‘We told them we needed to leave an hour before we actually do,’ Seb explained. ‘That way, we might actually get out of here on time.’
Taking a seat, Tom tried to imagine Violet taking hours to get ready. For someone who mostly lived in neat jeans and blouses, with her hair clipped back, it seemed unlikely. But, then again, once Sherry got involved...yeah, he could see things taking a while.
Violet, as a bridesmaid, should, by rights, have stayed at the hotel the night before with the rest of the wedding party. But, as she’d pointed out to everyone at dinner earlier in the week, she was only a bridesmaid on the bride’s sufferance, so she wouldn’t inflict her presence too early. ‘There are, like, ten others anyway. No one is going to miss me.’ So, instead. she’d arranged to have her hair and make-up done to match everyone else’s at the house and would travel down early with the rest of them.
If she ever finished getting ready.
Two cups of coffee later, Violet appeared, dressed in a pale blue bridesmaid’s dress that left her shoulders bare. Her hair had been pinned back from her face and fell in curls at the back, and her wide dark-lashed eyes looked bluer than ever.
‘They are coming, honest. Daisy’s just changed her mind about which dress to wear. Again.’ Violet swished across the room, her skirt floating around her legs, to fetch herself a coffee. Her shoes were silver, Tom realised. And sparkly.
And he was totally staring.
Blinking, he tore his gaze away, just in time to see Rick hide his smirk behind a coffee cup. Fantastic.
‘I’ll, uh, go see if the cars are here, shall I?’ Tom said, heading out to the front of the house before anyone had time to reply. Maybe the fresh air would help clear his head.
Since they weren’t expected for another thirty minutes, of course there were no cars. Stepping to one side of the front door, Tom leant against the brick wall.
‘Hey.’ He opened his eyes and found Violet standing beside him, cup of coffee in hand. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Tom lied. ‘No, actually, I’m not. I have something to give to you, and I’m not sure if I should, if it’ll help or if it will scare you off for life...’
Violet raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, now you have to give it to me. Because the things I’m imagining just have to be worse than whatever the reality is.’
Reaching inside his suit pocket, he pulled out the carefully folded sheet of paper.
‘Okay, so you said you wanted to know about me. About my life. And so I thought I’d write it down—that’s what I’ve been doing this week, when I wasn’t interviewing your family. So...here it is.’ He held out the piece of paper and waited for her to take it, half wishing that she wouldn’t.
But she did, her wary eyes huge as they met his. Then she unfolded it, looked down and her eyebrows drew down as her brow furrowed.
‘This is... Is this your obituary?’
‘Kind of.’ Tom hunted for a way to explain. ‘When I used to work on a local newspaper, one of the things I was in charge of was keeping the obituaries up to date for local celebrities. So that if anything happened, we were ready to run. I have a few on hand for musicians I’ve written about or interviewed a lot, too, ready for when the time comes. So when I sat down to write about my life...it just kind of came out that way.’
Violet stared at him. ‘You really are a journalist all the way to your core, aren’t you?’
‘Apparently so.’ He just wished that wasn’t the one thing she didn’t want him to be.
‘Is the car here yet, darling?’ Sherry’s voice floated down the stairs and out of the front door. ‘We don’t want to be late.’
Violet folded the paper again and slipped it into the tiny silver bag she carried. ‘I’ll read this later,’ she promised. ‘And then...maybe we can, uh, talk again?’
‘I’d like that a lot,’ Tom replied. Of course, first they had to get through the Littlewood wedding. Suddenly, he’d never been so unexcited at the prospect of spending a day with the rich and famous.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘SO, WHAT DO we think?’ Daisy asked as they finished up their puddings later that evening. ‘Better or worse than my wedding?’
‘Our wedding,’ Seb put in, around a mouthful of chocolate and pistachio torte. Daisy waved a hand dismissively at him.
‘Not a patch on yours, Daze,’ Violet assured her sister. ‘Was it, Tom? Wait, you weren’t there, were you?’ Maybe that third glass of champagne had been a bad idea. Bubbles always did go straight to her head.
But there’d been so many people, so many knowing glances. And even with Tom on her arm, she’d needed something else between her and all of them.
‘I was not, unfortunately.’ Tom smiled across the table at Daisy. ‘But, delightful as today has been, I can’t imagine it being a patch on a wedding organised by Sherry Huntingdon.’
‘A safe bet,’ Seb murmured.
Leaning back in her chair, Violet tried to spot the waiters coming round with coffee. Maybe that would help her focus on the special day going on around her.
Because all she’d been able to think about so far was the piece of paper folded up in her clutch bag.
She’d tried to concentrate on smiling as she and the other bridesmaids walked in front of the beautiful bride down the aisle, and on Henry looking handsomely nervous at the front of the church. And she’d tried to listen to the vicar talking about the importance of love and forgiveness and understanding in a marriage. But really her mind had been buzzing with the knowledge that in her lap she held the history of Tom Buckley. His life and times. His secrets.
And she really, really wanted to know them.
