‘Only after I’d dragged you halfway around the world to live in a tukul. I saw the version of you that no one else got to see.’
‘And about a million mosquitoes.’ He laughed, leaning down to press his lips to her forehead. ‘But I want to be that version of myself. For you. With you. And with our son. I couldn’t want for anything more.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ she told him, her voice thick with love. ‘I have plans for a whole team of little Woods children running around.’
And Oti was true to her word.
Two years later, they added a daughter to their family, who came out less fiercely than her brother, but with a grip on life—and her father’s thumb—that was equally strong. And, two years after that, twins, a girl and a boy.
They were sitting in the snug at Sedeshire Hall, having settled the last of their brood to sleep, and having bid farewell to both Edward, who lived independently in the gatehouse, and her father, who had mellowed considerably at the arrival of his grandchildren and now lived in his own apartment in the north wing.
‘He wants to be a part of Max’s life.’ Oti had bitten her lip as she’d told Lukas, a few months after their eldest son’s birth. ‘He asked for a second chance, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea.’
‘What would have happened if you hadn’t given me a second chance?’ Lukas had replied softly. ‘I would have stayed bitter and lost, seeking revenge and destroying myself in the process.’
‘But now...?’ she had prompted gently.
‘Now I’m happy, contented. I’m fulfilled. Driven by the love of a family who I love, rather than driven by revenge for a man who I don’t even waste a thought on any more. Just as you told me would happen.’
‘So I should give him a second chance?’
‘That’s your decision.’ He’d laughed, dropping a kiss onto her lips. First one side, then the other, as she’d sighed and silently prayed their baby son would give them an hour of quiet to themselves. ‘But I will support any decision you make.’
As he had done. And in all the years since. They had supported each other, and together they’d set up the Woods Foundation, offering not just a financial boost to any number of charities, but advice, experience and services. From setting up cold storage facilities to store vaccines for medical camps or desalination plants providing fresh water to desert communities, to local community projects like planting trees in parks, and setting up centres for children who acted as carers for their parents.
But as they snuggled together, their four children miraculously all asleep at the same time, Oti turned her face up to her husband’s.
‘You really have made me happy,’ she whispered.
‘I told you that I would,’ he deadpanned, lowering his head to claim her mouth with his before she could object. A deep, stirring kiss that made promises for the rest of the night. Five years after their first kiss at the altar, he still had the same power to set her heart thumping and leave her feverish for more.
Even so, she managed to punch his chest lightly.
‘I think you’ll find it was me who said that you would,’ she managed when they finally surfaced.
‘Are you quite sure? I seem to remember it differently.’
‘You really are the most aggravating man.’ She laughed.
‘Yes, I think that was what you were lamenting this morning into the pillow, when your legs were draped over my shoulders.’
‘You’re impossible.’ Oti batted him as he offered a wicked smile that shot straight through her body.
‘I am,’ he agreed. ‘And I love you, Lady Octavia Woods, just as I love our family. My only goal is to make you the happiest family alive. It always will be.’
And then he lowered his mouth to hers and set about proving it. Right until the stars began to twinkle in the inky blue sky. Then again, just before the sunrise began to turn the sky a welcoming yellow, and the first of the Woods brood began to roar at the top of his lungs.
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Charlotte Hawkes
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All available now!
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Unlocking the Doctor’s Secrets
by Carol Marinelli
PROLOGUE
‘YOU’LL BE NURSING here tomorrow night!’
From the ambulance bay, Lina Edwards looked towards the bright lights of The Primary Hospital. She was now back in the driving seat after completing the handover for a patient they had just blue lighted.
‘At least I’ll be warm.’
It was a wet and cold Thursday night, and they really hadn’t stopped since the start of their shift. Brendan held her coffee while Lina re-tied her long, damp black hair and tried to both dry off and warm up as they took a moment for a welcome break after a long and busy night.
As well as being a paramedic, Lina was also a registered nurse and did the occasional shift in Accident and Emergency, not just to keep her registration current but also to keep her hand in. ‘You might be here too,’ she pointed out to her colleague. Brendan’s wife, Alison, was booked to have their first baby here. ‘Or rather you might be up on Maternity!’
‘Fingers crossed that it won’t be for another three weeks,’ Brendan said, ‘although I swear that Alison’s in labour.’
‘You’ve been saying that for the past fortnight.’ Lina smiled as she opened up the foil on her egg mayonnaise sandwiches.
‘God, not them again,’ Brendan groaned, and wound down the window a touch. ‘If it isn’t eggs then it’s tuna.’
‘What have you got?’ Lina asked, because, well, they always asked, and food was an especially big topic at the moment given that Brendan was on a diet and trying to lose weight.
‘A salad wrap, a tub of cottage cheese and an orange,’ he sighed, checking his phone for the umpteenth time. ‘She was on edge this evening before I left for work.’
