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“Well, we just admitted that we have feelings for each other, and that’s supposed to be a happy thing, but this doesn’t feel like the happiest of situations.”
Theo laid his hands against my cheeks and pulled back, staring into my eyes. “You watch too much TV. In case it wasn’t clear, I am happy, Chlo. I’m so happy I want to climb to the top of this damn hotel and scream it at the top of my lungs.”
My lips twitched. “Idiot.”
“Maybe that would be doable if we’d met in a pub or through friends. Maybe things would feel different if we didn’t work together—if I wasn’t who I am, and you weren’t my secretary. But we do, I am, and you are. I wouldn’t change any of those things for the world; we wouldn’t have met if that wasn’t the way things are, but that doesn’t take away the fact that we have more to consider than just our feelings for one another.”
He was right.
Although I might have changed the whole ‘boss’ part. He had tormented me for a while.
“Every relationship has their anxieties, and the ones we share just happen to be a bit more complicated than others. But it’s all right. We have time to work it out.” He pecked the tip of my nose. “My feelings aren’t going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Hmm. What if mine do?”
“I’ll make sure you catch me getting myself off in your shower.”
I blinked at him. “Theo. Really?”
He grinned. “It worked last time, didn’t it?”
My cheeks warmed at his words. He wasn’t exactly wrong…
“It’ll all work out.” He kissed my left cheek, then my right, then my forehead, before finally finishing his little journey around my face with another peck to the tip of my nose. “We’ll go back to the cottage, pretend the real world doesn’t exist, and just be together the way we have been for the last week.”
“I don’t know. Ignoring my anxieties seems like a bad idea.”
“On the other hand, so is focusing on them.” He smiled, meeting my eyes. “And they’re not your anxieties. They’reouranxieties.”
His words wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and I clamped my arms around his waist, squeezing him tightly.
“I can’t believe I used to imagine hitting you over the head with a box file,” I muttered into his shoulder.
“You used to do what?”
“Never mind.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE – THEO
Crazy Old Man
Two Weeks Later
Our time in Buckley Heath could be split into two parts: before and after.
Before was the three weeks when we slowly became friends, and after was the lightspeed with which our friendship turned into something more.
Our trip back to London two weeks ago had marked the true turning point, but not much had changed after. As I’d said to Chloe, we’d returned back to the cottage and carried on as if we didn’t have a real life to come back to. The past two weeks had been chaotic from a work perspective, but nothing but peace outside of those hours.
Well.
Peace was the wrong word for it.
There’d really not been much peaceful about what we’d been doing.
Hidden away in the cottage was almost like being on holiday. As soon as the work hours were over, we were just two people who were living together. Chloe had even loosened up during work while we were holed up in the cottage working from our shared office sapce and hadn’t stuck to her rules quite as strongly as she had before we’d admitted our feelings for one another.
I still couldn’t believe that had happened. I’d wanted her for long, but I’d never allowed myself to believe that anything could truly happen between us. I’d honestly never thought for a second that she would return my feelings for her based on our relationship before we’d left.
