I slumped against the wall. He backed off of me, but then I felt his hands turning me around. I turned so my back was against the wall and looked up at him. He kissed me. It was lazy and comfortable. Both of us came down from the high that we had just risen to making love in the shed. This bit was almost as good as what we had just been doing. I almost didn’t care how he was touching me as long as he kept doing it. I didn't want it to stop. When he finally pulled away, I had to stop myself from opening my mouth and saying something I would end up regretting.
Come stay in the house with me.
I actually sold your watch already.
The child I pretended not to have is actually yours.
“How long do you think the rain is going to last?” he asked.
“What? Well, it hasn't let up after all this time. I think we're out of luck.”
“How about we give it another hour and see what happens?” he asked. I straightened out my clothes and retrieved my blouse, putting it back on. The fabric, still damp, was cold. I went to the door of the shed and opened it. The rain was falling almost violently. The closed door and walls of the shed were saving us from the deafening sound of it coming down. I closed the door.
“I don't think you can leave and drive in this kind of rain. I don't think it's safe.”
“I hate to ask then, but do you mind if I impose for the night? I don't mean, I'm not asking to share your bed, though I wouldn't say no if you offered. I'm not keen on trying to get back to London in this either. Maybe I could spend the night in one of your spare rooms?”
There was a thought. Riley, Prue and I barely filled the place up. Three bedrooms were completely unused, but that meant they were also empty. In an attempt to make money, I had sold off all of the furniture that wasn't essential which included emptying the spare bedrooms. Technically, there were no spare bedrooms for him spend the night in. Walking into the house and seeing completely empty rooms would have been a bad enough shock. I barely had any furniture left. I didn’t know how I would have that conversation with him. I would have to bring up the finances and admit that I had sold the watch that he thought was only being appraised. If that wasn't suspicious, even worse was Riley.
Riley looked like me. The hair he had gotten from me, definitely. It wasn’t that Riley had my hair, more than that was the fact that he looked nothing like Russell.
Niall was a smart man, if he found out, who knew what his reaction would be? I imagined anger which was understandable, but what if he took it to the next level and decided the child, legally was his? I wouldn’t stand a chance against him in court. He would completely ruin me as well as take my son. The risk was far too high.
“No,” I said. His eyebrows went up.
“No?”
“No. I mean, I can't let you do that. It's not a good idea. My son has been ill lately, so I don't think it's a good idea to have you in the house.”
“Oh, poor thing. I hope he feels better.”
The boy was fine. If Niall did end up going into the house, Riley would be thrilled at the prospect of having a houseguest. He wouldn’t leave him alone, giving Niall plenty of time to deduce that there was no way he was Russell’s son. How would Niall react to me sending him back into the town and asking him to try and get a room at the little inn?
“How about this,” I said, thinking on my feet. “There's a little cottage on the property not far from here. It used to be the caretaker's cottage but we haven't had anyone there for a little while. It's heated and it's comfortable though, so you could spend the night there.” I watched his face, nervous for his reaction.
He nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, sure. No problem at all. Where is it?”
To get there, we had to go through the rain. I went over to the door of the shed and threw it open. The rain has gotten even harder if that was possible. We would be soaked by the time we got to the cottage. It wasn't far, a little less than fifty feet away, but in the rain, we would be wringing our clothes out by the time we got there.
“Are you sure you don't want to wait here and see if the rain lets up a little bit first?” Niall asked.
“What? Are you afraid to get a little wet?” I asked him.
He smirked at me. “Come on, let's go.”
We sprinted through the rain, doing our best not to fall over, slipping on the mud towards the cottage. We were both laughing by the time we got there.
“I asked to stay here so that I could stay out of the rain,” Niall said.
“Well,” I said rifling through the potted plant next to the door for the key to the cottage. “That's what you got for popping up unannounced.”
He laughed and nodded his head. “I suppose I deserve that.”
I got the door open and we walked inside. The air smelled stale and it was cold. Nobody has been inside for a long time. The last time it was lived in was several years ago since the maintenance of the grounds had been the first to go when finances got tight. There were white sheets thrown over the furniture to prevent too much dust from accumulating. It would have gotten sold along with all the other non-essential stuff I had already flogged but buyers weren’t interested since the pieces were so old. I tried the lights and thankfully they were still functional. I turned on the heat and the radiator rumbled into life.
“Here we go,” I said trying to sound bright. It was a small cottage, but it was definitely liveable. There was a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom. Plenty of room for one person, for one night, but Niall had definitely seen grander accommodations than this. He was probably just being polite about being okay with staying here. It was either this, or sleep in one of our spare rooms on the floor. “Sorry if the place is a little dusty.”
“That's alright,” Niall said. I was glad that he was sparing my ego, even though it was a little bit humiliating. I pulled the white sheets off of the furniture and bundled them up in my arms. The cloud of dust that I upset tickled the back of my throat. I fought back the urge to sneeze, sniffing.
