His mouth dropped open, and then he all but shouted, “A metre?” Thaddeus poked me hard in the ribs. “You let me swim in a pool with a monster eel?”
I grabbed his hand before he poked me again. “Boris is fine. He knows me, and he generally keeps his distance.”
One eyebrow shot up. “Define generally?”
“Well, occasionally he’s been known to swim over and say hello, nothing threatening.”
“To say, hello?” Thaddeus’s expression was becoming more horrified by the second.
“But mostly I only see him at a distance,” I quickly qualified. “And he’s never come near me at night.”
“Notyet,” Thaddeus muttered, his brows tipping into a scowl. “He hasn’t come near you at night...yet. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I tipped my head to the side. “Would you have come in the water?”
His lips pursed. “No, I fucking wouldn’t.”
“I rest my case.” I cupped his cheek. “Are you mad at me?”
His scowl gentled. “Not really. I wouldn’t have missed this evening for anything. But now I know about Boris—” And we were back to finger-stabbing my chest. “—you better have a laundry list of suitable incentives at the ready before I put one toe back in that water, understood?”
I grabbed his finger and sucked it into my mouth, watching his pupils darken. “I think I can come up with something suitably alluring.”
He huffed and looked at me sideways. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
I grinned and pulled him back into my arms. “Challenge accepted.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MONDAY—ONE WEEK LATER
RYDER
I woke early,heard the pattering of rain on the iron roof, and turned off my alarm so I could watch Thaddeus sleep a while longer... onmyside of the bed... for the seventh night in a row. Since our swim. Since the night that I’d given in to the idea that I might just be falling in love with him. Since... what felt like forever.
We’d talked, laughed, showered, worked, and cooked together. We’d made love whenever the opportunity presented itself, and it presented itself with a frequency that seemed to surprise both of us. And catching Thaddeus like this, peaceful and relaxed, before all those problems and decisions of the day creased his brow and troubled his eyes, had become my favourite time of the day.
Moving him into my bed probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, and it certainly wasn’t the safest for my heart. But the thought of him sleeping anywhere but in my arms just didn’t feel right. Not that he’d needed convincing. The day afterour swim, I’d come home to find his book on one of my bedside tables and his razor in my en suite.
When I asked him why he hadn’t moved all his stuff, his cheeks blazed a bright beetroot and he apologised profusely for assuming I’d be okay about it without checking. I’d kissed him to shut him up and set about gathering the rest of his things and stowing them in my room. I couldn’t have been happier... about everything. And Thaddeus taking the initiative, in even a small way, relieved any fear I had of pressuring him.
Everything was going swimmingly, except for the small problem of when he was going to leave, as he inevitably would. Thaddeus hadn’t mentioned it since that evening on the deck, the weekend had come and gone, and he was still there. He’d even returned to the emergency dentist to have his new crown applied. We were living in a bubble of denial, but the conversation was coming, nothing surer.
Thaddeus had a life to get back to and a messy situation to sort out. And then there was us, whatever we were. We’d skipped most of the getting-to-know-you part and jumped straight into sleeping together and sharing a house. It might’ve started as nothing more than a short-term dance between the sheets, but that excuse had long passed, at least for me.
Thaddeus, however, was harder to read on that particular topic. I knew he liked me. I knew he liked what we were doing together. And I knew he didn’t really want to leave. But whether that was because of me or because of what he was going home to, I wasn’t brave enough to ask.
We’d fallen into a comfortable routine that suited us both, one that included never discussing the elephant in the room. Every night, we worked together on the sofa, him at one end, me at the other, our feet meeting in the middle. I’d often look up to find him watching me. He’d smile and then go back to whatever he was doing. But occasionally, I’d catch him unawares, and inthose times, I’d see confusion and conflict in his eyes, along with something that looked a lot like guilt.
I wasn’t sure what it meant. Was he worried about outstaying his welcome at the cottage? Worried about what we were doing? Or just worried about his future in general? The more negative side of my brain, the side that had been sideswiped by James’s departure, was bracing itself to be told that Thaddeus needed time and space to think. That once he left, I might not see him for a while, or maybe ever again.
Tap thought I was imagining things, but Naomi was a great deal more cautious when I’d told her. She liked Thaddeus, I knew that much, but when she’d left that day after meeting him, she’d pulled me aside to tell me that if Thaddeus owned that particular apartment—a slip I was sure he hadn’t meant to make—then he was either in a lot of debt or he was pretty loaded. Either way, she’d warned me to take things slow and be careful.
Advice I’d completely ignored.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about what she’d said, and one thing I was pretty sure of was that Thaddeus wasn’t a big risk-taker, at least not in his private life. The idea of him taking out a huge mortgage didn’t sit right. Thaddeus thought things through. His brain was always making connections and trying to improve whatever he came across, my laying hens, for example.
From what I’d seen, Thaddeus seemed to have two default positions. One was to spreadsheet everything in his daily life into submission. The other was to run away—but only when the emotional side was too difficult, the one thing he couldn’t spreadsheet away. Which left him sitting on the loaded side of Naomi’s equation.
