“You did, and I loved it!” Tom chuckled. Alex laughed then, perhaps spurred on by Tom’s approval, kissed him into the pillow again, tender and heated all at once. At that moment, Tom couldn’t have asked for more. Have me, he’d asked, and Alex most certainly was.
Their hands moved together on his body as Alex kissed him again and again, every soft sigh and hitched breath further proof of his desire. His arm was around Tom’s shoulders, holding him tight, the embrace as protective as it was fierce. And just as he had last night, Alex brought Tom to his climax. Tom didn’t break their kiss as pleasure darted through him, spreading through his limbs and shuddering along every nerve. He’d never felt so close to a lover before, never wanted someone as much as he did Alex.
“Oh, Tom.” Alex sighed happily. “You gorgeous bloody man. What did I ever do to deserve you?”
Tom grinned lazily. “One glance from those big blue eyes and I was yours.”
“You should be in the press office. Just imagine that party political broadcast.” Alex laughed. “Breakfast in bed before the whirlwind returns?”
Tom snuggled happily against Alex, curling his body to his. “Oh, yes. Toast and marmalade?”
“Or we could have the extremely-bad-for-you-and-I-don’t-care croissants I picked up yesterday? It wasn’t only flowers and spaghetti, you know.”
“I’m going to send you shopping more often!”
Tom couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had felt more cared for than he did now. Alex was already a wonderful friend and a better employer than anyone could ask for, but as a lover, he was irresistible. The breakfast was decadent and rich, everything Tom suspected it would be, and they whiled away the morning with croissants and kisses as, outside, London went about its business.
With one eye on the clock, Tom stretched his arms and said, “I’m going to hop in the shower. Do you fancy one as well?”
He’ll say no. He’s too shy to say yes.
“I’d love one.”
“With…” Tom glanced off toward the en-suite bathroom, then back at Alex. “Do you want to share?”
He took a deep breath and said, “Yes, if you don’t mind me getting in your way?”
“You won’t be.” Tom scrubbed his hand back through his hair. “Shall I get started, and you can join me when you’re ready?”
He thought again of that out-of-reach fantasy, of Alex Hart letting his towel fall and stepping into the shower with him. Perhaps Alex intuited it somehow, because he nodded. “That sounds good to me.”
Tom winked at him. “Can I borrow your soap?”
“Help yourself.” Alex kissed his cheek. “I’ll be two minutes.”
Tom climbed out of the bed and, completely comfortable in his nudity, headed into the bathroom. He sighed as he stood under the jet of warm water in the shower, and smoothed on the shower gel, which he recognized at once as one of the smells that made up Alex’s scent.
As he showered, he kept one ear tuned to the bedroom, wondering whether Alex would really join him. A couple of minutes passed, then another, before he saw a shadow fall across the tiled bathroom floor, and there in the doorway stood his lover. For just a moment Alex paused, then he padded into the bathroom and asked, “You sure you weren’t in that shower gel ad?”
Tom turned down the shower and opened the glass door. He smoothed his hand down his wet chest, teasing. “Well, okay, I was bored one afternoon and thought, why not?” But Tom’s heart was racing. Alex was going to get in the shower with him. Just as he’d dreamed of. And for Alex to get this far—was he going to wear his shorts? Whether they were on or off, Tom would try his best not to glance down.
“Why not?” Alex repeated, his voice low with desire, a slight tremble evident in the words. Then he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and slid them down.
Tom fixed his gaze on Alex’s eyes. “Would you rather I didn’t look?”
“I’m just shy.” There was a bright twinkle in Alex’s gaze, a faint flush on his face. “You can look if you want to.”
“Guess what my answer is to that?” Tom reached out through the shower’s partly open door and stroked Alex’s arm, then he glanced down. And here was Alex as he had never seen him before— bare, aroused, and shy. Tom was moments from cracking a joke involving loofahs, but instead he said, “You really are one hell of a man, Alex.”
Alex caught Tom’s hand and stepped into the shower with him, making another of those unreachable dreams come true. Standing beneath the shower’s cascade, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, letting the warm water run over him. Tom combed his fingers through Alex’s dampening hair and kissed his neck under the stream of water.
