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“Yeah, after I’d taken it from them.”
“You didn’t take it from them.” Jasper’s form became smaller until he eventually disappeared. “Your family did, and many others besides. You were just a boy, Rupert, and a stolen one at that.”
We sailed the rest of the way in near silence, only breaking it to sneak a warming kiss against the biting cold or to check we were each okay. It was only when we disembarked onto Scottish soil the trepidation set in. Rupert was about to discover more about himself on this trip than he had in the whole nine months I’d done known him, or the decades he’d lived up to now. A gnawing voice in the back of my head questioned whether he would come back to me at all.
Two cars were waiting for us. One ready to take Minty and Hector to The Glasshouse in Edinburgh for a romantic getaway before the big meeting, and one for Rupert and me. We bid an excited farewell-for-now and set off for the airport. Four hours later, we were sitting in a comparatively less luxurious black London cab, winding our way through the streets to the place I grew up.
Having Rupert beside me in the area I’d called home all my life was strange to say the least. There he was, a man raised to be a billionaire through and through, and an impossibly beautiful one at that, looking extremely out of place in a scruffy cab in the arse-end of London, being taken to meet my equivalent of ‘the parents.’ I was cringe personified.
“Where’s your house?” he asked, being the gentleman he was.
“Um, it’s on that street, over on the left.”
He followed my finger to where I was pointing. “Rose lived at the other end.”
I felt him breathe deeply beside me.
“I want to see where you grew up.”
“It’s really not that int—” A hand cupped my mouth cutting me off.
“It’s interesting to me, okay? I want to see the place where you grew into the person you are now.”
His eyes bore into me with such intensity, I couldn’t argue. I gave the driver directions and we stepped out right by the front door of my family home.
“This is it,” I said, with thinned lips and a shrug.
“It’s empty?” he asked with a frown.
My heart weighed heavy with guilt. Peggy had moved back with Richard and Anna while she battled the return of her pain. “Peggy’s staying with friends again and… well, we didn’t expect it to stay empty. I was meant to come back here after I delivered your news.”
His features darkened. “You gave up so much for me.”
I looked up at him, every cell in my body wanting to ease the pain he was feeling. “But I gained everything.”
He pressed his face into my hair. “Everything except the very thing you came to the island for.”
“It was always going to be a gamble,” I reassured him. “It’s a good thing you fancied me, otherwise I’d still be trying to grow those damn mushrooms on the windowsill of Sandpiper Cottage.”
My attempt to lighten the mood went over his head. “I’ve failed you and your sister.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said, firmly. “You gave her a drug that relieved her pain, if only for a short while. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be normal and you helped her remember what that was like. If she hadn’t had that, I doubt she’d still be around today.”
The words stabbed me but as I said them, I knew they were true. It had been years since Peggy had been pain-free and she was so close to not knowing any differently.
“Come on,” I said, pulling him from the pavement. “Let’s go inside.”
I unlocked the door and led Rupert into my home. It was freezing cold so I flicked on the heating before showing him to the living room and the kitchen where I’d sat so often with Em putting the world to rights over several glasses of red.
“Where’s your bedroom?” He came right up behind me, his breath brushing my neck, and his voice was dark and deep.
“Um…” I swallowed, the change in his tone and expression taking me by surprise. “It’s this way.”
My knees shook as I led him up the stairs. For some reason, I’d never allowed myself to think this far ahead in our story. I’d never imagined what it would be like to bring Rupert Thorn into my family home. I felt like a fifteen-year-old taking a boy to my room for the first time.
I turned the corner to the first room on the right. “This is…”
I had barely stepped foot inside when a hand curled around my throat and pushed me back into the wall. Rupert’s lips grazed the tip of my nose.
