Love Happens

by Claudia Burgoa

  The lights are blazing through the dozens of windows that make up the front facade of this huge house. My parents have completely modernized the inside, but the outside has been left virtually untouched since the last Dowager Countess of Coventry lived here.

  “Here we are,” I say as the comforting sound of my Range Rover’s tires crunching over the gravel lets me know we’re about to pull up to the front of the house.

  The front door flies open as I park and I see my mother, tall and blonde like me, step out of the house. My father, a tall man with a head full of white hair, that’s always neatly groomed, follows her at a slower, more sedate pace.

  She runs up to my car and opens my door before I can even turn off the ignition.

  “Darling, you’re home,” she exclaims as she starts to throw her arms around me. She freezes in mid motion when she sees Cara sitting there.

  “Oh, who is this?” she asks, her voice full of delight. “Look dear, Louis has brought a girl home.” She shouts over her shoulder to my father. She abandons my side of the car and rushes over to Cara.

  Cara looks at me, her eyes wide with panic as my mother makes her way to her, and mouths “Oh my God!” right before her door flies open and my mother hugs her.

  “Hello, lovely. Welcome to our home.” She actually leans over Cara, unbuckles her seatbelt and then pulls her out of the car.

  “Yes, that’s right, stand up, let me take a look at you.” She peers at Cara in the dark before she looks over Cara’s shoulder at me. She sees the horrified look on my face and bursts out laughing.

  “You’ve only got yourself to blame, Louis.” She says with delight as she claps her hands together and grabs Cara’s hand.

  “Come with me, dear, we’re all just about to sit down for supper.” She leads a bewildered Cara towards the house. As they walk away from the door she shouts, without looking back, “Lou, bring your bags in. She can have the yellow room across from yours.” And then she disappears into the house, leaving my father and I staring after their disappearing forms.

  He walks up to me, claps a hand on my shoulder and gives me a quick hug.

  “Welcome home, son. I think your mother is excited to see you,” he chuckles. His frame feels like he’s lost a lot of weight since I last saw him, which is alarming. It’s been less than a month. He’s smiling though and doesn’t look sick, so I don’t mention it. “Thanks, Dad. Good to be home,” I return.

  I walk around to the boot of my truck and grab our bags. He takes Cara’s smaller one from me and we walk towards the house together.

  “Is everyone here already?” I ask him as we step inside the massive, white marble floored foyer of their house.

  “Yes, Harry and I were in the office. Freya and the children are in the study watching television and Gene, snuck off to catch a nap somewhere.” He smiles warmly at me and leads me into the house. As we veer off the foyer into the main sitting room, I can hear Cara’s laugh. We enter the room and she is sitting with my mother, on one of the sofas and they are laughing together about something. I take in the vision they make, my little blonde sprite of a woman and my tall, Amazonian dark blond mother-both stunning women in their own right-have their heads bent together and look like they have known each other their whole lives.

  I drop my bag with a thud, which startles them and their heads pop apart as they look at me. My mother is positively radiant.

  She smiles conspiratorially at Cara, before she says to me, “Oh, there you are, Louis. We were wondering what was taking you so long. I was just telling Cara how you were the only child I’d ever met who could get lost between his bedroom and the breakfast room and she said you’re still just as hopeless.” She throws her head back, obviously tickled with her own little joke. I glance at Cara, giving her a mock glare.

  “I’m just going to take our bags upstairs, Mum. I’ll be right back down so we can eat. Cara, want to come with me, so I can show you where you’ll be sleeping?” It’s phrased as a question, but I hope she can read the expression in my eyes which says “Get your ass out of the chair and come with me.” She gets it and smiles at my mother warmly.

  “Excuse me, I’d better go with Louis, make sure he finds his way back.” And my mother laughs again, this time joined by my father. I take Cara’s hand in one of my hands, and pick up our luggage with my other and lead her to the massive spiral staircase that is the center of my parent’s home.

