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He had woken late—so late, in fact, that in the first few seconds after he’d opened his eyes he’d struggled to remember where he was, even when it was. The last time he’d slept in late he’d been about fourteen years old.
He breathed out against the dull ache in his groin. And that wasn’t the only similarity with his fourteen-year-old self. His body hardened as he rewound his mind back through the early hours of the morning, pressing ‘pause’ at the moment when Lottie had reached out and touched his chest and then leaned in to kiss him, or had he lowered his mouth to kiss her?
She had been wearing some kind of soft cotton robe and, catching a glimpse of her trying to smooth the fabric so that it covered more of her thighs, he had completely lost track of what she saying, for it had been all too easy to imagine those same hands smoothing and caressing his body.
But had he known what was about to happen?
He considered the question. Not in terms of seconds and minutes maybe. And yet it had been out there waiting to happen since the moment their lives had reconnected outside his office.
They’d both been fighting it, using anger to deflect their desire, but each time they’d quarrelled their hunger had edged out their anger a little more, until finally it had been too tempting, too inevitable, too impossible to resist.
Their unfinished connection was like that feeling when you found a loose tooth and couldn’t leave it alone and kept probing and jiggling it with the tip of your tongue. Hardly surprising then, that they had ended up kissing.
The kiss had been fierce and tender and beyond any conscious control. A kiss driven by a need and hunger that had burned like a molten core deep inside him.
It had lasted sixty seconds at most, and yet it had felt like an admission of everything that had gone on between them. And everything that was still pulling them together now.
He breathed out unsteadily. It was the first time he’d really acknowledged that fact—that this pulsing thread of longing was as much about the present as the past. Although why it had taken him so long to figure that out was a mystery, given that he seemed to think about Lottie in all the pauses in his day and in the dark silence of the night.
To put it in its simplest terms, he wanted her—and she wanted him. But where would that wanting take them?
His heart thumped lightly against his ribs. Sex was supposed to be simple, and at its most simple it was just bodies connecting and intertwining.
He felt his body harden more.
But, of course, in reality sex was rarely that straightforward. How could it be? There were billions of people on the planet. Even if you eliminated vast numbers of them on the grounds of age, geography, or mutual attraction, that still left a lot of potential hook-ups out there—and, realistically, what were the chances of two people who felt exactly the same way about sex and commitment finding one another and then continuing to feel the same way until death parted them?
He grimaced. Judging by his family’s track record: slim to none. But he already knew that. It was the reason he’d created ice/breakr in the first place. To mathematically optimise the odds of couples finding a match. And the numbers clearly worked. According to the latest data from his team, the app was making about twelve million matches a day.
There was just one small problem. According to his own algorithm, one night should have been enough to satisfy both himself and Lottie—and they’d already shared a night. Yet just hours ago, the strength and speed of their desire had been mutual and irresistible.
So what happened now?
He sighed. He was back where he’d started and no nearer to finding an answer.
The dull, insistent ring of his phone made him glance away from the window and the confusing, circuitous path of his thoughts. Walking over to his bed, he picked up the phone and looked down at the screen, his face stilling. It was his mother.
He’d called her earlier and left a message, suggesting that Marta should go over and stay at Lamerton. No doubt she was returning his call. He was about to answer her when something pulled at the edge of his vision—a movement, the shape of a person, a woman...
His pulse began to beat faster, his heart leaping against his ribs as though trying to reach her.
It was Lottie, holding Sóley in her arms. Maybe it was her clothes—she was dressed for the weather in a black fur-trimmed parka and dark jeans—or maybe it was her loose ponytail and chunky dark boots, but she looked more like a student than a professional artist and mother.
He stared at her, transfixed. In the margins of his brain he knew that his phone was still ringing, but for the first time in his life he ignored it.
There was something so beautiful and tranquil about the scene outside his window, and he didn’t want to risk spoiling it by letting an episode of his family soap opera play out in the background.
He felt his phone vibrate in his hand as his mother left a message. But that was fine. For once, she was going to have to wait.
His shoulders tightened. Outside the window, Lottie was holding out a handful of snow for his daughter to inspect.
His daughter.
He frowned. He should call his mother back, tell her about Sóley. Forming the words inside his head, he tried to imagine saying them to his mother. But, just as when he’d been talking to Marta, he checked himself—and immediately felt guilty, but relieved.
At some point he would tell everyone, but right now he wanted to keep his daughter to himself for a little longer—to defer the moment when she would be absorbed by his chaotic, wonderful, exhausting family.
He walked slowly beside the window, shortening his strides to mirror Lottie’s as she picked her way slowly across the snow-covered lawn like one of the deer at Lamerton.
