by L.H. Cosway
“It’s so beautiful,” I said, but Damon was busy getting our luggage from the boot and didn’t hear me. I turned and started following him to the door of the cottage when the sound of a dog barking came from the distance. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw an older woman wearing a thick woollen jumper, heavy jeans, and Wellington boots making her way towards us, a golden German shepherd walking alongside her.
“Damon,” she said in a thick Scottish accent, “it’s so good to see you.” She seemed pleased, but the dog seemed even more so, scarpering over to Damon and practically leaping on top of him. Seriously, the dog was so overjoyed to see Damon it was almost like he couldn’t believe his luck.
“Charlie,” said Damon, going down on one knee to give the dog’s fur an affectionate ruffle. “How are you, boy?” The dog yipped and whined, like he couldn’t contain his emotions. It was too adorable for words. When he licked Damon right on the face, I laughed, but he didn’t even seem bothered by it.
“I’ve never seen him so excited,” said the woman, chuckling.
Damon stood and introduced me to her. “Rose, this is my neighbour, Sheila. She owns a small sheep farm about a mile that way.” He gestured to the right of his cottage. “And she’s been taking care of my place while I’ve been in London. Sheila, this is Rose, a friend of mine from the city.”
“Lovely to meet you, Rose,” said Sheila, smiling kindly.
“And you,” I replied, returning her smile.
“And this big handsome fellow is Charlie,” Damon went on. “Charlie belongs to Sheila, but I steal him from her sometimes.”
Sheila laughed. “That’s an understatement. When you’re home, he sleeps in your cottage more often than mine. I can’t tell if he just likes you better or if he wants a break from all the sheep.”
Damon chuckled softly. “I guess we’ll never know.”
“Well, here are the keys you left me, and your car is parked around the back. The tank is full if you’re planning on doing any driving, though I see you’ve brought a rental. You can drop the keys back on your return to London. I’ve stocked the fridge with enough food to see you both through, and left some clean towels and bedding in the cupboard.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble, but thank you.” Damon took the keys, and Sheila pulled him into a hug. He looked like he hadn’t expected it.
“It’s nothing. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see your face again,” she said before drawing away. “Ever since Maureen’s passing, it hasn’t been the same around here.”
I surmised that Maureen was Damon’s grandmother. He gave the woman a tender, understanding look as he said, “I know. I miss her every day.”
Sheila sniffled a little before pulling herself back together. “Anyway, I’ll leave you two to get settled. If you need anything, just pick up the phone. And it looks like Charlie’s set on staying with you for the night, I’m afraid.”
“No worries,” said Damon. “His company is always welcome.” He patted the dog again and Sheila left, walking back across the field that I assumed separated their houses.
I glanced up and found him studying me. “Sheila was a close friend of Gran’s. She lived in a house just a couple of miles that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction of Sheila’s place. “Sheila’s always been very kind to me,” he went on, leading me inside the cottage. The dog, Charlie, sniffed at my hand. I petted his head, and he seemed to decide I was okay.
Immediately as I stepped inside I smelled a fresh citrusy scent. It didn’t smell like fake citrus, though, like you get in chemical cleaners. When we went into the kitchen, I saw someone had placed several chopped lemons and limes in a bowl of water.
Damon caught me looking, shrugged, and explained simply, “Sheila.”
“She must use them to freshen the air,” I suggested, looking around. The interior was simple but homely. The floors were hardwood, and there were also wooden beams on the ceilings. It was all very rustic. There wasn’t much in terms of interior design, but the place felt lived in and warm. I noticed the lit fire and thought Sheila must have seen to that, too.
“Do you pay her for doing all this?” I asked. It seemed like a lot of work to do just out of the kindness of your heart.
Damon sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve tried, but the woman takes offence whenever I bring it up. When you live in a place like this, everybody takes the time to help each other. That’s why I don’t like cities. There are too many people, and life becomes devalued somehow, taken for granted. Here, everybody appreciates one another, because they know how much we all need each other to survive.”
I stared at him, speechless, and honestly, a little bit turned on. He was right, of course, but I’d lived my entire life in London. I was desensitised to the rush and the feeling of being just another one among too many.
I coughed to clear my throat. “Well, she seems like a lovely woman.”
Damon nodded and lifted my suitcase. “She is. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
The spare bedroom was small, with just a bed, a closet, and a desk as furniture. Damon stood in the doorway after we both worked together to put fresh sheets on the bed. I glanced up and caught him staring at me, some kind of heat in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but seemed to shake himself out of it a second later.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll leave you to rest. The journey must have taken a lot out of you.”
He closed the door and walked down the hallway, presumably to his own bedroom. My heart thrummed in my chest as I wondered what he’d been thinking just then. There’d been thick sexual tension growing between us all day, and I felt like I was just about ready to burst with it. I loved how he’d given me the window seat on the plane, and how he never let me carry my own suitcase, how he placed his hand on the small of my back in a protective gesture as we made our way through the airport. Alicia had been right. He was a gentleman.
I also couldn’t get my mind off the fact that he had only ever really slept with a handful of women. There was something so sweet and lovely about it, because any woman would give her left arm for a night with a man who looked like Damon Atwood.