But she wanted the time to savour them, too. To absorb and understand them. And she couldn’t exactly sit there and read it at the dining table surrounded by her sister and brother-in-law, and three of Henry’s cousins and their wives.
The cousins, fortunately, had wandered off towards the free bar before Daisy had started comparing weddings. But that didn’t mean she could just get reading. Did it?
Violet glanced up. Daisy, Seb and Tom were deep in conversation and she didn’t seem to be required. Mum and Dad were sitting three tables over, chatting with some old friends. It was entirely possible that no one would notice if she disappeared for ten minutes.
‘I’m just going to...’ She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the bathrooms as she stood, but no one seemed bothered.
Pausing in the doorway to the main ballroom, where the wedding breakfast had been served, Violet checked to ensure no one was watching her, then headed in the opposite direction from the bathrooms—towards the gardens.
It was easy enough to find a secluded bench, hidden away behind the walls of the rose garden. If anyone stumbled across her, she could just say she needed a little air. After all, the weather was warm and the five hundred guests had made the ballroom a little stifling. No reason for anybody to suspect anything.
Especially not that she was hiding away to read the obituary of a man still very much alive.
She unfolded the piece of paper, wondering if the fact he’d written it told her more about him than even the words contained could. Only a journalist would think of doing such a thing, which was a permanent worry. But, on the other hand, he’d wanted her to have all the facts, the truth, laid out in a way they were only ever told after death.
This was who he was, how he thought he’d be remembered, everything he felt was important to say about his life. All in two pages—which Violet figured was probably a good page longer than hers would have been. Or a page and a half longer if you omitted the sex tape thing in the interests of good taste.
Yeah. No one was ever going to omit that.
With a deep breath, Violet focused on the words. Even with the dispassionate tone an obituary demanded, she could still hear Tom talking to her with every line.
She lived Tom’s childhood in New York, his early career, his estrangement from his mother and his pain at her death, his t
ours with bands and his relationship history, all in his own words. And by the time she reached the end she almost, almost felt as if he was sitting there beside her.
‘So, do you have questions?’
Violet jerked her head up at the sound of Tom’s voice, blushing when she found him leaning against the garden wall watching her, one eyebrow raised.
‘I probably will have, later.’ After all, the plain facts weren’t the same as actually knowing a person, were they? But after the last few weeks, it was really only the facts that she’d been missing. Swallowing hard, Violet got to her feet. ‘But there’s something else I want to do first.’
He didn’t move as she stepped towards him, and she understood that this was all on her now. This was her decision. And he would wait and let her make it.
She just hoped it wasn’t a mistake.
She stopped, close enough that she could almost feel his breath on her face, but still not touching. Violet looked up into his eyes and saw the control there. He was holding back. So she wouldn’t.
Bringing one hand up to rest against his chest, she felt the thump of his heart through his shirt and knew she wanted to be close to that beat for as long as he’d let her. Slowly, she rose up onto her tiptoes, enjoying the fact that he was tall enough that she needed to. And then, without breaking eye contact for a moment, Violet kissed him.
It only took a moment before he responded, and Violet let herself relax into the kiss as his arms came up to hold her close. The celebrity wedding melted away, and all she knew was the feel of his body against hers and the taste of him on her lips. This. This was what she needed. Why had she denied herself this for so long?
And how could it be that kissing Tom somehow tasted like trust?
Eventually, though, she had to pull away. Tom’s arms kept her pressed against him, even as she dropped down to her normal height, looking up into his moss-green eyes.
‘You liked my obituary, then?’ he murmured.
Violet shook her head. ‘Not one bit. I’d like it to never be written, please. But...I liked knowing you.’
‘Is this where I give you some kind of line about getting to know me even better?’ Tom asked, one eyebrow raised.
Violet’s laugh bubbled up inside her, as if kissing Tom had released all the joy she’d kept buried deep down. ‘I think it probably is, yes.’
‘In that case, how long do you think we need to stay at this hootenanny?’
‘There’s five hundred people here,’ Violet pointed out. ‘What are the chances of them missing just two?’
‘Good point.’ And with a warm smile spreading across his face, Tom grabbed Violet’s hand and they ran for the waiting car.
* * *
‘Are you asleep?’
It was many hours later, and Violet’s voice was barely more than a whisper. He felt it against his bare skin more than heard it.
‘Not quite.’ He shifted, pulling her closer against his side. Now he finally had her where he’d dreamt of her being, he wasn’t willing to put up with even a centimetre between them. ‘You okay?’
‘Mmm, fine. More than fine. Kind of awesome, actually.’ She smiled sleepily up at him, and he felt a puff of pride at the relaxation and satisfaction he saw in her face. She rubbed her cheek against his chest like a contented kitten.
‘Told you this was a good idea,’ he murmured into her hair.
Violet laughed, low and warm. ‘You did. And you were right.’
Too damn right. This was more than a good idea. This was more than he’d dreamt it could be. He’d known from the first that he was attracted to Violet, but had never really expected to do anything about it. Never imagined he’d want to, not this badly.
But then he’d got to know her. Understand her. Even let her in a bit to understand him. And now look at them.
And she thought it was a good idea, at last.
