He was stuffy. Good grief… he was only thirty-six years old but he was middle-aged to the nth degree. Had been since God knew when.
Had he entered a middle-aged mentality when he’d been in his teens? When he’d decided that both his father’s personality and his behaviour simply wasn’t acceptable?
Or had it been even earlier than that? When he’d seen that his mother needed protection?
Needed genuine love?
Oliver swam another length. And another. Maybe he needed to dry himself off and go and sit in the summer house for a while to finally get rid of this unpleasant feeling of… What was it?
Frustration?
A dislike of who he was?
No. It was more a sense of having missed out on something important.
That he was still missing out.
And he didn’t quite know what it was that he was missing outon.
* * *
The spa pool was part of the home gym set-up on the lower floor of the Dawson mansion.
Lady Dorothy had taken some persuasion to don a bathing suit and start some water therapy, but the visiting physio had recommended it and Bella had gone home to Kate’s house last night to fetch her own bathing suit so that she could do more than supervise from the edge of the pool.
Finally, she had Lady Dorothy seated safely in the pool.
‘Don’t get a fright,’ she warned. ‘I’m going to turn the jets on now.’
The pool hummed into life and the pressure of the moving water increased around them.
‘Good heavens!’ Lady Dorothy exclaimed. ‘This is… extraordinary.’
Bella blinked. ‘Haven’t you been in a spa pool before?’
‘Never. This is Oliver’s playroom, not mine.’
Bella took another long glance around them. Yep. She was still blown away by what looked like the ultimate home-fitness area. The room was vast. It probably took up the lower floor of this whole wing. The pool had to be fifty feet long and the dark blue tiling made the water match what she could see of the ocean through the windows.
No waves, though. The pool lay like a giant mirror, with faint curls of steam rising from its glassy surface. Both the swimming pool and the spa pool were at a level that put them in line with the expanse of the sea. At the far end of the pool was a treadmill that was also positioned for the view.
An infinity treadmill. Who knew?
‘Not much of a playroom,’ she said aloud. ‘It looks like a torture chamber with all those machines. Oliver must be very fit.’
‘His father got terribly overweight,’ Lady Dorothy responded. ‘That’s what caused his heart attack, of course. Just one of the attributes Oliver didn’t want to emulate, I expect.’
Bella was surprised again. What a cryptic thing to say. She really wanted to ask what else about his father he hadn’t liked but, for once, she paid heed to the warning bell.
She’d already gone too far, hadn’t she, pushing Oliver with that line dancing the other night? He’d been absolutely furious with her, and she had been keeping her head down and avoiding him ever since. When he came to visit his mother in the evenings, she made sure that there was some urgent task she simply had to get done. And last night she’d been out for hours, having dinner with Kate and Connor.
She’d told them about making St Patrick’s head neurosurgeon line dance, and Kate had shaken her head.
‘You’ll get yourself into trouble, Bella. You might lose this job if you’re not careful.’
‘I won’t. Lady Dorothy loves me and she’s doing really well. I’m right on top of supervising her diabetes. Oliver said that he’s never seen her blood-glucose levels under such tight control.’
‘Oh…Olivernow, is it?’
