If they hadn’t had that misunderstanding yesterday evening, would he have acknowledged his attraction to her? Would he have ignored it—pretended it wasn’t there? Or would he have flirted with her? Played with that chemistry, and seen where it might take them?
With Jake’s sister? he reminded himself. No, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. She was as off-limits today as she had been yesterday. He had to remember that. But her culottes had slid up her legs, showing smooth, toned calves, and he physically ached with the need to reach out a hand and feel the softness of her skin, the firmness of the muscle. He flexed his fingers and tried to concentrate on his food. But for once he could barely taste it. He was more interested in the curve of her lip and the close of her eyelids as she tasted an olive. The slide of her finger into her mouth as she sucked them clean.
He stifled a groan. That really wasn’t helping matters.
‘What?’ Madeleine asked, opening her eyes and catching him watching her.
He opened his mouth to tell her Nothing, but no sound came out. Instead he held her gaze and watched as her expression shifted from quizzical to interested to knowing. He knew that what he was thinking must be written all over his face. But he had told her yesterday how he felt. It would be dishonest of him to try and hide it from her now. At least that was what he told himself so that he didn’t feel he had to tear his eyes away. Not just yet. He just wanted another moment.
‘Finn...?’
He waited in silence to see where that sentence was going. But it seemed either Madeleine didn’t know or didn’t want to share it with him, because her voice faded out. Her eyes dropped too. To his lips, and then back up again.
Her lower lip slipped between her teeth and she bit down, and he knew that they were thinking the exact same thing. How would it feel to press his mouth against her lips? To feel the slide and the power of them beneath his own? To taste and to test? To press against her until they were stretched out on the grass, the sun hot on their bodies as they explored beneath their clothes?
The cry of a baby behind him brought that stifled groan to life, and Madeleine took a breath as she glanced over at the pushchair.
Maybe it was for the best, he considered as he followed her gaze and saw Hart stirring.
And maybe he was going to spend the rest of the day wondering exactly where that look might have taken them if they hadn’t been interrupted. He had a feeling he knew which way that was going to pan out. And it didn’t look good for his peace of mind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OH. MY. HAD that been a moment? Had they just had a moment? One second she’d thought she was just picking at some antipasti, and the next Finn was looking at her like he wanted to eat her. In a really, really good way. He had watched her lips until her eyes had been drawn to his mouth too, and just as her body had begged her to find out what it would feel like—
Hart had woken up, and the moment was gone. Because she was not ready to deal with how much she’d wanted that kiss to happen.
Not like this. Not with Finn.
Because she knew what she wanted from her relationships. She wanted predictability, and the balance of power firmly on her side. She wanted to be able to walk away when she decided it was over because that was the only way that she knew how to handle this stuff. To be fair to herself, it was the only way that she had tried. Maybe, if she’d wanted to, she could have had a go at something different and made that work too. But she never had, because that meant opening herself up to getting hurt and she had precisely zero interest in doing that. Not with Finn, or with anyone else.
But when Finn looked at her like that—like he wanted to eat her, to consume her, to make her a part of him—she wanted to find out what that felt like. She wanted to give herself over to it and care precisely nothing about the consequences. Because she was pretty sure that the not knowing was going to kill her. The not knowing, and the being so damn close that she could practically taste him. Which was why she had to get up off this blanket and start walking and stop thinking before she did something she would regret later.
* * *
That night, Madeleine slipped between the cool cotton sheets and stretched out her feet, pointing her toes until she was sure that some part of her foot would just snap completely. After the babies had woken up they had played in the park with them for nearly an hour, pushing swings and taking gentle turns of the roundabout, rocking horses and adventures in diggers.
And then, with the picnic bag empty—and the coffee flask dangerously so—they had headed away from the green oasis in search of sugar and caffeine to keep them fuelled until the babies decided that they’d had enough of exploring and wanted to sleep in the pram. She wished she’d realised before she’d started how many miles you could cover with babies who would only sleep on the move. She couldn’t have been more grateful when they’d woken and informed them—at some considerable volume, that it was time to go home now, please.
Once they were through the doors of the house, it had been a whirlwind of steamed veg and finger food and sterilising bottles. Bathing naked babies and wriggling them into Baby-gros and humming nursery rhymes.
By the time that she and Finn had collapsed in front of the TV she couldn’t have cared less that they might have had a moment back there on the picnic blanket. All she wanted was spadefuls of the mac and cheese that Finn had found in the freezer, and the sweet, sweet oblivion of sleep. Neither of them had managed more than half an hour of the movie they’d stuck on before giving up any pretence that they would be awake later than nine o’clock.
It felt as if her head had barely hit the pillow before the crying began, but a glance at the time on the front of her phone told her that it had been a couple of hours. Turned out midnight really was the witching hour. She could leave Finn to it, she supposed—they were his kids currently screaming the house down. But she was here to help him out and what was even the point of these awkward living arrangements if she wasn’t doing that?