It was Sunday, the one day in the week that Alex really allowed himself time off, and here they were spending it in a steamy shower. One of those strong arms was around Tom’s waist and as Alex lowered his chin and kissed Tom in return, his hand was massaging through the decadent bubbles on Tom’s back. Tom wanted so much to stroke Alex’s erection, but instead he contented himself knowing that Alex would enjoy feeling the warm water against it, and hoping he’d like the frisson of it pressing against him.
They barely spoke, devoting themselves instead to kisses, to stroking the heady shower gel over their warm skin and there, when Tom cared to look, were Alex’s shoulders with the rivulets of water he had dreamed of.
Tom lost track of time, entirely wrapped up in the most sensual experience of his life. And the sweetest, too, as they kissed and caressed under the warm water.
But the day was ebbing away, he reminded himself, and soon the twins would be home and with them, the already somewhat flustered in-laws. There was to be tea and a light snack and excited children racing around, but through it all, there would be this memory. And the thought of what else was to come.
Chapter Thirteen
The bed linen was turning in the washing machine by the time the knock sounded on the door.
“I’ll get the kettle on.” Tom nodded to Alex. He patted his arm. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
“We have.” Alex smiled. He pecked a kiss to Tom’s cheek then disappeared along the hallway. Seconds later the sound of cheering children filled the apartment and the peace was wonderfully shattered.
And we wouldn’t change it for the world.
“Daddy!” Madeleine shouted, her ragdoll under one arm and her drawing notebook under her other. She promptly dropped them and flung herself at Alex’s legs. He stooped and deftly lifted both of the children, one in each arm. The three clung to one another as Malcolm and Jenny followed along, carrying the weekend bags.
“Hello, darling.” Jenny smiled as she kissed Alex’s cheek. “Hello, Tom!”
“Hiya!” Tom came through from the kitchen. “Just getting the kettle on. And juice for the kids. Take a seat.”
How different the sofa looked in daylight, without him and Alex embracing.
Stop thinking about it.
The in-laws sank down onto the sofa as Alex carried the twins over to Tom, both of them reaching out to give him a hug.
“Tom,” Alastair said, “did you have a nice time?”
Tom hugged them, trying to avoid hugging Alex at the same time. “Yes! Your daddy and I went out on Friday for dinner, and yes, we had a lovely time.”
“Out for dinner. Sounds lovely,” Jenny said, but Tom could hear the effort in her voice. She had her suspicions, and no wonder given all that talk of tickling and shared beds. Then she peered down at the sofa and murmured, “What’s this?”
From behind the sofa cushion Jenny produced a quantity of striped fabric, her brow furrowing with confusion. As Tom watched, his heart plummeted into his stomach because he realized now exactly where his discarded shirt had ended up.
In Jenny’s hands, basically.
“It’s a shirt!” she declared, as though the very concept of it was alien to her.
“Yeah, I must’ve lost it yesterday when I was doing the ironing.” Tom did his best bland smile as
he came over to retrieve it. “Thanks for finding it.”
“I’m sure that’s it.” But her smile was fixed as she handed it over. Then she rose to her feet and asked, “Alex, could I borrow you for five minutes? Just a quick mum-in-law chat before tea?”
Alex darted a glance to Tom, but his tone betrayed nothing but helpfulness when he said, “‘Course you can, Jenny. Come through to the office?”
He put the children down on the sofa beside Malcolm and led her from the room. This didn’t look good.
“Erm… So the donkey’s doing okay, then?” Tom resumed his spot on the armchair and Madeleine thrust her drawing pad at him, excitedly pointing out her renditions of Jenny and Malcolm’s menagerie.
Malcolm talked Tom through the ins and outs of animal husbandry, but Tom took nothing in. What the heck was Jenny saying to Alex?
“Where did you and Daddy go?” Alastair climbed up into Tom’s lap. “For your dinner?”
He brought with him a waft of talcum powder and sweets, and Tom hugged him.
“We went to a restaurant in Soho, but it looked like it was in France,” Tom explained, knowing that Alistair only had a vague grasp of what France might mean. “We’ll all go there for lunch soon. You’ll love it.”