‘I’m sure Alison would call if anything was happening. There wasn’t a light on when we drove past.’
‘True.’
Their ambulance station was west of London but of course they went where their shift led them and sometimes they ended up at The Primary, a huge general hospital in the north of London, close to where Brendan and Alison lived and Lina once had.
‘I wonder who I’ll end up working with tomorrow,’ Brendan mused. ‘I hope it’s not Peter.’
‘Perfect Peter,’ Lina groaned, because there was a good chance that she’d be working with him when Brendan went on paternity leave and Pedantic Peter could also be Peter’s nickname. ‘Well, if you do end up with him, just remember that it’s only temporary and that it’s overtime.’
‘I certainly need it.’
‘Me too,’ Lina agreed. ‘This shift tomorrow is going to help pay for my next trip.’
‘Another one?’
Lina nodded. She loved nothing more than to get away. It was the time she got to not just let down her guard but to think...or not. Her relationship with her family was complex, her flatmate was wonderful but always there and as well as that her work was stressful—it required a series of rapid decisions and being assertive, while at other times a lot of aimless killing time, as they were doing now.
Walking, wherever her train or coach ticket took her, replenished Lina. But there was another reason she had been away so m
uch lately—she was seriously considering relocating from London and was quietly working out her options, not that she had told anyone. Soon, though, she would have no choice but to share the news. These days she was all too often on the phone with the bank and estate agents and Brendan had noticed. Aside from that, she had applied for a job in Newcastle and needed a preliminary reference.
‘I’ve been thinking...’ Brendan said as he peered into his salad wrap as if hoping some ham and cheese might miraculously appear.
‘About what?’
‘Your love life.’
‘I have no love life,’ Lina said. ‘So you can save your grey matter, I really am through. Men are a mystery and one I have no wish to solve—I’ve decided that I’m sticking with Gretel...’ Gretel was her needy and demanding ancient diabetic cat.
‘Please.’
‘I mean it,’ Lina said. ‘It’s been months since I’ve been on a date and I intend to keep it that way. I’m just sick of...’ Her voice trailed off and she looked over at Brendan, wondering if now was the time to tell him the plans she had in mind.
‘Sick of what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lina said, deciding against telling him just yet—she knew Brendan would try to dissuade her and so instead she spoke of other things on her mind—men, or the lack of decent, single ones. ‘Being dumped, being let down, being left sitting alone in a restaurant while he makes his escape...’
They had worked together for more than two years and so Brendan knew about her rather disastrous love life, in the same way she knew about his and Alison’s difficult journey with IVF and the upcoming birth of their baby.
He didn’t know all of it, though.
Lina wasn’t sure if it was bad luck or poor judgement that plagued her, but at twenty-nine she didn’t have so much as a long relationship to her name, let alone a broken engagement, or anything of note really. Just awful dates or, what she considered even worse, wonderful dates, followed by more dates, and bed—except, just as she got her hopes up, she’d find out he was cheating, or he failed to call, or it all just petered out, or she was told she was too abrupt, too work obsessed, not feminine enough...
‘I don’t think there are any good guys left,’ she admitted.
‘Of course there are. You just go into things expecting to be let down. We’re not all like your dad, Lina...’
And though Brendan was trying to say the right thing, even that annoyed her—not that she let it show.
Oh, her friends all knew about her father’s leaving and moving overseas, they just didn’t know the friable scar it had left on her heart—one that bled on contact. Lina kept her deepest feelings well tucked away. Everyone carelessly assumed that she must be angry with her father for leaving them to live in Singapore, when the truth was that she simply missed him, and still, to this day, wondered what she had done wrong. How someone who had supposedly loved her could simply get up and leave and make so little effort to keep in touch.
But instead of telling Brendan the truth she offered a blithe response about her dating life, one she had almost come to believe. ‘I just can’t be doing with it all...’
‘You should try online dating.’ Brendan suggested, but she shook her head even as he persisted with the idea. ‘That’s how Alison and I met.’
‘I never knew that!’
‘Best thing I ever did.’
But Lina wasn’t convinced. While it was true that he and Alison were utterly devoted, Brendan seemed to think that just because it had worked out so spectacularly for himself and Alison, true love was a mere swipe away.
‘I did try it,’ Lina admitted as she gazed out through the windscreen. The clouds had parted and she looked out at the blue hour, the delicious navy sky that crept in just before dawn. ‘Several times.’ She gave a tired laugh as she thought of the hours of preparation her beautician flatmate had taken to deem her suitable for a date—her pale skin had been fake tanned, her wavy hair straightened and smoothed, her green eyes framed with fake eyelashes and eyeliner and the photo had been taken at an angle that supposedly slimmed... ‘Shona got me all tarted up for my photo.’
