AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In other words, the opposite to me.
And her father, come to think of it.
I have always thought certain areas were black and white, but this is one with many, many shades of grey. Noah came to me for help and, though our relationship isn’t that of patient and doctor, I worry about how this development might affect him. And, yes, I worry about how it will affect me.
‘What’s this one?’ She wrinkles her nose—so like Aaron’s—and passes me the ornament.
I force myself back to Ivy, the tree, and try to ignore the fuzzy worries on the periphery of my brain. ‘Ah. I made this when I was ten years old.’ I stare at the little decoration, the small foam ball that I painstakingly stuck fabric to, then dotted with sequins. I remember sitting on the floor of my parents’ lounge, my knees covered in a blanket, my hair long around my shoulders, determined to make the decoration according to the ins
tructions. ‘It took quite a long time.’
‘Really?’ Ivy probably doesn’t mean to sound so scathing and I can’t help but laugh.
‘Yes, dearest.’ I push the ornament into the branches and wait for another decoration.
‘Ebony James says it’s too early to put up the tree,’ she says, her eyes darting to mine and then flicking away, as if afraid of the sacrilegious assertion she’s just repeated.
My smile is kind. ‘Everyone has different traditions. Perhaps in Ebony James’s house they put their tree up later.’
‘Do most people put their tree up now?’
I shrug. ‘They’re up in shops, aren’t they?’
Ivy nods but looks far from convinced.
‘Why shouldn’t we enjoy the tree for a month? Christmas only comes around once a year and it’s such a waste not to enjoy it fully. Don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so.’ Her smile is more genuine now.
She goes back to unboxing ornaments and I go back to hanging them, but my mind keeps threatening to drag me back to Noah, my desk, my office and that pleasure.
Decorating the tree is one of my favourite pastimes. We have a real tree, but of course it’s too early to have a chopped tree, so ours is potted. I water it every few days to keep it fresh and then, after Christmas, once it’s denuded of decorations once more, I put it on a trolley and push it back into our small courtyard garden. There it remains all year round, dormant and hibernating, waiting for its time to shine—literally—with the strings of lights we weave through its greenery.
I love doing this, and even more so now that Ivy is old enough to join in with me, but I’m barely in the moment.
By the time Ivy is in bed, and I have had dinner, I am itching to crawl between my sheets and surrender to the dreams of him that I know will follow.
I check my emails quickly first—a habit I’ve fallen into since having Ivy and needing to do some of my work from home—and his name is the first I see.
Noah Moore—Bright Spark Inc
I click into it faster than I can believe.
It’s a short email. Just a few words. But they rob me of breath and make my knees sag.
I can smell you on my hand. Tomorrow I want to taste you.
CHAPTER FOUR
HIS EMAIL SPINS through my mind all day. I hear the words he’d written, voiced in his inimitable accent. Australian with a dash of arrogance and a bucketload of don’t-give-a-fuck. I guess having squillions of pounds could give someone that attitude, but I don’t think that’s the beginning and end of it.
I’d put money on Noah having been like this for a long time—before having money and commercial success. I think his arrogance is stitched into his being; every cell of his body is made up of the same.
But my lines of deduction are now very blurry. As a therapist, I would have the ability to look beneath that arrogance and see what he’s trying to hide—to guess at what makes him tick. As a woman, I see only the arrogance and it’s sexy as all hell. I don’t want to push at it. I don’t want to guess what’s beneath him.
Professionally, that makes me redundant.
I make a soft groaning noise and dip my head forward, catching it in my hands.
