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LEANING FORWARD OVER the banister, Lottie felt her heart jump guiltily against her ribs. Sóley had decided to pull her socks off and push them into her breakfast cereal, and she’d only come upstairs to grab a clean pair for her. But as she’d been walking back along the galleried landing she’d heard an irresistible squeal of laughter, and then a deeper, definitely male laugh, and she’d had to flatten her body into the cool brickwork to even out her breathing.
Now she was smiling. In the living area below, Ragnar was playing hide and seek with their daughter, and she watched, transfixed, her smile widening, as he allowed himself to be found, much to Sóley’s giggling, appreciative amusement.
A week ago she would have found it impossible to enjoy this moment. She would have wanted to, only her fear of being pushed out would have overridden her good intentions. Now, though, she felt differently. She knew that the father-daughter bond wasn’t a threat to her own relationship with Sóley.
She inched backwards, concealing herself in the shadows, feeling a knot of nervous uncertainty tightening beneath her diaphragm.
She felt differently about other things too.
Instead of feeling as if she was trapped in a villain’s lair, out in the wilderness, she felt almost as much at home as she did in Suffolk. And, rather than counting down the days until she could leave, she was trying to stretch out every minute.
Mostly, though, she felt differently about Ragnar.
Oh, she could remember her resentment and her scepticism, but they seemed to have broken up and melted away like spring ice on a lake.
She thought back to their conversation the morning after that first time they’d yielded to the burning, incessant pull of their desire. It had been a little nerve-racking, waking in his arms in her bed. She’d had no idea of what to expect, knowing only that she didn’t regret what had happened.
But then they’d talked—or rather he’d talked—and she’d agreed with him that she didn’t want it to be just that one night and that they should give themselves these three weeks.
Only down by the waterfalls she’d started to realise that wasn’t what she wanted either—or at least not all she wanted.
That phone call from his sister had made her want to learn more about this man who was Sóley’s father, whose touch turned her inside out but about whom she knew next to nothing.
The knot in her stomach tightened. But, judging by his terse, oblique answers to her questions, and the shuttered expression on his face, he clearly didn’t trust her enough to give her more than a glimpse into his life—a glimpse that had confused more than clarified her understanding of him.
But could she blame him for being reluctant to open up?
Even her decision to tell him about Sóley had been framed as much by her failed relationship with her own father as by a need to do the right thing.
She’d been so preoccupied by her fears of being pushed out that she’d relegated his feelings, and his family, to second place—to the point of never even actually asking him a single question about them.
Her stomach muscles clenched. He was clearly the polestar of his family. Marta had called again twice, and his mother once, and listening to him talk to them, patiently and calmly, she had felt both moved and almost envious that they had a permanent right to his attention, and she—
She pushed the words away, letting them be pulled into the swirling centrifuge of emotions she couldn’t seem to unpick or understand.
Downstairs in the living area, Sóley was gratifyingly excited to see her. Kneeling down on the rug, she let her daughter climb into her arms.
‘She missed you.’
Turning towards where Ragnar sat, slouching against one of the huge leather sofas, she felt her heart slip sideways. He was wearing a thin blue V-neck sweater a shade darker than his eyes, and a lock of blond hair was falling across his forehead. He looked calm and relaxed and incredibly sexy.
‘Sorry for taking so long.’
He shifted against the sofa, stretching his leg out so that his thigh was next to hers, and instantly the heat and pressure of his body made her breathing change rhythm.
‘You really don’t need to keep apologising to me every time I look after her. Otherwise I’m going to have start retrospectively apologising to you for the last eleven months.’
‘I just don’t want to take you for granted.’
His eyes rested on her face, the blue suddenly very blue. ‘How do you want to take me?’ he said softly.
Behind the sudden insistent thud of her heartbeat she heard her phone vibrate on the sofa. It could be her mum, or Lucas, or even Georgina to say that the gallery had burned down, but she couldn’t seem to make herself care enough to pick it up and find out.
‘Here.’ He reached across and handed her the phone. ‘It might be a commission. Just because I’m on holiday it doesn’t mean you have to be too.’
Thankful for being given a reason to lower her face, away from his steady stare, she glanced down at the screen as her mind nervously tried to interpret his words.
He was talking about being on holiday from his job, not commenting on their affair. Or was he?
