I’m not saying that she should have been cooking all the time, for him, or… you know, fuck it. You’re all fucking wind up merchants.” His expression turned sulky as Vanessa began to laugh at his reaction.

  “It’s alright, Jacks,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “I’ve promised your brothers and sisters I’ll go through with the wedding. They’ve threatened to sue me for breach of contract if I pull out now.”

  “Just for the record,” I said, putting the veggies in the sink for washing. “My cooking is fine. I can follow a recipe which is better than most of you, given that y
ou spend most of your salaries on take outs and restaurants.”

  “Maybe you should cook lunch then,” my dad said. “Get two of the boys to help you prep…”

  “No way,” Seph stood up, shaking his head. “She’d either kill us with a cleaver or with salmonella. Besides, mum’s Sunday lunch is the only reason I’m still here. No offense everyone.”

  I aimed a carrot at his head, surprisingly hitting the target.

  “That’s enough,” Marie said, extracting a second carrot from my hand. “Joseph and Callum come here. The rest of you need to bugger off. It’s ten o’clock and I want everything prepped and good to cook for eleven. Dinner will be at two. So, unless any of the rest of you want jobs, I suggest you scarper. That includes you, husband dear.”

  My father gave a perturbed look, collected his papers and moved, still wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown. I followed him outside where the sun was already beating down. It was going to be another warm day, cloudless and still. Dad disappeared to his oversized shed from which everyone except his brewing buddies were banned, and I slipped away to the swing, an old rope and plank affair that had been hanging from a giant, ancient oak since I was about twelve.

  “So, you learned to cook?”

  I turned to see Killian, hands in jeans pockets, blonde hair tussled, standing behind me.

  “I just don’t broadcast the fact that I can manage a decent meal or two. You know what my brothers are like: I’d never be rid of them and they’d be turning up uninvited when they couldn’t be bothered to go to the supermarket,” I said, starting to push myself off the ground, the branch creaking slightly with the movement.

  Hands braced my back then pushed as I swung backwards, giving me more lift. I caught the scent of Killian’s aftershave, something woody and musky that made me want to bury my nose into his neck and inhale until the smell was etched on my memory. I laughed as I went higher and he stopped pushing, moving to the front to watch me.

  “You should do this more often,” he said as I began to slow. “It’s good to see you not looking serious or cross.”

  “I’m not always serious or cross,” I said. “It’s my job that makes me that way.”

  He said nothing, just giving me a gaze that suggested he knew otherwise but wasn’t going to argue.

  “I should have everyone round to mine to prove I can cook. Seph and Jackson are going to keep harping on about this forever,” I said, hopping off the swing and finding my legs shaky.

  Killian grinned broadly, half to himself. “Sounds good. That’s where your competitive nature benefits everyone.”

  “I’m not competitive!” I said, feeling my blood start to simmer slowly.

  Again, he smiled. “I’ll not have that argument,” he said, beginning to walk towards the fields, wild flowers scattering colour through the green. Across the fields was a wood, shaded pathways cutting through trees and a slim river that fed eventually into the Cherwell. As a child I had built treehouses with my brothers. As a teenager I had sought the silence the wood provided as a place to reflect and find peace away from the continual company. Now, as an adult, it was comfort, my escape.

  I knew Killian ran through the fields and the woods when he stayed, as did my brothers, and it appeared that he was now leading me that way, to a place where we could talk away from the likely interruptions of my brothers. My heart pounded as I walked with him. He looked relaxed which was his usual demeanour. The yin to my yang.

  “I guess we’re going to have that conversation,” I said, needing to fill the air with something other than birdsong.

  He shrugged. “We can do. Or we can just enjoy being outside in the fresh air in a place that’s not London.”

  “I’m surprised you settled in London,” I said, speaking truthfully, the long grass tickling my bare legs. I was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a thin vest, enjoying being out of a suit. I’d be the owner of bitten legs by the evening, but I could worry about that then.

  “I haven’t,” he said. “I bought the house with the idea of moving out here at some point, once the business was at the point where I could manage a lot of it remotely. It should happen sooner than I’d planned too.”

  “Why here and not in Ireland?”

  “I like it here better. And it’s an easy commute into London when I need to be there. Plus, I know folks here. What about you? Are you a Londoner forever?”

  I shook my head. “No. At the moment it suits for work, but like you, I can live away from the city. I’ve liked living there though; I like the busyness and the buzz and the restaurants but this place has always been home. There’s a small cottage up for sale about a mile and half away. It needs renovating and updating but I keep looking at the listing on the internet and wonder how mad I’d have to be to put an offer in.”

