‘Yes!’ they both said in unison and Nina took hold of Noah’s hand and hustled them away. God, she’d packed more exercise into one day than she had in a whole year.
‘We only have fifteen minutes to shop!’ she told Noah with genuine alarm as they reached the shop. ‘Talk about pressure!’
Nina was a very focused shopper. She put it down to all the years of riffling through charity-shop and jumble-sale rails looking for good vintage. Now, she immediately homed in on a pretty print of the Parsonage in autumn, then grabbed a handful of postcards and added Brontë-branded chocolate bars to take into work on Monday (a milk chocolate Charlotte bar for Posy, a milk orange chocolate Branwell for Tom and though Verity was always saying that she was an Austenite and that the Brontës were too dour and histrionic for her liking, she could have an Anne bar and count herself lucky). Nina snatched up five Emily dark chocolate bars for herself. She really wanted to get Noah a gift too. Some small, entirely inadequate way of saying thank you for the day out he’d given her. He seemed to have looked deep inside her soul to plan out the most perfect set of experiences – even that hellish march across the moors to the waterfall had had its highlights – and she’d like to look deep into his soul to decide on the perfect thank-you gift. Though her options were limited, what with being in a gift shop in the Brontë Parsonage. Perhaps she could get him an iPad or mobile-phone case? Nina looked around for inspiration and then came to a halt by a display of gifts featuring quotations from some of the Brontë novels.
She couldn’t help the snort that exploded out of her nostrils at the sight of a ‘Reader, I Married Him’ mug. She’d suggested the famous quote from Jane Eyre as a possible new name for the shop, which had been shot down in flames though Posy had commissioned a ‘Reader, I Married Him’ tote bag and rashly ordered five hundred of them.
‘Oh God, Posy must never find out about all this branded merchandise,’ said Noah, coming up behind her. ‘Verity told me about the tote bags.’
‘We have “Reader, I Married Him” T-shirts too,’ Nina said. ‘They do surprisingly well as gifts for brides-to-be. But we can’t tell Posy about these,’ she added, pointing at oven mitts and an apron both with the quote ‘I Am Heathcliff’ printed on them.
‘You tempted?’
‘Not really, they don’t go with my aesthetic and making toast or heating up a ready meal, which is all I do in the kitchen, doesn’t really need accessories,’ Nina explained. ‘But I will have a mug and you’re having one too! I mean, everyone needs a mug.’
The Emily Brontë mug had the quote ‘No Coward Soul Is Mine’ which seemed appropriate for someone like Noah who had such a love of death-defying activities. A mug that cost seven pounds fifty was a very poor way of saying thank you but it would do for now.
‘Everyone does need a mug,’ Noah solemnly agreed and Nina saw that he’d been doing his fair share of shopping.
‘Nice scarf,’ she said, nodding at the grey-and-lilac scarf adorned with pale-blue dots, which Noah was holding.
‘For my mother, for Mother’s Day,’ Noah said. He frowned. ‘We’re not meant to spend more than ten pounds on gifts and I don’t know if the lamb’s wool comes from ethically sourced, free-range lambs who spend their days happily gambolling about the moors.’
‘I’m sure she’ll love it.’ Nina was sure of no such thing. Noah’s mother, like her own, seemed like a tough crowd. He was also holding several boxes of Bron-Tea. ‘Is the tea for her too?’
‘The Emily, er, Bron-Tea is for my father. He’s on this detox diet since he was diagnosed with MS and this has wild nettles and berries in it, and I got the Branwell one too, which has yerba maté and spice, for my younger brother. He prides himself on being able to drink the most foul-tasting concoctions.’
‘Like green juice? Ugh!’ Nina, Posy and Verity had been on a collective health kick last year that had lasted two days and had involved one yoga class and a green juice that had cost ten pounds and had tasted like pond scum.
‘Green juice is the work of the devil.’ Noah shuddered. ‘When I lived in San Francisco, everyone was on green juice. If you ordered a fully caffeinated coffee, they’d look at you like you’d just asked them to chuck in a couple of rocks of crack and hold the foam.’