She stumbled out of bed and threw on her cardigan, pulling on socks in anticipation of the tile floors downstairs. She pulled her hair into a ponytail high on her head, opened her door and nearly crashed into Finn, who was holding a wailing Bella on his shoulder and a tear-stained Hart on his hip.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Finn said, shoving Hart in her direction. ‘Would you take him? He’s settled for now but I just can’t get him down.’
‘I don’t—’
But her reply was cut short by the arrival of Hart on her hip and she didn’t have any choice but to hold on. He gave her an uncertain look and his bottom lip wobbled, but no tears were forthcoming for now.
‘Is there something wrong with Bella?’ she asked as she followed him and Bella’s cries down the hall.
‘Teeth? Wind? Existential angst? Your guess is as good as mine at this point.’
‘How long has she been crying?’
‘An hour? Half an hour? A week...?’
‘Do you want me to take her?’
Finn’s face creased as he peered at Bella, and Madeleine could see the ruminations behind his eyes as he tried to work out what was wrong.
‘Maybe she’s sick of me,’ he said with a shrug before completing some sort of superpower twin manoeuvre which resulted in her finding that she was now holding Bella and Finn was bouncing Hart.
‘What do I do?’ Madeleine asked, aware that her eyes were widening in alarm as Bella’s volume picked up a notch and the bouncing and patting that had worked with Hart the night before only seemed to make things worse.
‘This...this is the part where we pace,’ Finn said, heading past her door to the end of the corridor, bouncing and patting as he went. And pace they did. Long past her feet hurting. Long after her back started to ache and her shoulders started to burn. She saw half an hour tick by on her phone. Then an hour. By the time that Bella stopped screaming, they had moved their pacing down to the k
itchen so that the adults could at least dose with caffeine to get through what was feeling like an endless night and the babies could spit out the lovingly prepared formula that Finn had somehow managed to make one-handed.
When Bella finally exhausted herself in Finn’s arms and Hart was asleep on her shoulder, Madeleine was left with a deliciously heavy bundle snuggled into her as she collapsed onto the sofa in the open-plan area. Finn leaned back against the kitchen island, pinching the bridge of his nose before rubbing a hand across his forehead.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been doing this on your own,’ Madeleine said.
‘It’s not always like this,’ Finn said with a wry smile. ‘Wait here. I’ll put Bella to bed and come back for Hart.’
Madeleine snuggled deeper into the corner of the sofa and her eyes were just starting to close when she heard Finn’s bare feet padding across the tiles of the kitchen floor.
‘I’m sleeping here,’ she mumbled without opening her eyes. ‘Possibly for a week.’ She heard his smile in his little huff of breath. Didn’t even need to crack open an eyelid to see the lines around his eyes that he always got when he grinned.
‘Let me take him,’ Finn said, and her shoulder was suddenly cold where Hart had been snuggling and she heard the gentle swish-swish of his swinging chair.
‘If you’re sleeping, I’m sleeping,’ Finn said at last, when they had both finally released their held breath. ‘Budge up.’
She lifted her feet so that he could collapse at the other end of the sofa, and it was only when her thighs started to ache that she realised she really hadn’t thought this through. She lowered them slowly and felt heat spark when Finn’s hand cupped her ankle and guided her feet onto his thighs.
‘God, you really need a nanny,’ she said, trying to think of any topic of conversation that would distract her from the electric feel of his hands resting on her. Suddenly, her ankles were the most sensitive part of her body and she could feel the heat of each of his fingertips as they gently rested against her.
He’s not even thinking about it, she told herself. He’s literally only touching you because you refused to give up the sofa.
Except now one fingertip was tracing a feather-light circle around her ankle bone, so slowly, so gently that she suspected that Finn didn’t even know that he was doing it. Had no idea that he was driving her so insane with the gentlest of touches.
‘I’ve scared you off, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘You’re going to pack your bags first thing in the morning.’
‘No, not that,’ she said, trying to keep her mind on the subject of nannies and their arrangement, and definitely not on the sparks of heat that she could feel radiating out from his hands on her. From the feel of hard muscle beneath her feet. ‘You must be desperate for someone who knows what they’re doing, that’s all. I don’t feel like I was much help tonight.’
His grip on her ankle was suddenly firmer, the wandering fingertips that had been driving her so insane were still, and she could feel that the hardness in his body went beyond that. She had annoyed him. Perfect.
‘Why do you do that, Maddie? You did great tonight. I hate that you won’t acknowledge how capable you are.’
She cracked an eye open at last, trying to read the expression on his face from the half-light of the lamp in the corner of the room.
‘Okay, I won’t say it again. It’s no big deal.’ She shut her eyes, tried to get the swimmy, heavy feeling of nearing sleep back into her muscles but it was gone, and she was angry at Finn for that. It was bad enough that she was awake in the middle of the night. Worse that he was annoying her so much that she couldn’t even get the sleep she so desperately wanted.
