“Nick won it for me. On his second throw.” She mock-glowered at him.
At the end of the evening, Chloe gripped her hand as Lanie bent to take the tray from her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Lanie smiled. “It was a lovely evening after a wonderful day.”
“We’ll see you in the morning,” Nick said. He had his and Richard’s trays. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
They left the older couple sitting by the window: Richard so vigorous, but his energy contained and gentled; and Chloe, faded but brave. What shone through brightest of all was the love between them.
In the kitchen, Nick set the trays down hard enough to rattle them. He raked a hand through his hair. “Leave the dishes. I need a walk. Will you come with me?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 14
To walk outside, cutting through the kitchen garden to reach the rose garden and out through to the ghostly remnants of the fete, had an eerie magic to it. The stalls were empty, their goods stowed away, but the tents remained. The stage still stood in front of the lake.
Lanie looked back at the house, but there was no light in Chloe’s window. Chloe, who loved Nick. It sparked a tangential thought. “What was your mum like?”
“Mum? The opposite of Chloe.” Nick paused.
Had he made the same connection Lanie had, that he was losing his second mother? She wished she hadn’t questioned him so impulsively.
But Nick seemed relieved to speak of his mum. “Mum was loud, determined and kind. The most generous person. She was forever helping people.” A wry note. “Even when they didn’t want help. She had definite ideas about things. Dad didn’t lie about it being Mum who didn’t want me to know my heritage. I don’t think it was just that she despised what she saw as the upper class squatting like toads on their gold.”
Lanie blinked.
He grinned. “Direct quote from Mum. She should have been born decades earlier. She’d have made a great Marxist.”
“Yet she got involved with Richard, heir to all of this.”
Nick walked onto the small pier that jutted into the lake. His footsteps sounded hollow.
Lanie waited on the path. The pier was small enough that there was little distance between them.
He turned, silhouetted against the starlit sky and silver shimmering lake. “Mum never talked about it. When I was growing up, she’d never say who my dad was. She never even told her parents. She promised, though, that she’d tell me when I was eighteen. She said I had to be old enough to understand the situation, to imagine myself into other people’s lives and see how vulnerable they are.”
“She worried about Chloe.”
“Yes.” He walked back to Lanie. “Dad says that the relationship between him and Mum was more than a one night stand, but that neither wanted it to be their future. They were too different. And he loved, loves, Chloe.”
“Their love is obvious.” She shivered because such deep love left you vulnerable. It left you open to all of life’s hurts. To life’s joys as well. She looked at Nick.
No matter the gulf between his dad and him, they were the same. Her gaze lifted from him to the house. Waterhill men. Men sure of themselves, protective of those they loved.
“Are you cold?” He stood to block the wind from her.
She reached up a hand and pushed back the hair that blew into his eyes. “I’m not cold.”
He put his arms around her. They stared at one another, and then, she smiled. He kissed her, taking her smile and changing her hope and dreams into promise and anticipation. “I want to make love to you.”
“Yes.”
His hands swept possessively down her back and up along her sides, sliding forward to cup her breasts, to massage and own them.
She gripped his shoulders as her spine arched and pleasure shook her.
“Bed.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to love you in bed. Not on cold, trampled grass.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve never brought a lover to Waterhill, not to stay overnight. I want to see you in my bed. The moonlight will flood in the windows and I’ll kiss the shadows on your skin.” He demonstrated, finding the sensitive hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse beat fast. “Come to bed.” He twined his fingers with hers.
They walked up the lake path. The house loomed before them, but not scarily. Its grandness was mitigated by its age. It had sheltered its people through heartache and joy. It had held them in birth and death. Lanie walked through its doors aware that she was welcome. The need between her and Nick ran true.
Moonlight patterned the floor before being hidden by prosaic electric lighting that kept the staircase safe. They ascended in that muted modern yellow glow, but the magic remained. Waterhill treasured the secrets of lovers’ trysts.