  “Wow, this place is incredible, Louis,” She says as her eyes grow wide with wonder. The walls of the staircase are lined with ancestral portraits and one of me that I’d rather she not notice. I try to pick up the pace as we approach it.

  “I can’t believe you grew up here. It’s like a modern museum. Everything is so—” she stops suddenly right at the picture I was hoping she wouldn’t see. “Oh my God, is that you? You and your siblings?” she giggles in delight. “You were so cute, Louis. Look at your hair.” She practically squeals in delight.

  The picture is an unfortunate portrait done right before I left for Harrow. In it, Harry and Freya are standing and I’m sitting in a Louis XVI style chair in front of them. My hair, when I was younger was a mass of tight corkscrew curls that have loosened as I got older. When this picture was painted, it was at a stage where it was more curly than wavy. My mother controlled my hair styles then, and she had it cut in this ridiculous style that can only be described as a bowl.

  I looked like a freak and was teased mercilessly at primary school. I convinced my father to stop on our way up to Harrow so I could get it cut. I knew if I showed up at boarding school looking like that, I wouldn’t survive the first week without getting my ass kicked.

  Cara is laughing, peering at the picture and then me. “You still look the same, Louis, except you’re a giant now and your hair is practically straight.”

  She walks past me, taking the lead on the stairs and looks at all the pictures, none of me, but plenty of the Earls who had held the title before my father and their families.

  “This is so amazing. All of this history and you can trace your family back so far,” she sighs.

  “Gosh, my family’s pedigree is nothing like yours. My mother is French, the daughter of a cook. My dad is Moroccan, and even though he’s a doctor now, his father could barely read. Your mother will be horrified when she finds out. I’ll ruin your bloodline.”

  I laugh when she’s done with this monologue. She looks worried and I’m delighted because she is thinking of herself as part of my family. I want to grab her and kiss her until she tells me she loves me. But, I know that her mind hasn’t caught with her heart. She is still hurt by my reaction last week and I can’t rush her. So, I just wink at her and say, “My mother’s a mutt, too. Her father is Italian, her mother, Danish. My father’s family threw a fit when he brought her home. But he wouldn’t be swayed. The bloodline’s already good and ruined.”

  I grin at her and take two steps at a time so I am in front of her again. We reach the top of the stairs and Cara is breathing hard.

  “Louis, I don’t want to go back down. I can’t climb these stairs again today.” She moans as we start down the hall.

  I laugh at her. “Sorry, we can take the elevator next time.”

  She growls and tackles me from behind. The impact causes me to stumble forward, but I drop our bags and grabs her hands to pull them around my waist and steady us.

  “You’re such a jerk, Louis!” she bites my back and I yelp and arch away from her but I don’t let go.

  “Sorry, but everyone has to climb those stairs at least once, Cara. It’s tradition.” I explain laughing as I move to avoid her snapping teeth.

  “I thought I was going to die at the end, Louis. That’s like 150 steps,” She laughs, catching her breath now.

  “Clearly you need to step up your workouts. That should have been easy for you.”

  “Hey, lay off. I’m in perfect shape.”

  She disengages from my waist. But, she doesn’t let go of my hand and comes to
stand beside me. She smiles up at me, and looks so beautiful that it takes my breath away.

  “Come on, handsome, show me the way.”

  And with that, we head down the hallway, to her room. Hand in hand and in a perfect, collective silence.

  CARA

  The sounds of a cock crowing wakes me up just as the sun begins its daily ascent. I stretch and snuggle more deeply into the soft, down comforter on the bed in Louis’ family home. I’ve just had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a year. I feel refreshed and ready to face the day, even though, ordinarily, this would feel like an obscenely early time to wake up.

  I close my eyes and let my mind drift back to last night.

  Louis showed me to my room and was a perfect gentleman when he left me alone to freshen up for dinner. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t try anything, but I’m the one who asked for distance and set the tone with that peck on his cheek when he picked me up yesterday. So, I just took my lumps and played by my own rules.