‘But isn’t caffeine one of the five major food groups?’ Nina mused as they walked towards the till where a woman was staring at them with the desperate look of someone who wanted to close up the shop and go home.
They paid for their purchases and left the Parsonage. It was quite dark as they walked back to the car park and suddenly, despite her legs aching, actually all of her aching due to all the enforced activity, and being ravenously hungry, Nina felt quite skittish with nerves.
Noah had told her to pack an overnight bag so he obviously wasn’t planning to drive them back to London. They’d be staying somewhere.
Maybe sharing a room. And a bed.
It was their third date and they both knew exactly what that meant.
The shivers were back because Nina wasn’t at all adverse to the idea of finally getting down to some serious funny business. Quite the contrary, especially when he took her hand and asked, ‘Are you cold?’
Nina paused to consider the question. Actually, she was cold, to add to the general achiness and the hunger. ‘A little bit, but I have a few ideas on how I might warm up,’ she said huskily and squeezed Noah’s hand just before he let her go because they were at the car now.
‘A pot of tea and a round of toast?’ he suggested primly. ‘Then an early night with an improving book.’
‘Well, maybe one out of those four,’ Nina agreed.
‘Make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change.’
It was a short drive to their next destination. They hadn’t even been in the car ten minutes with the lady on the satnav purring directions before they were turning into a drive at the end of which was a long, low, slate-grey house. The lights were on in the windows and as they pulled up the front door opened.
‘This looks nice,’ Nina said. ‘Cosy and welcoming.’
‘That’s not all it is,’ Noah said, a little smugly, which wasn’t that becoming but indicated that he had more surprises in store for her. ‘I’ll grab our bags.’
‘Come inside!’ called the woman who stood in the doorway. ‘You must be freezing!’
It wasn’t long after that that Nina and Noah were side by side on a gloriously squashy sofa, with a mug of tea and a huge slice of cake each as the owners of the bed and breakfast explained how the Brontës had been frequent visitors and that it was generally regarded as the inspiration for Wuthering Heights itself. Nina didn’t think her eyes could get much wider – it felt like they might pop out of their sockets altogether – when they also revealed that Nina would be staying in the Earnshaw Room with its ‘Cathy window’ where Cathy’s ghost had struggled to get in.
It sounded magical. Nina could only stare at Noah who ducked his head modestly. Hands down, this was the best date Nina had ever been on. The best date, in fact, since records had begun.
Also, best road trip. Best mini-break. Best foreplay because, oh yes, they were definitely going to do IT tonight.
‘We did wonder if you were still wanting a second room. It’s just we’ve had a phone call from an American couple who were hoping we might still have a room free for tonight,’ their host, who was extremely genial in both face and character, asked apologetically.
‘We only need the one room,’ Nina said firmly and a little forcefully. ‘Right?’ She patted Noah’s knee with heavy emphasis. No one could, or ever had, accused Nina of being subtle.
‘In case you get scared that you hear something tapping at the window?’ Noah enquired with just a little bit of arched eyebrow. ‘Or someone?’
‘Exactly, you know what a vivid imagination I have,’ Nina said and she winked so theatrically that she practically dislocated her eye
lid.
There was a moment’s silence, awkward, then the landlady coughed quietly. ‘Well, you’ll be wanting to see your room and get straightened up.’
‘That would be great,’ Nina agreed. She was still wearing damp clothes and she would have paid vast sums of money for a hot bath.
Their room was something to behold. If you stripped away the fripperies of twenty-first-century living – the sofas, the velvet throws, the retro-looking but actually very modern wood-burning stove, which lit the room with a warm, cosy glow – then little had changed from when the Brontës had been visitors to the house. There were rough brick walls and thick wooden beams, like tree trunks, supporting the sloping ceiling, smaller beams bisecting them.
And there was what their hosts called ‘a box bed’, just like the one that Emily Brontë described in Wuthering Heights. A bed hidden in an oak cabinet: ‘I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.’