Nick led her to his room, opened the door and guided her in with a hand at her waist.
Her heart thudded. “I understand your fantasies about the bed.” It was massive, an antique from a century when beds were a serious business. The bedposts stretched up high and were intricately carved.
“You’ll have to develop some of your own.”
“Hmm.” She kicked off her shoes and walked over to the bed. She’d showered after the fete and changed into a summer dress that unbuttoned in the front. She left the buttons done up, conscious that Nick watched her closely.
She reached the bed, touched a bedpost and turned, so that the post ran along her spine. She raised her arms and gripped the post above her head. Then she stretched.
Nick pounced. There was no need to ask if he liked her fantasy. He kissed her hard as he undid her top button. He worked his way down her body. One button, several kisses, till she thought she might forget to breathe. Then he stood, his hands trailing back up her body, parting her dress and slipping around to her back. He undid her bra.
She released the bedpost and shrugged out of her clothes. She marveled that she wasn’t shy, but the heat in Nick’s eyes, the honesty of his appreciation, pushed out embarrassment and reserve. She trusted him.
He stripped off his t-shirt, unbuckled his jeans and pushed them down. Completely naked, he stood before her. He was glorious.
She flung herself at him, tripped on his jeans, and he caught her, turning and falling so that they tumbled laughing onto the big bed. He explored her then, as he’d promised. Moonlight turned them both to living statues. Their words were murmurs, lost to the truer conversation of their bodies’ responses as they learned each other.
Nick stood by the main staircase, smiling at Lanie as she walked towards him. She wore a simple, sleeveless blue dress but had gone back to their room to add a white fluffy sweater, and now smoothed it over her hips before pushing up the sleeves. Three gold bangles chimed softly on her left wrist.
He knew the delicacy of her wrists, the softness of her skin, the passionate embrace of her body. Arousal thickened his blood as his woman walked to him. Outside, heavy clouds hung low, gray and sullen outside. One magic day for Chloe’s fete, and the English summer weather had returned. But inside, Lanie was light and sunshine, and he was high on how good the night had been.
If he kissed her, he’d take her back to bed.
He perched on the bannister. The trick had to be as old as the house. He slid down.
Lanie’s laughter followed him. She descended more decorously, running down the stairs. “When I’m wearing jeans, I’ll try that.”
“Don’t forget to jump at the end.” He swung their joined hands, happy.
They strolled towards the kitchen. After yesterday’s chaos, expecting to be served a cooked breakfast was unreasonable. He’d forage in the bread box and fridge.
Kate, Mrs. Webster, disagreed. “Tell me what you want and I’ll serve you in the dining room.” She looked tired, though, her dark blonde hair limp and purplish circles under her eyes.
“I think I can manage toast.” Nick pulled out a chair for Lanie at the kitchen
table. “And Lanie’s not scared of eating in a kitchen.”
“Hardly.” She refused the seat. “Do you have eggs? I feel like an omelet, and I saw some chives and parsley in the garden. Would you like an omelet, Mrs. Webster?”
“I’d like mine with mushrooms.” Nick explored the fridge, finding a brown paper bag of mushrooms and rolling some onto the bench. He added eggs, butter and milk.
“No, thank you, Lanie. I’ve had toast.” Kate filled the kettle and put it on to boil.
“I’ll get the herbs.” Stepping out, Nick inhaled the garden scents of Waterhill. Cool, gray weather in London meant smog, but here the damp air carried a green promise of earth and new growth. He headed for the rose garden where the herbs helped deter pests. The stalks of parsley snapped juicily. The chives he pulled out whole, tapping them against the ground to shake off the loose dirt.
When he returned, Richard sat at the kitchen table, a steaming mug in front of him, while Lanie stood at the sink, whisking eggs. She’d also acquired a floral apron over her white sweater. Melted butter sizzled in a frying pan.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Good morning.”