“Sounds…interesting,” Malcolm said. “Soho.”
“Soho’s amazing,” Alastair assured him. “We’ve found all of the noses!”
Malcolm looked even more perplexed by that, the smallholder from Herefordshire unsurprisingly not overly familiar with London’s art installations. Tom was just wondering whether to explain when Jenny’s and Alex’s voices could be heard, friendly and chatting as ever, as they made their way back to the kitchen.
“Right.” Alex stood in the doorway and clapped his hands together, his smile just a little strained. “Who wants tea?”
Malcolm raised his hand. “Milk and two sugars, you know how I take it, thanks.”
Tom rose from the chair but he couldn’t quite bring himself to approach the kitchen, as if it were surrounded by a forcefield. He had seen that fixed smile on Alex’s face before, painted on for more challenging Downing Street visitors, unmoving when he was forced to do unwanted press calls by the party’s media machine.
What did Jenny say?
“It’s okay, Tom, it’s your day off,” he said. “And you don’t have to run around waiting on us anyway. Let me.”
“No, it’s no bother, honest!” Tom gathered all his gumption and headed into the kitchen, which at that moment was as inviting as a vat of warm acid. He glanced up at Jenny, his bland smile still in place, but waves of displeasure rolled toward him from her, which nearly tripped him up.
“Good drive up?” Tom asked as he spooned out the tea leaves.
“Uneventful,” she replied, smiling. “Just how we like things to be, Tom. Nice and uneventful.”
“Great. No traffic jams, no dicky tums?” Tom pointed toward the twins and laughed. “You’re a brave woman, traveling with the monsters!”
Her smile grew warmer then and she assured him, “Oh, we don’t mind any of that. We adore them and we talk Gill all the time. It’s very important to us that she’s a big part of their lives, even if… Well, Alex won’t be single forever, will he? Good luck to whoever takes him on though, I can only imagine the microscope the press will turn on her!”
Her. And in that word was the warning bell, the veiled reference to Gill being replaced and forgotten—something Alex would never allow and Tom would never want. They had been friends long before he and Alex were anything more than professionally polite— partners in crime, as Alex had once called Gill and Tom when they returned from one of their long, laughter-filled lunches. He had no intention of replacing Gill or elbowing her out, and the press could go hang.
“Nobody’s going to replace Gill,” Alex said, his tone uncharacteristically snappy. “I don’t want to hear you say that again, Jenny, all right? Whatever happens, she’s part of our lives.”
“Well, let’s hope it stays that way.” She looked Tom up and down and swept from the kitchen toward the sofa, where her smile was transformed into a beaming grin for the children.
Tom sagged against the worktop. He wanted to hug Alex, there and then, but he knew it would only make matters worse. With a wan smile for him, Tom finished making the tea.
Jenny wouldn’t make him choose between the memory of Gill and finding new happiness, he told himself.
Would she?
Chapter Fourteen
Malcolm had been in a voluble mood, and Tom had done his best to engage, but once he and Jenny had left, he felt nothing but relief. The twins had their tea, then it was bathtime.
“Why do I have to have bath time?” Madeleine held on to her crayon with an iron grip as Tom tried to get her down from the table. “I’m not smelly!”
“Because all children have baths on Sunday night,” Alex told her with admirable parental logic. “I had to, Tom had to, now you have to. Come on, Mads, crayons down.”
“I don’t want to,” Madeleine whined, on the edge of tears, as if she were being forced to run a marathon through the snow in flip-flops. “I don’t, Daddy.”
Tom crouched down on the floor next to her chair. “Come on, you can play in the bath. You’ve got those soap crayons—you like those. And then bedtime.”
Madeleine shook her head. “I hate my bed. I’m not going to bed.”
“If she’s not going to bed, I’m not going to bed,” Alastair informed them. He folded his arms, challenging Alex and Tom to disagree.
Alex raked one hand through his hair and told them, “You’re both going to have a bath, then a story, then bed. And you can choose any story you like, how’s that?”