Nina felt as if she had stepped into the pages of Wuthering Heights.
Noah was asking about local places to eat and what time breakfast was in the morning as Nina wandered the room, hands running over each piece of furniture, eyes trying to take in every detail. In its little cubbyhole, the bed looked so inviting, so soft and comfortable, piled with pillows, that Nina wasn’t even thinking about what a suitable venue it would be for their third-date activities but how she’d like to fall face down on it and sleep for a hundred days.
‘Nina? So, does that sound like a plan?’ Noah asked and she turned to him with a fixed but bright smile on her face.
‘Sorry, didn’t catch that. What is the plan?’
The plan was that Nina would spend a ‘not ridiculous amount of time’ freshening up, then their hosts would very kindly drive her and Noah to a local pub for dinner and pick them up when they were ready to call it a night.
Nina had never got this treatment in any of the hotels she’d stayed in before, though admittedly the hotels she’d stayed in before tended to be nana-ish B&Bs or Premier Inns.
She was even promised the loan of a coat as her bedraggled leopard-print faux fur was carried away to be dried, Noah going with it, so Nina was alone.
When she’d woken up that morning, it seemed like weeks ago, she’d expected nothing more than a hard day of bookselling, maybe a trip to The Midnight Bell for after-work drinks. She certainly hadn’t expected, well, any of this or that their first night together was imminent.
Her heart sank when she saw that the en suite only had a shower and not the bath she was hoping for but it was probably just as well. She’d definitely fall asleep in a hot bath. As it was, even a hot shower made her want to sink to the floor of the shower cubicle and have a nap.
But there was no time for napping. Not when Nina needed to do her whole third-date-night getting-ready regime in half an hour. Washing, conditioning, depilating, exfoliating, moisturising and then trying to quickly blow-dry her hair so she’d have time to get to work with the curling tongs after.
When Noah tapped on the door thirty-seven minutes after he’d left, Nina was ready. She opened the door and his eyes widened, his mouth fell open, which was all the validation she needed. But his awestruck ‘Nina, you look absolutely gorgeous!’ was the cherry on top of the validation cake.
It was their third date, after all, and most of the time Noah had seen Nina in her hated Happy Ever After T-shirt. He’d seen her in her Land Girl dungarees. He’d seen her in a laser-tag-friendly ensemble but he’d never seen Nina in all her full glory before.
Noah’s eyes didn’t know where to focus first. At her glossy, platinum Veronica Lake-style waves or her face with brows perfectly arched and HD ready, a sweep of liquid eyeliner, false eyelashes, and matt-red lips. Many other products had happened and the finished effect was siren of the silver screen, which was further emphasised by the black satin wiggle dress that plunged in the right places and clung lovingly like a sailor on shore leave in all the other places.
‘I’m meant to be serving Old Hollywood realness,’ Nina said and finished with a giggle because she hadn’t realised how nervous she was. Or maybe it was just the way that Noah was still looking at her fishnet-clad legs, toes curling in perilously high black suede heels.
‘Mission accomplished,’ Noah said hoarsely and he took hold of Nina by the wrists, his eyes all pupil, so she wondered if they might just skip going out to dinner and move straight on to pudding but … no. He was moving her gently but firmly out of the way.
‘Give me ten minutes,’ he said, pushing her out the door. ‘That’s all the time I need to shower and put on my warpaint,’ and Nina was laughing as she snatched up her leopard-print clutch bag from the sideboard by the door.
Their fellow guests were a young American couple, Rachel and Ford, who were touring around Europe and slightly dismayed to find themselves in Britain in a March that was mostly grey and damp.
‘We’re from Austin, Texas,’ Rachel explained as they all squashed into a car to be driven to the pub for dinner. ‘No one told us that it would be this cold.’
‘Or wet,’ Ford added glumly.
When they got to the pub, which was as charming and old-looking as any pub in Brontë country should be, Nina realised that there was no chance of ditching Rachel and Ford for a table for two.