Kate monitored a second frying pan, stirring sliced mushrooms. “I hope you remembered some thyme.”
He rinsed it and added the leaves to the browning mushrooms.
Without fuss, Lanie served breakfast.
Richard accepted a herb omelet, although he said he’d already eaten. He’d probably been up a couple of hours, organizing the dismantling of the fete.
Only Chloe was absent.
Lanie asked after her.
“She’s tired. Sleeping in.” Richard paused and looked uncomfortably from Lanie to Nick. He grounded his knife and fork. Went to speak, and stopped. He picked up his tea, instead.
“Dad?”
“You’re here for the weekend. I want you here. Waterhill’s your home.”
Lanie deciphered the cryptic message first. “But while we’re here, Chloe will try to entertain us. If we go, she’ll rest.”
Richard’s frowned deepened. “Yes.”
Kate unobtrusively rose and began cleaning the frying pans.
“It’s okay, Dad. We’ll go.”
“I—” Richard’s mug hit the table a fraction too hard, a fraction too loud.
“I’ll visit Wednesday or Thursday,” Nick added. “When Chloe’s had time to recover. I’m in London for a couple of weeks.”
Richard’s gaze shifted to Lanie, who’d stood and was politely and near silently arguing with Kate over who should clean up their breakfast mess. It was obvious that Richard guessed Nick’s reason for staying in London. His tight mouth relaxed. “That would be good.”
Lanie chose the music to play on the drive back to London, going into gales of laughter at Nick’s complaint.
“You are such a tease.”
Her songs were all love songs, and not the subtle kind. Sex, sex, sex.
“Don’t speed,” she warned. Happy excitement and anticipation had her singing and grooving to the music.
Nick tapped the steering wheel and occasionally joined in.
Waterhill was beautiful and she’d loved the fete and her night in the huge bed with Nick, but there’d been a note of restraint because of Chloe, and Richard’s worry for her. In London, they could be hedonistic.
Instead of driving her home to the museum, he took her to his hotel.
It proved to be one of those hidden gems that anticipated every decadent delight its guests could imagine. The bath was easily big enough for two people. The shower had seven different settings. The bed sheets were linen. The room service divine.
Among all this encouragement to pleasure, Lanie and Nick didn’t make love. They ravished each other. It was intense, fun and exhausting.
“I’ll need a week to recover.”
Nick kissed her as he walked her to the door of the museum, trapping her against it. “I’ll see you, tomorrow.”
She smiled. “I’m counting on it.”
Kisses and touches, intimate knowledge of what turned each other on, and enjoying doing so. They had their two weeks before Nick reluctantly surrendered to the demands of his far-flung projects. “I must have been crazy, agreeing to so many.”
Not crazy. Just uncommitted to anything but his work.
And that had changed.
He blew a raspberry against her belly button and she laughed at the tickling torment. She marveled at how much they’d both changed. She’d let him into her life, opened herself up to life, and he had dropped all barriers with her. He was still reserved, it was his nature, but she was inside the fence with him.
It made everything worthwhile.
She ignored the seating options the rooftop garden offered and sat on the floor, her back against the sun-warmed low concrete wall that enclosed the roof—and also served as wind protection. Below its height, the herbs Nick had planted flourished, and she liked being amongst them. There were even bees up here, drowsy and golden in the evening light.
She’d changed out of her frock and heels, worn to show museum visitors around, into shorts and a sleeveless shirt so that she could feel the sun on her skin. She wriggled her bare toes and took a sip of the wine spritzer beside her. The drink was a favorite of her mum’s, lighter and more refreshing than wine alone. She’d text Nick, and if he could talk…
They’d had two perfect weeks after the fete.
The weather hadn’t been perfect. It had rained and stormed, but they’d been snug in Nick’s hotel room and occasionally in her flat. They had even tested out the loveseat in the museum’s drawing room—it was too small, and they’d crashed, laughing and gasping, bumping, onto the floor.