“I don’t want to, I don’t want to!” Madeleine wailed. All the hallmarks of a tantrum were brewing.
“Now listen.” Tom pulled out her chair and crouched again, holding Madeleine’s hands. And the crayon. “When I was out in the desert, I still had to have a bath and go to bed. And I was told when to go to bed by a man who shouted a lot if I didn’t do as I was told. Would you like me to invite him round and send you to bed? No, you wouldn’t. Everyone has baths and bedtime—if you didn’t go to bed you’d fall asleep in your chair, wouldn’t you?”
“Mads?” Alastair asked, reaching up to take Alex’s hand. “If you fall asleep in your chair you’ll fall on the floor.”
Madeleine widened her eyes in horror and shook her head. “No, no, I don’t want to fall on the floor! But I don’t want to have a bath.”
“Why don’t you fancy a bath?” Alex stroked her curly hair. “What’s the problem, darling?”
Madeleine blinked at him. “Because after bath I go to sleep and what if I close my eyes and I don’t wake up ever, ever again?”
For a moment there was complete silence, then Alex knelt beside the chair and asked gently, “What do you mean, Mads? You’ll wake up and be just as loud and curly-headed as ever.”
“But I might not, and then I’d never, ever see you again.” Tears were rising in Madeleine’s eyes now. In a whisper, she added, “Like Mummy.”
And Tom knew then that something had been said during their trip. Some helpful little chat about Gill that had succeeded only in terrifying her daughter. He saw that Alex knew it too, registered the swallow in his throat and the flicker in his gaze before he said, “Do you want to come and sit with me and we’ll have a talk about it all?”
Madeleine swung her legs back and forth and sniffed. “Yes please, Daddy.”
He picked her from the chair as he stood, with Alastair seemingly happy to trot across and bounce onto the sofa under his own steam. As Madeleine clung to Alex, he met Tom’s gaze and asked, “Will you sit with us?”
Tom had started to tidy away the twins’ crayons, but he stopped. “Yeah…yeah, of course.”
He headed over to the armchair and sat down.
Safely gathered on the sofa, Alex offered Tom a brief smile then asked the twins, “Have you been talking about
Mummy this weekend?”
“Yes,” Madeleine replied. “Nana showed us photos.”
“And said that Mummy went to sleep and never woke up,” her brother added. And it was true, Tom knew, just as he knew that Alex had done his best to explain to the children what had happened to their mother and why she was no longer there to care for them. It didn’t sound as though Jenny’s efforts had been quite as well planned, perhaps.
“We’ve talked about Mummy a lot,” Alex told them, his voice measured, containing all that sadness that he and Tom had faced as they tried to care for two infants between them. “And you know she was very poorly. It was nobody’s fault, nobody did anything wrong, but she was too poorly to get better. Mummy did go to sleep, darling, but she was sick and very tired. That won’t happen to you or Al or Tom. I promise you it won’t.”
Madeleine gripped his shirt sleeve with her fist. “And you won’t? Promise, Daddy?”
“I definitely promise that.” He lifted his arm to allow Alastair to snuggle closer. “We’re all going to wake up tomorrow, but we all have to go to sleep. Nana wouldn’t want you to be upset—she just wanted you to see your mum because we all miss her, that’s all.”
“She was very pretty. She smiled a lot,” Madeleine said. And she was smiling now.
“You have her curls.” Tom moved from the armchair to the edge of the sofa and stroked Madeleine’s hair. Then he reached across Alex and stroked Alastair’s.
“And you have her freckles,” Alex told the little boy. “And she and Tom were very good friends and when Mummy found out how poorly she was, she—” He blinked rapidly, gathering in his emotions, containing them for the sake of the children. “She said to Tom, I want you to look after my little monsters, that’s exactly what she said. So me and Tom would never let anything or anyone hurt you, and neither would any of the gramps. We all love you.”
Tom smiled gently. “She said I had to make both of you—all three of you—happy.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Madeleine said. “I love you, Tom. I love you, Alster.”
Once her brother had finished his own spirited rounds of I love yous, Alex said, “I love you all too, never doubt it.”
The Captain and the Prime Minister Page 12