“Why don't you get comfortable? I'll run up to the house and get you some sheets and some food.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked
“No. No just stay here,” I said. He looked a little puzzled by how short I was being with him, but I could not have him in the house. It was better this way, even though this way was far more tedious and a hundred times more wet.
“Are you sure you want to go back out in that downpour?”
“At this point, I don't even think I can get much wetter than this.”
I didn't even hurry on the way back to the house. I was not looking forward to making the trip back with the sheets and the food that I had promised. This was what I got for keeping the secrets of my finances and paternity of my son from him. This was not supposed to be happening. Niall was not supposed to be on my property. I had already told him that he could stay so it was no use brainstorming ways to get him to leave. Perfect. Now what? I let myself back into the house, dripping. Prue, thankfully was waiting on the other side of the door with a towel. I thanked her as I took it and started dabbing at my face. I stole into the guest bathroom in the entryway to get out of my wet clothes.
“Why has the Earl of Arden decided to pay us a visit?” she asked through the door.
“Who?” I asked, peeling my wet clothes off.
“The man who came to the door. I googled him. I didn't know you were familiar with the Earl of Arden.” The what? I wrapped the towel around me and came out of the bathroom, wet clothes in hand. Prue took them from me. I knew that Niall was titled but I didn't realize that he was an Earl. I shrugged.
“We’re acquaintances. He came to pay me a visit and now he can't leave because of the rain. I've put him up in the cottage but I need sheets and dinner for him.”
“He's quite rich, you know. Are you sure the cottage is adequate?”
“Of course, he’s rich. Did you see the car he rode up in? If the cottage is inadequate, he’s welcome t
o find his way in this downpour to the nearest establishment with five stars.”
“Not simply rich, he’s obscenely wealthy. What business brought him here?”
“It's kind of a long story.”
“Oh, I have time.” I shot Prue a look. She was the closest thing that I had to a friend out here and ordinarily, I wouldn't have any issues telling her what was going on, but the story between me and Niall was a little bit too messy to get into at the moment.
“Our guest needs sheets and dinner, Prue,” I repeated. She made a face, but she nodded her head.
“There's something you're not letting on,” she said to herself, leaving the room. There was. With any luck, we would get through this whole night of Niall being here without me having to reveal anything, to her or to him. I went to the kitchen to start preparing Niall’s dinner. Riley bounced into the room and came up to me.
“Are you ready to eat love?”
“Who was the fancy man with the fancy car?” he asked.
“That man is a friend of Mummy's.”
“Where is he?”
“He's spending the night in the cottage.”
“Can I go and say hello to him?”
“That's not a good idea, Riley.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's raining just now and I don't want you to get sick.”
“But you went out in the rain,” he said. He was right. Do as I say and not as I do, I thought. How did I tell my son that I didn't want him to find out the truth of his paternity? Not like this.
“I did, and now I'm all wet. You don't want to get wet.”
He looked thoughtful. “I get wet when I have a bath.”
“Of course, sweetheart, but this is rainwater, it's different. Come now, it's time for you to eat.”
I supervised Riley's dinner, using his incessant questions and very passionate argument to be allowed into the rain to stop thinking about Niall outside in the cottage. Oh, excuse me; not Niall, the Earl of Arden. The fabulously wealthy Earl of Arden. When was he going to tell me that? I felt like he knew far more about me than I did about him, and he had barely scratched the surface. This complicated things. I needed to go back out there.
Tonight was going to be a long night.
15
Niall
I opened a cupboard. The hinges creaked and I was hit by the smell of stale, old fabric. I was right though; it was a linen cupboard. Not much linen to be found inside though. There were a couple of moth-eaten blankets, a duvet which seemed to have lost a lot of its stuffing and a couple of thin-looking towels. I grabbed one of the towels and wrapped it around my waist. The fabric was kind of scratchy and it did close to nothing as far as getting me warm or dry, but it was better than putting my clothes back on.
I walked back to the sitting room and sat next to the radiator. I had put my wet clothes on the backs of a couple of chairs and they were drying out next to the radiator too. The cottage was taking a little time to heat up, but it was getting there. It had been two hours since Eddy had left. I had explored the entire place up and down a couple of times by now and the searches had turned up nothing too shocking. There were no rats or other wildlife that had taken up residence in the abandoned cottage. It wasn’t necessarily clean but I’d survive a night here. Under more savory circumstances, the place must have been downright cozy.
Staying in the house must have been much cozier, however.
I wasn't expecting Eddie to take so long. I knew that she had her son in the house so I tried not to be bitter about it, but it would have been nice to have something to do. My phone wasn't getting reception and the old TV in the living room looked like a relic from the late Stone Age. I hadn't even tried it because what was the use? I was partly scared it might erupt in flames.
