by Holly Martin
‘Why didn’t you tell us you were there?’ Rome asked.
‘Well I didn’t want to interrupt. The whole island has been rooting for the two of you to get together and now you finally have, well I think it’s simply wonderful. I didn’t want to be responsible for stopping it before it started. So I thought it best that I just stay out of the way and keep my eyes closed until it was over. I didn’t want to embarrass you.’
‘Oh god, it’s safe to say I’m embarrassed,’ Freya said.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it my dear, nothing to be embarrassed about. Me and Lucy used to have sex outdoors all the time when we were younger,’ Finn said, desperately trying to make Freya feel better. ‘You’re not hurting anyone and it’s not technically illegal, providing you don’t get caught. Me and Lucy were caught having sex in the park once. The police had got some tip-off that someone was selling drugs in the park and a whole squad of them turned up ready to bust some illegal drug ring and there was Lucy and I, stark naked. She was on her hands and knees and I was—’
‘Dad, for the love of god, stop talking,’ Rome said.
Finn blushed. ‘Yes, quite. Maybe you don’t need to know the full story. But my point is, there’s no harm in it, two young, single, healthy, consenting adults, why shouldn’t you have sex whenever the mood takes you.’
‘Dad!’
Freya let out a little giggle.
‘Well, why don’t I leave you two love birds to it and get off home,’ Finn said, clearly deciding to stop making a bad situation even worse.
‘We’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this,’ Rome said and Freya felt another little kick of disappointment. Of course she didn’t want the whole island to know about her and Rome’s late-night naked swim but she also didn’t know why Rome was so reluctant for people to know about them being involved either.
‘Of course, I’ll be discreet,’ Finn said. ‘I mean, I’ll have to tell Lucy, she’d have my guts for garters if I kept that from her, but we won’t tell anyone else, I can assure you of that.’ Finn turned away and then immediately turned back, embracing Rome in a big hug. ‘I’m happy for you, son, you deserve to be happy and find love again and I can think of no one finer to do that with than young Freya here.’
Rome patted his dad awkwardly on the back, probably not wanting to tell him that this thing between Rome and Freya wasn’t love. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t love and Rome knew that.
Finn pulled away from Rome and grabbed Freya into a big hug too. ‘We always have the children round for dinner every Friday, we didn’t last week because we were away, but we’d love you to come round for dinner this week.’
Finn pulled back to look at her.
‘Oh thank you, that’s so kind, but it wouldn’t be right to intrude on your family dinner.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re family now too. Isaac will be there and Dougie always comes whenever he is in town. You must come.’
‘Thanks Dad, we’d love to,’ Rome said.
Finn nodded and walked away. Rome slipped his hand into hers and started walking towards his house.
Freya looked up at him in surprise. ‘You didn’t want to tell anyone and now you want to go to a family dinner and be outed as a proper couple in front of your parents and sisters?’
Rome shrugged. ‘We probably have twenty-four hours until the whole island knows. Finn will tell Lucy and Lucy will just have to phone my aunt Cassie and she will tell everyone whether they want to know or not. I’m pretty sure Bella and Eden already know from the looks they were giving us all night and if they don’t I’m sure you will tell them, I know how close you are. Dougie definitely knows. There doesn’t seem much point in trying to keep it a secret any more.’
Freya frowned slightly. It sounded like he was resigned to his fate rather than happy about being outed. While Freya wanted to shout it from the rooftops. And if he really did love her, wouldn’t he want that too?
She sighed. She had said she would give Rome time and she knew she had to do that. This was so new to them both and just because she had been in love with Rome since she met him, it didn’t mean that he felt the same way yet. Up until the day before he had been quite happy being friends with her, it was her that had changed things between them. She couldn’t expect him to suddenly fall in love with her overnight just because they’d slept together a few times. She had to remind herself that Rome had slept with several women since Paige died and although he insisted this was a lot more than just sex, it would take time for him to make that transition between friendship and something more.
‘So now I’m part of the family?’
Rome grinned down at her. ‘Seems like it.’
‘Does your dad make that kind of fuss with all the women you date?’
‘I don’t date.’
‘Sleep with then. Do they all get invited round for dinner?’
‘No, Dad knows how important you are to me, that’s why he’s inviting you round and practically organising the wedding already. No one else has ever been invited round. You’re the only one… Apart from Paige. But she only met them a few times,’ he quickly clarified. ‘She was away in London a lot and when she was back up here for the weekend we’d spend pretty much the whole time in bed.’ He looked down at her. ‘I’m making this worse, aren’t I? You’re my best friend and I have spent two years talking to you about everything, it’s hard for me to get my head around that I need to censor my thoughts from now on.’
Freya shook her head. ‘Don’t censor your thoughts. I never want you to do that. Paige was a big part of your life, you loved her, you were going to get married to her. I’m not expecting you to just forget all about her because we’re sort of seeing each other.’
‘Not “sort of”,’ Rome muttered.