‘Don’t,’ Finn said, holding onto her as she went to swing her ankles off the sofa and sit up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he carried on in hushed tones. ‘I didn’t mean to criticise.’ The stroking fingertips were back, driving her insane, and really she knew that that was reason enough to take herself off to bed. But... But. But she was a complete idiot and clearly needed her head examined, and it felt so good to have his skin so near to hers that she felt herself relaxing back, her eyes drifting shut again.
She could feel the intimacy settle over them like a blanket, shutting out the real world. They were the only two people awake in London. She was sure of it. Never mind that she had been out in this city at every hour of the day and night and never found it sleeping. She was quite sure that she and Finn were the only people in the world right now. As if they had slipped through some sort of wormhole brought about by screaming and pacing and fallen into a universe where no one but the two of them existed.
‘I didn’t mean to snap.’ She sighed. Finn’s hands stilled and she let out an involuntary mew of displeasure and nudged him with her toes. Her feet ached. Her calves ached. Her toes ached. She’d had no idea that it was possible to walk so far without leaving the house. The circles around her ankle bone resumed, each one unwinding her a little looser, each one undoing her a little more, so when Finn asked, ‘What happened?’ she didn’t have the energy to throw up her usual barriers. The words fell out of her.
‘A professor, the last year of my university course. I thought he was taking an interest because I showed promise. I thought the grades I was getting were because I was working hard. But it was all a play. It was all to get me where he wanted me. To get what he wanted from me.’
The hand on her ankle stilled, and she nudged him again. If he stopped, if they returned to real life, there was no way that she could talk about this. The circles came back, and so did her words.
‘When he made it clear what he really wanted... When he locked his door and stood in front of it so that I couldn’t escape, I finally worked it out. God, what kind of journalist was I going to be if I couldn’t even see that coming? I managed to get out of there, and that’s when it all fell into place. It was never my work that he saw. It was my body. He thought that he could just take it. That I would hand it over. Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I walked out of university and I never went back and I lost my career because of it. Well, the career that I wanted. That I might have had. Except I’ll never know now, will I? I’ll never know if I could have had that career, because everything I know about my ability has been cast into doubt. I never got a single grade that I don’t ask myself whether it was for my insight and understanding and thorough research. Or whether it was just someone wanted to get a better look at my boobs.’
Finn was quiet, still for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice was ice. ‘You should kill him.’
She gave a wry smile at his instinctive response to protect her. ‘Too late. I thought about it, but a heart attack beat me to it. Two years ago. Glowing obits in all the broadsheets.’
‘You could dig him up and kill him again.’ The words were ground out, shocking her with their carefully harnessed rage. She opened her eyes and the expression on his face startled her. She had never seen his features contorted into such anger. Every line of his face was hard. His jaw was a slash of muscle beneath the hollows of his cheeks. The bones above were stark lines caught by the light from the lamp. The creases around his eyes owed nothing to laughter now. They were deep and harsh.
She sat up, her feet sliding under his leg now, her knees bent as she hugged herself smaller, brought herself closer to him.
He shook himself and she watched as he forced some of the tension from his face. When his eyes met hers she wanted to hide from the raw intensity there, but then her hand was on his face and she couldn’t look away.
He gripped her other hand hard, and she could feel him shaking. ‘I am so, so sorry that that happened to you,’ he said. His other hand came to rest on top of hers, trapping it against his jaw. ‘If you want to talk more about it, I’m here. I want to help—just tell me what I can do.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s not much more to tell. And there’s nothing you can do.’ His grip on her ha
nd softened and she let her body follow, resting against the sofa cushions, still tucked into her little protective ball. But when she leaned against the sofa Finn’s shoulder was right there and in a breath, no more than two, her cheek was resting against it, drawing the heat from it. When his arm circled around her back to tuck her more firmly into his side, she didn’t fight it. With her toes tucked under his thigh and his arms a hard band of bone and muscle around her back and her waist, his shoulder the pillow under her cheek, she was surrounded by him.
If she dared open an eyelid, he would be her entire field of vision. He was the firm support under her head and the gentle strokes on her aching calves. He was the heavy weight on her feet and the rise and fall that was lulling her into sleep. He was the gentle huffs of breath, the slight movement as it nudged her hair.
The wormhole universe that they had created had shrunk around them until the only way that they could both exist inside it was by curling up tight. Tangling limbs around one another. Sharing a space that only seconds before had only been big enough for one. And for the first time in as long as she could remember she felt still. And quiet. And as sleep dragged her under she didn’t care what she was going to think about all this in the morning. All she cared about was the aching perfection of their universes merging and colliding, and finding peace there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MADELEINE WAS IN his arms.
She was practically in his lap. Her feet were still tucked under his leg, her cheek on his shoulder. One hand rested on his chest.
He had no idea how long they had been asleep, but the sky was lightening and Hart’s swing had stopped moving. The dark circles had started to fade under Madeleine’s eyes, and it took more self-control than he realised he had not to stroke the skin there, to try and soothe her tiredness.
Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins Page 8