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“Do you want to do anything, or shall we watch films all day?”
A coy smile emerges as she looks around the room. “Hanging out is good. Or we can Christmas-ise your house?”
I smirk. “You know that’s not a word.”
“Well of course, but it captures everything required. I could say: shall we go and get a tree and decorate it, and then decorate your house with lights and ornaments, or I can say Christmas-ise.”
I start to laugh.
“You’re well behind on the Christmas-ising by the way. It’s already the fifteenth.”
Gamely, I roll my eyes. “Fine. Let’s go and buy a tree. There’s a farm nearby where we can pick one out.”
Ten minutes later, we head north in the Jag. It’s raining and a miserable seven degrees outside. The snow that held us suspended in time in Shropshire never made it to Cambridge or London. I’d like to be snowed in with her again, unravelling her secrets and unravelling her heart.
Picking out a tree is easy. Pre-cut, all we have to do is choose a height and load it into the car. Somehow, Ava manages to convince me to have three: one for the entrance hallway, one for the living room, and a smaller one for the kitchen.
The car isn’t big enough, and the trees hang out of the boot all the way home. No sooner have we dropped them off than we head out again to the nearest DIY store, buying up lights and extra decorations.
During the afternoon, we Christmas-ise. Sharing my house and my life with Ava has been a thought that’s preoccupied me for a long time. Seeing her making herself at home, filling my house with new memories and love makes me even more determined to never let her go.
“Fancy a swim?”
“Is the water warm, or do you set it to five degrees just to get that authentic wild swim experience?” she teases.
I don’t tell her that I’ve heated it up for the past few days just so that she'll enjoy the warmer temp.
Later, wearing a tiny black bikini, Ava tentatively enters the water. “Ah! It’s lovely and warm.” She meets my eyes. “Thank you. I bet you normally have it cooler.”
Because her itsy-bitsy bikini is an invitation to strip her naked, I do, fucking her—twice—before we take a leisurely, lazy swim.
Dinner is a delivery of gourmet burgers, fries and thick, creamy milkshakes. “I’ve earned these calories,” she tells me, counting up all the times we’ve had sex this weekend on her hand.
“I think we should burn them off,” I insist with a crooked smile.
She laughs, toying with her ring, and my God how I love her laugh. It’s sweetly infectious, a sound I want to wake to every day. “Can you show me your work yet? Or how you do your work?”
After tidying away the wrappings, I lead her upstairs and through to my office. “At one time, jewellery artisans moulded from wax, filing and carving and shaving until they had a rough form of the item. These days, 3D models can be made from state-of-the-art computer software. But I always produce a hand-drawn image of what I intend to make, often starting off from absent doodling. I have drawers full of ideas, right from when I was a boy learning the trade.”
Ava listens closely as I describe the different types of settings: bezel, millgrain, prong, pavé, flush and bead amongst others. Opening the safe, I use real pieces as examples. “I trained for years, mostly learning how to polish and set.” I twist to my desk, pointing out useful tools such as the rotary tumblers, and a variety of files—coarse and fine. “These give the metal an even, satin finish. Fine jewellery is about showing the gemstone in the least invasive way. The settings are meant to bring light and visibility to the stone. But it must be secure.”
Ava studies the pear-shaped diamond sitting prettily against her olive skin. “This is a prong setting,” she confirms.
“Correct. It’s the most popular because it works well. And while I made this ring and the setting, I don’t cut gems. I leave that to the pros who train for a minimum of five years.”
Ava studies the mood boards on my walls, some of my hand-drawn designs pinned up next to them.
I turn on the iMac and open up my WIP folder, selecting a document. “Tell me what you see,” I demand, hungry for her observations.
She clicks through the pages, doubling back sometimes before continuing again. Her lips part as she takes in all the glittering details. “This must be the snowy lake,” she queries, looking at a necklace with pavé set diamonds above a swathe of emerald-cut sapphires. “This is me, in my red coat,” she deduces, smiling, looking at another necklace of pavé diamonds, this time surrounding a string of rubies. “In my coat, and hat,” she guesses correctly, seeing diamonds, rubies, and an emerald on top. She clicks on through the designs, giggling out: “My heart scarf! Pine trees amongst the snow,” she suggests for the slim, triangular emerald shapes surrounded by diamonds. “What will you call this range?” she asks breathlessly.
“That’s for marketing to determine. It’ll be an autumn release next year in time for Christmas.”
“They’re incredible.”
“There’s more to come, this is just the start.”
Thrilled, impressed, Ava wraps me up in her slender arms, dropping her head to my shoulder. “You could say the same about us,” she shares, lifting her eyes to mine. “I love you, Maximilian de Vries. And I know it’s taken me longer to tell you but I’m just being certain of my feelings. I can’t begin to tell you how important you are to me. How cherished you make me feel, and how blessed I am to have you walk me through this. I couldn’t have asked for a more dependable, undaunted man at my side.”