  When I made my way back down for dinner, his entire family was in the sitting room that I’d been in with his mother earlier. The house’s decor is very modern, totally belying the exterior’s Victorian stone facade and design.

  His sister Freya and his brother Harry could be twins. They both have their father’s looks about them. I saw from family pictures that he had very dark hair and was olive toned when he was a young man. His two oldest children inherited the same coloring. Louis is obviously his mother’s child. While Freya and Harry are both tall, neither one of them is as big as Louis. While his brother, who is the walking definition of tall dark and handsome, is obviously an athletic man, he’s built like someone who plays polo.

  Louis is built to play Rugby.

  I see him as I enter the room and just sharing the same space with him causes a thrill to run through me. He’s so sexy and we are always so in tune with each other. As soon as I enter the room, he knows I’m there. The same way I always feel him before I see him. I don’t know what it means that he brought me home, but it’s obvious his family is very close. I also know, because his mother told me, that he’s never brought a girl home before.

  Their conversation dies as I enter the room.

  “Cara, hi. Let me introduce you,” Louis stands up from where he is sitting and walks towards me, smiling like it’s been months rather than minutes since we’ve seen each other. When he reaches me, he places a kiss on my lips, and turns around to face his family.

  “This is my sister, Freya.” Freya, smiling warmly leans forward and kisses me once on each cheek, and even though it’s normally a gesture that feels aloof, she makes it feel like a warm embrace.

  “Welcome to Coventry, Cara. We are so pleased to have you. My husband has just worked a full twenty-four-hour shift at the hospital and is fast asleep. You’ll meet him at dinner tomorrow. These three rascals,” she points to the three small children who are peering up at me from behind her legs, “are Matthew, Oliver, and Lucy.” She smiles proudly at them and says, “Children, say hello to your Auntie Cara.”

  The boys, who have to be twins and can’t be older than three say nothing. One of them smiles at me shyly and the other sticks his tongue out and turns his face away. The little girl, who looks to be no older than five, steps from behind her mother, curtsies beautifully and says, “Very pleased to meet you.”

  I stoop so I’m at eye level with all of them and smile. “Very nice to meet you, too Lucy” She scampers back behind her mother and I stand up.

  Louis takes my hand and turns me to his brother, Harry. “And this old goat, is my brother, Harry.”

  His brother, in a manner so unlike his sister, doesn’t smile, just extends a hand, doesn’t even attempt a smile and looks completely miserable. When our eyes meet, the flash of pain I see in his eyes before he masks it, steals my breath. I make a note to ask Louis about this later.

  “Nice to meet you, Cara.” He mumbles before walking back to his seat. He’s not rude, more like, curt, but it’s obvious he’s going through something.

  Louis places a hand on my lower back and turns me towards the doors and says to the room at large, “Since we’ve made introductions, let’s go eat.”

  Dinner was delicious, if a little formal. Everything served by staff that moved like wraiths between us, refilling water and wine glasses before you even noticed it was empty.

  His mother told me that all of the vegetables we were eating came from the family farm. Tomorrow was market day and she and Louis’ father man the store for part of the afternoon. She invited us to meet them for lunch in town the next day. It was all so lovely and easy. His sister was friendly enough to make up for the sullen mood of his brother, which his family completely ignored.

  On our walk back to my room, Louis told me that his brother’s fiancé had died in a swimming accident while she was on vacation. And not only had the news of her death come back instead of her, it turned out she had been on vacation with Harry’s best friend and that they were having an affair. He said the family was letting him sulk for a little bit longer because it had been less than a year since it happened, but that his mother was going to be pushing him to start trying to live a little more. He said that Harry almost never left the estate and had cut off most of his friends. My heart broke for him and I could hear Louis’ anguish as he spoke about his brother.

  He dropped me off at my room with an infuriating peck on my cheek and went across the hall to his room. I watched him go, noting which room was his. I was tired of keeping him at arm’s length. I missed him and could tell that he was trying to make me feel his commitment to me, by sharing something very dear to him, with me.