At the same time, it made me angry. No teenager should ever be introduced to sex the way he had been. There was a fierce need inside me to erase everything he’d been through. To make it better.
Letting out a long sigh, I opened my suitcase and changed into a comfortable jumper and some leggings. When I lay down to rest for a little while, I found myself unexpectedly drifting off to sleep. It was so quiet here, barely a sound to be heard for miles around. Perhaps that was why sleep came so easy.
I awoke to the smell of food cooking, and padded my way into the kitchen to find Damon by the stove, heating up a pot of what looked like lamb stew.
“That smells amazing,” I said, taking a seat on a stool behind him.
He turned, looking sexy and relaxed in a grey long-sleeved T-shirt and lounge pants. His feet were bare, and there was something about the sight of his bare skin, any skin, that turned me on.
“It’s all Sheila’s doing. I found the pot waiting on the stove,” he explained, sounding exasperated with the older woman’s kindness.
“You really need to find a way to start paying her,” I said, smiling and reaching my arms up to stretch over my head.
Damon’s eyes followed the movement before he focused back on the stove. “Good nap?” he asked, voice a little strained.
“Yeah, I was pretty tired,” I answered.
“Hmm,” he said, the sound coming out quiet and contemplative.
A few minutes later, we were sitting down to eat the stew, paired with some thick, crusty bread and a glass of red wine. I felt comfortable and relaxed as Damon and I chatted, the wine helping me loosen up. I thought this was why I was brave enough to broach a new topic.
“Do you remember the day we first met?” I asked, chewing on a delicious piece of bread I’d just dipped in the stew.
“Aye,” D
amon replied.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Back in the car you said the reason your relationship with Lizzy fell apart was because of your inability to trust. But that day, even though you were hesitant at first, you seemed to trust me without even knowing me.”
Damon nodded, swallowing a bite of bread, elbows resting on the table. “You’re right — I did trust you, but it’s hard to put into words the reason why. It was just this feeling you gave me. You had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen, and this is going to sound strange, but it was almost like being offered help from a child. You had this way about you that made me feel at ease, like I didn’t have to worry about you having ulterior motives because you just seemed so…so guileless.”
His tenderly spoken words made me catch my breath as I held my spoon in midair. It felt good to know he’d had that instant level of comfort with me. And for a man like Damon, who had every reason to be wary of strangers coming into his life and trying to take advantage, that meant a lot.
“Oh,” was the response I finally gave him.
Damon reached across the table to take my hand in his. His touch was warm and inviting. “The way I feel about you, it’s unexplainable, but it just is. It’s different from how I felt about Lizzy. It took me a long time to warm up to her, but with you I felt immediately endeared, curious even. I wanted to know you, but I’m just so bad at talking to people that you probably thought I had no interest.”
“I could tell you were just shy. I’m not the most confident person in the world, either.”
“Yes, but you’re not closed off like I am. You’re open to people — you even embrace them without question at times. I wish I could be like that, more open to new things.”
“You are, you just don’t realise it. The very fact that you accepted this role and came all the way to London proves it,” I said.
He seemed to like the idea of being braver than he thought, because he gifted me a small but beautiful smile. My heart thrummed, and a warmth suffused my chest.
We ate the rest of our meal in companionable silence. Afterwards, we helped each other clean up, while Charlie scarfed down some of the leftovers. The remainder of the evening we spent in the living room. It had a large, panorama-style window that looked like it had been built more recently than the original structure. I wondered if Damon had completed the renovations himself. It perfectly showcased the view as the day slowly darkened to night.
There were two couches. I lay on one, listening to an audiobook and letting my eyes drift to the warmth of the fire. Damon sat upright on the other, his ankle crossed over his knee as he read a paperback of some crime thriller. I thought that in another life I could be happy here, happy to spend quiet evenings like these with a man like Damon.
It was late enough when Charlie came and decided he was going to join me on the couch. I chuckled and let him settle his big head on my lap, absentmindedly stroking his fur as I continued listening to my book. I noticed Damon watching us, a wry smile touching his lips. He said something to himself as he shook his head, but I couldn’t hear because I had my earphones in. Still, reading his lips, it looked a lot like lucky bastard.
That made me grin, right before a ball of desire formed in my belly. I wanted to be with him tonight. I wanted to tangle our bodies together and have him make love to me until I fell asleep from exhaustion. Being alone like this only seemed to heighten the way I felt for him, and I wasn’t sure I could last much longer not touching him.
When I felt sleepy enough for bed, I gently shifted Charlie off my lap and rose. Damon’s eyes moved from his book to me. There was some kind of expectancy in his gaze.
“It’s late. I think I’ll hit the hay,” I told him, and he stared at me for a long moment.
“Sleep well,” he said at length, and I turned to leave. I swore I felt his eyes on me the entire time as I left the room.