I wondered what Eddy was doing at the house. Truly, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that she was someone's mother. I had never thought about her family life with the Baron too much, but everything that had happened since I had gotten to Belshire was bringing to light the fact that I didn't know much about her at all. I wanted to see the child. I wanted to see her as a mother, see her in her house playing with the boy, see how they related to each other. I had had more contact with my nannies than my parents growing up. A revolving door of women, local and foreign that dealt with my tantrums on their behalf. Received payment for offering me some approximation of parental love. I liked to think that Eddy was a hands-on mother. Her boy wouldn’t grow up a bitter cynic because she didn’t hug him enough when he was a child.
There was a short knock at the door, and then it's swung open. I was sitting on one of the sofas in the living room as Eddy walked in. She was dry, even though the rain was still coming down which meant that she had used an umbrella and she had a basket under one arm. I watched her, slightly amused as she let herself into the house, took off her muddy shoes and then set the basket on the small dining table, all before noticing me. She jumped, bringing her hand to her chest.
“Oh my God, I didn't see you there.”
“I was starting to think that you forgot about me. I got up and walked to the table. I caught her eyes scanning me head to toe in my towel before she looked away.
“I'm sorry about that. I just got a little held up in the house.” She pulled containers of food out of the basket along with cutlery and two plates. “I guess it was a good idea for you to stay since the rain isn't getting any better.”
I wasn't thinking about the rain. I was thinking about her and her little boy, eating dinner together, her reading him a bedtime story before putting him to sleep.
“What did you bring me?”
“Probably not what you're used to, but this is what we eat.” In one of the containers was a hearty stew of meat and potatoes with biscuits. In another were still warm Yorkshire puddings. I watched as she made me a plate and then made herself one.
“I'm sure it's delicious,” I said, sitting down. She waited to take a bite until after I had tasted the food. It was delicious. She was right about it not being what I was used to eating. I never cooked for myself so almost everything I ate came from restaurants or hotels. It was all good food, of course, but it didn't have the same touch that home-cooked meals had.
“This is amazing,” I told her. “It always annoyed me that people here don’t really eat biscuits. These are the American’s greatest invention.”
She giggled. “I had an aunt who was married to an American and she introduced me to their version of biscuits. I never went back.”
“This is delicious,” I repeated.
“I'm glad you like it. I thought something like this would be good since the weather is so bad and it's a little bit chilly over here.”
“My compliments to your housekeeper.”
“Oh, she didn't make this. I did.”
“No, you're having me on. You cooked this?” She nodded. “I didn't know you knew how to cook. Frankly, not many women of your ilk know how to do it. It's kind of a dying skill among the rich.”
“I wasn't always rich,” she said.
“I bet your husband appreciated it.”
“Barely. He was hardly home and when he was, he was less interested in who had done the cooking and more in how fast he could shovel it down his gullet.”
“Well, his loss.”
“It's not like he was interested in whether I could cook or not when he married me. I thought that was something that men looked for when they married.”
“Usually, but let's be honest. Your marriage was probably the exception.”
She laughed. “Lucky me.”
“You know what? It's taken a while, but it's here now.”
“What's here now?”
“You finally have a man who appreciates your cooking.”
She laughed again. “Wow, and it only took five years.”
“I would say it was worth the wait.”
“Would you know?” she asked.
I would. She had had an unhappy marriage. Sh
e had told me that and it was so well-known that even her neighbors in the town knew that she and the Baron didn't get along. He was gone now, and I did feel sorry for the fact that she was a widow and had to raise her son alone, but I wasn't sorry that the man who treated her so poorly was no longer a part of her life. He never deserved to be part of her life. He took that privilege and squandered it. Without knowing much about him, I was glad that he was gone, and not just for my sake.
“Are you still hungry?” she asked me as I cleaned my plate.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, serving up some more food. She laughed, watching me eat. “Sorry to make you wait.”
“Don’t worry about it. I made you wait too. I would have hustled if I knew you were half-starved out here,” she said. The cottage was heating up but it wasn’t just because the radiator was on. “I hope this place is decent enough for you. I know it’s below your usual standards.”
“I can make do,” I said. I didn’t want to ask why she didn’t want me in the house, besides the child being sick. I was pretty sure that my immune system wouldn’t let me fall ill with a little exposure to a five-year-old’s runny nose. That child made things a lot more complicated between us. It hurt a little that she didn’t want me near him, even though he was a little sick at the moment. We chatted as I finished eating and Eddy cleared the dishes away, taking them to the kitchen.
“Shall we do the bed now?” she asked, walking back in.
“We?” I asked. “What kind of turndown service is this?” I asked.
She laughed. “Here at the Hotel Nicolas, it’s self-service,” she said. She pulled the sheets out of the basket and led the way into the bedroom. I took one side and she took the other. She threw the sheet up so I caught the other side and we fitted it over the corners. The mattress was lumpy and heavy, hard to maneuver. It felt like it was stuffed with rocks.
“When was the last time that someone slept on this?” I asked. I fitted the sheet over the corners on my side but Eddy was struggling.
Admit You Love Me: A Secret Baby Romance (Irresistible Billionaires Book 2) Page 9