Well, Nina would have been happy to dump them, but Noah had far better manners and said with convincing enthusiasm that it would be lovely to all eat together but Nina saw the way he swallowed to hide his disappointment and as he took her borrowed puffa anorak, he whispered ‘sorry’ in her ear.
As it was, dinner passed in a mellow blur for Nina. What with the heat from the obligatory roaring fire and the brandy in her glass and the hearty steak pie in front of her, she was feeling no pain. Rachel and Ford, despite their scrubbed, wholesome appearance, like they should be advertising wholegrain cereal or paraben-free cleaning products, were good company. Before touring Europe, they’d sold all their worldly possessions, bought a camper van and had road-tripped across the States so they were full of stories about the time they went to the Grand Canyon or the Utah salt flats and how Rachel had got locked in a bathroom at Graceland.
Noah was full of questions about road-tripping that they were only too happy to answer and Nina was content to sip her brandy and murmur the odd comment as she and Noah played footsie under the table. They were exchanging so many heated looks that they hardly needed to be seated so close to the inglenook fireplace.
The only thing that slightly killed the mood was that every person in the pub found a reason to pass their table so they could gawp at Nina. Normally, Nina wouldn’t have minded the attention (on the contrary, she usually loved it) but tonight she’d dressed solely for Noah to gawp at.
In fact, she’d have been quite happy to skip pudding and head back to their B&B and their box bed, but Rachel and Ford had walked over 25,000 steps that day so they did want pudding. They were both really nice, super nice, but Nina wanted to punch them.
‘You all right?’ Noah asked when they’d given their pudding orders and Rachel and Ford left the table to take photos of the rustic, rural charms of the pub and post them on Instagram. ‘Shall I come and sit next to you?’
‘Yes, please,’ Nina said and when Noah was seated in the chair that Ford had just vacated, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. She almost wanted to shrug it off because she was too hot after spending most of the day being too cold, but then he pulled her even closer to kiss her cheek. Nina leaned into Noah’s touch and his lips were moving down, just glancing the corner of her mouth, when something occurred to her. ‘I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve kissed today!’
‘Yes we have!’ Noah frowned. ‘No, we haven’t. We should probably rectify the non-kissing situation quite soon.’
‘Very soon,’ Nina agreed. She pulled away. ‘But not here, especially not when those two girls have walked past our tabl
e twice already and think that I don’t know that they’re trying to take a sneaky picture of me.’ She raised her voice and the two girls backed away, phone still pointed in Nina’s direction. ‘But yeah, more kissing needs to happen as soon as humanly possible.’
‘Sooner than that,’ Noah said, his gaze fixed on Nina’s mouth. ‘Really wish we hadn’t ordered pudding now.’
‘Talk of the devil …’
Their pudding was in sight as were Rachel and Ford, who were loudly enthusing about the history of the pub now that one of the bar staff had told them it was haunted by several different ghosts.
For perhaps the first time in ten years, Nina hadn’t ordered dessert but Noah stayed seated next to her and fed her delicious morsels of his sticky-toffee pudding, though she had no appetite for them.
It all got a bit hazy after that. There was definitely another brandy. And nuzzling. Quite a lot of nuzzling. Especially in the car on the way back.
Nina supposed they must have made small talk with Rachel and Ford and their hosts. Possibly refused a nightcap because the next thing she was aware of was climbing the stairs to their room, the wooden banister rail smooth under her fingers, Noah walking behind her and pausing to nuzzle the back of her neck again when she stopped on the landing to get her bearings.
Then finally they were in their room. The fire had been stoked while they were out and it was toasty warm and Nina was coming to boiling point just from all that nuzzling.
The door shut behind Noah with a heavy thud that matched the beat of Nina’s heart.
‘So,’ she said hoarsely. ‘About that kiss …’
‘Yes, that kiss,’ Noah said prowling towards her and Nina didn’t think she’d ever wanted to be kissed quite so badly as she did at that moment …
Then the wait was over because Noah had closed the small gap between them, closed his arms around her and Nina was dragging his head down, her fingers clutched in his hair and they were kissing.
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 25