‘Well, whatever this thing is between us. If this relationship goes the way I want it to, this will be the first relationship you’ve had since she died and I know that will be hard for you, so talk to me about what you’re thinking and feeling, it’ll help me to understand. Just because we’re lovers now, doesn’t mean we’re no longer friends. So your relationship with her was very physical?’
He looked down at her in confusion. ‘You really want to know?’
She nodded, even though she didn’t. But she needed to know whether she actually stood a chance with him. Was the relationship she had with Rome anything like the one he had with Paige?
‘Sex with Paige was… frantic, a desperate need for each other.’
Freya looked away over the moonlit sea. She was wrong, she didn’t need to hear this. But Rome showed no signs of stopping now.
‘I’ve never had that with anyone since. I often wondered whether our relationship would last when it was only built on amazing sex. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk. She was in London all week, so we’d only see each other at weekends. I worked as a glazier during the day and she was out working at night so we barely had time to catch up over the phone during the week either, and the only catching up we did at weekends was purely physical. We rarely talked and actually I was always quite thankful for that. I was always afraid that once she got to know the real me, she wouldn’t want to be with me any more. Thank god we had amazing sex.’
Freya felt a bit sad about that, that Paige had never got to know the real Rome. ‘You talk about the real you as if there’s something wrong with you, when I don’t see that at all. There’s a lot more to you than your ability to make a girl scream in bed. I fell in love with you long before we had sex. I fell in love with your kindness, the way you really listen, your protectiveness, your intelligence. I fell in love with your humour, you genuinely make me laugh. I fell in love with how easy it is to talk to you, your wonderful talent for working with stained glass and the way you taught me with so much patience. You are a wonderful man, Rome Lancaster, and if you and Paige had ever married, then she would have been the luckiest woman in the world.’
At the foot of the steps that led
up the hill towards Rome’s house, he stopped and pulled her into his arms, kissing her sweetly. ‘What did I do to deserve you?’
‘Well, I’m guessing the god of love or Cupid, or whoever is in charge, looked down and saw how many women you made happy in the bedroom and decided you needed a bit of happiness yourself. I could make you happy, Rome. I know our sex is probably nowhere near as amazing as the sex you had with Paige but—’
He frowned. ‘Wait a minute. I’ve never said that. And I want you to know there is something incredible about making love to your best friend, that intimacy of knowing each other so well is something really special. I never had that with Paige.’
He took her hand and led her up the steps towards his house as she digested that. Was he saying it was better with her? She didn’t dare ask that question for fear of the answer but it gave her hope.
He let them into the house and immediately pinned her to the door as he kissed her again.
She moved her hands over his chest and started working on the buttons of his shirt then slid it off his shoulders and let it drop on the floor. She ran her hands over his arms and shoulders and then round his bare back.
‘Make love to me in your bed,’ she whispered against his lips.
‘Is that all you think about?’ Rome muttered, sliding his hands under her dress and then pulling it over her head. He filled his hands with her breasts, kissing her again. She moaned against his lips, she was never going to get enough of him. His hands slid back to her waist and then down to her bum and he lifted her. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and, without taking his mouth from hers, he carried her up the stairs.
Chapter Twenty
Freya woke the next morning as Rome walked back into the bedroom carrying two mugs of tea. He was wearing only pyjama bottoms and she admired that glorious, huge smooth chest and those strong arms for a moment as he walked around the bed and placed her cup on the small chest of drawers next to her. Then he walked back around the bed and climbed in next to her.
‘Morning beautiful,’ Rome said, kissing her sweetly on the lips.
She sat up and leaned into him as he wrapped his arm round her shoulders.
‘What time is it, it feels really early?’
He grinned. ‘You just didn’t get enough sleep last night. It is a little earlier than I’d normally get up but, having had the last two days off work, I feel we have a lot to catch up on. The tent around where the mural will be is going to be erected today, so we can start putting it together on the wall without the prying eyes of the public seeing it before the big reveal. So we could go over there this afternoon and work for a few hours. I also have a meeting with my solicitor this morning.’
‘Oh, that sounds very official.’
‘Just a few things I need to get sorted out,’ Rome said, vaguely.
She slid her hand down his chest, heading towards his pyjama bottoms. ‘So we haven’t got time to hang around here for a bit longer.’
He laughed and extricated himself from her arms as he got back out of bed. ‘No, we haven’t. Don’t tempt me. Besides, I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about how you think this is only physical for me. I want to prove to you that this is a hell of a lot more than that. I want to have a proper relationship with you. So for one week, we’re going to talk and kiss and spend time with each other and go out on proper dates but no sex.’
Freya sat up as if she’d been electrocuted. ‘No sex?’
‘I want to do this properly. Paige and I never had a deep relationship. I’d like to think that when she eventually moved back here after her job finished in London we would have got married and things would have worked between us but if sex was the only thing keeping us together, I wouldn’t have fancied our chances. I don’t want to fall into that kind of relationship again where we are just tearing each other’s clothes off at every available opportunity.’
