‘I…’ He was still gazing at her intently.
He drew her even closer to him, and bent his head.
They were going to kiss… and Georgie couldn’t until she’d explained properly to him about before. She couldn’t bear him to continue to think that she’d been using him. Whatever her admission might or might not say about what she wanted now.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she said, the movement of her lips almost causing her mouth to brush against his, they were standing so close together.
‘Now?’ His voice was hoarse.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh-kay.’ Raf let go of her and took a step backwards. ‘Would you like to go back now?’ His voice sounded clipped. Well, maybe he thought she’d looked like she wanted to kiss him and had changed her mind. Maybe, if Georgie wasn’t flattering herself, that might have made him feel disappointed. It would definitely have disappointed her if it had happened the opposite way round.
‘No,’ she said, fast. ‘I wanted to explain that, yes, initially –veryinitially – after New Year I needed to spend time with youto get my secret back, but very quickly I just started loving being with you and, yes, the secret was still there, hanging over me, but when I was with you… I mean, I just loved your company.’ And fancied the pants off him, but there was a limit to how much she could own up to right now.
‘Is that so?’ His voice was warmer again.
‘Yes, it really is.’
‘And you’re sure you don’t want to go back to the house yet?’
‘Mmhmm.’
He slid an arm round her waist and she put her arms round his neck and now they were gazing into each other’s eyes again and Georgie’s heart was crashing around inside her chest like nobody’s business.
He lowered his head towards hers and then, just as,finally, she was parting her lips in huge anticipation, he said, ‘I have a confession too.’
‘You do?’ Georgie almost wanted to stamp her foot.
‘I have to own up to the fact that I only ever agreed for you to cat-sit because I wanted to spend more time with you. I totally had other cat-sitters available.’
‘Hunh.’
‘Yeah.’
And then, very slowly and very deliberately, he moved his head towards hers. He stopped for a moment just before their lips met and then, just as Georgie wondered if she was going toscreamwith frustration, he moved further and she did too, and then they were kissing – it was almost better this time because this time they knew how well they fitted together – and everything ceased to exist except where they were touching.
Georgie had no idea how long they stayed there, but after some time she became aware that it was raining and moved back a little.
And then the heavens opened.
Raf took her hand and they ran (as much as she could in stilettos) across the lawn until they got to the shelter of a doorway at the back of the house.
‘I’m staying here tonight,’ she told him, not really sure where she was going with that comment, and kind of wanting to leave things to fate.
It turned out that Raf wasn’t so keen to leave things to fate. He kissed her hard, really hungrily, in the doorway, before drawing her inside the house and whispering, ‘Where are you sleeping?’ in a way that made her entire insides turn to complete liquid.
Unbelievably, Georgie couldn’t remember where the bedroom was. And the house was enormous.
‘We can’t just try other people’s bedrooms, can we?’ she whispered to Raf, in the middle of the bigger-than-most-people’s-entire-upstairs landing, standing next to an actual suit of armour (apparently the owner had begged Alex to buy a lot of their furniture and he’d agreed and was now regretting it).
‘Come back to Noah’s?’
‘But Noah will be there?’
‘No, he texted me earlier and said he was staying here.’
‘Oh my goodness – with Beth?’