  “Not mad at all. You should.”

  My heart thudded heavily in my chest. Last night I’d thought about living there with him, what it would be like to have a future together. If he could forgive what I’d done. “Maybe. Maybe it’s not the right time.” I paused as we entered the woods and heard rustling in the hedgerows suggesting wildlife. “About last night.”

  “I’m sure that was a title of a film but I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to,” he said, sitting down on a tree trunk belonging to a tree that had fallen decades ago and was now worn smooth from the amount of people who had sat on it over the years.

  I laughed. “I’m not sorry I kissed you. Even if you wish I hadn’t.”

  “Fuck no,” he said. “I just wish we’d been on our own without an audience”

  “Thirteen years,” I said, sitting down next to him. We faced the entrance to the woods, looking back over sunlit fields, the big house in the distance. “I’m sorry.”

  His hand slipped to the small of my back, offering reassurance; his fingers caressing, gifting heat. “It’s in the past. It’s how we go forward that matters.”

  I looked across to the fields where I had been when I found out the news that had caused me to cut him off. I thought of it as setting him free, making a rational decision that was best for us both. And it was. I knew that, but it didn’t ease the guilt.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “And I should’ve had the guts to tell you why then but I didn’t because it was too hard.”

  He looked straight ahead, his face expressionless. “Because you hadn’t stopped…” he paused, a break in his voice. “Caring about me.”

  “You mean loving you?” He looked at me. “Because I did, so much.” My eyes grew heavy with tears again but I blinked them back ferociously.

  “Have you seen anyone seriously since?” he said, his blue eyes stormy, filled with a hurricane of emotions that I didn’t try to decipher.

  “No one seriously,” I said. “No one for more than a few weeks. I’ve been too busy with work. What about you?”

  He shook his head slowly, his arm around my waist now. “I tried,” he said, his voice low and reverberating through my skin. “But it wasn’t the same. I wondered if I’d let that year grow in my mind and made it something it wasn’t. But when I see you, even though you give me nothing but shit, I feel it again.”

  “So, what do we do?” I said, feeling as nervous as I did the first time I kissed him. “I’ve had enough of trying to annoy you.”

  The answering laugh was deep and melodious and I leaned into his side, feeling hard muscle through his t-shirt, firmer and bigger than what I remembered. “Good. You think I can take you out for dinner without your brothers killing me?”

  I smiled, warmth enveloping me. We still had to talk about what happened, but not yet. At some point, but not now. “I think they’ll be more likely to warn me.”

  He paused. “You think Marie will excuse us from Sunday lunch?”

  I angled my head to look at him. “I don’t think she’ll mind. I’ll be here for another couple of days at least, if you and your brother have your way.”

  “That’s the plan,” he sai
d, moving his chin to the top of my head and gently mussing my hair with his bearded chin. “Nick’s done a bit of digging on Dean Lacey, found a few people in common, and they say very little about him, apart from that it’s best to get your business with him done as quickly as possible and then get out of his way.”

  I sighed, feeling every inch of my body relax as if it had finally found home after a very long journey. “I know. But Katie needs someone to champion her and that’s my job. I have to get her the best deal.”

  “I get that. But understand it’s my job to keep you – and her – safe while you’re doing that,” he said. “Now who’s going to ask Marie if I can take you out?”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “Maybe we should just say we’re going out to discuss security so it sounds more of a work dinner?”

  “Nope,” he said resolutely.

  “No?”

  “Precisely.”

  I sat back slightly and eyed him. “You are aware of the repercussions of this. Most of my family will spend a meal with us as the entertainment, even though we won’t be there. Don’t be surprised if they get my sisters on Facetime and had a whole family meeting on what it is that we’re doing exactly.”

  “Claire,” he said, “I don’t give a fuck what they talk about. I want to do what I wasn’t able to do before and take you out properly. Even if if it’s just once and we decide that we can just be friends afterwards.”

  His blue eyes stared at me intensely; somehow, I summoned the willpower not to jump onto his lap. He had a presence that consumed me, that made me want to forget everything else and just simply be, something more base and instinctive than cerebral. “I’ll speak to Marie.”

  “No, I will.” The words were said quietly but firmly and I understood that he was making a point. We weren’t going to be each other’s dirty little secret, not this time. We were both in our thirties, both professionals with good incomes and no reason for anyone to object, even if it was anyone else’s business. My family, however, would enjoy commenting at length, although Killian could quite easily shut any of them up, given that he was taller and more muscular than any of my brothers.