In the spare bedroom, I pulled on a T-shirt and some shorts to sleep in, then climbed under the covers. I left the bedroom door open a little, hoping that Damon might interpret it as an invitation. Despite being tired, I tossed and turned until I heard his soft footsteps padding down the hallway. I practically held my breath when he reached my door, and my heart began pounding loudly in my ears when he paused, as though he’d noticed it was left open. What was really only a few seconds felt like an eternity, but then he gently closed the door and continued to his own room.
I knew he was probably just nervous. He’d told me this trip wasn’t about sex, and he was trying to uphold that promise. Still, it didn’t stop the bitter sting of disappointment from churning in my gut.
Twenty-Two.
*Rose*
The following morning, I woke up refreshed, despite the fact I’d felt just the teeniest bit rejected that Damon hadn’t come to my room. It was this place. I couldn’t help marvelling at how quiet it was, how at night the sky was pure black spattered with glittering stars. There was no smog, no yellow tinge of light pollution like you got back in London.
Rising from the bed, I went to pull the curtains and almost had a heart attack when I discovered a beast staring back at me. I yelped loudly in fright and practically leapt to the other side of the room, knocking into the closet and creating an awful ruckus. A second later, the door flew open and Damon burst inside, a look of concern on his face.
“Rose, what happened?”
I inhaled sharply and pointed to the window, trying not to fixate on how Damon was wearing nothing but a pair of navy boxer briefs. “I’m sorry. I just got a fright when I opened the curtains and that thing was looking in at me.”
A moment elapsed as his gaze went to the window, then back to me, then back to the window. A second later he burst into laughter, his hands going to his stomach, he found my distress so funny. I was stunned because I’d never heard him laugh so loudly before, nor with such uncontained fervour. “That’s not a thing, it’s a ram. He must be one of Sheila’s.”
“A ram,” I said, still breathing unsteadily. “Right. Well, you can stop laughing. I have every right to be scared when I open the curtains to find a creature with the horns of Satan staring back at me.”
Now Damon laughed even harder as he came towards me and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into a hug. He was smiling so widely it made my heart hurt. Nobody had a right being so flippin’ beautiful. “Oh, God, I can’t even….”
“Shut up,” I huffed, fighting back a smile of my own. It was useless, though, and in the end I was laughing, too.
“Horns of Satan,” Damon chuckled, his chin resting on the top of my head. “That’s priceless. I have to tell Sheila. She’ll be laughing for days.”
“Come on, even you have to admit how sinister-looking those horns are,” I said, resting my face against his warm, bare chest as our laughter died down. All of a sudden, the humour of the situation began to dissipate as a new feeling emerged. We were hugging, and Damon was practically naked. All I wore was a thin T-shirt and shorts, no bra.
He moved his hands, settling them on my lower back just shy of my bottom.
“I’m taking you into town today,” he said in a low voice. “There are some markets we can visit, maybe go for a walk on the beach. Then I’ll take you to my favourite pub to eat. They do the best roast dinner you’ll ever taste.”
“Sounds good,” I murmured, turning my face and absentmindedly pressing a kiss to his collarbone. A shudder ran through his body at the contact. I kissed him again in the exact same spot and he drew me tighter, one hand sweeping over my bottom, the other pulling me close. My nipples were so hard right then they could cut glass, and I knew he had to be able to feel them.
I continued kissing him, light little pecks that had him letting out the most spine-tingling masculine groans.
“Rose,” he said, his voice strained.
“Damon,” I whispered, my hands smoothing over his shoulder blades. I stared up at him, his eyes flickering back and forth between mine, when all of a sudden a loud baaaa came from the
direction of the window. We both glanced at the ram, who seemed to be enjoying his own little peep show – sheep show? Damon and I exchanged a look before proceeding to burst into laughter again.
“You can use the shower first. I’ll make breakfast,” he said, wiping a tear from under his eye. I nodded, disentangling from him and going to find some clothes. Once I was clean and dressed, I went into the kitchen to find a breakfast of sausage and eggs waiting for me. I dug into it all hungrily, loving the fact that he’d cooked for me.
A few hours later, we found ourselves walking around the nearby village as Damon pointed out places of interest. At one point he took my hand into his, and my heart did a little somersault. Neither one of us mentioned it, but we barely stopped holding hands the entire time we were exploring.
It was just as we’d emerged from a small coffee shop where we’d stopped to grab something to eat that I heard someone calling out to Damon.
“Damon! Is that you?” the female voice inquired, and I turned to see a pretty blonde approaching us. She was very petite, a few inches shorter than me, and had a little boy and girl with her. The boy looked to be about eight, and the girl was maybe four or five.
“Lizzy,” said Damon in surprise.
“It is you. Hello! I hear you’ve been off in London acting again,” she said kindly.
So this was Lizzy. I supposed it wasn’t too surprising that we’d bumped into her, given how small the island was. Even though my first impression of her was one of pixie-like loveliness, I still found myself stiffening. This was Damon’s ex-lover. She’d known him in ways I never had, and the sad fact of the matter was it made me maddeningly jealous.
“I have,” he finally answered. “It’s going well. Just back for the long weekend.”
“Oh, that’s good. I’m glad it’s going well,” she said, and a small quiet elapsed. Her two kids had wandered on ahead and were currently playing a game of chase.