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘Plus, with the...last-minute nature of everything, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have even had time to set up a video camera.’
It was a joke, he knew, but there was still something brittle behind the words. Something not quite healed. It made him want to wrap her up and keep her safe—not an emotion he was used to feeling about the women he dated. And in this case...he had a feeling that Violet had been kept safe for too long already. She’d had enough of being protected—and she was ready to take care of herself for a change.
Tom sank down a little lower in the bed, turning on his side until they were face to face. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that, don’t you? You have to know that.’ She might not need him to protect her, but she did need to trust him. To know he would never, never hurt her.
He wasn’t that man any more.
‘I do. I do.’ Violet inched closer and placed another kiss on his lips. ‘I’m just still...adjusting to the idea.’
‘I can understand that.’ Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her against him. ‘I just hope you can learn to trust me.’
‘I think I already do.’ The hope in Violet’s eyes meant he just had to kiss her again.
But when they separated, the hope had faded away and left a question there. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I just wondered...in your obituary, you talked about your mum, how you fell out. And I know you said you hadn’t made up when she died. But you never said what you argued about. I guess I just don’t understand...what could have been that important that you didn’t try to reconcile with her?’
Despite the warmth of the bed and Violet’s body, a shiver ran through him and his muscles froze.
‘Pride,’ he whispered. ‘What else? Stupid, pointless pride.’
Violet pressed a kiss against his collarbone. ‘Tell me.’
Except he couldn’t, could he? Because that one fact, that one omission from his obituary, was the one thing she’d never forgive. Still, he had to tell her something, and the trust in her eyes made him want it to be as close to the truth as he could manage.
‘When I was just starting out as a reporter, I worked for a...less reputable paper. The sort that my mom felt was beneath me. It was run by a guy who believed that the ends—a good story—justified any means. And he expected his staff to do whatever they needed to, in order to get the copy.’ And slowly, the longer he’d stayed there, the more desensitised he’d become to those methods.
‘Mom said I was wasting my talents, that selling my soul for a job wasn’t worth it.’ He swallowed at the memory of his mother’s face, full of righteous fury. ‘She told me she’d brought me up better than that, that she didn’t want to know a son who could sink to such depths.’
Tom risked a glance at Violet, where she lay silent, her cheek resting against his shoulder. Her eyes were damp and he fought back against the instinct to tell her how much he didn’t deserve her pity or her tears.
‘What happened next?’ she murmured, her hand caressing his arm, a comforting, caring touch.
‘I told her she didn’t understand journalism, that she’d never get it. That this was what I had to do to build my career. She kicked me out of the house and told me to come back when I’d found my honour again.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘It didn’t take me too long to figure out she was right. But my pride made me stay away too long. I didn’t know she was sick, and by the time I found out...it was too late.’
He’d quit the paper long before then, of course, the moment that terrible story broke and he realised what he’d done. But when he’d lost his mother’s respect, he’d lost any respect he had for himself too. How could he go back until he’d regained that? And it turned out respect took far longer to earn than to lose.
Violet wrapped her arms tightly around his middle, shifting until she was almost lying on top of him, protecting him from the world. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was a long time ago.’ As if that made a difference to the pain.
‘Still. I wish I could make it better.’
Tom curled his body arou
nd hers until they were touching skin at as many points as possible. ‘Trust me, you are. Just being with you...watching you move past your own history, it helps.’
‘Is that all that helps?’ Violet raised her head slightly to look at him, and he felt himself warming at the heat in her blue eyes.
‘I can think of one or two other things,’ he said, and kissed her again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VIOLET STRETCHED OUT against the sheets, listening to Tom’s steady breathing beside her. The sun was almost fully up outside; it had to be around six. She’d heard her parents, Daisy and Seb returning hours ago, listened to their giggles and their good-nights. She’d texted Daisy from the car to say that she and Tom were heading home early—she figured she didn’t really need to elaborate. Daisy might not be her twin, but she was still her sister. She knew her well enough for this.
What would they all think? Would they be pleased that she was moving on at last, or scared for her because of whom she’d chosen to move on with? Would they understand? And how would it affect the job that Tom was there to do?
‘You’re thinking too loudly,’ Tom murmured, shifting beside her. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I will,’ Violet lied. Running her hand down his arm, she listened until Tom’s breathing evened out again. He probably wouldn’t even remember his strange comment when he woke up.
But he’d remember the rest of the night, she was sure. That, at least, was impossible to forget. She might not be the most experienced of women, but the chemistry between them, the connection she felt when they were skin against skin...Violet had never felt anything like that before.
She stifled a laugh as she remembered Tom’s first words to her—about how the frustrated look on her face reminded him of that hideous tape. Maybe Rose had been right when she’d recounted the incident to her. Maybe she really was finally able to laugh about the whole thing.
That had to mean she was moving on. And it was past time.
She glanced across at Tom, one arm thrown above his head as he slept, his dark hair rumpled and his bare chest so tempting. She could just curl back up beside him right now, rest her head on that chest and drift back to sleep until he woke up again for a repeat performance of last night.
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