‘Why not, that sounds pretty good to me,’ Freya teased. She couldn’t believe after waiting for so long she’d finally made love to him and now he was slapping some kind of weird sex ban on their relationship before it had really got started.
‘I want to see if we work without it.’
She got out of bed and enjoyed the darkening in his eyes as he appreciated her nakedness as she approached him. She slid her arms round his neck and his hands immediately went to her waist. ‘You know we work without it, we have worked together and socialised together perfectly well for the last two years without the sex.’
‘But we weren’t in a relationship. We can still kiss and spend the night together but I don’t want it to be all about sex and I know you don’t want that either.’
Freya resisted telling him that she was quite happy for it to be all about sex. She was under no illusions that this was going to end with their happy ever after, happily married with four little children running around their heels. He didn’t love her. Real love didn’t appear slowly and take years to build. Real love knocked you off your feet, it was crazy and hedonistic and unstoppable. Bella and Isaac were proof of that. Real love wasn’t, ‘Let’s see how it goes over the next few months and I’ll try and fall in love with you too.’ Real love was falling head over heels with someone so much that they ask you to marry them after only a month, the way he had with Paige. And although he had asked for some time and Freya was quite happy to give him that, in her heart she knew that eventually this thing between them, whatever he wanted to call it, would come to an end. She wanted to make the most of what they had now and make love to Rome as many times as she possibly could before that day came. A sex ban was the very last thing she wanted.
‘I thought we could go to Envy again tonight, do the date that we should have had,’ Rome said. ‘And then tonight you can stay here again. I like having you in my bed. Having you sleep next to me… it made me feel complete.’
She stared up at him, emotion clogging in her throat. ‘You say the sweetest things sometimes. It makes me fall in love with you a little bit more.’
‘Hey, don’t go telling anyone I’m sweet, it’ll ruin my reputation as the grumpy sod on the island.’
‘Your secret is safe with me.’
He laughed and bent his head to kiss her briefly and then pulled back slightly to look at her.
‘Will you go out with me tonight?’
She smiled and nodded.
‘Good, now get dressed. We’ve got work to do.’
He kissed her on the forehead and left the room.
If he wanted to date her, then she was more than happy with that, but this sex ban would have to go.
Rome was busy packing everything into boxes ready to go down to Buttercup Beach so he could start work on the mural that afternoon while Freya was busy copper foiling the last few pieces of the current batch of red glass that would be part of the school building in the mural. Things had ticked along at work that morning as they always had, with them both working seamlessly alongside each other, chatting and laughing as normal.
He’d been worrying about how it would be at the studio, whether it would be awkward after spending almost two days making love to each other, but nothing had changed. It made him wonder if they could really make a go of things. Most couples would end up killing each other if they had to work alongside each other all day and then spend all night together too, but they had never got frustrated or annoyed with each other in the past and he didn’t see why that would change now they were dating.
Freya glanced up and out the window and he watched as the smile fell off her face.
He turned to see what had made her sad and saw Kitty Lane getting out of the car and heading towards the shop.
‘Here comes the Rome Lancaster fan club,’ Freya said.
He turned back to look at her. ‘You don’t like Kitty coming round?’
‘Of course I don’t. It’s bad enough seeing her draped over the man I love and flirting with him, but now that you’re my boyfriend it makes it worse.’
He grinned as he ste
pped up to her. ‘Boyfriend?’
She looked unsure for a second. ‘Well if we’re dating properly then I’m not sure what else I could call you.’
He slid his hands around her waist and she responded by putting her arms round his neck. He bent his head and kissed her briefly on her lips. ‘I like it.’
He saw the delight on her face just as Kitty walked in. As Freya tried to shift back out of his arms, he held onto her and kissed her again, this time taking his time, enjoying the moment. Kissing Freya was so sweet, so wonderful, he could honestly do it all day.
A cough interrupted them and Rome pulled back slightly, kissed Freya on the forehead and then slowly turned and faced Kitty as if he’d only just noticed her.
He plastered on his fake smile. ‘Hello Kitty.’
She didn’t look pleased at all and he took a small amount of pleasure from that.
‘I’d heard the rumours that you two were together, I have to say I didn’t believe them.’
Freya pulled out of his arms and carried on working with the red glass, deliberately ignoring Kitty.
‘Why wouldn’t it be true?’ Rome asked.
‘Because…’ Kitty gestured to Freya and then trailed off, smart enough not to answer that question, but her intention was quite clear. Why would he have Freya when he could have Kitty?
He let the fake smile drop from his face. She could forget being polite.
‘Do you have glass in the car?’ he said coolly. ‘I’ll get it out.’
Kitty nodded and he walked past her and out onto the street. She tottered after him in her heels.
‘So you and Freya? That’s sweet,’ Kitty said, dryly.
‘Yes, I couldn’t be happier,’ Rome said, opening her boot and lifting out two boxes of glass.
‘Believe me, I could make you happier,’ Kitty said, cutting to the chase.