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He smiled back at her—a sweet, slow smile that made her insides loosen.
‘I probably deserved worse.’
Lottie laughed. ‘I definitely thought worse.’ She took a breath. ‘I’ll send you that video and you can share it with your family.’
Maybe her daughter’s first steps might be her first step towards making amends.
‘I’ve got other videos,’ she added. ‘I can send those too.
He was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I’d like to see them.’
Her eyes flicked to his face. There was something different about his voice... Only before she had a chance to consider what had changed, or why, Sóley leaned forward and grabbed her shoulder, pulling all three of them into an embrace.
Her heart was suddenly thumping hard inside her chest, as she pictured the three of them in her garden in Suffolk: she and Ragnar were taking turns to push their daughter in her swing, their eyes bright, their faces flushed with the chilled air and with something less tangible that she couldn’t name—
She cleared her throat. ‘I was thinking... I know you’re already taking time off work now, so don’t worry if you can’t,’ she said quickly. ‘But I was just wondering if you’d like to come to Suffolk for Sóley’s birthday? It’s not a party, or anything, but I know she’d love you to be there.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d love you to be there too.’
He was staring at her steadily, and she felt heat rise up over her throat and curl around her neck like a cashmere scarf.
‘I’d like that very much.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Stone—Oh, I’m so sorry—’
It was Signy.
Lottie felt her cheeks grow warm. She had no idea whether or not Ragnar’s housekeeper had detected a change in their relationship, but she didn’t want to make the older woman feel in any way uncomfortable.
‘No need to apologise, Signy,’ Ragnar said calmly. ‘Sóley just started walking and we were celebrating.’ He hesitated. ‘In fact, why don’t we celebrate properly? We have champagne, don’t we, Signy?’
‘Yes, we do, Mr Stone.’
‘Good.’
Lottie watched as he gently kissed his daughter’s forehead, and then the air was squeezed from her lungs as he lowered his mouth and brushed his lips against hers.
‘Then let’s celebrate.’
* * *
Leaning back in his chair, Ragnar stared down at his laptop, watching the cursor blink on the pitifully blank screen. On the desk beside him he had a neatly stacked pile of unread business plans and magazines. But it didn’t matter how neatly they were stacked—he already knew they were definitely going to stay unread.
Two years ago, when his business had been starting up and he’d felt as if a hosepipe filled with data was pumping non-stop into his head, he’d followed the example of other successful CEOs and taken a couple of ‘think weeks’ out of his schedule.
He found them incredibly productive, and now he was following the same rules as he always did. Web-browsing was forbidden, he could only check emails once a day, for no more than fifteen minutes, and he could take no business calls whatsoever. The idea was to remove all distractions from his life and allow his mind the space and freedom to reset his goals, so that when he did return to work he would hit the ground running—and in the right direction.
He glanced again at the blinking cursor.
But clearly some distractions were just way more distracting than others, he thought, his body hardening as a slow-motion replay of the morning shower he’d shared with Lottie slid unprompted into his head.
He gritted his teeth. No wonder he was finding it difficult to focus his thoughts.
Except that wasn’t true. His thoughts were focused—only not on the future direction of his business but on the woman who had managed to get so far under his defences that he’d actually told her about that fishing trip with the boy Daniel.
He flipped his laptop shut, moving his eyes involuntarily to the window and through the glass, to the fractured outline of a small, wooden cabin that was just visible from where he was sitting.
His shoulders tensed. When Lottie had asked him about his family he’d told her part of the truth.
Maybe he hadn’t expressed it very eloquently, but he’d wanted her to know that meeting Daniel and his family had been a transformative moment for him. Like falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland, except in reverse, for in his family there had been no end of mad tea parties and pools of tears.