‘You never said.’
‘No, because it didn’t work out. I got loads of responses but it would seem I’m a bit of a let-down in the ample flesh.’
‘Well, then, put up a picture of yourself as you...’
‘I tried that too,’ Lina sighed, thinking of the real picture she had put up of herself, dressed in walking gear sitting on top of a snow-capped hill, feeling relaxed and accomplished and at peace. ‘She’s nowhere near as popular, at least not with anyone I find attractive.’
It was a fact.
The type of men she liked seemed to like the type of woman she wasn’t.
Lina spent most of her life at work and in overalls and steel toecap boots. On her days off she liked nothing better than to take a coach or train and go walking and exploring. There was no real reason for make-up, let alone heels and glamorous outfits, and anyway she felt stupid in them.
She had been raised on her brother’s cast-offs and the only real concession that she was female had been that her mother had trimmed her long black hair now and then, rather than taking the clippers to it like she had for her brothers. The only sexy clothing she possessed was her vast collection of gorgeous colourful underwear—not that she would be discussing that with Brendan!
‘Men say that they like independent women...’
‘They do,’ Brendan assured her, ‘though you are a bit bossy...’
‘I’m assertive,’ Lina corrected. Well, at least she was at work. ‘Have a sandwich if you want one.’
‘Assertive, then,’ Brendan agreed as he took a sandwich. ‘Forthright.’
And she was, except what Brendan didn’t know was that it was a learned trait.
She had been so sensitive growing up.
Every tease from her brothers had felt like a bee sting, and her mum, whom Lina adored, could be described as tactless at best. The only person who had understood her finely tuned ways had been her dad. Well, she could remember long walks, when her mother and brothers had chosen to stay on the beach or back at the holiday house they’d rented, and she’d tell her dad about trouble at school, or a friend that had turned out not to actually be one...
It had broken her heart when he’d left and since then her walls had gone up.
But that sensitive edge had surfaced again during her nursing training. She’d often considered quitting, and though she’d loved paramedicine, during her grad year as a paramedic on several occasions it had hurt too much and she’d considered simply walking away.
Well could Lina remember a wretched shift, going from a disaster into the mundane and just wanting to pause a moment and cry. She had gone to her mum’s, hoping for wise words and comfort—not exactly her mother’s forte. Instead, after a brief break when she’d taken a few days off to wander the countryside and gather her thoughts, she’d realised that if she seriously wanted to pursue paramedicine as a career then she had to toughen the hell up—at least on a surface level.
The tough, assertive, wickedly funny Lina had sort of become the norm—except that the tough, assertive, wickedly funny Lina everyone knew wasn’t entirely her.
‘My last date said I spoke about work too much,’ Lina admitted.
‘Alison says it’s all I talk about too,’ Brendan said, and Lina couldn’t help but laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘At work all you talk about is Alison and the baby...’
‘Guilty as charged,’
As Brendan smiled fondly, Lina felt a wave of...not envy, more pensiveness. She didn’t mind a bit that he talked about the wonderful Alison all the time—in fact, it rather restored her faith in men.
Close to thirty, Lina was more than a little jaded as she examined her dating past with her colleague. ‘The on
e before complained when I changed his tyre when he got a flat. He said I emasculated him.’
‘Ha-ha,’ Brendan said.
‘I don’t really have interests. Well, it’s not as if I go to the gym...’
‘You have your walking.’
‘Yes.’ Lina said, ‘but I do it so lazily. Remember that guy I met who turned out to be a racewalker! That date nearly killed me!’
Brendan laughed.
‘I like food, but even that’s complicated. I’m not a foodie...’
‘You like cakes and puddings...’
‘And sandwiches,’ Lina added, ‘but only particular combinations.’
‘You like antique shops,’ Brendan reminded her. ‘Though maybe leave that out of your online bio, or you’ll be attracting the oldies.’
‘Oh, I already do!’ Lina sighed.
‘Wear a bit of make-up now and then, have wine instead of beer...’
‘Careful,’ Lina warned.
‘Be more agreeable...’ He was really teasing her now. ‘Ask him if he’d like his slippers warmed...’ He turned and smiled. ‘Just be yourself, Lina.’
Which was all well and good in theory, except herself didn’t seem to be getting very far! And she was about to quip the same, but there really was something about the blue hour, that slice of time before dawn, that made you delve a little deeper.
Maybe it was that Brendan had become such a good friend.
Or perhaps she was just tired, but for whatever reason Lina admitted a deeper truth. ‘I think it would be harder...’
‘What?’ Brendan frowned.
‘Being completely yourself, only to then have them leave. It’s better to hold a part of yourself back.’
Brendan, as he ate her last egg sandwich, respectfully disagreed.
Copyright © 2021 by Carol Marinelli
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