But after two weeks squeezed out of his peripatetic schedule, Nick had had to fly out again. He was needed in his Dubai office, and then, out in Los Angeles again, and Nelson insisted on another film shoot in Mexico.
Fortunately, they were making the distance and time zone complexity work for them. And talking of being in sync…her phone rang. She smiled as she picked it up, anticipating a fun romantic call. “Hi, Nick.”
“Lanie, Chloe’s dead.”
Chapter 15
Nick held the phone, and stared out across the slum garden to the brick wall covered in colorful graffiti that celebrated defiance of life’s inexplicable cruelties. His dad had phoned with the news.
“We hadn’t thought it would be so soon. We’d hoped to have Christmas together. Chloe had hoped to see you and—” Richard broke off. “Her passing was peaceful.”
“I’ll come home,” Nick said.
“Please.” Richard hung up.
Nick hadn’t even been conscious of phoning Lanie; hadn’t known that he’d break the news of Chloe’s death so bluntly.
“Oh Nick. I’m so sorry.” Tears clogged her voice.
“I’m coming home.”
“Yes. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Thanks.” Flies buzzed around him, people clustered at a little distance, watching him, sensing that something was wrong. He inhaled deeply, knew that the scent of sun-warmed fresh coriander would always remind him of Chloe’s death. “I have to go to the airport, tell Nelson. The filming…”
“Can wait.”
“Lanie.” It felt good to have someone so fiercely for him. But he had no words. He wanted her here, or him to be there. He needed to hold her and be held. His breath shuddered in a near sob.
“Come home, Nick.” Gentle and emotional.
“I’ll text you the flight number.” He hung up, as abrupt as Richard.
“Nick, mate, you okay?” Nelson approached.
Nick shook his head and forced himself to turn around. “It’s my stepmother, Chloe. She’s died.”
He got an awkward hug and then more practical sympathy: a ride to the airport, his plane ticket booked, Nelson waiting with him. The people at the soup kitchen said they’d remember Chloe in their prayers. Their kindness nearly unraveled him.
He spen
t the flight staring out the window or at his hands, refusing food but accepting cups of awful tea. Memories of Chloe, but also of his dad and Waterhill, ran through his mind. There the tea was always hot and fresh, carefully chosen since it was one of Chloe’s few indulgences.
He’d been a grieving, angry boy when he’d arrived at Waterhill. Chloe could have resented him. His existence had been as big a shock to her as his dad’s appearance in his life had been to him. But she’d been all sympathy, asking nothing of him as he grieved for his mum. She’d been wise and gentle and never tried to be a second mother—and so, she’d become one. Without her, his anger could have flared out of control. He’d been so angry at life, at his dad.
Chloe had given him the space, time and gentleness to adjust to the major changes in his life. Her acceptance had stopped his rage from solidifying into a destructive pattern. She’d let him work out who he was and what he might do by showing him, proving to him, that he would be loved no matter what. Chloe made him believe he wasn’t alone.
And in the space she’d created, he and Richard had marked out a relationship of wary connectedness. She had kept them communicating.
Nick tipped his head back against the airplane seat and closed his eyes. Back then, he doubted that any of them had recognized how much of his teenage anger had been self-directed. He’d hated the immediate tug of recognition he’d felt on meeting Richard. The stranger who’d abandoned him, who had embodied everything his mum had taught Nick to despise, had evoked an innate sense of belonging. Waterhill had done the same.
If Chloe hadn’t so obviously needed his gentleness, confusion and grief might have torn him apart. Self-destruction was incredibly easy. But Chloe had offered him unconditional love and small nudges that only in hindsight did he appreciate.
When he might have been tempted to defy Richard and his Tawes heritage by acting out and failing at the new, posh school Richard sent him to, it was Chloe who’d asked what value his mum had put on education. His mum would have kicked his arse for not taking advantage of the opportunities given to him, even if she despised the inequality they represented.
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