  I lay down to wait until the rest of the house was quiet. I would crawl into bed with him and make up for lost time. I dozed off with a smile on my face.

  Now, it’s the next morning and I slept all night long. I walk on quiet feet to my door, open the door slowly and peer outside. I can hear some movement downstairs, but there is no one in this hallway, so I sprint across the hall to the door I saw Louis enter and slip inside.

  His curtains are drawn and the room is pitch black. I creep over to his bed and crawl in. He rolls toward me and links an arm around my waist, pulling me toward him.

  “Mmmm, good morning, blondie. I’m glad you came over and saved me the trip, he says drowsily and without opening his eyes. And then he kisses me softly and gently as he pulls me on top of him. His tongue teases my mouth and I open for him. Our kiss is deep, and languorous. The pace, slow and sensual. He reaches down and grabs the hem of my night shirt and pulls it over my head. I am naked beneath it and he sits up and closes his mouth over my breast. My hands go immediately into his hair and I pull on it, as I feel myself growing wet against his thigh. He’s sleeping in a pair of boxers and I feel his cock hard and peeking through the slit in the front. I reach between us and stroke him.

  And then, I pull myself off him, lean forward and press a hot, wet kiss to the tip of his large, uncut, pulsing cock.

  “I’ve missed you, buddy,” I say to his cock before, taking him into my mouth, pulling him as far as I can, I feel the head hit the back of my throat and I hum. He groans and places an open palm, flat onto my back. I start to move up and down and after only a few strokes, he is pulling himself out of my mouth, pulling me back onto his lap and reaching into his drawer for a condom. He makes quick work of slipping it on and then he lifts me up and puts me back down, slowly, until he is seated completely inside me.

  “Ride me blondie,” he says, his voice gruff with the effort of maintaining his control. I start to move and I don’t waste time finding the angle that works best for me. Once I’ve got it, I move as fast as I can, Louis’ hips tilting up with every one of my downward motions. Soon my eyes are closed, he’s flat on his back, my hand on his chest, and I am chasing my orgasm. I feel Louis start to come and hear him hiss out a long drawn out “Fuuuuuck” as he presses a finger to my clit. That’s all it takes for me to fall over the edge.r />
  We make a series of unintelligible noises as we come together and we fall into a tangle of limbs, both of us panting and sweating.

  His hand brushes the hair out of my eyes and he asks “You okay?”

  I smile at him. “I’m great, baby. Thank you for bringing me home. Your family is amazing.” I kiss him slowly.

  “I’m glad you think so. They are the most important people in my life, besides you,” he and kisses me softly before saying “and before we move to Paris, I want them to meet you, get to know you.”

  I sit up his words and gape at him.

  “What do you mean we?” I ask him. I put the “we” in air quotes.

  “I mean you and me, blondie,” he says as he sits up to look at me, “If you’ll have me.”

  I just stare at him as what he’s saying sinks in.

  “You want to move to Paris? With me?” I ask him, incredulous and feeling a hope and happiness build so strongly that it feels like bubbles are popping in my stomach.

  He looks suddenly apprehensive.

  “Only if you want me to. I know it’s presumptuous, maybe you can go first and get used to it and then let me know if you want me to—”

  I cut him off with a kiss, and push him back down onto his bed.

  “If I want you to?” I yell when we break our kiss.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I want you to,” I say giggling as I throw my arms around his neck.

  “Louis, are you sure? What about your job?” I ask him, suddenly afraid of all the reasons why this won’t work.

  “I can find a job in Paris, I hear they have a pretty decent arts scene, I think I could get a job as a set designer there,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He pulls me back to him and kisses me again. “I am completely sure, Cara. If you’re going, so am I. We’re a matched set, you and I. I want you to know that this time, the fall will be worth the leap of faith you’re taking with me. I’m in this 100 per cent, and I’m in love with you. Let’s have this adventure together.”