AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sera.” His voice is like a caress. Goosebumps raise over my skin. He tucks me deeper into his arms. “Seraphina, my angel.”
He breaks our embrace and I catch myself before I whimper. I don’t know what’s gotten into me today. I’m not normally like this. No other man has ever made me whimper. Certainly not by leaving my side.
Ali grins at me as he drops his man-mountain form surprisingly nimbly onto the fireside rug and beckons to me to join him. I sink down into the pile beside him, leaving a slight gap between us, suddenly feeling a bit shy. I’ve wanted to see him for twenty years. I’ve dreamed about this moment. All the imagined conversations, all the imagined looks, the touches, everything I planned to say and everything I planned to do has melted from my head like softly flurried snow.
Now he is here, I have no idea what to do with him. I want to do everything. I want to do nothing but stare at him. I want to talk. I want to stay silent, to pull him to me and do nothing but kiss him for hours. I want to catch up. I want to know everything. I want to store it up for later when we are lying sated on this rug. I want to watch terrible Christmas movies with him. I want to fuck him from now until next Christmas, and then some more. I want him forever. I want him now.
“I love an open fire,” he says. The light of the fire plays over the chiselled lines of his face: his broad, stitched brow, his long, misshapen nose, his full lips, his firm chin.
“You have about ten of them next door, if I remember, from your party. Every room had one! I liked the one in the piano room the best.”
He chuckles. “Yes, I remember one of the party planners going absolutely mad over the decorations on them. Some hadn’t been placed correctly. They’d put the gold ones in the sitting room, and the silver ones in the piano room. She was going wild.”
“She did a great job. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“It was quite something,” he says, sucking in a breath. He nods towards my own spartan looking fireplace. “You didn’t hang a stocking?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t really expecting much.”
He plucks at the pile of the rug, his head bowed. “You know, I came round, the next day. I brought a picnic. But there was no one home.”
“Aunt Molly drove me back to Glasgow. I thought you were flying out to meet your parents?”
“I changed my flight.”
“Oh. I thought…”
“It was a one night thing?”
“A one night almost thing,” I correct with a small smile.
“Definitely a one nightsomething,” he says. “I couldn’t let you go. I never did. You got me right here…” He places his hand over his heart. “I think it was the strictness.”
I laugh.
“Can I get you a drink? I think Aunt Molly kept some whisky in the…”
“Maybe later. Didn’t we make that mistake last time?”
“Yeah, no whisky for me, that’s for sure. Ghastly stuff. It still haunts my dreams.”
“You haunted mine. I should never have let you leave my arms. You were mine to claim, and I fumbled. Worst dropped ball ever. Try as I might, I couldn’t get you out of my head. No matter who I was with, or what I was doing, I always thought of you. Of what might have been.” He gives a short, dry laugh. “I had visions of you, running a hospital somewhere. Probably married to a consultant. Cardiologist, I thought. Heart guy. Made sense. Well, to me anyway.”
“Nurse marries consultant. Bit stereotypical.”
He spreads his huge hands open. “I’m not terribly imaginative. More a practical kind of guy. Don’t be plot-rating my daydreams,” he complains with a chuckle. “To be honest, they weren’t really daydreams. They were nightmares. Because you were with him. And not me. You were lost to me. You were mine. And I lost you.”
My heart skips a beat at his words, but my brain calls for a rewind. “Wait, running a hospital? An entire hospital?”
“Yeah, why not? You’ve got all the talent, and ability. Strict. Disciplined. Practical. Capable. Clever. Strong. Slightly scary.”
“You make me sound like a dragon.”
“Hmm. Definitely fire.”
He looks at me. His blue eyes dance with the light of the fire. I want him to reach out, to touch me, to claim me, to make me his in body as well as mind and soul.
“I asked your Aunt Molly. She said you’d moved to America.”
